In other words it was politics, not engineering or science that kept the Orbcomm satellite from getting into the previously agreed upon orbit.
Nice. There may even be some logic to the notion so far as the Merlin 1-C engine should be considered defective until proven otherwise or at least the cause of the malfunction identified clearly.
I was listening to the SpaceX feed when right around MECO (main engine cut-off) one of the SpaceX guys talked about a major alarm that sounded and asked the senior guys or flight director (this was off camera but on the loop audio feed) for further instructions. I can only presume this was an alarm indicating that the #1 engine shut down prematurely.
I did wonder right then and there if something "oops" had gone wrong.
The problem the the N1 is that it has a 0-4 record in terms of successful missions, including a major explosion on the launch pad that killed several hundred technicians. It was an amazing rocket, and it is too bad that Sergei Korolev was unable to stay alive long enough to get it working correctly.... but it also never was able to deliver on its promises either.
Failure to reach the orbit that SpaceX claimed that they were going to put the satellite into is to me massive egg on the face of SpaceX and will make it harder to sell future flights unless they can provide some assurance that even the secondary payloads will be able to meet mission objectives.
While SpaceX may also be able to claim that the Falcon 9 is still in "shakedown mode" and they are trying to work out the bugs, that doesn't help sell flights. There should have been enough reserve fuel to send even the secondary payload to its ultimate destination even if there was a bit of a snafu along the way.
Then again, this is linked to the fact that the Falcon 9 "version 1.0" (which is the current version) has barely enough fuel to launch the Dragon to the ISS empty, much less with any extra cargo or secondary payloads. The next version of the Falcon 9 as well as the Falcon Heavy is going to have that sort of extra margin of fuel necessary to be able to compensate if something like this happened, but it will be a hard sell to future customers.
Let's see how SpaceX reacts to this incident. Yes, a backup system or a safety system was used when it shouldn't have even been touched, but it is nice that such was in place to prevent an even larger disaster.
What NASA did in terms of their "go fever" to keep launches happening in spite having the primary O-rings burn through was to simply ignore the issue altogether and treat the backup systems as something to be used in a normal flight. It should be treated instead as a canary passing out in a mine where it is time to make some serious changes before it is too late.
Even if the Dragon splashes down with a genuinely successful mission returning all of the cargo that is supposed to come down and delivering all of the cargo expected on the ISS, this flight should have a through accident review board and engineering review befitting of a loss of vehicle investigation... as SpaceX should have lost this rocket yesterday. They really need to find out why they didn't lose the vehicle as well as why they came so close as well.
SpaceX has poached a whole bunch of people from across the entire aerospace industry, but in some cases they've had to re-learn lessons that should have been known about in the past from previous spaceflight missions.
Still, SpaceX seems to learn from their past mistakes and shows a remarkable ability to refine their future designs very well... generally not repeating the same mistake twice. That there are thousands of other mistakes to make still should give pause for concern, but I highly doubt you will ever see another SpaceX flight with an engine failure like this one again in the future.
It was more likely that the 2nd stage needed to burn longer for the deployment of the Dragon due to the failure, thus didn't have the fuel reserve necessary to achieve the proper orbital geometry needed for the Orbcomm satellite. Enough fuel (thus delta-v) could have compensated for the problem, but it simply wasn't there. Originally the apogee was supposed to be about 700 miles, but only achieved about 300. There is some on-board fuel for the Orbcomm satellite to try and compensate, but this is likely too much of a difference for them to effectively "fix" the orbit.
Neither SpaceX nor Orbcomm have commented about the snafu. Apparently the satellite was supposed to be just a testbed anyway and not something in their working constellation, but it still is egg on the face of SpaceX in terms of being able to deliver payloads.
At the very least, if I were Elon Musk I would end up offering a "free" flight for another satellite for Orbcomm in the future... if they would take it. Even though it was a secondary payload, Orbcomm did pay good money for the flight and were expecting the performance that SpaceX has been claiming for some time of "100% reliability to meet all mission objectives".
