In the 1960s America and the Soviet Union competed to establish dominance in space known colloquially as the space race this saga was responsible for many milestones including the first animal in space the first human in space and the first human on the moon but since then state-sponsored space travel has fallen from prominence and private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have filled the gap today we're answering the question what is SpaceX SpaceX is the innovative and ambitious private aerospace manufacturer founded in 2002 by Elon Musk in 2017 the company boldly went where no aerospace startup has gone before posting 18 successful launches twice as many as in the previous year on behalf of companies in five countries as well as the Air Force NASA and the top-secret US National Reconnaissance Office Elon Musk the eccentric and diverse billionaire initially founded the company because he thought that space travel was unnecessarily expensive he thought that if he could successfully reduce transportation costs he could begin to build a permanent population on Mars one of the key selling points of SpaceX is flights is that many of the Rockets component parts can be reused thus saving ample resources and money in 2017 alone SpaceX delivered 48 satellites into orbit and 20 2,700 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station but now holds more than 60% of the global share of commercial launch contracts but SpaceX truly earned its place among the aeronautical elite and changed the economics of spaceflight by making its reusable rocket systems seemingly as reliable as the Sun Rise throughout the year it landed eight rockets on the ocean based drone platforms and sent three refurbished ones right back into the skies Elon Musk claims he is making progress on his plan to colonize Mars and save humanity from some eventual extinction event before the advent of SpaceX public interest in space travel had been plummeting as it stands the last manned mission to the moon was 48 years ago in 1972 it seems that after achieving this stellar milestone many people were no longer impressed with extraterrestrial for funding for NASA was slashed dramatically every year meaning that they were much more limited in how much they could accomplish Elon Musk's or an opportunity and after his successes with companies like Tesla and PayPal he had both the knowledge and the capital to pursue his dream of intergalactic inhabitation but the beginnings of this company were extremely humble masks first action was to fly to Russia and buy a refurbished intercontinental ballistic missile at the time he wasn't even sure he wanted a space company rather he wanted to put on a spectacle that would inspire NASA to get more funding he wanted to send plants or small mammals to Mars and bring them back just to prove it was possible but the meeting in Moscow went sour and musk realized he could build his own rocket for much cheaper than buying a secondhand Russian rocket however the ambitious individual musk hoped to reach Mars by 2010 but by that time he had only successfully gotten one rocket into orbit this was the Falcon 9 rocket an early iteration of a design that has persisted for the length of SpaceX's existence what really made the Falcon 9 special was that after its payload was in orbit the first-stage boosters would detach and fall back to earth where they could be recovered either on land or at sea by 2018 SpaceX had released the block 5 Falcon 9 which could be used more than 100 times without needing to be replaced thus saving costs immensely on November 11 2019 a single Falcon 9 successfully launched and landed for the fourth time a first but orbital rockets and flew using a recycled nose cone for the first time this is in addition to the dragon rocket which was the first commercial spacecraft to be recovered after reaching orbit the dragon program will bring people and supplies to the International Space Station but suffered a major disaster when an unmanned rocket exploded during a ground test however musk and the team at SpaceX are not discouraged and intend to get a manned flight in the air sometime in 2020 and then there's the Falcon Heavy this is the rocket which musk believes will someday shuttle people and supplies to and from Mars in 2018 as part of a publicity stunt the Falcon Heavy carried musk red Tesla Roadster as a payload the car which was playing David Bowie's Space Oddity will hopefully reach Mars and fall into orbit where it would likely stay for billions of years with 27 engines the Falcon Heavy is capable of lifting 140,000 pounds into low-earth orbit that makes it the most powerful rocket on Earth viable for launching heavy satellites and future space stations into orbit it has twice the towing capacity of any other rocket in use today this powerful vehicle could open up entirely new types of business for SpaceX launching heavy national security satellites or even sending large modules or people into deep space according to the verge the Falcon Heavy is a viable option for ferrying cargo to Mars so what exactly is SpaceX is timeline for building a permanent habitation on Mars and how does it compare to other agencies many plans for a Mars settlement expect the community in a matter of decades the United Arab Emirates aims for a city of six hundred thousand by 2117 astrobiologist Luis Darnell says that while the first human mission to land on Mars will likely take place in the next two decades it will probably be more like 50 to 100 years before substantial numbers of people have moved to Mars to live in self-sustaining towns. SpaceX is aiming for a much faster timeframe with a series of 10 launches to start a city by 2050 maskers said that the spaceship is the hardest part of the system to get right so that's where SpaceX is focusing most of its energy to that end the company is building a factory in the Port of Los Angeles about 15 miles south of