The SpaceX Revolution

The SpaceX Revolution Private Mars programs

In the early 2000s, Elon Musk was looking to start a new compony. He had for a long time been a huge fan of space exploration, and was disappointed at the general public’s lack of interest in it. So, he came up with a plan which he called Mars Oasis: he would purchase a refurbished ICBM from Russia, and use it to launch a small greenhouse to the Martian surface. Seeing life grow on another planet, he thought, would prove to the public that colonising Mars was possible.

Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy, and getting Russia to sell him the rockets was harder than he expected. The lowest they offered him one for was 8 million, and Elon considered this to be too high. Allegedly as the story goes, while on the plane trip back from Russia, Elon did some quick calculations, and realised that the cost of an average spacecraft was about 30 times higher than the raw cost of the materials used to build it. He also realised that by doing vertical integration, and manufacturing as much as possible in-house, he could start his own space company and make rockets considerably cheaper than anyone else.

And so, in May of 2002, history was forever changed, as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, was founded.

The first rocket SpaceX built and flew was the Falcon 1, which could place about half a ton of payload into low orbit. The first 3 launches failed, but Elon did not quit. Staring bankruptcy in the face he pushed on, and it paid off. The fourth and fifth flights flew perfectly. Against all the odds, the program had been a success, and led the way to a much larger lifter, Falcon 9.

Falcon 9 first flew in 2010, and was much more capable, with an initial payload of 10.5 tons. By 2013 SpaceX had used a Falcon 9 first stage returning to Earth after staging to perform a retropropulsive landing test where the engines were relit and used to somewhat softly touch down the booster in the ocean. By 2014 this had been perfected, and in January of 2015, they tried landing the first stage on a barge in the middle of the ocean. Despite having a lot of practice from the ‘Grasshopper’ and ‘F9 Dev’ rockets that had been performing routine short hops, flying up to a few hundred meters and then landing again, the rocket when tasked with doing the same while returning from outer space, “landed hard”, and was completely destroyed.

However, by the 22nd of December 2015 SpaceX had figured out the issues, and a Falcon 9 first stage successfully performed a soft landing at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. By April of 2016 they had performed the same feat, but landing on a barge in the ocean. Since then many, many more flights have flown with their first stages being recovered, with the first stages themselves sometimes being flown multiple times. SpaceX had, in just a few years, completely revolutionised the entire launch market, and forced the price of getting stuff into space to plummet.

But Elon wasn’t done. As well as Falcon 9, SpaceX was also developing a spacecraft named Dragon, which could carry supplies to and from the International Space Station. First flying in 2010, Dragon was and still is one of the best ways of resupplying the ISS, with some Dragon spacecraft even being reused many times. SpaceX is also currently developing a crewed variant, named Dragon 2, which has already made an unmanned test flight to the ISS and an inflight abort test, and will start flying properly around 2020.

Even now, Elon still isn't done. SpaceX is currently working on a new family of spacecraft, named BFR (Big Falcon Rocket). The BFR will, when fully completed around 2021 to 2022, consist of two vehicles. The first is a gigantic spacecraft named Starship, which will be able to go from low Earth orbit all the way to the Moon or Mars, or even according to Elon (who has a delightful habit of aiming high), Jupiter or Saturn and back. To get the craft into orbit, a gigantic and fully reusable rocket booster named Superheavy will be utilised.

For example, in a Lunar mission a Superheavy booster would blast a crewed or cargo Starship into orbit. Once there, fuel tanker variants of the Starship will be launched by more Superheavies to refuel it. Then, the Starship would depart to the Moon, land, and return to the Earth. It could also perform a mission to Mars, but that would require it to refuel on the Martian surface using ISRU.

Right now a Starship prototype has already been built, and a second is almost complete. The rocket engines the craft will use have in fact already been flown on a flying test rig named Starhopper. The entire development process thus far has been extremely complex and constantly changing, but our best estimates say the craft will likely start flying (uncrewed) around 2021. With this rate of development, it seams like comparatively cheap spaceflight will soon start to become a reality.