I understand the difference between TCP/IP and ethernet. I also realize that you can use any protocol, but TCP/IP is pretty standard, has plenty of well vetted and reliable software libraries to choose from, and you don't need to reinvent the wheel in terms of getting devices using that protocol to talk to each other.
I've implemented custom protocols over fiber myself (and radio and copper). The security of the communications isn't the issue here, but rather getting reliable components to talk to each other over a physically lightweight communications channel that has redundant backups.... noting that a physical channel rather than radio communications is necessary as well.
This is also one way that SpaceX is reducing cost as reliable components (even milspec) which connect to each other using the protocol can be easily purchased from a variety of sources including purely commercial vendors.
From what can be read between the lines, the engine didn't explode but rather imploded. It shut off at "maximum dynamic pressure", sometimes called simply "Max-Q", when the atmospheric pressure pushing against the vehicle due to its velocity is at the highest it can be at that point in the flight. Between the pressure from outside of the spacecraft and from the nearby engines, the nozzle apparently collapsed in on itself and tore loose, hence the debris.
The engine itself was still there, just missing the nozzle. That is why data was continuing to be sent from the engine and respond to system queries about its status. Had it exploded, those sensors and microcontrollers running the engine would not be in place.
Technically you are correct that all that could be said from the telemetry is that the sensors were still in place, but those sensors would not be registering if it was an outright explosion.
The interesting thing is what may be a failure of the orbital insertion of the Orbcom satellite that was supposed to use the 2nd stage of the Falcon 9 for an additional burn after separation of the Dragon. Apparently either due to this engine loss of the 1st stage or some other problem, that satellite didn't get to the desired orbit.
It will be interesting to see if SpaceX will refund Orbcom their money or do something extra to help them out.
No, the Senate Launch System was designed by the fine engineers found in the upper chamber of the national legislature of America, hence its name. It is amazing how voting for appropriations to colleges can give you a PhD level knowledge of aerospace engineering, at least after you have been able to take lessons from an army of lobbyists. They also figured that the folks in Huntsville were too inexperienced in the matter so those same legislators decided to take the design into their own hands. That rocket really is a piece of.... whatever.
I bet the engineers would love to recover this particular 1st stage... if only to check out what is left of the failed engine to see what went wrong. I know that there were plans to recover the 1st stage at some point in the past, but beyond a very long term plan I don't think any parachute recovery system on the first stage was even considered for this flight.
I do agree though that SpaceX likes to hide their failures and tends to wait some time to come clean on those kind of problems. SpaceX definitely downplayed the problems encountered in the Falcon 1 flights, including one very embarrassing "oh shit" that abruptly ended the live webcast of one launch.
It will be interesting to see how SpaceX will respond in this situation.
Catastrophic failure really does mean the complete disintegration of the engine though. If this was the 2nd stage or the only engine on the rocket like the Falcon 1, it would have been a loss of mission. On the other hand, this is a situation that was anticipated and in fact tested at the McGregor test facility, where the engines were isolated from each other so a failure wouldn't impact the other engines.... including having shrapnel isolated and kept from the other engines in the event of such a failure. While not deliberately sought for or planned, it is good to see this safety system was put to the test.
SpaceX is one of the first to use TCP/IP for internal component control on rockets, but the protocol is pretty solid and "off the shelf" components can be easily had. Since they are starting with literally a clean sheet, they could have used almost anything.... and Elon Musk was very comfortable with TCP/IP as a protocol.
There are other bus protocols that are made available to payloads... as required by the customer and the mission. External interfaces for those buses can be made available to ground support teams just prior to launch as well and is a part of the Falcon design. The Dragon capsule in particular meets not just the physical docking standards for the ISS, but also has the necessary power and data bus connectors as well for compatibility with the ISS module standards.
