The blossom of space technology

 Picture of starting Falcon 9 rocket over SpaceX's hangar

First, a bit of the history. Back in the XX century, during the cold war, the US and Soviet Union were competing with each other in pretty amazing way - a space race. Instead of fighting each other with troops, they fought by using all resources they could to fly to space, and later on, to get a man to the moon. In the end, the Americans were the ones to win it - in 1969 as a part of the Apollo 11 programme USA successfully landed two men on the moon - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Some time after that, the cold war, and thus the space race, ended. NASA's budget has been cut, and never lifted to this funding level again. We stopped pursuing our dreams of going to space and the moon. 

Now, almost half decade later, once again we started looking u to the sky and once again we reminded ourselves what we've always wanted - to go and be closer to those small flickering lights in the sky, and explore the universe. But this time, it's not the governmental agencies who compete in this  new "space race". It's the private companies and the private investors' capital invested, and governmental space Agencies like NASA use their service to fly resources to ISS or realize some of their research programmes. Among leading entrepreneurs in this field you have Elon Musk with his SpaceX agency, or Jeff Bezos with Blue Horizon. One other change is in the way of thinking. Goal of each of the participants is of course to be the first to the mars, which replaced the moon in the space race’s goals, but as they are commercial companies, the rules of competition apply to them - they are constantly working to improve their space transportation systems, and to be the best on the market. This enhances their results, and propels them to develop better and better technology that could fly us to the moon or mars. As a result of this, I.e. SpaceX, hence to Elon Musk’s vision and his manifesto, has so far developed a rocket which’s first stage(the one that lifts the whole vehicle off the ground, to the low orbit) can return to the Earth and be reused to fly to the sky again. This cuts the starting costs drastically, and If one day they develop a rocket capable taking humans to mars, its reusability may be essential to colonization of cosmos. 

Thanks a lot for reading, I hope you liked it, I personally am really into this topic, as I’m sort of a dreamer and those people make me dream of all amazing things that lie ahead, so I hope I interested you at least a little bit, to make you look at it closer. 😊 

There’s still a lot to write about plans for space colonization, or the advancements in terms of rocket science now, so maybe someday I’ll write something about once again, but for now, have a nice week, feel free to comment, and stay tuned for new posts.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket during takeoff

Impression of a rocket that could take humans to the moon
(SpaceX's BFR)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGYNMOa8bD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEvCNZymo
Photos:
http://www.trbimg.com/img-596fc2a1/turbine/os-bz-ap-spacex-falcon-heavy-fail-risk-20170719
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/1_great_detail.jpg
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=43851.0;attach=1450283;image