"Looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail"

So said American astronaut Donald Pettit earlier today as he snagged the privately owned SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station's 58-foot robotic arm.

Gosh, this has been a long time coming. The pulpy sci-fi paperbacks of my youth have long ago crumbled into dust, but it was only today that their rosy predictions of private enterprise in outer space finally began to come true.

It's just a load of cargo on this trip -- food, clothing, new experiments -- but the AP's Marcia Dunn reports tonight (via Yahoo! News) that NASA and SpaceX are so encouraged by the success of this mission that a follow-up may come as soon as September.

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Video obtained from NASA.