SpaceX

Blue Origin equals SpaceX in rocket reuse but fails in the mission

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Blue Origin has reused the propellant of its New Glenn rocket for the first time, reaching a milestone that until now had only been achieved by SpaceX. With this achievement, it is one step closer to its main competitor, which is also beginning to hinder its path to the Moon. However, this launch has been accompanied by some errors that still allow Elon Musk’s company to breathe easy. The good and the bad. Last November, Blue Origin managed to recover the propellant for the first time with which he had launched a New Glenn rocket into space. Their goal was to reuse it, exactly as SpaceX already does routinely. That second achievement has been a long time coming, but it finally took place this Sunday, April 19. The launch was carried out successfully, but there was a problem: The satellite it was carrying as a payload was placed in the wrong orbit. Therefore, although this is a giant step for Jeff Bezos’ space company, there are still details to be refined. Background. Blue Origin had already managed to reuse the propellant of a rocket, but it was not a New Glenn rocket, but a New Shepard. This one is smaller, so it was less of a challenge. To match SpaceX, it needed to do the same with a larger rocket. For this reason, the company’s goal has long been set on reusing the first phase of a New Glenn. This one measures 98 meters high. The New Shepard only 18 meters. A failed attempt in January 2025. To reuse a propellant, it must first be recovered. This occurs after the rocket launches. The two phases separate and, while the second continues the journey to leave its payload in place, the first returns to Earth. Ideally, a vertical landing or splashdown should occur, so that the propellant can be recovered intact. Blue Origin already tried this with a New Glenn rocket in January 2025, but a failure to fire the engines during descent prevented it from being done correctly. In November, however, complete recovery was achieved. That has been the propellant that has now been reused. SpaceX has reused its Falcon 9 hundreds of times Other companys. In reality, the only space companies that have achieved reuse of this type have been Blue Origin and SpaceX, although there is another that has done something similar: Rocket Lab. In their case, a vertical landing of the first phase does not occur, but instead It lands in the ocean with the help of a parachute. It is also useful, but recovery is more complicated. Furthermore, this company has not yet achieved complete reuse of the recovered rockets. Other companies, like the Chinese LandSpacethey also intend to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, but are still carrying out tests. Importance for the future. Rocket reuse is important for many reasons. To begin with, what companies look at most: their economy. Not having to manufacture a new propellant with each launch greatly reduces costs and allows investment in other technologies. On the other hand, it is useful and necessary for reduce space debris levels. SpaceX does not stop generating new space junk by sending satellites into space. Few experts consider that the reuse of rockets will compensate for that, but it continues with its particular space greenwashing. SpaceX has made a lot of progress in this regard. Their reuse of rockets has already become routine, with more than 500 reused takeoffs from its Falcon 9. It has also been possible to reuse the powerful Starship. Even Rockets have been recovered in flight with a kind of giant Chinese chopsticks. Now, Blue Origin is closer, but if they want to continue in the competition they must be more accurate. An investigation is underway as to why the satellite did not end up in the correct orbit. When you find the answer, you can look for solutions. Images | Blue Origin | SpaceX In Xataka | Jeff Bezos asked his parents for their life savings to found Amazon. They only asked him one question: “What is the Internet?

The list of space launches is collapsed. Meanwhile, SpaceX has done two in a single day

