Mexico City. /
The simple act of throwing Starship, andThe largest and most powerful rocket that has ever flownseems like an important achievement. Gently returning your rocket booster, which rises up a 20-story building, to the launch tower and trapping it with giant metal arms is almost unbelievable. Yet this is what Elon Musk’s SpaceX accomplished this week, in just Starship’s fifth uncrewed test flight.
Demonstrating that a reusable megarocket is viable opens a new era in space transportation and space commercialization. The importance of Starship, if it develops as planned, is twofold. It will carry the largest payload ever made into spaceby a wide margin. SpaceX has already said that using orbital resupply, which it plans to introduce, Starship could deliver 100 tons to the Moon or Mars (NASA’s SLS rocket will eventually carry up to 46 tons).
And the fact that both the rocket’s Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft above it are designed to be reusable It also reduces the cost and increases the frequency of releases.
The heavy rocket is critical to NASA’s plans to send astronauts to the Moon again, and to Musk’s own vision of colonizing Mars. In a typically ambitious goal, Musk announced on his X site last month that he planned around five uncrewed Starship missions to Mars in two years and, potentially, manned missions in four.
Others are more skeptical. Once Musk has used Starship to launch another five thousand satellites for his Starlink internet network, which will be added to the current seven thousand, yesand they ask if there will be enough global satellite industry demand to cover frequent launches.
However, part of Musk’s talent is turning the “big ideas” of the future into business realitiesparticularly with Tesla in electric vehicles. His willingness and ability to delve into scientific detail helps instill in his teams some of his own relentless urgency.
Faith in his talent combined with fear of missing out has inspired similar loyalty from many investors, despite the growing risks surrounding Musk. His mismanaged acquisition of Twitter and his “absolutist” defense of free speech have caused Frictions with authoritarian and democratic governments equally.
A few days after the failure of a self-driving taxi demonstration, The last Starship flight was a reminder of what Musk, and the teams he helps, can achievewhen the restless billionaire channels his energies into what he does best.
ERR
