Elon Musk shares update on Starship rocket that will one day help Earthlings colonise Mars

• Elon Musk has shared updates on SpaceX’s Starship rocket that will fly people to the moon, Mars and other destinations.
• Musk imagines a future where SpaceX launches ten Starships three times a day.
• There’s no definite timeline yet but Musk expects Starship to get to orbit by the end of the year.

Elon Musk today shared updates on SpaceX’s megarocket ‘Starship’ that will one day take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and other destinations in space. This is the first major update on Starship that Musk shared after 2019, and it took place at the company’s Starbase facility in Texas.

At the event, SpaceX showed off the fully stacked Starship which consists of a huge first-stage booster called “Super Heavy”, and Starship which is the 50-meter-tall upper-stage spacecraft. Both elements of the rocket are designed to be reusable, something Musk reiterated at the event.

Musk imagines a future where SpaceX launches ten Starships three times a day. There would be more Starships than the boosters as the boosters will return to Earth in about six months. That’s quite ambitious since the Super Heavy booster will have double the thrust than NASA’s Saturn V which is the largest ever rocket sent to orbit.

This is part of Musk’s grand plan to colonise Mars.

"One day we could make Mars a planet like Earth," Musk said.

Launch timeline

Musk said that Starship will be used for Starlink missions and human spaceflight missions with NASA. The timeline for these missions weren’t revealed but Musk expects Starship to get to orbit by the end of the year. SpaceX is awaiting an environmental assessment of the Starbase facility by the FAA which is expected to be cleared in March. Once it’s approved, the first orbital testflight could take place next month.

Musk also mentioned the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa’s dearMoon mission that will take people and fly around the moon on Starship. This mission is slated to take place in 2023.

He added that people can look forward to future announcements on Starship that they “will be pretty fired up about.”

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