The Modern Space Race: SpaceX vs NASA

Last night, SpaceX made history.

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SpaceX's Falcon 9 which was carrying important supplies for the International Space Station landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida yesterday. Once again, SpaceX recovered it's Falcon 9 rocket and now is in possession of 11 Falcon 9s.

SpaceX used Dragon cargo capsule which was used for resupply mission in a previous mission. It's the first time that the Dragon capsule has been reused for a flight, which makes SpaceX the first private space company to send a capsule up into space for the second time.

The Dragon capsule contains about 6,000 pounds of supplies and equipment for various science experiments. This includes equipment like NICER which will be mounted on the outside of the ISS and will help in looking for neutron stars. It also includes a group of Fruit Flies to check how the cardiovascular system works in micro-gravity.

In the future, the company hopes to keep re-using Dragon capsule which will help them to work on developing and producing the newer models of the capsule, called Dragon 2 or Crew Dragon. The Dragon 2 capsule is expected to carry people to the International Space Station (ISS) and back.

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With the rise of SpaceX, there have been signs of a new space-race in America. SpaceX hopes to conduct a manned mission to Mars by 2024, if all goes according to the plan. But it is still an optimistic estimate. It is safe enough to bet that unfortunately there will be a few hiccups along the way. Hey, we are optimistic. But not that optimistic...

Here's the SpaceX timeline upto 2025:

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Musk has said that less than 5% of SpaceX is working on a manned Mars mission, so it's pretty clear that right now it's not the top priority for them.

At this point, everyone is speculating about who gets to plan the American flag on Mars first, NASA or SpaceX? Or someone else? Boeing is also a new dog in the game, but it still remains to be seen what they have under their belt.

While SpaceX plans a manned mission to Mars by 2024, NASA is a bit more patient. Their timeline for a manned Mars mission stretches up to the 2030s.

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Reaching the Mars orbit is no easy feat. And when it's a manned mission, the risk is greater than ever. I don't think that anyone over at NASA or SpaceX wants their first manned flight to Mars planet to fail. Only through vigorous testing can that risk be eliminated. But there still are many elements that need to fall into place for the mission to be a success. There have been many failures and disasters in history from which we should learn. Who can forget the tragic crash of the Challenger Space Shuttle? It broke apart 73 seconds into it's flight, and still haunts some people to this day. Engineer Bob Ebeling who had warned of the risk spent the last 30 years consumed with guilt died last year.

Nobody wants something like that to happen again.

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I think that the recent tests and breakthroughs in space-crafts are bringing us one step closer to the inevitable first human landing on the Mars surface, but realistically, there are still many hundreds of steps to go until we finally reach the next giant leap for mankind.