Early this morning, the crew of the International Space Station reached out with its robotic arm and captured SpaceX’s Dragon module. The capture and eventual docking marks the first privately driven cargo delivery to the space station, something that could change the landscape of manned spaceflight.
The ramifications are potentially huge. If SpaceX can make these deliveries reliably, it frees NASA’s budget and brainpower to focus on other projects. Perhaps a high-capacity launch vehicle to send something like the Orion capsule beyond Low Earth Orbit? Of course, SpaceX still has some hurdles to clear in order to become that reliable. First and foremost, it’s got to figure out why one of its Falcon 9 engines failed during Sunday’s launch. Still, this is huge for SpaceX and for NASA. Further progress can get NASA out of the cargo and crew shuttling business and into more Final Frontier kind of exploration.
