20 years from now what will people remember from 2020 or 2021? The inauguration of President Trump’s second term.

The year of the 2020 covid disease.

We might think of the death of George Floyd and the riots that destroyed America’s cities for no reason.

I know I will be thinking of this launch of this spacecraft from Boca Chica, Texas.

This is science fiction coming to life. The starship from SpaceX is literally from science fiction.

If you thought the launch of Americans several months ago was amazing with a 21st century capsule this is like the 22nd century.

The starship is a revolutionary design of rockets built from stainless steel not fancy composite materials it looks completely different than any rocket before.

The critical problem that SpaceX and Elon Musk wanted to solve was the reusability problem.

The falcon which launched Americans is not an interplanetary rocket. It is not big enough to get beyond the orbit of the Earth.

The starship is planned to go to Mars, land and refuel, come back to Earth and land, take off again and repeat. This is beyond anything that anyone in the space business has even dreamed to happen.

Along with the reusability of the rocket is the Raptor engine which is the most efficient engine ever developed. It has more specific thrust than almost any rocket ever built but also is designed for heavy duty use and for being able to operate in air and the depths of space. It can be refueled with methane made on Mars or the Moon.

The rocket is shown operating lifting the starship 500 feet in the air and landing.

The stainless steel cylindrical rocket is designed to withstand the heat of re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. It will be supplemented on the forward part with a liquid cooling under the skin. It won’t use the pica material that almost all return capsules have used. That material while impressive requires replacement after every use. It’s too expensive.

NASA in its wildest dreams never imagined such outrageous out of the box thinking. In fact, NASA paid Boeing billions of dollars to build the SLS which is a non-reusable rocket that will cost 2-5 billion dollars per launch. Boeing should be embarrassed.

I have been arguing for a decade that NASA should defund the SLS. Elon has been funding the spaceship on his own nickel. NASA needs to get on board.

This year NASA did one other good thing beside the launch of Americans into space again was the successful launch of the Rover 2020.

I have previously written about the 2020 rover but I missed talking about something else that went along with the Rover to Mars.

This copter is stowed away on the Rover flight. When the Rover arrives on Mars in February 2021 it will launch and fly over the Rover taking pictures and give us spectacular shots over larger areas.

This copter is not intended to do any experiments. It has a camera and that’s it. Nonetheless it is pretty incredible and I give NASA credit for doing something using out of the box thinking.