SpaceX is on a roll. In March, Elon Musk’s company successfully proved the entire premise of its business proposition: it could relaunch already used rockets safely, to maximise use of this extraordinarily expensive kit.
Read more: Next SpaceX launch will see rockets returning to Nasa's iconic Launch Complex-39A
This weekend, it started to look like the future business Musk had originally envisaged back in 2002, when two Falcon 9s were launched within the space of three days.
The first rocket sent the BulgariaSat-1 communications satellite into orbit on Friday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, with the booster safely returning to Musk’s Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean - just.
Musk tweeted the following as the smoke was still rising from the rocket:
He had already warned in an earlier tweet that the Falcon 9 would experience greater forces than in its virgin mission earlier in the year, saying: "Falcon 9 will experience its highest ever reentry force and heat in today's launch. Good chance rocket booster doesn't make it back.”
Two days later, over on the west coast at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, another Falcon 9 readied for liftoff with a payload of 10 Iridium communications satellites. The launch conditions were not ideal, but still it was deemed safe to proceed and the rocket re-landed safely on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship, making it SpaceX's eighth successful sea landing. The rocket was an upgraded model, however, with Musk explaining on Twitter:
When the rocket successfully touched down, he tweeted that the newer model should be able to carry out “an indefinite number of flights with no service” thanks to structural improvements. That is a massive claim, and riding off the back of a positive weekend Musk’s upbeat outlook for the company signifies the first time it has started to look more like a business on the verge of becoming a reliable, longterm commercial enterprise than a billionaire’s well-funded and researched experiment.
Musk has taken an enormous step in proving to the industry that this could be the future of affordable space business. Companies like Iridium are reliant on SpaceX to complete its constellation of 75 satellites for global mobile phone data coverage, and it will be a reminder to startups and incumbents alike that the space industry is about to become a lot more affordable.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
