SpaceX’s Starship Reaches Orbit, Key Step on Road to NASA Moon Base, Elon Musk’s Mars Colony

SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time Monday launching 26 StarLink satellites at Mach 27 in a key milestone on NASA’s planned return to the moon and Elon Musk’s hopes for a city on Mars.“Congrats @SpaceX! Gorgeous launch, getting Ship to orbit and managing every step in a safe, responsible, and especially inspirational way,” wrote NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on X. “NASA… is excited for Starship missions to become routine!”The test, Starship’s 14th launch from South Texas, is unlike the others which flew to the Indian Ocean often ending in a crash. This time, the 407-foot Starship was intended to circle the globe six times over about 10 hours ending with a splashdown off South America. A little over an hour into the flight, Elon Musk took to X to pronounce, “First orbital flight of Starship successful!” Perhaps that was speaking too soon. Within minutes SpaceX mission control decided to bring the ship home hours early after receiving concerning data from the craft. The next launch by the world’s most in-demand rocket launcher may feature a rocket being caught by enormous mechanical arms, a milestone in making Starship reusable. That’s another opportunity for mishaps before key tests with NASA scheduled for 2027.The NASA Artemis III mission is scheduled to begin as early as next summer, bringing astronauts back to the moon in 2028 rising either Jeff Bezos’ Blue Moon or Starship, depending on which is ready first. As the American moon presence expands, the billionaires will take turns providing rockets.Mr. Musk designed Starship to go to Mars, with hundreds supplying a colony of more than a millions souls. While Monday’s Starship success is an important milestone in the plan, critical technical hurdles remain. Starship must still master massive in-orbit fuel transfers, the challenging physics of landing on Mars and the immense scale of the industrial facility that must be built on the red planet to refuel Musk’s ships. Earlier this year, researchers published a study examining the possibility that the effort could be best supplied by mining metal-rich asteroids which would mark another first for Mr. Musk.“You never want to bet against SpaceX as a company, because they are, frankly, incredibly capable,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, told Aerospace America about SpaceX, Starship and Mars.Here on Earth, the mundane matter of funding Mr. Musk’s vision pushes SpaceX to focus on more practical demands. In pursuit of the dollar, the company has endured stock swings as dramatic as its launches while the federal government, under ally Donald Trump, has become its biggest customer. This year the company has secured billions of dollars’ worth of government business building and launching satellites for the Department of War. Mr. Trump is pushing n regulatory reform effort to bolster the company’s expansion, such as the new base it is building in Florida to increase the tempo of Starship launches. The Department of Transportation has proposed exempting such launches and interplanetary bases from old laws that require federal agencies to examine the project’s impact on the environment and the possibility of more Earth-friendly alternatives.Other exemptions have been granted by the Federal Communications Commission for the company to connect cell phones to Mr. Musk’s network of satellites, such as those deployed Monday.Todd Harrison, an American Enterprise Institute fellow says the rule changes might matter more than the money. “In the bigger scheme, the regulatory wins have more systemic, long-term implications for their business model,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

SpaceX’s Starship Reaches Orbit, Key Step on Road to NASA Moon Base, Elon Musk’s Mars Colony

SpaceX’s Starship Reaches Orbit, Key Step on Road to NASA Moon Base, Elon Musk’s Mars Colony

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