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Right now, a red Tesla convertible roadster is orbiting our solar system’s sun. It’s been in space since February 2018, when the private company SpaceX launched its first flight of the new Falcon Heavy rocket with the car as its test payload. Launching a car into space might seem silly, but it was a major milestone in private spaceflight. For decades, space exploration was just in the hands of national space agencies. In the last few decades, however, private companies have begun to explore the value of commercial spaceflight. SpaceX is arguably the most successful of those businesses to date. In 2002, young visionary Elon Musk started the company because of his enthusiasm for space exploration. After an unsuccessful attempt at buying Russian rockets to help him send mice to Mars and back, the young multimillionaire made a surprising decision. He planned to build his own rockets at a fraction of the cost.
Musk went to Southern California and started recruiting people to help bring his vision to life. In a remarkably short time, and despite some devastating setbacks, SpaceX launched Falcon 1, the first successful privately-built liquid fuel rocket, into orbit in 2008. |