Soumyadipta Majumder asked: How the recent success of SpaceX missions open up new vistas for human endeavours in space?

Ajey Lele replies: SpaceX is making ‘waves’ for its significant success in the outer space arena. Led by Elon Musk, an engineer with specific vision and progressive agenda on outer space, SpaceX has achieved reasonable success mainly in space transportation. Some of its efforts are also supported by America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). SpaceX has big plans for future like colonising Mars. However, this is a very challenging experiment and it’s too early to predict its prospects.

Meanwhile, success of SpaceX is expected to attract few more business houses towards making investments in the field of space. At the same time, it is important to appreciate that no private agency is in position to afford a long-term sustained investment in this field. The progress in space arena would therefore largely depend on how much technological and financial support (read contracts) state agencies like NASA or the European Space Agency (ESA) extend to the private players.

Posted on April 01, 2016