ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Today, SpaceX made history when it successfully caught a spacecraft as it returned from orbit. The employees and others watching at the company's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, were ecstatic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BABY COME BACK")
PLAYER: (Singing) Baby come back.
(CHEERING)
PLAYER: (Singing) You can blame it all on me.
SCHMITZ: Joining me to discuss what happened and why it matters for SpaceX and the future of space flight is NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. Hey, Geoff.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hey, Rob.
SCHMITZ: So, Geoff, we were watching this live in the newsroom, and even though I've seen a SpaceX booster land like this, it was just - it's still quite a spectacle to watch the Starship exit the Earth's orbit and carefully land exactly where it took off from like that. Describe the catch for us.
BRUMFIEL: Yeah. So, you know, it sort of re entered Earth's atmosphere glowing red, flew over Mexico's Baja Peninsula, then over Mexico and Texas. And it went back to the launch pad it came from on the Gulf Coast near Brownsville. It was a gray and cloudy day, and the spacecraft sort of burst through the clouds, flipped itself vertically and fired its engines and then lowered itself to the launch tower where these two mechanical arms grabbed it. Those arms are called Mechazilla.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Can you believe it? Mechazilla has caught the Starship.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
BRUMFIEL: I mean, you know, you say you've seen the booster come back before, but this is a very different ballgame. That Starship was moving at 26,000 kilometers per hour, 16,000 miles per hour, and it had to make its way back to Earth, burn off all that energy and land precisely. I mean, nothing like that has ever been done before, I can tell you.
SCHMITZ: And get caught by Mechazilla.
BRUMFIEL: Yes, Mechazilla.
SCHMITZ: Why...
BRUMFIEL: I called it Mechzilla (ph).
SCHMITZ: Mechazilla (laughter), sorry.
BRUMFIEL: I got my zillas (ph) confused. But anyway...
SCHMITZ: Why is Starship so important to SpaceX's business?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, SpaceX wants to use Starship for a couple of different things. It wants to launch potentially thousands of satellites for its internet, you know, constellation, Starlink. On this flight, it deployed 26, so they're off to a good start there. And someday, it wants to launch orbital data centers into space. And when you look at SpaceX as a company, both of these products are key to rapid revenue growth, and Starship is the rocket that's going to make it happen if it can be made rapidly reusable.
SCHMITZ: OK, so how does this get SpaceX closer to rapid reusability?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, the idea is the booster and the rocket will both fly back to the tower. They'll get caught, stacked, refueled, filled up with satellites or whatever else they need to carry and launched again very quickly. And obviously, this is a huge step towards that, bringing something back from space through Earth's atmosphere and have it - having it hover and land at the pad. I mean, you know, this is just incredible. But I should say, not everything went smoothly. After launch yesterday, Starship's super heavy booster rocket was supposed to return to the pad, but it aborted and landed in the Gulf, self-destructed there. They need to get both the booster and Starship back for this to really work, so there's more to be done.
SCHMITZ: So, Geoff, you know, SpaceX went public earlier this year. How much pressure is there on them to, you know, get all of these things right?
BRUMFIEL: I think they're under enormous pressure. I took a look at the financials, and, you know, it spent over $1 billion, with a B, on Starship in the first...
SCHMITZ: Wow.
BRUMFIEL: ...Nine months of this year. SpaceX revenue is up because it's renting out AI infrastructure here on Earth, but it hasn't turned to profit overall. So investors really need to see rapid progress like this on Starship.
SCHMITZ: So it hasn't turned a profit. We need to see more progress. You know, what happens now?
BRUMFIEL: Well, obviously, this is a big day, but there's a lot to do. They have to sort of look at whether ship was damaged on reentry. They have to check its engines. They have to look at its heat shield, and of course, they have to fix whatever went wrong with the booster. So this is a big moment, but it's far from the final word on whether Starship is going to become this rapidly reusable vehicle they hope it will be.
SCHMITZ: That is NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. Thanks, Geoff.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
