SpaceX’s plan with the Starship rocket in 2025

Starship is designed for complete and rapid reuse. SpaceX believes that this combination of power and efficiency is a key breakthrough that will allow humanity to achieve many achievements in the field of space travel, including colonizing Mars, a cherished dream. long ago by Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO.

That vision may become clearer in the next 12 months as Starship prepares to make a big leap in 2025. Accordingly, Starship will increase the frequency of its flights. In the past 2 years, it launched 6 times (twice in 2023 and 4 times in 2024). SpaceX has asked to increase the number of Starship launches allowed from Starbase by 5 times next year, to 25 times, which the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has preliminarily approved.

A draft environmental impact assessment released by the FAA in November 2024 approved not only 25 Starship launches from Starbase, but also 50 tower arrests at the site. Of which, 25 times captured Super Heavy boosters and 25 times for the upper stage of the Ship. SpaceX also has an FAA license for the Starship 7 flight, which is expected to take place in early or mid-January 2025.

This increase would be huge for SpaceX, whose rocket development strategy focuses on flying, iterating, and flying again. 25 Starship flights per year is far from the ultimate goal. The company plans to continue increasing this ratio in 2026 and beyond.

“Elon said, next year he wants us to do 25 missions a year, and in the next few years 100. He told me, ‘Kathy, I want to launch a few times a day,'” Gizmodo, Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX’s Starbase operations, said at the Mexican Space Agency’s National Space Operations Conference in November 2024.

Not all of these future missions will fly from Starbase: SpaceX also plans to launch Starship from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which has hosted the company’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket launches. ty.

According to SpaceX, Starship will get bigger and more powerful over time. “With a few upgrades planned, Starship will have three times the thrust of the Saturn V at takeoff, at 10,000 tons, plus the added benefit of complete reusability.”

“Starship 2 will be able to lift more than 100 tons into orbit and Starship 3 will be able to lift more than 200 tons into orbit. The amount of mass we can launch on each rocket is critical to creating a successful self-sustaining city on Mars,” Jessica added.

Because Starship is fully reusable, the vehicle could eventually deliver such capacity figures for just $2 to $3 million per flight, Mr. Musk said. That would be extremely cheap. SpaceX currently sells Falcon 9 missions for about $67 million.

Starship’s projected numbers could be adjusted toward Mars settlement, but the rocket could also carry out a variety of missions closer to Earth. SpaceX plans to complete the assembly of the Starlink broadband megaconstellation using the Starship, and more customers will likely look to take advantage of the vehicle, says Astrophysicist Ehud Behar, professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. .

“I think we have learned the lesson, if the technology is developed and affordable, there will be applications for it,” Mr. Behar added.

Starship is a launch system that is gradually proving SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s ambition to bring humans to Mars for the first time. This is the tallest (120 m) and most powerful rocket ever built, capable of generating nearly 8,000 tons of thrust when launched.

This is a launch system including the Super Heavy thruster stage and the Starship spacecraft above. The booster rocket is located on the first stage and the spacecraft carrying people and cargo is on the second stage. The rocket’s mission is to bring the Starship to a point in orbit, then the Starship will continue flying using its engines while the rocket returns to Earth. Both parts are reusable.

NASA chose the Starship to bring astronauts to the Moon in the Artemis program. When the Starship makes its journey to the Moon, it will have to stay in low-Earth orbit while SpaceX launches separate support vehicles to refuel the ship. The mission to carry astronauts to the Moon will take place as early as 2026.