THE BRIEFING | BIG PICTURE

This is what US $ 1tn of ambition looks like leaving the ground. SpaceX’ s Super Heavy- Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, lifted off on 24 July in its first test flight since the company’ s record-breaking IPO. 33 Raptor engines, 407 feet of steel, 16 million pounds of thrust. Rather than exploding on splashdown, like previous test flights, the Starship upper stage came down gently in the Indian Ocean and floated, intact, belly-up on the water.