SpaceX chief executive officer Elon Musk on Thursday said that he was “highly confident” his new Starship, designed for voyages to the moon and Mars, would reach Earth orbit for the first time this year, despite a host of technical and regulatory hurdles yet to be overcome.
Musk addressed a throng of news media and supporters at his company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, for a presentation that combined a high-tech pep rally with big-screen videos and a question-and-answer session.
It came nine months after the private California-based space venture achieved the first successful launch and touchdown of a Starship prototype rocket in a test flight after four previous landing attempts ended in explosions.
Photo: AP
Musk acknowledged difficulties SpaceX has faced in developing the Raptor 2 engines for its Super Heavy rocket, a reusable next-generation launch booster designed to carry the Starship spacecraft to orbit.
He cited problems with melting inside the thruster chambers of the engines from intense heat.
However, “we’re very close to solving that,” he said, adding that the firm expected to scale up production to about seven or eight of the engines a week by next month, and produce a new Starship and a booster every month by year’s end.
“I feel at this point highly confident that we will get to orbit [with the Starship] this year,” Musk said.
Such a time frame would mark an ambitious feat, even for an uncrewed orbital test flight of the Super Heavy-Starship combination, the next step up from SpaceX’s current workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which Musk said has flown 144 successful launches and 106 return landings.
However, the very future of the Boca Chica test-flight and production facility near the southeastern Gulf Coast tip of Texas is now at stake in an environmental assessment of the site underway by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The FAA is expected to decide in the next few weeks whether a planned build-out there poses a significant environmental impact to the area — including an adjacent wildlife reserve — and must therefore undergo a far more extensive study before expanded operations at Boca Chica can be licensed.
Such an environmental impact statements can take years to complete and are often subject to litigation.
Asked what he knew about the status of the FAA review, Musk said: “We don’t have a ton of insight into where things stand with the FAA.”
“We have gotten sort of a rough indication there may be an approval in March, but that’s all we know,” he said.
Even in a “worst case” scenario, in which a full review were required or legal wrangling over the issue threatened to drag on, Musk said that SpaceX has a fall-back plan.
The company would shift its entire Starship program to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where SpaceX already has received the environmental approval it needs, Musk said.
Such a move would cause a setback of six to eight months, he said.
In any case, SpaceX is still shooting for a launch next year of what it calls the world’s first private lunar mission, flying Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and a dozen artists aboard a Starship to loop around the moon and return to Earth.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his