Musk’s SpaceX, an incredulous spacecraft manufacturing company is distinctively known as a champion of integration – where rockets and other space-related tech is built from recycled parts, reducing wastages to increase affordability.   

SpaceX has managed to put Starlink into orbit, a massive constellation of low-altitude satellites which connects underserved areas of the world to the internet. 

Starlink and the recently launched Starship, are less of an opportunity for being notches up into SpaceX’s portfolio and more of the stepping stones and central pillars aligned to Musk’s space exploration’s ultimate dream – going to Mars. 

The tech titan has always made no secret of his dream to make human colonies on the Red Planet by 2050, envisioning the day when the world will witness his triumph of landing a rocket on the Martian surface successfully. 

“A spacefaring civilization is all about believing in the future, thinking it will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”
– Elon Musk

SpaceX Starship Launch Progress

One of SpaceX’s most ambitious projects to fuel the dream of Mars is launching Starship – a completely reusable and repurposable rocket transportation system that takes people and goods to Earth’s orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond. In the last two years, SpaceX has unfortunately delayed its starship launch innumerable times, owing to pending licensing requisites from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

Just weeks after firing all other engines to test the Starship launch vehicle, Musk’s latest tweets display the decision of gearing up to conduct the maiden orbital flight of the “Starship Super Heavy Rocket” as early as this week. 

The FAA also posted a notice for SpaceX’s Starship launch date buffer window for its orbital flight between April 10 – April 12, 2023, with backup dates listed as April 18 through 21. The timing frame for all dates is between 8:00 – 11:05 AM Eastern time. 

Starship fully stacked at Starbase. Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week followed by Starship’s first integrated flight test ~week later pending regulatory approval pic.twitter.com/9VbJLppswp

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 6, 2023

This test mission marks the first launch of the fully-stacked Starship rocket system which is SpaceX’s 394-ft tall rocket sitting on top of a ‘super heavy’ first-stage booster consisting of 33 rocket engines. Starship’s Super Heavy booster is expected to be rocketed up from SpaceX’s Starbase facilities in Boca Chica, Texas and deploy the Starship second stage into space to complete its maiden orbital before reentering Earth and splashing miles off the coast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. 

The aerospace company had fully integrated Starship with the booster and filled its fuel tank to full capacity. SpaceX’s Starship launch practice for its Super Heavy booster had survived a scintillating conclusion at the beginning of this year when as part of the Boca Chica SpaceX launch, the crew weighted the rocket with 10 million pounds of propellant. 

SpaceX And FAA: A Saga Of Launch Approvals

Although Starship’s Super Heavy booster sits on the pedestal of being powered as the world’s most powerful launch vehicle to ever be developed, the ability to hoist more than 100 metric tonnes to Earth’s orbit is privy to the FAA’s acquiescence. 

The Elon Musk-led company still seeks the launch license for its Texas-based first orbital Starship test flight from the FAA. 

Starship is ready for launch 🚀

Awaiting regulatory approval

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2023

In a statement to the press, the FAA clarified the notion of its planning notice having no influence over its licensing regulations. 

“The FAA has not made a license determination for the SpaceX Starship Super Heavy operation. FAA Command Center’s planning notice will not, and should not be interpreted as an indicator that a determination to issue a license has been made or is forthcoming.” 

Yet, reports from a source close to the issue affirm that SpaceX’s launch license for its Starship test could be granted by the FAA by today, but also cautioned that the licensing process is due to delays due to environmental compliance reviews. 

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Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, recently claimed that the company’s Starship rockets can be sent into orbit at 1% of NASA’s cost.

He was talking at a pitch event organized by the US Air Force for startups and businesses involved in innovative space technology.

“If you consider operational costs, maybe it’ll be like $2 million,” said Musk during a talk at the event.” This is much less than even a tiny rocket,” Musk added. “So, it’s something that needs to be made. The cost of propellant to launch it off the Earth is estimated to cost $900,000.”

On the other hand, NASA averages $152 million per launch, which puts SpaceX’s cost at nearly 1.28% of its cost.

“The economics have to be something like that to build a self-sustaining city on Mars,” he wrote in a tweet after the event. He added that “a thousand ships” will be needed to create such a settlement.

The figures quoted by Musk may be a little ambitious going by the actual cost of the launches of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the SpaceX launchers. According to reports, a Space X Falcon 9 launch costs $62 million and the Falcon Heavy launch costs anywhere in the vicinity of $90 million.

According to Musk, reusable spaceships and launchers are the future, which will considerably lower the cost of interspatial travel. SpaceX has already taken strides in this direction. Its Falcon 9 Rocket and Falcon Heavy have undertaken many first stage repeated launches.

The Starship transport system of SpaceX is a 100-passenger ship that uses the rocket Super Heavy, both reusable.

A lot of work needs to be done to make the launch systems fully reusable. Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy’s second stage launch systems are still single-use. SpaceX is still working on reusing its payload fairings— the protective cone casings that surround satellites during launch.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has ambitious plans to make humanity a spacefaring species. He also plans to use the Starship transporter for inter-city travel anywhere in the world under one hour in the next 10 years.

The Starship systems of SpaceX are primarily aimed for human settlements in Mars, the moon and other such destinations, which will open up with more space research.

The company has already announced plans to launch the first passenger flight to moon by 2023 on its Big Falcon Rocket. The moon mission, or the Lunar BFR Mission as it is called, is being funded by a Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.

