This morning, Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a rocket dubbed “Starship” from a site near Brownsville, Texas. 

SpaceX planned to bring the huge first-stage booster of “Starship,” called the “Super Heavy,” directly back to its launch pad and capture it with the “chopstick” arms of the launch tower in an unprecedented maneuver. Seven minutes after launch, the Super Heavy landed with pinpoint precision in the Mechazilla launch tower’s metal arms. After performing maneuvers, Starship landed in the sea. This is a historic moment in the annals of space travel. 

Starship is a superlative spacecraft and a marvel of modern engineering. As space expert Eugen Reichl said in an interview with the author:

Almost nobody realizes just how revolutionary this spacecraft really is. Starship will dominate space transport for the rest of the twenty-first century. It’s huge, yet cheap to build, it blurs the lines between traditional aerospace and shipbuilding, and draws on influences from automotive engineering. It is versatile. It will be built in a wide range of configurations and has the potential to open up the entire solar system to human exploration.

The name “Starship” is somewhat confusing as it collectively refers to both the first-stage Super Heavy (or booster) rocket (71 meters) and the actual Starship spacecraft—the rocket’s fifty-meter second stage. 

Before Starship, the Saturn V rocket was the largest and most powerful rocket in history. It was used to transport the first humans to the Moon in the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. Standing approximately 110 meters tall, Saturn V was only slightly smaller than the latest prototype versions of Starship, which measure 121 meters and will later reach 150 meters in height. Comprised of three rocket stages, Saturn V featured a small Apollo capsule at the top that measured just 3.2 meters in height and provided space for three astronauts. 

With its weight of about 5,000 metric tons, Starship is somewhat less than twice as heavy as the Saturn V, which could transport three astronauts to the Moon. However, Starship is designed to transport up to 100 persons to Mars.

Of course, it will be some time before this vision becomes a reality. Musk has already designed Starship to be big enough to accommodate communal areas and fitness rooms, making space travel far more comfortable than the cramped interior of the Apollo capsule. This level of comfort is essential because reaching Mars could take seven months, compared to the eight-day length of the original Moon-landing mission.

Starship’s most distinctive feature is its reusability. Like all the other rockets of its generation, Saturn V could only be used once, which made it very expensive. Imagine if every airplane had to be discarded after a single flight—air travel would be out of reach for the vast majority of people. 

This is why Elon Musk has spent so long making sure his rockets are reusable. He has already achieved partial success with his standard carrier, Falcon 9. Starship’s first-stage booster and second-stage orbital spacecraft are both reusable. The booster returns to Earth shortly after launch, allowing for its reuse in future missions. Similarly, the second stage can return to Earth once its mission is complete, whether that be hours, days, weeks, or months after launch. Some versions will never return to Earth again. They will remain—suitably equipped—at their final destinations as space station modules, refueling stations in Earth’s orbit, lunar shuttle vehicles, or as permanent bases on the Moon, Mars, asteroids, or beyond.

Another innovative feature that enhances the reusability of the Starship spacecraft is its unique re-entry and landing process. Starship (i.e., the upper stage) uses a “belly flop landing” technique, incorporating a turning maneuver at the conclusion of re-entry to land on the ground safely. This maneuver involves the spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere at a high angle of approach, similar to the space shuttle, to increase air resistance and decrease speed before descending horizontally through the atmosphere. Immediately before reaching the capture tower, the Starship uses its control surfaces and thrusters to straighten up and perform a vertical landing. This method not only reduces stress on the heat shield but also ensures a controlled and secure landing without the need for additional landing mechanisms or devices within the spacecraft.

Musk’s goal is to streamline the process of refueling, refurbishing, and relaunching spacecraft, similar to the high efficiency of commercial air travel. In pursuit of this goal, he has invented some incredible devices. For example, Starship will be caught by two giant robotic arms attached to a 146-meter take-off and landing tower. These arms open and close to grip the Super Heavy or Starship spacecraft during a carefully choreographed landing sequence. The spacecraft must be maneuvered precisely towards the open arms in order to reach the correct position for capture. As soon as the vehicle has reached a virtual capture box, the arms swiftly close to secure the spacecraft. This mechanism enables both of Starship’s stages to be reused quickly, as it eliminates the need for heavy landing systems and structural reinforcements typically required for touchdown.

Starship’s engines are also incredibly powerful, as Reichl explains: “When all thirty-three engines are running, the total thrust of even the pre-series versions is twice as high as the thrust achieved during the Apollo moon flight launches.” 

What is also new: the Raptor engines of his Space X are fueled with liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Musk chose methane because it can be extracted on Mars. This will significantly reduce the amount of fuel that Starship needs to carry. Musk is planning to send an unmanned rocket to Mars, which will generate methane fuel on site. This fuel will then be used to refuel a subsequent manned rocket for its return journey to Earth. Methane can be synthesized on Mars using the Sabatier process, which combines CO₂ from the Martian atmosphere with hydrogen.

While Starship has a wide range of potential uses, including journeys to and from the Moon, the entire design is ultimately focused on a single goal: transporting large numbers of people to Mars. Musk has consistently emphasized his vision of regular flights to Mars by the mid-21st century, with the ultimate aim of establishing a thriving colony of 1 million people on the Red Planet.

Rainer Zitelmann is the author of the books The Power of Capitalism and In Defense of Capitalism.

Image: Aqeela Image / Shutterstock.com.