SpaceX Aims for Orbital Flights of Prototype Mars Ship Next Year

摘要

It is easy to take potshots at Elon Musk's plan to help humanity become a multiplanet species. He dismisses development of life-support systems to sustain 100 people during long-duration spaceflight as a technical molehill in the overall challenge of building affordable, routine access to space. He has no customers for his interplanetary transport, now in development, save for the idealistic Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, who is financing a charter flight around the Moon for himself and a dozen or so as-yet-unnamed artistically leaning, adventurous souls.Driven by faith and a 17-year track record that has reshaped the worldwide launch market, Musk, the founder, CEO and chief engineer at SpaceX, is unfazed by the doubters as a small development team takes on his most audacious goal yet: a low-cost, fully reusable, human-class deep-space transportation system known as Starship.