Elon Musk spoke at the International Aeronautics conference in Baku and described the following points:
Starlink Version 3 satellites should start deploying next year (2024)
the first mechazilla catches of returning super heavy boosters and Starships will be late in 2024
Elon thinks an uncrewed test landing on Mars could be attempted in 4 years (this would be the outbound flight and the actual landing would be 6-12 months later)
The Saturn V apollo rockets had 7.5 million pounds of thrust and the currentSuper Heavy has 16 million pounds of thrust and engine upgrades should provide over 20 million pounds of thrust.
Above is screenshot of CBass Productions animation rendering of Mechazilla catching a Super Heavy booster
The SpaceX Spacesuit will be upgraded for more than orbital EVAs for use on the moon and Mars.
In October 2022, SpaceX redefined some early v2.0s Starlink so there are 3 different busses of v2.0s:
Bus F9-1, 303 kg mass, having roughly the same dimensions and mass as the current V1.5 satellites.
Bus F9-2 (initial deployment) (sometimes called V2 mini), 800 kg mass and measuring 4.1 m (13 ft) by 2.7 m (8 ft 10 in) with a total array of 120 m2 (1,300 sq ft). The Solar arrays are 2 in number. It could offer around 3-4 times more usable bandwidth per satellite. They are smaller than Starlink’s original ones (and so can be launched from existing rockets), have four times the capacity to the ground station to increase speed and capacity. This is due to a more efficient array of antennas and the use of radio frequencies in the E band range.
Bus Starship (planned Gen 2), 2000 kg mass.
It is unknown what upgrades will be made for the version 3 Starlink satellites.
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As has been noted elsewhere,
Biden’s DOJ is suing Spacex For not hiring refuges (Who they’re legally barred from hiring!)
DOJ and SEC are investigating Tesla.
The EEOC is suing Tesla.
The FTC is demanding internal Twitter communications.
The SEC is investigating his purchase of Twitter, (Which they forced him to go through with when he tried to back out.)
And the FAA is still dragging their heels on allowing Musk to test launch Starship. So is the Fish and Wildlife service.
All apparently because Musk decided to be the one major big tech player who was, not conservative, but just not reliably left wing. And stopped censoring Twitter.
The long knives are out for him, I bet he’s really regretting not starting SpaceX someplace politically stable like Mexico, where they’d have just let him be so long as he paid the right bribes.
Seems a bit later than I’d expected – wonder if Elon is factoring in FAA launch delays now?
Just the already accomplished launch delays would be enough to push catching into 2024, even if he’s permitted to do a launch in what remains of October, and it comes off perfectly. He’s going to have to confirm it wasn’t dumb luck with a couple more test launches, before risking taking out Starbase.
An interesting question: What to carry on that first unmanned Mars mission? High probability the contents are lost in a crash, but if not, that’s a heck of a lot of cargo capacity.
Durably packaged MREs and ORBs (Oxygen, Ready to Breath) that the colonists could use even if scattered across the ground by a crash?
Note SpaceX is not partnering with Prada for their spacesuit, unlike Axiom.
As for the sat bus, note that there is an additional subvariant, equipped with D2C (direct to cell) satellite cellular connectivity hardware.