Javier AnsorenaSEGUIRCorresponsal in New York Updated: Save Send news by mail electrónicoTu name *
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the U.S. opened this Saturday, a new chapter of the conquest of space in the most purely american : with private initiative. SpaceX, the aerospace company of the entrepreneur Elon Musk, placed in orbit two astronauts in the first manned space flight of a private company.
The milestone confirms the change of paradigm in the conquest of space: of the major space programmes public, like NASA, to the participation —and, probably, the leadership— of the mill private. The U.S. came out victorious of the fight multimillion-dollar lead the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and now search for ‘greening’ these laurels from the hand of their companies. The return to the Moon —that is resistant to NASA— and the arrival of dreams to Mars point to occur with the engine of the tissue of private entrepreneurship in the country.
Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken prior to take-off – Reuters
The first step in such ambitious targets occurred Saturday, shortly before the three and a half of the afternoon in Florida, at the Kennedy Space Center. Two NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, took off in the ship’s Crew Dragon, SpaceX, driven by a rocket Falcon 9, also of the company of Elon Musk.
Their destination was the International Space Station (ISS), where it is expected to reach today, Sunday, after a journey of about 18 hours.
environment and attention in the USA was that of the great feats of space, when, from the 1960s on, the country dominated this race in competition with the soviets and stunned the world by putting the first man on the Moon. The flight yesterday had the old flavor of that golden era of space exploration. The weather forecast was on tenterhooks the entire day to the engineers from SpaceX and NASA, which already had to suspend the first release date, last Wednesday, by bad weather.
on Saturday it seemed that they would repeat history, but eventually the clouds did aisle to the nave and the rocket, , who ascended to heaven of Florida between the joy of the attendees. Took off from the same platform that was used in the legendary Apollo mission and ascended without incident path of the ISS.
As in the old-time movies of that time, the people ran together to the nearby beach to see the trail of smoke and fire that left the Falcon 9, despite the recommendations of the authorities that there were no large concentrations by the pandemic coronavirus. The president of the united states, Donald Trump turned to move to Florida along with the vice-president, Mike Pence, to be a witness of a historical moment.
“Thanks for putting America once again in orbit space from the coast of Florida” , said Hurley from the ship to the engineers of SpaceX, when it was floating in space, and from your viewer front saw the earth as a blue ball cloud cover.
Claim patriotic
it Was a moment of glory for SpaceX , a journey that builds as the dominator of the industry’s private space and that puts you closer to the dream of Musk putting a man on Mars. But it was also a claim patriotic U.S., economic power, military and technological in the world, in a year that has not been able to prevent the more than one hundred thousand deaths due to the coronavirus, and in a weekend with the great cities taken by the violent protests against the death in Minneapolis of a black man at the hands of the police.
it Was, in addition, the first time that the US would send astronauts to space from its territory in nearly a decade. the end of the age of the shuttles of the NASA, which was accelerated by the accident of the Columbia in 2003, killed seven astronauts— forced the U.S. to rely on Russian craft Soyuz to send its astronauts to the ISS. A private company has finished with that humiliation and has shown that can take astronauts into space safely. And, in addition, with technical innovations, such as the recovery of the rockets used to propel the ships. The Falcon 9 lifted off of the Crew Dragon and landed with placidity on a platform in the Atlantic ocean.