SpaceX Makes History With Orbital Rocket Landing

When Jeff Bezos welcomed SpaceX to the rocket landing “club” last week, it set off a round of twittering over whether Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture and fellow billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX were really in the same league. Meanwhile, the Falcon 9 only costs $60 million, and only $200,000 to fuel it. With SpaceX, rockets only need to be refuelled to be relaunched multiple times. This will be done through the launch release of the Dragon capsule from the Falcon 9 rocket, which will be done in outer space orbit. The push for reusable rockets translates into enormous cost savings, which could have a profound and positive impact on the future of space travel. Fully reusable rockets could greatly reduce the cost of getting to orbit, making the expansion of humanity into space much easier.

Musk has called reusability as the fundamental breakthrough which was much needed to revolutionize access to space. Most rockets that have carried people or satellites to outer space over the last 58 years have been discarded after their launch, often burning up upon reentry. It’s operated quietly for more than a decade, with resupply missions to the International Space Station and satellite launches, including beyond earth orbit, using proven liquid propellant technology.

The flight control center at Cape Canaveral has reported that Space X Falcon 9, Musk’s crowning achievement has made a successful landing on the landing strip.

“The staggering price of spaceflight has been the single greatest deterrent to a thriving space market”, said Hannah Kerner, executive director of the Space Frontier Foundation, which advocates for greater human space exploration and settlement.

In short, the space business, long the domain of placid government contractors, is finally starting to reap the benefits of competition and capitalism.

Part of that cost is due to the fact that the most expensive part – the rocket itself – can only be used once, either burning up in the atmosphere or crashing into earth. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before.

The feat is, even more, impressive once we have learned that no piece of the craft was sacrificed during the launching and landing procedure. The possibility of lowering Space Travel by the factor of a hundred is the real reason why the landing of the two rockets was so significant.

The smooth landing led to bouts of delirium at SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace startup. Considering that the budget for NASA at the moment for launching one rocket into space is 1.5 billion dollars, we can see a noticeable change should Tesla continue to work on this project, which they probably will.

Companies are working toward a future in which minerals are mined from asteroids and tourists book rooms in space. It hopes to resume supply runs for NASA in February.