A nice side effect of the TCP/IP protocol is that they can use fiber optic connectors to isolate controllers electrically... which also cuts down on the weight of the vehicle as well. There certainly is no thick bus cable full of copper going the full length of the rocket, which is the case for legacy rockets.
Part of the problem with this particular launch is that the current version of the Falcon 9, while carrying the Dragon capsule, has just enough thrust and payload capacity to barely launch the Dragon capsule itself plus a modest payload inside.
When the next version of the Falcon 9 is expected to be used (called the Falcon 9 "version 1.1") it will be able to send up to the ISS the full 3,000 kilograms+ of cargo mass. Its first flight is going to be a commercial payload, but used for NASA on the CRS-3 flight as the CRS-2 flight is expected to have the last of the "1.0" version Falcon 9 rockets.
And if the boot sequence itself still doesn't impress you, at least you can say you were alive to see the dawn of commercial computers.
While it was before my time, the dawn of commercial computers was a big deal. There also was a time that only government agencies like the U.S. Army (who helped pay for the ENIAC and in part the COLOSSUS as well) even owned computers. A rather infamous declaration by an early computer pioneer declared that the worldwide demand for computers was exactly five.
Even so, I remember a field trip in kindergarten where I took a trip to a computer and walked inside ('look but don't touch"). It seems funny to talk about such things today or that a field trip to see a computer would even be remarkable, but I do find this stuff to be incredibly fascinating.
I can only hope that multi-ton launches to orbital space stations will some day be as remarkable as seeing a jet aircraft take off from an airport. Perhaps inspiring sights, but common and every day experiences too.
One huge problem SpaceX is facing for commercial crew vehicles is that there is no formal standard or licensing system in place for orbital spacecraft made by commercial entities, at least regulations defined by the FAA Office of Commercial Spaceflight. NASA has some regulations in place... regulations that none of their vehicles have ever met (including the Orion spacecraft) and they are also very arbitrary and political regulations as well. SpaceX is trying hard to hit a moving target as the regulations for commercial crew flights to the ISS also keep changing based upon political winds at the time.
One thing that SpaceX (and Elon Musk in particular) has mentioned is needed for the Dragon is the launch escape system of some sort that can haul the capsule away from the Falcon 9 in an emergency. That still needs to be developed. Furthermore, the current edition of the Falcon 9 (currently called the "version 1.0") also lacks the payload capacity to send astronauts to the ISS. At the moment and with this launch, all it can do is send up about 500 kg of cargo inside of the Dragon, which isn't enough for a proper crew + life support. The "upgraded version" of the Falcon 9 ("version 1.1") on the other hand is expected to provide that sort of lift capacity.
SpaceX is close, but not quite ready to send somebody up yet.
The internal rocket systems have also improved considerably, since the Falcon rockets use TCP/IP for internal commands along with the dozens of cameras mounted inside of the vehicle. I loved the live dual views of the 1st stage separation event from both the 1st and 2nd stages at the same time... together with 2nd stage ignition. That simply wasn't even possible in the Apollo days.
It was a troll reply to a troll question... thus very much deserved.
Besides, I agree 100% that if you neither know what an NPC is nor how to look it up on Google or Wikipedia, the story is largely irrelevant to you. Then again I would even wonder why "news for nerds" is even interesting for somebody like that?
I can name a few museums or "centers" that are very geek driven. One of the best of them is the Exploratorium, which is a must visit location for any geek. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is another major geek-out site that is well worth the trip. Visiting any number of planetariums are also places that you will generally not regret ever visiting.
That said, I think this museum is likely to become a rival to these other major geek museums and education centers.
There are certainly some places that the economic opportunities are much more limited than others. That is one reason why people migrate and move to different places around the world. I also don't dispute that the background of somebody has an influence upon the kinds of opportunities which can come your way. There certainly exist prejudice and all sorts of horrible things of society that can and should be criticized.
