At around 10 minutes into the launch, when the Falcon 9 rocket lifts the Dragon space capsule into orbit, you begin to sense the excitement, spreading across the launch control room in Florida to a more spartan, futuristic-looking mission control room in California, where a laser-focused Elon Musk sits front and center, clasping his hands in anxious anticipation of the next frontier. At 13 minutes, the nerd love enters full burn, and humanity takes a small step toward an era of space travel powered by sleek corporations, not rusty old governments.Also, an era of planetary redundancy, says Musk, who’s out to prove his private-space-hating heros Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan wrong by making space (and eventually Mars) cheap and accessible and exciting. And safe: the thrills will continue as the the capsule does some tests of its systems before being allowed to actually berth with the space station, perhaps as early as Friday.Even if it was a do-over after a weekend doozy, Musk’s launch felt a good deal more exciting than last week’s Silicon Valley fireworks.
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Musk has an astronomical IPO in mind too, of course. “We need to be doing a launch a month before we go public,” he said:, “and we might be there by the end of next year.”