I was kinda excited yesterday, actually maybe for a few days when I heard the news that finally after twenty something test runs of the dragon module from cargo missions that they were finally ready to try it with human passengers.
It’s been a decade since the end of the shuttle missions that anyone has gone up from american soil, it’s normally from elsewhere to go to the space station but yesterday for well over five hours I watched as they went over every single detail to get these two guys up into the sky.
They ended up not going because of weather.
But what I did end up watching was a masterclass in perfectionism and details oriented focus and it was a joy to watch.
To the way that space-x / elon musk has gone FULL APPLE on the space suits and the Tesla transports to the actual ship, to the way they have designed the seating and the three panels inside of the dragon module.
Image by SpaceX-Imagery from Pixabay
To the way that they have designed the system to boost away from the rocket if anything happens at launch time, they have just poured over this in terms of the second by second detailing of everything.
The fact that everyone had a number on their back who were prepping them, the single cord to connect their suits, the electronics of the seating swivelling around, the graphics and social media — you can see what space-x is also doing here. ..
. … they are getting us used to the idea of what BFR (the big fucking rocket) will eventually be, it’s going to be this apple Genius Bar experience of us getting into the spaceport and then comfortably making us feel at ease at all stages of the flight.
Of course we are probably not all ready to be strapped to a rocket ship and hitting massive G’s to get us off the planet each day and it’s probably not the best idea for us to be just like jetting to the other side of the world for sushi at lunch time but the very notion of being able to be something else on earth in forty five minutes is kinda incredible. ..
. . . not only that but taking an early morning view of the planet as we head to our destination bouncing along the ionosphere (ok, we are higher than that but hey, sounded cool when I wrote it)
Even thou it was gutting to not see them fly because of weather concerns (which also makes me think about future climate issues, will the windows become smaller to fly?) it was a lesson in patience.
I mean, fucking hell they were sitting in an awkward position, strapped in for hours, waiting for the go/nogo situation and then after hours of being in the capsule had to come out again because they could not hit a perfect weather window.
But one thing is clear, the space race is finally here, it’s started, expect your children’s children to be doing off world runs to the trading station on the moon, start saving up for their elite class star ticket to get them off world and get saving for the stars, maybe that 1 btc you put in a hardware wallet might be worth a lot more in five years time eh?
I’m looking forward to the weekend.
__humble x