That said, by far and away it is people being lazy that stops them from achieving their potential. It takes a whole lot of hard work, but also working smartly to be able to take advantage of opportunities which come your way. I should point out this isn't anything new either, and the ability for people to improve their circumstances and to pass on a heritage of greater opportunities to their children is something that frankly most people strive to achieve as a life-long goal in life.
Most people who are "down on their luck" in an economic sense usually made the situation they are in by either making stupid career moves or pissing on people who are trying to offer them an opportunity to succeed. I'll even admit that I've thrown away opportunities that I should have taken advantage of in the past that would have made my life a whole lot better in a number of ways.
In America in general and most 1st world countries (however you define that term) the opportunities are certainly there to do just about anything you really desire... if you put the effort into trying. How you were born, the kinds of parents you had, and to some extent even the physical disabilities you may have are largely secondary importance to your willingness to get the job done when it is needed.
I am saying that with McDonald's restaurants in particular... a company who has restaurants world wide and is famous for being one of the first jobs that many people have been able to land, there is very little that stops you from getting promoted to managerial positions... and most of the senior executives got their start in the company as a grill cook or some other very ordinary positions. They offer training to their employees both with internal schools (such as Hamburger University) as well as general scholarships to help their employees succeed in college training if that is the path they want to go. It is also an example of a company that doesn't have particularly high requirements for somebody getting an entry level position.
Not all companies are as nice as McDonald's in terms of these training and promotional opportunities, and sometimes you need to switch to other companies in order to be able to have a successful career. Sometimes you need to grovel when you are in your 40's or 50's and take that entry level job from a teenager. Yeah, that sucks for both the teen as well as the 50 year old, but you do what you need to do. Regardless, somebody in their 50's taking a job at McDonald's or a similar business should also not be bitter at life but rather try to take advantage of other opportunities that present themselves.
... and a price tag 2x - 4x more than any other company would normally charge for the same thing. You pay extra for that Apple logo. There may be some quality customer service and reliability with the logo worth the added cost, but nothing since the Apple II+ was very price competitive.
I still like the original oak cases of the Apple I computers though. That was real class.... and a design by Steve Jobs I might add as well.
The interesting thing will be to see what happens if Spaceship Three ever gets built. That is supposed to be an orbital spacecraft, unlike the current vehicle being built and flown by the company.
The one market that Richard Branson has apparently completely taken over (even though the vehicle has yet to fly) is the sounding rocket market. While Spaceship Two isn't a complete replacement, it largely works that way right now. A number of companies (including NASA and other government agency contractors) have a real need to test equipment in a "microgravity" environment, and the added ability to send a technician with the equipment into that environment can make a huge difference too. That the equipment can be tested for less than a million dollars is an added bonus, and certainly far cheaper than an orbital launch or even the cost of a sounding rocket that did a suborbital trajectory.
In fact, this research market instead of the "space tourist" market may end up being the real money maker for Virgin Galactic and is certainly something that will continue even after the "fad" of going into suborbital flight becoming the 20 thousandth passenger fades off into being rather ordinary. A great many of those research flights may even include professional astronauts operating the equipment and not just flying the vehicle.
Another major market for Virgin Galactic is to do point to point delivery (including passenger service, but this is cargo delivery I'm talking about). Think of this as Federal Express (as a "premium service" even for FedEx), but on a faster scale where you can have packages sent almost anywhere around the world in less than a couple hours. Yes, there are real-world needs for delivery of a critical item and people who would be willing to spend a million dollars for a smallish item to be sent somewhere distant in a short period of time. If a billion dollar factory with a couple thousand workers is shut down for a day or two because a special part is needed from the other side of the world, it would certainly be worth the premium. FedEx ships stuff like that even now as a "priority delivery" with air courier services that even fly equipment on demand for special charter flights for stuff like this even today if FedEx is too slow.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps SpaceX is biting off more than they can chew by trying to double up with secondary payloads for ISS flights.
In other words it was politics, not engineering or science that kept the Orbcomm satellite from getting into the previously agreed upon orbit.