SpaceX is headquarters while that facilities constructed engineers are working under a nearby 20,000 square foot tent to build a prototype spaceship out of advanced carbon fiber materials SpaceX is also meeting with NASA and other parties to workshop its Mars mission plans though it still has a lot of work to do to figure out how to keep passengers safe from radiation starvation and themselves as the United States holds its next presidential election SpaceX will be working on the next stage of starship tests this year's tests cover the booster as well as high altitude high velocity flights the team is expected to conduct an um of test flights before actually placing anyone on board an orbital starship could make its flight debut at this time musk said his aspirational timeline for the launch of the first big Falcon spaceship missions to Mars is 2022 each ship would first Phi into orbit around Earth which would use up most of its fuel then several other tanker spaceships would launch to fill the vehicle with enough fuel to reach Mars it's uncertain how many flights or how long this might take Mars and Earth get close to each other about once every two years creating windows of time when it's quicker to reach the planet because of that the best months the launch would be the summer of 2022 for its very first Mars missions. SpaceX will land at least two cargo ships on the Red Planet before sending any humans there those cargo missions would bring supplies such as life-support systems and power generators that the first astronauts on Mars will need when they set up camp the first Mars mission will also be tasked with confirming the presence of natural resources that can provide fuel for future two-way missions to the Red Planet SpaceX wants to use water ice from the planet's surface and carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere to refuel starships on Mars enabling the Rockets to return to Earth the first humans will also likely have to use solar-powered hydroponics to feed their plants and grow more food musk said in an interview that the technology which allows plants to grow without soil is already in use on earth and the same techniques could immediately apply to the Mars colony in September 2019 musk introduced the world to SpaceX his first space tourists hopeful Yasu kumazawa a Japanese billionaire who is paying SpaceX an undisclosed sum likely hundreds of millions of dollars to be the first passenger aboard the spaceship Nizwa purchased all seats on the vehicle spaceship and plans to pick six to eight artists from a variety of disciplines to take the roughly week-long trip around the moon with him in 2023 that mission would be the ultimate proof that the system works he is paying a lot of money that would help with the ship in its booster musk said in September 2019 he's ultimately paying for the average citizen to travel to other planets experts say starship is within the realm of the possible without acquiring impossible physics or unlikely technological leaps indeed starship employs ideas that were studied decades ago but never built the biggest innovation perhaps is that SpaceX and Mr. musk have applied the accelerated research and development approach of Silicon Valley building fast and fixing failures quickly as with the first uncrewed missions to Mars it could take perhaps six to nine months for crewed ships to reach the Red Planet these first spaceships would most likely serve as homes for astronauts musk said in August 2019 it wouldn't be the most comfortable setup but it might reduce mission complexity by eliminating the need to immediately build Mars habitats so it seems likely that SpaceX will send materials and people to Mars in the next decade at least but who is the mysterious man behind the company Elon Musk was born on the 28th of June 1971 in Pretoria South Africa from the Canadian may Handyman and the South African Air all masks mask was fascinated by science fiction and computers in his adolescent years when he was 12 he wrote the code for his own video game and actually sold it to a company in his late teens he emigrated to Canada in order to avoid the required military service for white males in South Africa thanks to his mother's Canadian ties he was able to enroll at Queen's University in Kingston one of Ontario's top schools after graduating he moved on to the University of Pennsylvania during his time at Hugh Penn the billionaire visionary and his roommate converted their college house into a nightclub so they could make money to pay rent musk had planned on a career in business and he worked at a Canadian bank one summer as a college intern this was his only real job before he became an internet entrepreneur after he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania he earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a second bachelor's in physics a year later from there he won admission to the prestigious doctoral program at Stanford University in California where he planned to concentrate on a PhD in energy physics he moved to California just as the internet boom was starting in 1995 and he decided he wanted to be in on it too he dropped out of Stanford after just two days in order to start his first company zip2 corporation this was an online city guide aimed at the newspaper publishing business and mask was able to land contracts with both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune to provide content for their new online sites mask was just 24 when he started the company and he devoted all of his energies to see it succeed he lived in the same rented office that served as his company's headquarters sleeping on a futon couch and showering at the local YMCA which was cheaper than renting an apartment explained from there he went on to found PayPal Tesla and ultimately SpaceX all eyes will be on him and his aerospace company in the coming years to see exactly how he manages to change the world.