Recently, everyone's attention has been drawn to Elon Musk, and his experiment with sending his car into space, apparently never to return. Hailed as a groundbreaking development, this could finally pave the way for Commercial Space Flight. But how soon is this happening, and is there really anything to get excited about. The answer is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no.

The launch

How does this particular flight differ from all the other flights launched in the past several decades? First off, the Falcon Heavy is currently the most powerful rocket in the world, capable of sending a fully-loaded passenger plane into orbit.

The second important factor is that SpaceX, the company that sent the Falcon Heavy into space, along with Elon Musk's car, is a private company, owned by Musk himself. Finally, the rocket boosters used in the mission are reusable and less expensive than most other rockets, which may make future efforts significantly easier.

Though potentially paving the way for chartered space flights, it will be a long time before the average Joe can fly to the moon for a family vacation, since, according to Al Jazeera, the first flights are currently priced at $90 million. Also, the unmanned flight, originally intended to land on Mars, has veered off course and is now headed towards the asteroid belt. This doesn't seem to concern Musk or his fellow scientists, since, according to Vice News, the crew admitted there was a very minimal chance the Falcon Heavy would land on Mars anyway.

It seemed Mars was more of a pipe dream than a legitimate goal.

The implications

The implications of this launch are interesting. Aside from being one step closer to science fiction levels of commercial space flight, it is also one more notch in the belt of SpaceX, which plans to continue its operations regarding space exploration, albeit at a slower pace.

Its next launch will be that of a NASA Falcon 9, for a scheduled mission on March 20, according to Al Jazeera. Though the success of the mission created some hugely promising possibilities, it isn't likely that a space travel revolution is going to happen anytime soon, since this flight was technically only a test, and more research and experimentation is definitely going to be necessary before any more major attempts are made at launching large objects into space. That being said, humanity could very definitely be on the path towards greater things.
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