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Elon Musk drops fresh vision of SpaceX Starship on the moon

So this is what a SpaceX lunar landing might look like.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser
2 min read
starshipmoon

Looking shiny there, Starship.

Elon Musk/SpaceX

SpaceX likes to tease our imaginations by releasing renders of its future spaceships doing extraordinary things, like chilling on Mars or rocketing around the moon. 

Founder Elon Musk gave us more eye candy on Monday by tweeting a rendering of the stainless-steel Starship parked on the moon. 

The image shows Starship with a lunar hill rising behind it and the Earth glowing in the dark distance. Musk responded to a question asking if Starship will be able to safely land in an area that's not perfectly flat, like the moon's surface. He says it will. 

SpaceX is currently planning to load Starship up with artists and send it on a trip around the moon in 2023, but there are no plans for that mission to actually land on the lunar surface. The spacecraft is still in the early stages of development. A prototype "hopper" took its first little test leaps in early April.

Musk also tweeted an updated rendering of the shiny version of Starship near a human settlement on Mars. Previous visions for Starship showed a design that looked more like a modernized space shuttle.

SpaceX has long had its eyes on getting humans to the Red Planet some day. Here's hoping an eventual Mars city would actually look this cool.  

The Mars and moon images have numbers up in the corner, with a "1" for Mars and a "4" for the moon. Perhaps they're part of a presentation, which makes us wonder what happened to 2 and 3.

These pretty pictures are a long way off from the real thing, but they give space fans plenty to dream about when it comes to hope for an off-world future for humanity.

Elon Musk Shows Off the Shiny SpaceX Starship

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