Halfway to Anywhere 269
Space Systems. These demands have become more difficult
to follow since the last time we traveled to the Moon
because our society tolerates only smaller risks. When early
rockets blew up, you could hear comments like, “Oh, thank
God the monkey wasn’t in that one.” Today it wouldn’t be
acceptable to put an astronaut on the top of a converted
ICBM originally designed to deliver nuclear weapons. The
Space Shuttle was statistically likely to suffer 9 fatal ac-
cidents per 1 000 launches, but it changed after the Space
Shuttle accident in 2003 to 1 in 1 000.^297
SpaceX designed the first version of the Dragon capsule
to meet 80 percent of NASA’s Human-Rating Require-
ments simply because they had to if NASA would allow
it to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. The
capsule was from the beginning equipped with windows.
“Technically, if somebody were to stow aboard the cargo
version of Dragon, they’d actually be fine,” Elon said. “I
mean, hopefully.” What SpaceX needs to add to the design
are a launch abort system, seats, and a full life support
system. The launch abort system will be designed so the
capsule on the top of the rocket can fly away from the
rocket if something happens after the launch. Not having
one is like a military aircraft without an ejection seat.^297