Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the evening of April 20, after a storm of delays, a new generation of carrier rocket starship (Starship) from Elon Musk's space exploration technology company SpaceX finally ignited, but exploded in the air and the first orbital test flight failed.

Musk then responded, congratulating the SpaceX team on their efforts and saying that he had learned a lot for the launch again in a few months. SpaceX officials also described the experiment as "success", "congratulations" and "learning a lot".

The first flight of the starship was scheduled for Monday night, but the launch was postponed on the grounds that the pressure valve appeared to be frozen. At that time, Musk also posted that "learn a lot, come back in a few days."

Why is Musk so obsessed with "learning a lot"? The launch of the starship is crucial because it will not only affect Musk's dream of Mars, but also affect the United States' plan to return to the moon.

Fifty years later, NASA is getting closer and closer to returning to the moon, and SpaceX plays a vital role in this mission.

Starships are designed to send cargo and crew to the moon, Mars and other places. The high-profile launch will determine whether NASA's Artemis mission to the moon will be on track.

In 2021, SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to use starships to help NASA return to the moon, the first NASA landing on the moon since 1972. In addition, in November last year, the starship won another contract to become part of the Artemis 4 mission.

Brendan Rosseau, a lecturer in space economics at Harvard Business School, said it was not only an experiment on the SpaceX starship, but also a key test of NASA's bet that "business participants are at the heart of its development process".

01 SpaceX was successfully launched as part of the NASA plan

Rosseau says SpaceX's success is part of NASA's ambitious plan to bring business participants to the moon landing.

After the end of the space shuttle program in 2011, NASA changed the way it plans to develop. Rosseau said NASA didn't devote all its energy to designing rockets from the start, but invested more money in private companies. These companies can undertake development tasks while competing in terms of price and efficiency.

Rosseau points out that NASA's strategy is risky but has paid off handsomely. "it has spawned companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin (the Blue Origin of Jeff Bezos). Getting investment from NASA and winning NASA is the only reason these companies can exist today."

SpaceX is not the only beneficiary of this strategy. NASA has commissioned 14 private companies to ship various payloads to the moon over the next few years, three of which will be delivered this year.

Will the economy of space be subverted?

The cost of a starship cannot be accurately predicted, but Mr Musk has previously said it could cost less than $10 million per launch within a few years.

In addition, the starship can be fully reused, which means it may be launched several times a year. "this will fundamentally change the economics of space," Rosseau said.

Rosseau said that if SpaceX can complete 50 launches in a year, it will make history. Moreover, this is only one of the annual launch targets set by SpaceX.

By contrast, NASA's space launch system (Space Launch System, or SLS) is expensive. Since its inception in 2006, the project has cost US $50 billion in development costs and was successfully launched six years after its launch.

Each launch of the SLS rocket costs more than $4 billion. Because it cannot be reused, NASA needs to rebuild it after each launch. Therefore, SLS is not destined to be a cheap project, at least in the short term.

All this makes NASA's SLS unable to become a favorable competitor to SpaceX starships.

03 NASA doesn't want to rely on starships alone.

If NASA believes that SpaceX can deliver on its promises, why continue to support its own SLS rocket?

Rosseau said it was "a bit unusual" for NASA to retain its own SLS rocket project because of its support for business participants.

"it is really feasible to buy services from the business sector (private companies) in terms of time and money costs," he said. "

Rosseau said it may have been a political strategy rather than a commercial decision to push NASA to continue to invest in SLS.

In any case, Rosseau said, the SLS could still be the main rocket for NASA, at least for the Artemis mission.

"the advantage of SLS is that it was built for the Artemis mission itself, to be compatible with the Orion spacecraft, and NASA has put a lot of effort into it," he said. "now it looks like they will hold on for a while."

Rosseau also pointed out that if SpaceX can prove that starships are cheaper and more efficient, NASA may face increasing pressure to use more SpaceX rockets in missions other than Artemis.

Currently, starships are the only vehicles that can land NASA on the moon.

But Greg Autry, a visiting professor at the Institute of Security, Science and Technology at Imperial College London, said: "NASA cannot be limited to one way to get to the moon."

Autry said the prospect of the starship was indeed amazing, but warned that there were still many obstacles to overcome before making the first orbital flight, including refueling the lander in orbit, installing life support hardware on the spacecraft and perfecting the "dust removal" strategy for landing on the moon.

"if there's one company that can do all this, it's SpaceX," Autry said. "but given the usual procedural delays (and starships are not immune), this is a real concern in the landing process."

Therefore, Autry believes that NASA must ensure that it has another lunar lander in order to achieve mission support, system redundancy, and ultimately economic competition.

Rosseau agrees. "NASA's policy is also against having only one winner," he said.

Last September, NASA signed a contract to buy a second lunar lander from a competitor for future missions.

Rosseau believes the market can accommodate several competitors. He said he would keep a close eye on the blue origin of the new New Glenn rocket, as well as Relativity Space's Terran R rocket.

"I hope there will be healthy competition in this field, so that people must keep innovating and not be complacent," he said. "

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