Welders in a Texas swamp have built a starship. But don’t bet against SpaceX.

Starship is a prototype upper stage for a next-generation, fully reusable, two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle designed to enable the human exploration of the solar system and the colonization of Mars. It’s made from stainless steel. (A little carbon converts iron to hard steel; a little chromium converts steel to corrosion-resistant stainless steel.) At cryogenic temperatures, grade 301 stainless steel has higher strength-to-weight and strength-to-cost ratios than carbon fiber reinforced polymer, and it has a higher melting temperature.

Starship will dissipate orbital energy by entering a planetary atmosphere like a sky diver, belly first, its fore and aft fins rapidly moving to control its descent prior to a tail-first rocket-powered landing. Strong electric motors powered by Tesla batteries will flap the fins.

Starship is powered by next-generation Raptor engines, the first full-flow staged combustion rocket engines to fly. In these efficient closed cycle engines, no propellant is wasted: all the oxidizer (and some fuel) power the oxidizer turbopump and all the fuel (and some oxidizer) power the fuel turbopump, which together pump gaseous oxidizer and fuel into the combustion chamber to combust and thrust. The oxidizer is liquid oxygen; the fuel is liquid methane, the primary component of natural gas, which can be manufactured from the martian (or terrestrial) atmosphere.

Iconic is Neil Armstrong’s photograph of Buzz Aldrin during the first moon walk, with Armstrong reflected in Aldrin’s visor. Much less well-known is this pair of photographs taken just after the moon walk. To my eyes, Armstrong seems exhausted but happy; Aldrin seems satisfied … and over his shoulder, almost casually, is a window, and outside the window is the lunar horizon, with its stunning airless black sky at day! Fifty years later, I still imagine A & A trying to catch a few zzzs … in hammocks … in their home … on the moon.

Our TV is broken, so Aunt Nora invites us to her apartment. (Aunt Nora isn’t really our aunt, but she introduced our parents to each other, so that’s what we call her.) My brother Jim and I lie on the floor close to the TV, while the adults sit on the couch. We watch NBC not CBS, so we miss Cronkite’s commentary. The late afternoon video is a simple animation; the famous 16-mm film — only later synchronized with the audio — would return to Earth with the astronauts 4 days later.

The tension is palpable. The cartoon lander reaches the surface at the expected time, but Aldrin’s monotone readouts continue. Absence of video heightens the audio. Mission control radios “60 seconds” of fuel remaining. Then “30 seconds”. I hold my breath. At last, Aldrin reports “Contact light” — we have touched the moon — followed by Armstrong’s famous, “Houston … Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed”. Of the landing site, my mother observes, “They’ve already named it”.

No one wants to cook, so we go to McDonald’s for dinner. As we drive, I see a small shop with photos of the three astronauts in its window. The streets are still. The world seems stopped.

As Collins orbits the moon solo, Armstrong and Aldrin forgo a scheduled sleep period, moving forward the moonwalk. Finally video — live from the surface of the moon —  shows a LEM landing leg, first inverted but quickly rectified. Armstrong describes the surface as “almost like a powder”. Again I hold my breath, a lump in my throat. “Okay. I’m going to step off the LEM now … that’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” I don’t hear the indefinite article, but I immediately grasp the meaning. Armstrong reads the plaque, “We came in peace for all mankind”. Aldrin practices locomotion, which “would get rather tiring”. The president phones. We leave Aunt Nora’s as the astronauts prepare to return to the LEM.

The next morning I sit on my living room floor reading two newspapers: The New York Times, with its simple banner headline “Men Walk on Moon” — which still brings me tears of joy, triumph, and wonder as I write this 50 years later — and the local newspaper, with its astonished “Now Do You Believe!”.