SpaceX’s future plans, according to Musk, are for the Starship launch systems to take over all the transport needs of the company. Other plans on the anvil include; satellite launches, missions for space junk clean-ups, and of course ferry people to space, and around the earth.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday evening showed off a picture and videos of its new Raptor rocket engine being tested at McGregor – the company’s test site. The Raptor engine, which is expected to power SpaceX’s spaceship to the Moon and beyond, is being developed as a successor to the company’s current Falcon 9 flights engine, Merlin ID.

Financial pressure is one of the many reasons why SpaceX is pushing hard to develop its next-generation starship. Musk posted two videos of the tests; one has no sound and the other has a lot of noise that you will want to turn down the volume of your headphones or speakers before opening the video. SpaceX’s prototype Starship is expected to be installed three of the Raptor engine, to perform short “hop” tests where the starship would fly low altitudes within the range of 1,640 and 16,400 feet. However, the final Starship is planned to have up to seven Raptor engines and 31 extra in the Super Heavy booster required to carry the spacecraft to space.

Musk referred the green tinge showing in the video in a follow-up tweet as mere saturation of the camera or the result of a copper in the chamber.

The new test has a full-scale “radically redesigned” engine, according to Musk’s description, unlike the first test videos of these engines we saw some time in 2016. The Raptor engine’s fuel is methane, which is not used by conventional rocket engines. But the company claims that methane provides better performance than other systems. The fuel is also said to be more affordable, cleaner and could also be harvested on Mars, which means the engine could be refueled far away from Earth. Compared to the current Merlin engines that can provide 190,000 pounds of liftoff, every single Raptor will provide up to 440,000 pounds of liftoff.

While the Starship would not go into space for a few years, SpaceX CEO disclosed on the 5th of January that the company expects to start performing the vehicle’s test flights within four to eight weeks. However, it’s very likely that the starship’s first test flights will be delayed. The starship prototype being built by SpaceX was seriously damaged by strapping winds in Texas.

Interestingly, Musk announced that SpaceX hopes to carry out an unmanned Mars mission three years from now, 2022 using the new rocket, with manned flight following the test in 2024.

Nonetheless, it’s safer to view these plans as an aspiration. Musk has a record of giving optimistic deadlines, coupled with the company’s financial challenges. It recently lay off 10% of its workforce to reduce the project costs.

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Elon Musk has changed the name of SpaceX’s future massive rocket, the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) to Starship.

Tweeting from his personal Twitter account, the billionaire chief executive said the transportation portion of the 387-foot rocket, also known as the BFR, will now be called Starship, while the booster portion will be called Super Heavy.

Plans for Starship were officially kicked in back in September. The company hopes it will someday replace the existing Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon rockets. Starship is currently being developed at the Port of Los Angeles, at a whopping cost of $5 billion and will be capable of taking up to 100 tons of cargo or 100 passengers to Mars.

The mission is planned for 2023.

Starship is the rocket’s fourth name – it started out as Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT), then became Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) before becoming Big Falcon Rocket.

It will take people into space on commercial flights around the Moon. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has signed up to be the first passenger to travel on the ship. He will, however, not land on the planet but will travel on a ‘free return trajectory,’ which will bring Starship back to Earth.

So far, only 24 humans have set foot on the Moon – all of them Americans, out which 12 landed on the Moon.

A Twitter user pointed out that calling the BFR a Starship is technically inaccurate unless it’s sent to another star system. Musk quickly responded saying later version of the rocket will leave our star system. The closest to our sun is the Alpha Centauri system, which is 4.3 light years from Earth.

In his tweets, Musk did not reveal details of the new design for Starship. It is still in the early stages of development. According to the third design of the rocket, which Musk presented in September, Starship will have a 118-meter long two-stage reusable spaceship capable of carrying 100-metric ton payload to the Red Planet.

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Starship, a new startup founded by one of the co-founders of Skype, Janus Friis, and one of its original developers, Ahti Heinla have created a fleet of delivery robots that delivers groceries for less than $2, according to reports.

The electric robots can carry 20 lbs of packages across the pavement at approximately 4mph. They use cameras, GPS, and proprietary mapping software to determine how to get from their distribution center to a customer’s front door. Currently, prototypes of the robot are being tested and the company plans to introduce pilot services in the US and the UK in 2016. One of the first test areas will be in southeast London.

According to Friss, the robots use navigation software with obstacle avoidance which allows it to drive autonomously 99 percent of the time. However, the robots will need to be driven by a human operator to help the robot get the layout of the place when it’s deployed in a new area to guarantee a safe delivery. It includes a microphone on it so that a distant operator can speak to pedestrians.

Customers can choose a delivery time that’s convenient for them, and they are able to track the robot’s progress through Starship’s mobile app. The robots’ cargo will remain locked inside until it reaches the customer, the app user is the only person who can unlock the machine’s cargo and get the groceries.

Currently, the robots are 26 inches long, 21 inches wide and 22 inches high. Starship says that future models could come in various sizes. The robots are not equipped to carry hot foods such as pizza, but the company’s planning future models with thermal insulation.

Once the packages are delivered, the robot will then return to base for charging and cleaning. The chief goal of the robot is to simplify the delivery process. Retailers ship the grocery items to a central hub where the robot fleet takes over. Starship hopes to deliver packages with its robots in just 30 minutes, thus avoiding expensive door-to-door traditional delivery methods.

The robot can apparently call the police if it thinks it’s being tampered with, but there was no information regarding how it could avoid being stolen itself or smashed open for its goods.

Perhaps it might not be long before we are able to order a package to be driven to our homes by a robot that has found its way on its own.

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