SpaceX began the effort to demonstrate its design ideas to NASA, but SpaceX stuck with it. SpaceX uses Chromium, Google's open-source foundation for the Chrome web browser, for the touchscreen user interface on the Crew Dragon, said Sofian Hnaide, a developer who worked on the Crew Dragon display technology used in the Demo-2 launch that carried the two astronauts to the space station. For example, software runs the SpaceX emergency abort sequence that lofts the Crew Dragon capsule away in the event a Falcon rocket explodes. But it's every bit as important, because it controls all aspects of space flight.

Software is less visible than some of the company's imagination-grabbing hardware, like booster rockets that return to Earth and land themselves. In a Reddit AMA that took place as Hurley and Behnken help out on the space station, SpaceX programmers revealed how Elon Musk's company has worked to modernize its part of the space industry, a field that still relies on technology dating back decades.

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