Video At Long Last, a Private Cargo Spaceship Takes Off (Video) 137
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Tuesday morning at 0344, right on schedule (and it had to be right on schedule), Elon Musk's baby finally left the launch pad on its way to the International Space Station (ISS). Two babies, actually: the Falcon 9 launch vehicle is what we watched as it took off from Cape Canaveral -- the first private spaceship headed for the ISS -- with the Dragon spacecraft perched on its nose. The Dragon carried over 1000 pounds of supplies and experiments for the ISS. The launch went off without a hitch. But don't stop holding your breath quite yet; Dragon isn't scheduled to dock at the ISS until Friday.
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Popping sound (Score:4, Interesting)
After watching both this and Copenhagen Suborbital's launch, I noticed that the rockets seem to "pop" at a few Hz. I don't recall hearing this on NASA launches, does anyone know why this is?
Re:Popping sound (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Popping sound (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't watched the video yet, but when I was present for one of the shuttle launches a few years ago there was a point when it was pretty high when the sound definitely started "popping". It was fairly high by that point, so the sound was traveling quite a distance and was mostly the low frequencies by the time it got to us, but the popping was clearly noticeable.
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It happens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuzuWmno-X8 [youtube.com] (1:35 mark)
Don't know why though, but since it's the same sound at low speed as well as high speed it's probably from the engines.
Re:Popping sound (Score:5, Informative)
If you mean the "popping noise" the TM65 engine that Copenhagen Suborbitals testet made at startup, then it was a bit of engine oscilations. It's most likely caused by the engine being run at a low fuel pressure. The fuel will ignite in the ignition chamber, causing the pressure to rise, giving a higher exhaust flow, causing the pressure to drop, giving less exhaust flow, resulting in more fuel in the ignition chamber, that ignites, ...
At higher fuel pressures the oscilations are dampened. (But they do sound awsome!)
I don't know if that's the case with SpaceX's Falcon, but I'm pretty sure that if they have engine oscilations it's nothing they can't handle.
Re:Popping sound (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Popping sound (Score:5, Funny)
So SpaceX paid more?
Re:Popping sound (Score:5, Funny)
This is aerospace engineering, not kid stuff. You have to buy the optional Monster Cables and add the extended warranty.
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After watching both this and Copenhagen Suborbital's launch, I noticed that the rockets seem to "pop" at a few Hz. I don't recall hearing this on NASA launches, does anyone know why this is?
I'm not sure, but I've heard antecdotally from some people that are more knowledgable that these frequencies result from some collision/mixing of the hypersonic exhaust with the surrounding still air. If it were actually something in the rocket, say like low frequency combustion instability in the rocket engine itself (aka chugging), I'm guessing that would shake the rocket to bits. AFAIK, chugging tends to be more in the 20-200Hz range, not really low frequency like a few Hz...
Maybe on NASA launches they
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FWIW, the space shots of the 60's, as I remember them, used to "pop". Back then I just thought it was a limitation of the audio hardware in use at the time.
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Of course, it could also be that burning over a thousand of
It will all be fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Scotty is on board.
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Re:It will all be fine (Score:5, Informative)
Insightful? Interesting? It's Funny FFS
It may be funny, but it's also true [time.com].
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Way Cool (Score:2)
Sputtering bunsen burner (Score:2)
I'm assuming the noise is more due to the mic cutting out than actual sound that the rocket made. Are there mics that can capture the roar, so it can be played back in DTS? :)
Re:Sputtering bunsen burner (Score:4, Funny)
I'm assuming the noise is more due to the mic cutting out than actual sound that the rocket made. Are there mics that can capture the roar, so it can be played back in DTS? :)
They should have used Monster Cables.
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Yes. using real microphones that use 48Volt phantom power it would have done a great job at it. Problem is Slashdot's budget is $12.50 and they cant hire anyone that is experienced or skilled in video, so they have to learn as they go.
Buy a real field mixer, some real microphones (like a shotgun on a boom with an audio person) and record to a audio recorder and not to the $200.00 camcorder.
they really need to spend about $3500.00 on some real gear (if your video camera does not have XLR mic inputs, it's n
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Reality = the $800 Panasonic camcorder and Azden shotgun mic + Audio-Technica wireless lav & handhelds that are the Slashdot standard video gear are at least as good as a Canon XH A1, which was the high-def successor to the XL1.
