![]() He later confirmed that plan would be scrapped, renamed the launch system Starship, and said the new version would be made out of steel. Starhopper's appearance was a surprise because, just months earlier, Musk had shown off large sections of a planned carbon-fiber launch system called Big Falcon Rocket. In January, he shared photos of a shiny Starhopper (though 50-mph winds later blew off its nose cone). Water-tower welders and engineers descended upon the location to build the vehicle out of steel panels. SpaceX quietly began work on Starhopper in 2018 at the company's remote facility in South Texas, where it continues to develop a nascent launch site. SpaceX's earliest Mars rocket ship prototype, called Starhopper, sits on a launchpad after its first launch in April 2019. The plan is to use one Raptor engine to launch the vehicle about 650 feet (200 meters) into the air, fly it sideways a bit, and land it back on its crude launchpad.Īfter that test - assuming it's successful - engineers will probably gut the ship, use its parts for other prototypes, and send its gleaming leftover hull off for display. Next week, SpaceX plans to perform what will likely be the final flight of Starhopper. Read more: How SpaceX's new Starship launch system compares to NASA's towering moon rockets Musk has said the final Starship system, which will be about 400 feet tall, may use more than 40 of those engines. The first two of those experimental runs, in April and July, have helped test and refine the most essential element of Starship: its Raptor rocket engines. Starhopper was never meant to fly into orbit, but rather to perform short "hop" flights. That will in turn keep development of larger and more ambitious prototypes moving along. In SpaceX's fervor to build a space-ready Starship, according to the managing editor of, the company will "cannibalize" parts from its first plucky rocket-ship prototype, called Starhopper. (The space-launch industry mostly relies on single-use rockets that crash back to Earth after launching a payload into orbit.) ![]() Instead, it's working around the clock on a new launch system called Starship, which Musk thinks could lower the cost of spaceflight 100 to 1,000 times by being fully reusable.
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