Tech

SpaceX chief Elon Musk ‘highly confident’ his Starship will reach orbit this year

Published

5 years ago

February 11, 2022

Elon Musk has revealed that he’s “highly confident” his new SpaceX Starship, designed for voyages to the moon and Mars, will reach Earth orbit for the first time this year

The billionaire’s comments come despite a host of technical and regulatory hurdles yet to be overcome.

Mr Musk, who is the SpaceX founder and CEO addressed reporters and fans at his company’s “Starbase” building located in Boca Chica, Texas for a presentation that combined a high-tech pep rally with big-screen videos and a question-and-answer session.

His presentation came nine months after the private California-based space venture achieved the first successful launch and touchdown of a Starship prototype rocket in a test-flight after four previous landing attempts ended in explosions.

LOS ANGELES, CA – OCTOBER 21: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk arrives at “Revenge Of The Electric Car” Premiere held at Landmark Nuart Theatre on October 21, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage)

Musk, who is also the boss of EV maker Tesla, acknowledged difficulties SpaceX has faced in developing the “Raptor 2” engines for its Super Heavy rocket, a reusable next-generation launch booster designed to carry the Starship spacecraft to orbit.

He cited problems with melting inside the thruster chambers of the engines from intense heat.

“We’re very close to solving that,” and expected to scale up production to about seven or eight of the engines a week by next month and produce a new Starship and a booster every month by year’s end.
Musk highlighted.

“I feel at this point highly confident that we will get to orbit (with the Starship) this year,”
said Musk.

Such a time frame would mark an ambitious feat, even for an uncrewed orbital test flight of the Super Heavy/Starship combo, the next step up from SpaceX’s current workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which Musk said has flown 144 successful launches and 106 return landings.