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SpaceX’s giant Starship will be 500 feet tall for Mars missions, Elon Musk says (video) – Space.com

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SpaceX's Starship, the largest rocket in the world, will get even bigger as the company continues to target Mars missions in the future.

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, told employees on April 4 that Starship will eventually be as tall as 500 feet (150 meters), roughly 20% higher than the massive system aboard the Super Heavy rocket right now.

What's more, advances in reusability will have each launch cost roughly $3 million each, Musk predicted; that's less than a third of what a (much smaller) Falcon 1 rocket launch cost in 2004 when inflation is taken into account. (The figure two decades ago was $5.9 million, according to NBC, which is roughly $9.5 million in 2024 dollars.)

"These are sort of unthinkable numbers," Musk said in the Starship update, released publicly April 6, roughly one month after the third and last test flight to date. "Nobody ever thought that this was possible, but we're not breaking any physics to achieve this. So this is within the bounds, without breaking physics. We can do this."

Related: SpaceX fires up huge Super Heavy booster ahead of 4th Starship test flight (photos, video)

Musk tends to deliver Starship updates at least once a year to highlight progress the company is making toward its long-term plans of settling Mars. Indeed, the last year has seen three Starship launches, so there has been progress made recently. Musk didn't, however, address delays in launching Starship that have contributed to pushing back the launch date for the first moon landing under the NASA-led Artemis program.

SpaceX was named the vendor for the Artemis 3 landing mission that, until recently, was set for 2025. In January, NASA elected to hold the launch date another year, to 2026, due to a range of technical issues. Aside from Starship not being ready the agency wants many successful launches before approving it for astronaut flights Artemis 3 was also delayed due to slow progress on spacesuits and problems with the mission's Orion spacecraft, among other factors.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

However, Musk's words about Artemis, to employees, focused on Starship's future capabilities: orbiting the Earth and refilling its tanks, both of which have yet to be proven on its three test flights.

"This will ... be very important for the Artemis program for the NASA to get back to the moon," Musk said of those capabilities. He also envisions a "Moon Base Alpha" that would include ships "specialized for going to and from the moon", meaning there would be no heat shield or flaps due to the lack of atmosphere.

Related: NASA celebrates SpaceX Starship's 3rd test flight, but more work needed ahead of Artemis moon missions

Musk's 45-minute speech touched on the usual themes for his Red Planet updates, focusing on how to send a lot of cargo out there for eventual settlers. He noted that would take thousands of launches to do; for perspective, Musk said the company has completed 327 successful Falcon series launches and about 80 percent of those had reused boosters (a key factor in reducing cost.)

SpaceX is by far the most active launching entity on Earth, and Musk forecasts the company will send roughly 90 percent of orbital mass aloft this year compared to China's 6 percent (the second-largest entity.)

Starship's next and fourth spaceflight attempt, expected to take place in May, aims to have the first stage of Super Heavy land "on essentially a virtual tower" in the Gulf of Mexico, Musk said. Once the company safely gets that done, they will consider using the launching area at Starbase, in south Texas, for future landings as soon as Flight 5. (Musk pegged the chances of success on Flight 4 at 80% or 90%.)

Musk also wants to perform two splashdowns of the upper stage of Starship in a row, in a controlled fashion, before sending it to Starbase on a future flight. "We do not want to rain debris over Mexico or the U.S.," he said. "My guess is probably next year when we will be able to reuse Starship."

Overall, Musk plans for multiple Starship launches to take place this year, and suggests SpaceX will build an additional six spacecraft by the end of 2024. A new rocket factory for the company should be available in 2025, which would make production even faster.

Future versions of Starship will include a "Starship 2" to send 100 tons of payload to low-Earth orbit and the 500-foot "Starship 3" for 200 or more tons. Bigger vehicles, Musk stressed, will mean fewer (four or five) refueling missions in low Earth orbit to get a Starship ready for the journey to Mars someday.

Of these milestones, Musk said it would be "very much a success-oriented schedule." His speech did not mention the Federal Aviation Administration, which must approve each one of the launches, nor ongoing criticism of the environmental impact of Starship on the ecologically sensitive area near Starbase.

That impact may continue to grow, as Musk said it would take roughly 10 launches a day to send hundreds of vehicles to Mars every two years (when the planet is closest) to make a long-term settlement feasible. As for the number of Mars-bound people, that would be roughly a million folks, he said that matches predictions he made at least as far back as 2017. Musk also says he wants to get the settlement going "in 20 years." He said the same thing in 2011.

