01 Mar A Tesla in space: Is there method in the madness?
Last week something quite special happened: the world’s most powerful space rocket was successfully launched by SpaceX, propelled by three reusable boosters and carrying with it a Tesla sports car.
That’s right, you read that correctly, the rocket’s cargo was a fully functioning automobile. And there’s more; in its driver’s seat was a dummy in an astronaut’s costume.
In case you missed this remarkable news at the time, the Falcon Heavy made a flawless ascent, with at least two of its three reusable boosters returning safely to Earth. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, was hailed as inspiring the start of the next generation of space exploration.
Regardless of how people feel about a car (Tesla or otherwise) being blasted into a brave new world, the successful launch of the Falcon Heavy is a significant event. It may be considered a publicity stunt to some, but to us, it’s a sign that SpaceX is moving closer to its eventual goal of sending people to live on Mars. Why? Because it now has a vital part of the puzzle: reusable boosters, which will be essential to overcoming their biggest challenge – cost. They’ve now eliminated the astronomical costs associated with producing boosters from scratch for every launch.
Elon has always been inspired to invent, as well as continually investing in new companies and opportunities. While his detractors belittle his achievements (a price all trailblazers have to pay), we, like many others in the engineering world, admire his mentality.
Here at Dawson Shanahan we have this same passion and inspiration to keep moving forward in our field of expertise. We are continually investing in new machinery, systems and software to further boost our precision engineering capabilities. This investment helps us broaden our offering to customers, as well as extending the range of work that we can do for them.
This mentality has earned us the opportunity to work successfully with many companies operating in aerospace. It’s a very exciting time to be involved in this area, and who knows, you may soon be looking at a news report of a rocket in space that features products manufactured by us. Stranger things have happened, like a state of the art sports car being fired into orbit.