10 facts to know about SpaceX
Ever since SpaceX was founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, winning victories, it became the first private-funded company to put a payload into orbit in 2008. Since then, the company has continued to impress, launching unmanned cargo vehicles to the International Space Station (ISS) and winning a contract. With NASA to send astronauts to the International Station, which will be as early as 2017.
Despite these successes, there were setbacks, the most disastrous in June, when a payload rocket exploded en route to the International Space Station, costing the team much-needed supplies and undermining confidence in the entire company.
But SpaceX did not give up. On December 21, the company launched a payload of satellites into orbit and successfully recovered the first phase of the Falcon 9 rocket, which landed vertically to position itself under the influence of its engine power, just 6 miles from the base. Absolutely Canaveral Cap.
The process of recovering the missiles used to be recycled again has been frequently mentioned as a way to reduce costs and speed up returns, but no one could do it until SpaceX did. There are 10 things you should know about SpaceX.
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1. Who is Elon Musk and why are they building rockets?
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Born in 1971, Musk is a South African entrepreneur with a degree in business and physics from the University of Pennsylvania, firing rockets because he kind of decided. This is a short answer, which is not much different from a long answer. Musk did not receive formal training in missiles, but he could see new markets. He made his first fortune as a founding partner of PayPal, and since then Tesla Motors and SolarCity founded a solar company
2. What did SpaceX and other companies do?
SpaceX made its first headline in the newspaper in 2010, when it became the first private company to launch a payload into orbit and bring it back to Earth intact, something it did only by government agencies such as NASA and Russia's Roskosmos. The vertical landing and restoration of the first phase of the Falcon 9 rocket on December 21, 2015 was another precedent. Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, sent a rocket to the edge of space and landed vertically early this year, but it was a show journey and did not reach orbit.
3. Are SpaceX rockets distinctive?
Progress in the missiles is gradual. The basic science of liquid-fueled missiles has not changed much since Robert Goddard's days. Solid-fuel rockets date back to ancient times. Progress is few, and the mask is doing well. Falcon is a single-engine model, Falcon 9 is not surprising that it has 9 engines, the Falcon Heavy, which has not yet flown will have 27 engines in three groups of 9 engines. This improves production in the same way that building different car bodies on similar structures helps reduce costs for car manufacturers. Approximately 80% of the parts in any of the SpaceX missiles are manufactured at the company's own plant, reducing the cost of outsourcing. This reduces the price of the load and helps control quality internally. A study by NASA and the Air Force estimated the costs from the initial design stages of the Falcon 9 to its first flight at $ 440 million, about a third of what NASA would have cost.
4. How close is SpaceX to crew flying?
Maybe so close. The company used its Dragon spacecraft to deliver a crew-free payload to the International Space Station. The Dragon is designed with compatibility for the presence of a crew, which means that the spacecraft has already proven its spaceworthiness, although it has a way to go before its life support systems are proven. SpaceX and Boeing are scheduled to begin sending crews to the International Space Station in 2017, and NASA has already identified astronauts who will fly with new spacecraft. The 2017 target and the June explosion of a SpaceX rocket during the launch could not be a good news for the company. The recent launch of the Falcon 9, even without landing the first stage in a vertical position, was a boost to confidence. But with the lives of astronauts at stake in future flights, they will have to make a series of good launches together to make up for this bad launch that exploded.
5. Where is the SpaceX mission control center?
Do you know the kitchen area in your office, the place where your coffee heats up and reheats your lunch? Well, SpaceX is headquartered in Hawthorne, California has a better kitchen. Do you know the area next to the kitchen where people gather to gossip and avoid returning to their offices? In SpaceX they use that area to fire rockets. Indeed, the sprawling SpaceX facility, a one-story industrial facility that was originally a Boeing aircraft factory. Captured by SpaceX and retooled for other purposes to be an integrated space port. Thousands of square feet are given to the booths, almost no one in SpaceX has an office with a door, including a holder. Adjacent to the factory floor and kitchen. And next to them behind a high glass wall is a mission control center. The workers gather to see the launches and preparations, and then return to their lathes, computers or offices. It is much like the Silicon Valley but in a more wonderful way.
6. How is the Dragon spacecraft?
In the 21st century imagery of the Apollo spacecraft and after the turbulent history of the space shuttle and the loss of two crew of seven crew members, SpaceX and other missile companies returned to the old model, a vertical rocket with the crew in the upper part. The Dragon spacecraft is intended for up to seven people, but will usually carry fewer than that number. Escape missiles, which are used to pull the vehicle away from the booster engine in the event of a possible fire or explosion, are not mounted above the capsule as they were in the days of Apollo and Mercury missions. Instead they were built at its base to push the capsule away rather than pulling it. This helps Dragon to achieve one of its other goals, which is reuse. The spacecraft and escape system are not simply disposed of after use but can instead be cleaned, checked and prepared for another flight.
7. Is SpaceX a profitable company?
It is difficult to say because the company is privately owned, which means its records are not open to investigation. But the belief among most analysts is that SpaceX is now making money. It has contracts with NASA alone worth 4.2 billion dollars and its recent success in dismantling Army business contracts and breaking the monopoly of the United Alliance launch with the military, which means more revenue. All this on top of its contracts for launching private satellites, with a total of 60 launches clearly about $ 7 billion. This is much for a company that relies on its sales that it can launch satellites at a cost of about a third of the cost that older companies need, thereby increasing the profit ceiling. There is a lot of speculation about when and if Mask will go to the public and there is a good chance he will go to Wall Street. SpaceX's reputation is somewhat weak, this is real, and there is no guarantee that it will make a lot of money in the long run.
8. Why are rockets still vulnerable to failure despite decades of production?
The best question is probably why they fly at all. Imagine a rocket as if it were an egg or, more specifically, the egg shell. And imagine the fuel as if it was whiteness and yolk. The Saturn V is the largest rocket ever built, weighing 6.5 million pounds. 5.5 million pounds of this was fuel. This basically looks like a bomb designed for a controlled detonation. The forces here in the scene in the rocket operating according to the principles of chemistry, physics, air velocity and resistance can be enormously destructive and by controlling them only within very narrow tolerances any launch can succeed. The SpaceX explosion in June is believed to have been caused by the wrong prop in the second stage of the rocket, which allowed a high-pressure helium container to be free-moving, causing it to crash a nearby tank containing liquid oxygen. The company described the result as an event caused by excessive pressure, which means that everything exploded. It is true that those things inevitably happen in space work. The real thing is also that you don't stay in that business if you can't reduce those risks.
9. Who are your main competitors?
Mask has a lot of key competitors. Boeing, which is building its CST-100 spacecraft to fly crews on missions to the International Space Station alongside the Dragon Mask, is a major competitor. Orbital Sciences, the company involved in the ISS contract with SpaceX. The United Launch Alliance (ULA), a partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, is at war with this alliance on some of the army's rocket launches. Richard Branson Virgin Galactic is a fringe player, planning to sell only sub-tropical flights to remote flight enthusiasts who have great financial potential. Vulcan Aerospace likewise wants to play a role in the space flight industry, but here too the actual flights are still far from being realized. Jeff Bezos Blue Origin sees itself as a big player, and the vertical landing of its spacecraft has not reached orbit and put it in the game, but this company also has a long way to go before sending actual flights to passengers or cargo.
10. What are Musk's ultimate goals?
Becoming an Apple rocket company is a way of looking at it, although Mask is opposed to this analogy without objecting to a similarly dominant role in the space sector. His biggest dream is to send people to Mars, which would only make him unusual if he could. He boasts that he could send passengers there at a cost of 500,000 dollars for the seat, but in this case he may be promising beyond his ability to investigate. The laws of economics may be too difficult to overcome than those of physics, but so far they have not cracked enough to make the trip to Mars achievable. As for Musk himself, whether he will go or not? "I would like to go into space, but I have to give up this," he told Time in 2012, referring to his five sons and multiple companies. "I have to be careful with personal risks.
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