by Howard Bloom

The big question in the space community right now is the same puzzle that nags millions who know nothing about space. When will Elon Musk hire another CEO for Twitter and get back to running Tesla and SpaceX?

Why? When he lugged a sink into the San Francisco headquarters of Twitter on October 26th and took over, Musk was on the brink of a revolution in space. He was preparing the first orbital launch of a spaceship that will carry a hundred passengers at a time to the moon or Mars: his Starship. Since he left, the Starship’s progress has gone dark.

Musk’s space company, SpaceX has chalked up some remarkable achievements while Musk has been gone.

  • SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation now has over 3,000 satellites in orbit.
  • SpaceX has had over 196 launches since June 2010.
  • SpaceX has now launched, landed and reused a single Falcon 9 rocket fifteen times.
  • In late December, SpaceX launched three Falcon 9 rockets in 34 hours

All of which makes SpaceX the world’s first true space transportation company.

But, most important, the Wall Street Journal reports that SpaceX is readying the Starship for launch. And Matt Lowne, a space YouTuber, claims that with the static fire test of a single engine December 15th on Starship 24, the 24th version of a Starship prototype, the Starship’s final test is complete. Which may mean the Starship is ready for its first launch to orbit.

The result? SpaceX is in a single-handed space race with China, which just pulled off seven rocket launches in ten days. Including the debuts of two new Chinese rockets.

When Musk planted himself at Twitter, some speculated that it was time to take his micromanagement out of the Starship’s development for a while. But since Musk has left for Twitter, Starship momentum has seemed to slow.

And that slowdown is not good for the future of humanity.

References:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-spacex-prepares-for-starship-launch-11671327551

http://spacereport.blogspot.com/

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/rocket-report-first-uk-launch-slips-to-2023-ukrainian-rocket-startup-perseveres/

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144182209/twitter-elon-musk-resigns