A fortnight ago we saw SpaceX make history by sending its first manned spacecraft to the International Space Station, carrying astronauts 49-year-old Robert Behnken and 53-year-old Douglas Hurley.
Space travel once restricted to only government agencies has now been truly democratized for private enterprises, and it's mostly thanks to SpaceX and Elon Musk's pioneering efforts and drive.
However, there is a lot that has gone behind this recent historic launch to the International Space Station. A series of successes, failures and a vision for human space exploration by Elon Musk and his team at SpaceX that has brought them to this day.?
And a lot of credit for SpaceX's historic outing in the sun needs to go to Elon Musk and his personal drive to disrupt space travel and make it more affordable for humans.
Even NASA will tell you that space exploration is hard, and not to mention very expensive. Elon Musk has always been of the opinion that humans must learn to be an interplanetary species.?
In a 2008 interview with Esquire magazine, he spoke about the main challenge in space travel, ¡°the ridiculously recalcitrant problem of big, reusable reliable rockets. Somehow we have to ... reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100."?
He added. "That's why I started SpaceX. By no means did I think victory was certain. On the contrary, I thought the chances of success were tiny, but that the goal was important enough to try anyway."
Elon Musk started SpaceX in 2002 by investing his own money, which he received after selling Paypal to eBay. Elon Musk has always admitted to having a fascination with space exploration, and what better way to bankroll it with but his own small fortune?
Building a reusable rocket is what Elon Musk and SpaceX focused on. And it took him four tries to get his first rocket into space in 2008 -- the Falcon 1. The journey wasn't ever going to be easy, in Elon Musk's own words.
From the first launch in 2006 being a failure within just 33 seconds after launch, to in 2016, when it lost a rocket during fuelling -- Space X has had multiple failures, big and small. Yet it has learnt from them and made their rockets better after every launch to a point where it has managed to achieve success like no other.?
Even the reusable rocket landing that looks crazy cool are a result of several failed attempts. Today, SpaceX has successfully landed over 28 times. With Dragon capsules, since 2010, the company has launched a Dragon 17 times with only one adversity (CRS-7).?
And with the newer CRS-11 in June 2017 refurbished capsules have been used. The last new Dragon was sent into the black during the CRS-12 mission to the ISS.?As Elon Musk says, ¡°When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.¡±
Little by little, SpaceX has managed to set a benchmark for affordable space travel with state of the art technology.?
However, it isn¡¯t the only one with the dream to get humanity into space. Jeff Bezos¡¯s Blue Origin, Richard Branson¡¯s Virgin Orbit are some of the other contenders that are trying to compete in the ¡®Billionaire space race¡¯.?
However, amidst all the contenders, SpaceX has been by far the most successful and has actually done multiple cargo missions to the International Space Station, teaming up with NASA, on its state of the art Dragon rockets.?
Recently, Richard Branson¡¯s Virgin Orbit also failed its first rocket launch attempt that used an unusual approach, launching a rocket from an in-flight Boeing 747.?
Even Boeing a pioneer in aviation for decades was one of the contenders for the manned space mission with NASA (which SpaceX bagged eventually) using its Starliner spacecraft. However, it failed its launch due to a software issue.?This goes to show the edge SpaceX over all other contenders.?
Elon Musk has always been talking about sending humans to Mars as a long-term goal for SpaceX.?
However, before he achieves that, his next mission is to develop the Starship for NASA¡¯s Artemis Moon mission.?
For this SpaceX will be competing against? Jeff Bezos¡¯s Blue Origin, and an IT firm Dynetics.?The Starship is a fully integrated lander that will use the SpaceX¡¯s Super Heavy rocket instead of the ULA Vulcan launch system used by the other two contenders.?
Only time will tell us if Elon Musk and SpaceX can pull this seemingly unthinkable moon mission off, but given their recent record who'll be bold enough to bet against Elon Musk and Space?