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On SpaceX's 20th birthday, fans sent a rocket explosion collection as a gift?
SpaceX's 20-year history is the best example of determination and persistence.
Thank you for never giving up, Musk!
In fact, since its inception in 2002, SpaceX's rockets have been plagued by failures.
The first three rocket explosions almost led to the bankruptcy of the newborn SpaceX, and then several failures such as pre-launch explosions, post-launch uncontrolled, landing problems, etc., even let people focus on the focus of rocket launches for a time on "will this time explode"...
But today, SpaceX has become the recognized No.1 in the commercial space sector.
Not only is it the only company in the industry that can achieve rocket recovery and reuse, creating several "multi-hand" rocket launch records, but also has the first commercial manned, the world's largest satellite operator, and even single-handedly ignited the entire commercial space field...
△ Image source Musk comment area fan P map
Just today, SpaceX's Falcon 9 successfully launched and recovered for the 12th time, sending 53 Starlink Internet satellites into the sky at a time, once again creating a new record for the number of repeatable launches of SpaceX rockets.
So, how did SpaceX go from being anonymous to reinventing the world in those 20 years?
From Falcon 1 to starship
If SpaceX is a castle in the commercial space field, then in the 20 years since its construction, falcon 1 ( Falcon 1 ), Falcon 9 ( Falcon 9 ), Dragon ( Dragon ) ( Starship ) ( Starship ) , their gradual successful launches have become very iconic.
The first is Falcon 1, which can be called the cornerstone of this castle.
Because it was the first rocket spaceX built, it was also the world's first privately funded orbital-class liquid-fueled rocket.
Falcon 1 was first successfully launched in 2008, sending 165 kilograms of virtual payload into space.
This success can be said to pave the way for SpaceX to achieve low-cost commercial rocket launches.
At the time, according to SpaceX, the thruster spent a total of about $100 million on development and testing, and the future launch cost could be around $8 million.
As for the fifth (and final) launch of Falcon 1, it was successfully launched in 2009 with a Malaysian satellite.
With the success of Falcon 1, more companies became interested in SpaceX, but their goal was to require greater carrying power.
For this reason, falcon 9 was born.
(The name jumped directly from "No. 1" to "No. 9" because the Falcon 9 was equipped with nine engines compared to the Falcon 1's 1 engine.) ）
It is a two-stage rocket that can launch a payload weighing up to 13,150 kg into low Earth orbit, and its first launch was on June 7, 2010.
However, as the number of launches gradually increased, the launch cost required by SpaceX also increased.
As a result, SpaceX began the development of the "reusable rocket stage one", which can significantly reduce the cost of launch.
By 2014, SpaceX had finally achieved a controlled sea landing on the ninth launch of The Falcon 9.
This step became the key to its future "first level of vertical recycling and reuse".
In February 2018, the heavy version of the Falcon series launch vehicle, the Falcon Heavy Rocket, successfully completed the launch mission.
It is understood that the Falcon Heavy rocket is the most active rocket in the world, and it also successfully sent a Tesla into space (although the cosmic radiation may destroy it in 1 year).
This also made SpaceX the first private company to launch an object into heliocentric orbit.
In addition to shipping cargo, SpaceX has another goal, that is, to carry people, and this project is the manned version of the Dragon.
As early as 2015, SpaceX showed the environment inside its cabin; after 4 years (2019), the manned version of the Dragon spacecraft conducted its first unmanned test flight and successfully traveled to and from the International Space Station.
A year later, in May 2020, SpaceX successfully sent two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
It also made it the first commercial company in history to implement manned spaceflight.
SpaceX has much more to do than that, though, as it launches a bigger rocket, the Starship.
The purpose is to use it for manned flights around the moon, to Mars and other space exploration.
Its simulation was originally made public on social media by Musk in 2019.
However, after many experiments, the starship prototype did not achieve the first successful recovery landing until May 2021, when the version number was iterated to SN15.
……
Today, throughout the 20 years of SpaceX's development, it has the ability to manufacture, launch, recover, and reuse launch vehicles, and can also launch manned spacecraft and satellite systems into various orbits.
In the field of commercial spaceflight, it can be regarded as a first-class existence.
So the next question is, why can SpaceX do it?
Musk: Never give up
The reason naturally has to start with the core figure of SpaceX, Musk.
In 2001, at the age of 30, Musk had just been forced to end his second entrepreneurial career , the company he had built on his own — the company he had built X.com officially changed its name to PayPal, and he was ostracized from leaving the company.
Musk, whose life and work have been frustrated, has a bigger idea in his heart: he believes that rocket spacecraft and space travel are a greater mission than designing Internet services.
This year, Musk proposed the Mars Oasis project: a plan to launch a small experimental greenhouse to Mars and grow plants.
Against this backdrop, SpaceX was born in a warehouse in California in 2002.
However, the initial development of SpaceX was not smooth, and at its worst, it even faced the risk of bankruptcy with Tesla.
After its establishment, the first dilemma SpaceX faced was a lack of money.
