Will a Starship go to Mars in the 2026 launch window?

[Vultur]

Carried over from the 2024 thread (now pretty clear it isn't happening this year):

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1832545298675331517

SpaceX created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, much more importantly, made the reuse economically viable.

Making life multiplanetary is fundamentally a cost per ton to Mars problem.

It currently costs about a billion dollars per ton of useful payload to the surface of Mars. That needs to be improved to $100k/ton to build a self-sustaining city there, so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1832550322293837833

The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens.

These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years.

Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.

This seems really cool but also super optimistic. With Artemis requirements (unless, I guess, that gets way delayed ... which sadly isn't all that implausible) they would have to crank up launch rate really fast.

Back in 2022 when I started the 2024 thread I was a lot more optimistic on how fast launches would go after the first one: IFT 1 was April 2023, we're now in Sept 2024 (17 months later) and we've only had 4 launches.

Also, planetary protection... can they get permission to land on Mars that soon? If not, would they do a flyby instead or wait to the next synod?

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Cross posting this too, for qualification on people going to Mars:

Whoah, this is not one of those things happening in a couple decades. This is happening in 4 years.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1832639729222737990

Attempting to land giant spaceships on Mars will happen in that timeframe, but humans are only going after the landings are proven to be reliable.

4 years is best case for humans, might be 6, hopefully not 8.

[daedalus1]

I'm pretty sure of this date.

[Helodriver]

Will a Starship go to Mars in the 2026 launch window?

No.

My prediction is in 2026 they will still be working on issues with high cadence launch and landing to/from LEO.

The enabling tech for interplanetary flights, orbital refueling, long term cryo storage, and Mars EDL will not be close to ready.

Planetary protection is clearly something Elon has decided to ignore, because with current build and launch processes, it is impossible to sterilize a Starship to planetary protection standards, so they're just not going to do it. A ship may well belly flop onto the surface of Mars with frozen rainwater ice, and caked aerial Texas dust laden with bacteria behind the heat shield tiles.

Mars eventually, sure, but not in 2 to 4 years.

[r2tincan]

Regulatory cadence needs to change to make this happen. Or start a new company in another country.

[geza]

"If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years." How did he mean? Four years from now, or from the successful landings?

[steveleach]

"If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years." How did he mean? Four years from now, or from the successful landings?

I'm fairly confident he means 4 years from now, 2028, assuming the initial 2026 landings are successful. All their slides have shown a robotic mission in opportunity #1 and a crewed mission in opportunity #2. They won't send crew until they've proved they can land them safely, but once they have it's full-steam-ahead.

From what I've seen, Elon plans purely by the critical path, with no contingency; he then accepts delays and slippage as an inevitable result of that lack of contingency.

[steveleach]

Will a Starship go to Mars in the 2026 launch window?

No.

My prediction is in 2026 they will still be working on issues with high cadence launch and landing to/from LEO.

The enabling tech for interplanetary flights, orbital refueling, long term cryo storage, and Mars EDL will not be close to ready.

Planetary protection is clearly something Elon has decided to ignore, because with current build and launch processes, it is impossible to sterilize a Starship to planetary protection standards, so they're just not going to do it. A ship may well belly flop onto the surface of Mars with frozen rainwater ice, and caked aerial Texas dust laden with bacteria behind the heat shield tiles.

Mars eventually, sure, but not in 2 to 4 years.

You are probably right about them still being plagued by flight cadence issues in 2026, but I suspect the challenges will be more regulatory than technical: environmental and noise concerns, legal challenges, etc.

There's lots of discussion about planetary protection for Mars Starships at https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=57266.0

The summary is that we simply don't know what they are planning in this area, or what discussions they've had with NASA and others.

As for enabling techs:-
* they clearly don't see any blockers to getting orbital refuelling in place in the next couple of years
* long-term cryo storage probably isn't as difficult as you think if you have enough power for active cooling
* the ship is designed for Earth+Mars EDL; they've basically proven Earth EDL, so next step is to test Mars EDL

So if everything goes well, I don't see why they can't launch an uncrewed Mars mission in 4 years. We just need to be realistic about the chances of everything going well.

[IRobot]

Is there any way of avoiding in-orbit refueling? For example a disposable super heavy booster, plus a starship with little cargo?

I think the objective would be to validate Mars (re) entry, even if payload is meaningless.

But it only makes sense if they can relay real-time information, otherwise if starship crashes, telemetry is gone. Would they be able to relay it to an existing Mars satellite?

[geza]

"If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years." How did he mean? Four years from now, or from the successful landings?

I'm fairly confident he means 4 years from now, 2028, assuming the initial 2026 landings are successful. All their slides have shown a robotic mission in opportunity #1 and a crewed mission in opportunity #2. They won't send crew until they've proved they can land them safely, but once they have it's full-steam-ahead.

From what I've seen, Elon plans purely by the critical path, with no contingency; he then accepts delays and slippage as an inevitable result of that lack of contingency.

I am less sure.

