Have you always dreamt to touch the sky? Spread your wings and fly away? Thanks to visionary company SpaceX, the private US aerospace manufacturer, and space transportation services company, their Starship which was teased earlier this year, is planned for its first commercial mission in 2021.
SpaceX’s Starship test vehicle was announced at the Asia Pacific Satellite Conference in Indonesia in June and already is in talks with customers, three telecom companies to be precise, for that flight in order to send satellites into orbit. Originally introduced as Big Falcon Rocket or “BFR”, it was renamed Starship which specifically refers to the “spaceship/upper stage” according to a tweet by CEO Elon Musk, while its rocket booster was dubbed Super Heavy.
According to Endgadget, two teams in Texas and Florida are undergoing development and competing to build the final spacecraft, with the possibility that it will “will combine the best solutions the two teams can come up with.” Both may differ in terms of design but capabilities of the spacecraft are that it will be able to carry 20 metric tons of cargo into space and over 100 tons to low Earth orbit.
Although this is the first step to their commercial space travel program, the eventual goal is to bring payloads to the moon and Mars, as well as even earth to earth trips at the speed of 18,000mph. Before it goes into production and flight, rigorous testing needs to be done first to the launch system and boosters while reports of hop tests, where the vehicle was launched centimeters into the air, has been already underway.