SpaceX: Triumph for Elon Musk – “Falcon 9” sends four people into space

Status: 02:23 am | Reading time: 3 minutes

ISlon Musk becomes the first ticket seller for NASA flights to the International Space Station and opens space travel to commercial space flights. Under the extraordinary motto “Launch America”, his space company SpaceX has now launched four people with its reusable Dragon capsule and its reusable Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station.

SpaceX has already shown a regular test flight with two astronauts on the ISS from May to August. But the mission now called “Crew1” is NASA’s first official mission. The mission is also seen as paving the way for future paid space missions with a private company and commercialization of space.

SpaceX could even transport Russian cosmonauts to the ISS. The brand new Dragon capsule will remain anchored to the ISS for approximately six months and then return to Earth. After the Space Shuttle flights were stopped in 2011, the United States now has the ability to send several people into space. The US no longer has to pay millions to fly in Russian Soyuz capsules to send US astronauts to the space station.

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In the capsule, which took off late Sunday evening at 7:27 pm local time from the US spaceport of Cape Canaveral in Florida, four people sat side by side in a row. The Dragon Capsule even offers space for up to seven people. There were also four people on board during the last space shuttle mission.

The crew of the newly started mission includes US astronauts Michael Hopkins (51) as commander and Victor Glover (44). In addition, NASA astronaut Shannon Walker (55) and Japanese astronaut Söichi Noguchi (55). It is the first space flight only for Glover. All in all, an experienced crew. The Japanese is one of only three people in the world who took off aboard three different spacecraft (Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Dragon).

The preparations on the day of departure did not go well. In any case, the departure was slightly postponed due to bad weather. Even on Sunday there was temporarily some uncertainty as to whether he could actually leave. Almost two hours before takeoff, the door to the already closed cabin had to be reopened unexpectedly because a loss of pressure in the capsule was detected. Presumably there was a “foreign object” in the capsule door closure, which was removed by the service teams. Then the countdown continued.

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Robert Harris on V2

For tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who is also at the helm of electric car maker Tesla, spaceflight just started is a triumph. Its space company SpaceX, founded only in 2002, is proving technically more effective than the more than 100-year-old aerospace company Boeing, which has also been selected by NASA as an astronaut supplier to the ISS despite years of project delays. After a failed unmanned flight of the Boeing Starliner capsule nearly a year ago, it is still open when Boeing will also be able to offer safe flights to NASA. First, Boeing must demonstrate in another test flight that it could work with the large American company.

With SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, astronauts get an ultramodern and reasonably comfortable spacecraft with large touchscreens instead of dozens of toggle switches and tight spaces like in the Russian Soyuz capsule. However, the Dragon capsule flight to the ISS, including automatically scheduled docking, takes approximately 27 hours, considerably longer than the last short flight of a Soyuz capsule to the ISS in October in just over three hours.

Although SpaceX pursued the strategy of reusable rockets and spacecraft capsules, the technology now used in now manned flight was brand new. After all, it’s SpaceX’s 21st launch this year alone. The first stage of the Falcon 9 recycling rocket landed as planned on a platform in the Atlantic just ten minutes after takeoff.