The amazing journey of SpaceX

SpaceX passed a significant milestone in February with the successful launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket which, according to the Washington Post, officially became the world’s most powerful rocket. The launch also logged the first time a privately financed venture flew a craft powerful enough to clear a payload out of Earth’s orbit. In this case, the payload was SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s very own cherry-red Tesla Roadster. Ever the showman, Musk placed a spacesuit-wearing mannequin, named ‘Starman’ into the driver’s seat destined for an orbit around the sun.

Reaching these incredible milestones did not happen overnight, and according to TechCrunch, the amazing story of SpaceX started in El Segundo, CA in 2002 with the idea to create a simple, inexpensive, and reusable rocket that was capable of taking man into space. For the first several years, the company developed its rocket technology and by 2006 Musk had put $100 million of his own money into the company that didn’t yet have any revenue source in sight for a return.

Beginning in 2010, SpaceX became very active with successful launches of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. After reaching orbit on a second launch, the capsule was able to crash back into the Pacific Ocean for retrieval. Importantly, the Dragon next proved that it could meet the standards of the global space cooperative by docking with the International Space Station and subsequently delivering supplies to the astronauts onboard. Once again, these events were world firsts for private spacecraft.

During the next several years, the company was hard at work delivering supplies to the ISS and satellites into orbit and all the while using these runs as a test for landing a used rocket back on Earth to be reused in the future. There were many failures, but ultimately they gained consistency, and in March 2017, they were able to relaunch a used Falcon 9 rocket into space successfully.

With Falcon Heavy and reusable Falcon 9 rockets under their belts, SpaceX has turned their sights onto carrying out more commercially viable space missions with a long-term vision of putting humanity into a position capable of colonizing Mars.