Elon's giant rocket

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Is this Mars thing really happening? SpaceX did its first test launch of Starship this spring, the rocket that it's developing to send to Mars. But getting to Mars is still a long way off. So does SpaceX have the funding and business plan to pull it off?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:12.2	This is the Indicated From Planet Money.
0:13.7	I'm Jerry Woods and I'm joined by NPR Science correspondent, Jeff Brumfield.
0:18.6	Welcome to the show.
0:19.6	Hi, Darian.
0:20.6	So good to have you.
0:21.6	You're here to talk about Elon Musk's giant rocket.
0:25.2	That's right, as I'm sure you saw this spring, Elon's company SpaceX launched.
0:30.2	The biggest rocket the world has ever seen.
0:36.2	It's called Starship.
0:38.1	It's enormous.
0:39.4	Taller than the Statue of Liberty and from the moment those engines fired, it was excitement.
0:46.1	It was so powerful.
0:47.1	It blasted a giant hole in the bottom of its concrete launch pad.
0:52.4	It sort of lumbered into the air and then started spinning out of control.
0:57.1	They had to punch the old self-destruct button there and the whole thing blew up over
1:01.8	the Gulf of Mexico.
1:03.3	All right, so it mixed results, but people were kind of celebrating a bit as well.
1:09.8	Yeah, yeah.
1:10.8	I mean, SpaceX treated this thing like a big success.
1:14.1	And it was actually, even though this giant, super expensive rocket exploded.
1:19.8	You know, just getting something like this off the pad, getting it this far into its flight
	...

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