SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket took wing on Nov. 15 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, launching the Crew Dragon capsule into the annals of history.
A gorgeous flight arc and a mere 27.5 hours later, the capsule, the Resilience, became the first privately operated commercial shuttle to dock at the International Space Station.
Four astronauts, three from NASA and one from the Japanese space agency JAXA, will make the station their home until the spring, collecting data on their own biological samples, attempting to grow radishes testing the capacity of fungi to break up asteroid rock.
This is a remarkable accomplishment that promises to revolutionize space travel forever.
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, as humanity struggles to protect its most vulnerable members against a deadly microscopic enemy, mankind continues to reach for the stars.
NASA retired its space-shuttle fleet in 2011 in the hopes of utilizing private commercial fleets at a later time. That time has now arrived. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has scheduled four-member shuttles to crew at the station for six-month periods.
And now that the math is checked and the capsule is docked, it’s only a matter of time before our knowledge of the cosmos and ourselves begins to grow. Discovery is its own reward, in this situation, and while some of the greatest discoveries in human history have occurred by accident, facilitating those accidents with projects like a regular commercial flight to the ISS can only thrust us forward.
Aside from the scientific curiosities yet to be unearthed, these regular flights also offer that chance thought impossible mere years ago: Private citizens will be able to book space on the shuttles. On the one hand, such catering to the wealthy and powerful might serve to take spots away from more deserving researchers, but there are other potential benefits to opening up the occasional seat.
NASA has been in talks with actor Tom Cruise about filming a movie at the space station, which could in turn inspire a whole new generation of astronauts and scientists to extend humanity’s reach further yet.
The shuttle’s successful docking represents that wondrous promise of the American dream in its purest form: possibility. Possibility to advance our understanding of our physical world. Possibility to dream about what comes next. And possibility to leave behind the chains of earthly gravity, and, unbound, push us farther into the great unknown.
— Tribune News Service
