"Russia is no longer a need": the Crew Dragon successfully docked to the ISS. What's next?

It is like a big white bullet — only move will be much faster. Its manufacturer, the company SpaceX, called the spacecraft Crew Dragon. he was at the height of several dozen meters from the ground, on top of the Falcon 9 rocket, looking down at launch pad 39A Space center. Kennedy in Florida. If all goes well (spoiler: everything went well), the Crew Dragon will go to the International space station in the last test flight before it will sit the astronauts.

No American company has never launched a space traveler on orbit on their own ship. "It's good to feel that we are ready to fly," said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of NASA's exploration and operations of space forces people acquainted with the readiness of the mission to fly on February 22.

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Now Crew Dragon will carry people to the ISS

It would Seem, what in it such? Not more than 109 spacecraft first flew from pad 39A, and most of them from the lunar missions "Apollo" and then the space shuttles — was more powerful and ambitious. It so happened that it was the state projects on a national scale.

"This is a modest step towards commercial spaceflight, but it is necessary to emphasize the word "modest", says John Logsdon, Professor Emeritus of space policy at the George Washington University.

A Fair point. At the moment, the Crew Dragon is a government project, organized by just different. But SpaceX and its allies say is a step to so much more. "It's a huge deal," says Chad Anderson, CEO of Space Angels, venture capital Fund with a budget of $ 50 million, which focuses on space startups. "SpaceX has opened the era of entrepreneurship in space. And it's not a tribute — it's a huge respect for their achievements".

The immediate aim, in the words of NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, is to "American astronauts were sent an American spacecraft from American soil for the first time since the retirement of space Shuttle in 2011."

Because since then USA has rented space for astronauts on Russian Soyuz rockets. And if this first flight of a Crew Dragon would be successful — and so he was pre — NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will go together with the next Dragon mission in July.

Crew Dragon, with a length of 8 meters and a capacity of seven astronauts, was able to take only 200 pounds of cargo in this flight — Demo 1. His plan was to reach and dock to the space station a day after launch, to spend there five days and then flop into the Atlantic ocean off the coast of Florida.

The crew Module, like its rocket reusable is an important part of the business model of SpaceX, the calculated savings due to multiple usage. Multi-million dollar investments will be used again and not "thrown away" after a single use.

And in the spirit of American entrepreneurship was organized by NASA for SpaceX competition. Boeing with a similar capsule CST-100 Cockpit at the present time to conduct a test flight without crew in April. If all goes well, astronauts Eric boe, Nicole Aunapu Mann and Christopher Ferguson will fly there in August.

Boeing has long served as a NASA aerospace contractor, and this is reflected in the contracts that are concluded with him and SpaceX. To perform the same work as Boeing has allocated $ 4.2 billion, and SpaceX — near 2.6 billion. First launch of Boeing will use expendable Atlas 5 rocket, which will make them essentially more expensive. But given the constant shifts in the schedule, the Boeing team can completely disrupt a Laurel wreath, going to the ISS before the SpaceX team.

"the Fundamental importance of commercial crew is to restore US access to space," says Logsdon. "He delivers us hopes for Russian, that's what's important."

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Russia is no longer a need

For these entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, colorful and controversial General Director of SpaceX, a major goal is to make the sky closer. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, funding for their space company . Richard Branson, the flamboyant businessman went from business to music of Virgin Galactic is to make space tourism a reality. Other ambitious space company have come and gone in the last twenty-five years, but very few had a vision as big and bold as Elon Musk. He said that the goal is to make people kind, endearing space to establish colonies on Mars and save the life on Earth.

"what's the difference between companies that participated in this development, how they were financed?", says Marco Caceres, senior space analyst at Teal Group. "Twenty years ago they were not as rich as Bezos, the personality Mask or are willing to risk Branson".

In the early days of the space era, when human flight into space was part of the race the cold war, the risk was NASA, sending astronauts in a dangerous journey to defeat the Soviet Union in the battle for the moon. This was reflected in the costs; the aerospace company benefited from the huge amount of government contracts that ensured they will earn money even coming out of the budget, because each mission was vital to national security. Nobody knew actually how much should it cost space travel. When taxpayers started to complain, someone always said, what is at stakea future of freedom.

But then Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and winning the space race NASA was unable to find a new direction. Suddenly any risk it became difficult to justify. The spacecraft began to be designed so that the flights were faster, however, became less effective. New technologies that could knock the costs of space exploration, discarded in favor of proven and stable technologies. Therefore, although the NASA space Shuttle was conceived as a confounding cost flights remained incredibly expensive and was thus dangerous. The explosion of the Shuttle Challenger in 1986 put the Shuttle program on a two-year pause, and the loss of the Shuttle Columbia in 2003 put on her point.

Anderson said that the problem was NASA system. "We developed space technology for 60 years, mostly funded by the government. There were a lot of contractors and one client. As a result, we got the opposite of innovation. We went from nowhere to low-earth orbit, to the moon, then back to low earth orbit, and in the end will not come. Until SpaceX was all right."

A Breakthrough, according to Anderson, quietly happened in 2009. It wasn't technical progress and not the high-profile launch — it was a list. SpaceX have published their prices for the launch of valuable goods. Now, if a company wanted to launch a satellite, she knew how to attract money, and could make plans around it. Before that, there were a few dozen participants willing to invest in new space enterprises. Now the company invested $ 18 billion from 412 companies.

The Business remains a difficult challenge. For six years, SpaceX has struggled to post its first payload in orbit; in 2015 and 2016 have suffered spectacular failures of rockets, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars. In January it became known that the company is firing 10% of its staff from 6,000 people. In short, anyone can make a small fortune in space — will have to spend big.

But the heavens opened for entrepreneurs, partly because of the aggressive business SpaceX and partly due to the fact that Washington now welcomes private enterprise in orbit. The most important thing in launching astronauts SpaceX is not what they will actually fly into space. The important thing is that they have reduced prices. They did amazing things that seemed impossible. Made them effective and inexpensive.

What was happening to space when the prices ceased to seem unaffordable? The idea literally flowed from all sides. SpaceIL, an Israeli non-profit organization, launched the world's first private moon ship rocket SpaceX. The Earth observation satellites, which are often displayed, one per day, now replaced by small clusters of smaller and moving satellites that send readings in real time. And so on.

Caceres says that the biggest driver of demand for space business in the near future may be the Internet traffic: in many cases, transmitting data via satellite is cheaper than on the ground. In 2015, SpaceX promised to deploy a global network of Starlink 11943 satellites. No one took.

Of Course, launching satellites is easier and safer than people. Even Musk said that the chance that he will retire on Mars, about 70%. At the moment governments are the only entities sending people into space. Does this change any time soon?

Someone long ago would have come if there was a demand, isn't it? And the current company could fly by themselves, but if they want to? And where will you go?

Far away, says Musk and his colleagues. If they succeed, the next stop will be Mars, and soon. They are extremely confident and in space.

Stay tuned .