ISS Astronaut Shares His Views on SpaceX’s Dragon

On Friday, we reported how the first ever commercial rocket to successfully launch into space, historically docked with the International Space Station. This truly paved the way to a future of privatized space exploration and now, having seen the Dragon himself, ISS astronaut Andre Kuipers a Dutch physician with the European Space Agency took his own blog to share his reactions about the Dragon capsule. After detailing how important an event the robot-arm docking really was, he described the craft as he saw it.

He said, “Beautiful. Spacious, Modern. Blue LEDS. Feels a bit like a sci-fi filmset. Of course it is from Los Angeles.” In addition to that quip from Kuipers (I’m sorry, I really couldn’t resist) he goes on to talk about the future of space travel.

He said, “Last Friday was a special day on my mission. Don and I docked the SpaceX cargoship Dragon to the Space Station. Dragon brings new equipment for the crew. On the 31^st of May it will return to Earth with supplies from the others and myself. The Dragon mission is the operational highlight of my mission. But it is also a milestone for international spaceflight. This is the first time that a commercial spacecraft has flown to the ISS and docked with the Station. You could say a new era of spaceflight has begun. Soon private companies will take people to and from space.”

Give then fact that this is the first of many flights that Dragon is scheduled to make right through to the year 2017, one of the things that Kuipers mentioned certainly does seem to be right on the money; the new age truly has already begun in this respect.

Pradeep Chandrasekaran
Categories: Transportation