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New Photos of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Assembly
RobGoldsmith writes "New images are now available of SpaceX's Falcon 9 being assembled. The images are accompanied with a small update from SpaceX. If there are no unexpected delays, it's possible Falcon 9 will be completely integrated by the end of the year. This update shows real flight hardware and really brings the rocket alive. View images of the Falcon 9 nearing completion now!"
as in the end of 2009? or tomorrow? Or somewhere in between, like the Chinese new year or Rosh Hashanah?
More music, fewer hits
Yay, newly-created organization which hasn't accumulated a work-impeding bureaucracy.
SpaceX is doing great work. Let's hope they don't become another bloated military-industrial dependency anytime soon.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Next time free enterprise puts a man on the moon, you let me know.
If you capitalists hadn't have f--- up with your stupid lending decisions and dumb investments, there wouldn't be a government bailout now, would there? There was no need for government to momentarily take control of everything, until the people that previously controlled things utterly screwed up.
This is my sig.
All that NASA is good at doing these days is burning money.
Deary me - isn't that a little unfair? The only thing they can do is burn money? You don't see any value at all in the various Mars missions, the fascinating output of Cassini-Huygens, or SOHO, or...? And so on.
Check out the NASA Current Missions for a bit of an overview of some of the amazing work that NASA are doing.
Whilst I don't disagree with your main point that small, nimble, commercial outfits can often work smarter and quicker than monolithic government departments, I don't think it's fair cast NASA as nothing but a bottomless sinkhole for cash.
It might also be worth considering how many of those current projects would never even get to the drawing board stage if the only space enterprises we had were entirely commercial.
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Yes, although the Congress and administration would like you to believe that the current "crisis" is a result of greed, the bottom line is that the money had to come from someplace, and it came from them.
Yes, in a way it did come from the government -- it's called deregulation. IOW, "freer" free enterprise. Since the bad boys in the banks didn't have Big Brother looking over their shoulder, they were free to do very risky things -- bordering on outright fraud -- with other people's money. That's what caused the bailout, that's what caused the economic collapse. Don't just take my word for it -- read what's been coming out of the mouths of economists.
Look at this project in comparison to "Orion". A small team vs. thousands. A few designers vs. hundreds of engineers using bulky project management. It goes to show that you really only need project management to do something the first time (IE, not knowing where the major failing points will be). After that, you need something lightweight and agile so that you aren't throwing away the experience of your people by second guessing them until they are unable to make quick decisions.
You can't compare the two. Orion's eventual goal is go to Mars. First Orion will go back to the moon to 'practice', and what is learned there will be used to further develop the Orion program for a manned mission to Mars. Let me know when Elan Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are even remotely planning anything on that scale. Then we can compare.
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