Starship could also be a better way to launch giant space telescopes that can observe the universe. Its fragments would harmlessly burn up in the atmosphere before it had a chance to reach our planet. Such a mission could carry enough explosives to rip apart an asteroid as large as the 10-kilometer-wide rock that wiped out the dinosaurs. Philip Lubin, a physicist from the University of California, Santa Barbara, calculated that a large enough rocket, such as Starship, could be used to prevent an asteroid from hitting Earth. The mission could also be equipped with a telescope, allowing for studies of the outer solar system and aiding the hunt for planets around other stars. Arcanum would have numerous components, including an orbiter to study Neptune, a lander to study Triton, and a penetrator to strike Triton’s surface and “perform a seismic experiment” to understand its geology and its structure, says McKevitt. No existing rocket could currently launch such a craft, but Starship would make it possible. Weighing in at about 21 metric tons, the spacecraft would be four times heavier than the largest deep space probe to date: NASA and ESA’s Cassini-Huygens mission, which explored Saturn from 2004 to 2017. “That’s what Arcanum is designed to showcase.” “Nobody’s really thinking on this next level about what Starship could enable,” says James McKevitt, a researcher at the University of Vienna and the co-lead of Conex. Neptune has been visited only once, a flying visit by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, and there is so much we still don’t know about it. One idea, from an international group of scientists called Conex (Conceptual Exploration Research), is a spacecraft called Arcanum, which would make use of Starship’s heavy-lifting capabilities to explore Neptune and its largest moon, Triton. Starship could also enable more extravagant missions to other locations, either via a direct launch from Earth or perhaps by using the moon and Mars as refueling stations, an ambitious future envisioned by Musk. That could shed light on a myriad of mysteries, such as the volcanic history of the moon or “the question of life and astrobiology” on Mars, says Heldmann. The sheer volume that could be returned, from a variety of different locations, would give scientists on Earth unprecedented access to extraterrestrial material. “What else do you want to bring?”īecause Starship can land back on Earth, it will also-theoretically-be able to bring back vast amounts of samples. But with Starship, “you could do it, and still have room to spare,” she adds. Before, such an idea have been “a little bit insane,” says Heldmann. “You could drill down a kilometer, like we do on Earth.” That would afford unprecedented access to the interior of the moon and Mars, where ice and other useful resources are thought to be present. For example, “you could bring a drilling rig,” says Heldmann. One great benefit is that Starship could carry full-sized equipment from Earth-no need to miniaturize it to fit in a smaller vehicle, as was required for the Apollo missions to the moon. Earlier this year, a paper published by Jennifer Heldmann of NASA Ames Research Center explored some of the scientific opportunities that might be opened by Starship missions to the moon and Mars. Scientists are now starting to dream of what Starship might let them do. Taking humans to the moon, for example, might require eight separate launches, with each consecutive “tanker Starship” bringing up fuel to the “lunar Starship” that then makes its way to the moon with scientific equipment and crew. The upper half of the rocket is designed to be refueled in Earth orbit by other Starships, so more of its lifting capability can be handed over to scientific equipment rather than fuel. What’s more, Starship has a key advantage over other super-heavy-lift rockets in development, such as NASA’s much-delayed Space Launch System and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

Elon musk spaceship