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SpaceX Gets Astronauts To Try Out Its Dragon Crew Cabin

Posted by timothy on from the want-to-get-inside-it dept.

Zothecula writes "With the space shuttle program now officially over, the United States needs a new reusable vehicle for getting supplies to and from the International Space Station. NASA is considering the Dragon spacecraft, designed by California-based SpaceX Exploration Technologies, to take over that role. The Dragon's scheduled late March/early April test flight to the ISS will be unmanned, utilizing a cargo configuration of the spacecraft. Last Friday, however, SpaceX released photographs of an engineering model of its planned seven-passenger crew cabin, complete with a crew that included real, live astronauts."

1 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:60 Minutes, Neil Armstrong etc by glop · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was also very impressed by that part of 60 Minutes.
    It was striking how Elon Musk (the SpaceX boss) looked on the verge of crying. Apparently seeing Neil Armstrong side against his endeavors was tough to take.

    For me, the astronauts siding against SpaceX are defending what they think is the most reliable and proven way to go to space. Their interpretation could be the following:
    - Nasa has had success and will have more success with enough funding
    - SpaceX is unproven and might be unable to ever achieve what NASA could do
    - SpaceX threatens NASA funding by its very existence (Politicians can think "why give NASA billions now if I can wait a couple years and there is a chance SpaceX will do the same for hundreds of millions?")

    Let's hope SpaceX or their competitors succeed, otherwise we are going to stay grounded as the US government is not prepared to invest in space conquest.