Elon Musk Says SpaceX Can Get Its Manned Spacecraft 'Starship' Into Orbit In Six Months

This past week, SpaceX had a demonstration of its latest Starship rocket, at a facility in Texas. Designed to eventually take humans to Mars, this was the first official unveiling of the completed spacecraft.

And Elon Musk thinks he can get it into orbit in just mere months.

SpaceX

At the presentation on Saturday, the SpaceX CEO said Starship might actually reach Earth's orbit in the next six months. That's a bold claim considering this is the completion of the first prototype of the rocket that hasn't been fully tested yet. And Saturday was also exactly 11 years since SpaceX first took to orbit with the Falcon 1.

Starship will be the most powerful rocket in history, capable of carrying humans to the Moon, Mars, and beyond pic.twitter.com/LloN8AQdei

¡ª SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 29, 2019

SpaceX is still working on engine designs for the rocket. It's tested a single raptor engine with its prototype Starhopper spacecraft earlier this year. Now it's combining three of them into a single engine for the first stage. A second engine is being built at its facility in Florida, and a third engine's construction will begin in Texas in a month.

"This is basically the holy grail of space," Musk said. "This is going to sound totally nuts, but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months," Musk said. Provided the rate of design improvement and manufacturing improvement continues to be exponential, I think that is accurate to within a few months."

Three Raptors on a Starship pic.twitter.com/UrRiD62EVk

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2019

The rocket attached to the Starship, called the Super Heavy, will be the most powerful in history, Musk says. It'll have up to 37 of the raptor engines on board, and will tower 18 metres over the 50-metre-high Starship. Once ready in entirety, SpaceX says the vehicle will be able to carry 11 astronauts and scientists not just into space, but also on long interplanetary missions. The first of course, being to Mars.

Reuters

The company also plans to use this for its space tourism plans of course, which is why the vehicle has been designed to be reusable. Of course, all of this depends on SpaceX not missing deadlines like it has multiple times in the past. But if they succeed, it'll be a huge achievement for them.