SpaceX Starship orbital flight likely this year, Musk says in update from Texas

Feb. 10 (UPI) -- SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk gave an update plans for the company's Starship rocket on Thursday night in South Texas, as the company prepares for the rocket's first orbital test flight, saying it would fly sometime this year.

SpaceX has not yet received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch orbital flights from Texas, and Musk noted Thursday that the company plans to build facilities in Florida in case the application is denied.

Musk had dampened enthusiasm over the nearly 400-foot-tall rocket system in November, when he told employees the company could go bankrupt if it didn't solve production problems.

He lauded SpaceX engineers Thursday for completing a massive launch tower that loomed above him during a live broadcast, saying it was "as complex and difficult as either the booster or the [space] ship, so I really want to emphasize that this is it's very difficult thing that requires a lot of hardcore engineering."

Musk previously had indicated, on Twitter, he hoped the launch would happen by late February. But during the live broadcast Thursday he only said it would likely happen this year.

Starship hasn't flown since its fifth test flight, to a height of about six miles, ended with a safe upright landing. Before that, four previous tests ended in fiery explosions.

SpaceX has been planning an orbital test, which would soar above the atmosphere, using the rocket's Super Heavy booster for launch. Musk last said the test flight would occur in late February, depending on approval by the FAA.

Starship "will achieve orbit until performing a powered, targeted landing approximately ... 62 miles off the northwest coast of Kauai [Hawaii] in a soft ocean landing," SpaceX's FAA permit application for the flight says.

Musk said Thursday that SpaceX was building a Starship launch tower and Starship production facility on Florida's Space Coast near Kennedy Space Center, in case the FAA denied its applications to conduct orbital launches from Texas.

Musk had warned his SpaceX employees in November that the company could go bankrupt if it didn't overcome problems in production of Starship's Raptor engines.

Thursday he noted that a remaining hurdle for engineers is that heat from the spacecraft's Raptor engines was "melting the chamber" of the engine at full thrust.

Both Super Heavy and the Starship upper stage are shiny towers of stainless steel. Stacked together, they are taller than the largest rockets ever launched, the Saturn V of the Apollo era.

SpaceX intends them to also have more thrust than Saturn V, with about 30 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy and six more on the upper stage.

Starship would also have the largest usable payload volume of any rocket, to carry cargo or people.

"The Starship crew configuration can transport up to 100 people from Earth into [orbit] and on to the Moon and Mars. The crew configuration of Starship includes private cabins, large common areas, centralized storage, solar storm shelters and a viewing gallery," according to SpaceX's fact sheet.

In April, NASA awarded SpaceX a contract of $2.9 billion to fly Starship as its Human Landing System for the United States' planned return of astronauts to the moon. NASA hopes to make that happen by 2025, but the agency hasn't received the funding it's been requesting from Congress.

If all goes according to schedule, SpaceX plans to send an uncrewed test flight to the moon before the astronaut mission. It also plans to launch Japanese billionaire Yusaka Maezawa and a crew of space tourists around the moon in 2023, on the so-called Dear Moon mission which Maezawa will fund.

But those plans could be pushed back if Starship's orbital launch doesn't occur soon this year.