TECH billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled his new spaceship that he believes could make space travel as common as flying and has also revealed he has big plans for the moon and Mars.
His new spaceship?
Musk unveiled “Starship”, at the HQ of his SpaceX firm in Texas. He told the gathered space enthusiasts that his goal is to create spaceships that can act like planes, taking off and landing without being damaged.
He said: “We need to make space travel like air travel. Any other mode of transport is reusable so the critical breakthrough is a rapidly reusable orbital rocket - this is the holy grail of space."
When’s the inaugural flight?
In “one or two months”, he said, during which the rocket will aim to reach 65,000ft before landing back on earth.
Musk said Starship is designed to take people and cargo "to the moon, Mars or anywhere else in the solar system" and land back on Earth perpendicularly instead of horizontally.
And what are his plans for the moon?
He wants to ultimately create cities on Mars and the moon.
“It will be very exciting to have a base on the moon, even if it's just a science city," he said. "Then we can go to other places in the solar system, like Saturn. But we need to focus on the fastest path to a self-sustaining city on Mars.”
Who is he?
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, he holds South African, Canadian and US citizenship and is the founder of SpaceX, which began 17 years ago, with the goal of reducing space travel costs to enable the colonisation of Mars.
He founded PayPal?
In 1999 he started an online bank, X.com, which became PayPal and was bought by eBay for $1.5billion in 2002.
At 48, with an estimated wealth of more than $20billion - he not only wants to revolutionise transportation in space, but on Earth too and his firm, Tesla, brought fully-electric vehicles to the mass market.
He’s no stranger to controversy?
He got into hot water in 2018 when he tweeted that he had “funding secured” for a private takeover of Tesla. The US Securities and Exchange Commission alleged this was securities fraud. Musk stepped down as Tesla chair.
He is due in court in LA later this month?
Musk faces defending himself in a defamation suit in court after calling a diver who helped save Thai schoolboys trapped in a cave a “pedo”. The tweet came after Musk sent engineers and a small submarine to Thailand to help free them. They were never used and British rescuer, Vern Unsworth, referred to it as a "publicity stunt”. Unsworth is seeking at least $75,000 in compensation.
Musk's focus is on the Starship?
It's 50m long, weighs 120 tonnes and will have six engines and he wants it to begin making private round-trips to the Moon and Mars as soon as possible.
He said: ”I think we should really do our best to become a multi-planet species, and we should do it now."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel