
-
South Korea's Ryu and Japan's Saigo share LPGA Chevron lead
-
Canada leaders make closing pitches in campaign upended by Trump
-
De Bruyne's Man City exit 'so difficult' for Guardiola
-
'No regrets' for Amorim over Man Utd move
-
Lyon and Strasbourg win to close in on Europe, Montpellier relegated from Ligue 1
-
Toulouse thrash Castres as Top 14 pursuers stumble
-
Djokovic crashes to nervous Arnaldi in Madrid opener, Swiatek advances
-
Olympic champs Russell, Davis-Woodhall win at Drake Relays
-
Browns end Sanders long draft slide
-
Cavs crush Heat, on brink of NBA playoff sweep
-
Fire rages after major blast at Iran port kills 8, injures hundreds
-
Kiwi Beamish wins Penn Relays 1,500m crown with late kick
-
Mbappe on Real Madrid bench for Clasico Copa del Rey final
-
England survive France fightback to seal Women's 6 Nations slam
-
Palace sweep past Villa to reach FA Cup final
-
CAF appoint Moroccan Lekjaa first vice-president
-
Major blast at Iran port kills 5, injures hundreds
-
Rodgers vows to stay with Celtic after fourth successive Scottish title
-
Ipswich relegated as Newcastle, Chelsea boost top five bids
-
Canada leaders make final pitches in campaign upended by Trump
-
Mullins -- Ireland's national training treasure
-
US, Iran say progress in 'positive' nuclear talks
-
Mullins emulates O'Brien with second successive trainer's title
-
Ipswich relegated after one season in Premier League
-
Just Stop Oil activist group holds final march
-
Djokovic crashes to nervous Arnaldi in Madrid opener
-
Syria's Kurds demand 'democratic decentralised' Syria
-
Leverkusen win to delay Bayern and Kane's title party
-
Buenos Aires farewells native pontiff with tears and calls to action
-
Turkey's opposition says Erdogan's canal plan behind latest arrests
-
Maresca hails 'nasty' Chelsea as top five bid stays alive
-
Trump raises Putin doubts after Zelensky talks at pope's funeral
-
Major blast at Iran port kills 4, injures hundreds
-
Napoleon's sword to be sold at auction in Paris
-
Iran, US discuss nuclear deal in third round of talks
-
Buenos Aires farewells native pontiff with call to action
-
Warholm sets hurdles world record at Diamond League, Holloway shocked
-
US students 'race' sperm in reproductive health stunt
-
Wikileaks founder Assange joins crowds for pope funeral
-
Leader Marc Marquez claims Spanish MotoGP sprint victory
-
Celtic win fourth successive Scottish Premiership title
-
Jackson ends drought as Chelsea boost top five push
-
Warholm sets 300m hurdles world record in Diamond League opener
-
Major blast at south Iran port kills 4, injures hundreds
-
Russia says retook Kursk from Ukraine with North Korean help
-
Francis laid to rest as 400,000 mourn pope 'with an open heart'
-
Trump, Zelensky meet on sidelines of pope's funeral
-
'Shared loss': Filipino Catholics bid Pope Francis farewell
-
Families unable to reunite as India-Pakistan border slams shut
-
Major blast at south Iran port injures hundreds

Musk 'confident' of Starship orbital launch this year
Elon Musk delivered updates on SpaceX's efforts to develop its interplanetary Starship rocket on Thursday night, but stopped short of announcing a firm launch date for an orbital test or new missions, despite considerable buildup ahead of the rare presentation.
Addressing an audience at the company's Starbase facility near Boca Chica, south Texas, the tycoon merely said: "I feel at this point highly confident that we'll get to orbit this year," while hinting at a potential pivot to launching from Florida if the company encounters regulatory hurdles.
Musk was speaking against the impressive backdrop of the spacecraft in its fully-stacked configuration, standing 394 feet (120 meters) tall, with a matte black upper-stage placed on a shimmering silver Super Heavy first-stage rocket.
Together, they make the biggest spacecraft ever built: taller than even the Saturn V rockets that took astronauts to the Moon during the Apollo era.
Made of stainless steel and designed to be fully reusable, Starship is also intended to be the world's most powerful rocket, and will be capable of lifting up to 100 metric tonnes to Earth orbit.
SpaceX envisages the ship carrying crew and cargo to the Moon, Mars and beyond -- and last year, NASA awarded the company a contract for a version of Starship to ferry astronauts on the Artemis program from lunar orbit to the surface.
- $10 million launches? -
In his first detailed progress report on the project since 2019, Musk recapped his ultimate vision for colonizing Mars as a "life insurance" in case of catastrophe on Earth, and as the first step in expanding humanity's footprint beyond the solar system.
The speech was peppered with dry humor, such as his "sales pitch" for Mars: "It's going to be cramped, dangerous, difficult, very hard word, you might die" -- though he eventually hopes to terraform the Red Planet.
Musk also included some updates for fans, such as an illustration of how one Starship would be sent to refuel another on deep space voyages, and the thrust advantage and neater design of the latest generation of Raptor engines compared to the first iteration.
Each Starship booster is planned to have 33 Raptors, and a bottleneck in the production is expected to ease in the coming weeks, with as many as one engine manufactured per day by next month, said Musk.
He also revealed that within years the cost of launch could be as little as $10 million -- a price point that could revolutionize the industry by making rockets attractive for commercial transportation purposes.
A flight to Singapore from the US is 20 hours "while in a rocket it would be less than an hour. So like 45 minutes or there abouts."
Starship's upper stage has already made several suborbital flights. After multiple tests that ended in impressive explosions, SpaceX finally succeeded in landing the spacecraft last May.
- Possible pivot to Florida -
But a far more ambitious orbital test is pending an environmental impact clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA said in a December release it would deliver a report by February 28.
Musk said that while he was optimistic of receiving approval, he was prepared to shift launch operations to the company's launch site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, if it was held up.
Former deepwater oil drilling rigs the company has acquired to convert into rocket launch and land sites could also come into play, he added.
Beyond exploration missions, Starship's tremendous payload capacity could also be a boon for astronomers seeking to place bigger telescopes into space, while the US military has given SpaceX a five-year contract to demonstrate its capacity to whizz cargo around the world in ultra quick time.
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has contracted Starship for a journey around the Moon with a crew of artists, and Musk hinted there would soon be "future announcements that I think people will be pretty fired up about," without divulging more.
P.Costa--AMWN