Space, which many consider to be the final frontier, (excluding our oceans of which we have only explored roughly five percent) is an extremely vast region of difficult to explore area. It's not hard to figure out why we humans have not even scratched the figurative surface of the cosmos considering that once we leave our atmosphere space is a perfect vacuum. Also, the average temperature is -270 degrees Celsius, and there is no protection from deadly cosmic radiation.

Besides the obstacles we must overcome in terms of the environment of space, the fact of the matter is that it is also incredibly expensive to reach outer space, in the first place. Current rocket designs allow them to only be used once, which adds up to being very expensive to send anything to space at all. Conventional chemical rockets are also a very slow and inefficient. If we wish to explore much farther than Mars, then being able to develop much more powerful and efficient engines will allow us to reach farther places faster, and cheaper.

The high cost of sending things to space along with the low profitability of space exploration are the chief reasons that space technology is not as funded as much as It should be. The biggest news in the field of rocket technology recently has been the development of reusable rocket systems. This new design, spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk and his space technology company SpaceX, has been in the spotlight for being the first attempting at launching, and landing a rocket to be used again in the future. Current rockets are used one time, and after getting spacecraft into space, fall and burn up in the atmosphere. So a new rocket has to be designed and built each time we plan to venture into outer space. SpaceX aims at creating a rocket that will be able to travel to space, re-enter earth’s atmosphere, and then safely land on a landing platform to be used again. Find it analogous to a commercial jetliner. It would be very impractical and expensive to fly if we had to rebuild a jetliner each time we wished to fly somewhere. If this reusable rocket technology can be developed, according to Elon Musk, it will revolutionize space technology.

“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.”
(“Reusability, The Key to Making Life Multi-Planetary” SpaceX. 10 June 2015, n.p.)

SpaceX is currently on the brink of a successful landing. On January 10, SpaceX’s first attempt at landing its Falcon 9 rocket on its floating barge In the Atlantic coined “Just Read the Instructions” resulted in the explosion of the rocket as it impacted the barge with too much force. SpaceX’s second attempt on April 14, proved to be a much more successful landing. Even though the rocket did not land successfully.

(“SpaceX’s Rocket-Landing Near Miss” Space. 15 April 2015. Wall, Mike.)