SpaceX Made Simple: A Quick Guide to Elon Musk’s Space Company

SpaceX, the rocket company founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk, was created with the mission of bringing humans to Mars. Almost two decades later, it’s already taken NASA astronauts in orbit and accomplished many other milestones along the way.

If you’re struggling to keep up with SpaceX’s plans replace international flights with orbital rockets, to create a global broadband network and develop a Mars rocket, don’t worry. We’ve created this SpaceX primer so you can get up to speed quickly.

How SpaceX started

In 2002, Musk and his friends traveled to Russia to purchase a refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile. The Silicon Valley prodigy who made millions of internet startups was not looking to start a business at the time. He wanted to spend much, or maybe all of his fortune, on a stunt that he hoped would rekindle interest in funding NASA and space exploration.

The idea was to buy a cheap Russian rocket and use it to send plants or mice to Mars – and hopefully bring them back too. Ideally, the show would turn the world on for space again. But Musk’s meeting in Moscow didn’t go well and he decided he could build rockets himself, calculating he could undermine existing launch contractors in the process. SpaceX was founded a few months later.

What is a Falcon 9 rocket?

Musk originally hoped to reach Mars by 2010, but it took six years to put a single rocket into orbit. A SpaceX Falcon 1 orbiting Earth for the first time on September 28, 2008. This paved the way for a nine-engine version of the rocket, the Falcon 9, the company’s workhorse since its first launch in 2010.

Falcon 9 is a two-stage orbital rocket that has been used to launch satellites for businesses and governments, resupply the International Space Station and even send the The US Air Force’s super secret space plane on his long mysterious missions. Over the past nine years, the company has flown more than 80 Falcon 9 missions.

What really sets Falcon 9 apart from the competition is its unprecedented ability to send a payload into orbit, then return its first stage to Earth, landing on solid ground or on a droneship floating landing pad at sea, another SpaceX innovation. After a few failed explosive attempts, one Falcon 9 finally landed safely on December 22, 2015, and a few months later another landed on a droneship for the first time. Several recovered Falcon 9 rockets have since flown and landed again.

On May 11, 2018, SpaceX launched its first Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket, the “final version” designed to be reused up to 100 times with periodic renovations. In 2020, we saw several Falcon 9 boosters launch and land for the seventh time in their individual careers. Reusing the nasal cone several times is also becoming common practice.

A flying dragon

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft was used to transport cargo to the International Space Station, and on May 31, 2020, its Crew Dragon made history as the first commercial spacecraft to send astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ‘ISS. Dragon was also the first commercial spacecraft to be recovered after travel from orbit.

NASA has chosen Crew Dragon, along with Boeing’s Starliner, to be the first spacecraft to transport astronauts to the ISS since the end of the shuttle program. The initiative suffered a setback in April 2019 when an unoccupied Crew Dragon exploded during a ground test due to a leak in the pressurization system.

But Crew Dragon’s first flight with humans on board was a success. Hurley and Behnken then brought the Dragon back to Earth months later, and another group of four astronauts, including one from Japan’s JAXA, made the second trip to orbit on a Crew Dragon in November 2020.

Falcon Heavy Lifting

SpaceX gained attention in February 2018 when it launched Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket launched from the United States since the Saturn V that sent astronauts to the moon. Basically, three Falcon 9 rockets strapped together, the massive launch system sent a test payload consisting of Musk’s personal red Tesla Roadster toward Mars. Two of the three Falcon 9s that made up the Falcon Heavy also landed almost simultaneously at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Over 15 years after his first trip to Moscow, Musk finally pulled off the international show he designed in 2001, and he’s also built a viable business in the process.

The second launch of Falcon Heavy took place on April 11, 2019 and was followed by the successful first landing of the three rocket cores on the first stage. A third Falcon Heavy launch took place on June 25, 2019, and SpaceX took reusability a step further by catch payload fairing (the nose cone that protects the payload during launch) using a ship equipped with a gigantic net.

