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SpaceX has placed a big bet on the success of its newest rocket, Starship, but it is still under development (TIMOTHY A. CLARY) \u00b7 TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n SpaceX has placed a big bet on the success of its newest rocket, Starship, but it is still under development (TIMOTHY A. CLARY) \u00b7 TIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP\/AFP <\/p>\n
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has made awe-inspiring achievements since its founding over two decades ago and has big ideas — colonies on Mars, orbital AI data centers, rapidly reusable rockets — for the future.<\/p>\n
But as SpaceX makes its record-breaking public market debut, some experts express doubts it can reach its lofty goals, especially on its planned timeline.<\/p>\n
“We achieve what others think is really the impossible, and we make that possible,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in a recent video.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the company’s development of a partially reusable rocket — which has allowed it to conduct more launches than all other providers combined — was once thought unattainable.<\/p>\n
“SpaceX has accomplished a great deal, that’s quite real,” Robert Zubrin, an engineer and president of the Mars Society, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“On the other hand, Musk frequently makes claims that are not real,” he said, citing deadlines that are regularly pushed back.<\/p>\n
– Fairytale timelines –<\/p>\n
While many experts believe they will see SpaceX send humans to Mars in their lifetime, the prospect of a mass inhabited colony will take much, much longer — if ever.<\/p>\n
“The simple answer is that I don’t see this as realistic at all,” said Christian Bach, head of the space transportation division at Germany’s Technical University of Dresden and co-author of a critical analysis of Musk’s Mars plans.<\/p>\n
He said that even just settling a handful of people on the Red Planet is unlikely this century due to unsolved technological and biological challenges.<\/p>\n
To make the roundtrip journey to Mars, which takes about three years, Musk and Spacex are counting on their newest rocket under development: Starship.<\/p>\n
However, perfecting launches with Starship will not be enough, warns Scott Hubbard, a former senior NASA official. Astronauts will also need new life-sustaining systems, such as oxygen and water recyclers.<\/p>\n
“They like to portray it that they can do it on their own, they cannot,” said Hubbard.<\/p>\n
He believes NASA — which is planning future missions to explore Mars but not to colonize it — will have to join the project for it to become a reality.<\/p>\n
SpaceX also faces a major hurdle, Hubbard noted, over its goal of refuelling rockets in-orbit.<\/p>\n
The idea would be to launch several rockets, one carrying crew or cargo, and the others carrying tanks of liquid oxygen and liquid methane that would be offloaded through coupling.<\/p>\n
That capability “is something that is absolutely crucial to their plans that has never been done before,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They have extraordinarily good engineers…so they will solve the problem, the thing is the schedule,” he added.<\/p>\n
– New-age Napoleon? –<\/p>\n
SpaceX has other major projects on its plate — including building a modified Starship to use as a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program, and developing a new satellite constellation to serve as orbital AI data centers.<\/p>\n
While the idea of moving energy-intensive AI data centers off-Earth may sound appealing, most experts remain skeptical.<\/p>\n
“If you do conquer all the technical hurdles, there’s still the economic aspect, and it’s just not financially reasonable at this point in time,” Kathleen Curlee, a space analyst at Georgetown University, told AFP.<\/p>\n
Zubrin was more blunt: “This AI data centers in space thing is fiction,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If you owned a company that could build ocean ships better than anyone else, you would say the place to do AI is in the middle of the ocean,” he quipped.<\/p>\n
Thanks to the unprecedented influx of cash from SpaceX’s IPO, the company will nonetheless have plenty of resources to devote to the project and others.<\/p>\n
While flying high for the moment, SpaceX could still face unexpected turbulence — as evidenced by competitor Blue Origin’s recent launchpad mega-explosion.<\/p>\n
Zubrin linked Musk’s potential for failure to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s calamitous campaign in Russia.<\/p>\n
If he were to fail, Zubrin said, it’d be because “he had succeeded in everything he had done before, and so no one could tell him that he was wrong.”<\/p>\n
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