SpaceX, the spaceflight company, is the first-ever private organization to design, build and launch its own space capsules and rockets to the International Space Station (ISS) and return them to Earth.
SpaceX, founded by the business magnate and entrepreneur Elon Musk has been winning ever since the company became the world’s first privately funded organization to put a payload in the orbit of the Earth in 2008. Since then, SpaceX has continued to astonish and impress everyone by launching unmanned cargo vehicles to the ISS and has also won a contract from NASA permitting them to fly astronauts as well. Here are some cool facts about SpaceX that you should know.
Why is Elon Musk making rockets?
Musk has a degree in physics and business from the University of Pennsylvania—and he is building rockets because he just decided to. At least, that is the short answer to the question. Musk never received any formal training in rocketry, but he has a thing for capturing new markets. In the early 2000s, NASA was creating openings by retreating from the business of launching spacecraft to low earth orbit. Musk saw the opportunity, and he jumped into that gap in 2002 and founded SpaceX—entering into stiff competition with other more-established companies like Virginia-based Orbital Sciences and Boeing.
What makes SpaceX unique from other companies?
SpaceX emerged as the first private company in 2010 to launch a payload into orbit and return it to Earth in one piece—something that only Russia’s Roscosmos or government space agencies like NASA had undertaken before. The Falcon 9 rocket’s upright landing and recovery of the first stage on December 21, 2015, was another remarkable achievement.
Are SpaceX rockets more advanced?
Technological progress made in rocketry is incremental. Since the days of Robert Goddard, the basic science of liquid-fueled rockets has not altered much. And solid-fueled rockets go back millennia. The SpaceX rocket advances are made at the margins, and the company is doing well there. Musk’s rockets are modular: For instance, the Falcon 9 is a nine-engine model.
Space capsules running on autonomous mode
SpaceX designed the Crew Dragon capsule to sit on top of Falcon 9 rockets, and it entirely runs in autonomous mode. The docking procedure of the capsule with the ISS was also carried out through an autonomous process - the astronauts didn’t have to manually control the capsule before docking.
SpaceX further intends to use a version of the robotic Dragon capsule in the future to carry astronauts in low-Earth orbit and the orbiting outpost.
