This weekend, Mars got one step closer.
I got goosebumps as I watched the SpaceX Starship booster slide into place, caught by the robotic arms of the launch tower. It was the first time SpaceX had attempted to land its Starship booster like this—an engineering feat initially suggested by Elon Musk that we only just learned was truly possible on Sunday. The livestream showed employees at SpaceX’s California HQ roaring with joy, arms raised and jumping up and down as if at a concert.
Delian Asparouhov, cofounder of Varda Space Industries and a partner at Founders Fund, one of the first venture firms to back SpaceX, was giddy as he recounted his Sunday morning, drinking coffee as he witnessed the landing via livestream.
It was “as fundamental of a leap forward as the first year of the Falcon 9 landing,” Asparouhov told me. “It's just a clear pointer to a fundamental net new era in space flight, right?”
This was a historic flight for SpaceX, the venture capital world’s second most valuable startup. The booster landing was a huge step in proving that the Starship Super Heavy rocket can be reused, offering assurance that SpaceX will be able to send heavier payloads into orbit for customers, ship its own second, larger version of SpaceX’s own Starlink satellites into the skies, and eventually transport dozens of people at once into space.
SpaceX’s novel approach to catching the booster with what it called the “chopstick” arms is intended to allow the company to conduct launches quickly and to catch the booster on the uneven terrain of other planets. There’s a way to go before that becomes a reality, but Sunday’s successful test already catapults SpaceX far ahead of competitors like Blue Origin, whose mega-rocket New Glenn has yet to do a test flight; or Relativity Space's Terran R, which is still in development.
Today, anyone who wants to send something into orbit—whether a company with a satellite to deploy, or a scientist who wants to send a probe or telescope for their studies—has to use expensive, light materials. Even SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, which was responsible for SpaceX doing 90% of U.S. launches in 2023, can’t carry more than 50,265 pounds to low earth orbit when its booster is reused. By contrast, the Starship, once in operation, will be able to carry up to 150 tons on a reusable rocket, or 250 tons on an expendable one.
“Starship will completely change what's optimal for spacecraft design,” Karan Kunjur, the CEO of satellite startup K2 Space, wrote me in an email. Kunjur pointed out how his company, which has already started building mega satellites that will benefit from bigger rockets like Starship, will be able to deploy satellites with higher power and larger antennas that can give houses in rural areas better internet throughput and service, and that K2 Space will ultimately be able to use heavier, lower cost materials to build them.
Founders Fund’s Asparouhov expects a shift in what venture investors will be willing to write a check for, now that founders can set a roadmap that fits within their investment horizons. “The idea that somebody could land something that's a multi-ton object on the moon is something that is actually viable in the timeframe that matters to investors,” he says, adding: “I'm not sure that we were totally ready to start to realistically underwriting business models that were dependent on Starship. Now it feels much more reasonable to do so,” he says.
SpaceX has been talking about its big plans for Starship for years: long-duration flights in between planets, developing a Moon base, and even point-to-point transit here on Earth.
We’re still likely years away from all that, as Starship has more test flights to go (including a sixth test expected later this year) before it is incorporated into SpaceX’s launch fleet. But SpaceX just laid the groundwork for all of it, and it’s pretty cool to see history in the making.
By the way…There’s been tons of interesting discussions at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference, in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Yesterday a16z’s Katherine Boyle and Nini Hamrick, cofounder and president of Vannevar Labs, weighed in on defense tech. I wrote about the conversation here.
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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Clarification: The online version of this newsletter has been updated to clarify that K2 Space's satellites will benefit from, but don't depend on, bigger rockets like Starship.
Nina Ajemian curated the deals section of today’s newsletter.
