in the 1960s America and the Soviet

Union competed to establish dominance in

space known colloquially as the space

race this saga was responsible for many

milestones including the first animal in

space the first human in space and the

first human on the moon but since then

state-sponsored space travel has fallen

from prominence and private companies

like SpaceX and Blue Origin have filled

the gap today we're answering the

question what is SpaceX SpaceX is the

innovative and ambitious private

aerospace manufacturer founded in 2002

by Elon Musk in 2017 the company boldly

went where no aerospace startup has gone

before posting 18 successful launches

twice as many as in the previous year on

behalf of companies in five countries as

well as the Air Force NASA and the

top-secret US National Reconnaissance

Office Elon Musk the eccentric and

diverse billionaire initially founded

the company because he thought that

space travel was unnecessarily expensive

he thought that if he could successfully

reduce transportation costs he could

begin to build a permanent population on

Mars one of the key selling points of

SpaceX is flights is that many of the

Rockets component parts can be reused

thus saving ample resources and money in

2017 alone

SpaceX delivered 48 satellites into

orbit and 20 2,700 pounds of supplies to

the International Space Station but now

holds more than 60% of the global share

of commercial launch contracts but

SpaceX truly earned its place among the

aeronautical elite and changed the

economics of spaceflight by making its

reusable rocket systems seemingly as

reliable as the Sun Rise throughout the

year it landed eight rockets on the

ocean based drone platforms and sent

three refurbished ones right back into

the skies Elon Musk claims he is making

progress on his plan to colonize Mars

and save humanity from some eventual

extinction event before the advent of

SpaceX public interest in space travel

had been plummeting as it stands the

last manned mission to the moon was 48

years ago in 1972 it seems that after

achieving this stellar milestone many

people were no longer impressed with

extraterrestrial

for funding for NASA was slashed

dramatically every year meaning that

they were much more limited in how much

they could accomplish Elon Musk's or an

opportunity and after his successes with

companies like Tesla and PayPal he had

both the knowledge and the capital to

pursue his dream of intergalactic

inhabitation but the beginnings of this

company were extremely humble masks

first action was to fly to Russia and

buy a refurbished intercontinental

ballistic missile at the time he wasn't

even sure he wanted a space company

rather he wanted to put on a spectacle

that would inspire NASA to get more

funding he wanted to send plants or

small mammals to Mars and bring them

back just to prove it was possible but

the meeting in Moscow went sour and musk

realized he could build his own rocket

for much cheaper than buying a

secondhand Russian rocket however the

ambitious individual musk hoped to reach

Mars by 2010 but by that time he had

only successfully gotten one rocket into

orbit

this was the Falcon 9 rocket an early

iteration of a design that has persisted

for the length of SpaceX's existence

what really made the Falcon 9 special

was that after its payload was in orbit

the first-stage boosters would detach

and fall back to earth where they could

be recovered either on land or at sea by

2018

SpaceX had released the block 5 Falcon 9

which could be used more than 100 times

without needing to be replaced thus

saving costs immensely on November 11

2019 a single Falcon 9 successfully

launched and landed for the fourth time

a first but orbital rockets and flew

using a recycled nose cone for the first

time this is in addition to the dragon

rocket which was the first commercial

spacecraft to be recovered after

reaching orbit the dragon program will

bring people and supplies to the

International Space Station but suffered

a major disaster when an unmanned rocket

exploded during a ground test however

musk and the team at SpaceX are not

discouraged and intend to get a manned

flight in the air sometime in 2020 and

then there's the Falcon Heavy this is

the rocket which musk believes will

someday shuttle people and supplies to

and from Mars in 2018 as part of a

publicity stunt the Falcon Heavy carried

musk
red Tesla Roadster as a payload the car

which was playing David Bowie's Space

Oddity will hopefully reach Mars and

fall into orbit where it would likely

stay for billions of years

with 27 engines the Falcon Heavy is

capable of lifting 140,000 pounds into

low-earth orbit that makes it the most

powerful rocket on Earth viable for

launching heavy satellites and future

space stations into orbit it has twice

the towing capacity of any other rocket

in use today this powerful vehicle could

open up entirely new types of business

for SpaceX launching heavy national

security satellites or even sending

large modules or people into deep space

according to the verge the Falcon Heavy

is a viable option for ferrying cargo to

Mars so what exactly is SpaceX is

timeline for building a permanent

habitation on Mars and how does it

compare to other agencies many plans for

a Mars settlement expect the community

in a matter of decades the United Arab

Emirates aims for a city of six hundred

thousand by 2117 astrobiologist Luis

Darnell says that while the first human

mission to land on Mars will likely take

place in the next two decades it will

probably be more like 50 to 100 years

before substantial numbers of people

have moved to Mars to live in

self-sustaining towns SpaceX is aiming

for a much faster timeframe with a

series of 10 launches to start a city by

2050 maskers said that the spaceship is

the hardest part of the system to get

right so that's where SpaceX is focusing

most of its energy to that end the

company is building a factory in the

Port of Los Angeles

about 15 miles south of SpaceX is

