Elon Musk’s SpaceX Announces two Launches for Late 2017

on September 19, 2015 at 11:51 am

Elon Musk has become a household name; known for his involvement in some of the most well known companies in the world. His primary baby, Tesla Motors, has been wooing us with exceptional advances in renewable energy and automobile manufacturing. He’s also been involved with solar energy company, SolarCity, which makes solar panels for the everyday consumer. Today however, we highlight a project run by Musk that makes Sci-Fi fans nerd out.

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches their own space crafts; something that used to only be done by companies like NASA which are owned by the government. Their mission is to accomplish feats in space exploration, commercialize space travel and ultimately, “enable people to live on other planets”.
On Monday, Sept. 14 2015, SpaceX announced that they’ll be launching commercial satellites with their Falcon 9 rocket and Heavy Rocket vehicles. The launches are scheduled for late 2017 and 2018 and will be launching communications satellites for HISPASAT and a Saudi Arabian Arabsat 6A communications. With these two new missions added to the manifest, SpaceX now has over 60 missions in the works and roughly $7 billion under contract.

The Falcon 9 is a two stage rocket completely designed and built in the 21st century. It has 9 merlin engines, stands at almost 230ft and is 12ft wide. The Falcon Heavy has three 9 engine cores, giving it a total of 27 engines and is dubbed the world’s most powerful rocket by SpaceX.

Author

Angel Damion Robles

Angel started writing at a young age keeping a journal since he was 12 years old. By the time he was 15 he had a binder overflowing with ideas. His senior year of high school he received a scholarship for his writing in English and an award for writing and directing a full length movie for his film club. At 19 he went to film school in LA with a focus on screenwriting where he wrote a series of shorts. He is a futurist and keeps up to date about current tech, especially automation. He is currently studying Computer Science in Berkeley and interested in writing code and working with hardware. Some interesting facts: He knows too much about Google, loves cats, and has one white cat named Nasa.