Just a few hours after the success of the first launch of Jeff Bezos' New Glenn rocket, Elon Musk's SpaceX company returns to the forefront this Thursday, January 16 with a new Starship test flight, the largest rocket never built. Following in the footsteps of Blue Origin, which succeeded in carrying out its first orbital flight, SpaceX intends to make its own show of force by catching up with the first stage of its megarocket, a technical feat that it has only achieved once.
123 meters high, the size of a building of around 40 floors, Starship is due to take off on Thursday from 4:37 p.m. local time (10:37 p.m. GMT) from its base in Texas. “Good luck today!” “, launched Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to his rival Elon Musk on X. Earlier in the day, the Tesla boss was quick to congratulate him “for reaching orbit on the first attempt! », with the New Glenn rocket, 98 meters high.
An exchange of pleasantries which offends and raises questions, while Elon Musk even ventured to joke about their possible new friendship. The two richest men in the world founded their space companies in the early 2000s and have been competing for star power in the field ever since. SpaceX, however, has taken a big lead over Blue Origin by adopting a different strategy and in certain aspects more risky, and has ruled the market for commercial orbital flights for several years. A domination that Jeff Bezos seeks to challenge with his new New Glenn rocket.
Failure in November
After having succeeded last October in recovering the first stage of Starship, a megarocket intended to “colonize Mars”, Elon Musk aims this Thursday to show that this success was not the result of chance. SpaceX failed this impressive maneuver in November under the eyes of President-elect Donald Trump, abandoning the attempt shortly after takeoff and leaving the booster to disintegrate in the Gulf of Mexico.
-Since the last test, “major improvements” have been made, SpaceX said on its site. The company prefers to take off imperfect rockets to learn in a real flight situation and then adapt its model. After the separation of the two stages of the rocket – the booster named Super Heavy and the Starship spacecraft giving the name to the whole – the company will therefore seek to return the booster to its launch pad. Instead of then landing vertically as the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket does, the latter will have to be immobilized, without having touched the ground, by mechanical arms installed on the launch tower.
Designed to be reusable
The Starship rocket is designed to eventually be fully reusable, which would significantly reduce costs. This specificity also allows the increase in the rate of launches, which in particular cause significant noise pollution on the Texan site.
Upon his return to power, Donald Trump is expected to lift a number of environmental regulations, which worries residents living around the SpaceX space base, located near protected areas. Especially since Elon Musk spent tens of millions of dollars in 2024 to support the Republican's campaign and in exchange landed an advisory position, raising questions about possible conflicts of interest with the government.
