Halfway to Anywhere 263
military airports, there’s a need for both commercial and
military spaceports. SpaceX would like to launch rock-
ets from three locations. The current locations are Cape
Canaveral in Florida, which is an Air Force Base, and the
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Because both
launch sites belong to the military, it’s problematic to
launch commercial cargo. The location of this new com-
mercial launch site should be close to the equator. “South
coast of Texas is the lead candidate for that third launch
site,” Elon said.^408
To deliver cargo and astronauts to space, SpaceX de-
signed the Dragon capsule. The design of the Dragon is
similar to the capsule that carried the first humans to
space. With a white color and eighteen Draco thrusters for
control in space, it consists of two main sections. While
the upper cone-shaped section, with a flattened top, is
pressurized and will return to Earth, the lower cylindrical-
shaped section is not pressurized and will not return to
Earth.
The Dragon can carry six tonnes of cargo or seven as-
tronauts. The astronauts inside of the cone-shaped section
will sit in two rows, with four in the first row and three in
the row behind them. In the case of an emergency, eleven
astronauts could sit in the Space Shuttle when it returned
from space, but seven astronauts was the most common
number.