Science & technology | Big rockets and big rivers

SpaceX tests Starship, and prepares to face down Amazon

Elon Musk’s Starlink business could soon be competing with Jeff Bezos’s Kuiper

Starship’s hot-stage separation.
Photograph: SpaceX

IN THE 21 years since it was founded, SpaceX, a rocketry firm set up by Elon Musk, has become the world’s space superpower. Its cheap, reusable Falcon 9 rocket dominates the launch industry. Thanks mostly to its Starlink satellite-internet business, the firm sends more mass into orbit each year than every other company and country on Earth combined.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Starships and enterprise”

From the November 25th 2023 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Science & technology

A person blowing about a pattern in the shape of a brain

Can you breathe stress away?

It won’t hurt to try. But scientists are only beginning to understand the links between the breath and the mind

The Economist’s science and technology internship

We invite applications for the 2025 Richard Casement internship


A man sits inside a pixelated pink brain while examining a clipboard, with colored squares falling from the brain

A better understanding of Huntington’s disease brings hope

Previous research seems to have misinterpreted what is going on


Is obesity a disease?

It wasn’t. But it is now

Volunteers with Down’s syndrome could help find Alzheimer’s drugs

Those with the syndrome have more of a protein implicated in dementia

Should you start lifting weights?

You’ll stay healthier for longer if you’re strong