Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by InclinedPlane 5561 days ago
Both the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy are planned to carry humans to orbit. In fact, the 2nd ever test of the Falcon 9 used the Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX's in house developed capsule spacecraft capable of being manned, as a payload.
1 comments

I'm pretty sure they lifted a non-functional mockup with similar weight characteristics, not the final functional Dragon model...
No, they did lift a real and functional Dragon capsule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon#Maiden_flight
Yup!

If it had been a country doing it instead of SpaceX they probably would have already put a human into orbit in a Dragon capsule.

Is there any legal restriction preventing them from putting a person in their next test flight?
I'd imagine it's more a commercial restriction - they really, really, really don't want to kill someone on the first few dozen flights.

(they don't want to kill anyone ever, of course, but an early death would be an inordinately huge blow to their potential success in the market)

yep, i saw it back in jan, burned from the reentry heat and all :)