For the most part, people are familiar with the idea of space travel, however for some, simply making it to space is no longer enough. Over the last few years we’ve seen the rise of many private commercial spaceflight companies, like Virgin Galactic, who aim to take people on leisure trips into outer space. For many of us, that would be fine, but not to Telsa & SpaceX CEO and founder, Elon Musk.
Elon Musk has a somewhat different idea in mind for SpaceX, which is to put people on Mars. For a long time SpaceX, has been leading the world in the “occupy Mars” movement, with it’s most prominent and promising rocket, the Falcon 9.
Unfortunately for SpaceX, the Falcon 9 exploded while undergoing a static fire test on September 1st, 2016. Totaling both the Falcon 9 as well as Facebook’s Amos-6 satellite in which it was carrying, a roughly 260 million dollar mistake. The Falcon 9 is expected to be ready to launch again by November, only slightly setting off their schedule. However, Jeff Bezos just announced that his company, Blue Origin, will be building a new rocket, The New Glenn. Which may put them ahead of SpaceX in terms of putting people on Mars, ushering in a new “space race.”
The New Glenn rocket has been on the drawing boards for over four years, and is just now ready to go into production. It towers over The Falcon 9 in size and has double the thrust at lift off, and with The New Glenn’s single-stage rocket, capable of reaching low earth orbit, the Falcon 9 is nothing but a shadow of the new Blue Origins rocket. On the other hand, The Falcon Heavy, which is essentially three Falcon 9’s bundled into one, provides us with an interesting race, as it has the more thrust, but lacks the height and girth of The New Glenn.
Despite this, neither the Falcon 9 nor The New Glenn are anywhere near capable of sending a landing party to Mars. They are simply the beginning of what is to come over the next few years as the technology develops. However, in the meantime, they will help provide the funding to get there. At the end of the day both SpaceX and Blue Origin are just trying to turn a profit, which means commercials flights to space. That means whoever can provide the safest flight to space, with the biggest payload will ultimately take a the lead in the new space race, landing them one step closer to putting life on the big red planet.
