ELON Musk has declared that SpaceX’s Starship rocket will make its first orbital flight next month.
The Starship is expected to be the spacecraft that will open up the cosmos and return humans to the Moon and beyond.
Fans adore the Starship’s futuristic design and the FAA cleared the ship for takeoff with a few minor conditions.
Musk has been candid about his expectations for the Starship.
In 2019, he tweeted “One day Starship will land on the rusty sands of Mars.”
But on July 11, a Starship prototype exploded in a shocking blaze that Musk flatly called “not good” in a tweet.
Two days later, Musk assured his 100million Twitter followers that Starship could take its first orbital flight in August “if testing goes well.”
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“Damage is minor, but booster will be transferred back to the high bay for inspections, returning to the launch stand probably next week,” Musk told Reuters in an email after the prototype explosion.
The Starship has made 10 test flights since 2019.
The first four attempts were mini-hops just a few meters from the ground while more recent testing brought the Starship a dozen kilometers into the air.
According to SpaceX Stats, the orbital test will bring the Starship 250 kilometers off of our planet’s surface and into low-Earth orbit.
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The Starship rocket is slated to travel deeper into space than any manned rocket has before and it’s designed to be reusable and multi-purpose.
“Starship has the capability to transport satellites, payloads, crew, and cargo to a variety of orbits and Earth, Lunar, or Martian landing sites,” SpaceX’s Starship user guide writes.
“With a fully reusable Starship, satellites can be captured and repaired in orbit, returned to Earth, or transferred to a new
operational orbit,” the guide went on.
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Oddly enough, Musk’s recent projection for the Starship test came in a thread where he made a crass joke about Hunter Biden.
The world’s richest man has a history of hollow promises and failed predictions and Futurism noted he first claimed the Starship would go orbital in November 2021.
