SpaceX

About

SpaceX is an American aerospace manufacturer founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing the cost of transportation through space for the purpose of colonizing the planet Mars.

History

As early as 2001, Musk began conceptualizing a project to work towards colonization Mars by growing plants in greenhouses on the planet. After attempting to buy cheap rockets from Russia, Musk began plans to build his own rockets after determining that the cost to do so would only be a fraction of the price to purchase one prebuilt. On May 6th, 2002, Musk founded SpaceX^[1] in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. On September 28th, 2008, SpaceX became the first privately-funded company to send a liquid-fueled rocket into Earth's orbit with the Falcon 1. On December 9th, 2010, the company was able to send the Falcon 9 into orbit and subsequently recover the spacecraft. On May 25th, 2012, SpaceX sent a spacecraft to the International Space Station.

Falcon 9 Rocket Landing

On December 22nd, 2015, SpaceX successfully landed a rocket used for an orbital launch in history. A video of the landing was subsequently uploaded to YouTube, where it gained over 2.7 million views and 2,600 comments within one week (shown below).

Falcon Heavy Launch

On February 6th, 2018, SpaceX successfully launched their Falcon Heavy reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle. That day, the company streamed the launch on their official YouTube channel (shown below, left). Additionally, the channel streamed live footage from the vehicle from several different angles (shown below, right). Within 24 hours, the videos received 14 million & 10 million views respectively and reached number 1 on YouTube's trending section.

Meanwhile, Musk tweeted video footage from the vehicle, showing a mannequin dressed in a space suit driving a Tesla Roadster inside the Falcon Heavy (shown below). Hours after the launch, Musk expressed enthusiasm for a "new space race."^[5]

On February 7th, Redditor anemik submitted an image macro featuring a photo of the Tesla Roadster aboard the rocket above a picture of David Bowie in the 2006 mystery thriller film The Prestige to /r/funny^[2] (shown below, left). Meanwhile, Redditor 99999fives submitted a photoshopped Elon Musk tweet in which he writes "Hold up what the fuck?" in reaction to a picture showing that the Earth is flat, followed by the Illuminati replying "Delete your account" to /r/dankmemes^[3] (shown below, right).

That evening, a Twitter Moments^[4] page titled "Did Elon Musk just shut down the Flat Earth conspiracy" was created, which highlighted tweets of people mocking the flat Earth theory. Meanwhile, two posts about the launch were submitted to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[9][10] In the coming days, other humorous image macros using photos of the Spaceman dummy in the Tesla Roadster circulated online (shown below).

First Passenger

On September 13th, 2018, the official SpaceX Twitter^[12] account announced that they had signed up their "first private passenger" for a trip to space. They wrote, "SpaceX has signed the world’s first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle--an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space. Find out who’s flying and why on Monday, September 17." The tweet (shown below) received more than 18,000 retweets and 66,000 likes in 24 hours.

SpaceX-founder Elon Musk fueled speculation as to who the mysterious passenger would be by tweeting^[15] an emoji of a Japanese flag. The tweet (shown below, left) received more than 300 retweets and 1,700 likes in 24 hours.

While many, were excited about the announcement, some mocked the tweet for stating that "everyday people" would have access to space flight, implying that there were no other barriers, such as price, preventing them. Twitter^[13] user @aaw286 tweeted (shown below, center), "Everyday people?"

Others joked that they were the one who would be the passenger. YouTuber Dolan Dark tweeted,^[14] "Its me." The tweet (shown below, right) received more than 50 retweets and 3,100 likes in 24 hours.

Online Presence

On July 30th, 2008, the SpaceX YouTube^[7] channel was launched. Over the next decade, the channel garnered more than 143 million video views and 1.2 subscribers. In April 2009, the @spacex^[6] Twitter was created, which gathered upwards of 6.23 million followers over the next nine years. On December 7th, the official SpaceX Facebook^[8] page was launched, accumulating more than 2.4 million likes within nine years. On August 22nd, 2011, the /r/spacex subreddit was created for discussions about the company. Over the next seven years, the community gained over 212,000 readers.

Search Interest

External References