How has SpaceX Transformed Spaceflight and the World?

The corporation has come a long way in its first 20 years, as seen by SpaceX, which has greatly contributed to our space lingo. On March 14, 2002, Elon Musk established SpaceX with the goal of creating reusable rockets, commercial spacecraft, and other cutting-edge technology. With the exception of a few instances like NASA’s space shuttle and its solid-fuel rocket boosters, few people, according to Musk, thought this was feasible when space agencies still controlled the sector.

Twenty years later, SpaceX corporation is already a powerful independent force. The corporation plans to employ 2,000 satellites to create the Starlink Internet constellation, which may eventually host 30,000 spacecraft. It is the only US supplier of human trips to the International Space Station and is developing a programme for orbital space tourism. SpaceX is already routinely launching and landing rockets while hauling payloads for a range of clients, including commercial firms, NASA, and the United States Space Force. This is exactly what Musk had in mind.

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The media coverage of Musk and SpaceX is frequent and not always favourable. For instance, the multibillionaire businessman’s consumption of alcohol and marijuana during his 2.5-hour live performance at The Joe Rogan Experience in 2018 prompted NASA to conduct a security examination of SpaceX’s operations. Musk criticised a rescuer of Thai children from a flooded cave that same year. Concerns over orbital debris and obstruction of astronomical observations are brought up by the Starlink constellation. Nevertheless, Musk insists on being authentic, and his business is among the most influential in the space sector. Here are the methods through which SpaceX elevated its degree of notoriety to that of Saturday Night Live.

SPACEX MADE BIG SPACEFLIGHT DREAMS MAINSTREAM AGAIN

Readers of a particular generation may remember the German-American aerospace expert Wernher von Braun from the 1950s, when he collaborated with businesses like Disney and directed the construction of space stations and future human flights to transport people to the moon during NASA’s Apollo mission. As Apollo made history, NASA’s funding was slashed, and the agency’s focus changed from human spaceflight to (supposedly) low-cost low-Earth orbit missions in the 1970s, such lofty aspirations swiftly fell out of favour. Although the Space Shuttle was a fantastic device, NASA was never able to launch it at a modest cost.

Musk comes in. Given that he gained $180 million (about $280 million in today’s currencies) in 2002 when eBay acquired Paypal, he displayed impressive independence for a space player. He used a large portion of his income to launch SpaceX and stressed early on the importance of human space travel to lower the chance of extinction. He thought Mars would be a fantastic destination. According to Musk, he started researching NASA’s intentions to put people to the Red Planet about 2002 and was surprised there wasn’t a schedule available. (NASA has recently recommended 2030 as a target.) According to Wired, at that time, Musk stated that he wanted to send a mission to Mars “to inspire national will.”

While this was going on, Musk pushed to establish his reputation and land jobs closer to home to launch satellites, supplies, and crew members to the International Space Station. Years were needed to demonstrate that SpaceX could be as reliable as major corporations like Arianespace and the United Launch Alliance, although as we’ll see later, Musk’s capacity to spend a lot on research into reusable rocket technology was helpful. Musk and SpaceX have focused a lot of their recent efforts on creating Starship, a massive rocket-spacecraft combination intended to transport people to Mars and other far-off places.

Several Starship prototypes flourished on test flights at great altitudes, but only one got it to Earth in May 2021. For its Artemis lunar exploration programme, which intends to put humans back on the moon by the middle of this decade, NASA selected Starship as the first manned lander. Starship still has to get over a few obstacles, though. For instance, SpaceX is awaiting regulatory permissions before launching the system for an orbital test flight; this may happen within the next month or two.

PUT BILLIONAIRES FRONT STAGE OF SPACE EXPLORATION

Of course, Musk isn’t the only wealthy person with a significant impact on the space sector. For instance, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group includes the suborbital space tourism business Virgin Galactic, while Jeff Bezos created the space company Blue Origin in 2001. But Musk has received more media attention than his contemporaries in the space era, in part because of SpaceX’s numerous high-profile successes and in part because he is an extremely active (and occasionally contentious) Twitter user.

Contrarily, Blue Origin worked mostly in secrecy for the majority of its life and made few statements in the media. (That has all changed recently, though, as the business has started transporting visitors in its New Shepard Rover into suborbital space.) While Virgin Galactic’s suborbital tour system isn’t entirely functioning, Branson has a colourful personality. The business has conducted four space flights but hasn’t flown with a paying passenger yet. While this was going on, Musk often tweeted updates on SpaceX’s different systems, live-streamed Starship status updates that rapidly turned into prizes for space aficionados, and made several other attempts to integrate himself into popular culture. For instance, in 2021 he hosted “Saturday Night Live” and appeared as the Nintendo supervillain Wario.

