A scientist explains why the shouting at SpaceX's Starbase on Monday matters more than the rocket that caused it
SpaceX's Starship circled Earth for the first time on Monday, which a cheering researcher describes as roughly as exciting as a bin schedule. Her real finding is that the crowd at Starbase cheered three-tenths of a second too long. Her model says that is the point where humanity stops looking up.
On Monday morning at Starbase in Texas, a crowd cheered for three-tenths of a second longer than any crowd has cheered before. I measured it. It is the worst number I have ever written down.
The cheer happened because a rocket went around the planet. SpaceX's Starship left the pad at 7.48am local time, circled Earth once and came back down. That part is not my field. I am told it went fine.
My field is cheering. For three years my lab has recorded how long people shout at rockets. We do it with a microphone on a stick and a stopwatch. It is not glamorous work but somebody has to do it.
A control group is a set of people you measure while nothing happens to them. Ours stood in the same car park on a Monday with no launch. They cheered for zero seconds. That is our baseline.
Every earlier cheer we recorded fell inside a narrow band. Monday's cheer left the band by three-tenths of a second. A p-value is the chance a result is just luck. Ours came out at about one in twenty, which is the number where scientists agree to start worrying.
What happens next
Here is the problem. Our model says there is a ceiling on how long a person can cheer at a rocket before the rocket stops being interesting. Cross that ceiling once and you never cross back.
Think of a hinge. It bends a long way. Then it bends slightly further and it does not work any more.
The people at Starbase bent it on Monday. My model says they will watch the next flight the way you watch a bus arrive. The flight after that they will not watch at all.
From there it spreads. Three flights on, nobody looks up. Six flights on, nobody remembers why we did. Nine flights on, and I say this plainly, that is a civilisation that has stopped looking at the sky. We have a word for that in the lab. The word is over.
I should hedge. Our sample is three launches with a full crowd, plus the empty car park. That is small. It is also enough, because I have listened to the tape and I know what a last cheer sounds like.
The rocket, briefly
Reporters keep asking me about the rocket. Fine. It is the largest and most powerful ever built. One engine appears to have given up early and the thing went around Earth anyway. It was the fourteenth test flight and the first to orbit.
I have written that paragraph the way I would write a bin collection schedule. That is the right level of feeling for it. The hardware works. The people who built it are pleased. The Guardian has the details if you want them.
Meanwhile a crowd stood in a field and made a noise my model says will not be made again. Nobody is reporting that. I am reporting that.
Reaction
SpaceX did not dispute the measurement. Its spokesperson, Delia Marchetti, said the company had “long assumed people would eventually stop clapping” and that its business plan does not depend on clapping. She said the plan depends on the moon.
Dr Tobias Wren, who studies applause at a rival lab, called my model “aggressive”. He agrees the cheer was long. He thinks people may simply have been very happy. I have asked him to prove it and he has not.
The rocket went round the world. That is the second most important thing that happened on Monday.
A woman who drove down from Corpus Christi to watch, Ruth Okafor, told me she cheered “until my lungs ran out and then a bit more”. That bit more is the three-tenths. That bit more is the problem.
What you should do
Nothing. That is the honest answer. You cannot take a cheer back.
If you feel you must act, watch the next launch and try to feel something. Write down how long it lasts. Send me the number. It will not help, but it is data, and data is how we will describe the end when it comes.
Starship is expected to fly again. My model expects three people to look up. One of them will be me, holding a microphone on a stick, counting.
