How The Groundbreaking Capsule Bought Its Title

If the SpaceX astronautics firm was identified for something apart from being owned by Elon Musk, it would be the truth that the varied rockets, capsules, and gear utilized in the corporate’s many groundbreaking missions all have exceptionally cool names. Its major collection of rockets bear the moniker of the mighty Falcon, it has engines named after the legendary wizard Merlin, and its revolutionary space-traversing capsules are named after the legendary Dragon. The factor with cool names, although, is that they typically do not simply come out of nowhere. Even when “Dragon” simply seems like a cool title to offer a spaceflight mission on the whole, there needed to have been some sort of spark that prompted SpaceX to bestow that title upon its first capsule to dock on the ISS.

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Because it so occurs, there really is a small story behind the title of the Dragon capsule, a mildly humorous one that could be of curiosity to followers of traditional folks music. The impetus for the title of the Dragon capsule arose as a form of act of defiance from Elon Musk, and a traditional tune that folk younger and previous have been whistling to themselves way back to the Sixties.

In a 2008 interview with Zeitgeist, Elon Musk revealed that the Dragon capsule was initially slated to be known as the “Magic Dragon.” This was supposed to be a reference to the 1962 folks track, “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” carried out by folks group Peter, Paul and Mary. For these too younger to recollect, many have hypothesized that “Puff, the Magic Dragon” is a veiled reference to marijuana utilization, although each Peter Yarrow and the creator of the unique poem that impressed the track, Lenny Lipton, have denied this.

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The title arose as a little bit of a passive-aggressive swing from Musk in opposition to those that believed SpaceX could not rise to prominence in its early days.

“Dragon was really named after Puff, the Magic Dragon as a result of so many individuals thought I have to be smoking weed to do that enterprise,” Musk stated.

This story was later corroborated by engineer Dr. Tom Markusic in a 2022 presentation by Texas Engineering. Dr. Markusic beforehand labored for SpaceX, and recalled an occasion of Musk buzzing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” after a gathering with the USA Congress to debate the creation of a brand new capsule.

Dr. Markusic stated that Musk selected the title as a result of “it was such a fantasy, it was such a joke that Elon was like, ‘Okay, superb. We’ll name it Magic Dragon.'”

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