I’ve been following SpaceX closely for a while now, and continue to be excited about the innovation we’ll see from a growing and competitive private space sector. I still watch nearly all their rocket launches live, and remember getting goosebumps when they landed a first stage for the first time in history on December 21st, 2015.
For that one, I was in Thailand with my wife, and she thought I was completely nuts to plan our morning around watching a live rocket launch (it was actually quite convenient with the time difference, at around 9:30am). I’d watched all the previous failures (calibration exercises?), and until they succeeded, many didn’t think it was possible.
Next week will hopefully be an exciting new milestone for SpaceX and NASA. SpaceX is scheduled to launch two US astronauts to the ISS, which will be (1) the first time a private company has ever launched astronauts into orbit, and (2) the first time since the shuttle program was decommissioned in 2011 that the US has the capability to do so.
Needless to day, I’ll be watching the launch live on May 27th, currently scheduled for 4:33pm ET.
Last week, SpaceX released an ISS docking simulator to the public, which is basically what it sounds like. In a web browser, you can manually dock the Dragon space capsule with the ISS, using the same controls the astronauts would use during a manual docking sequence.
It was actually pretty simple once you get familiar with the controls, and I was surprised to pull it off on my first try:
I tried a second time with the goal of docking as quickly as possible, and came in too fast and crashed.
I found it to be an interesting learning experience, but suspect I’m in the minority here. I shared with a good friend and got this response: “I got bored and crashed into the ISS. It was anticlimatic.”