Be Excellent To Each Other

Buried under news about leaks and fees and protests, on Wednesday SpaceX succesfully put a reusable 'Shuttle' analogue they call Dragon into orbit and brought it down again safely.

Considering there's no real chance of NASA producing a viable replacement to the Space Shuttle in the near future, does that mean that it's pretty likely that national governments are likely to just start contracting space-based work out to companies like SpaceX? Is that a bad thing?

If nothing else, SpaceX's stuff is well cooler looking than NASAs.



Realistically, is private space flight the only option for keeping up with the amount of effort the Chinese are pouring into their space programmes?

As I understand it they are planning to put people into orbit and possibly to the International Space Station already next year! Fucking impressive.

As far as I can see, currently there's only really a few ways of making cash out of space - sticking up commercial satellites, doing governmenty-sciency type stuff, and space tourism. I can't see any of them making enough cash to entice private companies into doing anything more than sticking people in fairly low orbits, and satellites in higher orbits, and maybe hurling the odd probe off into the void. It's such a big leap from that sort of stuff to cool space stuff, like manned Moon missions and so on that only a huge chunk of government cash from somewhere is going to get it done.0

This sort of thing is awesome, and can only be good news, but I can't see SpaceCorp colonizing Mars any time soon.

I'll bet if we do eventually get to Mars it'll be commercial companies that have made all the stuff to do it, even if their customers are some government.

And then they'll open a portal to Hell out of sheer corporate folly.

That's not a photograph. ZOMG! FAKED MOON LANDINGZ!

Haha, indeed they will.

And as if by magic their currently testing this with Nasa now. If all is successful they should gain a $1.6 contract to perform at least another 16 missions. They are also working towards sending manned missions up and they have mentioned they are also interested in space mining and getting to mars at some point.

I think this is quite exciting.

As prices to get into space hopefully come down it should prove easier to perform more interesting projects for all sorts of businesses. In theory this could make it cheaper for them* to build a space elevator... possibly... I could then have the best BBQ's.

* someone.

I still think it's amazing we've got that little robot still trundling around on Mars. I do feel quite sorry for it, though. Poor Warbot.

Yeah, they are amazing. New one on its way too, I hope it'll land safely.

The martians will sneeze on us and we will all die.

We should really send ones that look like us up there, so the aliens don't get freaked out if they find them.

Or we could send Michael Jackson.

We should send Curiosity.

Perverse Japanese engineers made sure she had the cross-eyed look that's considered 'cute'.

Noooo!

That's already pretty cheap.

This is pretty exciting and I've been following the story. Latest update is that its safely docked onto the ISS - the first non-government craft to do so - and that's pretty freaking amazing. Strong odds on that commercial space-faring companies are the future, particularly when the private sector demonstrates once again it can do things at a third of the cost of a lumbering government institution.

Because people have never experienced space, it's still just this abstract thing that makes for interesting film plots. Nobody really looks up from the dull grind of their daily lives to actually marvel at how we can actually build things that can escape the planet. It remains an amazing and mystifying thing. I'm looking forward to when SpaceShipTwo starts operating commercially, because as unworthy as it might be scientifically, punting people up into high orbit because we can is another important milestone.

You can go back to your jokes now.

I was watching the Dragon docking stuff on Nasa TV yesterday. Most excellent. Also, Megan Thingy at misson control.