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More and more public and private space companies are launching into space. Most are commercial, often satellite-related. There are so many events of this type that launch platforms are beginning to become saturated and many companies are beginning to look for alternatives, such as launches from the sea. Despite this situation, SpaceX has just launched two Starlink satellites on the same day. 19 hours difference. Last Tuesday, April 14, Elon Musk’s space company carried out two launches of rockets loaded with Starlink satellites: one at 5:23 am EDT and another at 00:29 EDT. With the first launch, 29 Starlink satellites were put into orbit and with the second 25. Favor treatment? In 2025, the Donald Trump Government announced its intention to relax space regulationsthus streamlining licenses for releases. A year earlier, when Elon Musk showed himself as one of the main supporters of the now president during his electoral campaign, this topic was already mentioned on several occasions. The CEO of SpaceX had expressed interest in which the Federal Aviation Administration accelerated the processing of licenses for its launches. Therefore, despite the fact that Musk and Trump’s relations are not the best currently, it could be thought that he has had this possibility due to favored treatment. Although it doesn’t seem like the case. The strategy. In reality, the easing of space regulations does not fall solely on SpaceX. Many licenses can be obtained more quickly. But this requires a good strategy. To begin with, when a launch is made it is necessary to stop maritime and air traffic for a time to avoid accidents. This should be done for an optimal amount of time.without putting anyone in danger, but in a way that does not slow down transport too much. Therefore, it is not viable to make two launches in a row in the same place, even if they are licensed. To avoid this problem, Elon Musk made his two launches on Tuesday from two different points: Florida and California. Thus, problems are avoided. The more the better (at least for Musk). Repeat, repeat and repeat. That is Elon Musk’s maxim. With Starshipfor example, has carried out many test launches until its operation is optimized. There have been explosions, but also achievements. The key is to rehearse over and over again. With Starlink, SpaceX aims to send tens of thousands of satellites into space. Therefore, launches cannot be spaced out over time, especially now that they have other companies on their heels. Elon Musk needs these strategies, which for him are plausible, but which give a lot to think about about the possible lack of ethics and the inequality that exists between some space companies and others. Image | US Space Force photo, Gwendolyn Kurze In Xataka | Ukraine’s military has a problem almost as important as Russia: Starlink belongs to Elon Musk

SpaceX is now a company in the railway sector and it is very bad news for its employees

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For some people it will be ingenuity, for others a very hard face, but the point is that SpaceX has found a way to avoid lawsuits and strikes by its workers when obtaining the name of air transport company. This means that it is regulated under the Railway Labor Law, with all the benefits that it entails within US legislation. The news. On March 13, the official resolution was made public by which SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space agency, is now considered a company in the railway sector in the United States. This means that your activity is no longer subject to the supervision of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)which is typically responsible for protecting the labor rights of private sector workers. The layoffs that started it all. In January 2024, the NLRB put a lawsuit against SpaceX on the tableafter the company illegally fired 8 employees. The lawsuit requested reinstatement of the employees, back pay, and a letter of apology to each of them. Given this situation, SpaceX responded with another lawsuit to the NLRBalleging that the procedure being carried out was unconstitutional. Rockets have the same legal treatment as cargo planes. An ace up your sleeve. According to Elon Musk’s company, the NLRB should not be able to act against a company that is dedicated to transportation. He added that One of its main missions is the transport of humans and goods to the International Space Station.. In many cases, these jobs are carried out for NASA, so they would also be providing a service to the Government. For all this, they requested to be covered under the Railway Labor Law. A plan that suits many. In recent years, SpaceX, as well as other Elon Musk companies, have been the subject of complaints from a multitude of dissatisfied employees, either due to their personal situation or due to bad practices carried out in the company. In the case of Neuralink, for example, Very bad practice towards laboratory animals was reported. But returning to SpaceX, the increasing volume of complaints could put the company’s work pace at risk. This, logically, would harm its managers, but also the companies that benefit from its services. The entire US space program would probably collapse. For all this, although it seemed difficult, in the end Elon Musk’s company has had a resolution in favor of its new name. Immune to strikes. One of the peculiarities of railroad companies in the United States is that they benefit from special state protection. Since minimum transport services must be guaranteed, strikes and other similar activities that would normally slow down the normal pace of work are closely controlled. The NLRB no longer rules. Another of those special protections for railroad companies is that the NLRB no longer has power over them. Therefore, dismissed employees cannot resort to it to report their situation. Instead, the company is governed by the rules of the National Mediation Boardmuch more lax in the mediation of labor disputes. It is true that employees can request strikes, but to do so they must undergo a long and tedious process that often causes them to change their decision. And now what? With this new name, SpaceX has even more power and freedom than before. If measures are carried out that involve malpractice towards employees, it is difficult for their complaints to come to fruition legally. This gives them a lot of leeway and greatly speeds up their protocols. Other curious legal victories. It is not the first time that SpaceX has obtained an unexpected legal name. Last year, for example, The Starbase base was given the name of cityso that all employees who live nearby would also become inhabitants. This, far from changing a few patterns, also gave SpaceX more freedom when maneuvering in the areas surrounding its base. As with railway legislation, what may seem like a small name change can change everything. Image | Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia Commons) |SpaceX In Xataka | SpaceX is preparing the largest IPO in history: the fact that it is doing so right now is no coincidence

SpaceX is about to go public promising to bring AI to space. What really sells is satellite Internet

