SpaceX – Future of Elon Musk’s Mars Dream

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a space-faring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”

-Elon Musk

MAKING HISTORY

SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company capable of returning a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, and in 2012 our Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station. And in 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to take humans there as well. In less than two decades, SpaceX went from Elon Musk’s dream of a greenhouse experiment on Mars to conducting the majority of U.S. rocket launches.

The early years of SpaceX reveal a company that teetered on the edge of dying out, as Musk has said. After three unsuccessful attempts to reach orbit, his team scrounged together enough parts for a fourth rocket, and SpaceX made history with its Falcon 1 rocket.

While Musk provided the vision, his company was not an overnight success. Key people, such as employees like now President and COO Gwynne Shotwell and investors like the members of the Founders Fund, helped forge SpaceX into the business it is today. SpaceX has won billions of dollars in NASA and Air Force launch contracts. It also carries payloads for private companies.

Now SpaceX is valued at over $74 billion and has more than 7,000 employees around the country. The company is launching rapidly, with a backlog of orders for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. SpaceX is facing its greatest challenge yet in 2019: Launching astronauts for NASA. If Musk’s long-term goal of sending humans to Mars is going to be realized, SpaceX must be able to regularly and safely launch astronauts into orbit.

Re-usability

SpaceX believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. The majority of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which historically has flown only once.

Compare that to a commercial airliner – each new plane costs about the same as Falcon 9 but can fly multiple times per day and conduct tens of thousands of flights over its lifetime. Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a hundredfold.

While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX rockets can not only withstand reentry but can also successfully land back on Earth and re-fly again. A total of 133 rockets have been launched till now. From which 75 rockets have landed and 55 rockets have been re-flown. SpaceX’s family of Falcon launch vehicles are the first and only orbital class rockets capable of reflight. Depending on the performance required for the mission, Falcon lands on one of our autonomous spaceport droneships out on the ocean or landing zones of spaceX.

BUILD AND TESTING FACILITY

SpaceX designs and builds its reusable rockets and spacecraft at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. As a company, SpaceX is vertically integrated, building the vast majority of the vehicle on the Hawthorne campus. SpaceX headquarters remains one of the few facilities in the world where you can see an entire launch vehicle or spacecraft come together under one roof. SpaceX tests its engines, vehicle structures, and systems at a 4,000-acre state-of-the-art rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. Outfitted with 16 specialized test stands, the facility validates for flight every Merlin engine that powers the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and every Draco thruster that controls the Dragon spacecraft.

STARLINK

It is one of the most important missions of spaceX to send 42,000 satellites to space for making internet fast and speedy. SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the eighth launch of this Falcon 9 booster, which previously supported Iridium-8, Telstar 18 VANTAGE, and five Starlink missions.

Unbounded by traditional ground infrastructure, Starlink can deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable or completely unavailable. At a time when more people are working from home and more students are participating in virtual learning, internet connectivity is more important than ever. With Starlink, we’re able to deploy quickly to areas that need it most.