SpaceX is a company based in California that has become the leading private-funded group to put payloads into orbit. Founded by Elon Musk, it has won NASA contracts and done cargo runs to the International Space Station (ISS) cheaper than other launch companies.
SpaceX is also working to lower the cost of space flight by developing reusable rockets. In this way, it hopes to lower the costs of trips to the Moon and eventually Mars.
Founded by Elon Musk
Elon Musk, a South African-born American billionaire and the founder of PayPal and Tesla, founded SpaceX in 2002 to provide low-cost space transportation. His long-term vision is to make humans a multi-planetary species by sending settlers to Mars and enabling them to build a self-sustaining city on that planet.
His first rocket, the Falcon 1, was design to launch small satellites into orbit cheaply and efficiently. The two-stage launcher revolutionized the aerospace industry by offering a cheaper and more reliable way to transport payloads into space.
Since then, SpaceX has made history by launching a range of different vehicles, including the Falcon 9 and Dragon. It also developed Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two.
Its latest rocket, the Starship, is a futuristic spacecraft that Elon Musk plans to use to send people to Mars and land astronauts on the Moon. It is a prototype for SpaceX’s future space exploration fleet, which will include reusable rockets.
In addition to SpaceX, Musk is the founder of Tesla, Neuralink and The Boring Company. He has built a multi-billion-dollar empire and has become one of the most popular figures in the tech world.
But his popularity isn’t without controversy. His Twitter accounts have banned and unbanned, he’s accused of censorship and his stocks have dropped significantly.
The most recent news is that SpaceX is reportedly raising $750 million in a new funding round. This raises the company’s valuation to $137 billion, up from a previous estimate of $150 billion.
SpaceX’s success is due to its reusable rockets and low-cost launch service. The company is also growing its constellation of satellites that beam internet connectivity to remote parts of the world. But bad deals from inexperienced investors who poured money into the private space sector have blamed for the industry’s turbulence.
Falcon Series Rockets
SpaceX has a variety of launch vehicles in its Falcon Series, including the Falcon 9, which is design to send satellites into orbit. The Falcon 9 is a two-stage launch vehicle that uses RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen as propellants. The first stage powered by nine Merlin engines, which generate one million pounds of thrust in vacuum.
The first stage also has four hypersonic grid fins on the interstage to control its attitude and trajectory during reentry. As the rocket falls toward the Earth, it reorients itself and performs a burn to slow its descent.
This process repeated a few times before the first stage separates from the second, enabling it to return to its launch site for recovery. The first stage also conducts a boost back burn to propel it to its landing site, which is a pad at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg Air Force base.
Aside from the Falcon series, SpaceX also produces a large three-core rocket called the Falcon Heavy. The company has about a dozen missions planned for this rocket, but some of them don’t have customer payloads ready yet.
While the Falcon series of rockets has been flying at a high rate, the company is still working on the larger Starship rockets that SpaceX hopes will replace them in the future. While the Starship will be much smaller than the Falcon Series, it will still be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle.
In addition to the Falcon series of launch vehicles, SpaceX has also developed a commercial crewed spacecraft. The company’s Crew Dragon is use to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. It’s currently tested for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program.
SpaceX Dragon Series
The Dragon series of rockets is SpaceX’s most commonly used vehicles for carrying cargo and people into orbit. It is primarily use for commercial resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS), but has also flown crewed spaceflights on behalf of NASA.
The first Dragon launched in December 2010, and returned safely to Earth that same day. Since then, it has been flying missions for a variety of customers, including the ISS.
While many of SpaceX’s boosters return to Earth by re-firing their engines and landing on a drone ship, Dragon uses a unique system that uses parachutes to slow the speed at which it descends into the atmosphere. This allows it to land in a more efficient manner than other vehicles that rely on rockets to return home.
It also reduces the amount of fuel it needs to return home, which means that more of its rockets can be used for launch. This has made it more cost-effective for SpaceX to develop its spacecraft and has also given the company a head starts over rivals.
This has also allowed it to create more innovative spacecraft, such as the Dragon crew capsule. The Crew Dragon, designed for human spaceflight, is a redesigned version of the cargo-carrying Dragon that was first launch in 2010.
It has used to send cargo into space on several missions, including two flights to the International Space Station (ISS) under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services program, as well as on one mission to the Moon in 2021. It was also use to carry four people for a private flight called Inspiration4, which raised money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
SpaceX Star links
SpaceX has created a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites called Star links to provide internet access in remote areas. The company has so far launched about 2,700 satellites in this network and plans to add tens of thousands more.
Unlike other internet services, Starlink relies on a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit to deliver signals. They’re a fraction of the size of Viasat and HughesNet satellites and they’re not as far away from Earth, meaning that each one is able to cover less of the ground.
However, astronomers are worried that the dazzling array of lights shining from Starlink could interfere with observations of the stars and other objects in the sky. Currently, these lights have an apparent magnitude of around 5.5 and are brighter when the satellites are in their orbit raise phase, which is when they’re most visible to people or telescopes on the ground.
The issue is particularly concerning to astronomers in rural areas where the dazzling streaks are much more noticeable, as they’re not as confined by land mass and can seen at sunrise or sunset. That’s why some astronomers are calling for a ban on Starlink.
But for some, a connection to the internet through Starlink can be a lifeline in remote or rural areas. Those are the customers SpaceX is targeting as it rolls out service to new areas and works to reduce costs.
The problem is that for now, it’s hard to get Starlink to work in the places where most people actually want to use the service. It’s a beta, which means outages are to expected and tech support can be slow. It also has a 1TB deprioritization threshold, which limits data after you’ve used that amount in a month.
SpaceX Starship
Starship is a spacecraft owned by SpaceX, and the company hopes to use it to take people around the Moon and to destinations in the solar system. Its design is similar to that of Saturn 5, the rocket that sent American astronauts to the moon during NASA’s Apollo program, but it stands taller and has a much bigger payload capacity.
The spacecraft consists of a 120-meter-tall (390 feet) spaceship and a Super Heavy booster, both of which can recovered and reused after launch to reduce costs. In theory, this would make Starship cheaper to fly than conventional spacecraft.
It also allows Starship to reach orbit multiple times, spreading the cost of each launch. The spacecraft can refuel itself in orbit before traveling to destinations that require more change in velocity, such as Mars or the moon.
In addition, it has electric-powered flaps that change their drag to control pitch, yaw, and roll during reentry, making it more stable. Its heat shield tiles mechanically attached to its belly to protect it from high temperatures during reentry.
Another key feature of Starship is its reusable first stage, which is design to blast away from the launchpad and land on a platform in the Gulf of Mexico. This is a key step toward reducing costs and time spent on maintenance, as it eliminates the need to keep a fleet of landing vehicles on hand to bring the ship back to Earth.
The next opportunity to launch Starship expected in February or March. However, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a history of making optimistic projections that don’t pan out, so the company is still trying to figure out the exact date of the first flight test.
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