Just launching Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever to fly, seems like a major achievement. To return its booster, as high as a 20-floor building, delicately to the launch tower and catch it using giant metal arms almost defies belief. Yet this is what Elon Musk’s SpaceX achieved this week, on only Starship’s fifth uncrewed test flight. Proving a reusable megarocket is workable opens a new era in space transport, and in the commercialisation of space. Musk is a capricious and contentious figure. Yet the description of the SpaceX founder by Britain’s astronomer royal — as a “21st-century Isambard Kingdom Brunel”, the visionary engineer of the Industrial Revolution — may not be entirely wide of the mark.
单凭发射星舰这个有史以来最大、最强的火箭本身，似乎就是一项重大成就。何况还将其高达20层楼的助推器精确地返回到发射塔并使用巨大的金属臂接住，几乎令人难以置信。然而，这正是埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)的SpaceX在星舰仅进行了第五次无人试飞时取得的成就。其证明巨型火箭可以做到重复使用，这开启了太空运输和太空商业化的新时代。马斯克是一个反复无常且充满争议的人物。然而，英国皇家天文学家对SpaceX创始人的描述是，作为“21世纪的伊桑巴德•金德姆•布鲁内尔(Isambard Kingdom Brunel)”，工业革命时期有远见的工程师或许并不完全离谱”。