Elon Musk says 'highly confident' about launching Starship this year; FAA approval awaited

Elon Musk’s mammoth Starship rocket would be ready for a flight in just a few months, the billionaire revealed on February 10 in a presentation organised at SpaceX’s R&D facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Musk said that he is “highly confident” that Starship would reach orbit after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) clears his company for launch with its approval. The giant rocket was originally scheduled for an orbital flight in December 2021, however, a delay in the environmental assessment by the FAA resulted in the launch getting pushed to 2022. 

“I think we're tracking to have the regulatory approval and hardware readiness around the same time. Hopefully, you know, basically a couple of months for both”, Musk said as per BBC. It was after two years when Musk gave a new update on the development of Starship, which is being touted as the vehicle that will carry humans to the Moon and eventually Mars. 

It is worth mentioning that Starship’s first orbital flight would be a 90-minute trip around the Earth following which the 120 metres (394ft) high Starship would land in the pacific ocean. The rocket is also a beast in its performance as the Starship would generate 75 meganewtons of thrust at the time of launch and is reportedly capable of carrying 1,00,000 kilograms of payload to the low-Earth orbit. 

‘More future announcements underway’, says Musk

In the presentation held for updates about the Starship and an engaging Q&A session, Musk said that there are a lot of exciting announcements to be made. “There's going to be some future announcements that I think people will be pretty fired up about. There are a lot of additional customers that will want to use Starship. I don't want to steal their thunder; they're going to make their own announcements”, BBC reported Musk saying. 

It seems like Musk really would follow on his words as SpaceX has completed assembling the first and second stage of the Starship rocket. Taking to Twitter, the company shared a clip of its launch tower stacking the upper stage over the Super Heavy rocket booster. The tower would be used to launch the rocket and catch the booster after it delivers the upper stage into orbit.

Image: Twitter/@SpaceX/AP