STARBASE, Texas—Shortly after SpaceX founder Elon Musk completed a 75-minute presentation on Starship Thursday evening, I huddled with a few veteran space reporters. What, we discussed, were the headlines from the event? No one was sure, as we agreed that Musk had not really broken any news.
In his speech, Musk repeated themes he has touched on in the past about why SpaceX is building the Starship vehicle to settle Mars and why this is important to humanity. There were two primary reasons, Musk reiterated. First, there is the life insurance rationale. Although the chance of a planet-wide calamity extinguishing our species is low, it is not zero.
For the first time in 4.5 billion years, a creature living on Earth has the ability to do something about this threat by helping humanity to become a spacefaring species. We ought to seize the opportunity, he said. "To be frank, civilization is feeling a little bit fragile right now," Musk said.
Then there is the inspiration piece. People should have some excitement about the future, and Musk believes that humanity coming together to extend our civilization to a new planet is one such opportunity for inspiration. Such a mission will require diplomacy and radical new technologies. We should be, Musk said, "making science fiction not fiction forever."
But for those who came to the speech in the hopes of hearing major news or technical details about the Starship program, Musk's words were a disappointment. In many ways, the themes Musk used Thursday night in South Texas were lifted straight from a speech, titled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species," that he delivered in 2016 at the International Astronautical Conference. Once again, he went long on vision and aspirations.
However, there was one all-important difference between Musk's speech this week and the one he delivered more than five years ago. Musk spoke then about hypotheticals. On Thursday night, he took the stage in front of a silvery, fully stacked Starship vehicle standing 120 meters tall. It stood next to an even taller "launch and catch" tower that, if anything, was still more impressive.
Talk is cheap. Hardware is not. Musk's vision of settling Mars once seemed like pure science fiction. Now, as he said on Thursday, SpaceX is starting to peel away some of the "fiction."
A few revelations
Musk did sprinkle in a few notable details on Thursday.
As SpaceX charges forward with full and rapid rocket reuse, the company's stretch goal is to fly each "ship" every six to eight hours. These "ships" are the Starship launch system's upper stage, which is 50 meters tall and designed to carry payloads into orbit or be refilled there to fly to the Moon or Mars. The first-stage "booster" could fly even more frequently, as much as once an hour, he predicted. The first stage makes a six-minute flight to space and back and is intended to be loaded with propellant on the ground in just 30 minutes.
He also reviewed the massive, aptly named "launch and catch" tower. It is designed to support the fully stacked rocket during fueling and launch operations. Then, minutes after launch, it will catch the first-stage booster with massive "chopsticks" as the booster slows down near the ground.
"This is some really wild stuff," he said. "It's hard to believe it's real, but there it is."
And there it was—tall, imposing, and seemingly from the pages of a science fiction novel. As an aside, Musk noted that the tower was designed and then constructed in just 13 months after SpaceX engineers decided to use the catching technique on returning boosters to facilitate their reuse more quickly.
Musk also offered some performance specs on the second-generation Raptor engine, Raptor 2. The original Raptor engine produced 185 tons of thrust, but Raptor 2 will have at least 230 tons. It will also cost half as much to build and should be considerably more robust. Some problems remain, however, as the engine chambers have a propensity to melt with the intense output. Still, Musk believes the company is close to solving these issues.
"It's a spectacular piece of engineering," Musk said of the Raptor 2 engine. "It's been mindbogglingly difficult."
But not enough details
At times, however, Musk was frustratingly vague. After the speech, I felt no more confident about when the massive Starship vehicle will actually make an orbital launch attempt. For those who follow SpaceX closely, this came as a disappointment, especially as this talk marked SpaceX's first substantial Starship update in more than 28 months.
During the Q&A portion of the evening, Musk was asked when he thought the Federal Aviation Administration might render a decision on the environmental suitability of the South Texas location for orbital Starship launches. Although SpaceX does not have "a ton of insight" into the FAA process, Musk said he believes approval could come as early as March.
Should the FAA require a more extensive environmental analysis of the Texas location, SpaceX would have to pivot its operations to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Musk said. The company already has FAA approval to launch Starship from Launch Complex 39A, but it would take time to construct a launch tower and associated infrastructure there. The worst-case delay would be six to eight months, he said.
Then, he added, "At this point, I feel highly confident we'll get to orbit this year."
When asked about the readiness of the Starship launch hardware, ground systems, and flight software, Musk said his company is hoping to have these capabilities ready at about the same time the FAA approval comes—if it comes this spring.
But he was short on details regarding the flight-worthiness of the hardware. (For example, the stacked ship and booster on display Thursday night is almost certainly not going to fly, but Musk never addressed or even alluded to this). Myriad other questions come to mind. For example, is the Raptor 1 engine actually powerful enough to push Starship into orbit? Or will SpaceX not attempt a launch until Raptor 2 is ready and its chambers stop melting?
Part of the reason for the lack of clarity is likely that the entire development process at SpaceX is fluid. The company is moving forward as fast as possible, but there still is so much to do. And SpaceX will get there when it gets there.
