Elon Musk’s Starship: flawed, but still useful

Musk does push hard at the boundaries of possibility. With Starship, he has made two promises that are hard to keep.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, is the world’s highest roller who really believes in his promises, writes Gwynne Dyer. Though Musk is not actually an engineer, he is deeply involved in the engineering aspects of everything he builds.Photograph courtesy of the White House/Flickr

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

May 28, 2026

LONDON, U.K.—After multiple failures and some partial successes in his Starship program, the 12th launch on May 22 of Elon Musk’s BFR—short for the “Big Fucking Rocket,” as he and the boys used to call it before the PR people intervened—was critical for the succe...

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