Latest Starship flight prompts praise and worries at IAC
MILAN — For many of the more than 11,000 participants at the International Astronautical Congress this year, the biggest news of the week-long conference was not anything that took place within the sprawling convention center here but instead more than 9,000 kilometers away.
The latest flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy vehicle, which took place in Boca Chica, Texas, on Oct. 13, a day before the opening ceremony for IAC, demonstrated the ability of the Super Heavy booster to return to the launch site and be “caught” by mechanical arms attached to the launch tower. That was a major step towards the rapid reusability the company envisions for the vehicle, and which will be needed for some of its key near-term missions like NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) program.
SpaceX itself kept a low profile at IAC, with no booth in the exhibit hall and no major presentations, but the flight was the talk of the show for many, illustrating SpaceX’s capabilities and, for some, a growing gap with the rest of the industry.