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SpaceX's giant Starship will be 500 feet tall for Mars missions, Elon Musk says (video) - Space.com

SpaceX’s giant Starship will be 500 feet tall for Mars missions, Elon Musk says (video) – Space.com

Posted on by

SpaceX's Starship, the largest rocket in the world, will get even bigger as the company continues to target Mars missions in the future.

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, told employees on April 4 that Starship will eventually be as tall as 500 feet (150 meters), roughly 20% higher than the massive system aboard the Super Heavy rocket right now.

What's more, advances in reusability will have each launch cost roughly $3 million each, Musk predicted; that's less than a third of what a (much smaller) Falcon 1 rocket launch cost in 2004 when inflation is taken into account. (The figure two decades ago was $5.9 million, according to NBC, which is roughly $9.5 million in 2024 dollars.)

"These are sort of unthinkable numbers," Musk said in the Starship update, released publicly April 6, roughly one month after the third and last test flight to date. "Nobody ever thought that this was possible, but we're not breaking any physics to achieve this. So this is within the bounds, without breaking physics. We can do this."

Related: SpaceX fires up huge Super Heavy booster ahead of 4th Starship test flight (photos, video)

Musk tends to deliver Starship updates at least once a year to highlight progress the company is making toward its long-term plans of settling Mars. Indeed, the last year has seen three Starship launches, so there has been progress made recently. Musk didn't, however, address delays in launching Starship that have contributed to pushing back the launch date for the first moon landing under the NASA-led Artemis program.

SpaceX was named the vendor for the Artemis 3 landing mission that, until recently, was set for 2025. In January, NASA elected to hold the launch date another year, to 2026, due to a range of technical issues. Aside from Starship not being ready the agency wants many successful launches before approving it for astronaut flights Artemis 3 was also delayed due to slow progress on spacesuits and problems with the mission's Orion spacecraft, among other factors.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

However, Musk's words about Artemis, to employees, focused on Starship's future capabilities: orbiting the Earth and refilling its tanks, both of which have yet to be proven on its three test flights.

"This will ... be very important for the Artemis program for the NASA to get back to the moon," Musk said of those capabilities. He also envisions a "Moon Base Alpha" that would include ships "specialized for going to and from the moon", meaning there would be no heat shield or flaps due to the lack of atmosphere.

Related: NASA celebrates SpaceX Starship's 3rd test flight, but more work needed ahead of Artemis moon missions

Musk's 45-minute speech touched on the usual themes for his Red Planet updates, focusing on how to send a lot of cargo out there for eventual settlers. He noted that would take thousands of launches to do; for perspective, Musk said the company has completed 327 successful Falcon series launches and about 80 percent of those had reused boosters (a key factor in reducing cost.)

SpaceX is by far the most active launching entity on Earth, and Musk forecasts the company will send roughly 90 percent of orbital mass aloft this year compared to China's 6 percent (the second-largest entity.)

Starship's next and fourth spaceflight attempt, expected to take place in May, aims to have the first stage of Super Heavy land "on essentially a virtual tower" in the Gulf of Mexico, Musk said. Once the company safely gets that done, they will consider using the launching area at Starbase, in south Texas, for future landings as soon as Flight 5. (Musk pegged the chances of success on Flight 4 at 80% or 90%.)

Musk also wants to perform two splashdowns of the upper stage of Starship in a row, in a controlled fashion, before sending it to Starbase on a future flight. "We do not want to rain debris over Mexico or the U.S.," he said. "My guess is probably next year when we will be able to reuse Starship."

Overall, Musk plans for multiple Starship launches to take place this year, and suggests SpaceX will build an additional six spacecraft by the end of 2024. A new rocket factory for the company should be available in 2025, which would make production even faster.

Future versions of Starship will include a "Starship 2" to send 100 tons of payload to low-Earth orbit and the 500-foot "Starship 3" for 200 or more tons. Bigger vehicles, Musk stressed, will mean fewer (four or five) refueling missions in low Earth orbit to get a Starship ready for the journey to Mars someday.

Of these milestones, Musk said it would be "very much a success-oriented schedule." His speech did not mention the Federal Aviation Administration, which must approve each one of the launches, nor ongoing criticism of the environmental impact of Starship on the ecologically sensitive area near Starbase.

That impact may continue to grow, as Musk said it would take roughly 10 launches a day to send hundreds of vehicles to Mars every two years (when the planet is closest) to make a long-term settlement feasible. As for the number of Mars-bound people, that would be roughly a million folks, he said that matches predictions he made at least as far back as 2017. Musk also says he wants to get the settlement going "in 20 years." He said the same thing in 2011.

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SpaceX's giant Starship will be 500 feet tall for Mars missions, Elon Musk says (video) - Space.com

Elon Musk Thinks Cannibals Are Invading the United States – Futurism

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In his latest racist outburst, multihyphenate billionaire Elon Musk joined other conservative pundits in accusing Haitian migrants of being "cannibals," arguing that they shouldn't be allowed to move to the US.

