TESMANIAN by Evelyn Arevalo June 09, 2020
SpaceX is working to develop a massive stainless-steel Starship that will one day ferry one hundred passengers to the moon and Mars. The company has an ambitious timeframe to meet. Starship’s first voyage is already booked by Yusaku Maezawa, a fashion entrepreneur who dreams of a voyage to the moon, the space tour is scheduled for 2023. NASA also selected SpaceX to develop a Starship Lunar Lander as part of the agency’s Artemis program which aims to take the first woman and the next mand to the moon’s surface by 2024. So, SpaceX engineers only have a limited time to finish the spacecrafts development. Teams are currently working on Starship’s development at the company’s facility situated in a small village at Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville, Texas.
The founder and Chief Engineer at SpaceX Elon Musk, reportedly told 7,000 employees that the company’s top priority is now Starship development. This comes after they conducted their first crewed mission to the International Space Station on May 30th. A Falcon 9 rocket launched the Crew Dragon spacecraft to orbit with veteran NASA Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, who are now safely working at the orbiting laboratory.
According to CNBC news, in an email Musk sent to employees he told SpaceX employees –"Please consider the top SpaceX priority (apart from anything that could reduce Dragon return risk) to be Starship," Musk wrote in the email, according to the report. The astronauts are expected to return aboard Dragon sometime between 6 to 16 weeks. The capsule will conduct a parachute-assistant landing in the Atlantic Ocean with Behnken and Hurley aboard. It will be the first time teams recover Dragon with humans aboard. Until then, SpaceX will shift all its focus to its next-generation spacecraft, Starship. “We need to accelerate Starship progress,†Musk told his teams. And asked them to “consider spending significant time†in Boca Chica to help the company accelerate Starship development, “For those considering moving, we will always offer a dedicated SpaceX aircraft to shuttle people,†he wrote.
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