42: Space Race and Private Industry Guest: Bob Zimmerman Bob Zimmerman discusses how SpaceX's privately funded Starship program is positioned to beat NASA, China, and Russia in establishing a lunar base, operating independently of the struggling Artemis progr

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

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🗓️ 1 November 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Space Race and Private Industry Guest: Bob Zimmerman Bob Zimmerman discusses how SpaceX's privately funded Starship program is positioned to beat NASA, China, and Russia in establishing a lunar base, operating independently of the struggling Artemis program. China and Blue Origin are deemed significantly behind in their lunar efforts. Zimmerman also covers other segments including A Space Mobile competing with Starlink, semiconductor manufacturing in space, the X59 project becoming obsolete due to private innovation, and accessible Martian ice at a potential Starship landing site. The convergence of private sector capabilities and reduced government constraints suggests a fundamental shift in space exploration dynamics.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is CBS I on the World.
0:07.0	I'm John Batchel.
0:08.0	Bob Zimmerman is here with Behind the Black.
0:10.5	We go to Lockheed Martin for a test of the X-59 plane.
0:15.3	What is it, Bob?
0:16.2	I don't recall this coming up before.
0:20.2	Well, that's because it's been decades in the making.
0:22.8	It's another one of those NASA dead-end projects.
0:26.3	The X-59 was originally conceived in 2016.
0:31.0	Lockheed spent two years of preliminary design work.
0:34.1	And then in 2018, NASA gave Lockheedon a quarter of a billion dollar contract to build
0:39.6	this test plane. This test plane would be attempting to do supersonic flights without a sonic boom.
0:46.7	The idea was, you know, if you can get rid of the sonic boom, we can have fast airline traffic.
0:51.2	And that was the idea. And so here we are, almost a decade later. They finally
0:56.0	this week did the first flight of the X-59. It didn't go supersonic yet. This was just a
1:02.0	preliminary flight. What's interesting about it is that in the interim, a private company boomed
1:09.2	supersonic not only developed its own supersonic
1:12.6	prototype. It flew it manned in January, flew it, and it broke the sound barrier three times on
1:19.7	that flight with no audible sonic boom. In other words, a private company using much less
1:25.1	investment capital has already done this.
1:33.2	And it's already got contracts with several airlines, including United and Japan Airlines,
1:38.6	to build its full-scale overture commercial supersonic jet.
	...

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