Why Elon Musk’s Starship rocket is beating Nasa in the space race

I t was one of the most striking technological events of the year. On 13 October, Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, blasted into space from a launchpad in Texas. Its main booster reached an altitude of more than 65km before it began to hurtle back to Earth at a velocity greater than the speed of sound.

A crash was averted when the rocket – built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company – reignited its engines and slowed down until it hovered tantilisingly over the tower from which it had been fired aloft only seven minutes earlier. Pincer claws grasped the giant launcher and held it firmly in their grip, ready for refurbishment and relaunch.

The prestigious research journal Science was equally enthusiastic: “The feat heralds a new era of affordable heavy-lift rockets that could slash the cost of doing science in space,” it announced last month when it gave an award to Starship’s October flight as one of its Breakthroughs of the Year.

Musk’s company has already reduced the cost of putting cargo into orbit round the Earth by a factor of 10, the journal revealed. Once Starship – the most powerful launcher ever built, and designed to be fully and rapidly reusable – is in full operation later this year, further reductions of a similar magnitude can be expected, it added.

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