Starship was first known as Big Falcon Rocket which is officially shortened as BFR. It is privately funded spacecraft in development by SpaceX. It is fully reusable, that is, it can refuel its liquid oxygen and methane tanks by making use of resources from the atmosphere. This project got started in 2012 but no details were released about this at that time.
In 2014 the fact that an initial flight test of the super heavy vehicle can occur by 2020 came into the light. In 2015, the CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk told that they might release the spacecraft system by late 2015 but these dates were delayed because of some unimportant issues.
Finally, In September 2017, SpaceX unveiled the spacecraft system at the International Astronautical Congress. At that time it was known as BFR. It is cylindrical in shape and has a diameter of 9 m ( 30 ft ). It uses methalox fuel. It is under construction at the firm’s Boca Chica site in Texas. It is made up of using stainless steel which looks incredible.
This attempt of SpaceX is similar to the approach which was used by NASA ( The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ) with the Atlas rockets in 1950 but they had some pitfalls. So in order to complete its missions, SpaceX must get a successful launching of this spacecraft by avoiding these pitfalls.
The aim of SpaceX is to send two unmanned Starships to Mars by 2022 and then two manned Starships following the two unmanned Starships by 2024. Moreover, a team of artists is also working on a project to send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on a trip around the Moon by 2023 approximately.
On Sunday, Elon Musk stated that they will try to make the rocket fly within four weeks and this time limit may extend but not more than eight weeks.
Starship test vehicle under assembly will look similar to this illustration when finished. Operational Starships would obv have windows, etc. pic.twitter.com/D8AJ01mjyR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 5, 2019
Although the hopper is still not finished as it is clear from the pictures that SpaceX has released. Elon Musk told that there are 70 percent chances that they will successfully launch the spacecraft “Starship”.
This will be really incredible. If this attempt success then this spacecraft will replace all the existing spacecraft and vehicles because it is cheaper than all other spacecraft and vehicles by its virtue that it can reuse its fuel.
In 2018, SpaceX declared that it will fly a group of private passengers around the Moon. This group will be crewed by Yusaku Maezawa with 6 or 8 people. The expected travel time is about 6 days. It this experiment becomes successful then this will be an incredible contribution of spacecraft.
