14 DAY TRIAL // Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) plans to become one of the first companies in the world to be involved in moving our species to other worlds. In short, SpaceX plans to save humanity by making us a multi-planetary species.
The corporation is scheduled to launch its Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station next week, on April 30, aboard its own Falcon 9 medium-lift delivery system. This will be Dragon's second, and Falcon 9's third, flights.
If SpaceX is able to complete this flight successfully, then it will receive permission to continue operations under a $1.6 billion contract it signed with NASA. The document calls for it to complete 12 resupply flights to the ISS, Space reports.
But the company is already working on a manned version of the Dragon. In fact, the capsule was designed from the get-go in such a manner that it respects the strictest guidelines the American space agency set in place for the development of manned spacecraft.
But corporation founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has set his sights much higher than that. He plans for SpaceX to become a tool for saving our species, and humanity as a whole, from extinction.
“I think it's important that humanity become a multiplanet species. I think most people would agree that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization is inspiring and exciting compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event,” Musk said recently.
“That's really why I started SpaceX,” he added, during an interview that aired on CBS' “60 Minutes” last month. At the same time, it's important to keep in mind that the United States is currently dependent on Russia, the European Union and Japan for access to space.
However, before these plans come to fruition, it's important for the company to succeed in next week's test flights. Musk said that a successful April mission could lead to two more Dragon launches in 2012, one during the summer, and one later on in the year.
Again, depending on how the new launch goes, the other ones may be converted from test flights into actual supply runs. “We will get to the space station, whether it's on this mission or on a future one,” Musk told the media last week.
SpaceX is currently developing the Falcon Heavy rocket, which will be half as powerful as the Saturn 5 vehicle that carried the NASA Apollo missions to the Moon, but twice as powerful as any other rocket in existence today.
This asset will provide the company with the lifting power necessary to conduct long-range missions, such as one for Mars. The Dragon capsule is being outfitted with a series of components that will make landing and taking off from the Martian surface very easy.