headquarters while that facilities

constructed engineers are working under

a nearby 20,000 square foot tent to

build a prototype spaceship out of

advanced carbon fiber materials SpaceX

is also meeting with NASA and other

parties to workshop its Mars mission

plans though it still has a lot of work

to do to figure out how to keep

passengers safe from radiation

starvation and themselves as the United

States holds its next presidential

election SpaceX will be working on the

next stage of starship tests this year's

tests cover the booster as well as high

altitude high velocity flights the team

is expected to conduct an um

of test flights before actually placing

anyone on board an orbital starship

could make its flight debut at this time

musk said his aspirational timeline for

the launch of the first big Falcon

spaceship missions to Mars is 2022 each

ship would first Phi into orbit around

Earth which would use up most of its

fuel then several other tanker

spaceships would launch to fill the

vehicle with enough fuel to reach Mars

it's uncertain how many flights or how

long this might take Mars and Earth get

close to each other about once every two

years creating windows of time when it's

quicker to reach the planet because of

that the best months the launch would be

the summer of 2022

for its very first Mars missions SpaceX

will land at least two uncrewed cargo

ships on the Red Planet

before sending any humans there those

cargo missions would bring supplies such

as life-support systems and power

generators that the first astronauts on

Mars will need when they set up camp the

first uncrewed Mars missions will also

be tasked with confirming the presence

of natural resources that can provide

fuel for future two-way missions to the

Red Planet

SpaceX wants to use water ice from the

planet's surface and carbon dioxide from

the Martian atmosphere to refuel

starships on Mars enabling the Rockets

to return to Earth the first humans will

also likely have to use solar-powered

hydroponics to feed their plants and

grow more food musk said in an interview

that the technology which allows plants

to grow without soil is already in use

on earth and the same techniques could

immediately apply to the Mars colony in

September 2019 musk introduced the world

to SpaceX his first space tourists

hopeful

Yasu kumazawa a Japanese billionaire who

is paying SpaceX an undisclosed sum

likely hundreds of millions of dollars

to be the first passenger aboard the

spaceship nozawa purchased all the seats

on the vehicle spaceship and plans to

pick six to eight artists from a variety

of disciplines to take the roughly

week-long trip around the moon with him

in 2023 that mission would be the

ultimate proof that the system works he

is paying a lot of money that would help

with the ship in its booster musk said

in September 2019 he's ultimately paying

for the average citizen to travel to

other planets

experts say starship is within the realm

of the possible without

acquiring impossible physics or unlikely

technological leaps indeed starship

employs ideas that were studied decades

ago but never built the biggest

innovation perhaps is that SpaceX and

mr. musk have applied the accelerated

research and development approach of

Silicon Valley building fast and fixing

failures quickly as with the first

uncrewed missions to Mars

it could take perhaps six to nine months

for crewed ships to reach the Red Planet

these first spaceships would most likely

serve as homes for astronauts musk said

in August 2019 it wouldn't be the most

comfortable setup but it might reduce

mission complexity by eliminating the

need to immediately build Mars habitats

so it seems likely that SpaceX will send

materials and people to Mars in the next

decade at least but who is the

mysterious man behind the company Elon

Musk was born on the 28th of June 1971

in Pretoria South Africa from the

canadian May Handelman and the South

African Air all masks mask was

fascinated by science fiction and

computers in his adolescent years when

he was 12 he wrote the code for his own

video game and actually sold it to a

company in his late teens he emigrated

to Canada in order to avoid the required

military service for white males in

South Africa thanks to his mother's

Canadian ties he was able to enroll at

Queen's University in Kingston one of

Ontario's top schools after graduating

he moved on to the University of

Pennsylvania during his time at Hugh

Penn

the billionaire visionary and his

roommate converted their college house

into a nightclub so they could make

money to pay rent musk had planned on a

career in business and he worked at a

Canadian bank one summer as a college

intern this was his only real job before

he became an internet entrepreneur after

he transferred to the University of

Pennsylvania he earned a bachelor's

degree in economics and a second

bachelor's in physics a year later from

there
he won admission to the prestigious

doctoral program at Stanford University

in California where he planned to

concentrate on a PhD in energy physics

he moved to California just as the

internet boom was starting in 1995 and

he decided he wanted to be in on it too

he dropped out of Stanford after just

two days in order to start his first

company zip2 corporation

this was an online city guide aimed at

the newspaper publishing business and

mask was able to land contracts with

both the New York Times and the Chicago

Tribune to provide content for their new

online sites mask was just 24 when he

started the company and he devoted all

of his energies to see it succeed he

lived in the same rented office that

served as his company's headquarters

sleeping on a futon couch and showering

at the local YMCA which was cheaper than

renting an apartment explained from

there he went on to found PayPal Tesla

and ultimately SpaceX all eyes will be

on him and his aerospace company in the

coming years to see exactly how he

manages to change the world

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