SpaceX Plans To Send Five Uncrewed Starships To Mars in Two Years

SpaceX plans to launch about five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years, CEO Elon Musk said on Sunday. From a report: Earlier this month, Musk had said that the first Starships to Mars would launch in two years "when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens."

The CEO on Sunday said that the first crewed mission timeline will depend upon the success of the uncrewed flights. If the uncrewed missions land safely, crewed missions will be launched in four years. However, in case of challenges, crewed missions will be postponed by another two years, Musk said.

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[JoshuaZ]

Absolutely. But it will still likely happen sooner than anyone else expects. The general tendency (with some exceptions) is that Musk says some highly optimistic time frame, pessimists say it won't happen at all for decades if ever, and then it ends up happening somewhere in the middle. As Musk has gotten to be more of a controversial figure for his political views and generally unpleasant behavior, that's also caused people to take even more negative views of SpaceX's work and prospects just as a matter

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[zlives]

cybertrucks?

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[LazarusQLong]

well, I can think of several things to put in those ginormous ships. Automated production facilities for one. Automated mining equipment for another.

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[garyisabusyguy]

Musk's original plan was to send automated greenhouses, Kimbal Musk currently heads up a hydroponics farming company called SquareRoots

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[JoshuaZ]

Do you genuinely think he is going to send FIVE rockets to Mars before he can send ONE rocket to the moon?

Probably not. It is likely a Starship rocket will go to or around the moon before this. I'm not sure why you would think otherwise. But note that with aerobraking, Mars has only a slightly larger delta-V than that to the moon if a ballistic capture orbit is used. The numbers are worse for Hohmann transfer orbits but not by that much.

Re: Special Relativity -- Elon style

[saloomy]

The moon seems like it could be orbited much sooner than 2 years given the recent cadence of his Starship progress, and the lack of the solar orbit transfer windows to the moon. My guess is they will send 5 designs to mars to see what landing / aerobreaking tech works. Musk has a good development workflow which involves failing frequently, failing often, and learning everything you can. Perhaps one of the ships will deliver to Mars orbit a giant payload of Starlink satellites so SpaceX can learn as much as

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[eobanb]

The moon seems like it could be orbited much sooner than 2 years given the recent cadence of his Starship progress

This seems likely to me. If the next couple of test flights go well and orbital refueling is demonstrated by early next year, there's no reason SpaceX won't try sending a Starship to lunar orbit (if not the lunar surface) sometime in 2025. This has been the plan under the Starship HLS component of the Artemis program for some time now.

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[backslashdot]

In this case, I believe their timeline is accurate -- Starship is almost ready and their already showing the ability to pump out Starship rockets faster than the FAA can move a sheet of paper from one desk to another. Assuming the FAA doesn't block them for purely political reasons, 2 years is very doable.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

Yuuup.

This is a good thing, though.

People are realizing that establishing property rights on Mars now will forever rule out terraforming.

For instance pushing the asterioid belt into Mars over a few centuries would help with mass and heat.

Can't do that if it's populated.

We're better off mining the Taurids into a massive space station at a Lagrange Point, and remove the source of Tunguska-type impactors.

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[backslashdot]

Uh, he did reach orbital velocity in flight 3 and flight 4. Flight 5 -- the FAA is blocking him because they think turtles are traumatized by rocket noise. What happens to turtles during thunderstorms? I wonder. How can it take them 3 months to do a phony environmental review each time he launches a Starship? Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

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[Berkyjay]

Lol, sure OK. Should I send you a box of tissues?

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[Berkyjay]

Nah, these are straight up facts. Deal.

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[JoshuaZ]

The straight up facts support what the other user is saying. See e.g. https://payloadspace.com/starship-achieves-major-milestones-on-its-third-test-flight/ [payloadspace.com]. The Starship went around 7.2 km/s. Stable low earth orbit is around 7.8 km/s, and if one moves slightly higher up, then the orbital velocity is 7.12 km/s, which is lower than that of Starship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit [wikipedia.org].

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[Berkyjay]

Seeing you guys trying to turn a semi-orbital flight, that saw the Starhip wings melting, into a successful orbital insertion is delicious. That kool-aid must be sweet.

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[backslashdot]

What kool-aid? The rockets are orbit capable and have proved that. Just because you say it isn't doesn't make it so. Will be funny when they does demo fully re-usable reach Mars, we'll be able to say a lot of people said it was impossible. You'll be an example of someone who said Starship won't work. Congrats.

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[XXongo]

...The Starship went around 7.2 km/s. Stable low earth orbit is around 7.8 km/s, and if one moves slightly higher up, then the orbital velocity is 7.12 km/s, which is lower than that of Starship.

If you go even higher up, the orbital velocity is even less. Go up to 10000 km, and orbital velocity is 5 km/s. Can we claim that any rocket achieving 5 km/s is orbital?

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[RobinH]

Look at Berkyjay's other posts. He's a perennial troll, and we took the bait.

