The space age has reached a new stage – second, third? – with an unmanned spaceship – space drone? – designed and built by a private company, and capable of, once again, carrying stuff up to the Space Station from the United States.Since the Space Shuttle went away, NASA’s been sending stuff and people to Russia, where the Souyz spacecraft has been running missions up to the big mansion in the sky. SpaceX’s Dragon, which did its test run in May, is not yet ready to carry people — that will be possible in three years, around the time SpaceX will be finishing its $1.6 billion, 12 mission contract with NASA – but it will be ferrying all sorts of essential supplies to the station. This time it will be carrying 882 pounds of key science experiments, including experiments by 11 sets of elementary schoolers, and a freezer full of Cups of Blue Bell chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream, because, well, ice cream. (By the way, freeze dried “astronaut” ice cream was only taken up on one Apollo mission, but take a look at all the other weird supplies that have gone up to space.)After it unloads the ice cream, Dragon will be returning twice as much as it took up, including, of course, a stockpile of astronauts’ blood and urine samples. Even though one of the rocket’s nine first-stage engines was lost during the ascent to orbit “due to an unspecified anomaly” (see 1:30 in the video above), the launch was deemed a success. And it was all the better because it was at night (that’s how I watched Space Shuttle Endeavour lift off for the last time), which means that for a moment, the rocket illuminated the entire sky above Cape Canaveral. And yet for all the drama, what’s remarkable to me about watching this launch, this big step into private spaceflight, is how normal it already feels.When you’re done admiring this new normal space age, nerd out with this Google Hangout from Saturday, with NASA chief Charlie Bolden and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk. And yes, they talk about Elon’s favorite thing: going to Mars.See our series Spaced Out, including episodes on interior design for outer space and saving Earth from asteroids.
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