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Falcon 9 Launch Aborted At Last Minute
ClockEndGooner writes "Sadly, SpaceX had to abort its launch of the Falcon 9 to the International Space Station this morning due to higher than expected pressure levels in one of its engine chambers. NASA and SpaceX have another launch window scheduled for early next week."
Probably better than an engine failing during launch; hopefully everything is worked out for Tuesday.
That some private corporations get rich off of this stuff is a semi-unfortunate consequence of how our economy works because I generally believe people should pay for their cost of doing business and should have neither research nor facilities handed to them unless they pay we the people back for doing their work for them (looking at you, drug companies and sports teams).
To the contrary, this is extremely fortunate. Keep in mind that most NASA R&D is both overpriced and unused. Their history past Apollo boils down to a rather wasteful employment program for aerospace engineers and space scientists.
That means looking for any sort of return on investment is just a delusion. No company could afford to compensate NASA for even a fraction of its R&D and still have a business. Frankly, it wouldn't be fair to ask them to since the US decided to give that stuff away for free. So anyone who thinks NASA R&D is important (well, which might not include you) should be thankful that some of that R&D is actually being used.
I wouldn't mind either NASA getting out of the technology development business (incidentally, I strongly oppose them maintaining any sort of launch capability, such as the Space Launch System (SLS)) or merely, shifting priorities from technology development to the other goals that NASA is supposed to have such as commercial space development and space exploration.
So--nice attempted slam at government again, but try doing it about something that needs it, like out of control law enforcement. I hope this venture works out. If it does, it will be because the government decided to take risks that private enterprise wouldn't, learned the lessons they wouldn't, and gave those lessons to them essentially FOR FREE, and the thanks they get is to be derided by knee-jerk reactionaries.
It's almost like you don't know the history. For example, NASA created the US launch oligopoly that lasted from the mid80s till the DoD's Evolutionary Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program and SpaceX mixed things up a little in the late 90s and 00s.
As to NASA "taking risks", where's their Space Shuttle 2? The fact that they couldn't put one together in the last thirty years tells you all you need to know about risk taking at NASA.