XLR mic inputs are only really necessary if you're dealing with music and need big audio bandwidth. And nowadays, you might as well use a Zoom H4 for sound, and it will provide phantom power and give you two channels of directional sound through external mics plus 2 channels of a
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The issue is that you NEED a high voltage swing to record a very loud noise. Be it a rock concert or a rocket launch. the Azden shotgun you guys use probably runs off of a single AA battery, so it will never record high dynamic range audio like a rocket launch. I agree the Zoom H4 is a perfect direction, add a clapper board for every scene and audio sync will be effortless. Although you could add a AG-MYA30G from Panasonic to fix the camera and power the microphones with more "oomph"... The XL1's succ
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The engine popping sound is audible when you're present for a launch, that microphone was actually pretty good quality. That's generally what it sounded like when I saw a shuttle go up.
From the legal department (Score:2)
But don't stop holding your breath quite yet
...the lawyers wanted us to pass on that they advise against issuing this command to your online minions.
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An accounting marvel (Score:5, Informative)
A commenter on NPR today made an interesting point. There is a lot of talk about "first private..." but NASA has relied heavily on private industry since the beginning. Lockheed Martin, Morton Thaikol, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Rockwell Colllins, Teledyne, Honeywell, Kodak, Perkin-Elmer.........
And Falcon launched from a government built/owned/maintained launch-site.
What *is* different is the accounting. Instead of a bevy of cost-plus contracts there is now a single-point fixed-cost provider which, surprise surprise, seems to be able to deliver at a much lower cost/kg.
And no, this does not detract from their accomplishment. Getting to space is still difficult and risky. Congratulations to everyone involved regardless of who writes their paychecks.
Re:An accounting marvel (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the other difference is that the company built the vehicle without providing the design spec. A private company built a product as best as it could instead of delivering a product 'to-spec'. Which admittedly to-spec has created some great vehicles like the Delta-IV. And a Delta-IV isn't *that* much more expensive to launch. We just didn't pay for its design and testing this time.
Re:An accounting marvel (Score:5, Informative)
Delta-IV is about 3x as expensive to launch as the Falcon 9. Delta-IV is pretty much the most expensive way to put things in orbit now that the shuttle is gone.
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In spite of the cost of the Delta IV, it is still cheaper than the Space Shuttle, and arguably similar in price if not cheaper than the Saturn vehicles were in inflation-adjusted prices from the 1970's.
On the whole, I really like the EELV program, and it was something not only necessary for the national security of America but remarkably well managed as well. Notable too is that NASA wasn't even involved (at least directly) with the program as it was paid for through the USAF budget. The fact that we can
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I was comparing the medium Delta-IV launch costs. That rocket is similar to the Falcon 9 in terms of payload weight.
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Who relies on whom?
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Yeah, nothing NASA launched was built by NASA. All of it was built by private companies and sold to them for use.
It's all PR. I'll call it Commercial when they launch from their facility and have a paypal for me to pay for each KG of payload I want to send up in LEO.
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It's all PR. I'll call it Commercial when they launch from their facility and have a paypal for me to pay for each KG of payload I want to send up in LEO.
Ask, and ye shall receive [nanoracks.com]
Seriously, this has been happening already. I'm sure Nanoracks will accept most major credit cards and PayPal if you insist. They charge about $25,000 for a "1 unit" or "1 U" rack mount system with a few variables depending on the mass of the system and a few other factors that you can negotiate on the website. At the moment their customers are all going to the International Space Station, and included in the contract allows you to have an astronaut perform in-orbit servicing of
Re:An accounting marvel (Score:5, Interesting)
In the past, the vehicles have been turned over to NASA (or other relevant space agency) whereas here, SpaceX has maintained ownership of the launch vehicle and capsule. It's one of the reasons that NASA has been so paranoid over the launch is because it has less direct control of it.
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Only if they were purchased by NASA (or other relevant space agency). Otherwise, they (or their launch capacity) went to the whoever was writing the checks. NASA isn't the only game in town, and hasn't been for decades. Private vehicles carrying private payloads have been taking off for decades.
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But none have docked with another vehicle (or at least a station) in orbit. That's the first here: a government agency is allowing a completely private craft to dock with a space station. Such docking may--and hopefully will--become commonplace with at least SpaceX and Orbital Sciences providing cargo runs (the first ISS mission for Orbital Sciences is scheduled for the fall).
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The government has worked with private agencies pretty much since it's founding. Heck, a private company handle assembling and dissembling nuclear weapons for the government.
Re:An accounting marvel (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, you could call Lockheed Martin, Morton Thaikol, Boeing,, et al "private companies", but I think the difference is that none of them would suck a deep breath without a government contract signed, sealed and delivered.
SpaceX designed, built and tested their Falcon rocket and Dragon spacecraft on their own dime.
Yes, I know NASA provided some funding, but that was extra funding. You can bet Elon Musk would have funded the whole thing himself if he had to.
Re:An accounting marvel (Score:4, Interesting)
AC gets it right.
