Democratizing Space – SpaceX Takes Up Blue Origin Challenge

December 2, 2015- It’s more than a rumor that SpaceX has decided, in its upcoming Falcon 9 rocket launch scheduled for mid-December, to attempt another controlled landing of the first stage. But this time not on a floating barge off the Florida coast, but on a pad at the Cape Canaveral launch site. This comes just after Blue Origin demonstrated on November 23rd its capability of launching a rocket to a height of 100 kilometers (62 miles) and returning it to Earth in a controlled landing ready for reuse.

SpaceX has tried to bring its Falcon 9 rockets back to controlled water landings using a barge as the receiving platform. These have all failed and SpaceX has attributed some of its failures to choppy seas. So it appears based on a NASA leak that the company, as early as its next flight, or the one right after, is going to dispense with offshore landing attempts and go for broke returning to solid ground at the Cape.

The race between SpaceX and Blue Origin represents the next step in our species efforts to make space more accessible and affordable. Government and consortia have dominated to-date. The tight regulation plus formidable costs have imposed a barrier to entry. But not anymore with commercial operators winning government contracts to give them a kick start in the business. NASA has fueled much of this private launch business by making launch to low-Earth orbit the domain of commercial carriers. But the commercial companies don’t see low-Earth orbit as their ultimate destination. They are looking well beyond Earth with SpaceX’s founder, Elon Musk, talking about colonizing Mars.

Democratizing space has come with cubesats that piggyback on commercial launches. But costs remain high when each launch vehicle is destroyed. Blue Origin and SpaceX intend to end this expensive practice once and for all making getting to space no more expensive than flying a commercial passenger jet.