SpaceX plans to start all 33 engines of its massive Starship launch system ahead of its first orbital launch, a key milestone in the company’s efforts to reach the Moon and Mars. The so-called static fire is planned for Thursday, Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer, said Wednesday at an industry conference in Washington. That would pave the way for the rocket’s orbital launch within “the next month or so,” she said.
The announcement comes about two weeks after the company, formerly known as Space Exploration Technologies, filled the rocket and booster with propellant in a “wet dress rehearsal.”
These deadlines are not guaranteed. A year ago Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk gathered members of the press in Boca Chica, Texas to show off spaceship Prototype on a launchpad. He said it would be ready to launch in “a couple of months.”
spaceship is SpaceX’s Next generation launch vehicle designed to carry cargo and eventually people to destinations in space.
SpaceX also has a deal with NASA To develop Starship as a lunar landing system capable of taking NASA astronauts to and from the lunar surface.
The company plans to build Starship as a spacecraft that can be quickly assembled.
“Falcon was never built to be manufacturable and quick to launch,” Shotwell said, referring to the falcon 9 workhorse rocket. “We designed Starship to be manufacturable and launch quickly. So if we can do 100 flights on Falcon this year, I would like to be able to do 100 flights on Starship next year.”
Unintended Uses
Shotwell also spoke about SpaceX’s internet-from-space initiative, Starlink, which she says had a positive cash-flow quarter last year.
“They’re paying for their own launches and they’re still going to make money,” she replied to reporters’ questions.
Last year, SpaceX and Musk provided Starlink terminals to the Ukrainian government following the Russian invasion of the country.
Shotwell said Starlink was being used in an unintended way, which the company has since tried to stop.
“It was never intended to be armed,” she said. Ukrainians “used it in a way that was unintentional”.
We were like, “Humanitarian, keep the banks, hospitals, keep the families connected,” she said. “I think the communications for the military are fine. We know the military uses them for communications and that’s fine. But it was never our intention to use them for offensive purposes.”
Some Ukrainian military units have been deployed Starlink to connect their combat drones, the Times of London reported last March.
SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon in September asking the agency to pay for Ukraine’s Starlink service, CNN first reported.
SpaceX is still funding the service. “We have stopped interacting with the Pentagon through existing capabilities. You don’t pay for it.”
As for stopping certain uses of Starlink, “there are things we can do and have done,” Shotwell said.
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