Latest news with #Starships
Time of India
21 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Memo to Musk
You got plenty to worry about Musk has left the DOGE building. It's hard to say who's happier – Musk himself, or his baiters – but odds are, Vivek Ramaswamy marked the day with a platter of cheese enchiladas. Like taxes and death, Musk's exit was a given. US law allowed him a maximum of 130 days, and he left with one remaining. As an EV maker, he knows the importance of reserve charge. And range anxiety is a terrible thing. You aim to drive $2tn out of the federal budget but stall at $160bn. That's 8% mission accomplished. Poor, but better than a hat-trick of SpaceX's Starship failures in five months. So, Musk should pull over and take stock. On the net worth front, allying with Trump has been good for him. Yes, some Teslas were burnt, and Tesla stock nosedived, but it's much higher than at this time last year, and Musk is about $175bn richer than he was at the same time. And while he's leaving after describing Trump's Big Beautiful Bill as disappointing, Trump's not nursing a grudge – 'He will, always, be with us…Elon is terrific.' That means, govt contracts for SpaceX won't dry up, and Lil X can pick his nose in the Oval Office. What Musk should worry about is BYD's fast-charging tech, Tesla's falling sales, bursting Starships, and Neuralink's competition. Nobody will remember Musk as Trump's beancounter, but as 'Rocket Man' – who once went shopping for Russian ICBMs to launch satellites – he has better odds. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk to build enormous Texas ‘gigabay' to store 1,000 Starships
Credit: X/SpaceX SpaceX will build the 'biggest structure in the world' to house up to 1,000 of its 400ft-tall Starship rockets per year, Elon Musk has claimed. The Tesla billionaire and world's richest man laid out his vision for 'making life multiplanetary' in an update at SpaceX's Starbase in Texas. Speaking to staff last night, Mr Musk said the company planned to build a 'gigabay', which he said would be 'a truly enormous structure'. He said the building, designed for 1,000 Starships per year, would be 'by some measures the biggest structure in the world'. The first so-called gigabay would be built in Texas, with a further facility in Florida as SpaceX seeks to launch multiple rockets per day in order to reach and colonise Mars. Mr Musk has said humans must colonise the Red Planet to avoid potential extinction risks, such as nuclear war or an asteroid strike, and that the colony would need to become self-sustaining. He said: 'Having two strong, self-sustaining planets will be critical for the long-term survival of civilisation.' The billionaire further claimed the company's Super Heavy booster rockets would one day be able to fly missions 'every hour, maybe every two hours give a bit of extra time'. The Super Heavy boosters are the first stage of the Starship rocket. They are designed to be reusable, falling back to Earth after launching. He added SpaceX would ultimately need to launch 1,000 to 2,000 rockets to Mars in every two-year window to carry the cargo needed to set up a colony. Mr Musk is known for his bold claims and ambitious timelines, including his vision of sending humans to Mars by 2029. He said its first mission could include landing an Optimus robot on Mars. On Tuesday night, Mr Musk's company undertook a ninth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. The test saw the first re-use of its Super Heavy booster, recycling a rocket body that had previously returned to Earth and been caught by a pair of 'chopsticks' on its landing tower. However, the Starship second stage went into a spin as it returned to Earth, breaking up over the Indian Ocean. Mr Musk has promised to launch another Starship test mission within a few weeks. Nasa is planning to use SpaceX's megarocket for a manned mission to the Moon as soon as 2027, returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. On Thursday, Mr Musk revealed new designs for SpaceX's Starship, which he said would be 'taller' and have a redesigned separation mechanism. He said future generations of its Starship would be 465ft tall and have twice the payload capacity of the Saturn V rocket that conducted the original Moon missions. The billionaire added that his ambition was that 'anyone who wants to move to Mars can do so', which he said would be the 'best adventure that anyone could possibly do'. He added there was a '50/50' chance SpaceX would launch an uncrewed Starship mission at the end of 2026, when Mars is at the closest point in its orbit to Earth. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk to build enormous Texas ‘gigabay' to store 1,000 Starships
