After Starship’s Hop, NASA Needs to Partner With SpaceX

Science, Technology

This week, we’re witnessing a remarkable event.  In Boca Chica, TX, SpaceX is successfully conducting its first hop of its Starship.  The Starship will be the top half of a rocket designed to transport 100 passengers to the Moon and Mars.  Yes, 100 passengers.

And that 100-passenger capacity will make NASA and the space plans demanded by Congress obsolete.  Unless NASA and Congress act.

This first Starship hop will be followed by a series of ever higher hops.  Indeed, it is likely that, within less than a year, the Starship will be hopping into space and into orbit.

But the Starship is not designed to make it into space on its own.  It will ride into the void on a first stage called the Super Heavy, a booster with 31 engines.  Topping it off, SpaceX will demonstrate the ability to do something no NASA craft can accomplish—the Starship will go into deep space. Then both the Starship and the Super Heavy will land back at their launch site.  Ready to take on new passengers and to take off again.

What are the implications of such remarkable progress?

NASA is planning on returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, then establishing a permanent base there by roughly 2030.  But the cost of developing NASA’s rocket of choice—the Space Launch System and its Orion capsule—is over 30 times the price of developing a SpaceX vehicle. 

In fact, getting one astronaut into space on NASA’s as-yet-unfinished vehicles could cost half a billion dollars. Yes, half a billion.  Getting one passenger into orbit on the Starship will cost a thousandth of that–roughly half a million dollars.  Which means that for the cost of one ticket on NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion you could transport 1,000 passengers on the SpaceX Starship.  In other words, you could transport an entire village into space for the cost of a single astronaut on NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion.   

But here’s the killer.  The Starship can land its 100 passengers on the moon or Mars.  The Space Launch System and the Orion can’t land their four passengers anywhere but an ocean on earth.  Let me repeat.  The Space Launch System and Orion can’t land on the moon or Mars.  Which means that the minute SpaceX succeeds in placing Starship in orbit, NASA will  become irrelevant. 

The Space Development Steering Committee calls for decision makers in Washington, D.C. to pay attention to SpaceX’s progress in Boca Chica, Texas, and to prepare to partner with SpaceX.  We urge NASA to yank its funding from the obsolete Space Launch System and Orion and to purchase tickets to space from SpaceX and any other company able to get humans into space for SpaceX’s prices.  And we urge Congress to end its Space Launch System and Orion. We urge Congress to abandon its pork-barrel approach to space.  We urge Congress to take the money we are wasting and put it into helping companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin achieve their dreams—and ours.

Look, China plans to own space by 2049.  NASA’s overpriced and underperforming plans could guarantee the Chinese success.  To repeat, it’s time to abandon NASA’s SLS and Orion.  It’s time to go with companies that can deliver space access at one thousandth of the SLS and Orion price.  Do it now, or we may repeat with space what we did with 5G.  We may hand the high ground to Beijing.

Written by:

Doug Plata, MD, MPH, President & Founder The Space Development Network http://developspace.info/

Howard Bloom, founder, Space Development Steering Committee.  Author of Einstein, Michael Jackson & Me: a Search for Soul in the Power Pits of Rock and Roll.  Subject of the award winnng documentary The Grand Unified Theory of Howard Bloom  https://youtu.be/rGkOkChazUQ .

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