As for Starman, he finally made a near Mars in October 2020

How to track Falcon flights

You can watch each launch of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy via the company’s website and YouTube channel. A good number of them are also shown on CNET Highlights. Each broadcast usually goes live about 15 minutes before the scheduled launch time.

To keep up with the ever-changing launch schedule, the best source is the SpaceX Twitter feed. It is also a good idea to follow Musk’s story, if you don’t already have it. You can also check out our own SpaceX stories feed to quickly get to grips with the business of the company.

Spaceship on the moon and on Mars

SpaceX plans to use Falcon Heavy to launch large payloads in the coming months, but it’s already at work on an even larger rocket called the Starship (previously called BFR, Big Falcon Rocket, or Big F *** ing Rocket) . Musk hopes that this even more massive rocket will be able to transport goods and possibly human passengers across the world and into the solar system. He plans to use Starship to transport people on super-fast international flights via space and finally to bases yet to be built on the Moon, Mars and beyond.

A single engine A prototype ship called Starhopper has left the ground for the first time on July 25, 2019, hovering about 20 meters (66 feet) above the ground before landing a short distance from SpaceX’s test facility in South Texas. This was followed by a few more jumps in late 2019 and mid-2020.

The first high-altitude flight of a prototype that looks more like a rocket took place on December 10, 2020. The SN8 prototype flew successfully at a height similar to the cruise altitude of commercial jets, then performed a new rollover maneuver to enter for a landing. It arrived a bit quickly, however, and the flight ended in a spectacular explosion. We expect to see a few more of these high-flying tests in 2021 with the aim of bringing this landing down and reaching orbit soon.

Musk presented his plans for a big city on Mars at two meetings of the International Congress of Aeronautics, but he has yet to give many details about what life would be like on the Red Planet. He said SpaceX was primarily interested in providing transportation, while allowing others to worry about infrastructure. However, company president Gwynne Shotwell said it might make sense for sister company SpaceX, the Boring Company, to dig tunnels on Mars that could be used for human habitation.

Paul Wooster, the company’s senior engineer for its Mars plan, told the 2018 Mars Society conference that the the first people sent to the red planet would live on the landed Starship spacecraft indefinitely when building homes, landing pads and other initial infrastructure.

Sites on Starlink

SpaceX isn’t just working to get things into space. He also began to operate in space to bring the universe to us. In May 2019, the company launched a first batch of 60 small satellites designed to pave the way for a massive constellation of broadband satellites. The plan, nicknamed Starlink will use up to 42,000 satellites in low Earth orbit to cover the whole world with high speed internet access. The company says the service could create a new revenue stream to help fund its lofty ambitions on Mars.

A second batch of 50 satellites was launched six months later, with more to follow in relatively quick succession. The scale of the project is causing some astronomers to fear that a sky filled with thousands of satellites could interfere with their observations. The newly launched satellite trains are easily visible from the ground as they gain altitude. SpaceX says it plans to work with astronomers and take steps to mitigate Starlink’s impacts on astronomy, including launching satellites with a sunshade dubbed “visorsat” to reduce their reflectivity.

As the company worked on launching its first 1,000 Starlink satellites, it launched a beta version of its broadband service in the last quarter of 2020 limited to northern latitudes. The deployment is expected to expand into 2021.

And after?

Since its inception, SpaceX has aimed to travel to Mars, but the company has been involved in non-space-related projects on Earth like broadband. Hyperloop transit concept. Musk Boring Company Tunneling and the traffic reduction companies also operate largely from SpaceX’s headquarters in Southern California.

Unlike Musk’s other big company, Tesla Motors, SpaceX is not publicly traded. Musk said he doesn’t plan to go public with SpaceX until the company realizes its ambitions on Mars. This means SpaceX could make sense as the home of any other musky future side projects like Hyperloop and The Boring Company in the meantime.

Originally published June 2, 2018 and updated as new SpaceX developments arrive.