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SpaceX’s giant robotic leap for mankind

The dream of interplanetary space travel is no longer so outlandish.

Norman Lewis

Topics Science & Tech USA

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‘A day for the engineering history books.’ That is how Kate Tice, a senior engineering manager at SpaceX, characterised her company’s achievements this weekend.

She’s not wrong. On Sunday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX managed a remarkable feat. It caught the massive booster stage from its Starship rocket in a pair of giant robotic arms as it fell back to the company’s ‘Mechazilla’ launchpad in southern Texas.

SpaceX has taken another huge step closer to developing a fully reusable rocket system whose parts can be recovered and reused. As such, Sunday’s giant booster catch also marked another significant milestone in Elon Musk’s ambitious plan to send people and cargo to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.

Since its foundation in 2002, SpaceX has opened up a new frontier in space exploration. It has revived the dream of establishing Moon bases, from which humankind could potentially colonise Mars. And it has reignited the ambition of NASA, too. The US government agency originally withdrew from further Moon landings back in 1972. Now, in response to SpaceX, it has developed its Artemis lunar programme, which aims to get humans living and working on the Moon and ultimately lay the ground for future missions to Mars. Musk’s Starship will be integral to helping NASA get there.

Just last month, one of the four commercial astronauts taking part in SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission set a new record for spacewalking. Billionaire Jared Isaacman became the first-ever civilian to venture out into the vacuum of space, and promptly undertook a walk at an altitude of 870 miles. This is the furthest humans have travelled since the last Apollo Moon mission in 1972.

Polaris Dawn was not the vanity project for the super-rich that critics might imagine. It was part of a wider, ongoing programme, to test new technologies and conduct scientific research on the effects of high altitude on human health. This knowledge will be critical to any future Mars mission.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk is probably better known now as the CEO of X (formerly Twitter), and for his social-media battles over free speech, than for space travel. In recent months alone, he has been fighting the attempts of Brazil, the UK as well as the EU to shut down or regulate X on the grounds it conveys ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’.

Musk’s willingness to defend free speech and his ambition to get humans to Mars are not unrelated. Both positions stem from a fundamental belief in the possibility of human progress. Where others see risks, Musk sees opportunities.

This pioneering, risk-taking spirit is hard-baked into SpaceX. While NASA spends years perfecting a design before assembling and launching a prototype, SpaceX takes a different approach. It follows a process of ‘rapid iterative design’ (RID), in which engineers test new technologies early and often, under extreme conditions, so as to uncover any bugs or flaws before testing the tech at a higher stage, when the stakes are far higher. This results in many more failures than NASA’s approach. But it is much quicker and more cost-effective in the long run.

SpaceX wants to make humanity a multi-planetary species. Its vaulting ambition is responsible for rekindling the space race and the space industry. According to the Space Foundation, the global space economy grew by seven per cent between 2022 and 2023 to reach $570 billion. Within five years, it is expected to be worth $800 billion.

Moreover, the commercial sector now accounts for 78 per cent of the space economy worldwide – more than at any point in its history. Growth is being driven by demand for space-based broadband internet services and satellite manufacturing. Indeed, satellite-based emergency beacons have already saved thousands of lives, while Earth monitoring sensors have increased the accuracy of weather forecasting.

SpaceX and its remarkable ‘Mechazilla’ should be celebrated. Thanks to Musk’s company, the idea of human beings becoming a multi-planetary species no longer seems so outlandish. If it comes to pass, that really will be something to tweet about.

Dr Norman Lewis is a writer and visiting research fellow at MCC Brussels. His Substack is What a Piece of Work is Man!.

Picture by: Getty.

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