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SpaceX's Starship Mars Vehicle Could 'Fly' For The First Time This Week

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It's time to sit up and take note. SpaceX may perform a test "hop" of its Starship vehicle for the first time as early as this week, a huge milestone as the company moves ahead with development of the spacecraft that it says could one day take people to Mars.

On Twitter on Sunday, March 17, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said they would “hopefully” perform the first test of Starship this week at the company’s Boca Chica test site in Texas. This was after the methane-fueled engine for the rocket, called Raptor, had been delivered to the site and attached (integrated) to the rocket.

According to Chris Gebhardt at NASAspaceflight.com, local residents have been informed of the upcoming test. “[R]esidents of Boca Chica Village were notified via mail of imminent tests and road closures that would occur as early as this week, the week of 18 March,” he wrote.

This is a prototype of the reusable vehicle that SpaceX hopes to one day use to transport up to 100 people to destinations including the Moon and Mars. Musk first unveiled the vehicle in 2016 at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Guadalajara, Mexico, where it was originally called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) and the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR).

The two parts of the stainless steel rocket are now known as Starship and Super Heavy, the latter being a large reusable booster that will take Starship into space. The entire vehicle will measure more than 100 meters (330 feet) tall, capable of taking more than 130,000 kilograms (300,000 pounds) into Earth orbit – more than NASA’s Saturn V rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

The upcoming hop test this week of the prototype, nicknamed Starhopper, will see the vehicle use a single Raptor engine to fly a few feet off the ground for a short amount of time. It will then land back on its three legs, a brief demonstration of how the vehicle might return from space in the future.

A possible future suborbital test flight of Starhopper, meanwhile, would involve three Raptor engines – although it’s unclear when that would occur.

SpaceX

Strong winds have hampered the test hop somewhat, causing part of the vehicle to topple over in January 2019 and destroying its nose cone. But Musk said the tests would continue without a replacement. “We decided to skip building a new nosecone [sic] for Hopper,” he wrote on Twitter. “Don’t need it.”

He noted the company was already working on an orbital version of Starship, which has been seen in images, and was seeking approval to launch both from Boca Chica and Cape Canaveral in Florida. Musk also said that both Starship and Super Heavy would be built “simultaneously in both locations”.

And he also shared footage on Twitter of the hexagonal heatshield tiles for Starship being tested, which will bear the heat of reentry as the vehicle comes back through the atmosphere in the future. “Hexagonal tiles on most of windward [reentry] side,” he noted, adding the hexagonal shape meant there was “no straight path for hot gas to accelerate through the gaps.”

The upcoming possible hop test of Starship, and the announcement SpaceX was already working on an orbital version, is an impressive amount of progress in the construction of the vehicle. It’s unclear what SpaceX’s testing schedule is going forward, but even this initial test would cause quite a stir. The company has suggested it wants to start flights to Mars in the 2020s.

While NASA’s expendable Space Launch System (SLS) faces an uncertain future, SpaceX’s development of Starship and Super Heavy would enable a vast array of missions at a fraction of the cost of the SLS – not least the company’s own ambition of sending humans to Mars. If successful, Starship could render the SLS obsolete before it’s even built.

SpaceX

SpaceX already operates the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and the Dragon series of spacecraft. But Musk has previously said that Starship would replace its entire existing fleet of rockets and spacecraft. “Essentially we want to make our current vehicles redundant,” he said in 2017.

Musk had suggested that development of Starship would cost less than $10 billion, and even suggested it could be cheaper than the development of Falcon 9. But it remains to be seen if the company can fund the development of this vehicle alone, a vehicle that NASA – which funded development of the Dragon spacecraft to the tune of billions of dollars – is pretending doesn’t exist at the moment.

This hop test will, therefore, be a major milestone for Starship’s development, and proof that it is very much real. And if things progress as planned, Musk has made no secret of what he wants Starship to do – take up to 100 people to space at a time. The company already has a space tourist signed up for a trip around the Moon on Starship as early as 2023, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, with flights to Mars the eventual goal.

“I’m confident moving to Mars (return ticket is free) will one day cost less than $500k & maybe even below $100k,” he said in February 2019. “Low enough that most people in advanced economies could sell their home on Earth & move to Mars if they want.”

There’s a long way to go, of course, and plenty of skepticism remains about whether Starship will ever see the light of day. But if the test this week is successful, it might be time to pay very close attention. Elon Musk colonizing Mars? Don’t bet against it just yet.

Update: Local notices suggest the hop test will take place on Thursday, March 21, between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M. Eastern time, with a backup date on Friday, March 22 at the same time.