SpaceX may have failed to get Starship V3 off the ground on Thursday, but the company revealed some interesting information in the lead-up to its launch attempt. With less than 15 minutes left in the countdown, commentators introduced the man who plans to lead SpaceX’s first crewed mission to Mars.
During the live webcast, SpaceX played a video of cryptocurrency billionaire and civilian astronaut Chun Wang speaking from Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Wang, who has gone to space one time before, explained that he will embark on a Starship flyby of the Moon and Mars. SpaceX has not shared a target launch date for the mission, but it could be the world’s first interplanetary human spaceflight.
Who is Chun Wang?
Wang co-founded F2Pool, one of the first Bitcoin mining pools in China. Having made a fortune off his cryptocurrency venture, he now describes himself as a “full time traveler” and has taken an interest in commercial spaceflight in recent years.
Wang has flown to space one time before, having served as the commander of SpaceX’s Fram2 mission. Wang also funded the flight, which took him and three other first-time civilian astronauts on a three-day journey around Earth’s poles. They flew aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, launched by the company’s Falcon 9 rocket on March 31, 2025.
Wang’s upcoming mission to Mars will be a far greater feat. According to spacepolicyonline.com, the round-trip flight will take approximately two years. During the recorded interview with SpaceX Communications Manager Huot, however, Wang said he’s not worried about the long journey.
“I can stare at the map view on airplanes all the way from takeoff through landing, so I think I’m going to enjoy the trip,” he said. But the journey from Starship V3’s first test flight to its first interplanetary mission could take even longer.
Starship V3 stumbles again
After canceling Thursday’s launch attempt at the last minute due to a mechanical issue with the launch tower, SpaceX plans to try again today, targeting liftoff at 6:30 p.m. ET. You can watch live here.
Anticipation for Starship V3’s first flight has been building for months. This newest iteration of the company’s super heavy-lift launch vehicle is the biggest, most powerful rocket ever built, and it’s critical to both SpaceX’s and NASA’s objectives. The agency originally planned to use a modified version of Starship V3 to return astronauts to the lunar surface, but due to significant developmental delays, it is also considering a lander being developed by Blue Origin.
There is a large pipeline of V3 ships and boosters in the factory. The delay from last launch was due to the almost total redesign of the primary structure, engines, electronics and launch tower from V2.
Failure today will not affect schedule by more than a month or so.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2026
“For NASA, it is borderline essential that this flight go pretty well,” Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, said in an X post prior to Thursday’s scrub. “Another six months of Starship developmental delays probably means that Blue Origin becomes the agency’s best option for a lunar landing in 2028 or 2029.”
That got Musk’s attention. “There is a large pipeline of V3 ships and boosters in the factory,” he replied. “The delay from last launch was due to the almost total redesign of the primary structure, engines, electronics and launch tower from V2. Failure today will not affect schedule by more than a month or so.”
The issue that forced SpaceX to stand down from Thursday’s launch attempt had nothing to do with the rocket, so hopefully engineers can resolve it quickly and get this Starship V3 off the ground tonight. But if the vehicle experiences a string of early failures similar to what we saw with Starship V2, Wang could be waiting a long time for his trip to Mars.
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