Banter between heavyweights in the aerospace sector always calls for a ringside seat and Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s jibe at Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk has turned out to be what could be an entertaining slugfest.
Talking recently at a Politico Space Forum, Muilenburg commented that though the aerospace titan of a company does not have any plans to launch cars of its own into space, it “might pick up the one out there and bring it back.”
The car he referred to was the red Tesla Roadster that was launched into space by SpaceX on its Falcon Heavy rocket - the most powerful operational rocket in the world.
Boeing is competing with Tesla in the same space. The aviation giant is working on an experimental reusable rocket called the Phantom Express in collaboration with the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Phantom Express will be able to launch small satellites into orbit. And more recently, Boeing has announced an investment in UK’s Reaction Engine company that is developing an engine capable of flying at Mach 25 in space.
Besides these, both the companies are competing in various fields which include, human capsules for space, travel to the ISS and Mars exploration, among other things.
The Falcon Heavy’s launch is a significant push in passenger spaceflight. What makes the move special is the pricing. Elon Musk, the brains behind the project, has said that it cost him $90 million to launch the rocket.
That's lower than the US $109 million price tag for the launch of the Atlas V rocket. It's also a significant saving versus the US$400 million per launch price tag of the Delta IV.
This move could energise the industry and make passenger spaceflight a possibility sooner than we think. According to a piece in Time, the heavy-lift boosters are technology you can use not just to get to Earth orbit, but to get out of it too, pressing on to deep-space destinations like the moon and Mars.
Earlier, SpaceX's webcast showed Musk's Tesla roadster soaring into space, as David Bowie's "Space Oddity" played in the background -- with the words "DON'T PANIC" visible on the dashboard, in an apparent nod to the sci-fi series the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
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