Nice. There may even be some logic to the notion so far as the Merlin 1-C engine should be considered defective until proven otherwise or at least the cause of the malfunction identified clearly.
I was listening to the SpaceX feed when right around MECO (main engine cut-off) one of the SpaceX guys talked about a major alarm that sounded and asked the senior guys or flight director (this was off camera but on the loop audio feed) for further instructions. I can only presume this was an alarm indicating that the #1 engine shut down prematurely.
I did wonder right then and there if something "oops" had gone wrong.
The problem the the N1 is that it has a 0-4 record in terms of successful missions, including a major explosion on the launch pad that killed several hundred technicians. It was an amazing rocket, and it is too bad that Sergei Korolev was unable to stay alive long enough to get it working correctly.... but it also never was able to deliver on its promises either.
Failure to reach the orbit that SpaceX claimed that they were going to put the satellite into is to me massive egg on the face of SpaceX and will make it harder to sell future flights unless they can provide some assurance that even the secondary payloads will be able to meet mission objectives.
While SpaceX may also be able to claim that the Falcon 9 is still in "shakedown mode" and they are trying to work out the bugs, that doesn't help sell flights. There should have been enough reserve fuel to send even the secondary payload to its ultimate destination even if there was a bit of a snafu along the way.
Then again, this is linked to the fact that the Falcon 9 "version 1.0" (which is the current version) has barely enough fuel to launch the Dragon to the ISS empty, much less with any extra cargo or secondary payloads. The next version of the Falcon 9 as well as the Falcon Heavy is going to have that sort of extra margin of fuel necessary to be able to compensate if something like this happened, but it will be a hard sell to future customers.
Let's see how SpaceX reacts to this incident. Yes, a backup system or a safety system was used when it shouldn't have even been touched, but it is nice that such was in place to prevent an even larger disaster.
What NASA did in terms of their "go fever" to keep launches happening in spite having the primary O-rings burn through was to simply ignore the issue altogether and treat the backup systems as something to be used in a normal flight. It should be treated instead as a canary passing out in a mine where it is time to make some serious changes before it is too late.
Even if the Dragon splashes down with a genuinely successful mission returning all of the cargo that is supposed to come down and delivering all of the cargo expected on the ISS, this flight should have a through accident review board and engineering review befitting of a loss of vehicle investigation... as SpaceX should have lost this rocket yesterday. They really need to find out why they didn't lose the vehicle as well as why they came so close as well.
SpaceX has poached a whole bunch of people from across the entire aerospace industry, but in some cases they've had to re-learn lessons that should have been known about in the past from previous spaceflight missions.
Still, SpaceX seems to learn from their past mistakes and shows a remarkable ability to refine their future designs very well... generally not repeating the same mistake twice. That there are thousands of other mistakes to make still should give pause for concern, but I highly doubt you will ever see another SpaceX flight with an engine failure like this one again in the future.
It was more likely that the 2nd stage needed to burn longer for the deployment of the Dragon due to the failure, thus didn't have the fuel reserve necessary to achieve the proper orbital geometry needed for the Orbcomm satellite. Enough fuel (thus delta-v) could have compensated for the problem, but it simply wasn't there. Originally the apogee was supposed to be about 700 miles, but only achieved about 300. There is some on-board fuel for the Orbcomm satellite to try and compensate, but this is likely too much of a difference for them to effectively "fix" the orbit.
Neither SpaceX nor Orbcomm have commented about the snafu. Apparently the satellite was supposed to be just a testbed anyway and not something in their working constellation, but it still is egg on the face of SpaceX in terms of being able to deliver payloads.
At the very least, if I were Elon Musk I would end up offering a "free" flight for another satellite for Orbcomm in the future... if they would take it. Even though it was a secondary payload, Orbcomm did pay good money for the flight and were expecting the performance that SpaceX has been claiming for some time of "100% reliability to meet all mission objectives".
