SpaceX successfully launched Dragon, an unmanned capsule, Tuesday, May 22, 2012, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This event is being heralded as the beginning of a new era of spaceflight. No longer is space the sole playground of government agencies. It’s the dawn of the commercialization and privatization of space travel. This is exciting stuff.
Almost exactly 85 years after Charles Lindbergh, aboard the Spirit of St. Louis, completed the first non-stop transatlantic flight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and company held their breath and watched with clenched fists as Falcon9 lifted off with Dragon on its back. So far, so good. The solar arrays and navigational sensors deployed and the GPS equipment is working. Now, Dragon just needs to make it to its $100 billion docking site, the International Space Station.
Once there, the astronauts will unload the 1,014 pounds of cargo:
- 162 meal packets
- Laptop
- Clothes
- 15 experiments
- Cremated remains of 308 people (The astronauts won’t actually keep these; the canister they’re in will be released and disintegrate upon reentry, sending the remains into eternal celestial suspension.)
If this demonstration mission is successful, then SpaceX will begin fulfillment of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to deliver goods, and eventually astronauts, to the International Space Station. The revenue sounds awesome, but I think the potential ramifications of this event are much more impressive:
“It is like the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s when commercial companies entered what was originally a government endeavor. That move dramatically accelerated the pace of advancement and made the Internet accessible to the mass market,” said Musk, SpaceX CEO and chief designer.
Where will the trajectory of aviation innovation point to in another 85 years? Perhaps individual flying pods here on Earth, or new aircraft called “planet-jumpers?”