This embedded content is not available in your region. Credit: X/SpaceX SpaceX will build the 'biggest structure in the world' to house up to 1,000 of its 400ft-tall Starship rockets per year, Elon Musk has claimed. The Tesla billionaire and world's richest man laid out his vision for 'making life multiplanetary' in an update at SpaceX's Starbase in Texas. Speaking to staff last night, Mr Musk said the company planned to build a 'gigabay', which he said would be 'a truly enormous structure'. He said the building, designed for 1,000 Starships per year, would be 'by some measures the biggest structure in the world'. The first so-called gigabay would be built in Texas, with a further facility in Florida as SpaceX seeks to launch multiple rockets per day in order to reach and colonise Mars. Mr Musk has said humans must colonise the Red Planet to avoid potential extinction risks, such as nuclear war or an asteroid strike, and that the colony would need to become self-sustaining. He said: 'Having two strong, self-sustaining planets will be critical for the long-term survival of civilisation.' The billionaire further claimed the company's Super Heavy booster rockets would one day be able to fly missions 'every hour, maybe every two hours give a bit of extra time'. The Super Heavy boosters are the first stage of the Starship rocket. They are designed to be reusable, falling back to Earth after launching. He added SpaceX would ultimately need to launch 1,000 to 2,000 rockets to Mars in every two-year window to carry the cargo needed to set up a colony. Mr Musk is known for his bold claims and ambitious timelines, including his vision of sending humans to Mars by 2029. He said its first mission could include landing an Optimus robot on Mars. On Tuesday night, Mr Musk's company undertook a ninth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. The test saw the first re-use of its Super Heavy booster, recycling a rocket body that had previously returned to Earth and been caught by a pair of 'chopsticks' on its landing tower. However, the Starship second stage went into a spin as it returned to Earth, breaking up over the Indian Ocean. Mr Musk has promised to launch another Starship test mission within a few weeks. Nasa is planning to use SpaceX's megarocket for a manned mission to the Moon as soon as 2027, returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. On Thursday, Mr Musk revealed new designs for SpaceX's Starship, which he said would be 'taller' and have a redesigned separation mechanism. He said future generations of its Starship would be 465ft tall and have twice the payload capacity of the Saturn V rocket that conducted the original Moon missions. The billionaire added that his ambition was that 'anyone who wants to move to Mars can do so', which he said would be the 'best adventure that anyone could possibly do'. He added there was a '50/50' chance SpaceX would launch an uncrewed Starship mission at the end of 2026, when Mars is at the closest point in its orbit to Earth. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Asia Times
a day ago
- Science
- Asia Times
SpaceX rocket fails pile on Musk's Tesla troubles
What goes up must come down, and earlier this week yet another of SpaceX's Starships, the biggest and most powerful type of rocket ever built, came back down to Earth in spectacular fashion. In the sky above the Indian Ocean, it exploded. This was the ninth test flight for the rocket, and the third catastrophic failure in a row, just this year. Is this what we should expect from the very ship some are counting on to take humans further than we've ever been in the solar system? Or does this failure point to deeper concerns within the broader program? The Starship program from Elon Musk's space technology company, SpaceX, has been in development for more than a decade now and has undergone many iterations in its overall design and goals. The Starship concept is based on the SpaceX Raptor engines to be used in a multistage system. In a multistage rocket system, there are often two or three separate blocks with their own engine and fuel reserves. These are particularly important for leaving Earth's orbit and traveling to the Moon, Mars and beyond. With Starship, the key factor is the ability to land and reuse vast amounts of the rocket stages again and again. The company's Falcon 9 vehicles, which used this model, were fantastically successful. Initial tests of Starship began in 2018 with two low-altitude flights showing early success. Subsequent flights have faced numerous challenges with now four complete failures, two partial failures and three successes overall. Just two days ago, during the latest failed attempt, I watched alongside more than 200 other space industry experts at the Australian Space Summit in Sydney. Broadcast live on a giant screen, the launch generated an excited buzz – which soon turned to reserved murmurs. Of course, designing and launching rockets is hard, and failures are to be expected. However, a third catastrophic failure within six months demands a pause for reflection. On this particular test flight, as Starship positioned itself for atmospheric re-entry, one of its 13 engines failed to ignite. Shortly after, a booster appeared to explode, leading to a complete loss of control. The rocket ultimately broke apart over the Indian Ocean, which tonnes of debris will now call home. We don't know the exact financial cost of each test flight. But Musk has previously said it is about US$50–100 million. The exact environmental cost of the Starship program – and its repeated failures – is even harder to quantify. For example, a failed test flight in 2023 left the town of Port Isabel, Texas, which is located beside the launch site, shaking