The shiny thing looks somehow like a comic vehicle from Tim and Struppi, after the legendary rocket from the album "Destination Moon". Or, as Elon Musk expresses it, after a machine from a junkyard in the Star Wars desert planet Tatooine. Whatever associations you may have, near the Boca Chica settlement in the south of Texas, SpaceX, a US space company, is building a fairly remarkable vehicle.
The "Starship" is intended to be the foundation for Musk's vision of offering passenger flights to the Moon and Mars, even to set up colonies on the distant celestial bodies. Up to 100 people could find space in it. A "BFR" called super heavy load rocket will bring the spaceship once at its head into space.
Starting next month, the "Starship" will take off for a first test flight from the village on the Gulf of Mexico. However, this flight will not lead into space, but only as about 20 kilometers high hop in the higher layers of the atmosphere.
Droid Junkyard, Tatooine pic.twitter.com/yACFR9y04P
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2019SpaceX had already launched a smaller model, the Starhopper, in August for a test. The device reaches a height of 150 meters and then gently returned to the earth. The "Starhopper" was powered by a new engine called "Raptor" during its flight, the "Starship" now has three of them. In the future, it could even be more. And the launcher "BFR", which does not yet exist, should even have more than 30 of these powerful engines.
Test flight from mid-October
Musk should present the further planning for his spaceship on Saturday in Boca Chica. A test flight is, according to the documents that SpaceX has sent to the US regulator FCC conceivable from mid-October.
Because it could be extremely loud at this and in future launches, SpaceX has just offered the approximately 30 homeowners of Boca Chica, by the way, to buy their houses without further ado. The company said in a letter that it would pay three times the usual market price. The sum is not negotiable. But one would make an assurance to potential sellers: they could attend future VIP start-up parties that would not normally be open to the public.
The "Starship" should not only take off from Texas, but also from Florida to pilot flights. The construction of the second prototype is already under way in the SpaceX branch at Cape Canaveral. He too should be used for a test. According to plans of the enterprise it could give the first "genuine" start of the super heavy-duty missile then in the year 2021.
Two years later, a team led by Japanese artist Yusaku Maezawa could embark on a journey around the moon. This schedule is very ambitious. At the same time SpaceX must solve other technical problems, it is about the much smaller "Dragon" capsule, to fly the astronauts to the International Space Station. Here there had been an explosion in April in an unmanned ground test. This caused further delays in the program.
