Space; a boundless three-dimensional continuum. The world has been venturing into space since the 1960s, with NASA in 1969 being able to land on the moon. During that time, there was only one major space industry within America, but now there is one other major space company by the name of SpaceX. SpaceX is a private spaceflight company that sends satellites and people to space, and with the recent news of one of its starships exploding, it feels necessary to take a deeper look into SpaceX.

SpaceX was founded by South African businessman Elon Musk. Musk is one of the richest people in the world. At age 30, he sold two companies; Zip2 sold for 307 million, and PayPal, which was bought for $1.5 Billion. With his wealth and interest, he had the idea to send a greenhouse to Mars, but the cost was too high, so he started a spaceflight, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Musk spent one-third of his fortune, which was about $100 million dollars, to buy SpaceX.

After Musk bought SpaceX, he created his first spacecraft. The craft’s name was “Dragon” based on the song called “Puff the Magic Dragon.” The costs were getting high, and Musk trying to save money made it a goal to send the first liquid-fueled booster to make it into orbit. Following the initial success, SpaceX would receive $278 million from NASA to spur the development of systems that can transport cargo commercially. With the new increase in finances, they took it to the next step and made the booster able to land on a launch pad which would allow for there to be a reduction in future launching costs. To test this theory, they would make a new rocket that made it into orbit. They called it the Falcon Heavy, and it was the rocket that the infamous Tesla Roadster and a mannequin that was sent to space. The two rocket boosters in this flight landed successfully, but the core stage landed in the ocean at 300mph and didn’t survive the impact. Alongside the testing of the rockets, there were also commercial flights introduced by SpaceX, with there being a flight to the space station in October 2012. They went well, but the satellite was in an abnormally low orbit due to the partial rocket failure during the launch. As for the aforementioned Dragon, it was able to run 20 flights and failed only once. They would then redesign the spaceflight and add an inflatable “Bigelow Expandable Activity Module”(BEAM). So far, all missions using the BEAM have been successful.

With all of the successes mentioned above, it is hard to believe the fairly recent failure of the SpaceX company. The recent rocket explosion has recently been heavily publicized and talked about. The scary thing that many people worried about is the sheer amount of time it took before the rocket self-destructed, spiraling down towards Earth. This recent failure has many people asking what went wrong. There were many reasons for a rocket’s termination: Loss of thrust, unplanned acceleration, failure with certain components, off-course trajectories, and more. Though some call this a failure, others, like Jason Plawa, an Astronomy, and Geology Teacher, call it a “Wildly successful launch” because it is a rocket that has never been launched like that before.

Though this was a failure in some sense, it didn’t deter the SpaceX crew from continuing their space exploration goals. The company is planning on using the Boeing Starliner to launch astronauts in 2023. This also comes with some controversy, with the Beoing Starliner having some issues on its first flight. But Musk is planning to make the Boeing Starliner the future starship going forward, with it being the ship to Mars and the Moon. Michael Kuhns, a History Teacher at Pennridge, says, “I have more confidence in Musk than I do in NASA” when it comes to landing on Mars. Though the spacecraft is early in testing, NASA has the opportunity to choose who they are sent, and they claim to be sending Artemis astronauts to go to the moon landing. But this won’t be happening any earlier than 2025, claims NASA, so we have a while, but SpaceX’s future is looking as bright as the sun.

Sources:

https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-starship-launch-explodes/
https://www.space.com/every-spacex-starship-explosion-lessons-learned
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2023/04/23/spacex-starship-explosion-what-caused-rocket-explode/70135134007/
https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-history-overview

https://www.space.com/18853-spacex.html