and covered in a thick cloud of dirt. Debris from the exploded rocket smashed cars. Residents told the New York Times they were terrified. They also had to clean up the mess from the flight. Then, in September 2024, SpaceX was fined by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for 14 separate incidents since 2022, where the launch facilities discharged polluted water into Texas waterways. Musk denied these claims. That same month, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a fine of US$633,009 in civil penalties should be issued to SpaceX. This was on the grounds of using an unapproved launch control room and other violations during 2023. Musk denied these claims too and threatened to countersue the FAA for 'regulatory overreach.' It's unclear if this suit was ever filed. Two other failed launches in January and March this year also rained rocket debris over the Caribbean, and disrupted hundreds of commercial flights, including 80 which needed to be diverted and more than 400 requiring delayed takeoff to ensure they were entering safe air space. Until last year, the FAA allowed SpaceX to try up to five Starship launches a year. This month, the figure was increased to 25. A lot can go wrong during the launch of a vehicle into space. And there is a long way to go until we can properly judge whether Starship successfully meets its mission goals. We can, however, look at past programs to understand typical success rates seen across different rocketry programs. The Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo era, had a total of 13 launches, with only one partial failure. It underwent three full ground tests before flight. SpaceX's own Falcon 9 rocket, has had more than 478 successful launches, only two in flight failures, one partial failure and one pre-flight destruction. The Antares rocket, by Orbital Sciences Corporation (later Orbital ATK and Northrop Grumman) launched a total of 18 times, with one failure. The Soyuz rocket, originally a Soviet expendable carrier rocket designed in the 1960s, launched a total of 32 times, with two failures. Of course, we can't fairly compare all other rockets with the Starship. Its goals are certainly novel as a reusable heavy-class rocket. But this latest failure does raise some questions. Will the Starship program ever see success, and if so, when? And what are the limits of our tolerance as a society to the pollution of Earth in the pursuit of the goal to space? For a rocketry program that's moving so fast, developing novel and complex technology, and experiencing several repeated failures, many people might expect caution from now on. Musk, however, has other plans. Shortly after the most recent Starship failure, he announced on X (formerly Twitter), that the next test flights would occur at a faster pace: one every three to four weeks. Sara Webb is lecturer, Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
India Today
2 days ago
- Science
- India Today
Elon Musk confirms plan to launch Starship to Mars in 2026
Two days after the latest in a series of test-flight failures for SpaceX's Starship, Elon Musk announced that he is aiming to send the massive spacecraft on its first uncrewed voyage to Mars by the end of 2026—a timeline he admits is ambitious and carries only a 50-50 chance of outlined an updated development roadmap in a video posted by SpaceX, just a day after he revealed his departure from the Trump administration, where he had led a controversial campaign to slash government said he is scaling back his government role to refocus on his private ventures, notably SpaceX and Tesla. The billionaire entrepreneur acknowledged that achieving the 2026 Mars target hinges on Starship's ability to master several demanding technical challenges during its ongoing flight among these is a complex in-orbit refuelling manoeuvre, essential for the long journey to the red planet. The end of 2026 coincides with a rare planetary alignment, offering the shortest possible transit—about seven to nine months—between Earth and Mars, an opportunity that arises only every two said that if Starship is not ready by then, SpaceX would wait until the next alignment window in 2028. The first mission would carry a simulated crew of Tesla-built Optimus humanoid robots, with human crews expected to follow on subsequent announcement comes on the heels of Starship's ninth test flight, which ended in failure when the spacecraft lost control and disintegrated roughly 30 minutes after launch, following a fuel leak that caused it to spin two previous test flights, in January and March, ended in explosions shortly after liftoff, scattering debris across the Caribbean and forcing commercial flights to reroute as a these setbacks, Musk remains undeterred, emphasising that each failure yields valuable data and promising a faster pace for upcoming tests. NASA, meanwhile, is counting on Starship for its Artemis program, aiming to return astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2027—a stepping stone for eventual human missions to Mars in the vision extends far beyond a single mission: he envisions launching up to 2,000 Starships every two years to rapidly establish a permanent, self-sustaining human settlement on Watch