People began travelling into space in 2021 thanks to SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin. Both Bezos and Branson took to the air aboard the respective firms’ fleets. With the price of a seat on Virgin Galactic (for instance) rising to $450,000, there is undoubtedly immense riches connected to these many chances. This indicates that the rich are the primary demographic for ticket sales. Of course, putting the extremely wealthy aboard spaceships raises ethical questions. Individuals have questioned what it means to create an industry where the only people who may participate are the affluent or those who have been favoured by the rich. But there is also the case of Inspiration4, which was launched by a SpaceX Dragon and spent three days in Earth orbit in September 2021.

Jared Isaacman, a millionaire who, like Musk, built his money on a payment system called Shift4, sponsored and ran Inspiration4, the first completely private human space flight into Earth orbit. The remaining three seats aboard Isaacman’s spacecraft were made available to regular people. Two of these individuals won their tickets through contests, while the third person travelled on behalf of a charitable organisation: St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Isaacman aimed to raise millions of dollars for St. Jude, and he succeeded in doing so while also receiving plenty of media attention. A number of additional private flights with SpaceX have just been announced by Isaacman as part of the Polaris programme. Although Isaacman has not yet revealed the personnel for all of the occasions, he has stated that each expedition would also emphasise philanthropy.

SPACEX MADE LAUNCH WEBCASTS APPOINTMENT VIEWING

Nowadays, a lot of space businesses broadcast from orbit, but SpaceX’s usually stand out. Millions of viewers have watched the company’s transmissions over the years to witness rocket stages touching down on ships at sea and, in one especially stunning instance, the launch of a mannequin wearing a space suit into orbit around the sun. The variant was a prominent participant in the inaugural Falcon Heavy launch in February 2018. The largest such audience at Kennedy Space Center in Florida since the conclusion of the space shuttle programme in 2011 watched as the enormous rocket blasted off flawlessly and its three first stage boosters returned to Earth.

The Falcon Heavy upper stage made a stunning announcement when the webcast returned to a space view: a fake astronaut driving a Tesla Roadster. As the dummy with the same name set out on a journey around the sun, SpaceX started singing David Bowie’s “Starman” on the broadcast. The “Astronaut” generated a lot of attention from throughout the world; for instance, this writer got a note from someone in Mariupol, Ukraine, who typically does not follow space exploration. But it’s only one particular illustration of what webcasts have provided ardent SpaceX supporters. SpaceX has strategically provided camera views of the launch pad, high-resolution pictures of its rockets as they launch and land at sea, and a wealth of statistics that fans like delving into on social media sites like Twitter and Reddit.

The business is reminiscent of early NASA, when the government produced television programmes at a time when human rocket dependability was much lower than it is now. In fact, during the Crew Dragon system’s cooperative launch operations, NASA and SpaceX frequently run conflicting broadcasts, posing a significant (but fun) problem as space enthusiasts divide their focus between various social media channels and live streams.

SPACEX BROUGHT NEW STYLE TO SPACEFLIGHT

The long-awaited spacesuits that NASA astronauts and others aboard their ship will wear on subsequent trips were unveiled by Musk in 2017. He shared the first images on Instagram in keeping with his history of breaking news on social media, however the link currently doesn’t function. Musk said that striking a balance between form and function was “very challenging.” People began complimenting her movie star appearance as soon as she was in the space suits. In fact, Musk had to reassure his Instagram followers that the SpaceX suit “absolutely works” since it was so thin. In a vacuum chamber, you are safe to leap in. The costume was not created by chance in Hollywood; it was created by renowned costumer José Fernández, who created the looks for blockbuster films like Wonder Woman, Wolverine, Batman vs. Superman, and Captain America: Civil War.

Along with the customary pressure testing and vacuum chamber tests in space, SpaceX picked notable occasions to test their spacesuit. In 2018, one was utilised on the Falcon Heavy rocket with Starman, and in 2019, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-1 unmanned test mission carried the Ripley dummy to the International Space Station. Additionally, Crew Dragon has upscale controls with touchscreens in place of dials and switches. NASA pilots Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who were used to operating space shuttles (parts of which date back to the 1970s, although many have been modified as the programme has grown), had fascinating encounters with the Crew Dragon interface. Hurley noted during a news conference in May 2020, “Having a specific method of operating a vehicle is obviously different as a driver, my entire career.” But we have been upfront about it.

About the Author

Ahsan Azam is the author who specializes in avionics as well as research writing. The author has a keen attention to detail and is focused on providing interesting content to the readers.

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