Elon Musk wants to revolutionize space travel with a giant reusable rocket. On Sunday he came a little closer to his dream.
The Starship‘s propulsion rocket returned to where it started as planned.
The history of the Starship failed. The rockets exploded again and again – until Sunday. SpaceX‘s new spacecraft has accomplished a remarkable maneuver. The propulsion rocket launched the spacecraft into the air and then landed accurately first on the launch pad, where it was caught by gripper arms. The space capsule, the actual Starship, landed in the Indian Ocean after flying halfway around the globe. Exactly as planned.
Can an exploding rocket be celebrated as a success? Elon Musk did exactly that with the earlier versions of the Starship and regularly received malicious comments about it. But Sunday’s success shows that SpaceX’s strategy of iteratively learning from mistakes is working. In fact, the failures of recent years are just as significant as the successes of last Sunday. And there is every reason to believe that continued progress will continue.
SpaceX is improving step by step
The first test flight of the Starship took place in April 2023. But the two parts of the rocket, the Super Heavy Booster propulsion rocket and the actual Starship, failed to separate. They both exploded. In the second and third attempts, the propulsion rocket or the Starship exploded. But each time there was a clear improvement from one test flight to the next. Everything went so well on the fourth test flight in June that SpaceX was eager to take the riskiest step for the fifth attempt this weekend: capturing the rocket.
That’s the principle by which SpaceX develops its innovative rockets: You build a clunky prototype and launch it, expecting that the test flight will probably fail. However, you observe this failure so carefully that you can learn a lot from it. The next version of the rocket is already much better, and a few iterations later, all the difficulties have been greatly improved.
Reducing costs with reusable rockets
Using the same principle, SpaceX has already done something that many thought was impossible: the propulsion rocket of the Falcon rockets, the predecessor of the Starship, has been landing on the ground again for years. After a short repair they can be used again. Individual propulsion bodies have already taken off and landed more than ten times.
The sheer size alone makes this even more of a challenge with the Starship. At 120 meters long, the Starship is the largest spacecraft ever built. If it works, it could send far more payloads or people into space than any previous rocket.
Additionally, SpaceX is pursuing the goal of a reusable rocket with the even more stable Starship. The second rocket stage, the actual space capsule, should also be reusable. During the most recent test flight, they were allowed to land in a controlled manner in the ocean. But in the future, like the rocket drive, it should be able to return to the launch site and be picked up by the gripper arms.
A giant reusable rocket would fundamentally change space travel. Because today every space mission is determined by saving as much weight as possible. SpaceX’s reusable rockets have already reduced the cost per kilogram of material carried into space. If the Starship is ready for series production, they will likely drop significantly again.
Elon Musk’s stated goal is to use the Starship to take humans to the moon and eventually Mars in the near future. There is still a long way to go until then. But moments like on Sunday show that we are getting closer to the big goals – step by step.