Crew Dragon launch escape demonstration
This was pretty impressive. It was super awesome that everything worked exactly as it should and it clears the way for SpaceX to launch people to the space station.<p>What is more relevant for me, is that if NASA follows their own rules, it also means that SpaceX will beat Boeing to having a manned spacecraft capability.<p>The &quot;rules&quot; in play here is that Boeing had a requirement of doing a successful unmanned flight. In government contracts this is known as a &#x27;threshold requirement&#x27; meaning that it has to be done before the contract can be completed. Boeing also had a parachute deployment failure during their drop test. As NASA (and some members in Congress) have been emphasizing on how important safety is and relentlessly hammering SpaceX over their refueling techniques and their &quot;history&quot;, if they do not want to be seen as hypocritical they should require Boeing to at least achieve a successful unmanned flight to the space station and they could piggy back the parachute deployment test on that flight (and get a twofer, both the parachute test and the end to end flight test.) Requiring that however, will cost Boeing money (they have to pay the expenses for the retest out of their pocket) and more importantly time (they need another launch vehicle from ULA and a launch window). Versus SpaceX which only needs the results of today&#x27;s test audited and signed off before they can launch their test crew. So perhaps 60 days, 90 at the most before they are cleared to fly people.<p>So I think it is highly likely that SpaceX gets people up into orbit first. And that is a pretty amazing milestone and it slaughters a couple of sacred cows in the aerospace industry.<p>The most impressive one for me is that an aerospace company can be started from scratch and beat all established players in capability, cost, and launch cadence. It is both a huge endorsement of SpaceX&#x27;s approach and a huge black eye for the existing players. Given that the existing companies actually want to survive it heralds some really exciting times ahead for space.<p>The other thing is that a company has this capability at all. I was talking with some friends about how do you &quot;value&quot; that in the market? How does it affect the geopolitics of space? What happens when Bigelow aerospace or another &quot;space industry&quot; partner starts selling access to orbital facilities that aren&#x27;t government owned and operated?<p>As far as I&#x27;m concerned I wish this had started 40 years ago rather than a bit less than 20, but I&#x27;m glad I have had a chance to watch it unfold. Exciting times.