founder of SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk recently took to twitter and hinted that the long-awaited Starship, currently undergoing an upgrade in preparation for its next maiden flight, could launch in November.
In response to a question from a curious Twitter account about updates to Starship’s orbital flight date, Musk replied: “Maybe late next month, but November seems very likely. We will have two boosters and ships ready for orbital flight by then, with a total production run of about one every two months.” As usual, his tweet got thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets.
This comes just two days after Musk tweeted a 12 second video with the legend “Static Fire of 7 Engines” showing a stationary, partially assembled Starship firing its engines and kicking up clouds of sand and dust that engulfed the booster in seconds. She followed up this tweet with a second saying, “Great for dusting!”
As stated, Musk wants to make humanity a multi-planetary species, especially on Mars, and he wants to use Starship to achieve this goal. He came one step closer to this reality when his crew built a fully stacked Starship in Boca Chica, Texas in July 2021.
When fully assembled, Starship is taller than any rocket ever built, surpassing the height of the Saturn V by 10 meters (33 feet), and is projected to produce more than twice the thrust of the Saturn V at nearly 7.7 million kilograms. (17 million pounds) of force. SpaceX claims on its website that Starship’s payload capacity to low Earth orbit will be more than 100 tons, which is almost as much as the Saturn V (130 tons).
Musk has a long-standing reputation for being very active and outspoken on his Twitter account regarding his aspirations to one day make humanity a multi-planetary species. On August 31, he said via his Twitter account that SpaceX is “aiming to make up to 100 flights next year,” even as its private launch company has already launched a record 42 times in 2022 and is preparing to launch. its 43.dr release this weekend. For context, SpaceX had 31 successful launches in 2021.
For now, Starship is still undergoing modifications in Boca Chica while we await official word on when it will have its inaugural flight. Will Starship have a successful launch on her first try, and will she eventually be the ship that takes humanity to Mars and beyond? Only time will tell, and that is why we are scientists!
As always, keep up the science and keep looking up!
This article was originally published on universe today by Laurence Tognetti. Read the original article here.
