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No Americans have launched from US soil on an orbital spacecraft in eight years. But with SpaceX’s first test launch of its Crew Dragon spacecraft this weekend, a new era in human spaceflight is about to begin.

In the early hours of Saturday March 2, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. This was the first flight of a spacecraft designed to carry humans to orbit from the US since the final flight of the Space Shuttle in July 2011.

Under contract with Nasa, this spacecraft is designed to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).


The test flight, known as Demo mission 1 (DM-1), had no humans on board. But as soon as this summer, SpaceX plans to launch its first humans, Nasa astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. And after that, the real fun begins.

“The success of DM-1 opens up a new market of possibilities for SpaceX,” says space policy analyst Laura Forczyk, founder of the consulting firm Astralytical. “We may see SpaceX launch private astronauts along with government astronauts to the ISS in the future.”

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SpaceX has six contracted flights with Nasa to fly astronauts to the station. They are one of two companies to receive billions of dollars in funding from the agency to develop crewed spacecraft, the other being Boeing, who hope to conduct the first test flight of their Starliner vehicle later this year. Crew Dragon can carry up to seven people on each flight, although Nasa will only use up to four seats per launch.

It’s SpaceX’s other customers, however, that may prove to be more exciting. The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has made no secret of his desire to send humans into space, and various private companies and philanthropists will no doubt be keeping a close eye on what opportunities Crew Dragon may offer.


“We’ve not sought any private customers. Our focus has been on serving Nasa’s needs,” Musk said in a press conference after the successful Crew Dragon launch. “But once Dragon is in regular operation, I think we will seek commercial customers.”

Those customers may include Bigelow Aerospace, an American company that hopes to develop a space hotel in orbit. Together with the United Launch Alliance (ULA), Bigelow hopes to launch inflatable habitats into orbit as soon as 2021, having already tested such a habitat aboard the ISS in 2016, known as the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).

“Companies such as Bigelow, Axiom, NanoRacks, and others are aggressively pursuing opportunities for [crewed] stations in-orbit, but none of these plans are possible without a way for humans to get there,” says industry analyst Caleb Williams from consulting firm SpaceWorks.

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And paying space tourists, too, could be a target for SpaceX. Seven people have paid to go to space before on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, at a cost of about $20 million per seat, travelling to the ISS. SpaceX may well look to offer similar trips to the ISS or elsewhere for a similar price. They already have Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa signed up to launch on a trip around the Moon on their Starship vehicle, which is still in development.


Crew Dragon’s first test isn’t over yet – the spacecraft still needs to successfully return to Earth on Friday March 8, surviving a harsh re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere before parachuting into the Atlantic Ocean. But if all this goes to plan, it’s hard not to dream of what might be possible in the near future.

With companies such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin also planning to offer paid space tourist flights to suborbit as soon as this year, Crew Dragon is the latest part in an exciting era of human spaceflight that many have long hoped for.

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