The news comes after political unrest in the island nation came to a head this week. On Monday, Haiti's prime minister Ariel Henry agreed to resign if other Caribbean nations were to form a transitional government on behalf of the country. The statement angered Haitians, triggering mass protests, with tires being burned in the streets.

Meanwhile, Musk took to his social media platform X to further unverified and sensationalist claims of cannibalism arising out of the conflict, as NBC reports.

Case in point, today, the mercurial CEO tweeted a link to a video that claimed to show evidence of cannibalism in Haiti in response to the report.

The video was promptly taken down by X, Axios reports, which stated that the video had violated its rules.

In other words, even Musk's own social media company isn't willing to support his increasingly racist anti-immigration posts.

Ever since Musk took over the company formerly known as Twitter, hate speech has flourished on the platform. The billionaire has spread his own share of misinformation as well, from bogus COVID-19 data to false information about the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Musk has also made plenty of his own racist remarks on his platform. In January, he argued that Black students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have lower IQs and therefore shouldn't become pilots ridiculous claims that were met with horror by civil rights groups.

Most recently, the billionaire took aim at the people of Haiti, playing into debunked tropes.

Over the weekend, Musk tweeted "cannibal gangs..." in response to a clip by right-wing commentator Matt Walsh about unrest in Haiti.

"Civilization is fragile," he wrote in response to another since-deleted video, which claimed to show footage of a "cannibal gang eating body parts."

This week, Musk joined right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong, who argued on X earlier this week that there were "cannibal gangs in Haiti who abduct and eat people."

"If wanting to screen immigrants for potential homicidal tendencies and cannibalism makes me 'right wing,' then I would gladly accept such a label!" an incensed Musk wrote in a reply to a separate post in which Cheong complained about the NBC report. "Failure to do so would put innocent Americans in [sic] mortal risk," he added, failing to provide any evidence for his outlandish claims.

As experts have since pointed out, the posts were likely the result of gang propaganda campaigns designed to stoke fear, as NBC reports. While it's still possible that the odd gang leaders are indeed capable of such ghoulish acts, generalizing these claims is not only misleading a State Department spokesperson told the broadcaster that it had received no credible reports of cannibalism but even clearly playing into racist tropes that date back to colonial times.

There's also the issue of basic human decency. Through no fault of its residents, Haiti is in crisis; instead of wondering how the country he immigrated to could help, Musk is punching down at the most extreme examples of social dysfunction he can find online.

"It is very disturbing that Elon Musk would repeat these absurdities that do, indeed, have a long history," Yale University professor of French and African diaspora studies Marlene Daut told NBC.

In short, it's yet another troubling sign of Musk's descent into extreme right-wing circles, while using his considerable following and social media network to further conspiracy theories and racist disinformation.

"A whole population is getting blamed for what some psycho gang members are doing," Washington-based lawyer and moderator of the subreddit r/Haiti, told NBC. "It is racist. It is dehumanizing."

More on Musk: Elon Musk Deletes Tweet Saying Ex-Wives Responsible for Collapse of Civilization

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Elon Musk Thinks Cannibals Are Invading the United States - Futurism

Elon Musk expresses concern over FAA’s focus on DEI – Washington Examiner

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Billionaire Elon Musk has directed his attention to the Federal Aviation Administrations focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, stating Monday morning that he could not believe this is happening.

Musk, who has spoken out against the DEI movement recently, shared a story on social media that revealed the FAA is seeking to hire people withsevere intellectual disabilities. Among these disabilities defined by the FAA include those involving hearing, sight, partial or complete paralysis, and epilepsy.

Just had a conversation with some smart people could not believe this is happening, Musk wrote on X, his social media platform once known as Twitter.

Musks concerns about the FAAs use of DEI in its hiring comes about a week after a Boeing 737 Max 9, operated byAlaska Airlines, had a piece of it blown off during its takeoff. The government is currently investigating what caused the piece to blow off from the plane.

A social media user responding to Musk suggested how catastrophic DEI could be when hiring people in the medical industry, with the user suggesting people could DIE due to DEI. Musk agreed, responding yes to the hypothetical scenario.

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Musk has made himself a vocal critic of DEI over the past few weeks, stating Monday that discrimination based on anything other than merit is wrong. He also argued last week thatDEI discriminatesagainstpeople based on their race and that DEI itself is both immoral and illegal.

Other billionaires who have recently voiced their opinions against DEI include hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

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Elon Musk expresses concern over FAA's focus on DEI - Washington Examiner