Musk was already a billionaire at the time, but his wealth was not worth mentioning in the aerospace sector.
Private rockets were a worthless money-burning project in the eyes of the industry at that time, so that Musk did not find any investors after several weeks of running, and finally had to invest $100 million out of his own pocket, becoming the original and only investor of SpaceX.
Musk has also tried to buy rockets directly from Russia, but returned empty-handed due to high prices.
It was then that he had an idea: Why not build a company that makes cheap rockets himself?
In the following months, Musk systematically studied various professional books such as "Principles of Rocket Propulsion", "Fundamentals of Celestial Dynamics", "Aerodynamics of Gas Turbines and Rocket Propulsion", and finally came to this conclusion:
The price of raw materials for the production of rockets was only 3% of the price of the rocket at that time.
He believes that if these rockets are reused, through vertical integration and self-production of 85% of the launch equipment and software modules, the rocket launch price can be reduced to one-tenth, and still have a gross profit margin of 70%.
Even with a talented boss with a unique vision, SpaceX's path to making "cheap rockets" is fraught with uncertainty. Musk even thought:
There is a 90% chance that the value is zero.
The idea stems from three failed launches that nearly drove SpaceX and Musk into a desperate situation:
On March 24, 2006, Falcon 1 caught fire and crashed 25 seconds after launch;
On March 15, 2007, Falcon 1 lost control, disintegrated, and finally exploded five minutes after liftoff.
On August 2, 2008, the Falcon 1 collided as the arrows separated after liftoff, and the rockets eventually crashed before they could enter orbit.
The three failures burned almost all of the company's wealth and sparked a huge public relations crisis — no investment institution and bank would trust a private space company whose launches had been repeatedly delayed and failed.
This is also the second dilemma that SpaceX faced after its establishment.
In order to pay his employees, Musk sold his sports car and other private property to borrow money from friends and family.
The most difficult time is even faced with the situation that "spaceX will not be able to pull this $4 million financing, and SpaceX will declare bankruptcy in a few hours".
But in the interview, when the moderator asked "Did you ever think about packing this in after the third failed launch," Musk shook his head almost without thinking:
Never.
In this way, on September 28, 2008, Musk and his SpaceX attempted a fourth launch.
This time, Falcon 1 soared.
This is the "first liquid-fueled rocket developed and orbited by a private company" in history, and it solved SpaceX's financial problems almost immediately.
At the end of the year, NASA directly handed over a commercial contract worth about $1.6 billion to SpaceX.
Since then, SpaceX has finally truly begun its path to reshaping the world.
One of the most dazzling achievements is the famous Falcon 9, a partially reusable two-stage in-orbit medium launch vehicle.
How?
The rocket reserves the right amount of fuel in advance so that it does not burden the fuselage, and can support the re-ignition of the rocket engine, and then rely on the precise control system to land smoothly.
This line of thinking completely abandons the traditional practice of "using aerodynamic lift to return the rocket", and directly allows the rocket to return by its own power, which can be called an amazing technological innovation.
It was this innovation that made the Falcon 9 the world's only reusable launch vehicle, having been repeated 147 times in the past 12 years.
And over the years, Musk, as a multi-tasking boss, has shown a clear "preference" for different professions on Twitter — his avatar has been this big rocket for a long time:
△ Starship spaceship
Last year, he also revealed that his current residence is a rental house of less than 40 square meters (20 inches × 20 inches) in the Boca Chica (also known as starbase) area.
SpaceX's space and launch center, the Boca Chica launch site, is exactly where the rental houses are located.
Musk is retiring on Mars
Today, Musk's "Martian dream" has almost been widely circulated.
If the Mars Oasis project in 2001 was just a prototype, he officially announced in 2007:
The ultimate goal is human exploration and Mars settlement.
Carrying his dream is SpaceX.
In the crazy "39-page Mars Plan" PPT exposed last year, the ideal Mars base depicted by Musk and the goal of humans becoming a "multi-planetary species" depend on the realization of the SpaceX rocket.
In his blockbuster speech in February this year, he once again mentioned that his consideration of the "future of life" is one of the reasons why he has been doing SpaceX.
In order to survive in the long term, humans need to know more about things other than our planet.
For example, for Mars to be self-sufficient, at least 1 million tons of supplies had to be transported from Earth.
Just below Musk's comments section celebrating SpaceX's 20th anniversary, fans have put a photo of the company's 2002 founding on the Background of Mars to remind Musk to "not forget his original intention":
And just recently, Musk gave a time point for humans to land on Mars - 2029:
Whether or not Musk can actually fulfill his famous "retirement on Mars" declaration, at least for the moment, let's wish SpaceX a happy 20th anniversary.
Reference Links:
[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/elon-musk-warning-not-first-time-spacex-has-risked-bankruptcy.html
[2]https://www.chron.com/news/space/article/elon-musk-texas-house-boca-chica-16278768.php
[3]https://twitter.com/SirineAti/status/1503327423097618434