Also, add in that SpaceX is willing to eat any cost overruns. The other "private companies" (government contractors are no such thing) continue to demand additional funds if there are cost overruns.
When SpaceX is allowed to have their own spaceport, and they're launching a new rocket every day of the week for five years straight to meet demand for a $500,000 trip to Mars, NASA won't even be in the picture.
The only downside / risk (Score:1)
I don't see SpaceX coughing up the $$$ to rebuild the ISS if they crash into it during the docking procedure.
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And for NASA, if SpaceX or another private competitor can't dock, then there isn't much value in the ISS except as a funding vehicle for the Russian Space Agency.
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I don't see SpaceX coughing up the $$$ to rebuild the ISS if they crash into it during the docking procedure.
Actually, SpaceX was required to take out an insurance policy on their rocket to pay for any incidental damage that their vehicle might cause. I'm sure that damage to the International Space Station would be covered under this policy.
The financial incentive for SpaceX to avoid doing something like that is two fold though: first, their insurance rates would go through the roof and make subsequent flights uneconomical, and second, the rest of the COTS flights would likely be cancelled as well (with the bulk
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A corporations is run as a far more strict command economy than the likes of the soviet union had ever seen. That does not make it inherently inefficient.
Actually, yes it does. The calculation argument Ludwig von Mises leveled aganst the Soviet Union can also be used to explain the bloated inefficiency of major corporations, as Kevin Carson has demonstrated. The bigger a company gets, the further its command structure is removed from inputs, and so it grows more irrational until it cannot function capably under its own power. Such entities require outside assistance and defence from competition to survive at all.
You hear lots about economies of scal
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What *is* different is the accounting. Instead of a bevy of cost-plus contracts there is now a single-point fixed-cost provider which, surprise surprise, seems to be able to deliver at a much lower cost/kg.
Than what? Apollo? The Space Shuttle? Soyuz?2010s technology is more efficient than 1960s and 1970s technology. Who da thunk it?
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Of course NASA relies on the expertise from those industries. Why not? Why re-invent the wheel? On the other hand NASA had the funds, and could take the huge risks, of developing space technology without any known benefits - without even knowing whether it'd be possible.
Also those private companies have the means to actually build stuff. They have the know-how and the tools to put stuff together, so when NASA develops a design, they hire someone to build it for them.
On the other hand, companies like SpaceX
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Private? (Score:1)
"At Long Last, a Private Cargo Spaceship..."
Uhh, didn't all the money come from NASA???
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Shhh. You're going to soft-boil all the free market hard-ons.
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Sputnik was a hollowed out ICBM warhead. I can only guess the political reasoning behind doing what they did, besides national pride/one-upsmanship.
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Sputnik was a hollowed out ICBM warhead. I can only guess the political reasoning behind doing what they did, besides national pride/one-upsmanship.
I don't think people in 1957 (especially members of the United States Congress at the time or the Eisenhower administration) missed the political message of what Sputnik meant, including the fact that it was a nuclear warhead casing. In fact you can get congressional hearing transcripts which will tell you exactly what they thought that message implied. Those senators and representatives weren't shy about expressing their opinions on the matter.
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No, Elon Musk has put in about $100M of his own money, with another odd $100M from other private investors. They've gotten some money from DARPA, deposits on future launches. NASA has kicked in $400M or so, but that has been based entirely on milestones successfully achieved
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No, the vast majority of the money SpaceX is using right now has come from deposits on future flights they will be making. If a whole bunch of those companies try to back out of those contracts, SpaceX would be in a world of hurt, but the money has been flowing in their direction from that. It represents most of the current revenue stream that SpaceX has been running on so far. SpaceX needs to actually launch some rockets to complete those contracts, so there is some concern there, but then again they ar
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Private, public, who cares?
What matters is that we keep it going.
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No, actually it didn't.
NASA ponied up some money when they did the COTS idea (and will pony up more when SPaceX starts regular cargo flights to the ISS next year), but SpaceX had been developing Falcon 1 & 9 and Dragon before NASA got involved.
Not bad, Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Not bad. That's the way to do video.
Transcript (Score:3)
Agreed - and also not much to transcribe as a result.
-----
Title: "Fourth Time's a Charm" - The SpaceX Falcon Finally Gets Off the Ground
Description: It's been a long time coming, but a private spaceship is finally heading for the International Space Station. Yay!
00:00 TITLE
A shot of Timothy Lord in front of the countdown clock at Cape Canaveral is shown.
