As SpaceX’s Starship rocket thundered into the South Texas sky this week, a crowd of employees outside mission control began to chant, “U-S-A, U-S-A!”
It was the second successful test flight after a string of fiery failures for Starship, bringing Elon Musk’s rocket company a step closer to its goal of carrying NASA astronauts back to the moon. Yet, the hurdles ahead seem as large and daunting as the 400-foot-tall launch system.
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The employees’ zeal was, in part, an acknowledgment of the space race that has heated up between the United States and China . NASA chose SpaceX for an upcoming moon mission the agency bills as “humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years,” which is scheduled f