NASA's tie-up with SpaceX has proved a model of public-private partnership when it comes to space travel
of 400km, with both vessels travelling at 7.7km a second, the Crew Dragon capsule took orbital advantage of a freedom denied to the socially distanced on Earth to come within two metres of the International Space Station. After a final 20 seconds of stately approach the’s capture ring made contact with the station’s docking adaptor. The short voyage’s simple, straightforward end belied its significance.
In May 2012 SpaceX, a Californian firm founded by Elon Musk, started using its spacecraft to make cargo deliveries to the space station built by America, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. The mission it launched on May 30th, though, used a completely revamped version of the firm’s Dragon capsule to carry up something much more precious: two astronauts, Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley.
This feat is good news for astronauts, for American taxpayers and for the world at large . The astronauts get a ride in a spacecraft that is spiffier than the Russian Soyuz capsules which have been Hobson’s choice for the past ten years. The Crew Dragons were designed afresh in the 2010s, rather than being updates of a workhorse from the 1960s. They seat up to seven people, not three, and even have toilets.
It would be wrong to see this as simply an example of the private sector outperforming the public sector. Admittedly, America’s space agency, has a disastrous history of over-expensive space-flight projects—such as the shuttle—developed with an eye to keeping money flowing to contractors andfacilities rather than in order to do the job at hand expeditiously.
In themselves, such very high jinks may not matter much. But in the long run, if there is to be a future for humans in space, humans will need to be able to get there. Being able to do so just by buying a ticket to orbit is a crucial step in that direction.’s programme for a human return to the Moon are now being run in the same commercially focused way as the Crew Dragon programme was.
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