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SpaceX has confidentially registered with the SECthe US regulator, its application to go public, in what could become the largest public offering in history. Why is it important. The valuation of Musk’s company exceeds one and a half billion dollars, and the objective is to raise between 50,000 and 75,000 million euros before the end of June. To put it in perspective: the IPO of the Arab oil company Saudi Aramco in 2019until now the largest in history, raised just over 25,000 million. Furthermore, this news has been presented as a milestone in space exploration, but if you read between the lines, the real story is different. Between the lines. The story that SpaceX is going to sell to Wall Street mixes rockets, Mars and AI. It is the perfect cocktail to attract capital in 2026, but analysts who have looked at the numbers and quote Reuters are a little cruder: the $1.5 trillion valuation is only supported by starlinkthe satellite Internet service that already has nine million subscribers and generated $8 billion in revenue in 2024 alone. SpaceX billed between 15,000 and 16,000 million dollars in 2025, with about 8,000 million in profit. Starlink accounts for the clear majority of that revenue and almost all of the margins. The orbital data centersthe great promise of the IPO, are still an unproven concept. As said market strategist Shay Boloor: “Starlink is the only reason this assessment is defensible.” The contrast. SpaceX was born in 2002 with a mission: to make humanity multiplanetary. Mars as a destination and reusable rockets as a means. That narrative has had to give some ground. And Wall Street, which has been buying anything with the word AI for years, hears that and opens its wallet. The money trail. This year, SpaceX absorbed xAI, Musk’s AI startup and now also the parent company of X. Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022 and since then, X and xAI are projects that consume a lot of cash, especially the latter. SpaceX’s IPO, according to The New York Timesis proposed among other things to pay the debt that Twitter incurred when Musk bought it and to finance xAI’s data centers. In other words: the jewel in the crown finances loss-making companies. The big question. Can SpaceX trade at $1.5 trillion with markets shaken by war? The Nasdaq just suffered its worst week in almost a yearwith the war between the United States and Iran in the background and oil skyrocketing. Some bankers have pushed SpaceX to keep between 15,000 and 20,000 million in cash before exiting. For what may happen. The moment of debut can be decisive for the worse even if the fundamentals are great. What is certain is that if the operation goes ahead, Musk, who owns about 42-44% of SpaceX, will almost certainly cross the threshold of a trillion dollars of personal wealth. He would be the first billionaire in history. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Featured image | SpaceX

We have solved the problem of space junk by burning it. A SpaceX lithium trail just proved to be a terrible idea

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For decades, the aerospace industry has had a consensus solution to the problem of space junk: burn it. A fairly simple phenomenon that is based on the satellite reentry when it ends its useful life in the atmosphere so that it begins to suffer friction and completely disintegrates. But the reality is that we are facing a huge problemsince physics reminds us that matter is neither created nor destroyed. We have captured him. Science is realizing that we are not removing space junk, we are just vaporizing it into metallic aerosols that are changing the chemistry of our own sky. And the definitive clue to this problem was found on the night of February 19, 2025where a team of German researchers pointed a laser into the sky over Kühlungsborn. What they detected in this case at about 100 kilometers altitude, in the thermosphere, was something that should not be there, since there were large amounts of lithium. And it wasn’t there for no reason, since it just coincided hours before with the re-entry of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which had disintegrated over the Atlantic between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Something new. The signal measured in this case was not very subtle, since was 10 times bigger to the usual concentration in that region, and this finding was collected in an article because it marks a great milestone: it is the first time that the metallic contamination released from a specific piece of space junk at the exact moment of burning has been observed “live” and from Earth. The metallic iceberg. The incident with this Falcon is not something isolated in our society, but is a symptom of the structural change we are experiencing. In 2023, a team of researchers already used different devices to be able analyze more than 50,000 aerosol particles in the stratospherewhich is the layer where our ozone layer resides, at about 15-30 km altitude. What did they see? Historically, the metals found in the stratosphere came from meteorites that entered our planet. But today it is estimated that 210 tons of aluminum per year in the atmosphere comes from the disintegration of satellites and rockets, compared to the 20 tons per year that vaporize naturally from meteors. But lithium is not the only metal in the atmosphere of our planet, since scientists have detected more than twenty elements, among which aluminum, copper, lead or silver stand out… This is something that does not fit with the normal composition of meteorites, but it does coincide with the materials that different aerospace companies use to create their rockets and satellites. There is no planning. The pace of launches has skyrocketed in recent years, and if today we are close to 10,000 objects orbiting the Earth, we have to know that only Starlink aspires to have more than 40,000 satellites in Earth orbit low. But the problem is that the useful life of these devices is short, so their inevitable fate is to end up vaporized over our heads. Its effects. Science here is quite clear that the effects of filling the stratosphere with these metals are currently unknown. But the projections suggest that we should not be calm because elements such as aluminum and copper are important catabolizers that can affect the delicate ozone layer. In addition to this, metallic particles can act as special condensation nuclei, altering the microphysics of polar stratospheric clouds. And if that were not enough, adding anthropogenic material to sulfuric acid aerosols changes their size and ability to scatter sunlight. Ironically, we are altering the reflectivity of the stratosphere, the same layer that some scientists want to use for climate geoengineering, without knowing what the consequences will be. The planetary limit. The models here suggest that, if the planned megaconstellations materialize, the fraction of stratospheric particles contaminated with aluminum from satellites will rise from the current 10% to around 50%. In other words, the load of metals in the stratosphere could grow by around 40% compared to natural levels. Here for years space agencies have assumed that disintegrating satellites was a completely harmless and clean practice. The example of the Falcon 9, which has validated the warnings of the scientific community, shows us that the Earth’s orbit and our atmosphere make up a connected ecosystem. In this way, launching tens of thousands of objects into space and then burning them on our own roof may be a solution to keep space clean, but we are dirtying the sky in return. In Xataka | Spain and Portugal have joined forces to launch satellites with a mission: to monitor catastrophes in real time