I understand the difference between TCP/IP and ethernet. I also realize that you can use any protocol, but TCP/IP is pretty standard, has plenty of well vetted and reliable software libraries to choose from, and you don't need to reinvent the wheel in terms of getting devices using that protocol to talk to each other.
I've implemented custom protocols over fiber myself (and radio and copper). The security of the communications isn't the issue here, but rather getting reliable components to talk to each other over a physically lightweight communications channel that has redundant backups.... noting that a physical channel rather than radio communications is necessary as well.
This is also one way that SpaceX is reducing cost as reliable components (even milspec) which connect to each other using the protocol can be easily purchased from a variety of sources including purely commercial vendors.
From what can be read between the lines, the engine didn't explode but rather imploded. It shut off at "maximum dynamic pressure", sometimes called simply "Max-Q", when the atmospheric pressure pushing against the vehicle due to its velocity is at the highest it can be at that point in the flight. Between the pressure from outside of the spacecraft and from the nearby engines, the nozzle apparently collapsed in on itself and tore loose, hence the debris.
The engine itself was still there, just missing the nozzle. That is why data was continuing to be sent from the engine and respond to system queries about its status. Had it exploded, those sensors and microcontrollers running the engine would not be in place.
Technically you are correct that all that could be said from the telemetry is that the sensors were still in place, but those sensors would not be registering if it was an outright explosion.
The interesting thing is what may be a failure of the orbital insertion of the Orbcom satellite that was supposed to use the 2nd stage of the Falcon 9 for an additional burn after separation of the Dragon. Apparently either due to this engine loss of the 1st stage or some other problem, that satellite didn't get to the desired orbit.
It will be interesting to see if SpaceX will refund Orbcom their money or do something extra to help them out.
No, the Senate Launch System was designed by the fine engineers found in the upper chamber of the national legislature of America, hence its name. It is amazing how voting for appropriations to colleges can give you a PhD level knowledge of aerospace engineering, at least after you have been able to take lessons from an army of lobbyists. They also figured that the folks in Huntsville were too inexperienced in the matter so those same legislators decided to take the design into their own hands. That rocket really is a piece of.... whatever.
I bet the engineers would love to recover this particular 1st stage... if only to check out what is left of the failed engine to see what went wrong. I know that there were plans to recover the 1st stage at some point in the past, but beyond a very long term plan I don't think any parachute recovery system on the first stage was even considered for this flight.
I do agree though that SpaceX likes to hide their failures and tends to wait some time to come clean on those kind of problems. SpaceX definitely downplayed the problems encountered in the Falcon 1 flights, including one very embarrassing "oh shit" that abruptly ended the live webcast of one launch.
It will be interesting to see how SpaceX will respond in this situation.
That redundancy was put to the test.
Catastrophic failure really does mean the complete disintegration of the engine though. If this was the 2nd stage or the only engine on the rocket like the Falcon 1, it would have been a loss of mission. On the other hand, this is a situation that was anticipated and in fact tested at the McGregor test facility, where the engines were isolated from each other so a failure wouldn't impact the other engines.... including having shrapnel isolated and kept from the other engines in the event of such a failure. While not deliberately sought for or planned, it is good to see this safety system was put to the test.
SpaceX is one of the first to use TCP/IP for internal component control on rockets, but the protocol is pretty solid and "off the shelf" components can be easily had. Since they are starting with literally a clean sheet, they could have used almost anything.... and Elon Musk was very comfortable with TCP/IP as a protocol.
There are other bus protocols that are made available to payloads... as required by the customer and the mission. External interfaces for those buses can be made available to ground support teams just prior to launch as well and is a part of the Falcon design. The Dragon capsule in particular meets not just the physical docking standards for the ISS, but also has the necessary power and data bus connectors as well for compatibility with the ISS module standards.
A nice side effect of the TCP/IP protocol is that they can use fiber optic connectors to isolate controllers electrically... which also cuts down on the weight of the vehicle as well. There certainly is no thick bus cable full of copper going the full length of the rocket, which is the case for legacy rockets.
