How SpaceX has made spaceflight affordable

It is very exciting for me to talk about SpaceX. I am not only amazed by the aerospace technology, but also by all they have accomplished in such a short time. The company was founded in 2002, and in just a few years, starting in 2006, they have achieved 166 successful launches with 128 successful returns of their rocket’s first phase, and 104 total re-flights using them. As a side note, I started writing this little article on July 3rd and since then they already have launched one more mission. This is something unprecedented in space flight history. They have now surpassed the number of launches that the Space Shuttle did in its 30 years of history, which were 135 total. What is more impressive is the reduced cost of a SpaceX launch. While in 2011 the average cost of a Space Shuttle launch was $450 million dollars, the average cost of a Falcon 9 rocket is about $60 million. Much of the cost reduction has to do with the reusability of their boosters. For example, on Jun 19 of this year, the Flacon 9 Globalstar FM 15 mission launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, reusing for its 9th time a booster that was previously used to launch missions like Crew-1 and Crew-2. Most recently, on July 7th, the Starlink Mission reused for the 13th time a first-stage booster used previously in missions like Crew Demo-2 and ANASIS-II.

After each launch, the first-phase boosters are refurbished in a hangar at the Kennedy Space Center, close to where the rockets are launched. Refurbishing a rocket not only helps to reduce costs but also helps with time. It allows SpaceX to reach space on a weekly basis, rather than months. The goal is to eventually become like an airline company, offering affordable launches on a regular basis.