NEW YORK – Elon Musk has won the battle between billionaires for the conquest of the Moon. Waiting for SpaceX, Musk’s space company, to take astronauts to Mars one day thanks to the super rocket Starship, it will soon help NASA to land on Earth’s satellite again. The US space agency has announced a $ 2.9 billion deal with SpaceX that will help astronauts, using the Starship itself, move from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon.
The new project, in addition to confirming the new space mission in the name of the synergy between public and private, represents a personal success for Musk. Also in the running was his longtime opponent, Blue Origin, of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Space X officially becomes NASA’s highest-level partner, and the private individual that will bring a crew of astraonauts to the moon, which also includes the first woman and the first black people.
On Twitter, Musk’s company posted the news of the agreement to its nearly 16 million followers, talking about a “new era” in space missions. “We are sure – Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA manager commented to the New York Times – that the collaboration with SpaceX will help us to realize the Artemis mission. We can’t wait to take astronauts to the Moon and then prepare the great leap towards Mars”. Other private companies, in addition to Musk and Bezos, participated in the initial project to build the ‘landers’: Dynetics, from Alabama, and a ‘team’ of companies led by Lockheed, a long-time NASA partner.
The goal, launched by Donald Trump, of returning to the Moon in autumn 2024, does not appear to be achievable, and the same prediction by Musk, who had promised a space mission by 2023, appears unrealistic, considering that not all missions so far of SpaceX proved to be perfect, even if they achieved extraordinary results. But at the White House, NASA found a great supporter also in Joe Biden, who confirmed the opening to private individuals. The cuts in funding for space missions made this change necessary. For the top of NASA, external companies are faster and cheaper than institutional collaborators such as Lockheed, Martin, Airbus and Boeing.
To the test of the facts SpaceX has confirmed this vision: the use of the Musk system has proved to be reliable and less dispensable. The Dragon capsule weighs about ten tons less than the Orion, and has proven to be operational and at a much lower cost. The Artemis program foresees a first exploratory launch at the end of the year, or early 2022, of a rocket without astronauts, but capable of going to the Moon and returning to Earth.
The cost of each launch will be around a billion dollars. Then we will move on to the final mission with the Starship super rocket that will have to act as a ‘lift’ for the astronauts between the lunar orbit and the surface of our satellite. If all goes well, we will move on to the most suggestive challenge: the landing on Mars, a project that Musk has been cultivating for more than twenty years, since he dreamed of creating an experimental greenhouse on the red planet, to grow the first Martian plants.
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