IT'S MUSK SEE!
Sleek new look for first SpaceX astros
Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket is ready to launch in style this week.
The two NASA astronauts due to board the Tesla co-founder’s spaceship on Wednesday — the first manned American space flight since 2011 and the first-ever manned commercial launch — will be decked out in sleek space suits that look like something out of “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
They’ll shoot into orbit on a rocket named Falcon 9 — a nod to the Millennium Falcon in “Star Wars” — while riding inside a capsule called Dragon, as in the folk song “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Beforehand, they’ll ride to the launch pad at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in a Tesla Model X electric car.
“It is really neat,” astronaut
Doug Hurley said.
“I think the biggest testament to that is my 10-year-old son telling me how cool I am now.”
“SpaceX has gone all out” on the capsule, he said. “And they’ve worked equally as hard to make the innards and the display and everything else in the vehicle work to perfection.”
Then there’s the Falcon 9. The reusable, two-stage rocket is “designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth’s orbit and beyond,” according to the company’s Web site.
It could be the future of US space travel.
Musk started SpaceX in 2002 to provide a more cost-effective form of intergalactic travel, with an eye to journeys to Mars.
NASA hasn’t launched a manned flight since the last space shuttle was grounded in 2011. Both Hurley and co-pilot Bob Behnken are veterans of the space agency and each has 20 years with NASA and two space flights each under their belt.
But the Falcon 9 will mark the first time a private company has launched people into space, an endeavor thus far reserved for governments in China, and Russia.
The SpaceX project is seen as key to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to return astronauts to the moon by 2024. He is expected to be at the space center Wednesday to witness the launch.
Meanwhile, SpaceX officials assured that safety is the mission’s first concern.
“Just as we need to take care of each other through these interesting times, we’re needing to take care of the crew and bring them home,” mission manager Benji Reed told The New York Times.
“On that sacred journey together, we are all holding each other accountable.”