NASA and SpaceX have successfully launched the first crewed Falcon 9 with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station! This is the first time since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 that astronauts have been launched from U.S. soil. Until now, NASA has relied...
SpaceX has successfully launched their new Falcon Heavy rocket! This was the massive rocket’s first test launch, and Elon Musk had given it a 50/50 chance of blowing up. But the launch was literally picture perfect, and rocket succeeded not only in delivering its cargo into orbit, but also managed...
On Friday, December 22nd, 2017, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenburg Air Force base, near Los Angeles, at around about 5:30 PST (around sunset). This was nothing unusual, but what was usual was the atmospheric conditions, and the fact that the rocket’s contrail caught the sunlight at a...
SpaceX has just launched its 12th resupply mission to the International Space Station, and has succeeded in its second landing of its stage 1 one Falcon 9 rocket on solid ground (instead of a barge at sea)! This is great news, as the better they get at landing their rockets...
SpaceX has become more and more successful at landing their first stage rockets, and Elon Musk says it is for reusability, which will save money in the long run and allow for quicker turn-around on launches. Sure, but, maybe there’s another reason, too. Elon Musk has become increasing vocal about...
Tony Stark Elon Musk has announced SpaceX’s big plans for getting a human colony set up on Mars, perhaps sometime mid-century or so if everything pans out. That’s some pretty big ambitions, and it’s risky too, but ambition and risk are two things humanity must have in abundance if we...
I recently came across an interesting infographic comparing real-life eccentric billionaire Elon Musk to the not-so-real-life eccentric billionaire Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) of Marvel Comics fame. I always knew they seemed similar, but the parallels are actually pretty amazing. The only real difference is that Elon Musk doesn’t have...
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX has its ambitious sights set on Mars — and has since the beginning. “The reason SpaceX was created was to accelerate development of rocket technology, all for the goal of establishing a self-sustaining, permanent base on Mars,” he revealed at the International Space Development Conference. Elon...
60 minutes recently interviewed Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla Motors (and PayPal, before he sold it). Pretty interesting stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0WFSDmFgw
The year 2012 marked the first achievement for private space ventures with SpaceX’s docking of their Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station (which they in fact did twice). This year (2013), private companies like SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, XCOR, and Virgin Galactic are gearing up to make even greater...
