Dragon

I’m sat at work editing a seemingly endless list of faculty biographies, but on my desktop I have open the live feed of SpaceX‘s Dragon capsule docking with the International Space Station.

Every time I look at it I smile. SpaceX is doing an incredible thing in pushing humanity towards space and a proper science-fictional future with all the jet packs and moonbases and stuff.  Congratulations to Elon Musk for having the vision to attempt something like this, rather than investing his fortune in something drab and financial.

But docking in space is painfully slow, a bit like watching the hands of a clock: you only notice they’ve moved when you look away and then look back a bit later.

And for all that Dragon is an amazing achievement, what’s truly mesmerising is our Earth spinning by underneath it all – galloping by in comparison to the Dragon capsule!