Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ:SPCX) CEO Elon Musk said that the company’s Starship rocket could eventually deliver between 1 million and 10 million tons of payload to orbit annually as operations scale.
Up to 10 Million Tons of Payload
On Wednesday, the billionaire responded to user Eric Berger, who questioned why Europe would opt for Italian aerospace company Avio and its solid-fuel rocket technology amid SpaceX’s long-term plans to transition launch operations toward Starship.
Solid-fuel rockets use a pre-mixed solid propellant and generally have a simpler propulsion architecture than liquid-fueled rockets.
“Starship will deliver somewhere between 1M and 10M tons per year to orbit,” Musk said in his response. The billionaire added that even if “non-SpaceX tonnage to orbit were to triple, it would still be less than 0.1% of what SpaceX plans to do,” expressing bullish sentiments on SpaceX’s payload capacity.
However, Musk acknowledged the large gap between orbital payload and payloads transported via aircraft, saying it was still “small potatoes compared to airflight tonnage.”
Notably, Musk said in March this year that the Starship rocket could transport 1 million tons of payload to orbit, in response to a user who asked what the payload capacity of the company’s flagship rocket would look like in five years.
Starship’s Flight Test 14
The comments follow SpaceX’s announcement that the company will conduct Starship’s first orbital launch on September 22, which was confirmed by Musk. The billionaire also said that the company will begin deploying the Starlink V3 satellites, which will offer better bandwidth than the current Starlink constellation.
Price Action: SpaceX shares were up 0.99% at $152.38 during overnight trading on Wednesday.
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