On Wednesday, SpaceX released a pretty cool promo video for its commercial crew development program. If it were any other commercial spaceflight company, I probably would have filed it under "Nice, but we've got a long way to go." But this is SpaceX, a company that is proving its launch capabilities year after year, the most recent landmark launch being the flight of the Dragon capsule last year.
But company founder Elon Musk has far loftier goals than simply putting stuff into low-Earth orbit. That's so last century. No, he wants to see SpaceX go to Mars, facilitating the expansion of mankind's influence throughout the solar system. If there's someone wanting a ride, Musk wants SpaceX to be the first company they call.
Only last week, Musk went on the record to say SpaceX was aiming to make commercial trips to the Red Planet a reality within 20 years. And after seeing Falcon 1 make its first successful foray into orbit in Sept. 2008; watching that awesome Falcon 9 thunder into space in June 2010; then the Falcon 9 carrying the Dragon capsule into a near-perfect orbital insertion in Dec. 2010; it's little wonder I'm more than just a little excited about a future with SpaceX.
Now that SpaceX has secured NASA funding and well on course to supplying (and launching astronauts to) the space station, seeing the SpaceX Dragon capsule performing a propulsive landing on Mars (using a dual purpose launch abort system no less) doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.
Video credit: SpaceX
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