• SpaceX made history when it returned its Super Heavy launcher to its launch site in Texas.
• For Elon Musk, it was a chance to prove the doubters wrong – and that's what he did.
• Missed deadlines and problems at his businesses have raised concerns about his ability to deliver.

It was a moment for the history books. As SpaceX's Starship lifted off from its launch site in South Texas for the fifth time on Sunday, the wonder of seeing the most powerful rocket ever soar into the sky was more than matched by the landing.

The Super Heavy – the first stage booster that launched the nearly 400-foot-tall spacecraft – was fully recovered as it descended into the rod-shaped arms of the “Mechazilla” tower, from which it had launched about seven minutes earlier reached the edge of space.

This was a crucial moment for Elon Musk: the company he founded in 2002 had not only achieved a technical world first that seemed implausible a few years ago, but it had also given him the chance to prove to doubters that he could deliver beyond his ambitions on a cosmic scale.

The billionaire, who has repeatedly spoken of his dreams of taking humanity to Mars and beyond, has long emphasized, while openly pointing out, the need for reusable rockets to achieve that goal – for both cost and technical reasons how difficult it is to produce them.

The much-publicized catch was undoubtedly a victory. But as Musk continues to lead sprawling companies with ambitions to dominate everything from space to AI to autonomous cars, investors, employees and regulators are watching closely as many other big dreams become reality.

At a National Press Club meeting in 2011, Musk pointed out that an orbit-class rocket that could make life multiplanetary was a “very difficult engineering problem” because of the strength of Earth's gravity.

That didn't faze him too much. He told the audience that he could solve the technical problem and that SpaceX would “try to solve it.”

Some 13 years later, the rest is history. SpaceX is now very used to landing rocket boosters, but never on land on this scale before.

In doing so, Musk took a major step forward in his mission to build large rockets that can be reused and could one day carry crew and cargo to Mars and beyond.

SpaceX employee Dan Huot captured the feelings of several of his colleagues with a post-launch post to X: “I'm crying right now.”

And Musk earned applause online from legions of Starship fans, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Questions about delivery capability

As Musk's corporate empire has grown since he founded SpaceX 22 years ago – he became CEO of Tesla in 2008 and led a dramatic $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022 – he has made a habit of making big promises, which seem devilishly difficult to fulfill.

(Musk also founded Neuralink, which is testing a brain implant, and xAI, a startup developing AI to accelerate scientific discoveries.)

In 2019, for example, Musk said that Tesla would have “more than 1 million robotaxis on the road” in 2020, a deadline that has passed without the company putting an autonomous taxi on the road.

Its subsequent launch of Cybercab, which took place at Tesla's Robotaxi Day last week, failed to impress investors. Tesla shares fell as much as 10% the day after the event, losing around $67 billion in market capitalization.

Wall Street analysts attributed the decline in part to skepticism about Tesla's ability to enable fully autonomous driving.

And the plans to brand Twitter

Musk's vocal support of right-wing politics could work against him. On Thursday, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request for more frequent trips SpaceX starts.

Commissioner Gretchen Newsom expressed concerns about Musk's political posts, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency's recent hurricane response and Working conditions at SpaceX.

“Never bet against Elon”

Musk's recent performance at SpaceX shows that he still has the ability to achieve things that would have previously seemed impossible.

In a 2021 episode of the Lex Fridman podcast, Musk described the difficulty of the task he had set for himself. “We're talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms. It's like Karate Kid with the fly, but much bigger,” he said, referring to a scene from the 1984 film in which the main character uses a pair of chopsticks to catch a moving fly.

“Banana stuff,” as he put it at the time.

The billionaire will soon have the opportunity to prove that he can achieve even more extraordinary feats.

Next year, SpaceX plans to complete a manned orbit around the moon as part of NASA's Artemis II mission. In 2026, it will be involved in the Artemis III mission, the goal of which is to land humans on the moon.

Can it help achieve something that hasn't been achieved since 1972, the last time humans landed on the moon? As his old buddy Peter Thiel once said, “Never bet against Elon.”