SpaceX Starship: Redefining Travel in a Pandemic World
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Probably the biggest lesson gleaned from the COVID pandemic so far is that being locked up – whether alone or with family, whether at home or in an unfamiliar place – stresses people out quite seriously. Mundane routines crush you with the weight of boredom while many cherished habits are suspended. Enclosed, humans tend not to thrive. Isolation can drive us to the brink of madness. I’ve been thinking about this problem in relation to SpaceX and its rapid advancements throughout the pandemic, including the most recent successful launch and landing of its largest rocket, Starship. This was a prototype of the ship that Elon Musk intends to travel to the Moon, to Mars, and eventually beyond. In “crew mode” it will be able to carry up to 100 passengers. Indeed, Musk suddenly seems a lot closer to his goal of making humans “a multiplanetary species”. There is something vaguely cathartic or even inspiring in Musk’s tenacious drive to perfect the SpaceX Starship especially during the pandemic: it inspires the fantasy of more space, out there, beyond the constraints of Earth.
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Before SpaceX takes passengers to space, it will offer “Earth to Earth transportation.” These would be ridiculously quick rides around the world. The rocket will take paying travelers above the Earth’s atmosphere, then speed around the globe and land promptly at the destination. From any major urban center with an appropriate landing pad and equipment to service the rocket to another in an antipodal location – in less than an hour. If achieved at commercial scale, this would turn the airline industry upside down – or at the very least, it would disrupt the airlines business that rely heavily on long-haul flights. No other airline or aircraft manufacturer is currently developing a similar mode of transit. SpaceX’s Starship flights, if realized, would make even supersonic flights feel like the slow train.
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The rationale for speeding up long flights is that people do not like to be in cramped cabins for more than an hour. The history of commercial aviation has hitherto been a race to shorten the flight time, and make people more comfortable during flight. However, some things can’t be fixed, like a tarmac delay or an annoying seatmate or constant turbulence. Here is where the paradox enters. The same Starship that will save you all boredom while flying around the earth is also the aspirational repository for Musk’s would-be passengers to Mars. They won’t have a trip in “under an hour”; they will journey for months at a stretch. If you think air rage is bad on a hop from Las Vegas to San Diego, just wait until your seatmates are there beside you for weeks on end, in the black void of space. SpaceX describes the interior of these craft as including “private cabins, large common areas, centralized storage, solar storm shelters and a viewing gallery.” Doesn’t sound bad, right? Still, there’s no getting around the blunt truth of containment – a whole new purgatory of cramped isolation, en route and wherever they “land.”
