Frontiers of Space Exploration with Elon Musk

by: Jessica Joe | February 06 2021

Space exploration is an exciting new frontier that pushes the leading edge of modern science and human advancement and can’t be properly discussed without mentioning Elon Musk, founder of the revolutionary SpaceX and Tesla Motors company.

Musk is a South African born businessman whose mission is to make space exploration more common and plans to launch a first all-civilian orbital spaceflight later this year.

The Enterprising Space Engineer recently became the richest man in the world, with a net worth around $188billion and describes himself as, “an engineer and entrepreneur who builds and operates companies to solve environmental, social and economic challenges.”

The company plans to build greenhouses on Mars and even establish a Mars colony by 2026-- that's 7 years earlier than Nasa’s plans to even visit the red planet.

Musk believes it is vital that humans become, “Multi- planetary” and Martian landings for this expedition would operate every two years. Elon has even stated that he is comfortable enough with the missions to possibly consider sending his own children up to the established Mars colonies after the 4th or 5th successful manned trip.

And its not completely SpaceX on its own pursuing these wild endeavors, according to Miles O’ Brien(an independent American broadcast news journalist specializing in science, technology and aerospace), SpaceX has a history of collaboration with NASA as well.

“...SpaceX already had its nose in the NASA tent,” stated the national science correspondent,

“It began flying cargo to the space station using the Falcon 9 Dragon design. It's done that 21 times, with one failure.”

“And, meanwhile, SpaceX rockets now dominate the commercial launch business, validating this public-private partnership(With NASA). In all,(SpaceX’s) Falcon 9 rockets have successfully flown to space more than 80 times.”

But things haven’t always gone totally smoothly for the visionary entrepreneur of SpaceX.

Musk’s recent Starship spacecraft prototype, a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo to Mars and beyond, was scheduled for a test flight, launched in Cameron County, Texas on February 2nd and unfortunately ended in an RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly), leaving Musk with more revision work for the super craft that is designed to carry an impressive 100 metric tons and is projected to be, “The most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.” (SpaceX.com)

Getting off the planet is one thing in and of itself but exploring the moon, the stars, and establishing a colony on Mars will be a whole other exciting and challenging task to tackle as Elon keeps his vision toward the stars and acknowledges that the arduous space frontier will be, “a hard place” to navigate.