This is pretty cool and I think the naysayers have it wrong (there aren't many but still; and the pre-launch reportage was pretty staunch in mentioning delays).
Launching a rocket, berthing at the ISS (commercial company first) and returning back to earth (no other current spacecraft does this) is extremely difficult. Doing it privately on a budget is just as noteworthy...or more so.
News stories have highlighted the delays but will have little room to criticize the mission now (the only glitch I am aware of was a laser guidance problem which was quickly and adeptly resolved by SpaceX staff).
And as a web developer, it's difficult to imagine what it's like to build something with very long feedback cycles, little or no ability to test in actual conditions and extremely slim error margins.
I agree it is cool, the Soyuz actually does have a return to earth capability, its the Progress modules that don't. Now in their defense the Russians would be happy to return stuff in a Progress module but often they have trash in them and up until recently you could always bring things back in the shuttle.
All of that aside, SpaceX has hit one right out of the park here. They have effectively re-done all of the Mercury goals and most of the Gemini goals (the last being the whole man in space part). For comparison that took the Chinese 10 years [1] (some western observers would tell you it actually took them 20 years to get to the level that SpaceX is now but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and NASA couldn't talk to them.)
I am super excited about having someone who is commercially motivated to step into adjacent markets with space flight capability. It makes talking about doing things in orbit a much more serious thing than it was.
The soyuz has the capacity to return crew to the Earth, but Dragon is actually the only unmanned capsule capable of returning significant amounts of cargo.
Part of the problem is that the name 'Soyuz' is the name for the whole thing, the module on top is called 'Progress' and the current generation, Progress-M [1]. From the wikipedia page (but I've heard this from my Russian space enthusiast friends as well) "The Progress M is essentially the same spacecraft as the Progress, but it features improvements based on the Soyuz T and TM designs. It can spend up to 30 days in autonomous flight and is able to carry 100 kg more. Also, unlike the old Progress crafts, it can return items to Earth. This is accomplished by using the Raduga capsule, which can carry up to 150 kg of cargo." [2]
So in a strict language mapping Falcon-9 -> Soyus, and Dragon -> Progress if we talk about the various parts. And yes, the amount of cargo the Progress-M can return it quite limited compared to Dragon. But my Russian friends tell me that there are variants that are an equivalent to Dragon either available or designed but not deployed. I don't know one way or another and it takes NOTHING away from the huge thing SpaceX has accomplished. I would be hugely proud to be part of a team that has shown such a stunningly good ability to execute against their goals.
For clarity: soyuz is the name of a launch vehicle as well as a manned spacecraft (the Soyuz-TMA-M). The Soyuz spacecraft can return humans to the Earth and of course has the ability to return cargo as well, but since the space is taken up by people that capacity is extremely limited. The Progress can return a very tiny amount of cargo (about 150kg) to Earth using a specialty capsule that was last used in 1994.
Launching a rocket, berthing at the ISS (commercial company first) and returning back to earth (no other current spacecraft does this) is extremely difficult. Doing it privately on a budget is just as noteworthy...or more so.
News stories have highlighted the delays but will have little room to criticize the mission now (the only glitch I am aware of was a laser guidance problem which was quickly and adeptly resolved by SpaceX staff).
And as a web developer, it's difficult to imagine what it's like to build something with very long feedback cycles, little or no ability to test in actual conditions and extremely slim error margins.
Great job, SpaceX!