Elon Musk is capable of… the best. Not always on Earth (as evidenced by his support for Donald Trump), but in space. On Sunday, October 13, SpaceX, the company of the American billionaire who also owns the carmaker Tesla and the social media platform X, achieved a new technical feat: recovering the Starship rocket’s “Super Heavy” first stage using the mechanical arms of its launch tower in Boca Chica, Texas, instead of losing it at sea as in the four previous launches, and successfully landing the Starship rocket on water.
This was the fifth test launch, since April 2023, of the world’s most powerful launcher – 120 meters high and capable of carrying 100 metric tons (10 times more than today’s rockets). Those who scoffed at the idea of a recoverable launcher at the start of the Falcon-9 venture have had to admit that SpaceX has changed the space industry’s business model. Bringing back the first stage of a rocket means that it can be reused and relaunched, considerably reducing costs.
With this new “giant leap,” SpaceX is further widening the gap with Europe and China, as well as with its American competitors Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, in the strategic sector of space exploration and the launch of satellite constellations for civil or military use. To fill at least part of this gap, Europe will have to move from “haute couture” to “industrialization,” Eva Berneke, CEO of French satellite operator Eutelsat, warned in Le Monde on July 3, at the time of the successful launch of Ariane-6. “Falcon-9 had already reduced prices by 50%; Starship will take them even lower, by at least 30% to 40%.”
‘A big step towards multiplanetary life‘
The economic equation isn’t everything, even for the richest man in the world. There’s an element of messianic dreaming in his approach. “Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today,” Musk said on Sunday. SpaceX is preparing spaceships that will shuttle between Earth and the Moon to build a base camp and transport its future inhabitants. And there’s a hubris like no other: Destination Mars! Not to send a few astronauts there by 2050, as several space agencies are planning, but to settle millions of human beings fleeing our planet, which is becoming uninhabitable, and to extend human life. Nothing less.