Late Thursday, SpaceX and its founder, billionaire Elon Musk, unveiled the Dragon V2 spaceship. The Dragon V2 is vying to be one of the first U.S.-built spaceships to carry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station since the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011. SpaceX and two competitors, Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp., are each getting more than $1 billion from NASA to create a shuttle replacement, and NASA is expected to announce sometime over the next few months which projects will have an actual spaceflight around the year 2017.
For the past two years, Dragon cargo capsules have been going up to the International Space Station, but those spacecraft are not made to carry people. If launch abort tests go well, Musk believes the Dragon V2's first flight in orbit (minus a crew) might happen in 2015, and a version with actual test pilots could follow in 2016. Musk doesn't plan on stopping at the ISS, though. As NBC News reports, he believes sending colonists to Mars is "where things need to go in the long term."
You can watch Musk's showman-like unveiling:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Or just check out some photos of the Dragon V2.--Catherine Garcia
-
Israel: Losing the American publicFeature A recent poll finds American support for Israel's military action in Gaza has fallen from 50% to 32%
-
Unmaking AmericansFeature Trump is threatening to revoke the citizenship of foreign-born Americans. Could he do that?
-
EPA: A bonfire of climate change regulationsFeature The Environmental Protection Agency wants to roll back its 'endangerment finding,' a ruling that lets the agency regulate carbon emissions
-
Lithium shows promise in Alzheimer's studySpeed Read Potential new treatments could use small amounts of the common metal
-
Scientists discover cause of massive sea star die-offSpeed Read A bacteria related to cholera has been found responsible for the deaths of more than 5 billion sea stars
-
'Thriving' ecosystem found 30,000 feet underseaSpeed Read Researchers discovered communities of creatures living in frigid, pitch-black waters under high pressure
-
New York plans first nuclear plant in 36 yearsSpeed Read The plant, to be constructed somewhere in upstate New York, will produce enough energy to power a million homes
-
Dehorning rhinos sharply cuts poaching, study findsSpeed Read The painless procedure may be an effective way to reduce the widespread poaching of rhinoceroses
-
Breakthrough gene-editing treatment saves babyspeed read KJ Muldoon was healed from a rare genetic condition
-
Sea lion proves animals can keep a beatspeed read A sea lion named Ronan beat a group of college students in a rhythmic dance-off, says new study
-
Humans heal much slower than other mammalsSpeed Read Slower healing may have been an evolutionary trade-off when we shed fur for sweat glands
