New Scientist - USA (2019-10-05)

5 October 2019 | New Scientist | 5

ELON MUSK has said that his

Starship spacecraft – which is

designed to carry people to the

moon and Mars – will begin test

flights in less than two months.

The SpaceX CEO made the

comments during a presentation

at the firm’s test facility in Boca

Chica, Texas, with the spacecraft

looming in the background.

Musk first revealed plans for

a rocket to get to the moon and

Mars in 2016, updating them

and naming the craft the Big

Falcon Rocket (BFR) in 2017.

Last year, he revised the design

again and changed the rocket’s

name to Starship.

The prototype will stand

118 metres tall when on a separate

booster rocket required to get it

into orbit and will apparently

be capable of carrying about

100 people to the moon or Mars.

SpaceX has said that the system

will carry eight artists around the

moon in 2020, with the tickets

paid for by the billionaire Yusaku

Maezawa, an art collector and

businessman who founded Japan’s

largest online clothing retailer.

Maezawa says he will go along too.

But the end game for Musk still

appears to be Mars. Ahead of the

presentation, he tweeted that the

“Starship will allow us to inhabit

other worlds... to make life as we

SpaceX plans to test its Starship spacecraft by sending a group of

artists on a trip round the moon next year, reports Lilian Anekwe

Mars ship almost ready

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know it multiplanetary”.

The prospect of “being a space-

going civilisation and being out

there among the stars makes

me [and] many people glad to

be alive”, said Musk at the event.

The breakthrough needed to

achieve this, he said, is to make

space travel more practical by

creating a “rapidly reusable orbital

rocket”. Starship is intended to be

just that. Musk said he plans for

Starship to fly to 65,000 feet and

then land back on Earth within the

next “one to two months”. SpaceX

says Starship “will be the most

powerful rocket in history” and an

affordable means of getting cargo

and people into space.

Ben Taylor at the University

of Surrey, UK, says Musk’s plans

are very ambitious. “I wouldn’t be

surprised if the flights at 65,000ft

go well,” he says. “But I’m much

less sure about being able to

relaunch the engines quickly.”

He says SpaceX has good refuelling

rates with its smaller rockets, but

Starship will be a bigger challenge.

Sinéad O’Sullivan at Harvard

Business School says it is unclear

whether Starship is the start of a

sustainable business. “It will cost

upwards of $100 billion to colonise

another planet, and 100 years or

more to build a self-sustaining

economy at a further cost of

at least $1 trillion,” she says.

Sullivan says she can see

the rocket being used to carry

cargo but the costs will probably

remain too high for it to become a

route to everyday space tourism. ❚

Starship is the most

powerful rocket in

history, says SpaceX.

Here it stands on

the firm’s test facility

in Texas

“ Starship will allow us to

inhabit other worlds, to

make life as we know it

multiplanetary”