Andrew Wade, senior reporter
It’s been a landmark week for space. We’ve had news of Airbus UK leading a new space weather warning project, academics in the US helping NASA recreate Titan’s methane seas, and an international programme to use space technology to solve global challenges. And of course, SpaceX delivered the dramatic debut of the Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful launch system deployed since the Space Shuttle.
Though widely acclaimed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken some flak over the launch, with one particularly po-faced Guardian piece calling it a waste of resources. The payload of a Tesla Roadster with a space-suited mannequin at the wheel was certainly indulgent; a clever and opportunistic marketing ploy with little scientific purpose. But the rocket needed a dummy payload, and a sports car against the backdrop of Earth is a damn sight more dramatic than a block of concrete. We shouldn’t begrudge an element of theatre when the boundaries of rocket science are being pushed. In fact, we should applaud it. Those images – seen all across the world – have the power to inspire, especially when soundtracked by Bowie.

(Credit: SpaceX)
Whatever about the merits of the payload, the synchronised theatre of the twin boosters successfully landing was a moment of scientific wonder requiring no adornment. Until recently, the notion of reusable rockets was a pipe dream, something destined to remain in the realm of science fiction. SpaceX, despite some hiccups along the way, has transformed the ridiculous into the routine, these days casually returning Falcon 9 rockets to terra firma. Landing on the autonomous drone ship off the Florida coast has proved trickier, as demonstrated by the core stage of this week’s launch. Nonetheless, Falcon Heavy’s coming-out-party can only be hailed as a major success, and it could herald a new era of space exploration.
At an estimated cost of $90m per launch, the Falcon Heavy has the potential to dramatically shake up the satellite market, as well as take manned spaceflight beyond Earth orbit for the first time since the Apollo missions. Plans for a Falcon Heavy-powered manned journey around the Moon have been afoot for several years, but Musk recently indicated that these may be tabled in order to focus development on SpaceX’s next big project: the BFR (Big Falcon/F***ing Rocket).

BFR (Credit: SpaceX)
Concentrating resources on the BFR would mean foregoing Falcon Heavy’s certification for manned flight, but the Falcon 9 is expected to begin crewed missions to the ISS using its Dragon module sometime in 2019. If development of the BFR is delayed – as Musk’s projects have a tendency to be – certifying the Falcon Heavy for crewed mission could still be an option.
“We’ll see how the BFR development goes,” Musk said recently. “If that ends up taking longer than expected, then we will return to the idea of sending a Crew Dragon on Falcon Heavy around the Moon, and potentially doing other things with crew on Falcon Heavy.”

