Elon Musk intends to take off the Starship spacecraft in 2022 to make it make its first orbital flight. It is in any case one of its main objectives for this end of the year.
Liftoff of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft shouldn’t take long. It will not have taken place in August contrary to what was expected, but it should occur in the coming months. A SpaceX document recently obtained from the web indicates that the aerospace company is now aiming a 6 month window from the 1er september to get his spaceship off the ground. Elon Musk has just confirmed it on his side.
The American billionaire, who recently teased a Tesla Gigafactory in Canada, announced that sending Starship into orbit is still one of his ” main goals for 2022. There are only 4 months to achieve this goalbut Elon Musk seems rather confident.
Starship liftoff and self-driving Teslas are Elon Musk’s two main goals for this year
On Twitter, Elon Musk revealed his two main goals for 2022. So the first is to send Starship into orbit while the second is to deploy the autonomous driving (FSD for Full Self Driving) of Tesla cars to the general public. Moreover, the price to access the beta of Full Self-Driving has increased further in North America. In a few days, Tesla drivers will be charged $3,000 more. They will therefore have to pay a total of $15,000 to enable FSD.
As for Starship’s first orbital flight, its liftoff is fast approaching as the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has already released the results of its environmental review on the spacecraft’s launch. SpaceX will get the full green light from the FAA once it deems that the 75 actions requested to reduce the environmental impact of take-off will have been taken.
The successful completion of Starship’s first orbital flight will represent a significant breakthrough for SpaceX. The spacecraft is indeed the one that was designed to transport humans into space and more specifically to Mars. Recall that SpaceX still plans to send humanity to Mars “before the end of this decade”. So it might be time for Starship to successfully complete its first unmanned orbital flight before it can start taking humans on board.
Source: CNET