the merger of SpaceX with xAI is an example

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There is an idea that sounds almost radical in 2026, but that has actually been operating for decades in several European countries or in the form of internal experiments in companies: that workers have a real seat on the boards of directors of the companies where they work. The debate has returned to the front line due to a proposal from Yolanda Díaz, third vice president and Minister of Labor, based on the report of the International Commission of High Level Experts “On Democracy at Work”. Curiously, one of the best metaphors to understand what this report proposes is not in a factory or an SME: it is in the upcoming merger of the Elon Musk’s business universe. Díaz’s proposal. The Ministry of Labor presented a report which proposes two major changes in the relationship between companies and workers: giving workers more voice in the strategic decisions of companies and facilitating access to company property. The underlying idea is simple and has been applied for some time in certain managerial ranks and industries, in which part of the remuneration is in the form of shares or participations in the company itself. The report suggests that, if a workforce is an essential part of a company, their participation should not be limited to negotiating salaries or schedules, but rather to be an active part of its management. For this reason, it proposes introducing more worker representation on boards of directors. Not as a symbolic gesture, but with real weight. The proposal is staggered: in medium and large companies (50 to 1,000 employees), a portion of the board seats would be reserved for staff representatives, with percentages that would grow depending on size. Furthermore, the report states that companies should make it easier for employees have a part of the capitalwith formulas that can range from participation plans based on shares, to more structured models in the form of trusts or funds. SpaceX: employees who are “owners”, but without a voice. In Silicon Valley, and especially in startups, it is very common for companies pay part of salary in sharesoptions or units that are consolidated over time or based on objectives. This means that thousands of workers end up being, de facto, partial owners of the company they work for. However, and here the shock appears, these workers/owners do not have a voice in the decisions made by the company, leaving so much your workplace as your propertyin the hands of third parties. In a merger as decisive as the one that has been proposed between SpaceX and xAI (or in any similar operation in the Musk ecosystem as the one that occurred before between X and xAI), employees find out about these decisions after the fact, through internal channels and without leaving room to maneuver. Europe has been doing it for years. One of the keys to the report is that it does not propose an isolated occurrence, but rather an adaptation of models that already exist and on which research has been done. The best known case is Germany, where the co-management model It has been integrating worker representatives into supervisory or administrative bodies in large companies for decades. Also has been tested in Norway in a law implemented in 2020, or with the Rebsamen law of 2015 in France. These previous studies have shown that the participation of workers in company decision-making improves labor relations, greater investment in training and long-term productivity, although the effects may vary depending on the sectoral context and institutional design. The report insists that Spain is behind in this area and recalls that the article 129.2 of the Spanish Constitution It already marks the obligation to promote the participation of workers in the company. The proposal, therefore, is presented as a way to ground that mandate in a modern model that improves labor relations. It is a paradigm shift in Spain. The great value of the Ministry of Labor’s approach is that it unites two concepts that normally go separately: labor participation and ownership. Although this remuneration formula that motivates workers to improve your performance and thus improve your personal capital, is not something common in Spain. However, giving workers a greater presence would also give the workforce power to influence on key decisions such as relocations or restructuring that lead to closure “preventing viable companies from being liquidated or sold to predatory investment funds,” the minister said. In Xataka | Elon Musk’s fortune has reached an unprecedented $600 billion. And it’s not thanks to Tesla Image | Flickr (The Left, World Economic Forum)

