SpaceX’s big gamble
Starship is poised to be the most revolutionary rocket ever built—a fully reusable two-stage launch vehicle that packs an absurd amount of lifting power. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk envisions Starship as the system for getting humans to Mars en masse and—more modestly—as a way to launch payloads, cargo, and passengers to Earth orbit and the Moon. SpaceX is also under contract with NASA to develop the Starship system as a lunar lander for crewed Artemis missions. For SpaceX, there was a lot riding on Thursday’s test, to say the least.
