SpaceX became the first private company to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station!
Why is it a big deal?
The launch is a huge deal for SpaceX, the private company founded by Elon Musk, contracted by NASA to carry astronauts on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. The historic liftoff atop a Falcon 9 rocket is a long time coming — with a bit of a storyline of David and Goliath. “SpaceX 10 years ago was the underdog,” said Anderson, whose Space Angels portfolio includes SpaceX. “They were fighting tooth and nail to get NASA contracts, to get security contracts, get the defense and community and government agencies to trust them enough to give them contracts.” Saturday’s mission, called Demo-2, ups the ante on aerospace giant Boeing (BA), which is separately under contract to ferry NASA astronauts via its own capsule. During a test flight last year the CST-100 Starliner failed to dock at the ISS. Boeing will re-test it before carrying humans. It’s worth noting, Boeing’s contract awarded by NASA in 2014 was valued at $4.3 billion versus SpaceX’s $2.5 billion. “Boeing was paid almost twice as much as SpaceX for essentially the same thing,” said Anderson. “So SpaceX is delivering at half the cost to taxpayers.” Since NASA retired its own shuttle program in 2011, the U.S. has been paying Russia more than $80 million per seat to shuttle astronauts to the ISS via the Soyuz spacecraft. “Reducing the cost is basically key here,” said Anderson. “To reduce the burden on taxpayer dollars and on congressional budgets and free up NASA's budget to go out and do other interesting science exploration missions.” Demo-2 brings SpaceX one step closer to achieving its more ambitious goals of going to the moon, and later Mars.
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