(Credit: SpaceX)
Musk has plenty of detractors, but it’s difficult to fault the man’s ambition, even if it sometimes eclipses his companies’ capabilities. In the space industry, where risk aversion is understandably such a dominant ideology, he has recalibrated the bounds of possibility, setting a new bar to which others will be forced to respond. And he’s done it all while putting on a show for millions watching around the world, no doubt encouraging countless young people to wonder how exactly you send a sports car into orbit. If there is Life on Mars, it’s those same young people who may someday set foot on the Red Planet to confirm it.
Perhaps those that believe in pushing the boundaries, and are not deflected by the occasional failure, should simply ignore those that criticise until those that insist on focussing on the negatives step up to the plate themselves rather than just act as armchair critics. There are far too many in the media these days that just publish without a clue of the facts behind the story but they will not tell you what their solutions would be. Lets see more innovative and driven people focussing on just getting on with progressing in to the future. If we had listened to the equivalent’s of todays critics in the past we would still be riding in Fred Flinstone type cars.
Why not have a bit of fun while achieving something that would otherwise have taken thousands of people and 20 years to launch?
Musk’s achievement shows that it’s not necessary to get political to get things done and of course it’s all done ” on the shoulders of giants”, but that’s how we make progress. Until ‘the Federation’ is founded to consolidate Humanity’s efforts, we have to rely on the people who ‘ just go and do it’.
Here Here! In a world where fantastic engineering is all around us a probably taken for granted by most, it is a breath of fresh air that someone like Musk has put some interest and excitement into the public imagination again.
… or even Hear Hear!
Agreed. Hopefully, in the future we might see a British engineer rivalling Elon Musk, also for exciting world-beating innovations. However, I am not holding my breath!
As i said before: History is being made. Go Elon go
Elon Musk, he just crack’s on, and adds a bit of pizazz at the same time, just for good measure…Hopefully paving the way for a second wave of human spaceflight. Hopefully he can do it before we mess our special blue dot up too much….brilliant man…simple as…
Perhaps the Grauniad should concentrate on their spill chocking before they start denigrating the efforts of others!!
Just as well the Falcon isn’t scheduled to land anywhere. You can bet there would be a Parking Warden ready to slap a ticket on Mr Musk’s cast-off sports car.
Don’t get too carried away. Did the car have its battery? The battery pack of the Tesla Model S weights 1,200-lb/540-kg — half a ton in layman’s language.
Tesla’s car operation is currently running at a reported $1.3 billion loss. So, a diversionary PR stunt?
And in due course, won’t the Sabre air-breathing rocket engine for normal landing/taking off (re-usable) space
launchers being developed by the UK Reaction Engines (with a new site now in the USA) make re-usable tail-sitting rockets make projects like Space X obsolete?
I am certainly impressed by the Space X achievements. With little more than the NASA coffee fund they have demonstrated reusable rockets, heavy lift, and more.
Sorry but NASA have a lot of catching up to do if they want to get in there for the future.
They have consistently laggeded behind the former USSR in launch technology. That is right from the first manned flights. Gagarin actually orbited. Glenn did a quick up and down. The USA had to bring in an amateur UK astronomer (Sir Patrick Moore) to prepare the Apollo maps. At least they had a decent telescope for him to use. They had to bring in a german WW2 rocket scientist (Von Braun) to design the vehicles.
Or maybe NASA should concentrate on the science and leave the vehicles to others? Then again the UK and other European countries are quite good in satellite developments.
Well done to Space X!
Perhaps NASA will give Space X a contract for providing launch vehicles for their future deep space probes.
NASA-bashing is a popular pastime of the envious and the ignorant, David, Your comment thus categorises you as being a seasoned member of this tribe. NASA does not build rockets… it administers the exploration of space, through tax-payer (US that is) funded programmes. It has been the milking-cow for numerous bloated private commercial ventures – until companies like Spacex came along to introduce the advantages of commercial competition. Also, NASA has, and continues to, draw upon expertise from all over the world, and is indeed a magnet for people who not only have the skills to be involved, but who set about acquiring the skills that eventually get them aboard – and they come from everywhere. NASA’s contributions to science are significant and too numerous to list in this limited space. Again… NASA is not the builder of the rockets – its name (containing the word “Administration”) is the clue.
I was quite happy that the launch happened on a day that the stock markets were going through a “correction”, that way i could point out to the “waste of resources” crowd that the clowns on wall street had just lost $4trillion to speculation and the cost of the launch was mininimal by comparison
The Guardian may like to wonder why I and I suspect quite a few others do not buy there paper with stupid comments like what they made. What do they want Elon to do? launch a lump of concrete? Steel as ballast? the thing is some young child may see images of the Tesla and its passenger with Earth as a back drop and be inspired. That young child may one day be reading The Engineer (I sincerely hope so) and become a Engineer…
An Awesome achievement Space X, well done, doing what no-one else has ever done! Whether or not the car had it’s batteries installed is of no concern, there was more than enough thrust and when we get the Infinite Improbability Drive (IID) working even the Sabre technologies become obsolete!
It was a wonderful thing to watch the SpaceX launch but, flawed as it was, we did have reusable rockets decades ago with the Space Shuttle.