Musk doesn’t have the best model or the best product, but he has something more important in the AI ​​race: SpaceX

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Elon Musk has done it again: he has changed one of his companies from the right pocket to the left. In 2016, when his company Solar City was in the doldrums, he took advantage of the fact that Tesla was going like a rocket to save the company. Now it is xAI that needs a push in the age of artificial intelligence and, after a few brief rumorsconfirmation came: SpaceX has purchased xAI. Or what is the same: an Elon Musk company has bought another Elon Musk company. It’s an ideal move, but also a morrocotudo mess. In short. The announcement came late into our night. As part of a vertical integration, aerospace will absorb the operations of xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company. It was an extremely rare agreement. When it occurs a business purchasewe know the numbers, but here we only have some ideas about the goal. Musk has been deliberately opaque and has justified the movement as a restructuring to guarantee “freedom of expression”, with a story based on energy, the development of technology and something we have been talking about for some time: the need for exploit outer space as a source of energy and giant heatsink for the increasingly numerous data centers. One million satellites. In fact, the operation came shortly after we learned that SpaceX had filed with the US FCC a project to launch one million Starlink satellites. Currently, there are about 9,000, plus another few thousand companies like Amazon or chinese satellites and Europeans…and astronomers are already complaining about how difficult it is to observe beyond low orbit. With a million satellites from SpaceX alone, the amount of potential space debris will increase stratospherically, but Starlink is not a simple satellite system to have Internet anywhere on the planet: They are potential data centers. Musk himself, when companies like amazon either Google They began to be very vocal about the need for moving data centers into spacepointed out that SpaceX already had them and that it was easy to convert its satellites into computing centers. In space there is Unlimited, uninterrupted energyheat dissipation is much simpler because air or water is not needed as on Earth and the information is transmitted to terrestrial centers using lasers, eliminating the need for Expensive fiber optic interconnections. SpaceX works. And, in Musk’s statement, it is stated that this demand for energy and computing power to feed AI is almost impossible to cover with terrestrial solutions, so the most logical thing is the space exodus from data centers. And, of course, one plus one equals two: SpaceX has the infrastructure and xAI needs it. But beyond the synergy, there is another reality. SpaceX has become a solid and profitable company. It is the only one that, right now, can routinely transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. It has become an essential piece for both NASA and the Department of Defense and, in addition, it has the aforementioned Starlink system that has crept in, perhaps too much, into the communications infrastructure of countries like Ukraine. xAI burns money. On the other hand, xAI shows the symptoms of a company focused on artificial intelligence. This valued at more than $230 billion and has raised several tens of billions in several rounds of financing, but is burning money at a rate of approximately one billion a month. This is typical, as we say, of companies in the growth phase, and the executives themselves have stated that they have plans and resources to keep spending aggressively, but everything has a limit. xAI requires enormous amounts of energy, resources, computing and is developing its own chips. All of that costs money, and putting data centers in space with existing infrastructure like Starlink’s can help ease the burden. In the economic and energy sense, it is a brilliant operation. When other technology companies want to start filling the space with their data centers, SpaceX will already be there. Morrocotudo mess. Therefore, and in the end, what Musk has done is unite a company in an aggressive investment phase with another that is solid and has established contacts with the US government. SpaceX is the highest xAI carrying vehicle and it looks like a win-win manual. Now, it’s also a tremendous mess. Because xAI is not just xAI: it is (Twitter), and now SpaceX has all that power under one umbrella. xAI manages military intelligence and we have already mentioned that Ukraine threw itself into the arms of Starlinkrelying on its infrastructure during the conflict with Russia. SpaceX is no longer just an aerospace company, it is that and much more: a brain, a social network with private data of tens of millions of people. And in a Europe that is fighting for their technological sovereignty and information protection, SpaceX can go from being a partner for a specific mission to something to look askance at. Image | The White House (edited) In Xataka | From $100 billion romance to silent divorce: NVIDIA and OpenAI’s relationship is disintegrating