Crewed misson in opp. #2 was announced in his IAC lecture in 2017. Description of opp. #1 from his slide:
"2022 CARGO MISSIONS
Land at lest 2 cargo ships on Mars
Confirm water resources and identify hazards
Place power, mining and life support infrastructure for future flights"

His description of the first flight to Mars in his recent post:
"These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars."

Seems to be descoped... We will see... I'll be 70 in '26...

[zack]

No.
Maybe, and thats really a tiny chance, an uncrewed test in 4 years. Humans 15 years out, at least.

[tbellman]

From what I've seen, Elon plans purely by the critical path, with no contingency; he then accepts delays and slippage as an inevitable result of that lack of contingency.

I also get the impression that the things they haven't started looking at in detail yet, he believes should be easy.  Because from a 1 au view^†, all the basic technologies they plan to use already exists and is in use elsewhere, you "just" need to combine them in new ways.  We already have electric cars, solar cells, drills, excavators, water electrolysis and sabatier reactors.  And we already know a fair bit about the environment on Mars.  Adapting and combining those technologies to use on Mars should be a Small Matter Of Engineering.  Right?

Then they get closer to actually implementing things, and study the problems in more detail, and find out that there are a gazillion of details that just takes time to handle, and that the devil does hide in some of those details.

And then, as you say, he just has to accept that his earlier estimates where wrong.


_{^† "10,000 foot view" seems a bit inadequate when we talk about interplanetary spaceflight.}

[Bob Shaw]

I think that there is every chance that a Starship is sent ‘to’ Mars in the near future. Not to land, but as a flyby demonstration of LEO refuelling and reignition and full duration engine burn into Mars transfer orbit. I wouldn’t expect that it would be particularly close to Mars (say 100,000km). This would be very much in the footsteps of the first FH, which sent Musk’s Tesla beyond the orbit of Mars and like the FH flight it would serve a serious set of programmatic purposes (and gain bragging rights - who can forget Starman idly drifting past Australia in ‘his’ roadster!).

[Star One]

Currently reading the book called Challenger and it feels like we are on a repeat about reusable spacecraft timescales. As back in the day there was lots of optimistic talk about the shuttle and when it would first fly and what it would do, and here we are again and I don’t expect the result to be any different than that time.

[spacenut]

SpaceX may have to build an offshore facility to avoid environmental issues for launching.  Landing the Starship may have to be on land using legs if the chopsticks can't catch the Starship under the 2 fins.  The booster at least has 4 grid fins for catching.  Hoovering for catch may use a lot of fuel. 

Lots of things to work out. 

[Dancing Dog]

SpaceX may have to build an offshore facility to avoid environmental issues for launching.  Landing the Starship may have to be on land using legs if the chopsticks can't catch the Starship under the 2 fins.  The booster at least has 4 grid fins for catching.  Hoovering for catch may use a lot of fuel. 

Lots of things to work out.

Once again, the canard of "catching the grid fins" flies by. The lift pins and the catch pins are the very same pins; grid fin catch is a worst case contingency that would likely result in loss of booster, to say nothing of "hoovering".

[steveleach]

"If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years." How did he mean? Four years from now, or from the successful landings?

I'm fairly confident he means 4 years from now, 2028, assuming the initial 2026 landings are successful. All their slides have shown a robotic mission in opportunity #1 and a crewed mission in opportunity #2. They won't send crew until they've proved they can land them safely, but once they have it's full-steam-ahead.

From what I've seen, Elon plans purely by the critical path, with no contingency; he then accepts delays and slippage as an inevitable result of that lack of contingency.

I am less sure.

Crewed misson in opp. #2 was announced in his IAC lecture in 2017. Description of opp. #1 from his slide:
"2022 CARGO MISSIONS
Land at lest 2 cargo ships on Mars
Confirm water resources and identify hazards
Place power, mining and life support infrastructure for future flights"

His description of the first flight to Mars in his recent post:
"These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars."

Seems to be descoped... We will see... I'll be 70 in '26...

Apart from your first sentence, you seem to be entirely agreeing with me. What am I missing?

[AmigaClone]

I give a 50% chance that SpaceX would attempt a single 'fly-by' Starship mission in the Mars launch window that starts in 2026. That of course would depend on the timing of the HLS test flights and Arthemis III.

[Greg Hullender]

SpaceX may have to build an offshore facility to avoid environmental issues for launching.  Landing the Starship may have to be on land using legs if the chopsticks can't catch the Starship under the 2 fins.  The booster at least has 4 grid fins for catching.  Hoovering for catch may use a lot of fuel. 

Lots of things to work out.

Once again, the canard of "catching the grid fins" flies by. The lift pins and the catch pins are the very same pins; grid fin catch is a worst case contingency that would likely result in loss of booster, to say nothing of "hoovering".

Yeah, Hoovering would literally suck!

[RikW]

Seeing the progress they made the biggest problem to get a starship to mars is the in-orbit-fuel-thingy

We have seen they can launch it and I think most here agree getting a starship in LEO can be done already.

So transfer fuel in LEO is the bottleneck for a trip to Mars in my eyes. So 2026 seems doable for a trip