Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, is hopeful that his company’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, will still be able to get regulatory approval for the launch, which is scheduled for March this year, and that the first orbital launch of a new rocket SpaceX represented by Starship will take place this year. Elon Musk made these comments during his first Starship presentation since the first presentation in 2019, which he held just a couple of days ago at the company’s test site in Boca Chica, Texas.
Standing in front of a fully folded rocket prototype that towered over the stage, the CEO gave an overview of some of the rocket’s latest features, as well as exactly why he wants to go into deep space and when he expects all these plans to come true. This was his fifth presentation on Starship in general, and the last one featured Elon Musk speaking for over an hour. However, the CEO hasn’t provided any major new updates regarding Starship that haven’t been previously revealed. During the Q&A session at the event, some new details emerged regarding projected costs and plans for future flights.
However, for ardent SpaceX fans who have followed all other conferences and not only before, the last speech was more of a paraphrase of what Elon Musk said earlier. Whatever the case, the timing of the launch seemed well-calculated, especially as the Federal Aviation Administration is on the verge of deciding whether to allow Starship to launch it into orbit from Boca Chica. “Life is not just about solving problems. There should be things that inspire you, that touch your hearts,” Elon Musk said in a conversation about why you should strive for interplanetary travel. By the way, he has already used a similar excuse in the past.
Either way, Starship is at its core a very massive next-generation rocket from SpaceX, which is designed primarily to carry passengers and cargo to deep space, such as the Moon and Mars. This fully reusable system is designed specifically to launch Starship into space on a giant launch vehicle called Super Heavy. Using its main Raptor engines, Starship will be able to land on the surface of other planets, as well as get back to Earth.
