Starship

Elon Musk expressed a goal of obtaining a Federal Aviation Administration license for Starship launches by the end of 2021 to allow a first orbital launch as soon as January or February.

Development of Launch Complex 49 for Starship would be in addition to SpaceX’s effort to develop a Starship launch site at Launch Complex 39A.

Before the Soyuz MS-20 flight, Maezawa had announced in 2018 that he would purchase a flight on SpaceX’s Starship vehicle for a mission called dearMoon to fly a group of artists around the moon.

Elon Musk tweeted on 2021-11-30 that bankruptcy is not impossible in a severe global recession that dries up capital while SpaceX is losing billions on Starlink and Starship, though he characterized bankruptcy as unlikely.

SpaceX planned for a series of Starship test flights in 2022, including as many as a dozen test flights, with the goal of enabling commercial operations to begin in 2023.

SpaceX intends to complete the Starship test flight program next year so the vehicle could carry operational payloads in 2023.

Super Heavy currently requires 29 Raptor engines and later will require 33 Raptor engines, while Starship requires six Raptor engines.

The Starship launch schedule depends on winning regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, with SpaceX expecting FAA license approval around the end of 2021.

The FAA had not completed the environmental review necessary for Starship launches and was evaluating more than 17,000 written comments and 121 oral comments from two public hearings as of 2021-11-15.

SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn may become available as affordable commercial alternatives within the next 5 to 7 years.

SpaceX performed a static-fire test of a Starship vehicle on 2021-10-21, at its Boca Chica, Texas, test site.

Previous low-altitude suborbital Starship test flights used an earlier environmental assessment prepared when SpaceX planned to launch Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from Boca Chica, Texas.

The FAA is coordinating with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine the effects of Starship launches on endangered species and will not complete its environmental review until that agency offers a formal opinion.

SpaceX won a $2,900,000,000 Human Landing System award in April for a lunar lander based on its Starship vehicle.

Elon Musk has applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for permission to launch planned Starlink satellites in batches of up to 400 on Starship rockets.

Starlink is at an advanced stage of deploying its mega-constellation and is discussing using SpaceX’s Starship to launch as many as 400 satellites at a time.

SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander concept of operations requires 16 launches: one launch of the lander itself, 14 tanker Starship launches to refuel it, and one additional launch whose purpose is redacted in the GAO document.

Elon Musk estimated that 16 flights to support a single Starship lunar lander mission is extremely unlikely and provided a maximum estimate of 8 flights and a possible minimum of 4 flights to fill the tanks.