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SpaceX Dragon Launch To ISS Set For April 30th
Spy Handler writes "NASA announced today a tentative April 30th date for SpaceX launch to the International Space Station on an unmanned cargo mission. 'Everything looks good as we head toward the April 30 launch date,' said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations. If successful, SpaceX will become the first private company to launch a space vehicle and dock with the ISS."
The failure of NASA, speaks to a much deeper issue growing in US culture. People only care that it works, not how or why it works, and make no effort to understand. This is also why the US is falling behind as the world leader in tech. This is the same thing that causes us to buy cheap products from china, that break, and instead of fixing them, we just buy more. It makes me sad.
Boeing is in it. They are designing a capsule called CST-100, together with Bigelow Aerospace. There is also a more direct competitor to SpaceX, the Antares rocket built by Orbital Sciences and also scheduled to launch this year. Not to mention many smaller but ambitious players like XCOR that work on upper stage engines with ULA.
A little perspective is needed here.
SpaceX is doing something that the US managed during the Gemini program, the USSR perfected in the 1970's with the Salyut stations, and the Chinese have just done. The first two of those national programs did so without any help or prior knowledge to draw on, and the Chinese had less help from the Russians than is commonly acknowledged.
SpaceX has had their hand held every step of the way by NASA, and have benefitted greatly from NASAs expertise, experience and technology - as have all commercial space launch companies in the US. The people running these companies freely admit this, but the libertarian fanboys simply refuse to, and demand NASA "get out of the way". This is like a teenage, entirely dependent on his parents income to live, demanding they "get out of the way" of his life.
Secondly, the "commercial" label is quite a stretch. These companies are offering a service that is almost exclusively used by a government agency (the very one that fanboys want to die right now quickly please) - they are not catering to a market. The artificial generation of demand that they are exploiting is pure Keynesian. No wonder the space libertarian crowd don't want to talk about this aspect of it.
It is nice that the US is working towards a Shuttle replacement, regardless of how it achieves this - but it is wrong to take this as a sign of the Ultimate Capitalist Triumph In Space, or as a cue to tear apart NASA in the name of ideology.
The reality at present is this; you can support the Libertarian Party, Ron Paul, and any other markets-above-all nuts - OR you can support the continued presence of the US in space. You cannot do both, at least not honestly.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Are you people really that stupid to think that both SpaceX and NASA haven't spent tens of thousands of man hours planning, testing, retesting, and triple testing this docking procedure? Are you aware that the only reason it takes two people to do the docking is that NASA won't _allow_ SpaceX to do the docking automatically like the Russian Soyuz? Instead, they have to pull up close to the station, and then get grabbed by the robot arm, for SAFETY.
Do you have any idea how many ex-NASA and space shuttle contractors have been hired by SpaceX? Do you know how many former astronauts work there?
God, it is like some people think Elon Musk hired a bunch of high school rocket club kids and is being allowed to dock with the space station based on plans drawn on the back of a napkin.
Get a freaking clue, people.
- Necron69