Part of the problem with this particular launch is that the current version of the Falcon 9, while carrying the Dragon capsule, has just enough thrust and payload capacity to barely launch the Dragon capsule itself plus a modest payload inside.
When the next version of the Falcon 9 is expected to be used (called the Falcon 9 "version 1.1") it will be able to send up to the ISS the full 3,000 kilograms+ of cargo mass. Its first flight is going to be a commercial payload, but used for NASA on the CRS-3 flight as the CRS-2 flight is expected to have the last of the "1.0" version Falcon 9 rockets.
And if the boot sequence itself still doesn't impress you, at least you can say you were alive to see the dawn of commercial computers.
While it was before my time, the dawn of commercial computers was a big deal. There also was a time that only government agencies like the U.S. Army (who helped pay for the ENIAC and in part the COLOSSUS as well) even owned computers. A rather infamous declaration by an early computer pioneer declared that the worldwide demand for computers was exactly five.
Even so, I remember a field trip in kindergarten where I took a trip to a computer and walked inside ('look but don't touch"). It seems funny to talk about such things today or that a field trip to see a computer would even be remarkable, but I do find this stuff to be incredibly fascinating.
I can only hope that multi-ton launches to orbital space stations will some day be as remarkable as seeing a jet aircraft take off from an airport. Perhaps inspiring sights, but common and every day experiences too.
Details about the Dragon "version 1.1" can be found here:
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:04ce340e-4b63-4d23-9695-d49ab661f385&plckPostId=Blog%3A04ce340e-4b63-4d23-9695-d49ab661f385Post%3A8039e573-151a-434a-808d-bb5a8a3ad59b
One huge problem SpaceX is facing for commercial crew vehicles is that there is no formal standard or licensing system in place for orbital spacecraft made by commercial entities, at least regulations defined by the FAA Office of Commercial Spaceflight. NASA has some regulations in place... regulations that none of their vehicles have ever met (including the Orion spacecraft) and they are also very arbitrary and political regulations as well. SpaceX is trying hard to hit a moving target as the regulations for commercial crew flights to the ISS also keep changing based upon political winds at the time.
One thing that SpaceX (and Elon Musk in particular) has mentioned is needed for the Dragon is the launch escape system of some sort that can haul the capsule away from the Falcon 9 in an emergency. That still needs to be developed. Furthermore, the current edition of the Falcon 9 (currently called the "version 1.0") also lacks the payload capacity to send astronauts to the ISS. At the moment and with this launch, all it can do is send up about 500 kg of cargo inside of the Dragon, which isn't enough for a proper crew + life support. The "upgraded version" of the Falcon 9 ("version 1.1") on the other hand is expected to provide that sort of lift capacity.
SpaceX is close, but not quite ready to send somebody up yet.
The internal rocket systems have also improved considerably, since the Falcon rockets use TCP/IP for internal commands along with the dozens of cameras mounted inside of the vehicle. I loved the live dual views of the 1st stage separation event from both the 1st and 2nd stages at the same time... together with 2nd stage ignition. That simply wasn't even possible in the Apollo days.
I love this photo though in terms of putting things into perspective: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/255106389683343360/photo/1
It was a troll reply to a troll question... thus very much deserved.
Besides, I agree 100% that if you neither know what an NPC is nor how to look it up on Google or Wikipedia, the story is largely irrelevant to you. Then again I would even wonder why "news for nerds" is even interesting for somebody like that?
I can name a few museums or "centers" that are very geek driven. One of the best of them is the Exploratorium, which is a must visit location for any geek. The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is another major geek-out site that is well worth the trip. Visiting any number of planetariums are also places that you will generally not regret ever visiting.
That said, I think this museum is likely to become a rival to these other major geek museums and education centers.
There are certainly some places that the economic opportunities are much more limited than others. That is one reason why people migrate and move to different places around the world. I also don't dispute that the background of somebody has an influence upon the kinds of opportunities which can come your way. There certainly exist prejudice and all sorts of horrible things of society that can and should be criticized.
