Today’s next big step into space again came from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, where the Dragon 2 crew-cabin spacecraft blasted off March 2 from Cape Canaveral on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. While it’s true that SpaceX received billions from NASA and much technical assistance, it’s also true that Musk’s team created the next generation of U.S.-built-and-based spacecraft, capable of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station [ISS], the moon or to other planets when conditions permit. When the last NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis returned to earth July 21, 2011, the U.S. manned space program was over the foreseeable future. Unlike past NASA spaceships from the early days of Mercury to Gemini, Apollo and finally the Space Shuttle, NASA had not had a replacement vehicle when Atlantis landed in 2011. NASA talked then about the Orion Spacecraft somewhere in a distant future.
At the time Atlantis finished its last flight July 21, 2011, NASA forecast its Orion Spacecraft sometime in the mid-to-late 2020s, essentially grounding U.S. space operations for over 20 years. With Musk launching the Dragon 2 Crew-capsule with an Anthropomorphic Test Device [ATD] [Dummy] named Ripley with thousands-of-pounds of supplies for the ISSS, SpaceX took a giant leap toward manned space operations perhaps sometime in late summer or early fall. NASA was nowhere without SpaceX and Boeing Space Operations nearing completion of final launch-pad abort test for its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft in the next few months. Musk’s remarkable accomplishment for a private space company comes at a time when NASA is not expected to deliver another spacecraft. Docking successfully at the ISS on its own thrusters, the Dragon 2 Crewed capsule accomplished its mission.
Docking at the ISS prompted cheers from SpaceX’s mission control, whose tireless work paid off, including overcoming adversity when a Falcon 9 rocket blew up on the launch-pad Sept. 1, 2016. Musk has many sleepless nights with his team figuring out what when wrong before correcting the flaw of liquid helium composite-wrapped oxygen tank. Yesterday’s launch and successful docking to the ISS was a huge step in returning to U.S. manned space operations. After docking, data from the ATD [Ripley] showed a clean oxygen pure and temperature-controlled environment, compatible with manned space-flight. NASA astronaut Ann McClain and her two ISS crewmates Canada’s David Saint-Jacques and Russia’s Oleg Kononenko confirmed the Dragon 2 capsule was free of any contaminants. “Ripley and Earth both look like they enjoyed their trip up here,” McClain quipped.
McClain and crew were ecstatic realizing that the U.S. was back in the manned space business thanks to Musk and his collaboration with NASA. “On behalf of Ripley, Little Earth, myself and our crew, welcomes to the Crew Dragon . . . These amazing feats show us no how easy our mission is but how capable we are of doing hard things,” McClain said. “Welcome to the new era in space-flight. McClain paraphrased President John Kenney when he told young generation of space pioneers at Rice University Sept. 12, 1962 that, “we choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy but because it’s hard.” At $80 million a ride on the Russian Soyuz to the ISS since 2011, NASA has spent over a billion dollars transporting astronauts. Before yesterday’s Dragon 2 Crewed mission, SpaceX had flown 16 Dragon 1 un-manned cargo flights to the ISS since 2012. Dragon 2 docked to the ISS on its own power.
Russian space officials were concerned about a possible software malfunction, where the Dragon 2 could potentially crash into the ISS, something that prompted all three astronauts to take refuge in the Soyuz lifeboat capsule until after Dragon 2 completed its autonomous docking procedures. Dragon 2 is expected to stay docked to the ISS for five days until its releases from the ISS and returns to earth March 7-8, splashing down in the South Atlantic near the Florida coast. NASA astronauts Dough Hurley and Robert Behnken are ready to strap into their Dragon 2 seats sometime in July if all safety checks pass rigorous scrutiny. Based on the analysis of Ripley and the Dragon 2 crew cabin, it looks like Hurley and Behnken will be going on their test flight in the near future. Beating Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner was no small feat for Musk’s fledgling space company founded May 6, 2002.
Unlike Boeing founded by William Boeing in 1916, Musk has been feverishly working on SpaceX, Tesla Motors and Solar City, all attempting to revolutionize the space, auto and electricity industries. Musk keeps plowing forward when Wall Street analysts and a slew of critics write him off. Tesla Motors has sought to revolutionize the auto industry, single-handedly creating the lithium battery technology necessary to shift the auto industry’s carbon-polluting internal combustion engines to zero polluting electric vehicles. Before Tesla, now the envy of the auto industry, electric vehicles had failed over the last 100 years. Now Musk stands at revolutionizing space travel, where his Dragon 2 spaceship promises to be the first in next generation space-flight. “Thank you on behalf of SpaceX,” Musk tweeted today. “Also thank you to NASA without whom this would not of been possible.”
