Blasting off at 3: 22 P.M. EST Saturday, May 30, Elon Musk’s Crew Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocked went flawlessly, launching NASA astronauts 53-year old Doug Hurley and 49-year-old Bob Behnken to the International Space Station [ISS]. For Americans nostalgic for manned space-flight, 48-year-old Elon Musk enabled the U.S. to get off the ground again, not since the last NASA Space Shuttle finished landed July 21, 2011. Unlike past generations of space-flight, NASA had no replacement vehicle, leaving it up to private industry to develop the next generation of manned space vehicles. Musk started SpaceX May 6, 2002, realizing that once the Space Shuttle finished their last mission, there would be no more manned space-flights for the foreseeable future. For those listening to the countdown and watching liftoff, there weren’t too many dry eyes watching Musk’s accomplishment..
Building the next generation rocket and spacecraft wasn’t easy for Musk who received a $2.6 billion NASA grant Sept. 16, 2014, far less that Boeing Space Systems getting $4.2 billion. No one from NASA imagined that an upstart space company like SpaceX could beat out Boeing into space. But unlike Boeing, Musk is driven like no other, a true key man, currently CEO of SpaceX and his space-age Tesla car company, building, without equals, the most aesthetic, best engineered electric cars on the planet. Musk proved today that SpaceX, like Tesla, is light years ahead of any other private space company, including Boeing Space Systems, Sir. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin Space Company. NASA’s 44-year-old administrator Jim Bridensine admitted that NASA could not have pulled off today’s historic feat without SpaceX.
SpaceX gave the aging NASA space program more than a facelift, a total overhaul from top-to-bottom. Gone at SpaceX is the government’s bloated bureaucracy that couldn’t adapt to a new era of space-flight, largely because NASA’s old corporate culture left the agency paralyzed, unable to move forward. Musk lit rocket fuel underneath NASA, now rejuvenated, looking ahead to beyond the International Space Station to building the first space station on the moon, a necessary step in Musk’s plans to put humans on Mars. “With this launch, the decades of lost years and little action are officially over,” said 73-year-old President Donald Trump. Trump noted that Hurley and Behnken join the ranks of space pioneers Alan Shepard, John Glen and Guss Grissom, all of whom didn’t live to see Hurley and Behnken lift off on Crew Dragon Demo-2, the first manned operation in nine years.
Musk showed off for the world to see not only a flawless launch but the remarkable return to earth of Falcon 9’s fuselage, landing effortlessly on SpaceX’s drone barge off the Florida coast. Musk’s reusable rocket components have helped defray the costs of rocket launches in the future. “Today was just an amazing day,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. “I can breathe a sigh of relief but I can also tell you that I’m not going to celebrate until Bob and Doug are home safely,” something that may not happen for four months, when Hurley and Benhken finish their experiments on the ISS. Even Falcon 9 and Dragon Crew capsule inventor and chief engineer Elon Musk felt the awesome responsibility of returning Hurley and Behnken to their families. “I have heard that rumble [of a rocket launch] before, but it’s a whole different feeling when you’ve got your own team on that rocket,” said Bridenstine.
When Trump spoke at Kennedy Space Center’s auditorium today, he passed around credit to many dignitaries and elected officials, including 60-year-old Vice President Mike who heads the National Space Council. But, without a doubt, the biggest ovation was saved for Elon Musk, knowing the courage, sacrifice and raw determination needed to build the next generation of U.S.-built rockets and spaceships. Gone was the humbling experience of watching U.S. astronauts over the last nine years ferried to the ISS by the Russian Soyuz capsule. While a reliable piece of equipment, it looks utterly obsolete next to Musk’s Crew Draagon spacecraft. Bridenstine looked forward to more SpaceX missions to the ISS in the next few years, but, more importantly, watching Musk build the next generation of space vehicles designed to fly to the moon, to mars and neighboring asteroids.
Unlike the retired Space Shuttle, Musk’s acorn-shaped Crew Dragon harks back to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spaceships but far more streamlined and sophisticated, operating with all touch-screen controls, much like today’s smart-phones, laptops and tablets. Hurely and Behnken, while well-rehearsed, thanked the SpaceX and NASA’s ground crews and everyone that made the mission possible, while speeding off to the ISS under autonomous control. Given the coronavirus global pandemic and race riots over the May 25 brutal death of 44-year-old George Floyd at the hands of 46-year-old white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the SpaceX launch was exactly what America needed—a real shot in the arm. No longer will Americans endure the humiliation of watching Russia launch U.S. astronauts for $80 million as seat from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