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, has just announced the purchase of xAI, founded by Elon Musk

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Until very recently, this was just a rumor. Today, SpaceX just told it as a fact. The aerospace company has published an official statement in which it states that it has acquired xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk. The text does not go into details of the operation, but it does set the tone: it talks about integrating AI, rockets and space connectivity as part of the same strategy. And, although the announcement is forceful, it leaves many important questions in the air that still have no answers. SpaceX frames the operation as part of a vertical integration. The official statement is signed by Musk and has a more ideological than corporate tone, with references to “freedom of expression” and an almost existential mission. But, beyond the story, the document leaves out some elements that are important to understand this movement: there are no figures or details of how the agreement materializes. In development. In Xataka | Genie 3 is awesome at creating worlds for video games. But the problem with video games was never creating worlds

Space reuse seemed like a SpaceX thing. China is already trying to replicate the formula with LandSpace

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For decades, access to space was conditioned by a simple and very expensive logic: each launch was an almost unrepeatable operation, with rockets designed to be used only once. That model turned cost per kilo into a structural barrier for the entire industry. Reuse broke that inertia and changed the rules of the game, not as an incremental improvement, but as a different way of thinking about launches. Today, that idea has become the bar for who can compete in the new space economy. The trajectory that is currently taken as a model was not born from a comfortable position. In 2008, SpaceX faced a sequence of technical failures with the Falcon 1 that left the company with no financial margin. Elon Musk even admitted that a fourth explosion would have meant the end of the project. The turning point came first with a successful launch to orbit and, almost three months later, with a NASA contract to transport cargo to the International Space Station. That combination gave oxygen to a company that was still far from demonstrating sustained reliability. When launching is no longer the most expensive. The traditional model assumed that launch was the most expensive and risky part of any orbital mission. NASA analyzes place Historical costs in a typical range of between $10,000 and more than $20,000 per kilo in low orbit, with an average cost around $18,500/kg. The drop in prices associated with reuse altered that balance: with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the cost per kilo fell into the range of $3,000 to $1,500. By reducing the cost of travel, the door was opened to launch more often and rethink the scale of projects. Why LandSpace is coming into the picture now. In this new scenario of more frequent and scale-oriented launches appears LandSpace. Founded in 2015, a few years after China opened the space sector to private capital, the company has positioned itself as a player focused on building a complete chain from design and manufacturing to launch. Its program aims to recover and reuse the first stage, and in parallel it is committed to liquid oxygen and methane launchers, a combination linked in the industry to cost reduction strategies. This approach fits with China’s need to deploy large satellite constellations in the coming decades. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace With the Zhuque-3LandSpace proposed something unprecedented in China for an orbital-class launcher: attempting to recover the first stage in a real flight. The launch made this vehicle the largest Chinese commercial launcher ever flown and the first by a private company in the country to attempt a vertical landing after completing its primary mission. The profile was carefully planned, with a recovery area built specifically for it in the Gobi Desert. LandSpace has not given figures on the probability of success, and the flight was functioning as a recovery test in real conditions. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace Similar to Falcon 9, with nods to Starship. The comparison with SpaceX is not a rhetorical device, it is in the design itself. Zhuque-3 adopts a very recognizable pattern: nine engines in the first stage, return maneuver, aerodynamic control with grid ends and legs for a vertical landing. At the same time, it is not a carbon copy of the Falcon 9. The rocket is built of stainless steel and uses methane and liquid oxygen as propellants, two features associated with the development of Starship. SpaceX Falcon 9 The December attempt did not end as LandSpace had planned. After takeoff, the Zhuque-3 completed its initial phase of flight, but the first stage failed to execute the final landing maneuver. According to Reutersthe booster had to start its engines about three kilometers from the ground to stop the descent and carry out a controlled landing, something that did not occur. The result was an impact rather than a vertical landing. The design of the test itself assumed that risk: it was a reuse test, not a complete operational mission. Reuse and risk tolerance. The commitment to reusable rockets forces us to review how risk is understood within the Chinese space sector. The aforementioned agency highlights that the local industry has historically been dominated by state companies reluctant to see visible failures. The entry of private companies like LandSpace is introducing another logic, closer to controlled experimentation. The fact that failed attempts are documented and publicly explained suggests that the priority is beginning to shift from immediate success to the accumulation of experience, a necessary condition for reuse to be more than a promise. Images | LandSpace | SpaceX In Xataka | While Silicon Valley dreams of servers in orbit, Russia prepares a nuclear reactor on lunar soil

