SpaceX's manned Dragon spacecraft was successfully launched! "Send 1 million people to Mars", can Musk's boast come true?

Latest update time：2020-06-01

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According to CCTV News, at 15:24 local time on May 30 ( 3:22 am Beijing time on May 31 ), the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying two American astronauts was successfully launched and flew to the International Space Station on a "Falcon 9" rocket.

The launch was originally scheduled for the 27th local time, but due to weather conditions and concerns about lightning, the launch was canceled at the last minute and rescheduled to this launch time. NASA said earlier on the 29th that the probability of launching at this time was 50%. According to US media reports, the weather conditions before the launch that day were "good". This is the first time since 2011 that the United States has used domestic rockets and spacecraft to send astronauts to the space station from its home country.

In fact, SpaceX's ambitions go far beyond this. The company is currently developing a new giant rocket called Starship, which may one day take humans to deep space such as the moon and Mars.

The company's first manned space launch in 18 years

In the early morning of May 31st, Beijing time, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was launched from the 39A launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), sending SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft into orbit.

Image credit: NASA

After the first stage of separation was completed, there was thunderous applause!

Image credit: NASA

This mission, code-named Demo-2, is the final test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, used to verify the operational capabilities of the manned space system developed in cooperation with NASA, including the launch pad, rocket, spacecraft, etc.

Image credit: NASA

About 10 minutes later, Falcon 9 also landed after completing its mission. This was the first time SpaceX had sent humans into space in its 18 years of existence !

It will take NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley about 19 hours to reach the space station, at 10:29 a.m. Eastern Time on May 31 (10:29 p.m. Beijing Time on May 31), where they will stay for 1 to 4 months.

Image credit: NASA

This is a launch of extraordinary significance for both NASA and SpaceX. It is the first manned space launch mission carried out from the United States since the retirement of NASA's space shuttle in 2011, marking the United States' restoration of its ability to send humans into space.

Public data shows that the golden age of manned space flight in the United States was from 1972 to 2011. The 1990s was the heyday of the space shuttle.

But later, accidents occurred frequently and the space shuttle gradually withdrew from the stage of history. In the manned space crashes around the world, a total of 22 astronauts were killed, of which 14 were on the US space shuttle, accounting for as much as 63%!

For NASA, there have been two fatal space shuttle accidents - Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.

After the disintegration of Columbia, NASA had to consider entering a post-space shuttle era, and private companies began to enter the field of manned space flight.

Plan to send 1 million people to Mars

Today, SpaceX has 7,000 employees and a long list of accomplishments: it was the first private entity to launch a satellite into Earth orbit, the first to utilize a major component of a reentering rocket, and the first to launch a spacecraft to connect with an orbiting international laboratory.

According to Sina Technology, although the prototype of SpaceX's first "Starship" has not yet been built, its CEO Elon Musk (who is also the CEO of Tesla) has already made grand plans, including sending humans to Mars.

Musk said in January that SpaceX has the ability to send 1 million people to Mars by 2050. He set a goal of building 100 interstellar spacecraft each year, sending about 100,000 people from Earth to Mars whenever the orbits of Earth and Mars are synchronized.

Musk (Photo source: Visual China)

Of course, there are many obstacles between this bold vision and reality, but for SpaceX, today's success is a step in the right direction.

Industry: SpaceX may be more valuable than Tesla in the future

According to the Securities Times, Musk is the largest shareholder of both SpaceX and Tesla. He owns about 54% of SpaceX's shares and more than 20% of Tesla's shares.

Tesla's latest market value is currently $154.8 billion, and its cumulative increase this year has reached 99.6%, doubling. According to Sharespost, SpaceX's valuation has risen from $10.1 billion in 2015 to $33.3 billion in 2019. However, the industry believes that SpaceX's development prospects may make it more valuable than Tesla in the future.

In 2018, SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon Heavy, the world's largest rocket, for the first time, entering the global commercial launch market. According to FAA statistics, SpaceX's market share in the global commercial rocket launch market has increased from 13% in 2013 to 52% in 2018.

In the more than ten years since its establishment, SpaceX has greatly reduced the cost of rocket launches. Currently, the launch price of the Falcon 9 rocket is only 30% of that of its main competitor, the Ariane V. SpaceX deploys its Starlink program at a rate of 60 satellite launches every 2 to 3 weeks, and is expected to become the world's largest satellite Internet operator by the end of 2020.

Since 2000, Goldman Sachs estimates that $13.3 billion has been invested in new space startups, and Morgan Stanley believes that by around 2040, the “space industry” could grow to more than $1 trillion.

The commercial success of SpaceX has attracted global startups, including Blue Origin (invested by Amazon founder Bezos), to join the commercial rocket market. A number of excellent private rocket manufacturing companies have also emerged in China, including Blue Origin, Interstellar Glory, OneSpace, and Deep Blue Aerospace.

Among them, Interstellar Glory's Hyperbola 1 has been successfully launched into orbit, and Blue Arrow Aerospace's Magpie engine (80t thrust) has successfully completed a 100% thrust 100-second test run. The rapidly developing Chinese low-orbit small satellite and micro-nano constellation market may become the first blue ocean for these companies.

Source: Daily Economic News