Space travel makes history as Elon Musk’s SpaceX launches astronauts

“It’s been 18 years working towards this goal, so it’s hard to believe that it’s happened.”

SpaceX founder Elon Musk was understandably an emotional man, after his company launched astronauts into space on Saturday. This is the first time a private company has launched NASA’s astronauts into space.

“I’m really quite overcome with emotion on this day, so it’s kind of hard to talk, frankly,” Musk said in a post-launch press conference at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s historic launch complex 39A, carrying a Crew Dragon spacecraft along with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.

SpaceX and Boeing were both selected for NASA’s commercial crew program to wean the agency off its dependence on Russia’s Soyuz to fly astronauts after the US retired its space shuttle program in 2011.

US President Donald Trump, witnessing the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a historic first private crewed flight into space, said: “It’s incredible.”

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “It’s really something special.”

“Space will be one of the most important things we have ever done,” Trump added, noting that “nobody does it like us.”

If all goes well with the Demo-2 test flight, SpaceX will soon begin launching astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA as well as other space agencies and private companies. The first operational Crew Dragon mission, called Crew-1, could launch to the ISS as early as August 30, with three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency on board.

This isn’t the first time SpaceX has launched a Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS. Another Crew Dragon called Demo-1 was launched to the station in March 2019 for a weeklong demonstration mission but there were no astronauts on board — only a test dummy named Ripley.

When asked about his conversations with the Demo-2 astronauts’ kids, Musk — who recently became a dad again — got choked up.

“It really hit home,” he said of the time he told their two boys that he would do everything in his power to bring their dads home safely.

“I think it was an argument that the return is more dangerous in some ways than the ascent, so in order to declare victory yet, we need to bring them home safely and make sure that we’re doing everything we can to minimize that risk of re-entry and return,” Musk added.