In November 2010 the American SpaceX company will launch its Dragon spacecraft on its first mission. The world’s first private spaceship will be carried by the Falcon 9 rocket, developed by the same company. This will be an important milestone for private spaceflight: Falcon 9 and the Dragon, after some more development, will even be able to carry personnel to the International Space Station.

After terminating NASA’s Project Constellation, development of the Ares rocket and the Orion spacecraft became uncertain,  and the United States started depending on other nations’ help (mainly the Russian Soyuz spacecraft) sustaining work on the ISS. In this situation the role of private companies in space exploration became more valuable, making the simple and cheap reusable rocket and spaceship affordable. The whole system was also designed to be able transport passengers (for example, during the rocket’s flight there is only moderate acceleration, escaping and saving of personnel is possible throughout the whole flight, and the spacecraft is able to come back to Earth with full load). NASA, being confident, has already ordered 12 flights worth $3.1 billion, starting with this demonstration flight, first of three similar missions.

Dragon spacecraft is of quite simple and conventional design. The conic shaped pressure resistant bow is reusable and all important instrumentation is placed here. At the nose the Common Berthing Mechanism compatible with the American modules of the ISS is placed, which is not able to do a conventional docking: one of the ISS’s robotic arms has to catch the spacecraft, which is then practically fitted to the station. This procedure has already been proven  possible by the Japanese HTV spacecraft. The Dragon is able to bring back its entire cargo to Earth. The landing is done the conventional way: with heat shield and a parachute, the capsule in the end reaching the sea. The reusable spacecraft’s only expendable part is the otherwise empty service module containing only the solar cells, this is separated before entry and burns in the atmosphere.

Both stages of the Falcon 9 rocket are also planned to be reusable, they are to return to sea by parachutes, although so far (five Falcon 1 and one Falcon 9) the recovery was unsuccessful. Bringing back the second stage already in low Earth orbit is even more complicated: its difficulty is similar to those of orbiting spaceships, so this will only implemented in the future.

After successful tests, SpaceX originally scheduled the first flight of the spacecraft, after some delays, to late October. Due to further minor technical problems this was postponed to November. If the first flight takes place as currently expected, one of the important parameters will differ from later missions: the rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center will be sent onto a 31.5 inclination trajectory which is unlike the 51.8 degrees trajectory of Space Shuttles and later Dragon flights, meaning the first launch cannot be seen from Europe.