SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses on the red carpet of the Axel Springer Award 2020 on December 01, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images) SpaceX’s Elon Musk said Thursday that the first orbital flight of his towering Starship — the world's most powerful rocket ever built — could come in another month or two.While he anticipates failures, he’s confident Starship will reach orbit by the end of this year.Musk provided his first major Starship update in more than two years while standing alongside the 390-foot (119-meter) rocket at SpaceX's Texas spaceport.
He urged the nighttime crowd, "Let’s make this real!""This is really some wild stuff here," he said. "In fact, hard to believe it's real."NASA plans to use the fully reusable Starship to land astronauts on the moon as early as 2025.
Musk, meanwhile, hopes to deploy a fleet of Starships to create a city on Mars, hauling equipment and people there.For now, the initial flights would carry Musk's internet satellites, called Starlinks, into orbit."There will probably be a few bumps in the road, but we want to iron those out with satellite missions and test missions" before putting people on board, he said.SpaceX's Super Heavy first-stage booster has yet to blast off.
But the futuristic, bullet-shaped, steel Starship — perched on top and serving as the upper stage — successfully launched and landed on its own last May, following a series of spectacular explosions.