In a first for commercial space flight, SpaceX is sending astronauts up to the International Space Station for the first time today. You can watch the lead up and entire launch in the live feed down below.
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It is yet another big step forward for SpaceX who has always had the mission of making space flight commercially viable for a private entity, and not simply left up to huge government departments with bottomless funding like in the 20th century. The biggest reason mankind hasn’t been to the moon in decades is because funding has dried up. This is where privatisation steps in.
Space veterans Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken were scheduled to ride into orbit aboard the brand new Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket at 4:33PM local time on Wednesday from the same launch pad the Apollo missions used so many years ago. Both men are experienced test pilots and have launched on multiple missions with NASA’s space shuttle program.
As at publishing, we are about two hours away from launch, but there may be a spanner in the works. Launch controllers put the chances of acceptable weather for lift-off at a 50-50 chance because of rain, clouds and thunderstorms at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. If the launch is postponed the next window available to SpaceX is on Saturday.
“We’re launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. We haven’t done this really since 2011, so this is a unique moment in time,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said. “With this launch everybody can look up and say, ’Look, the future is so much brighter than the present.′ And I really hope that this is an inspiration to the world.”
“We’re doing it differently than we’ve ever done it before,” Bridenstine said. “We’re transforming how we do spaceflight in the future.”
The launch could not go ahead on May 27th as originally intended, due to weather conditions.
