Human curiosity about space is increasing every year, with humans sending various rockets to different planets to unravel the mystery of space and life and many more. Space is believed to be the place where the secrets of our existence can be found, or of other lives too like aliens,
there is a possibility to that. It’s obvious that the person who unravels this mystery will become powerful, in terms of resources as well as knowledge and so since decades countries have been competing in this space race to achieve that knowledge and trying to find resources which
they believe they might find in space. Recently a private company in the United States achieved this feat.
Space-x is a private American company run by Elon Musk which manufactures parts needed for aerospace exploration and also provides space transportation services. Recently space-x made history by becoming the first private company in the united states to launch humans into space. On 27th May, a rocket ship built by space x successfully launched into space carrying two NASA astronauts into orbit from the Kennedy space center in Florida. This is also marked the first launch of a crew from the united states soil since the space shuttle program ended 9 years ago. The two NASA scientists- Robert L Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley are marked their third trip to the International Space Station wearing futuristic-looking space x pressure suits and were watching the progress of the fully automated falcon 9 into space on a large
touchscreen display which was being reported to the space x fight controllers in Hawthorne, California which is their rocket factory. They docked with the ISS at 10:16 am EDT just above the china-Mongolia border. On arrival, the crew rang the station’s bell three times in maritime
tradition to signal their arrival. It’s not exactly known when they will return to earth but it’s said that there is a high possibility that they might come at the end of this month or the next month.
Human space flight is incredibly difficult and expensive. The rockets must be safe and it should have extensive life support systems and hence it becomes difficult for various nations to send rockets and hence various countries give the jobs of making parts of rockets or give them projects for launching into lower orbits and making their national space agencies to focus on deep space research. Space-x has been doing the same for NASA and has been providing the parts and allowing travel to the lower orbit at a very cheap cost. Compared to an average space shuttle mission that costs US$1.6 billion, NASA pays space-x only US$ 55 million per seat making it very cheap and saving budget for their deep space explorations. The way I see it, this relation between the public and private space sector in the US will benefit the country in future space explorations in which if they work together like this they might even achieve the feat of colonizing mars and will definitely make the United States the most powerful in
the field of space exploration.
Archit Gupta
Grade XII, Manav Rachna International School, Gurgaon
Archit is an enthusiastic and very logically oriented young man who has a keen interest in global affairs and politics. He wants to bring about change in the society by the power of science and information. He has participated and has also organized various debates related to global politics.
