Elon Musk gives an update on Starship development on Feb. 11. Screenshot via Youtube.

SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk gave an update on Thursday on the Starship rocket, the massive rocket SpaceX is building to develop a human presence on Mars and deploy Starlink satellites and other payloads. 

Speaking from the Starship development base at Boca Chica, Texas, Musk gave an overview of the vehicle, projecting Starship to bring a massive increase in total mass to orbit. 

To date, all launches from Earth have sent about 15,517 tons to orbit. Musk said the mass to orbit for one Starship, launching three times per week, would surpass that in one year. If SpaceX achieves its plans of three Starship launches per day for 10 Starships, this would carry more than 1 million tons to orbit in one year. 

Starship is 164 feet tall, with 9 meter diameter. Its payload capacity is 100 to 150 tons, dependent on the orbit. Starship will be able to carry roughly 100 tons to a Starlink orbit, Musk said. 

He also projects Starship will be cheaper per launch than the workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. ““I’m highly confident it would be less than $10 million,” Musk said.

SpaceX is waiting on approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, to complete an environmental review to give  SpaceX a license for Starship. Musk said he expects this license as soon as March, but said that if the FAA asks for an environmental impact statement, SpaceX would consider shifting the Starship launch base to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.