Elon Musk's Starship blew up again — and our prospects of mining the moon hang in the balance

• SpaceX's Starship hasn't totally stuck the landing yet, and the space industry is watching closely.
• That's because Starship is key to opening the moon for business.
• Companies need the rocket's heft and reusability to launch moon mining and tourism.

SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket screamed past the Texas skies only to spin out of control just as it reached space on Thursday.

The vehicle lost contact with ground controllers, fell from space, and exploded, triggering ground stops at airports in southern Florida. It was the second flight in a row where Starship exploded on ascent, which could be a significant setback.

As with every Starship test flight, the entire space industry was watching with bated breath.

The lunar gold rush is coming, space experts say, and it needs a fully functional Starship.

Leroy Chiao, a retired NASA astronaut who consulted for SpaceX on its Safety Advisory Panel for 12 years, called Starship "the most exciting thing" since the Apollo era and the construction of the International Space Station.

"I don't think the regular person really understands what a technological leap Starship is," Eric Berger, the author of two books about SpaceX, previously told BI.

It's a larger, fully reusable version of the rocket that flew humans to the moon, he added, "and it's just really audacious."

Why Starship is critical for building on the moon

Though the moon isn't Elon Musk's favorite Starship destination — he's got his eyes on Mars — it may be the rocket's greatest business appeal.

That's because it's designed to fly super-heavy payloads all the way to the moon, land on the moon's surface, then launch itself back toward Earth.

On top of that, both stages of the rocket are meant to be reusable, which could slash the cost of spaceflight "by an order of magnitude," Brendan Rosseau, a teaching fellow at Harvard Business School who wrote a book about the space industry and now works for SpaceX competitor Blue Origin, previously told BI.

That reduced-price super-heavy lift is what many companies need to launch their biggest plans for the moon: tourism and mining operations.

Just look at the two Texas-based companies that landed spacecraft on the moon this week.

The Blue Ghost mission by Firefly Aerospace landed on the moon on Sunday, loaded with experiments to test the lunar surface and soil. Intuitive Machines landed on the moon for the second time on Thursday. Its Athena lander is carrying a cellular network and a drilling experiment.

Both missions aimed to test technologies that will be critical for mining on the moon — although Athena landed sideways, couldn't get enough sunlight on its solar panels, and ended its mission early.

To eventually mine ice and minerals on the moon, companies will need to fly in heavy equipment like harvesters, Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, told BI in December.

"You have to take larger masses up to the moon to have a sustainable human presence on the moon. Habitats, human landers — there's a lot of elements that have to go into sustaining humans on the moon," Altemus said.

How strong is Starship?

Starship will be able to carry up to 100 metric tons (110 tons) to the moon, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a NASA press conference in 2019. That's about 16 James Webb Space Telescopes, or about one quarter of the space station.

To put that in perspective, the Saturn V rockets that launched the Apollo missions could only carry 50 tons to the moon.

"In order to have a sustained economy around the moon, I think we need a heavy lift launch vehicle," Altemus said.

Starship's competition

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket could be up to the super-heavy lunar lift task, too, but it's further behind in its development than Starship and only designed to reuse its booster.

NASA has its own super-heavy lift vehicle, called the Space Launch System, which has flown an uncrewed test flight around the moon.

However, SLS is so behind schedule and over budget that one of its strongest supporters recently called for an "off-ramp" and Boeing is anticipating the program may be canceled, Ars Technica has reported.

The agency has already contracted Starship to land its next astronauts on the moon, putting boots on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972.

Starship still needs to stick its landing

SpaceX still needs to prove that Starship can fulfill its promise.

So far, the launch system has flown to space a few times. Its Super Heavy booster has returned to Earth in one piece, caught by a pair of "chopsticks" on the launch tower.

The Starship spaceship itself has returned from suborbital heights to land on the ground in one piece, but has only returned from space to splash down in the ocean.

Returning from a spaceflight to land on the ground will be a key step in the vehicle's development. That's how SpaceX will someday recycle Starships and fly them again and again.

NASA plans for Starship to put its first astronauts on the moon in 2027. Musk said on X in September that Starship could fly its first crewed flights to Mars in four years.

Both NASA and SpaceX have historically set overly optimistic timelines for those milestones, and both have repeatedly moved their dates back.

"We don't know where Starship is going. Maybe it will never be fully reusable. Maybe they'll never nail rapid reuse of the upper stage," Berger said. Even so, no launch system has ever been so powerful and been able to reuse its booster.

"I think it's going to be revolutionary almost no matter what," he said.