WASHINGTON — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk says it’s going to be a few yr before the corporate’s recent Starship vehicle shall be ready to begin launching satellites.
Musk, speaking virtually on the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 5, said he felt that the vehicle would have the option to begin launching SpaceX’s advanced Starlink satellites even before the corporate had demonstrated the power to soundly get better each stages of the vehicle.
“There’s a very good likelihood we start deploying Starlink V3 satellites next yr, in roughly a yr from now,” he said. The corporate has not previously disclosed a version 3 of its Starlink satellites; it previously said it might launch full-sized V2 satellites on Starship relatively than the smaller “V2 mini” satellites currently being launched on Falcon 9.
Those launches, he suggested, could begin before mastering recovery of each the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage, or ship. “The toughest part about this, or the part that can take the longest, is solving for protected ship reentry and landing,” he said. “Before we solve that, we are able to launch the satellites because, in any case, with Falcon 9 the upper stage is expendable. It’s actually high-quality to begin launching satellites even before we solve for ship reusability.”
Musk offered few recent details about Starship itself, which is awaiting regulatory approvals for its second test flight after an inaugural launch in April. He noted that SpaceX has shifted to a passive stage separation system between the booster and ship to eliminate parts, in addition to previously announced plans to perform “hot staging” where the ship ignites its engines before separating from the booster.
He reiterated a cautious optimism about the possibilities of success for that upcoming launch. “I need to set expectations not too high,” he said. “If the engines light and the ship doesn’t blow itself up during stage sep, then I believe we’ve got a good likelihood of reaching orbit.”
As with the planned profile for the primary flight in April, the upcoming flight won’t complete a single orbit, with the ship splashing down near Hawaii. That’s linked to the gradual approach SpaceX is taking to recovering and eventually reusing the vehicle.
Neither the booster nor the ship shall be recovered on the upcoming flight. The booster, he said, might be recovered inside the subsequent yr, he said, by flying it back to the launch site and catching it with arms extending from the launch tower, a contraption dubbed “Mechazilla.”
Recovering the ship will take longer. “We wish to be sure that that it is available in fully intact and lands in a precise location within the Pacific before we attempt to catch it on the launch site,” he said. “Hopefully, we’d catch the ship towards the top of next yr.”
Musk, though, is understood for setting timelines that the corporate doesn’t meet. Later within the presentation he said that he expected the primary Starship mission to Mars to happen in three to 4 years. At his previous appearance on the IAC in 2017, in Adelaide, Australia, he offered an “aspirational” goal of initial cargo missions to Mars in 2022.