NASA, SpaceX Launch Marks New Era for Space Exploration

SpaceX will launch its first flight into space with humans aboard on Wednesday, May 27, with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on the Crew Dragon spacecraft. The crew is headed to the International Space Station (ISS), and if they're successful, this will mark the first-ever privately owned company to send humans into space while meeting NASA's certification requirements. Elon Musk's company designed the spacecraft, which is planned to launch on May 27 at 4:33pm ET/1:33pm PT. National Geographic will live stream the entire event, beginning at 3:00pm ET/12:00pm PT. "Launch America: Mission to Space Live" on its Nat Geo Channel, which will have updates about any changes to the launch time. IGN spoke with retired astronaut Cady Coleman, who logged 180 days in space, and trained Sandra Bullock for her role in the Oscar-winning film, Gravity, on this momentous event and how privatized space launches could help bring more opportunities to American astronauts in the future. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=nasa-black-hole-gallery&captions=true"]

"People are meant to explore. Our earth is part of a much bigger place, and that’s kind of this big statement, but it’s really true. And in order to explore you have to go there," Coleman said. "We’ve had a space station in orbit for almost 20 years, and we are testing things out in that space station and we’ve been going back and forth with the Russians for the past nine years, and now we have the added capability of being able to launch from the U.S."

NASA's Opportunities with SpaceX and Boeing

“I think NASA has taken a new look at ‘How can we do this and how can we do this efficiently’ and looking at commercial companies like SpaceX and Boeing, we can say, ‘This is what we need.’ And they get to use their ingenuity and their ideas to design. So you don’t just have this thinking from the government of ‘This is the way we’ve always done it,'" Coleman said.

A major difference of private companies such as SpaceX or Boeing creating the spacecrafts has to do with risks – Coleman explained the commercial companies are able to take further hardware risks than NASA is able to.

"If they [SpaceX/Boeing] test something out and it doesn't work out, they can go, 'Okay we learned something,' but if NASA or the government has a big test, and if it doesn't work out, then we have an investigation, rightly so, and they’re using tax dollars. So in this case, SpaceX and Boeing can do all of the trying out of things that they want to. They're still signed up to deliver a vehicle to us that works a certain way, but they’re taking bigger risks than we can, and by them taking bigger risks, everybody gets further ahead," Coleman said.

Coleman added the distinction of the involvement of risks, saying, "No one can take risks with humans that aren’t appropriate. Space travel is never safe, but we have to try and make it as safe as we can."

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The Future of Americans in Space

In terms of SpaceX being the first commercial company for the launch, Coleman said they and Boeing both bring really valuable approaches for the future. "Both of them bring such increased capability that we are going to be able to launch more easily. From the U.S. we have more control about timing, about what's going on and how, and that's going to lead to basically more data points, of what kinds of things can we do up in space." Although SpaceX is the first private company to mark this historical event, Coleman said she believed Boeing was actually expected to be the first launch of the two, but ran into some problems and had to delay. Coleman shared that even though the launch on Wednesday has a two-person crew that is made up of both males, that is not representative of where NASA and the commercial companies are at in terms of equality. "We have a crew of a group of about eight astronauts that are a part of this commercial crew group, and are made up of both women and men, but when only two people go and they both happen to be guys, in a field that has been traditionally male-dominated, I think it's really easy to create an impression that women and minorities are not a part of this program, and that is a completely incorrect impression." The chief pilot for Boeing's first mission is a woman pilot, Nicole Mann.

Bringing the 'Magic' of Space to Film

Coleman was in space on the ISS when she and Sandra Bullock got in contact with one another for Bullocks role in 2013's Gravity, with Coleman saying the experience became a great morale booster for the entire crew while up there. "The two things that she wanted to understand was, how does it feel to be a human being living so far from everyone that you care about, and not knowing when on Earth you're going to come home," Coleman said. "And the other thing, was a more physical thing, she wanted to understand what it was like to move up in space." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2014/01/10/the-best-movie-of-2013-gravity-igns-best-of-2013"] Coleman said that moving in space isn't as much about, "floating around, grabbing handrails and pulling yourself along and giving yourself a shove, it's just this magic flying." National Geographic will continue the live coverage on Thursday, May 28 as the Crew Dragon spacecraft is expected to dock at the ISS. More space content can be streamed on Disney+ leading up to and after the event, including, Apollo: Missions to the Moon, One Strange Rock, Mars: Inside SpaceX, and Mission to the Sun. Stay tuned to IGN for a follow-up to the SpaceX launch and in the meantime, for more space news, read about the closest black hole to earth that has recently been discovered and how one black hole appeared to break the law of physics itself. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jessie Wade is Homepage Editor and the science lady at IGN. Follow her on Twitter @jessieannwade.

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