That said, by far and away it is people being lazy that stops them from achieving their potential. It takes a whole lot of hard work, but also working smartly to be able to take advantage of opportunities which come your way. I should point out this isn't anything new either, and the ability for people to improve their circumstances and to pass on a heritage of greater opportunities to their children is something that frankly most people strive to achieve as a life-long goal in life.
Most people who are "down on their luck" in an economic sense usually made the situation they are in by either making stupid career moves or pissing on people who are trying to offer them an opportunity to succeed. I'll even admit that I've thrown away opportunities that I should have taken advantage of in the past that would have made my life a whole lot better in a number of ways.
In America in general and most 1st world countries (however you define that term) the opportunities are certainly there to do just about anything you really desire... if you put the effort into trying. How you were born, the kinds of parents you had, and to some extent even the physical disabilities you may have are largely secondary importance to your willingness to get the job done when it is needed.
I am saying that with McDonald's restaurants in particular... a company who has restaurants world wide and is famous for being one of the first jobs that many people have been able to land, there is very little that stops you from getting promoted to managerial positions... and most of the senior executives got their start in the company as a grill cook or some other very ordinary positions. They offer training to their employees both with internal schools (such as Hamburger University) as well as general scholarships to help their employees succeed in college training if that is the path they want to go. It is also an example of a company that doesn't have particularly high requirements for somebody getting an entry level position.
Not all companies are as nice as McDonald's in terms of these training and promotional opportunities, and sometimes you need to switch to other companies in order to be able to have a successful career. Sometimes you need to grovel when you are in your 40's or 50's and take that entry level job from a teenager. Yeah, that sucks for both the teen as well as the 50 year old, but you do what you need to do. Regardless, somebody in their 50's taking a job at McDonald's or a similar business should also not be bitter at life but rather try to take advantage of other opportunities that present themselves.
... and a price tag 2x - 4x more than any other company would normally charge for the same thing. You pay extra for that Apple logo. There may be some quality customer service and reliability with the logo worth the added cost, but nothing since the Apple II+ was very price competitive.
I still like the original oak cases of the Apple I computers though. That was real class.... and a design by Steve Jobs I might add as well.
The interesting thing will be to see what happens if Spaceship Three ever gets built. That is supposed to be an orbital spacecraft, unlike the current vehicle being built and flown by the company.
The one market that Richard Branson has apparently completely taken over (even though the vehicle has yet to fly) is the sounding rocket market. While Spaceship Two isn't a complete replacement, it largely works that way right now. A number of companies (including NASA and other government agency contractors) have a real need to test equipment in a "microgravity" environment, and the added ability to send a technician with the equipment into that environment can make a huge difference too. That the equipment can be tested for less than a million dollars is an added bonus, and certainly far cheaper than an orbital launch or even the cost of a sounding rocket that did a suborbital trajectory.
In fact, this research market instead of the "space tourist" market may end up being the real money maker for Virgin Galactic and is certainly something that will continue even after the "fad" of going into suborbital flight becoming the 20 thousandth passenger fades off into being rather ordinary. A great many of those research flights may even include professional astronauts operating the equipment and not just flying the vehicle.
Another major market for Virgin Galactic is to do point to point delivery (including passenger service, but this is cargo delivery I'm talking about). Think of this as Federal Express (as a "premium service" even for FedEx), but on a faster scale where you can have packages sent almost anywhere around the world in less than a couple hours. Yes, there are real-world needs for delivery of a critical item and people who would be willing to spend a million dollars for a smallish item to be sent somewhere distant in a short period of time. If a billion dollar factory with a couple thousand workers is shut down for a day or two because a special part is needed from the other side of the world, it would certainly be worth the premium. FedEx ships stuff like that even now as a "priority delivery" with air courier services that even fly equipment on demand for special charter flights for stuff like this even today if FedEx is too slow.