In January a SpaceX rocket exploded. Today we know the danger that an Iberia plane was in with 450 passengers in the air

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On January 16, while air traffic in the Caribbean continued its usual routine, three commercial airliners were thrust into a situation that until recently belonged more to science fiction than civil aviation: passing through a possible cloud of rocket debris in mid-flight. Iberia under a space rain. It was a JetBlue plane heading to San Juan, another Iberia plane and a private jet that ended up declaring fuel emergencies and crossing a temporary exclusion zone hastily activated after the Starship explosion from SpaceX a few minutes after taking off. Altogether, about 450 people were traveling on those planes, which ultimately landed without incident, but internal documents of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reveal that the real risk was much higher than what was publicly known at that time. When the protocol is behind. The Starship explosion caused almost 50 minutes a rain of incandescent fragments over large areas of the Caribbean, a scenario in which the impact of a single piece of debris against an airplane could have had catastrophic consequences. However, the warning chain did not work as planned: SpaceX did not immediately report the failure through the official hotline, and some controllers learned of the incident because the pilots themselves they started reporting “intense fire and fragments” visible from the cabin. The exclusion zones were activated late and, furthermore, only covered US airspace with radar, leaving out pockets of international space where, in theory, flying could continue despite the risk. The result was a extreme workload for controllers and situations of added danger, such as excessive proximity between aircraft that forced intervention to avoid a collision. Impossible decisions at 10,000 meters. In the air, theory became a practical dilemma. The pilots were raised a choice that no manual comfortably contemplates: deviate and take risks to run out of fuel over the ocean or continue through an area where space debris could fall. In at least two cases, the only way out was declare emergency to be able to land. Iberia later maintained that its plane crossed the area when debris was no longer falling, and JetBlue assured that its flights avoided the points where debris was detected, but FAA records describe a tense situation in which decisions were made with incomplete information and under extreme pressure. A structural problem. The incident set off alarms both in the airline industry and in the US Government itself, not only because of what happened in January, but because of what comes next. The FAA plans to go from a historical average of about two dozen launches and reentries annually to managing between 200 and 400 every year for the foreseeable future. A good part of this increase goes through Starship, the most powerful system ever developed, with more than 120 meters high and trajectories that, in future missions, will fly over busy air routes in the North Atlantic, Florida or Mexico. The industry’s own history reminds us that the development of new rockets involves failures: approximately one third of launchers active since 2000 failed on their first flight. Half review. After the explosion January, the FAA convened a panel of experts to review protocols for failed launch debris, an initiative that took on even more urgency after another Starship that exploded in March. That second incident was managed better from the aerial point of view, closing loopholes in exclusion zones and avoiding fuel emergencies, and the panel came to identify high risks for aviation safety, such as forced diversions or overloading of controllers. However, in August the agency suspended unexpectedly that internal review, claiming that many recommendations were already being implemented and that the issue would be addressed at another regulatory level, a decision that surprised even some group participants. The defense of SpaceX. SpaceX responded calling the published information misleading and reiterating that public safety is always its priority, ensuring that no plane was really in danger. Your address insist in which the collaboration with the FAA is close and proposes solutions such as real-time monitoring of vehicles and possible debris, so that a problematic launch can be managed almost like a meteorological phenomenon. Meanwhile, the company has moved forward with new evidence of Starship, some longer before disintegrating and others staying within the planned profile, and preparing an even more powerful version for next year. As recognized Its CEO, Elon Musk, is a radical design that will likely have “growing pains.” A warning from heaven. What happened in January was not only a specific scarebut an early warning of a problem that is barely starts to take shape: the increasingly closer coexistence between commercial aviation and a rapidly accelerating space industry. The night when pilots tthey had to choose between the fuel and a rain of space debris showed that current protocols are not fully prepared for this new scenario. The challenge is no longer just to launch bigger rockets more often, but to ensure that the price of that progress is not paid at 10,000 meters above sea level, with hundreds of passengers trapped between the sky and the sea. Image | Adam Moreira (AEMoreira042281), NARA In Xataka | China is launching more rockets into space than ever before. And the reason is very simple: not to depend on Starlink In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands

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