MISSION MOON
Eccentric billionaire offers bold vision, mixed track record
Our special anniversary coverage of the July 20, 1969, moon landing continues today as we look at SpaceX and the future of commercial space travel.
Billionaire Elon Musk envisions a future where his company would see astronauts resume launches from U.S. soil, where people would colonize other celestial bodies and where a constellation of satellites would provide the Earth with broadband internet.
That future is coming, but perhaps not as quickly as the SpaceX founder promises. Musk has a track record for launches — having successfully launched more than 70 rockets and landed more than 35 rocket boosters, flying many of them a second or third time — and for having an overly optimistic timeline.
It’s all part of the pizzazz that Musk brings to space and his quest for humans to become a multiplanetary species.
“Some of Elon Musk’s ideas are a little ambitious, shall we say, but he gets people listening,” said David Alexander, director of the Rice University Space Institute. “And if he hadn’t had the successes to back it up, it’d be a different story to tell.”
The adventure begins
Musk’s 17-year-old space company started in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Australia. The young company’s employees did a little bit of everything. One worker’s job was to prepare the launch pad and help integrate the rocket, but he also captained the 40foot catamaran that ferried employees to and from the island where launches would occur.
The first three launches — March 2006, March 2007 and August 2008 — did not reach their intended orbit. But in September 2008, a predecessor to the Falcon 9 rocket (named for the Millennium Falcon spacecraft in “Star Wars”) became the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach Earth’s orbit.
Development continued and received some assistance from NASA, which was searching for commercial rocket companies that could deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Between 2006 and 2012, the year SpaceX sent the first private spacecraft to the space station, NASA provided technical expertise and $396 million toward developing the Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft. The Dragon was reportedly named for the “Puff the Magic Dragon” song in response to critics’ skepticism that Musk was high if he thought it could work.
SpaceX contributed $454 million as its part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services Space Act Agreement. Its first cargo contract was worth $1.6 billion, according to a NASA report on the COTS program. SpaceX would later receive a second cargo-specific contract. And it would be trusted with a more delicate haul.
In September 2014, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.6 billion contract to ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station. The government has relied on Russia to take its astronauts to and from the space station, at a cost of $82 million per seat, since the space shuttle program was shuttered in 2011.
Launching astronauts is among the most immediate future for SpaceX. On March 3, its Crew Dragon spacecraft developed to carry astronauts successfully docked with the space station, though there was no one on board during the test.
Delays just part of the race
The first launch with astronauts was, most recently, expected for this year. But a “mishap” during engine testing in April destroyed a spacecraft and could further delay the company. Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance for SpaceX, said he hopes the company can still launch astronauts in 2019.
“Yes, there will be delays,” said Scott Hubbard, adjunct professor in Stanford University’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “But I don’t expect it to keep this industry from developing.”
Commercial companies such as SpaceX are expected to take over operations closer to Earth, freeing up NASA to focus on the moon, Mars and beyond. In addition to rocket launches, SpaceX is licensed to operate more than 11,000 satellites to provide broadband internet to the Earth.
But don’t expect SpaceX to remain close to Earth. Musk first unveiled plans in 2016 to eventually colonize Mars.
To get there, SpaceX launched the world’s most powerful operational rocket in February 2018 — the Falcon Heavy, which also carried a cherry-red Tesla Roadster into space. It’s now developing an even more powerful spacecraft and rocket combination, the Starship and Super Heavy Rocket, that’s expected to surpass NASA’s Saturn V rocket used to take astronauts to the moon.
SpaceX is developing and testing an early Starship prototype at Boca Chica beach near Brownsville. The test vehicle has completed several milestones, including its first tethered hop in April where it lifted slightly off the ground.
Going to the moon
And while the Starship and Super Heavy Rocket are ultimately destined for Mars, the company’s more immediate destination will be the moon. Musk announced in September that Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa would fly around the moon during a weeklong journey in 2023. And he’ll be taking six to eight artists to capture the beauty.
“Humanity landing on the moon, man, that was maybe the greatest thing ever,” Musk said at a news conference earlier this year, according to the Atlantic magazine.
“I hope we go back to the moon soon,” he said. “We should have a base on the moon, like a permanently occupied human base on the moon. And send people to Mars, and build a city on Mars. That’s what we should do.”