SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This week saw yet another test launch of the largest rocket ever built. It's called Starship, and it's built by Elon Musk's company SpaceX. Musk was there to watch the launch, as was President-elect Donald Trump. Joining me to discuss what happened and what might be in store for Starship is NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. Hey, Geoff.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: This Elon Musk guy - I feel like we've heard a lot about him lately.
BRUMFIEL: (Laughter) Yeah, yeah, he's been in the news, hasn't he?
DETROW: So when it comes to his space ambitions and SpaceX, remind us what Musk wants this giant rocket to do.
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, there's sort of three things we're looking at here. First, Musk would like Starship to launch more Starlink internet satellites. Now, they can already launch these on their regular Falcon 9 rockets, but Starship could launch a lot more and larger satellites, and that will allow them to build out the Starlink network.
Second, NASA has contracted with SpaceX to use Starship to land on the surface of the moon. And then the long-term ambition to Musk is to have Starship carry people to Mars and start a new colony on Mars, basically.
DETROW: So that's the long-term big, big, big goals. How did this particular launch fit into all of that?
BRUMFIEL: To get Starship to do any one of these things, it has to be rapidly reusable, and that means both the rocket and its giant, superheavy booster have to be able to actually fly back to the launch pad, and the idea is they get grabbed in midair by these mechanical arms on the launch tower called Mechazilla, by the SpaceX folks.
Now, on the last launch in October, they did successfully catch the booster. It was really spectacular to watch. This time around, the launch tower was apparently damaged on liftoff, and so they aborted the catch and landed the booster in the Gulf of Mexico. But the launch still went very smoothly.
And Starship, the part that goes into space, went up, went partway around the world and re-lit one of its engines before it came back in and landed near Australia. That engine relight's actually pretty important for just making it a spaceship capable of going into orbit as opposed to just going up near orbit and coming back.
DETROW: Amid all those details, I want to make sure that you said Mechazilla?
BRUMFIEL: I did say Mechazilla.
DETROW: I appreciate that whoever's naming things is celebrating their inner 10-year-old here and there. For those of us who are interested in going to Mars, you know, where does this milestone put us in terms of that long-term goal of flights to Mars, of eventual Mars settlements?
BRUMFIEL: This is a teeny tiny step on that road. SpaceX still needs to catch Starship when it comes back to land. They haven't tried that yet. And another thing they've got to do to reach the moon and Mars is transfer fuel from one Starship to another while they're both in space. That's never been done before. It could end up being quite tricky. So there is a lot more testing needed, but things may be about to speed up quite a bit under President Trump.
DETROW: Right. He showed up for the launch. He has mentioned Elon Musk and his rockets several times in his rallies and speeches. Right now, they are incredibly close. So what can the incoming president do to speed up this program?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah. The government has a real big role to play here. Starship testing was actually slowed down earlier this year because of regulatory and environmental issues. Now it looks like some of those sorts of problems might disappear. Regulators might pave the way under a Trump administration to allow more launches.
And in fact, the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees SpaceX, just released a proposal to allow 25 Starship launches next year. That would be a huge increase over the five currently allowed. It's also possible the Trump administration could direct billions in government funding to develop Starship, but we're just going to have to wait and see what comes out of all this.
DETROW: That is NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. Thanks so much.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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