Money and hardware
There have been two other hugely important changes since Musk’s first speech in 2016: money and hardware.
Back in 2016, Musk said SpaceX was spending a “few tens of millions of dollars” annually on the project. Last year, by one estimate, the company spent more than $1 billion in South Texas alone to bring its production and launch site online. Five years ago, Musk had to tell jokes when asked about how SpaceX would raise money to support the Mars rocket project. He flashed up a slide titled “Funding” that offered the following sources of money: “Steal Underpants, Launch Satellites, Send Cargo and Astronauts to ISS, Kickstarter, Profit.”
For skeptics, this lack of funding represented one of the biggest stumbling blocks to Musk’s ambitions. He estimated it would cost $5 billion to $10 billion to develop a basic launch and spaceship capability. SpaceX did not have that money then, but it does now. Based on recent private fundraisers, SpaceX is valued at $100 billion, and thanks to his Tesla holdings, Musk regularly ranks as the richest person in the world. Money remains an issue, but it is now at least a solvable issue.
With this money, SpaceX has built a Starship factory in South Texas capable of churning out rockets with rapidity. Over the last two years, SpaceX has built more than a dozen Starship prototypes and at least three full-scale Super Heavy boosters. Starship has undertaken several successful test flights above 10 km, and on its last flight in 2021, it safely made a vertical landing for the first time.
While these are not spaceflight tests, they are critical demonstrations of the hardware and the ability to control such a massive vehicle in flight. SpaceX no longer has an “Interplanetary Transport System” on a PowerPoint slide. It has a fully stacked prototype at its launch site, with the capability to produce more vehicles quickly. Much technical work remains ahead of Musk and his engineering team, but their execution to date suggests they will get to the point where the Super Heavy and Starship can launch to space, land, and then fly again.
NASA certainly believes so. Last May, the space agency selected a modified version of Starship to fill the role of a “lunar lander” for the Artemis program, carrying astronauts down to the Moon’s surface. This put Starship squarely on the critical path of NASA’s most high-profile human spaceflight program since Apollo. In other words, NASA now believes SpaceX will succeed with Starship and is paying $2.9 billion in development costs.
SpaceX no longer needs to steal underpants. It can afford to buy a lot of them.
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