2024-10-17
37 分钟The Economist.
T minus 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
On Sunday, the engineers at SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, achieved something extraordinary.
It was the fifth test flight of their gigantic and supposedly reusable rocket Starship.
And it was a double success.
Not only did Starship take off into the early morning sky in southern Texas and successfully land in the Indian Ocean around 40 minutes later,
but for the first time ever, the bottom section of the rocket,
known as Super Heavy, flew back to the launch pad.
We can see those chopsticks now.
For a few moments it hovered above the ground until a huge pair of mechanical arms caught the rocket in midair.
SpaceX won't be the only ones cheering this incredible feat,
because aside from being able to transport a payload weighing at least 150 tons to low Earth orbit much more cheaply,
Starship is also set to play a key role in NASA's ambition to send astronauts back to the moon.
I'm Alok Jha and this is Babbage from the Economist.
Today how Elon Musk's Starship will reshape low Earth orbit and kick off a new space race between America and China.
Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket that's ever flown.
And in fact it's the biggest and most powerful thing of any kind that's ever flown.
Tim Cross is the Economist's senior science writer and our resident expert on all things SpaceX.
So if you imagine the COVID of a sort of 1950s sci fi book with a man with a ray gun and a space rocket in the background,
it kind of looks a bit like that.