SpaceX Aces First Launch of Crew Dragon, Built to Carry Humans, and Falcon 9 Touchdown (cnn.com)

"SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, its first spacecraft designed to carry humans, took flight for the first time Saturday," reports CNN.

Slashdot reader Applehu Akbar calls it "a perfect launch," noting the test flight is hauling a sensor-loaded dummy named "Ripley" -- plus a 400-pound cargo of essentials for the International Space Station. Crew Dragon will dock on Sunday, CNN reports, then return to earth five days later. "SpaceX's capsule is now en route to the International Space Station, which flies about 254 miles above Earth at tremendous speeds: about 10 times faster than a bullet."
The successful launch puts SpaceX one step closer to a historic landmark: Crew Dragon could be the first commercially built spacecraft to carry NASA astronauts to orbit. And Crew Dragon -- along with a capsule called Starliner built by Boeing -- could end the United States' decade-long reliance on Russia for human spaceflight...

This marks the first and only demo mission that Crew Dragon will fly without humans on board. If all goes well, the capsule design will undergo a few more reviews and safety checks, and it could be ready to fly two NASA astronauts to the space station in July, based on the space agency's current timeline.
Space.com reports that the reusable rocket also landed safely back on earth about 10 minutes after the liftoff, "acing a touchdown on the SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which was stationed off the Florida coast."

Comments

YES!

[DCFusor]

Finally, the beginning of delivery of the implicit promise of Apollo. Late, and not by the government that implied human space travel would become commonplace, instead of a ****-waving political exercise and cancelled at step 1.
Money was of course, an issue, and as usual, private enterprise - and not one yet totally involved in crony capitalism, managed to deliver what the government and their heavily subsidized old-school aerospace contractors could not.
.

All possible congrats, props, general hip hip hurray and so forth.
Just wish I didn't have to wait from childhood until too old to fly for this.

Re: YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla is irrelevant, as is your strongman argument. Tesla is a separate company.

ULA gets a bunch of money every year whether they launch or not. Thatâ(TM)s a government subsidy.

SpaceX is paid by nasa to perform tasks or build products. If thatâ(TM)s your standard for subsidies then pretty much every company receives subsidies, since the government buys from many private companies.

Re:YES!

[Kjella]

Well so far the only business SpaceX's Dragon has had is to ferry people to the very much so government built and operated ISS. I mean it's great that we've replaced an expensive cost-plus provider with a fixed price service but they're still the whole reason the market is there. Yes, I know SpaceX got a private moon fly-by in the plans but that's still years away and the casual space tourist market will soon be taken by a $200k suborbital joyride from Blue Origin that isn't useful for anything else. What would drive a commercial expansion of space flight?

Don't get me wrong, SpaceX is doing a very commendable job bringing down the cost but even if you could get Apollo for 1/100th of the cost the Moon is just a barren rock with no real income potential other than as a researcher or their support staff. Even if came down to the point where you could literally book a flight it'd probably look like "T/R Moon, Tranquility Bay: $10 million. Hotel: SpaceX Plaza, Tranquility Bay: $100k/night." with prices that make seven star hotels look cheap. The only people who can afford that are those who make millions on stocks while they sleep.

Re:YES!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Even if came down to the point where you could literally book a flight it'd probably look like "T/R Moon, Tranquility Bay: $10 million. Hotel: SpaceX Plaza, Tranquility Bay: $100k/night." with prices that make seven star hotels look cheap.

But this would be an INSANE deal for any government or scientific institution, since until now, that same price tag was $16,000,000,000. Would you really be bitching about a 1600-fold (!) decrease in price? So many people's brains (well, true, mostly geologists') would explode just from the thought!

As to the "just a barren rock" part, the interesting question is whether some kind of avalanche effect would happen or not. True, when Apollo flew to the Moon, it was two guys alone on a barren rock. At one point, it *might* make sense to find and pressurize a lava tube. By that time, you'd be probably going to visit a few thousand people in a moderately comfortable environment, not just jump around in a spacesuit for a few hours.

Re: YES!

[jamesborr]

No question that the government decided to get out of the ISS re-supply business (first cargo, then crew). As they decided to retire the Shuttle (for which they spent many billions in development contracts going back to the 70's with many "private" companies, including Rockwell and a whole list of typical "cost plus vendors"). They could have simply purchased rockets and capsules already available on the open market to perform re-supply and crew change out tasks -- except there were no private companies which such available services, at least in the United States. As no cost plus U.S. contractor was going to invest billions with no foreseeable way to not going bankrupt attempting to provide such services, the U.S. had three options: abandon the ISS, contract with foreign governments for such services, or fund development contracts followed by services contracts (or bundled together) to U.S. based contractors. These contracts were put out to bid, and the government chose contractors to deliver the necessary services (including some development components). For the crew contracts, the U.S. decided on 2 primary contractors, awarding much more money to an existing cost plus contractor (Boeing) for the same service (except Boeing committed to deliver fewer testing services and also re-use of their capsules -- while SpaceX offered more testing in their bid (including max Q abort test) and also new capsules for each crew transports. Now I could be wrong, but I don't see nearly the vitriol directed at the cost plus contractor for delivering less for far more money -- which kind of leaves me to believe that some of the SpaceX naysayers have some tie in to these contractors...

Congratulations!

[ReneR]

Finally the next steps of human space exploration. A pity most governments are more interested in their own shady, old fashioned business, making war, or playing golf. Cudos to Musk and the team he gathers, ..!

First âoeCommercial lâ Spacecraft?

[Jerrry]

Hardly.

All of the Apollo hardware was developed and built by private industry. The Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft were built by Boeing (S-IC first stage), North American Aviation (S-II second stage, Apollo command and service modules), Douglas Aircraft (S-IVB third stage), IBM (instrument unit), Grumman (lunar module), and many others (as subcontractors).

To say that the crew Dragon will be the first âoecommercialâ craft to carry astronauts ignores history.