Elon Musk Teases Massive Watership To Carry SpaceX Starships Into Florida

SpaceX has been at the forefront of private space exploration and technology for years now, developing and launching rockets, satellites, and even crewed spaceships. Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to an even larger manned spacecraft — Starship — that the company is planning to use for going to Mars. However, one of the latest announcements from the company doesn't concern a flying spaceship at all, but instead a "watership" — also known as a "boat."

This announcement, which was made the same week SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying an Indonesian satellite, came straight from the source — SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. On X, formerly known as Twitter, which Musk is also the primary owner of, the billionaire posted, "Watership to transport spaceship from Starbase to Cape Canaveral." While not an official press release, Musk's statement was a response to a user asking if SpaceX was adding a new droneship to its fleet.

Obviously not intended for space, this new boat will instead carry cargo from SpaceX headquarters in Starbase, Texas to Cape Canaveral, Florida, the iconic launch site of many famed space missions. Traveling across the Gulf of Mexico, that's a distance of over 1,000 miles. Going by Musk's tweet, the vessel will specifically carry "spaceships," which will probably include the Starship-class. If that's the case, this new SpaceX boat will need to be pretty big.

Starship is likely to be one of the primary spacecraft carried by the watership. Plans to reach Mars have been in the works by SpaceX and Musk for years; SpaceX even intends to build a city on Mars. At their closest (which hasn't yet happened in all of recorded history), the orbits of Earth and Mars would be 33.9 million miles apart at the minimum. For reference, the average distance from Earth to our Moon is just 238,855 miles. To traverse such incredible distances, a habitable spaceship larger than any other in history would be necessary, as a large amount of fuel and life support supplies would also need to be brought along.

The name "Starship" can refer to either the manned craft by itself or collectively when it's paired with the gigantic Super Heavy needed to launch it. Together, Starship is over 400 feet tall (or long, when transported on its side) and 29.5 feet in diameter. It has a payload of up to 150 tons and 250 tons if it's not planned to be reusable. With these specs, any boat carrying Starship will also need to be massive.

Not only is the Super Heavy the biggest and most powerful rocket ever made, but it's also intended to be reusable, which makes it even more complicated to design and successfully fly. SpaceX has already conducted 10 test flights with its Starship, with several ending in failure. While the company plans to launch its first Starships to Mars in 2026, only time will tell if that timeframe is feasible. The more Starship is tested and used, the more SpaceX will likely need its new watership to carry them toward the launching pad at Cape Canaveral.

Technically, SpaceX already operates seacraft in addition to spacecraft. The company uses fully autonomous boats, called droneships, as floating landing pads for its reusable rockets. These vessels are key to SpaceX's mission to make space travel and exploration more affordable, as they help make SpaceX rockets reusable (by catching them before they land in the ocean).

The names of SpaceX craft often have offbeat monikers derived from science fiction — for example, one droneship is called "Of Course I Still Love You," the name of a fictional spaceship in "The Player of Games" by Iain M. Banks. Based on the X thread where Musk posted about a new watership, the name of this ship may be "You'll Thank Me Later," which is also a spacecraft from Banks' work.

A week before mentioning a new watership, Musk posted a cryptic tweet that simply read, "You'll Thank Me Later." Another user on the platform conjectured that the post was related to SpaceX, which Musk confirmed with a reply that simply said, "Correct." When yet another user asked if "You'll Thank Me Later" would be the name of a new droneship, Musk then specifically brought up a watership that will ferry SpaceX vehicles to Cape Canaveral. Considering seafaring technology is thousands of years older than space travel, hopefully this new ship will fare better than the multiple failed rockets SpaceX launched earlier this year.