SpaceX Crew Dragon launch: What this means for the future of spaceflight
It has certainly been a long time since history of any sort has been made in the field of spaceflight in America, but SpaceX has recently become the first commercial spaceflight company to launch a crewed mission, the Crew-1, certified by NASA.
At 7:27 p.m. Sunday night, one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets took off in a fiery blast from the Kennedy Space Center, sending the attached Crew Dragon capsule to its cosmic destination: the International Space Station. Astronauts Shannon Walker, Michael Hopkins, and Victor Glover, all of NASA; and Soichi Noguchi, a Japanese astronaut with JAXA, were the four astronauts transported to the ISS in the capsule, which they named the ‘Resilience.’ Under a new contract with NASA, SpaceX will transport a crew of astronauts to the ISS every six months.
The Nov. 15 launch marks the beginning of a new age in commercial spaceflight. Photo courtesy of NASA/Joel Kowsky.
Why is NASA, a reputable government space agency in its own right, partnering with SpaceX, a commercial spaceflight company? Budget cuts to the space program made it economically unfeasible for NASA to produce spaceflight technology all on its own (i.e. the space shuttle program), and it was not in the interest of the American government to continue supporting Russia’s space program by relying on it to transport NASA cargo and crew to and from the International Space Station. Since 2006, NASA has awarded a number of contracts to commercial spaceflight companies — including Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corporation and more — to develop spacecraft for NASA’s use. Under these contracts, NASA can return its missions to home soil for the least expense.
One of the private companies heavily invested in by NASA is SpaceX, founded in 2002 by well-known entrepreneur Elon Musk in order to pursue the idea of space travel. SpaceX’s technology is unique in that its rocket boosters are reusable, the first and currently only rockets to be successfully designed this way. This lowers the cost of its spacecraft, which is appealing to NASA. Since 2012, SpaceX has been contracted by NASA to carry cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.
On May 30, SpaceX took one step further in its spacecraft technologies, successfully launching its first ever manned spacecraft. Named Demo-2, this mission served as a test flight to demonstrate the capabilities of SpaceX’s spaceflight systems to NASA. Demo-2 safely transported NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station and returned them two months later on Aug. 2.
The four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission await launch. Photo courtesy of SpaceX.
SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission is momentous in that it is the first operational crewed flight by a commercial spaceflight company that has been certified by NASA. Not only is the success of Crew-1 a pivotal point in the history of NASA, it is a game-changer in the field of human spaceflight itself. SpaceX has proven that it doesn’t take a government space agency to get to outer space; and someday, ordinary people with enough money could purchase tickets on a commercial rocket.
As Elon Musk himself said during 2017’s International Astronautical Congress: “I think fundamentally the future is vastly more exciting and interesting if we're a spacefaring civilization and a multiplanet species than if we're not. You want to be inspired by things. You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great. And that's what being a spacefaring civilization is all about.”
Tile image courtesy of Bob Behnken on Twitter. NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy snapped the photo of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle docked on the International Space Station.