SpaceX seems to be gearing up to launch and land its Starship rocket on an ocean-based spaceport by 2022. Starship will be able to ferry up to 100 crew members to the Moon, Mars, and other planets in the future.
The spacecraft can also come in handy for city-to-city travel, cutting down the travel time between international cities significantly. SpaceX’s prime aim is to develop two floating spaceports called Deimos and Phobos, named after the moons of the Red Planet.
Elon Musk confirmed the speculations while responding to a fan’s tweet who posted an image of how the spaceport could look. The spaceports are being built on oil rig apparatus bought in 2020 for $7 billion from Valaris, the world’s largest owner of offshore rigs.
City-to-city travel in 60 minutes
Elon Musk also envisions the use of SpaceX hardware such as spacecraft, rockets, and floating platforms for city-to-city travel. Musk noted that the system would enable passengers to “fly to most places on Earth in under 30 minutes and anywhere in under 60.” He also said that the travel cost will be almost the same as an economy flight ticket.
To make these concepts a reality, SpaceX has been testing high-altitude flights of its Starship vehicle with an aim to launch its first orbital flight in the near future. However, the testing phase hasn’t shown promise yet. Three of the first five test flights ended in explosions when Starship made a heavy landing.
Super Heavy rocket to make debut
For the next orbital flight, Starship will be placed aboard the company’s Super Heavy rocket, which is a reusable system that is believed to transport humans to Mars one day. The company posted a job listing in 2020 suggesting the team building spaceports is working from Brownsville, Texas, near SpaceX’s Starship test site.
Recently, SpaceX also made history by sending its Falcon 9 rocket booster on its 10th successful flight. This is an important achievement for the company in terms of rocket reusability. By reusing the first stages, SpaceX aims to bring down the cost of rocket launches drastically.
