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• Musk is ‘highly confident’ that spcacraft will make it to orbit this year
• Starship work is years behind initial goals for the Mars trip
SpaceX founder Elon Musk on Thursday said the U.S. aviation authority might grant environmental approval for the company’s rocket launch site in south Texas as soon as next month, paving the way for the launch of Starship.
In an event in Texas, Musk said he is “highly confident” that Starship Starship — the world’s most powerful rocket ever built — will make it to orbit this year.
SpaceX, which has fallen short of Musk's goals in 2019, is now awaiting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before proceeding with Starship’s next phase.
“We have gotten sort of a rough indication that there may be an approval in March, but that’s all we know,” Musk said.
The world’s richest person provided his first major Starship update in more than two years while standing alongside the 394-foot (120-meter) tall spacecraft at SpaceX’s Texas spaceport.
If the FAA demands more info about potential environmental impacts or any lawsuit emerges meanwhile, Musk said Starship launches could move to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but also mentioned that would delay the first orbital launch by more than half a year.
Commercializing space travel
The full-size Starships are taller than NASA’s moon rockets, with approximately double the liftoff thrust, designed to carry 100 passengers or 100 metric tons of other payloads to low-Earth orbit.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to use the fully reusable Starship to send astronauts to the moon as early as 2025.
Meanwhile, Musk hopes to deploy a fleet of Starships to colonize Mars by hauling equipment and people to the planet. He also said SpaceX is aiming for up to three flights a day without giving a timeframe.
But for now, SpaceX would carry Musk’s internet satellites, called Starlinks, into orbit initially before putting people on board.
“There will probably be a few bumps in the road, but we want to iron those out with satellite missions and test missions,” he said.
Not-a-smooth ride
Several Starship test launches ended in flames earlier, until last May, before it was able to take off and settle back near its launchpad without any violent incident, after a 6-mile hop.
In November, Musk expressed his frustration with the lack of progress regarding developing the Raptor engines to power the spacecraft and said SpaceX would face a risk of bankruptcy if it cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks by 2022.
Until now, SpaceX has heavily relied on its much smaller Falcon rockets to launch its Starlink satellites, as well as astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.
Picture Credit: The Verge