Elon Musk said SpaceX is aiming for full and rapid reusability for the Starship launch system, during an update at the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.
The billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO explained the significance of Starship's innovations during his livestream presentation.
“It’s capable of getting a million tons the surface of Mars and creating a self-sustaining city," said Musk. “This is the first point in the 4.5 billion year history of Earth that it has been possible."
Starship has a super heavy booster and the spacecraft itself, stands 394 feet (120 meters) tall. The system is designed to carry 100 passengers or 100 metric tons of other payload to low-Earth orbit, according to the company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
Musk has fallen well short of the goals he outlined at his last formal presentation, in 2019. Starship would have its first orbital test flight within months, he said at the time, and would carry people on a mission within a year. But several test launches to collect data, with no one aboard, ended in flames and it took until last May before Starship was able to take off and settle back near its launchpad without violent incident, after a 6-mile (9.6-kilometer) hop.
SpaceX plans to take thousands of Starlink satellites to orbit for its internet-service constellation and has sold a flight around the moon scheduled for 2023 to Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. The company also has contracted with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to take astronauts to the moon.
Workers toiled through the night to stack the Starship spacecraft atop the booster, a couple of miles from what the company calls Starbase, Texas, where it builds and develops the space system.
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