It's no secret that Elon Musk has been slowly pushing towards his goal of making humanity a multi-planetary species and through SpaceX, his private space company, he has made several strides in that direction.
Musk correctly recognised that in order to make space travel a reality, it would need to be vastly more affordable than it is currently. And for that, rockets would need to be reusable.
Imagine if an airplane could be used only once. Travelling by air would be impossibly expensive! SpaceX has made significant progress on the reusable front already with its falcon rockets and they will only keep perfecting the technology further.
It is pieces like this that would need to come together to make the reality of an interplanetary spaceship come true, capable of carrying humans to anywhere in the Solar System.
Starship Taking Form
SpaceX's answer to interplanetary travel is the Starship. It was earlier known as the 'Big Falcon Rocket' and 'Interplanetary Transport System' before that. It has gone through several design updates over the last few years and it seems that a prototype might be ready for launch soon.
Musk tweeted on December 22 that the prototype launch could happen as soon as March or April next year. Here's hoping it actually does, as we know Musk seems to miss deadlines quite a lot.
Another important and interesting piece of information that we got to know thanks to Musk's tweet was that the Starship would be made of stainless steel, which is quite an interesting choice. It would be able to handle the extreme heat really well but would be really heavy compared to carbon fibre which is generally used in spacecrafts.
But it seems like Musk has an answer to that problem as well. He mentioned that making the stainless steel go through a cryogenic process, would make the strength to weight ratio even better than carbon fiber!
The launch of Starship will truly mark the beginning of a new era in space exploration and one day, we might look back at it as the milestone we needed to cross to become an interplanetary species.