SpaceX, the Future Transportation of Space By Elang Amurwabhumi, Year 6, Sekolah Cikal

In 1957, humans started to conduct space exploration when the union of soviet socialist republics launched sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. Space is also dangerous. More than 20 astronauts have died doing their job. That hasn’t stopped people from signing up and blasting off. NASA’s shuttle program has ended, but private companies are readying their own space programs. One of the biggest private aerospace companies is SpaceX, SpaceX is a new way of space transportation, the company is in Hawthorne, California that was founded on March 14, 2002, by Elon Musk. Elon Musk approached a rocket engineer named Tom Mueller then Tom Mueller agreed to work for Elon Musk, and thus SpaceX was born.

SpaceX scored its first big headline in 2010 because of doing something no other company has done before which is launching a payload into orbit and the payload returning to earth intact. SpaceX currently manufactures and operates a series of reusable rockets named Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon and Starship. The most powerful launch vehicle ever and it’s called a “starship”, the starship is capable of carrying 100 people and is planned to carry them to Mars. In May 2021 the latest prototype with the serial number 15 launched to a high altitude and landed successfully.

“It is a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work.”

- Elon Musk -

SpaceX was certified by NASA for crew transportation in November 2020, and currently, its third crew rotation mission for the agency is in orbit. NASA announced on Friday that it had awarded a contract to SpaceX for .9 billion to use Starship to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon. The contract extends NASA's trend of relying on private companies to ferry people, cargo and robotic explorers to space. Nasa is the key partner for SpaceX.

SpaceX has a huge potential in the future, and there are many partnership opportunities open to other countries to invest and develop aerospace technology, including Indonesia. On May 15, 2022, Jokowi and Elon Musk meet in Boca Chica, America to discuss further planning for a partnership with Indonesia in the future.

The future of space travel for humans is close to reality. One of the biggest aerospace companies that focuses on building and doing business in commercial spaceflight is SpaceX. The goal of SpaceX is to reduce space transportation costs, revolutionising the aerospace industry and inhabit Mars, in order to achieve this goal SpaceX is collaborating with Nasa. In my opinion, I think this project can do something good for everyone because it can contribute to advancement in aerospace technology, new inventions in science and technology, and broader human exploration of space.

On May 15, 2022, Jokowi and Elon Musk met in Boca Chica, America to discuss the production of SpaceX rockets and future partnership with Indonesia.