3 Events That Made For A WILD Week In America’s Free Market Space Race

Free market rocketry is making big strides forward as yet another brutal example of the difference between free market flexibility and the hidebound rigidity of behemoth government agencies.

This week’s spacewalk by astronauts still stranded and awaiting rescue after their ‘8 day trip’ to the space station from last June stand in stark contrast to the vibrant energy as companies founded by Musk and Bezos continue to push the envelope of what’s possible in space travel.

Blue Origin (Bezos) had a solid success with the launch of a rocket in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday. The ‘New Glenn’ rocket went for it’s maiden flight, and it achieved a smooth and successful liftoff.

The attempt was made to borrow Musk’s strategy of landing the booster on a barge. They didn’t quite stick the landing. But, of course, bleeding-edge science learns more from a failure that occurs on the outer limits of our abilities than could ever be learned from play-it-safe milk run successes.

The next day was Elon Musk’s turn. We have stopped counting his now-routine trips into space bringing Starlink and other payloads into orbit. This time, it was SpaceX that had both an achievement they could be excited about and a failure that delivered a world of useful data to push future advancements.

First, the success. The ‘chopsticks’ that shocked the scientific world by catching a booster rocket a few short months ago proved this was a repeatable process. For the second time, they successfully caught the behemoth Super-Heavy booster as it gently came to rest in their arms.

Far more dramatic to watch was the spectacular failure of the Starship.

Starship’s upper stage met a fiery end today, exploding dramatically even as the booster pulled off another great catch by the chopstick arms. Here .. the falling debris lighting up the sky like a spectacular meteor shower pic.twitter.com/ii8SJt4l7r

— The Tape Talk (@TheTapeTalk) January 17, 2025

Rapid unscheduled dissassembly. That’s the cheeky phrase Elon uses to describe an exploding rocket. There is no guarantee of ‘success’. We want to see the failures in testing so we can identify flaws and avoid critical failures when lives are at stake in a real mission.

In fact, when Joe Rogan asked him about rockets exploding, Elon said that with rocketry pushing the edges the way it does, it’s almost a surprise when it does NOT go boom.

Here’s his assessment of this week’s explosion.

The chasm of difference between pioneers like Elon and the play-it-safe government environment run by bureaucrats, lawyers and actuaries is why NASA is stuck with hitching rides from private corporations and before that, the Russians, while Elon is looking ahead to a rocket flight that takes passengers from NYC to LA in 25 minutes rather than 5 hours 25 minutes.

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