SpaceX: Making History
SpaceX - Who are they?
SpaceX is an aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, the co-founder of other amazing companies such as Tesla Motors, and Paypal (heard of it? yes you have!). Just like with Robert Bigelow, Elon Musk is an entrepreneur ready to change how we get to space. On September 28, 2008, SpaceX was the first commercial company ever to launch a liquid fueled rocket to orbit the earth. On July 15th, 2009, they were the first commercial company to put a commercial satellite in orbit. As early as May 8th, they will launch their Falcon 9 rocket, which is being developed for the purposes of launching large payloads, and Astronauts.
Why should we care? Doesn't NASA do that all the time?
Yes, NASA does. However, No other company or organization (not run by the government) in the history of space exploration has been able to achieve this! That is what is important to remember. Not only is SpaceX confident in their ability to build rockets, they are confident they can accomplish some of these goals:
They want to travel to Mars!
We have another option to get to Mars now besides just relying on NASA! They are proving that governments are not the only ones that build rockets, PEOPLE WITH PASSION DO!
They want to bring the cost down to 1 Million per person or lower.
This number does not seem impressive at first sight, I mean, I don't have a million dollars (paypal donation? anyone?), but let us put this in perspective. Do you know how much NASA is going to pay to send someone into space right now?? 55.83 million per seat! By the way, that is the cost on a Russian Rocket, not our own. On our own Space Shuttle, we pay 65+ million per seat (could be as high as 100 million depending on who you talk to).
From the lowest figure of 55.83 million to 1 million? That is significant. Consider also that 1000 people have already bought tickets aboard the Virgin Galactic vehicle which costs 200 thousand a seat. If people are willing to pay Virgin Galactic 200,000 for a ride that takes them 70 miles up, Do you think people would pay SpaceX a million for a 50 million mile ride to Mars? OBVIOUSLY! People would pay 100 times that. As our understanding of new propulsion, fuel, and safety techniques increase, the cost will go down, and the day we all fly draws closer.
It is close. Very. Very. Close...
Fun fact: How did SpaceX come up with the names of their Falcon and Dragon rockets?
Interestingly enough, Falcon was named after the Millennium Falcon. Dragon was named after Puff the Magic Dragon because people thought Elon got the crazy idea for this rocket while smoking a lot of weed. Think I'm kidding? Check this out Skip to 17:40.
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More reading/viewing material:
Popular Mechanics article (This article was my introduction to SpaceX)
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