Elon Musk and the SpaceX future

SpaceX is special. This is a company that will lead the future in space. Not just the United States future in space. I mean the world.

There’s a lot of talk about whether government or private enterprise should lead in space. For all the armchair criticism, NASA has an enviable history of accomplishment—right through to the present day. Those who criticize NASA (and of course nobody is above criticism; and everyone makes mistakes) forget how difficult spaceflight is. Or pretend to.

NASA is at the end of the line as a leader in human spaceflight because the U.S. government will not make the major multi-year budgetary commitment needed to, say, send humans to an asteroid.

SpaceX splashdown

So, the theory is that private companies, allegedly efficient and ingenious and competitive, will do it better and cheaper. Oh, with the assistance of government money issued via NASA. That’s a weak theory.

In fact, both government and private enterprise have serious problems exploring space. NASA can’t get the financial commitment. And private companies can ONLY explore space insofar as they can also maximize shareholder return.

Except for companies where the founder is in charge, really wants to explore space, and has hired ingenious engineers who he frees up to do the job. That company is SpaceX and the founder is Elon Musk. Just as the competition with the Soviets and the cold war environment made it possible for NASA to get to the moon, Elon Musk makes it possible for Americans to do great things in manned spaceflight again.

I don’t believe many of the other “new space companies” have the capability or money to match SpaceX. I think many will work on the edges, providing components and services. Others will simply fail. There WILL be a space industry, and it will be somewhat vibrant. But overall, not very exciting. Like most businesses, it will be about making money.

Meanwhile, these last few days, people have been hailing the successful orbital flight and recovery of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, launched using the Falcon 9 booster. If the flight had failed, people would have just as quickly described the setback as a failure of Musk and SpaceX. They forget that everyone fails sometimes creating new things and pushing them to their limits. In any case, this time SpaceX happily succeeded.

Now, SpaceX is working to fulfill its contract to re-supply the International Space Station. And they are looking ahead to human orbital flight. But Elon Musk is looking further. I think he’s looking to loop some humans around the moon. In the past, documents on the SpaceX website talked about the Dragon/Falcon lunar capabilities. I can’t help but believe that a dramatic circumlunar flight is one of Musk’s goals.

Finally, the human race would be somewhat closer to the capabilities they’d displayed back in 1968. Personally, I can’t wait.

FOOTNOTE: Aboard the historic SpaceX orbital mission was a wheel of Le Brouere cheese. This was a small tribute to Monty Python and their famous “Cheese Shop” skit. It will also be noted that the Le Brouere flew higher than the cheese flown on another mission featured here.