ARS Technica by Eric Berger - 11/10/2021
Crew-3 is set free —
SpaceX is beginning to get the hang of human spaceflight"I think we're incredibly grateful with the partnership that we've had."
Finally afforded serene skies and fair seas, SpaceX successfully launched four more astronauts for NASA on a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday night.
Flying atop a once-used Falcon 9 first stage, the Crew Dragon spacecraft ascended into thin clouds above Kennedy Space Center, and safely reached orbit. The first stage subsequently returned to Earth, landing on a drone ship. The crew—NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as European astronaut Matthias Maurer—will dock with the International Space Station on Thursday evening.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of Wednesday night's launch is that it seemed almost routine.
Less than 18 months have passed since SpaceX took the extraordinary step of becoming the first private company to launch humans into orbit, with a demonstration flight carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the space station, and thereby achieving heights previously only reached by the national space agencies of Russia, the United States, and China.
Since then, Crew Dragon has launched three additional missions for NASA, as well as the private Inspiration4 flight this fall. That's a fairly rapid cadence right out of the gate. The space shuttle, with its standing army of thousands and thousands of civil servants and contractors, flew its fifth mission after 19 months.
More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/spacex-is-beginning-to-get-the-hang-of-human-spaceflight/
