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South African born space entrepreneur,Elon Musk has treated the world to a graphic look at his large and undeniably impressive rocket glowing vivid red.
His firm SpaceX released a graphical representation of the Starship, which was once known as the ‘Big Falcon Rocket’ and is designed to take astronauts to Mars.
It was produced for the magazine April 2019 issue of Popular Mechanics and show Musk’s mighty vessel entering Earth’s atmosphere and becoming rather inflamed in the process.
Starship is going to be reusable and capable of making return trips from Earth to space.
Whenever a rocket reenters the atmosphere, it faces temperatures so extreme its outer body becomes incandescent
This torrid experience puts intense stress on a rocket ship, requiring Musk and his team to think of a way to cope with the ravages of the intense heat.
Musk tweeted: ‘Transpiration cooling will be added wherever we see erosion of the shield. Starship needs to be ready to fly again immediately after landing. Zero refurbishment.’
It’s hoped Starship will one day fly humans to Mars, but industry analysts have suggested it could play a major role in revolutionising transport down here on Earth, potentially taking passengers from New York to London in just half an hour
Investors at Swiss firm UBS have said that the market for ‘point to point’ rocket travel could be £15 billion a year by 2030.
Jarrod Castle and Myles Walton, analysts with UBS, said: ‘Although some might view the potential to use space to service the long-haul travel market as science fiction, we think there is a large market.
While space tourism is still at a nascent phase, we think that as technology becomes proven, and the cost falls due to technology and competition, space tourism will become more mainstream.’
In 2017, Musk first revealed the idea of using rockets to transport people around the world.
He suggested customers would board a rocket in one city and launch to the edge of space, before flying around the planet at speeds of up to 27,000kph and landing in another city.
The first SpaceX Starship is currently being assembled in Boca Chica, near Brownsville in Texas.
New photographs show the craft under construction with what looks like its nose cone on the ground, waiting to be assembled.
Starship was previously known as BFR (Big Falcon Rocket or the Big F***ing Rocket) and is at the centre of Musk’s plans to send humans to Mars.