SpaceX will attempt to hurl a 400-foot rocket into orbit on Monday. This is the first time Starship will try not to explode before reaching space. Previous tests involved the rocket achieving liftoff, performing a series of maneuvers, and then becoming a fireball. Progress.
The company spent years building this thing in a Texas field while Musk tweeted about it approximately 4,000 times. Each tweet generated another wave of retail investors convinced they should buy SpaceX stock. SpaceX is not publicly traded. They bought Tesla instead. Tesla makes cars. Cars do not go to orbit.
Starship stands taller than the Statue of Liberty and contains enough fuel to power a small city for a week. SpaceX plans to use it for Mars missions, moon landings, and eventually point-to-point travel on Earth. The idea is you'll commute from New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes. You'll still need to arrive two hours early for TSA screening, making the total trip time roughly the same as a conventional flight, but you'll get to experience 8 Gs of force and spend $500,000 for the privilege.
The test flight will determine whether the rocket can actually make it to orbit without becoming an unplanned pyrotechnics display. If it succeeds, Musk will declare humanity a multiplanetary species. If it fails, he'll call it a rapid unscheduled disassembly and say they gathered valuable data.
Somewhere right now a guy with $3,000 in a Robinhood account is googling "how to invest in rockets" and feeling genuinely frustrated that Vanguard doesn't offer a Space ETF with 50x leverage.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment