SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft

 The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.
-About SpaceX

If you like science fiction books, shows and movies then you’ve probably dreamed of the day that you would be able to sit within an exquisite ship with a sleek outer design, flat screen control panels, comfortable seats and vertical landing. Perhaps now those thoughts which have seemed to be far off visions of dreamers may finally be possible for humanity. The private space company SpaceX has recently unveiled their Dragon V2spaceship, a craft which promises to be those exact things!

Elon Musk shows us the control panel of SpaceX’s new Dragon V2 spaceship.

Solving many of the common problems which make space travel expensive and difficult is the name of the game for SpaceX. Since the advent of space travel crafts have used massive rockets to enter space which are burned and dropped into the ocean, though the craft makes it into space tens of millions of dollars are literally abandoned in the atmosphere and bottom of the sea. Many crafts coming back from space to Earth have either been rendered unusable or require part replacement while few are capable of being relaunched.

SpaceX’s Grasshopper is the largest rocket-powered Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) prototype being tested with the aim of preventing re-entry burn-up and also being able to land itself safely on the ground. This would mean saving millions of dollars on having to build a new rocket and only having to spend money to refuel the rocket! The Dragon V2 is a craft designed to sidestep re-entry problems with it’s new heat shields and SuperDraco thrusters which would allow the ship to land with pinpoint accuracy ‘like a helicopter‘ anywhere on the planet. With these two innovative ideas combined space travel becomes highly inexpensive and far more accessible to humanity.

All of the innovations that SpaceX is making seems to truly point to upholding the goal of making space travel more accessible. The company has already helped to make multiple NASA missions possible and is contesting against companies like Boeing to be one of the main contractors of spacecraft to NASA. With these advents the future seems positive for SpaceX and may come to mean even more for all of humanity.