Musk's SpaceX Starship orbits earth

Vishala Sripathma (0:01)

Starship finally makes orbit.

Peter Jankowski (0:03)

Three, two, one.

Sinead O'Sullivan (0:08)

What the launch today was attempting to show is that SpaceX can create the type of engineering that really backs up the price and the valuation of SpaceX.

Vishala Sripathma (0:19)

It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.

I'm Vishala Sripathma. On the way, after years of testing, Starship finally achieves its biggest goal yet, but the mission didn't quite go according to plan. What price would it take for you to welcome an AI data center to your neighborhood and Apple's multi-billion dollar legal headache?

So, a thunderous liftoff and a fiery ending, that's how SpaceX's 14th launch of its Starship rocket panned out today. Well, SpaceX, which is owned by Elon Musk, describes Starship as the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed. SpaceX aims for it to be reusable and eventually take people to the moon. It's made up of two parts, the booster and the top section, which is called the ship. Now, minutes after today's launch from the base in Texas, the booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico, which was planned. And the main goal of today was making the ship section of the rocket orbit Earth for the first time. An issue with one of the engines prompted discussion over whether the rocket would be sent into orbit, but it was eventually given the go ahead. However, the craft only managed two laps of the Earth, rather than the six that had been planned, before SpaceX decided to end the mission early and also bring it back to Earth.

Cory Cart (1:51)

Starship, Leningrad, start up.

Vishala Sripathma (2:15)

So that sounds like a cheery moment for staff there at SpaceX. The reason for that mission to be slightly different remains unknown, but the BBC has approached the company for comment. Nevertheless, our science editor, Rebecca Morell, says SpaceX will be delighted with how today went.

Rebecca Morell (2:34)

Getting into orbit is... A big milestone for the team to pass today. Places like NASA will be watching closely, because of course Starship is going to be heavily involved in the Artemis missions, which are returning astronauts to the moon.

Vishala Sripathma (2:46)

So, Rebecca Morel there. Sinead O'Sullivan is a space economist and former NASA engineer. She told us why this is such a big deal.

Sinead O'Sullivan (2:57)

A rocket of that size doing anything is significant. As we've seen before, when Blue Origin tried to do something similar with its rocket and exploded on the launch pad, the engineering significance of these behemoth structures is enormous. But the engineering aside, because the engineering is obviously what SpaceX is really good at doing, it's significant for one new important reason. And this is that SpaceX actually IPO'd recently. So it is now a publicly listed companies, you can buy shares in it, and importantly, it is worth nearly $2 trillion.

So what the launch today was attempting to show is that SpaceX can create the type of engineering that really backs up the price and the valuation of SpaceX. So in other words, can this enormous rocket be used reliably in the future so that it can deliver payloads and do all the kind of stuff it's going to do in space to make that revenue that it needs to get in order to be a nearly $2 trillion company.

Vishala Sripathma (4:03)

And so it really does matter then economically, it's not just this extraordinary piece of engineering.

Sinead O'Sullivan (4:10)

Yeah, and this is one of the interesting things about SpaceX. People really obviously love the engineering side of it, but what it has done or what at least Elon Musk has tried to do, you know, SpaceX has been going for more than 20 years. He has tried to create an entirely new economy off Earth. So that's, you know, we've seen already, putting Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit so that you and I can kind of make phone calls on a plane or get service in places that maybe you couldn't before.

Now we've seen that he is starting to look at things such as creating data centers in space. And of course, we all know about the NASA contracts where you try to get humans to the lunar surface and then eventually to Mars. So, you know, before SpaceX, the idea of there being this kind of in space economy didn't really exist. And now, you know, 20 years later, or more than 20 years later, the question is, okay, where is this economy and how do we value it? And Starship is a really important part of that.

Vishala Sripathma (5:12)

And SpaceX has promised to dramatically cut the cost of getting things into orbit. How much could it realistically bring those sorts of costs down?