SpaceX rocket launch mixes history, nostalgia and glitz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The first astronauts launched by SpaceX are breaking new ground for style with hip spacesuits, gull-wing Teslas and a sleek rocketship — all white with black trim.
The color coordinating is thanks to Elon Musk, the driving force behind both SpaceX and Tesla, and a big fan of flash and science fiction.
NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken like the fresh look. They’ll catch a ride to the launch pad in a Tesla Model X electric car.
“It is really neat, and I think the biggest testament to that is my 10-year-old son telling me how cool I am now,” Hurley said.
“SpaceX has gone all out” on the capsule’s appearance, he said. “And they’ve worked equally as hard to make the innards and the displays and everything else in the vehicle work to perfection.”
The true test is scheduled for Wednesday when Hurley and Behnken climb aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and shoot into space. It would be the first astronaut launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space
Center since the last shuttle flight in 2011.
Stormy weather is threatening to delay the launch. The manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, Kathy Lueders, said everything was progressing well on the ground.
“Now the only thing we need to do is figure out how to control the weather,” she said Monday evening as rain drenched the area. “We’re continuing to be vigilant and careful and make sure we do this right.”
Forecasters put the odds of acceptable launch weather at 40%.
If it comes off, the launch will also mark the first attempt by a private company to send astronauts into orbit. Only governments — Russia, the U.S., and China — have done that.
The historic send-off deserves to look good, according to SpaceX. It already has a nice ring as Musk named his rocket after the “Star Wars” Millennium Falcon. The capsule name stems from “Puff the Magic Dragon,” Musk’s jab at doubters when he started SpaceX in 2002.
SpaceX designed and built its own suits, which are custom-fit. Safety came first. The wow factor was a close second.
The bulky, orange ascent and entry suits worn by shuttle astronauts had their own attraction, according to Behnken, who like Hurley wore them for his two previous missions. Movies like “Armageddon” and “Space Cowboys” stole the look whenever actors were “trying to pretend to be astronauts.”
On launch day, Hurley and Behnken will get ready inside Kennedy’s remodeled crew quarters, which dates back to the two-man Gemini missions of the mid-1960s. SpaceX technicians will help the astronauts into their one-piece, two-layer pressure suits.
Hurley and Behnken will emerge through the same double doors used July 16, 1969, by Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins — the Operations and Checkout Building now bears Armstrong’s name.
But instead of the traditional Astrovan, the two will climb into a Tesla for the nine-mile ride to Launch Complex 39A, the same pad used by the moon men and most shuttle crews. It’s while they board the Tesla that they’ll see their wives and sons for the last time before flight.
Making a comeback after three decades is NASA’s worm logo — wavy, futuristic-looking red letters spelling NASA.