Elon Musk delivered updates on SpaceX's efforts to develop its interplanetary Starship rocket on Thursday night, but stopped short of announcing a firm launch date for an orbital test or new missions, despite considerable buildup ahead of the rare presentation.

Addressing an audience at the company's Starbase facility near Boca Chica, south Texas, the tycoon merely said: "I feel at this point highly confident that we'll get to orbit this year," while hinting at a potential pivot to launching from Florida if the company encounters regulatory hurdles.

Musk was speaking against the impressive backdrop of the spacecraft in its fully-stacked configuration, standing 394 feet (120 meters) tall, with a matte black upper-stage placed on a shimmering silver Super Heavy first-stage rocket.

Together, they make the biggest spacecraft ever built: taller than even the Saturn V rockets that took astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo era.

Made of stainless steel and designed to be fully reusable, Starship is also intended to be the world's most powerful rocket, and will be capable of lifting up to 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.

SpaceX envisages the ship carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond -- and last year, NASA awarded the company a contract for a version of Starship to ferry astronauts on the Artemis program from lunar orbit to the surface.

- $10 million launches? -

In his first detailed progress report on the project since 2019, Musk recapped his ultimate vision for colonizing Mars as a "life insurance" in case of catastrophe on Earth, and as the first step in expanding humanity's footprint beyond the solar system.

The speech was peppered with dry humor, such as his "sales pitch" for Mars: "It's going to be cramped, dangerous, difficult, very hard word, you might die" -- though he eventually hopes to terraform the Red Planet.

Musk also included some updates for fans, such as an illustration of how one Starship would be sent to refuel another on deep space voyages, and the thrust advantage and neater design of the latest generation of Raptor engines compared to the first iteration.

Each Starship booster is planned to have 33 Raptors, and a bottleneck in the production is expected to ease in the coming weeks, with as many as one engine manufactured per day by next month, said Musk.

He also revealed that within years the cost of launch could be as little as $10 million -- a price point that could revolutionize the industry by making rockets attractive for commercial transportation purposes.

A flight to Singapore from the US is 20 hours "while in a rocket it would be less than an hour. So like 45 minutes or there abouts."

Starship's upper stage has already made several suborbital flights. After multiple tests that ended in impressive explosions, SpaceX finally succeeded in landing the spacecraft last May.

- Possible pivot to Florida -

But a far more ambitious orbital test is pending an environmental impact clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA said in a December release it would deliver a report by February 28.

Musk said that while he was optimistic of receiving approval, he was prepared to shift launch operations to the company's launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, if it was held up.

Former deepwater oil drilling rigs the company has acquired to convert into rocket launch and land sites could also come into play, he added.

Beyond exploration missions, Starship's tremendous payload capacity could also be a boon for astronomers seeking to place bigger telescopes into space, while the US military has given SpaceX a five-year contract to demonstrate its capacity to whizz cargo around the world in ultra quick time.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has contracted Starship for a journey around the Moon with a crew of artists, and Musk hinted there would soon be "future announcements that I think people will be pretty fired up about," without divulging more.

Related Links
Rocket Science News at Space-Travel.Com

Thanks for being there; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5+ Billed Monthly		SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal

NASA, SpaceX investigate Dragon capsule parachute openings
Washington DC (UPI) Feb 4, 2021
SpaceX and NASA officials are investigating a lag in parachute openings during the return of the company's Dragon capsules from the International Space Station with cargo and astronauts, the organizations said during a teleconference Friday. The return of such capsules was never in jeopardy, and the landing systems performed well during 24 cargo missions and three crewed splashdowns, SpaceX's Bill Gerstenmaier said. Two recent Dragon splashdowns, cargo mission CRS-24 on Jan. 24 and Crew- ... read more

Read more from original source...