Elon Musk Takes Us Inside SpaceX's Starship Mk1 Prototype (Video)

News
By Mike Wall
published

We get a look at the cavernous cargo bay.

Just a few days after showing off the shiny silver exterior of SpaceX's new spaceship, Elon Musk has provided a peek at the inside.

On Saturday night (Sept. 28), the SpaceX founder and CEO gave us a design update about Starship and Super Heavy, the reusable spacecraft and rocket, respectively, that the company is developing to help humanity colonize Mars.

Musk delivered the presentation in front of the newly assembled stainless-steel Starship Mk1, the first full-size prototype of the 100-passenger spacecraft. And early Tuesday morning (Oct. 1), he gave us a look at the interior of the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Mk1. 

Video: Look Inside SpaceX's Starship Mk 1 Rocket!
Related: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy Mars Rocket in Pictures

SpaceX's Starship Mk1 prototype (left)  stands 165 feet (50 meters) tall at the company's Boca Chica site in South Texas. A Falcon 1 rocket first stage for SpaceX's first rocket is visible at right.  (Image credit: SpaceX via Twitter)

Musk posted a 10-second video on Twitter showing the cavernous cargo bay of the spacecraft, which is a whopping 30 feet (9 m) wide.

"Inside Starship cargo bay. Header tanks mounted in tip of nosecone to offset engine weight at rear," Musk wrote in the Twitter post.

"Production version will be a lot more polished than this prototype, but still fun to see," he added in another tweet about half an hour later.

The Mk1 sports three of SpaceX's next-generation Raptor engines. The final Starship will have six Raptors, and the Super Heavy will have space for 37 of the engines. At least 31 of those slots will probably be filled on each launch of the huge booster, Musk said on Saturday.

The Mk1 will make its first flight soon, if all goes according to plan. In the next month or two, SpaceX aims to launch the prototype on an uncrewed, 12-mile-high (20 kilometers) jaunt into the skies above SpaceX's South Texas facility, Musk has said.

A Starship prototype could reach orbit within six months if development work continues to go well, he said on Saturday night. That milestone flight will probably be made by a future iteration of the spacecraft, he added, perhaps the Mk4 or Mk5.

And we might not have to wait too long after that for commercial operations to begin. Starship and Super Heavy may start launching communications satellites as early as 2021, SpaceX representatives have said. And the company has a crewed mission on the docket with a targeted launch date of 2023 — a round-the-moon trip booked by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who said he plans to take a handful of artists with him.

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

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Mike Wall
Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.