A rocket built by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX has successfully blasted off into space with a crew of two NASA astronauts, and to be totally honest, getting the hell off planet Earth sounds so good at this point, where do I sign up?
Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken of NASA lifted off at 3.22pm local time in Cape Canaveral, Florida, making them the first astronauts to take off from US soil in close to a decade. They entered orbit minutes later, bound for the International Space Station.
“Let’s light this candle,” said Hurley before takeoff, the same words used by Alan Shepard as he embarked on America’s first human space flight. He and Behknen are expected to stay on the ISS for up to four months.
We have liftoff. History is made as @NASA_Astronauts launch from @NASAKennedy for the first time in nine years on the @SpaceX Crew Dragon: pic.twitter.com/alX1t1JBAt
— NASA (@NASA) May 30, 2020
The launch has also been hailed as the dawn of a new era of commercial space flight. SpaceX is the first private company to launch people into space, and Elon Musk intends to start sending paying customers into orbit as early as next year.
SpaceX has not given any indication of how much a trip into orbit will cost, but the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket without a capsule for humans costs around $US 60 million, so you’d have to assume it won’t be cheap when it happens.
