STAR TOURS
Elon Musk unveils new SpaceX Starship for private round-trips to Moon and Mars due to launch in just WEEKS
ELON Musk last night unveiled his brand new SpaceX Starship - designed to make private round-trips to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
The craft - which is due to make its first test launch in just weeks - is built to carry crew and cargo deep into space and then return to Earth.
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And in what would be an incredible feat of engineering, the Starship should land standing on its its base - making it completely reusable.
Such a breakthrough could pave the way for regular, fast and cheap space travel to be available to many in the near future.
Tech billionaire Musk, 48, revealed his ambition to have the ship launched in just the next month or two.
Standing beside a prototype of the huge silver craft during a livestream broadcast, he addressed a crowd at SpaceX's Texas launch facility.
The event marked the 11th anniversary of the first successful orbital launch of SpaceX's first rocket, the Falcon 1.
Musk laid out his plan for interplanetary travel using the new 387ft-tall spaceship - which when complete could carry up to 100 people.
And now that the design is complete, work will begin fast to get people strapped in and sent skyward.
It will take off for the first time in about one or two months and reach 65,000 feet before landing back on Earth.
Musk said he hopes a prototype will then reach Earth's orbit in about six months.
And if tests go well, brave explorers could start flying aboard it within the next year.
Billionaire Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa and a handful of artists are booked on a trip around the Moon in the Starship in the 2020s.
But Musk said his ultimate objective is seeing human life on Mars.
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He said of the new Starship: "This is the fastest path to a self-sustaining city on Mars."
Ahead of the grand unveiling, Musk tweeted on Friday: "Starship will allow us to inhabit other worlds.
"To make life as we know it interplanetary."
Sun Explains: Is SpaceX's Starship the spacecraft that will take us to Mars?
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