That may seem ambitious, but the tech supremo's long-term objective for Starship is for it to possibly carry people to destinations in the 'greater Solar System', including gas giants such as Jupiter or one of its possibly-habitable moons.

Musk and SpaceX have remained tight-lipped about a lot of the details regarding Starship, including images of what the inside will look like, but the 51-year-old has previously said he is looking to install around 40 cabins in the payload area near the front of the upper stage.

In April 2021, NASA announced that it had selected SpaceX's next-generation vehicle as the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis III mission — due to put the first woman and first person of colour on the moon in 2025.

Powerful: Musk's vehicle (pictured earlier this week) packs 16 million pounds (70 Meganewtons) of thrust, which is almost double that of the other new generation rocket created by NASA and known as the Space Launch System (SLS)

Musk has already promised a trip around the moon to the Japanese online retail billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who at the end of last year announced that a crew of eight artists would be joining him for the dearMoon mission.

The space agency hopes this colony will uncover new scientific discoveries, demonstrate new technological advancements and lay the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy.