T-Minus: 10 Milestones in Commercial Spaceflight
T-Minus: 10 Milestones in Commercial Spaceflight
By Kristin Houser | Published: 2024-11-02 22:06:00 | Source: The Future – Big Think
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week for free.
This is T-Minus, where Freethink tallies the biggest developments in space, from new rocket launches to discoveries that advance our understanding of the universe and our place in it. Humanity reaches new heights in space exploration. Make sure you are part of the journey Subscribe here.
SpaceX has done the seemingly impossible.
Seven minutes after blasting off to deploy the spacecraft into orbit, the company’s Super Heavy booster was back where it started, hovering vertically above the launch pad in Texas. Mechanical arms on a specially built launch tower, dubbed “Michazela,” then closed around the 233-foot-tall rocket, trapping it in the air until it could be refurbished and fly again.
Kicker? It was the first time SpaceX — or anyone for that matter — had attempted this type of rocket recovery, and its success astounded even the company’s own employees.
“This is absolute madness!” He said Kate Tice, SpaceX’s director of quality systems engineering, during the live broadcast of the event. “In the first attempt ever, we successfully recovered the super-heavy booster to the launch tower…and this is a day for the engineering history books.”
Since its founding 22 years ago, SpaceX has proven time and time again that a private aerospace company can not only match the achievements of government-funded space agencies, but in many cases, it can do so, too. more than they can, faster, and at a lower cost.
In honor of SpaceX’s remarkable Super Heavy hurdle, this month’s T-Minus takes a look at 10 major milestones in the commercial space industry — including several other SpaceX victories.
Pegasus launch (1990)
NASA and other space agencies regularly worked with private companies throughout the first decades of the Space Age, but Northrop Grumman and Orbital Sciences proved successful in the first launch of a spacecraft. Pegasus On April 5, 1990, private companies were able to develop and build the missiles themselves.
Pegasus was an air-launched solid-fuel rocket. Once launched from a carrier plane at an altitude of about 40,000 feet, it ignites its stages one by one until it reaches orbit. Pegasus’s last flight took place in 1994, but a larger configuration of the rocket, Pegasus XL, was in use until 2021, to deploy payloads for NASA and other customers.
SpaceShipOne flight into space (2004)
In 1996, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would award $10 million to the first non-governmental organization that could send a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.
California-based aerospace company Scaled Composites set out to win the prize, and on June 21, 2004, pilot Mike Melville flew his air-launched SpaceShipOne spacecraft just above the Kerman Line — the boundary that separates Earth’s atmosphere from outer space.
This made SpaceShipOne the first private, manned spacecraft in space, and by the fall of 2004, Scaled Composites would fly the spacecraft twice in five days to win the X Prize.
Falcon 1’s first orbital flight (2008)
In 2002, Elon Musk used about half of the $176 million he raised from a PayPal sale to found SpaceX with a dream of building rockets that could lower the cost of spaceflight and, eventually, send humans to Mars.
Six years later, the startup was on the verge of bankruptcy, having tried to launch its first rocket, the Falcon 1, three times, all of which ended in failure.
On September 28, 2008, SpaceX tried again, and this time, Falcon 1 has reached spaceRescuing the startup and putting SpaceX in the history books as the first private company to reach orbit with an entirely liquid-fueled rocket.
SpaceX batch recovery (2015)
The successful launch of Falcon 1 helped SpaceX secure a $1.6 billion contract from NASA, and after Falcon 1 flew again, the startup turned its attention to developing an orbital rocket with a booster that could be recovered and Reuse After launch, something that has never been done before, but it could significantly reduce the cost of spaceflight.
SpaceX successfully launched that rocket, the Falcon 9, for the first time in 2010, but didn’t begin testing its landing system until 2013. Then, on December 21, 2015, after the Falcon 9’s 20th flight, SpaceX hit the ground running. Point the booster to a vertical landing – Marking the beginning of a new era in Affordable space travel.
The first Crew Dragon astronauts (2020)
Shortly after the Falcon 9 began flying, SpaceX began using the rocket and its reusable Dragon 1 spacecraft to ferry cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA — something no private company had done before.
On May 31, 2020, SpaceX achieved a major milestone in commercial spaceflight when it launched Dragon crew The spacecraft delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station.
It was the first time a private company had flown people to the International Space Station, and it was the first crewed spaceflight from American soil since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, ending NASA’s nearly decade-long reliance on Russia for transportation to the ISS.
Inspiration4 Special Crew (2021)
In 2001, American businessman Dennis Tito paid an estimated $20 million to reach the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with trained astronauts, making him the world’s first space tourist. Over the next decade, six more will reach space in the same way.
It wasn’t until September 2021 Inspiration task 4However, we will see a crew consisting solely of ordinary citizens traveling to Earth’s orbit, where they spend about three days before landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
The crew made the trip aboard one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules, which was launched by a Falcon 9 rocket, making it the first completely Private orbital space flight.
Axiom Space’s visit to the International Space Station (2022)
Less than seven months after Inspiration4, SpaceX set another first for the commercial space industry by flying a crew of four private citizens to the International Space Station for Axiom Space’s Axiom Mission 1 mission.
Flight was made possible again thanks to the Crew Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket, and during 16 days aboard the International Space Station, the crew conducted more than two dozen research experiments in the orbiting laboratory.
“The success of this first private astronaut mission to the International Space Station is an important step in opening opportunities for space travelers and achieving NASA’s goal of enabling off-planet businesses in low Earth orbit.” He said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson next.
Landing of intuitive machines on the moon (2024)
In 1959, the Soviet space program’s Luna 2 became a satellite The first man-made object to reach the surface of the moon (Don’t call it “landing”). In the decades since, more than 30 spacecraft — all built by public space agencies — have landed on the moon. Nine will have astronauts on board.
On February 22, 2024, Texas-based space startup Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land on the moon, successfully guiding one of the Nova-C lunar landers to the lunar surface (with a little… Last minute help From experience on board).
Intuitive Machines plans to Back to the moon Again in January 2025, this time with NASA’s PRIME-1 water extraction experiment aboard the lander. If successful, this mission could help NASA return people to the Moon and, eventually, send troops to Mars.
Spacecraft soft landing (2024)
In 2005, before SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon 1, Musk was already talking about building the BFR, a “very large rocket” that could put 100 tons of payload into low Earth orbit and, eventually, transport cargo and people to Mars.
After several name changes, SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket is finally ready for test flights in 2022. It took four attempts, but on June 6, 2024, SpaceX was able to put the spacecraft into orbit and then return it to Earth with a controlled re-entry, ending with a soft landing in the Indian Ocean, putting humanity one step closer to manned Mars missions.
Polaris Dawn spacewalk (2024)
Nearly exactly three years after taking over as commander of Inspiration4, billionaire Jared Isaacman returned to space on the Polaris Dawn mission, another mission that SpaceX facilitated with an all-civilian crew.
This time, the private astronauts wore special suits designed and developed by SpaceX so they could exit the Dragon capsule and perform the first-ever private spacewalk.
“Today’s success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry and NASA’s long-term goal of building a vibrant American space economy.” chirp NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
this condition Originally published by our sister site Freethink.
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week for free.
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
