SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Says Company Will ‘Hopefully’ Launch First Orbital Starship Flight in 2022

Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX as well as Tesla, announced this week that the former will hopefully launch the first orbital Starship flight this coming January.

Musk said that the company is “hoping” to launch the first orbital flight test of its mammoth Starship rocket that month, depending on testing and regulatory approval.

SpaceX is developing Starship, a massive, next-generation rocket, to launch cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars.

The company’s next major step in testing Starship is launching to orbit.

“We’ll do a bunch of tests in December and hopefully launch in January,” Musk said at a meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Space Studies Board.

The company is testing prototypes of the rocket at a facility in southern Texas and has flown multiple short test flights.

SpaceX will first need a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission, with the regulator expecting to complete a key environmental assessment by the end of this year.

Musk noted that he wasn’t sure if Starship would successfully reach orbit on the first try, but emphasized that he is “confident” that the rocket will get to space in 2022.

“We intend to have a high flight rate next year,” Musk said.

“I think, in order for life to become multiplanetary, we’ll need maybe 1,000 ships or something like that,” Musk said. “The overarching goal of SpaceX has been to advance space technology such that humanity can become a multi-planet species and, ultimately, a spacefaring civilization.”

SpaceX has a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to develop Starship for delivering astronauts to the moon’s surface.

According to Musk, the company is “not assuming any international collaboration” or external funding for the rocket program.

″[Starship] is at least 90% internally funded thus far,” Musk said.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.