The super-heavy ship that takes humans to conquer Mars has a 50% chance of success

This is the opinion of billionaire Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, when he talks about the first orbital test flight to Mars carried out by the Starship.

SpaceX spaceship

SpaceX’s spacecraft during a historic refueling test on January 23 (Photo: SpaceX).

“Starship has about a 50% chance of successfully launching into orbit,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said this at the Morgan Stanley conference on March 7. “I’m not saying it will happen for sure, but I guarantee it will be extremely exciting.”

Starship is SpaceX’s developing project to bring people and goods to the Moon and then to Mars. Added to this are a series of other space travel missions.

This giant super heavy flying vehicle is composed of the upper stage of the Super Heavy rocket and the Starship spaceship. It would be the most powerful rocket ever launched by humanity into the air, with launch thrust approximately 2.5 times that of NASA’s iconic Saturn V rocket.

Spatialship

Spatialship. (Photo: SpaceX).

The Starship is also designed to be fully and quickly reusable. This is what Elon Musk considers to be an important and necessary step forward to transform things. “colonize Mars” and other ambitious exploration plans become possible.

Although Starship is now considered powerful enough to launch from the Moon and Mars, it still requires specialized Super Heavy thrusters to escape Earth’s gravity.

SpaceX’s first orbital test flight with Starship is expected to launch in March, after SpaceX successfully completes testing of all 33 Raptor 2 engines and makes environmental adjustments to Starbase, the planned launch site, as required by the Federal Aviation Administration.

SpaceX’s Ship-24 spacecraft prototype fires one of its six Raptor engines

SpaceX’s Ship-24 spacecraft prototype fires one of six Raptor engines during a short test, which will take place on December 15, 2022 (Photo: SpaceX).

It’s no surprise that Musk sought to dispel public expectations ahead of the highly anticipated launch of the Starship spacecraft. History has shown that rockets often fail during their first flights and only gain stability after several or even dozens of launches.

According to SpaceSpaceX is currently building the Starship spacecraft in the South Texas area, which they call Starbaseand plans to begin launching a series of these ships in the coming months.

Article source: Dan Tri