SpaceX
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50 free SpaceX trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
SpaceX was three failed launches from bankruptcy in 2008. A fourth Falcon 1 reached orbit from a Pacific atoll, NASA signed a $1.6 billion cargo contract that December, and the company went on to land orbital boosters on barges, fly astronauts from Florida again, put a Tesla Roadster into orbit around the Sun and build the largest rocket ever flown in a Texas field. These 50 questions cover the whole story: the Mars Oasis idea and the trips to Moscow, Omelek Island, the Merlin and Kestrel engines, the first drone-ship landing on Of Course I Still Love You, the CRS-7 strut and the AMOS-6 fireball, Demo-2's Endeavour, Inspiration4 and the first private spacewalk on Polaris Dawn, Starlink's 60-satellite batches, Starship's stainless steel and tower catches, Gwynne Shotwell and the 2026 IPO. The expert tier asks about RazakSAT, the Culture novels behind the drone-ship names, the 5D disc in Starman's glovebox and the worm logo. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss. Play solo or print it for a space night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Musk funded SpaceX with money from selling which company?
PayPal
PayPal's sale to eBay made Musk rich, yet by 2008 SpaceX, Tesla and Musk himself were all close to going broke.
Q 02The Falcon rocket family is named after a spacecraft from which film franchise?
Star Wars
Star Wars' Millennium Falcon gave the rockets their name, and Musk says he named Dragon after 'Puff the Magic Dragon' to answer critics who called his plans impossible.
Q 03Falcon 1's failed third launch in August 2008 carried the ashes of which Star Trek actor?
James Doohan
James Doohan's ashes were lost in that failure, but another portion finally reached orbit on a Falcon 9 in May 2012.
Q 04From which Pacific atoll were all Falcon 1 launches conducted?
Kwajalein
Kwajalein, a US Army missile test range, took Falcon 1 after SpaceX was shut out of launching from California's Vandenberg base.
Q 05In March 2025, SpaceX's Crew-9 brought home two NASA astronauts whose own capsule, built by which company, had thruster trouble?
Boeing
Boeing's Starliner flew Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams up in June 2024 for an eight-day test, but NASA judged it too risky to fly them home, so they stayed until March 2025.
Q 06Which $1.6 billion NASA contract did SpaceX win in December 2008, when it was nearly broke?
Commercial Resupply Services
Commercial Resupply Services bought 12 cargo flights to the space station before the Falcon 9 rocket meant to fly them had even launched.
Q 07What did Musk's 2001 'Oasis' space project propose to do?
Land a greenhouse on Mars
Land a greenhouse on Mars needed a cheap launch, so Musk tried to buy Russian missiles, but two trips to Moscow came back empty-handed.
Q 08Which future NASA administrator joined Musk on a rocket-buying trip to Moscow?
Michael Griffin
Michael Griffin was on the flight home when Musk turned around with a spreadsheet and said they could build the rocket themselves.
Q 09When one of its nine booster engines failed in 2012, how did Falcon 9 still reach orbit?
Its other engines burned longer
Its other engines burned longer and software adjusted the climb, so Dragon reached its orbit, but a secondary Orbcomm satellite was left too low and fell back.
Q 10What propellants does the Merlin engine burn?
Liquid oxygen and RP-1
Liquid oxygen and RP-1, a rocket-grade kerosene, feed Merlin, an engine SpaceX built in-house when most rocket makers bought theirs from established suppliers.
Q 11Which engine powered Falcon 1's second stage?
Kestrel
Kestrel shut down early on Falcon 1's second flight in 2007, when the upper stage began to wobble and roll, so the rocket fell short of orbit.
Q 12What are the small thrusters that steer SpaceX's crew and cargo capsules in orbit called?
Draco
Draco thrusters also let a cargo Dragon boost the space station's orbit, which a Dragon did for the first time in November 2024.
Q 13What fuel does the Raptor engine burn alongside its oxidiser?
Liquid methane
Liquid methane can be made on Mars from underground water and atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is why SpaceX's Mars plan counts on brewing return-trip fuel there.
Q 21What is the mannequin in the driver's seat of the space-bound Roadster called?
Starman
Starman, named after a David Bowie song, beamed back live video from cameras mounted on the car for hours after launch.
Q 22A copy of which novel rides in the glovebox of Musk's space-bound Tesla Roadster?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is aboard as a nod to Douglas Adams, one of the authors Musk devoured as a boy.
Q 23What phrase is printed on the Roadster's circuit board?
Made on Earth by humans
Q 14After a Falcon 9 booster first landed in December 2015, which rival space billionaire tweeted 'Welcome to the club'?
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin had already landed its suborbital New Shepard rocket in 2015, and his tweet called SpaceX's a 'suborbital booster stage'.
Q 15Which drone ship caught SpaceX's first at-sea booster landing, in April 2016?
Of Course I Still Love You
Of Course I Still Love You hosted SpaceX's first sea landing on the fifth attempt, after earlier boosters had crashed or toppled on drone ships.
Q 16SpaceX's drone ships take their names from spaceships in novels by which author?
Iain M. Banks
Iain M. Banks gave his Culture starships joke names, and SpaceX's drone ship names were a posthumous tribute after he died of cancer in 2013.
Q 17In March 2017, the SES-10 satellite became the first to launch on what?
A reused Falcon 9
A reused Falcon 9 first stage that had flown the year before lifted SES-10, then landed at sea for a second time.
Q 18What did investigators blame for the Falcon 9 explosion that destroyed CRS-7 in June 2015?
A failed steel strut
A failed steel strut let a helium bottle break loose in the upper stage's oxygen tank, and NASA's review faulted SpaceX's choice of an industrial-grade part.
Q 19A 2016 Falcon 9 launch-pad explosion destroyed a satellite whose internet capacity had been leased by which tech company?
Facebook and Eutelsat had agreed to pay $95 million to lease its broadband capacity for Internet.org and African businesses, a deal the explosion wiped out.
Q 20Falcon Heavy's 2018 debut launched a car into an orbit around what?
The Sun
The Sun: the car loops out past the orbit of Mars, and in January 2025 astronomers briefly logged it as a new asteroid before deleting the entry.
Made on Earth by humans suits Musk's hope, voiced more than once, that some future alien race might discover the car.
Q 24What did side boosters do after the 2018 Falcon Heavy debut?
Landed together
Landed together: the two side boosters touched down almost at once on twin pads at Cape Canaveral, while the center core crashed.
Q 25Which two NASA astronauts flew on Crew Demo-2 in May 2020?
Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken
Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken made the first crewed launch from US soil since 2011, years in which NASA had bought seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Q 26What name was given to the capsule flown on Demo-2?
Endeavour
Endeavour was chosen partly because both Demo-2 astronauts had made their first spaceflights on the space shuttle Endeavour.
Q 27The Demo-2 Falcon 9 revived which retired NASA logo?
The 'worm'
The 'worm' was retired in 1992 in favour of the older 'meatball' insignia, then brought back in 2020 in time for the Demo-2 booster.
Q 28From which launch pad did Demo-2 lift off?
Kennedy LC-39A
SpaceX won Kennedy LC-39A's lease by bidding for exclusive use, arguing that refitting the pad for several rockets would cost too much.
Q 29Who commanded Inspiration4, the first all-private orbital spaceflight, in 2021?
Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman bought the flight himself and gave away its seats, one of them to the winner of an online contest for entrepreneurs.
Q 30Inspiration4 raised money for which Memphis institution?
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital chose one of its own physician assistants, a bone cancer survivor and former patient, to fly as a crew member.