The biggest story of the year so far was undoubtedly the SpaceX Starship launch that occurred on April 20th, 2023. It was the largest rocket configuration that ever attempted to fly, and they managed to get the monstrosity to leave the pad and achieve supersonic speeds in its first flight. I stopped what I was doing when the launch occurred in Boca Chica, Texas, around 9:30 AM. And the rest of the world was watching too. Suddenly nothing else was more important, and it was nice to see. But of course, there were problems. The force of the launch damaged the launch pad, some of the Raptor engines did not ignite, and others burned out during the flight, leaving the upward trajectory to fall short of its orbital goals. The craft lost control in the upper atmosphere and had to self-destruct in what SpaceX called “an unscheduled disassembly.” We were watching an entirely new sector of the economy blooming before our eyes. Starship was essentially a giant space bus that would make it possible to move civilization into space with routine, reusable space flights, much more effectively than the Space Shuttle from NASA was able to. Starship was a game changer, and they actually made the thing fly, which many thought would be impossible. So with everything going on which seemed so important, there was nothing bigger, better, or more dramatic than the launch of SpaceX’s Starship into orbital testing. There are more phases to test, such as the orbital spaceflight itself and reloading back on a pad in Texas for rapid refueling and relaunch. Yet, there is a lot more going on with this launch than just a technical achievement. The entire world was not happy about it, even though they were paying attention. You didn’t see Joe Biden stop and give a press conference about this event from the Rose Garden because, in essence, the world’s politics did not want to see SpaceX achieve anything, which became apparent in the hours after the launch.
All the news coverage was negative to one degree or another. The key reports talked about the damage to the launch pad and that the Starship had exploded on its first flight. There was almost a jealous parent syndrome going on when a son brings home a hot young girl he intends to marry, and the mother is a fat piece of cabbage shaped by years of bad decisions who says nothing but bad things about the young wife-to-be. Of course, the son wants his mom to be happy, but she’s overtly jealous and can’t say anything good because here is a nice young couple who have a chance to do all kinds of great things together, while the mom’s life is essentially over. So she jealously criticizes everything about the young couple to their face, and even worse, behind their backs, making it impossible to have a conversation with her about anything because she is so filled with jealous hate. That global mother is the earth, and the way she intends to manage her family is communism, as China has been selling it to the world. And with communists, a centralized government intends to prevent options for the children so that they are easier to control. For top-heavy governments filled with lazy bureaucrats, they are always looking for the easiest options, so they wish to limit the desires of the human race to fit their limited abilities. Space, in this case, is the hot young wife that is filled with promise colliding with the desire by governments to rule at all costs. They want Covid restrictions and economy lockdowns, while the children want to be free of such parental figures and a chance to do things their own way in the world. That is what Starship brings to civilization.
The plan is for Starship to launch a new craft several times a week within a few years. The assembly line-like approach at Starbase, where the Starship launches, currently have plenty of other rockets ready to go. That’s the way SpaceX operates. Even with all the damage, SpaceX will have another craft ready to fly in a few months, and they’ll stay along that path until they achieve stable flight that is so routine that people won’t even pay attention anymore, much the way that the Falcon Heavy launches are now, that launch so often that nobody hardly takes the time to watch them, even though every one of them is its own minor miracle of science. In a short time, Starship will be able to take people into space by the busloads, and they will unlock a whole new economy where the tools of space will suddenly free mankind in ways that recorded history has never been able to achieve. The ability to set up space stations on the moon, manufacture in the weightlessness of space, and travel to Mars and other places is a game changer that many haven’t come to terms with. And yet launches like the one early in 2023 drag that angry mother along for the ride that is way beyond their control, and they don’t like it.
A quick reminder that when NASA landed people on the moon, we had two significant events that sought to pull mankind back into the worship of ancient Sumerian gods, such as the Cult of Ishtar with the Stonewall Inn riots at the end of June 1969, then again a month after the July landing on the moon with the Woodstock music festival. What we saw was a crawl by the timid of our society back to the primitive grasp of that jealous mother because they lacked the courage to embrace this new future where mankind could build a rocket and land people on the moon to walk around, pick up rocks and practice their golf swing. The governments of the world should be more supportive, just as they should support the young son who brings home the hot wife-to-be, untarnished by the mistakes of age and a fresh outlook on life. Space is an opportunity for everyone, and SpaceX’s work is destroying the yearnings for global communism because it brings too many options to civilization, requiring an entirely new political philosophy. Knowing all that, the way that the news media is these days, entirely on board with centralized governments controlling every aspect of society, this push into space does not fit their comfort zone of technical innovation. The imagination and ambition of our society were outgrowing the governments that wanted to hold it back with silly rules and regulations. And many of those static figures hoped that SpaceX would fail and continue to fail. So all they could think about during that magnificent launch was their hope that it would all go bad and that; hopefully, Elon Musk would get discouraged and stop trying to get into space and would shut up, sit down, and take orders from an authoritarian government like everyone else. Instead, what SpaceX continues to do, and why people cheer on those launches the way they do, is because space gives people options. Options that organized societies have always struggled with. How do you boss around people with kingly roles if people can just pick up their stuff and leave? And with that, there were many animosities that Starship had a successful launch, that it had left the pad and achieved great things that will bring tremendous new options to all existence. Which clearly the tyrants of the world do not want to see.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 