Giving his first Starship update in two years, SpaceX founder Elon Musk reiterated his belief of making humanity a multi-planetary species.
Musk said that it was, "very important and essential that we become a multi-planetary species over the long term" and added that we would ultimately go, "beyond the solar system and bring life with us."
Musk started the presentation flanked by a new version of the Starship, the world's tallest rocket. It is designed to carry people on deep-space missions to Mars and beyond. The stainless steel rocket stands 165 feet tall.
The popular entrepreneur who also serves as the CEO of Tesla, said that one of the reason's SpaceX was doing this was to inspire the human race, but also acknowledged that there were many problems to solve on Earth first.
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He agreed that the majority of our resources, "should be dedicated to solving problems on Earth," and believed that "99% of our resources," should be oriented to that goal.
Rapid usability was high on the agenda as well. Musk had previously shared footage of the Starship launch tower called Starbase. The 400-foot tower has giant robotic arms designed to stack the Starship on top of the company's Super Heavy Rocket.
It has been designed so that the Starship can be refurbished and reflown, as soon as possible.
Musk also laid out some ambitious goals, he said that SpaceX's goal was to eventually stack Starships and Super Heavy Rockets once per month, adding that eventually they would like to speed it up to, "potentially a ship every three days."
"There will be more ships than boosters," said Musk, adding that boosters, "will come back in about six minutes."
The end goal is to launch a Starship up to three times a day. While that sounds insane, Musk argued that it will be essential for survivability of human colonies on distant planets like Mars, and if the ships stop launching from Earth, the human colony will be at the risk of dying out.
If everything goes well, then it might be possible to launch a Starship from Earth, every six to eight hours. This would also bring down costs dramatically, owing to the high flight rates.
"It may be as little as a few million dollars per flight — maybe even as low as a million dollars per flight," Musk said.
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Both the Super Heavy Booster and Starship will be powered by the company's new Raptor engine, designed with Mars in mind. It works by burning liquid oxygen and liquid methane, both of which can be sourced on Mars.
Musk was also realistic when assessing early test runs scheduled for the Super Heavy and Starship duo. He admitted that the company will, "lose a few vehicles along the way," and that Falcon 9 took the company, "14 or 15 attempts to successfully land the first booster."
Musk said he did not believe that they will require that many attempts with Starship, "but it's not a sure thing that it'll work the first time."
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