SpaceX has successfully not only launched Americans into orbit from American soil with an American rocket topped with an American capsule, they have also successfully recovered the first stage booster. Woo!
Now if they could lob those rioters to the Moon, that would be great.
Also: they included a zero-g indicator in the capsule:
That’s cool and all, but something more active would seem to be called for. And now that capsules are spacious and need not be nightmarishly cramped, it might be time to consider launching a kitten:
This could be the crowning achievement in the history of human spaceflight, or it could be a blood-soaked disaster. Either’s good, so long as it’s adequately live streamed. But I expect that a cat will be able to accept freefall… maybe not instantly, but eventually. Cover the inside of the capsule with something like burlap and the cat will be able to hang on and move around. I’ve designed, over the years, a couple different “zero g litterboxes” that cats would *hopefully* be able to accept and use. Thing is, we won’t know any of this for certain until someone actually tries. Now that Dragon is up and running, the cost of spaceflight just might drop enough that we can finally, at overly long last, try this necessary step on the road to conquering space.