Elon Musk has shown doubters that he can stick the landing

• SpaceX made history when it returned its Super Heavy booster to its launch site in Texas.
• For Elon Musk, it was a chance to prove the doubters wrong – and he did.
• Missed deadlines and problems within his businesses have raised concerns about his ability to deliver results.

It was a moment for the history books. When SpaceX’s Starship lifted off for the fifth time from its launch pad in south Texas on Sunday, the wonder of seeing the most powerful rocket ever take to the skies was more than matched by the landing.

The Super Heavy – the first stage booster used to launch the nearly 400-foot spacecraft – was fully recovered as it descended into the chopstick-like arms of the ‘Mechazilla’ tower, from which it had lifted off about seven minutes earlier. before you reach the edge of the room.

For Elon Musk, this was a pivotal moment: not only had the company he founded in 2002 achieved a world technical first that would have seemed unlikely just a few years ago, but it had also given him the opportunity to prove to doubters that he could keep his promises. could make happen. about ambitions on a cosmic scale.

The billionaire, who has repeatedly spoken about his dreams of taking humanity to Mars and beyond, has long touted the need for reusable rockets to achieve that goal – both for cost and technical reasons – while being outspoken about how difficult it is to create rockets. them.

The much-watched catch was undoubtedly a victory. But as Musk continues to lead sprawling companies with ambitions to dominate everything from space travel to AI to autonomous cars, investors, employees and regulators are keeping a close eye on how many other big dreams will translate into reality.

At a 2011 National Press Club meeting, Musk pointed out that an orbital-class rocket that could make life multi-planetary was a “very difficult engineering problem” because of the strength of Earth’s gravity.

That didn’t really matter to him. He told the audience that he could solve the technical problem and that SpaceX would “give it a try.”

About 13 years later, the rest is history. SpaceX is now very used to landing rocket boosters, but never before on this scale on land.

In doing so, Musk took a giant leap forward in his mission to create large, reusable rockets that could one day carry crew and cargo to Mars and beyond.

SpaceX employee Dan Huot summed up the feelings of some of his colleagues with a post-launch message to X: “I’m crying right now.”

And Musk received online applause from legions of Starship fans, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Questions about the possibility of delivery

As Musk’s business empire has expanded since founding SpaceX 22 years ago — he became CEO of Tesla in 2008 and led a dramatic $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022 — he has made a habit of making big promises do that devils seem difficult to accomplish.

(Musk also founded Neuralink, which is testing a brain implant, and xAI, a startup building AI to accelerate scientific discovery.)

In 2019, for example, Musk said Tesla would have “more than 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020,” a deadline that sailed past without the company putting an autonomous taxi on the road.

Its eventual launch of Cybercab, which took place last week at Tesla’s Robotaxi Day, failed to impress investors. Tesla’s shares fell as much as 10% the day after the event, losing approximately $67 billion in market capitalization.

Wall Street analysts attributed the decline in part to skepticism about Tesla’s ability to enable fully autonomous driving.

And plans to turn Twitter into an “everything app” – one that keeps users coming back to use a range of digital services like payments, job search and more – appear to be struggling under the X brand have had.

Musk’s loud embrace of right-wing politics could work against him. On Thursday, the California Coastal Commission denied a request for more frequency SpaceX launches.

Commissioner Gretchen Newsom expressed concerns about Musk’s political posts, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s recent hurricane responses and working conditions at SpaceX.

‘Never bet against Elon’

Musk’s latest achievement at SpaceX shows that he still has the ability to achieve things that once seemed impossible.

In a 2021 episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, Musk described the difficulty of the task he had set himself. “We’re talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms. It’s like Karate Kid with the fly, but much bigger,” he said, referring to a scene from the 1984 film in which the main character uses a pair of chopsticks to catch a moving fly.

‘Banana stuff’, as he called it then.

Soon enough, the billionaire will get the chance to prove he can perform even more extraordinary feats.

Next year, SpaceX will aim to complete a crewed orbit of the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis II mission. In 2026, the country will be involved in the Artemis III mission, which aims to land humans on the moon.

Can he help accomplish something that hasn’t been done since 1972, the last time humans landed on the moon? As his old friend Peter Thiel once said, “Never bet against Elon.”