SpaceX Successfully Delivers Supplies To ISS

Posted by timothy on Sunday April 20, 2014 @08:08AM from the eggs-and-dye-mostly dept.

Reuters reports on the successful SpaceX-carried resupply mission to the ISS: "A cargo ship owned by Space Exploration Technologies arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, with a delivery of supplies and science experiments for the crew and a pair of legs for the experimental humanoid robot aboard that one day may be used in a spacewalk. Station commander Koichi Wakata used the outpost's 58-foot (18-meter) robotic crane to snare the Dragon capsule from orbit at 7:14 a.m. (1114 GMT), ending its 36-hour journey. ... "The Easter Dragon is knocking at the door," astronaut Randy Bresnik radioed to the crew from Mission Control in Houston. Space Exploration, known as SpaceX, had planned to launch its Dragon cargo ship in March, but was delayed by technical problems, including a two-week hold to replace a damaged U.S. Air Force radar tracking system."

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Re:I just can't get excited about SpaceX by Anonymous Coward · 2014-04-20 13:44 · Score: 2, Informative

Because back in the 70s, NASA was landing rovers the size of SUVs on Mars
Viking landers

And had orbiters around Saturn
Pioneer 11

And a mission to Pluto.

Voyager 1 could have been aimed on to Pluto, but exploration of Titan and the rings of Saturn was a primary scientific objective. This caused the trajectory to be diverted upward out of the ecliptic plane such that no further planetary encounters were possible for Voyager 1.
(JPL Voyager FAQ)

And probes in interstellar space
No, but let's not forget that the probes that are in interstellar space now were launched in the 1970s. The next comparable probe (New Horizons) wasn't launched until 2006. Quite a gap, no?