Q&A with Elon Musk after SpaceX’s first rocket landing

SpaceX has revealed the flight plan for the first orbital test launch of the company’s huge stainless steel Starship rocket, a 90-minute, around-the-world mission that will originate from South Texas and culminate with a controlled re-entry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

The mission is the second planned Falcon 9 launch for SpaceX in the span of six hours. Liftoff from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is targeting 10:34 p.m. EDT (0234 UTC).

NASA cited the complexity of Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser space plane and an uncertainty of when the proposed crew transport craft would be ready to fly astronauts to the International Space Station as the primary reasons the agency picked Boeing and SpaceX for lucrative contracts to develop commercial space taxis.