Starship Will Travel To Other Star Systems, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Says

Elon Musk gave an update about SpaceX's Starship after its third test flight. The Tesla CEO teased that the world's most powerful launch vehicle will go interstellar.

Elon Musk On SpaceX's Starship's Future

Musk spoke on X early Monday morning (March 18) and teased Starship's future. According to the tech billionaire, a more advanced iteration will go interstellar.

"This Starship is designed to traverse our entire solar system and beyond to the cloud of objects surrounding us. A future Starship, much larger and more advanced, will travel to other star systems," Musk said.

Two stainless-steel components comprise Starship -- the massive Super Heavy first-stage rocket and the Starship, or simply Ship, upper-stage spacecraft, which is 165 feet (50 meters) tall.

These vehicles, which have six Raptors for Ship and 33 for Super Heavy, are powered by SpaceX's next-generation Raptors, which are intended to be totally and quickly reusable.

Starship is approximately 400 feet (122 meters) tall when stacked. The rocket is the largest and most potent rocket ever constructed with a reusable structure that allows it to deliver up to 165 tons (150 metric tons) into Earth orbit. In contrast, the maximum payload capacity of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket is approximately 25 tons (23 metric tons).

During its test flight last week, Starship performed admirably, demonstrating significant advancement over its previous two missions, which took place in April and November of last year. The first test mission, for instance, concluded after just four minutes, and the second ended approximately eight minutes after launch. However, the trip on Thursday (March 14), lasted for roughly 50 minutes before the Ship broke apart as it was reentering Earth's atmosphere.

Starship's Mission

SpaceX envisions Starship to assist human colonization of Mars and the moon. NASA shares this vision: as part of its Artemis program, the agency chose Starship to be the first crewed lunar lander.

With the tentative launch date of September 2026, Starship will lift off for the Artemis 3 mission, landing astronauts on the moon for the first time if all goes as planned.

It will take much more development and test flights to prepare Starship for astronaut missions in deep space. Furthermore, launching an interplanetary version will need a far larger leap, which is difficult to envision in the present.

Scholars have proposed ways to increase the journey's viability. For example, the Breakthrough Starshot program is developing a system that would use extremely powerful ground-based lasers to accelerate sailcraft to 20% the speed of light. If all goes according to plan, these spaceships might arrive to Proxima Centauri around 20 years after liftoff.

And the Breakthrough Starshot vessels would be small, with bodies roughly the size of a postage stamp-that's a hefty "if." The task of creating an interplanetary vehicle large enough to accommodate humans would be far more difficult.

Musk seems to have it in mind, considering that the upcoming interstellar starship will be "much larger" than the colossal spacecraft. The 2016 announcement of Breakthrough Starshot hinted at a potential 2040s or 2030s launch window.

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