On Sept. 1, engineering and science circles were rocked by the news that SpaceX suffered an explosion at the Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida.
In a sad turn of events, the launch wasn’t even the actual launch to space. It was only a test launch to make sure everything would go smoothly on the day of the real launch.
The goal was to launch a satellite owned jointly by Facebook and French satellite company Eutelsat to provide internet access to countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Our immediate reactions were relief that nobody was hurt and a collective eye roll at Mark Zuckerberg for making a big deal about his lost money.
The satellite on board belonged to a partnership that included Zuckerberg and his Facebook empire. He has plenty of big bills under his belt to pay for the building of a new satellite.
This explosion set SpaceX, a private aerospace firm, and many telecommunications businesses back a few steps. Even though Zuckerberg and Co. have enough money to rebuild the satellite, the real question is: do they have enough time?
It takes several years to build a satellite and a few more to get the clearance required to send that satellite into space.
Every moment that the satellite sits on Earth once it is done being built is costing their companies money.
Another company that was affected by the explosion is Spacecom, the communications satellite operator stationed in Israel that built the satellite.
After the explosion, they gave SpaceX an ultimatum: a $50 million dollar reimbursement or a free flight on a SpaceX satellite.
Spacecom lost as much as 43 percent of its stock value in the few days since the incident and are looking at a loss of $30 million in equity.
The most terrifying part about this explosion is the future of SpaceX. They have not had the best track record of getting objects into space and back in one piece.
While this is true for NASA as well, they at least had perfected their travel before considering sending humans into space in their shuttles. SpaceX is looking to send a human to Mars by 2025..
According to the New York Times, SpaceX quickly gained recognition by “promising lower costs and accelerated launch schedules.”
As we all know, you get what you paid for.
The idea of space travel with equipment that isn’t 100 percent safe should be a scary thought for anyone considering space travel.
These events definitely put a damper on the excitement of space exploration. People haven’t been too interested in or trusting of space programs ever since NASA “shut down.”
Space travel hasn’t been a complete disaster, though, with the success of the Voyager mission.
It’s intriguing to think that we are struggling to get spacecrafts off the ground as well as to land them safely when we were able to put a man on the moon in the 1960s.
Aerospace technology still has a long way to go if SpaceX is to meet its mark.
