Elon Musk said his space company’s enormous rocket should soon be able to reach orbits at a fraction of traditional launch costs.
Starship should be able to reach orbits for less than $10 million a flight within two to three years, Mr. Musk said during a presentation Thursday at SpaceX’s southern Texas facility, where the company plans to launch the spacecrafts
SpaceX has previously said that the company would use Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket it has built to date, for its most ambitious missions, including a potential trip to Mars. The vehicle is meant to be fully and rapidly reusable and forms an important part of the company’s business, according to analysts, as it could potentially deliver hundreds of satellites to orbit at once, including those that make up SpaceX’s own growing fleet of broadband satellites.
“We need to accomplish that—that’s not done yet,” Mr. Musk said of proving Starship can achieve the reusability goals. “But success is one of the possible outcomes.”
In this image from video made available by SpaceX, one of the company’s Starship prototypes fires its thrusters as it lands during a test in Boca Chica, Texas, on Wednesday, March 3, 2021. The two previous attempts ended in explosions. (SpaceX via AP …
He said the company has continued to make improvements to Starship to support future missions. A second version of the spacecraft’s engine, called Raptor, costs about half as much as a prior version, even though the newer edition is more powerful, Mr. Musk said.
During his presentation, Mr. Musk described civilization as feeling “a little fragile these days” and made his case for reaching Mars to build a self-sustaining city.
Mr. Musk had said at a December event organized by the Journal that Starship was proving to be a very difficult project. Not long before, he had said on Twitter that bankruptcy for SpaceX wasn’t out of the question if a severe recession made access to capital more difficult while the company was losing billions on Starship and its satellite internet service.
