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Orbital Becomes Second Private Firm To Send Cargo Craft To ISS
An anonymous reader writes "Orbital Sciences Corp.'s unmanned Cygnus spacecraft delivered 3,000 pounds of equipment, fresh fruit, and Christmas presents from the families of all six ISS spacemen today. 'From the men and women involved in the design, integration and test, to those who launched the Antares (rocket) and operated the Cygnus, our whole team has performed at a very high level for our NASA customer, and I am very proud of their extraordinary efforts,' said David W. Thompson, president and chief executive officer of Orbital, in a written statement from the company."
Except for the fact that Lockheed and Boeing have been NASA's contractors for decades.
This whole "look how gr8 commercial spaceflight can do so much better than government!" stuff is nonsense propaganda. Aerospace, except in perhaps the first 5 years of flight, has always been about the government making the long-term investments and R&D, and private companies delivering final products.
But the New Religion can't stand the idea that everything isn't completely under the guidance of the Almighty Invisible Hand, so it paints this new picture of independent private enterprises as if they grew from nothing. It's pathetic. I could cope with communistic space; I could cope with capitalistic space; I might even cope with corporatist space if people were honest about it; but what we have now is just smoke and mirrors.