Musk gives Starship update and roadmap for self-sustaining Mars city

Elon Musk gave an update on SpaceX's Starship on February 10th at SpaceX's Starbase.

Musk's presentation took place in front of a 390-foot-tall (119 meters) assembly of the Starship Ship 20 stacked atop the Super Heavy Booster 4. The update included the announcement that the future designs for the Super Heavy booster will have 33 Raptor 2 engines, up from the 29 engines currently on Booster 4.

The new engine designs will produce up to 230 tons of thrust at sea level while being made from fewer parts than Raptor 1, which can only generate up to 185 tons of thrust. Starship will be able to output up to a total of 7,600 tons of thrust at liftoff, more than double the power of a Saturn V rocket, and breaks the record for the tallest rocket built, previously held by the Saturn V, which stood 363 feet (111 meters) tall.

Starship will be able to carry between 100 and 150 tonnes to orbit and about 100 tonnes to Mars. With orbital refilling, Musk expects the payload capacity to Mars to be up to 200 tonnes. He expects one year of operation at a rate of three Starship launches per week would result in 15,500 tonnes delivered to orbit. However, this is still a ways off from being enough to deliver the one million tonnes Musk estimates would be required to create a self-sustaining city on Mars.

For more information from the update, check out this breakdown.