Mars Gets Farther Away With Each Failed SpaceX Starship

In one of the new Trump administration's most notable successes, two NASA astronauts were rescued on the behest of Elon Musk, who - among other notable positions - also happens to produce spacecraft. His company SpaceX is just one in many massive tech companies that are looking for a piece of the new-age Space Race - focused mostly on the flight to Mars. With the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, SpaceX stocks shot up in price, with an overall valuation of $350bn from a Trump Bump. Yet, with a series of failed missions, the company's mission seems to be slipping out of its reach.

As a global community, we spend a lot of time thinking about space. Our society has devoted a large portion of its scarce resources to attempts at making advancements in the field of Astronautics in hopes of finding what's out there, or even a new planet to settle down in. 135 billion U.S dollars was spent on programs regarding space globally in the year 2024 alone. Despite the large amount of investments devoted to astronautics, Elon Musk's SpaceX, a renowned private aerospace manufacturer, abysmally failed in producing a starship meant to advance the development of reusable spacecrafts.

SpaceX’s starship exploded skybound on March 6th above the skies of Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean island. With this second failure, the manufacturer is now facing serious doubts about the quality of their spacecraft. Dispersed remnants of the starship, as a result of its untimely detonation, were visible from ground level imitating a meteor shower. No matter how pretty, the result of the ship's dismantled state severely compromised the safety of local residents in the island. Furthermore, SpaceX’s failure, on top of countless others, is yet another step back for the commercial spaceflight industry.

With this being the fourth failure in SpaceX’s starship programme, it is not looking good for the relentless efforts of the company to achieve a breakthrough in the astrophysics world. SpaceX reported an estimated loss of hundreds of million of dollars in 2024 alone. With SpaceX being one of the leading companies in its field of research, its failures not only affect itself, but the astronautics community as a whole. Investors and shareholders of numerous astronautic research companies have begun to grow doubtful on the reliability of the spacecrafts manufactured. As a result of this, investors have started to hesitate and slow their funding which has caused major setbacks in projects still in the prototype stage such as Mars colonization missions. With the little trust remaining rapidly dissipating with the unstable state of the US economy, the future of commercial space exploration is looking increasingly hopeless.

Despite all the major setbacks and risks in the space industry, many investors still choose to stay in the market. This is because many see the long-term benefits of space research. This includes the increase in employment rates within the industry due to the large amount of funds collected by it. Examples of the jobs created due to the ability to increase the scale of space research includes IT directors, engineers etc. With employment increasing, this gives the economy the chance to possibly achieve economic growth which could potentially lead to increased income levels along with government tax revenues. Additionally, technological advancements surrounding outer space such as satellite imaging has real world uses - allowing scientists to track climate change and monitor ecosystems, helping the global fight to protect the environment. At the current rate of global warming, this serves as a huge advantage in terms of protecting the environment which exemplifies the enormous benefits of space research. What we create to survey space might just be what helps us save our planet as well.

SpaceX’s failure may have generated speculations within the space industry. It is clear, though, that attempts to create new discoveries in the world of astrophysics will not come to a halt anytime soon. Apart from the economic and social benefits, man’s ongoing desire to unveil new territories and discoveries will ensure space exploration continues to skyrocket into the future.