So Starship will make an orbital test flight in 2022. Unless it doesn't.
Answering critics
SpaceX has unquestionably come a long way since 2016, when Musk first revealed the full scope of his plans to build a launch system that could establish a self-sustaining settlement on Mars. By his own estimates, such a venture would require 1 million tons of food, water, and construction materials. The settlers will need to build an entire industrial base to mine the red planet, and manufacturing consumer products will require a huge infrastructure base to refine and shape materials.
This is an incredible logistical challenge. Consider that throughout the last five decades, during the entirety of its Mars exploration program, NASA has landed a grand total of a couple of tons on the surface of Mars.
For his settlement plan, therefore, Musk proposed an unprecedented rocket and spacecraft. During a 90-minute speech in Guadalajara, Mexico, five years ago, Musk spoke of his “Interplanetary Transportation System,” or ITS. This was a huge and fully reusable launch system with a second-stage spaceship that could be fueled in low Earth orbit and then flown to Mars fully laden with supplies or dozens of settlers. Eventually, after more name changes, the ship would be christened Starship.
The 2016 speech was striking in its candor. Musk laid bare his entire vision for the first time for all the world to see. It was easy to criticize, and many did. The general viewpoint among the established space community at the time was that such a vision was preposterous.
And who could blame the critics? Only four weeks before Musk gave his speech, SpaceX had blown up its second Falcon 9 rocket in a year, losing the Amos-6 satellite on the launch pad on September 1. The company was also going to be years late delivering a Crew Dragon capability to NASA and its astronauts. And for all the talk of reusable rockets, SpaceX had not yet re-flown a single Falcon 9 rocket. Critics watched the Guadalajara speech and saw Musk the Charlatan—over-promising, grasping for government money, and spewing lies about the future when he couldn’t deliver in the present.
But in the five and a half years since Musk’s first Mars moment, the billionaire has answered those critics. SpaceX has not lost a single rocket since Amos-6. In fact, the Falcon 9 booster recently set the record for the longest streak of successful launches by any rocket ever. SpaceX also has become a reliable provider of crew transportation services to NASA, years ahead of its competitor Boeing, which NASA paid 60 percent more for the same service to low Earth orbit. And Falcon 9 rocket first stages have now flown 11 times, with no end in sight.
The Falcon 9 rocket’s sterling performance since 2016, and its relatively rapid reuse, suggest that SpaceX has the wherewithal to replicate this with a much larger rocket. So when Musk talks about launching and landing Starship and Super Heavy rockets and then reusing them fairly rapidly, it does not seem like hot air. The tools are there. SpaceX has already learned the basic reuse lessons with the Falcon 9, and the launch tower and “chopsticks” on display this week in South Texas suggest their intent to carry them forward into Starship.
Money and hardware
There have been two other hugely important changes since Musk’s first speech in 2016: money and hardware.
Back in 2016, Musk said SpaceX was spending a “few tens of millions of dollars” annually on the project. Last year, by one estimate, the company spent more than $1 billion in South Texas alone to bring its production and launch site online. Five years ago, Musk had to tell jokes when asked about how SpaceX would raise money to support the Mars rocket project. He flashed up a slide titled “Funding” that offered the following sources of money: “Steal Underpants, Launch Satellites, Send Cargo and Astronauts to ISS, Kickstarter, Profit.”
For skeptics, this lack of funding represented one of the biggest stumbling blocks to Musk’s ambitions. He estimated it would cost $5 billion to $10 billion to develop a basic launch and spaceship capability. SpaceX did not have that money then, but it does now. Based on recent private fundraisers, SpaceX is valued at $100 billion, and thanks to his Tesla holdings, Musk regularly ranks as the richest person in the world. Money remains an issue, but it is now at least a solvable issue.
With this money, SpaceX has built a Starship factory in South Texas capable of churning out rockets with rapidity. Over the last two years, SpaceX has built more than a dozen Starship prototypes and at least three full-scale Super Heavy boosters. Starship has undertaken several successful test flights above 10 km, and on its last flight in 2021, it safely made a vertical landing for the first time.
While these are not spaceflight tests, they are critical demonstrations of the hardware and the ability to control such a massive vehicle in flight. SpaceX no longer has an “Interplanetary Transport System” on a PowerPoint slide. It has a fully stacked prototype at its launch site, with the capability to produce more vehicles quickly. Much technical work remains ahead of Musk and his engineering team, but their execution to date suggests they will get to the point where the Super Heavy and Starship can launch to space, land, and then fly again.
NASA certainly believes so. Last May, the space agency selected a modified version of Starship to fill the role of a “lunar lander” for the Artemis program, carrying astronauts down to the Moon’s surface. This put Starship squarely on the critical path of NASA’s most high-profile human spaceflight program since Apollo. In other words, NASA now believes SpaceX will succeed with Starship and is paying $2.9 billion in development costs.
SpaceX no longer needs to steal underpants. It can afford to buy a lot of them.
