LAUNCH IS A GO! DOCKING IS TAKING PLACE RIGHT NOW 10 AM EST SUNDAY

I was at work a couple of days ago and realized I was the only one in our office of 8 people who was alive the last time American astronauts took a ride on a new American spacecraft. The shuttle was OK but ate up all the budget and took us no further than low earth orbit. This launch today was very fun to watch. I made darn sure my kids were watching too. Seemed to take forever to accelerate away from the tower.

I’ve followed the SpaceX program for several years and absolutely love the progress they’ve made. It brings out the engineer geek in me. My favorite thing is the way they land & reuse the first stage, even after NASA told them doing it wasn’t possible. That Elon guy is a tad out of round, but a visionary the likes of which we haven’t seen for many years.

It was so refreshing to focus on something other than our current troubles, at least for a little while.

Here's to the Dawn of a completely new era in crewed spaceflight...

It's GREAT seeing a US made spacecraft taking off with humans from US soil again. It's also a HUGE step forward into a fundamentally different vision of spaceflight, e.g. commercial forces will also be a driver in the development of space. The development of space will no longer be solely a Governmental playground.

It takes time to move from what is technologically possible to what is somewhat affordable. The South Pole was first successfully reached in 1911. It took forty five years, before humans went back to Antarctica to stay. In 1956 the US created the first permanent base in Antarctica, McMurdo station. The US has been launching humans into space, off and on, since 1961. This is the first time that it looks to be a fairly reasonable cost per mission.

The Falcon 9/Dragon 2 transportation system was built for a government investment of $400,000,000. The rest of the cost was picked up by SpaceX. To put it mildly that is an incredible bargain for the US taxpayer PLUS we now have a system that is privately owned, so it is not at the whim of the US Government and the 2, 4, 6, 8 election year cycle. It is somewhat of a harbinger of "New Space", where private companies are the driving force behind exploring/commercializing circumlunar space (e.g. the space between the Earth's surface and the Moon's surface). Hopefully New Space, or to put it more honestly, commercial space, will also soon be a driver on exploring/developing the Moon too.

The thing to remember is that space is hard. There is a reason it's called rocket science. I for one am thrilled that the US will HOPEFULLY be able to safely launch humans again from it's own soil on it's own hardware/software. It's a nice beginning step for this next era of spaceflight and commercial development.

I'm not going to say congratulations to SpaceX and NASA until the crew is safely back to the USA after a complete and successful mission. However, needless to say, I'm PUMPED.

Here's a dime that flew on Gemini 3 on March 23, 1965. Gemini 3 was the first manned Gemini spaceflight. The spacecraft was flown by Gus Grissom and John Young. Up until that point in time the USSR owned every important manned space first in history.

Gemini 3 produced the FIRST EVER significant US manned space first in history, the first change in orbit. Up until that point in time, all USSR and USA spacecraft, while they could change their roll, pitch and yaw, flew on whatever orbital path the rocket they were on, launched them on. Gemini had powerful enough thrusters that it could change orbital parameters, so that it could rendezvous with other spacecraft. The dime was owned by Gus Grissom and was given by him to Guenter Wendt (look him up in Google) after the mission. Grissom carved GT-3 (Gemini Titan-3, Titan was the name/type of the launch rocket) in the coin with his mission survival knife after landing. The Gemini program was where the USA took the lead in crewed spaceflight.