Hopefully there's a payload

[Baron_Yam]

Rather than just testing consistent landing ability, sending a fuel generator, some supplies, a rover, etc. would be nice to see. Make the rover remote deployable and operable and use it to prep some nicer landing space for the crewed mission.

And one of those rockets should launch again, at least to Mars orbit.

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[JoshuaZ]

There's been some discussion of putting a scaled up version of MOXIE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Oxygen_ISRU_Experiment [wikipedia.org] on board one. MOXIE is a very small scale tech demonstrator on the Perseverance rover which tested producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere by splitting CO2. A fuel generator would be good. As with a scaled up MOXIE, probably more on the working-out-kinks than actually making one with fuel one is intending to use on a large scale. But your point about rovers is a good one. The s

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[Baron_Yam]

Solar's pretty weak on Mars... But they're as likely to be cleaned by a breeze as cover with dust by one, so I think it would be interesting to send up some solar tarps and peg them down to the ground. Or just move rocks onto the corners. It would save a lot of mass on mounting hardware, and if you don't care so much about the mass, think of the volume. Either way you get more room to send more stuff.

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[JoshuaZ]

Solar power on Mars is weaker yes, with light levels about 2.3 times as weak as on Earth, but it was strong enough to be able to use it to power Spirit and Opportunity. And solar panels now are about twice as efficient as they were since they were made, and modern batteries are also better. So the energy budget from solar is not bad as long as one is willing to use some time to just sit and recharge. The dust problem is I agree an issue, but from Spirit and Opportunity, we saw that cleaning events were muc

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[Sloppy]

Is it reasonable to just have a "robot dusting arm" with a brush on it? "Oh no, the panels are covered with--never mind, I pushed the button and they're clean again now."

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[JoshuaZ]

This idea and some similar ones were suggested for follow-up missions to Spirit and Opportunity. At the time, they judged that the risk of scratching/damaging the panels was high enough and that they wanted high enough energy budgets for the big rovers, that it made sense to just go nuclear. I'm not sure how much research there's been since then. But presumably this sort of thing is one of the many things when one has this large a mass budget that one could go check with an early launch.

Re:Hopefully there's a payload

[SmaryJerry]

They will send much more than that. These ships are enormous, 37 stories tall with a 9 meter diameter. It is truly an incredible feat they have already launched to orbit and mock landed them in the water. Their payload for each trip is 100 to 150 tons. They could literally send 100 rovers in each ship and still have room leftover. They will start with things that are not expensive so as not to risk resources in the case of a failure at first but there will be thousands of different things sent on each ship. This is why they initially launched a tesla into space with the Falcon Rocket. They first offered NASA and others to launch things, but not one took them up on their offer given the risk of failure so they put Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as the test payload, and the flight succeeded and now the Tesla is still floating through space.

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[Baron_Yam]

That's a lot of posting about what they could send, nothing definite about what they will send. If you're up on the latest and can provide links that are more comprehensive than the article linked to this discussion, it would be genuinely appreciated.

I'm no fan of Musk, but I am a fan of space exploration and won't deny SpaceX has pushed things forward quite a bit.

How quickly will this get borked?

[RogueWarrior65]

IIRC, in the documentary "Good night, Oppy", JPL had a hell of a time making sure that the thing worked while also being beyond squeaky clean. Some people are very concerned about "contaminating" Mars with Earth microorganisms. I'm guessing that elements of the government are going to try to bork SpaceX's efforts for political reasons while claiming that it's for biological reasons.

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[jacks smirking reven]

The same government that gave SpaceX a $2.89B contract (a sole contract at the dismay of the other bidders at the time) for Starship/HLS which is all but an official endorsement of the program.

Do you not think contamination is a concern that should be addressed if they are going to attempt to land the ships? SpaceX already knows this is a requirement, I don't think the thousands of engineers who are working on this are so cynical or stupid to disregard it as you think they are.

No creamy nougat center, neither.

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Uh, I kind of checked out on Musk's projects after the whole [gestures at everything], but as near as I can tell, the only Starship rocket that has managed to come back to earth in one piece splashed down in the ocean. Ain't no ocean on Mars, though.

Captain Musk

[ThurstonMoore]

I think the chances of success would be so much higher if Musk would captain the first ship they send to Mars.

Musk seeks publicity

[Required Snark]

Musk has always enjoyed being in the limelight, and making boastful claims has always been part of his strategy. He also likes to do stunts, which at times have been very creative; sending his personal Tesla to orbit the solar system, or selling flame throwers.

However, since he has become more involved in politics, his public persona has become more provocative and extreme. He's said that rich tech bros like himself should have more votes the regular people, and he supports more radical and violent content

Musk haters

[RitchCraft]

Criticize all you want but SpaceX has done more for the space industry in its short existence than anyone could have imagined. Yes, Musk's timelines are rarely correct, but SpaceX does come through. I'm so happy I'll be alive to see people on Mars some day ... courtesy of SpaceX. Stop the hate and enjoy the show people, it's a great time to be alive.