One Rocket, A Dozen Missions
Elon Musk said that SpaceX’s Starship rocket can travel to Mars roughly a dozen times.
The Tesla CEO boasted about the super heavy launch vehicle’s reusability via tweet on Saturday, saying that it’ll help drive more cost-effective missions to the Moon as well as the martian surface.
“Starship will be crushingly cost-effective for Earth orbit or moon missions as soon as it’s operational & rapid reuse is happening,” Musk said in the tweet. “Mars is a lot harder, because Earth & Mars only align every 26 months, so ship reuse is limited to ~dozen times over 25 to 30 year life of ship.”
The 1 Percent
How much money will Starship actually save though? If Musk’s past comments are to be believed, it’s going to be a lot.
In fact, the SpaceX founder says that Starship will be able to launch for 1.3 percent of what NASA currently doles out for the same missions.
“If you consider operational costs, maybe it’ll be like $2 million,” Musk said during the US Airforce Space Pitch Day in 2019 according to Space.com. “This is much less than even a tiny rocket, so it’s something that needs to be made.”
As it stands, Starship is going to no doubt change the game for space travel. The ability to reuse rockets will not only save NASA money but it’ll also allow the agency to focus resources on other vital projects (like creating the annual Space Olympics).
More on Starship: Elon Musk Says It Could Take Eight Starship launches to Fuel Up a Single Moon Trip