SpaceX was a company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk. This company specializes is aerospace Rockets and Manufacturing
Born in South Africa, Elon Musk made his fortune settling in Canada and creating an online company called Zip2. Zip2 was essentially an "online yellow pages" that connected local businesses to people on the Internet. The company was sold in 1998 for 307$ million giving Elon a share of over 20 million.
Shortly after earning a large amount of money in his late 20s, Elon quickly funded his new project. He had a vision of changing how the world used money. Computers only being a few years old was what he had insight. A mobile banking system that instantly put money from one person to another. This was when he created PayPal.
The Multimillion dollar company created in 2002, has worked vigorously in the past years to change Space forever.
The companies main goal right now is set for Mars. A 6 month trip to the red planet with give travelers a one way trip into starting a new colony in hopes of creating a new world.
SpaceX, in 2010, was the first private company to launch a payload into orbit and return it to Earth intact. This is something only government agencies, such as NASA and Russia’s Roscosmos, have done before.
The Falcon 9 rocket that Spacex uses has an upright landing and recovery system that was first tested and achieved on Dec. 21 2015, was another first. Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, sent a rocket to the edge of space and landed it upright earlier this year, but it was a demonstration flight and did not achieve orbit.
Roughly 80% of the parts used to make the rocket are made in the same factory which reduces the cost of outsourcing. When the Falcon 9 rocket first flew it costed $440 million, about a third of what it would have costed NASA.
SpaceX is on the verge of sending its first astronauts into space. The date is expected to be somewhere in 2018 since The company has been heavily testing its "Dragon" rocket for safety.
Since SpaceX is a private company its hard to tell wether it's profitable or not. The company has over 4.2 Billion in contracts with NASA. Experts say that the company is doing well but no one is for sure. The company is speculated to go public soon.
Google has also invested 1 Billion dollars in SpaceX, unlike amazing and Facebook investing in other rocket companies.
The goal is to colonize the planet in hopes of making it habitable for humans in the late future. When earth "is gone" humans could have a safe place to go. The challenge is starting the whole thing from scratch. The company is planning to send 100 travelers to the planet in 2026 and many more trips after.
The company, working in California and employing more than 4500, are planning on launching at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Why Mars is ideal?
Its soil contains water to extract, It isn’t too cold or too hot, There is enough sunlight to use solar panels, Gravity on Mars is 38% than of Earth's, which is believed by many to be sufficient for the human body to adapt to, It has an atmosphere that offers protection from the Suns cosmic and radiation rays, Mars day is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds, where as earth is only 24 hours.
