Symbol of a Future that Ought to Be

Practical achievements often have a symbolic meaning aside from and beyond their engineering efficiency. A few days ago in Boca Chica, Texas, Elon Musk’s Starship N15 took off, rose to its test altitude, glided back toward its launch complex, and made a successful soft landing in the vertical position – without the “spontaneous disassembly” that plagued earlier flights. This was a momentous technical advancement for spaceflight. The Starship is a heavy-lift booster that can function as a first stage on its own or as the second stage of an aggregate launch system. The Starship possesses a number of features not hitherto seen on rockets. Its aerodynamic system, for example, allows it to fly under control during the descent phase of its trajectory, until, righting itself, it lands on the controlled thrust of its rocket motors.

Thanks to its fins and canards – this is worth emphasizing – the Starship actually looks like a spaceship: Not like an Atlas or Titan or Saturn booster, but like the spaceships that figured on the covers of the science fiction magazines of the 1930s and 40s; or in the black-and-white low-budget science fiction movies of the 1950s. These always conformed to an ideal of stylized sleekness. An Atlas or Titan or Saturn booster, on the other hand, looks like a grain silo spitting flames. I suppose that the phrase “form follows function” excuses the lack of aesthetic grace in the appearance of the Atlas or Titan or Saturn, but then they were not designed to be re-usable or to have multiple functions. The rocket scientists built them to lift the payload into orbit and to disintegrate as they re-entered the atmosphere. Musk intends for the Starship to be an orbital booster, a moon-bus, and, in large numbers, a Conestoga wagon to take human beings to Mars.

Space-X, which builds the Starship, belongs to private enterprise, which shows genuine boldness in its goal of reaching and exploiting resources beyond earth that no government department can match. Notably, mid-Twentieth Century science fiction tended to represent the reconnaissance and exploitation of the solar system as stemming from private enterprise. E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Skylark in his novel Skylark of Space (1928) is a privately built spaceship. The moon rocket in George Pal’s film Destination Moon (1949) is an entrepreneurial endeavor. The Starship also stands in symbolic contrast to the unraveling of American politics and to the pervasive “dumbing-down” of the collective mentality. The Starship’s beauty and functionality derive from the highest degree of imagination and competency. The Starship’s elegant complexity, which it hides behind its sleek lines, stands in sharp contrast to the malicious stupidity that boils over regularly in our streets and to the mindlessness that afflicts our public institutions. One wonders how long it will take before the Left, in its war against civilized order, directs its resentful ire to the successes of such as Space-X and, invoking “equity,” moves to cancel them. The Starship is a symbol of a future that ought to be. [Image: Chesley Bonestell – Mars Expedition]