At Starbase on Thursday, April 4, SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk provided an update on the company’s plans to send humanity to Mars, the best destination to begin making life multiplanetary.
Raptor 3 has been really simplified.
Some interesting notes:Flight 4 in a month or so. Aim to get through the high heating regime. Into the ocean at a controlled spot - a virtual tower (soft water landing technique).If that works, "Flight 5 will land on the Tower" (catch the booster with the chopsticks). 99 percent of all mass from Earth to orbit when Starship is flying (fully operational).Goal to get 200 tons to orbit with full reusability. Two pinpoint soft landings are required for Ship for catches. Maybe next year.Two Towers by sometime next year. Two at Starbase. Two at the Cape - first operation middle of next year (will be 39A).Planning to build another roughly six boosters and ships and that production rate will increase a lot next year. That's why we're building the giant factory.Per Mars, need more ships than boosters. - "aim to ramp production to pretty high numbers, ultimately probably a ship every, like multiple ships per day".Next year aiming to demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer.Lunar Starship - "we need landing legs. And you don't need a heat shield and you don't need flaps because there's no atmosphere. So the Moon ship would be specialized".Performance - "we've made dramatic progress on every level for Starship has evolved from, you know, optimistically 185 tons to 280"."We'll aim to get the booster engines over 330 tons of thrust, which would mean 10,000 tons of total thrust at liftoff. Raptor 3 also will not need a heat shield".Cost: "The Starship 3 (much taller version) will be 400 times more payload for less than the cost of a Falcon 1. Ultimately, I think we might be able to get the cost per flight to Earth orbit down to around $2 million or $3 million".Lots about Mars Base Alpha.Long-term - "we'll probably have some offshore launch sites".
Some nice slides from the update:
@25:50You'll actually want to take apart the ship and use it for raw materials on Mars, because the ship materials will be so valuable. Most of the ships you wouldn't want to bring back, you just want to use them for raw materials.Eventually we will want to bring ships back. And I think we will want to give people the option of coming back, because they're more likely to go if there's some option of coming back. But I think most of the people that go to Mars will probably never come back to Earth.
Quote from: Elon Musk@25:50You'll actually want to take apart the ship and use it for raw materials on Mars, because the ship materials will be so valuable. Most of the ships you wouldn't want to bring back, you just want to use them for raw materials.This is new.
@25:50You'll actually want to take apart the ship and use it for raw materials on Mars, because the ship materials will be so valuable. Most of the ships you wouldn't want to bring back, you just want to use them for raw materials.
Perhaps the design of the Hot Staging Ring is changing?
RGV Aerial Photography@RGVaerialphotosQuick photoshop to help visualize how tall Starship V3 will be.*Ignore the SQD
It looks like payload volume will be increased only a little. What good is 200 tons to orbit, if you can fit only 100 tons of Starlinks inside?
