If SpaceX completes the milestone-based requirements of the design contract, then NASA will pay SpaceX The high-altitude, high-velocity 'Starship orbital prototypes' (everything after From mid-January to early-March, a major focus of the manufacture of the test article was to complete the pressure vessel construction for the liquid methane and liquid oxygen tanks, including plumbing up the system, and moving the lower tank section of the vehicle two miles (3.2 km) to the launch pad on 8 March.Following initial integrated system testing of the By December 2018, initial construction of two high-altitude prototype ships had begun, referred to as Mk1 at Boca Chica, Texas,On 20 November 2019, the Starship Mk1 was partially destroyed during max pressure tank testing, when the forward LOX tank ruptured along a weld line of the craft's steel structure, propelling the bulkhead several meters upwards. The second stage of Starship—which is also commonly referred to as "Starship"While the spacecraft will be tested on its own initially at suborbital altitudes, it will be used on Integrated system testing of a proof of concept for Starship began in March 2019, with the addition of a single SpaceX is planning to launch commercial payloads using Starship no earlier than 2021.While the name of the vehicle has changed many times over the years,At least as early as 2005, SpaceX used the codename, "BFR", for a conceptual heavy-lift vehicle, "far larger than the Falcon family of vehicles,"With the announcement of a new 9-meter design in September 2017, SpaceX resumed referring to the vehicle as "BFR".Notably, in the fashion of SpaceX, even that term "Super Heavy" had been previously used by SpaceX in a different context. These sea-level engines are identical to the engines on the Starship is planned to eventually be built in at least these operational variants:The SpaceX approach is to tackle the hardest problems first, and Musk sees the hardest problem for getting to sustainable human civilization on Mars to be building a fully-reusable orbital Starship, so that is the major focus of SpaceX resources as of 2020.SpaceX is one of three organizations who are developing their lunar lander designs for the Artemis program over a 10-month period in 2020–21. SpaceX is building a full-size Starship prototype called the Mk2 at its facilities on Florida's Space Coast, reasoning that some intracompany competition will improve Starship's final design. SpaceX's Starship Mk1 prototype (left) stands 165 feet (50 meters) tall at the company's Boca Chica site in South Texas. Besides filling in as an exhibition hall piece, Starship Mk2’s destiny was fixed – the main genuine inquiry was how and when it would be rejected. But thinking about the NASA Pathfinder mock-up as a precedent, my idea of what to do with the Starship MK2 may not seem as far-fetched as a hot rod Starship landing on Phobos. Also the worksite was expanded with more tents, structures and upgraded machinery to give the workers a much better controlled environment, allowing for better precision work and, more importantly, better quality welds. No injuries were reported.Construction had begun on the Mk2 Starship in Florida by mid-October 2019,By May 2019, SpaceX was planning to conduct flight tests both in South Texas and on the Florida space coast.Starship is intended to become the primary SpaceX orbital vehicle, as SpaceX has announced it intends to eventually replace its existing Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Starship is an architecture designed to do many diverse spaceflight missions, principally due to the very low In 2017, SpaceX mentioned the theoretical ability of using a boosted Starship to carry passengers on suborbital flights between two points on Earth in under one hour, providing commercial long-haul transport on Earth, competing with long-range aircraft.The full build-out of the Mars colonization plans was envisioned by Musk in 2016 to be funded by Elon Musk said that there is no expectation of receiving NASA contracts for any of the ITS system work SpaceX was doing.