Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Still Looking Up

Watching rockets blast off into space never gets old.  It's especially cool when they're launching people.  Traveling over a thousand miles an hour, thrust into an environment that wouldn't be survivable for any significant length of time, should life-supports fail, and doing it all in the name of exploration and learning, excites all the curiosity cells in my brain.

As of tonight, there have now been eighteen people carried to space by the three Dragon 2 spacecraft over five launches in the last year and a half.  Each is capable of carrying seven, though none of them have carried a full crew, thus far.  Simple math says they should easily carry dozens to space in the next year or so.

When the Starship development goes into service, that number will increase exponentially.  It's been stated that each vessel could ferry 100 passengers to space.  There could instantly be more people in space than in some small towns.  

Considering the most people ever in space at the same time has been fourteen, space colonization could happen very rapidly.  Humanity could have research outposts developing and understanding new things in no time.  That's exciting.