Would You Fly To Space?

Vacay of the future.

Footage of NASA and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch last weekend stopped my Wheel Of Fortune-esque scroll-hole in its tracks.

Watching the stream with my heart in my mouth, US astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley were strapped in, performed comms checks between the vessel and the space centre and tested for spacesuit leaks in the lead up to being blasted out of our atmosphere. SpaceX displays the trajectory in an arc, with just two precise moments that the crew can abort the mission if something on board fails. *See aforementioned heart-in-your-mouth stuff.

Thanks to International Space Station Instagram @iss. Hero image by Aidan Monaghan via IMDB.

According to the company’s futuristic-travel-brochure-of-a-website, SpaceX engineering “will soon become the first private spacecraft to take humans to the space station”, as part of Elon Musk’s plan to make space travel a (relatively) affordable, viable option for humankind. A new era of space flight and a prospect many will jump at.

Former NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg (coincidentally, Doug Hurley’s wife) once said, “If I could get every Earthling to do one circle of the Earth, I think things would run a little differently.” Listen up, humankind.

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, thanks to International Space Station Instagram @iss

There’s no doubt that seeing our planet become a glowing blue dot in a sea of jet-black universe would give you a little ... at the very least, perspective. At the worst a full-blown existential meltdown. Just me?

But these guys are trained for it. They live for it. They’ve been into space several times and worked with NASA for decades. Both their partners are astronauts too. Space exploration is their life.

Flying to the opposite hemisphere was once unimaginable. Now it’s an achievable thing. Many would choose to do it every year – the only obstacles being the cost and the annual leave, will space be the same? The United States’ exploration of space has taken half a century, and is at the whim of the sitting president’s priorities, but after this successful launch, and Musk’s funding, it’s looking increasingly likely that in our kids’ lifetime a leisure trip into orbit will be a getaway option.