Tag: Mars Colonial Transporter

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NASA checks out SpaceX’s landing plans for Mars

Starship on Mars
An artists’s conception shows SpaceX’s Starship craft on Mars. (SpaceX Illustration)

NASA is helping SpaceX get a fix on potential landing sites on Mars for its Starship super-spaceship, with an emphasis on Arcadia Planitia and Amazonis Planitia, regions where deposits of water ice may be found.

Another focus of NASA’s reconnaissance campaign in Phlegra Montes, a mountainous area just west of Arcadia Planitia in Mars’ northern hemisphere.

Pictures of the candidate sites were captured from orbit by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in June and July, and included in last month’s roundup of MRO imagery.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX assembles a shiny Starship

Starship Hopper
Which is the illustration, and which is the actual Starship Hopper test rocket? The real rocket is on the left — and take note of the Starman standing by one of the fins. (Elon Musk via Twitter)

For weeks, photographers have been snapping pictures of a retro-looking, shiny stainless-steel rocket that’s been taking shape at SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas — and tonight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk declared that assembly of the first Starship short-hop test rocket is complete.

Musk tweeted a picture of what looks to be a roughly 120-foot-tall “Starship Hopper,” composed of three sections that were put together at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility.

“This is an actual picture, not a rendering,” Musk wrote. But the rocket does look eerily like the illustration that Musk shared several days earlier — or, for that matter, the pointy-topped rockets that were all the rage in the 1940s.

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Hello, Starship: SpaceX’s big rocket gets new name

BFR illustration
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s newly renamed Starship in flight. (SpaceX Illustration)

First it was the Mars Colonial Transporter, or MCT … then it was the Interplanetary Transport System, or ITS … then it was the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. Now it’s Starship.

Tonight SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced the latest name for the spaceship that he says SpaceX aims to use to deliver a million people to Mars, send a Japanese billionaire and an assortment of artists around the moon and back, carry passengers on supersonic trips around the globe, and basically do everything big that needs to be done in space.

The name change comes just days after Musk tweeted that the design for the spaceship is being radically revised once again. “New design is very exciting! Delightfully counter-intuitive,” he wrote.

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Elon Musk geeks out over his Big Falcon Rocket

BFR talk by Elon Musk
SpaceX founder Elon Musk discusses his plan to build a “Big Falcon Spaceship” at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia. Musk followed up with an “Ask Me Anything” chat on Reddit. (SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX CEO says he “chickened out” and made the design for the monster spaceship he’s planning to send to Mars a little less monstrous — in order to make the concept a lot more realistic.

He also confirmed that testing for the BFR, euphemistically known as the “Big Falcon Rocket,” would begin with suborbital short-hop tests on Earth.

Musk’s frank talk came today during an “Ask Me Anything” chat session conductedon Reddit’s space forum. More than 10,000 comments streamed in during the session, which Musk had promised to hold in the wake of September’s unveiling of the latest BFR concept at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia.

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Elon Musk gets set for a big rocket chat with fans

BFR launch
Artwork shows SpaceX’s BFR launch vehicle blasting off from a floating pad. (SpaceX via YouTube)

Two weeks after SpaceX founder Elon Musk updated his vision for a monster rocket designed to take settlers to the moon and Mars, he’s due to take questions from his fans this weekend during a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session.

The precise coordinates for the chat depend on Musk’s schedule, but the Reddit’s SpaceX forum is sure to have the definitive word when it comes.

In the meantime, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell provided further details on Oct. 11 at a forum presented by the Stanford Student Space Initiative, with venture capital guru (and SpaceX board member) Steve Jurvetson hosting a Q&A.

SpaceX’s BFR (“Big Falcon Rocket”) was Topic A.

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Sizing up Elon Musk’s big bet on a big rocket

BFR at space station
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s BFR super-rocket docked to the International Space Station. (SpaceX Illustration)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s rocket roadmap just got much bigger than Mars. Now the question is, who else will follow the map?

The first answers to that question may well start emerging next week, when government officials and space industry leaders — almost certainly including a SpaceX representative — come together for the first meeting of the White House’s National Space Council.

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Elon Musk promises update on Mars plan

Mars spaceship
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System lifting off with a refueling tanker sitting beside it. (Credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision to send a million people to Mars is now in print, but the billionaire visionary says he’s already working on an update.

The newly published print version, appearing on the New Space website, recaps Musk’s 95-minute talk at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico last September – during which he laid out a decades-long plan to develop and launch fleets of giant spaceships to Mars, each carrying 100 passengers at a time.

The presentation has been online in video form for months, with accompanying slides, but the text-plus-graphics version is arguably easier to scan and digest.

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Elon Musk geeks out over his Mars plan on Reddit

Mars rocket
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System lifting off with a refueling tanker sitting beside it. (Credit: SpaceX)

In the weeks ahead, SpaceX plans to pressure-test a prototype carbon fiber tank on an oceangoing barge, to gauge how well the technology will stand up to the oomph that’d be required for trips to Mars.

The test is one of the near-term steps that SpaceX founder Elon Musk laid out today during an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s SpaceX discussion forum, focusing on his long-term plan to transport a million settlers to Mars.

Musk signed on to the AMA session to follow up into some of the geeky questions raised by last month’s big reveal about SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System. Which, by the way, Musk is not happy with as a name.

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Reality check on Elon Musk’s plan to go to Mars

View of Mars
An artist’s conception shows a traveler looking out at Mars through the window of SpaceX’s future passenger spaceship. (Credit: SpaceX)

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – In order to make the figures work for Elon Musk’s plan to put settlers on Mars, SpaceX will have to build boosters and interplanetary spaceships for less than the price of a Boeing 777x jet, on a shorter time frame.

What’s more, Musk is aiming to ramp up to building 1,000 of those spaceships. That’s three times the number of 777x orders to date.

The comparisons between Boeing’s next airplane and SpaceX’s ultimate spaceship suggest Musk is overly optimistic about what it’ll take to get a million settlers to Mars by the end of the century.

So what else is new?

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Elon Musk makes the big pitch for Mars settlement

Elon Musk
SpaceX founder Elon Musk presents his vision for sending settlers to Mars. (Credit: SpaceX)

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made some ambitious sales pitches in his career, but today’s big reveal about his plan to transport a million settlers to Mars over the next few decades has to be the topper.

The billionaire began his 95-minute talk with the existential concern over Earth’s long-term future, and the need to set up a civilization beyond Earth to safeguard the species.

“I hope you’d agree this is the right way to go. Yes? … That’s what we want,” he told a crowd of 3,000 attendees at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara.

From there on, Musk laid out a step-by-step blueprint that culminated in a vision of a totally reusable super-spaceship that could transport 100 to 200 passengers and their luggage to the Red Planet.

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