When will Elon Musk led SpaceX Starship be ready for launch?

tech.hindustantimes.com:

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the Federal Aviation Administration may grant environmental approval at the company’s south Texas site as soon as next month, paving the way for the launch of Starship this year.  Speaking at an event in Texas, with the 394 feet (120 meters) tall spacecraft that Musk envisions will one day carry people to Mars providing a dramatic backdrop, the world’s richest person said he is “highly confident” Starship will make it to orbit this year. “We’re tracking to have the regulatory approval and the hardware readiness around the same time,” Musk said. “Basically, a couple of months for both.”

Musk has fallen well short of the goals he outlined at his last formal presentation, in 2019. Starship would have its first orbital test flight within months, he said at the time, and would carry people on a mission within a year. But several test launches to collect data, with no one aboard, ended in flames and it took until last May before Starship was able to take off and settle back near its launchpad without violent incident, after a 6-mile (9.6-kilometer) hop.

The Starship system is designed to carry 100 passengers or 100 metric tons of other payload to low-Earth orbit. Musk said SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is eventually aiming for up to three Starship flights a day, without giving a timeframe. Each flight would cost less than $10 million, he said. 

SpaceX plans to take thousands of Starlink satellites to orbit for its internet-service constellation and has sold a flight around the moon scheduled for 2023 to Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. The company also has contracted with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to take astronauts to the moon.

Thursday