Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:00 PM | August 31, 2025
meme

As one of my commentors mentioned last week, I am often dour in my essay that precedes Sunday Smiles. This week, I decided to write about something a bit more upbeat. 

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I am just old enough to remember the moon landing--I was five when it happened, and of course I watched it along with everybody else. Space was exciting. The entire nation was engaged in a collective project, and even in the midst of the tumultuous 1960s, most people could agree that the country was doing something quite special. 

In the decades since, interest in space travel dwindled. It didn't take long--the Apollo program itself was cut short due to declining interest, and the Space Shuttle funding kept getting cut that by the time it was finished, it was hardly the machine originally envisioned. It came in late, over budget, and despite being a fine machine, never came close to achieving what was envisioned. 

We reached the nadir when the United States lost the capacity to launch human beings into space, instead relying on the Russians to get us there. We didn't regain the capacity to launch astronauts until Elon Musk's SpaceX Crew Dragon made it possible again. Boeing Starliner still can't reliably ferry people to the space station, so SpaceX remains the only viable human-rated spacecraft America has. 

More remarkable is the fact that the Crew Dragon, which is reusable, flies on Falcon 9 reusable boosters, significantly lowering costs. However, while the Falcon 9 will remain the mainstay of SpaceX operations — currently carrying about 90% of the mass launched into space — it will soon be joined by its larger sister ship, Starship. Starship is massive. Nothing comes remotely close to it in size or capacity. 

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And while the upper stage is still under major development, SpaceX appears to have nailed the booster, making it already recoverable. It will be refined, of course, and Musk intends to make it not just reusable, as is Falcon 9, but rapidly reusable without refurbishment. We shall see about that. 

Elon Musk is famously optimistic, always promising the impossible--and real soon now. His critics often point to his not reaching promised milestones, ignoring that nobody else can accomplish what he has at all. Musk joked once that "At SpaceX we specialize in converting the impossible to late," which seems about right.  

Falcon 9 has launched over 500 times, and its booster has been landed 480 times by now. The boosters are so reusable that one has reached its 30 flight milestone this month. The launch platform is so robust that SpaceX is launching them at a cadence of 1 every 2 days or so. United Launch Alliance, its major competitor in the United States, may reach 9 launches this year, and hopes for 20-25 next year. Blue Origin just reached orbit for the first time, and we have no idea what its launch cadence will be. 

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The Europeans? They will hit six launches this year. China is doing about a launch a week. 

So far, nobody has achieved reusability other than SpaceX. You don't have to be a fanboy to be impressed with nearly 500 booster landings. Literally nobody else can do it at all, while SpaceX has graduated to catching falling rockets out of the sky with chopsticks. 

Despite all this, a large number of people are deeply invested in SpaceX's failure--for obvious reasons. Musk broke the left's monopoly on speech, helped tear down the censorship infrastructure they so lovingly built, and gifted DOGE to the American people. 

Yet, I am pretty sure that this time, too, Elon and SpaceX will deliver the impossible, late. 














































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