The hard knocks of rocketry

It would seem that the past year in space exploration has been one defined significantly by failure.

One year ago, Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon, but Odysseus ended up on its side, cutting the mission short. Earlier this month, its second moon lander, Athena, did the exact same thing, meaning it could not deploy its rover.

On March 6, for the second consecutive launch, SpaceX’s Starship rocket lost control and exploded after reaching space.

Next week, NASA hopes to change this gloomy trajectory. Last August, it stranded two astronauts on the International Space Station when the Boeing Starliner spacecraft developed technical problems. It hopes to soon launch a mission to bring them back.

If Shakespeare were to pen a play on the topic, he could fairly write that the course of space exploration never did run smooth. SpaceX founder Elon Musk – a man usually brimful of confidence – recently conceded, “Rockets are hard.”

Failure is never cause for celebration. When humans sit atop rockets, failure is inadmissible. Yet the recent spate of failures tells a different tale. It tells of a renewed effort to do something difficult, and the new possibilities, hopes, and frontiers on the other side of that barrier.

“In the high-stakes world of space exploration, failures aren’t just accidents – they’re critical learning opportunities,” wrote contributor Ivan Yatskov in Orbital Today.

For decades after the curtain went up on the Space Age, exploration was the exclusive province of governments. In the United States, NASA was cautious and had accountability as a government agency, but there were drawbacks. Human space exploration largely stagnated during the three-decade shuttle program. And at one time, so many NASA missions to Mars failed that the red planet gained a reputation as a spacecraft graveyard.

Now, both new nations and new companies like Intuitive Machines are entering the scene. There are challenges. The past year shows the need to build up technical know-how. But as ever, these efforts are about more than space. They are about loosening humanity’s sense of limitation.

“Overcoming our limits is what is hard to do. It’s not about the rocket equation, it’s not about physics – we solve those issues every single day,” said Rick Tumlinson of the SpaceFund in a 2015 TEDx Talk. “Everyday, something that was science fiction ... turns into reality. It’s an amazing time, and it’s accelerating.”