00:00) Countdown voice guy
7 minutes
00:01) Timothy
As you can see from the countdown clock behind me, it's now just under 7 minutes until the historic SpaceX
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Yeah, this video was a lot better than the previous ones! Only thing that I personally miss is a subtitle track/transcription, but that's a side order
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It was right on the rescheduled schedule. :)
Downloadable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tsk Tsk for slashdot of all places to embed video that's not at least compatible with downloadhelper so one can download the video and watch it on a decent screen without strbuffering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMu_x7zcTrs [youtube.com]
Details (Score:5, Informative)
For the minority of /. readers who care about the details, I highly recommend downloading the COTS 2 Press Kit from SpaceX.
It provides tons of details and graphics describing the mission objectives, schedule, cargo manifest, vehicle specs, and much more...
http://www.spacex.com/downloads/COTS-2-Press-Kit-5-14-12.pdf [spacex.com]
(I am not affiliated with SpaceX, but I like what they are doing)
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Ahhh night launches (Score:2)
Nothing is like watching a rocket launch at night. fantastic experience.
Re:Ahhh night launches (Score:4, Funny)
Trouble is it was too dark to see the milk-bottle they launched it from.
Historic (Score:2)
Two launches today? (Score:2)
Wow, two launches in one day. That's amaz..
Nevermind.
God give Speed, John... Elon Musk (Score:2)
(You'd better get the reference :)
It isn't docking. (Score:5, Informative)
Dragon isn't scheduled to dock at the ISS until Friday.
The Dragon isn't capable of docking, it has to be grappled by the station's robotic arm and berthed to a common berthing port. It is scheduled to receive an upgrade that enables it to use docking ports in the future, but on this flight, it's berthing, not docking.
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Not so (Score:1)
The launch went off without a hitch.
Not so: There have been several launch date delays since the mission was announced, most recently on 19 May 2012, due to a launch abort during the last second before liftoff. [wikipedia.org]
Maybe *this* launch went fine but that doesn't mean the mission launched on time and without a hitch.
Re:Docking on Friday? (Score:5, Insightful)
From a layman's perspective, I'm confused as to why it takes so long to get to LEO? How fast does this compare with the space shuttle? Why does it take so long to dock?
It's not McDonald's. You don't just drive up to it. Like a beautiful woman, you have to chase it... No, I didn't really say that.
Basically, they're taking their time checking systems out. They are doing a close approach pass to ensure that the communications and control links work before taking it in close. A Soyuz capsule has already crash-parked into the ISS with much consternation and concern. They're just being really, really careful.
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Like a beautiful woman, you have to chase it... No, I didn't really say that.
I believe the technical term is stalking.
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I'm always impressed with such dockings, considering they happen while both craft travel at many kms per second, yet their speeds are to be virtually equal. So you have to speed up to a certain speed, and then make sure the speed is exactly the right speed, and the exact right direction, and that the craft is at the exact right position when reaching that speed and direction.
And I don't think that firing your thrusters is such a great idea when in close proximity to another space craft: I would expect that
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And I don't think that firing your thrusters is such a great idea when in close proximity to another space craft: I would expect that the matter thrown out by the thrusters could damage and push away the other craft if directed at it.
That is sort of what Gemini 8 [wikipedia.org] was all about. I will agree though in terms of being impressed with such a maneuver. If anything, I would consider in-orbit rendezvous to be as difficult if not more difficult to complete even assuming that you have the technology to get into orbit as simply building a rocket to get into orbit in the first place. It is that large of a technical challenge.
That SpaceX is only the fifth organization in the history of humanity to even attempt such a task should speak volumes abo
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10 minutes to go 100 miles vertical seems pretty fast to me...
Especially when you consider that they don't just fly straight up, and they end up flying at 7km/s.
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Dumb me - it's 200 miles.
Re:Docking on Friday? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, getting 100+ miles high is the easy part - getting that high with 17,000 MPH of sideways velocity is where it gets tricky. Without that much sideways velocity, you just fall back down.
I'm just gonna go ahead and say both are pretty tricky.
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Takes so long? If your car could drive straight up as fast as it could go, it would take 2 hours to get there. 10 minutes is insanely fast for 200 miles.
Call me when your renault can do 0.33 miles per second.
Re:Docking on Friday? (Score:5, Interesting)
It only takes about 10 minutes to get to orbit. I believe the Shuttle and the Progress & Soyuz spacecraft all took about 2 days to dock with ISS. I believe most of that time is spent matching the orbits perfectly and "catching up" with it in orbit (you don't want to approach too fast and slowing down requires fuel, and fuel is weight so you want to use as little as feasible).
Dragon is taking awhile longer because this is only the second time that the Dragon has flown and the first time docking. So, they're going to run a whole bunch of tests to ensure that they can control the spacecraft from the ground and then a bunch more to make sure the astronauts on the ISS can control it. Then, finally, they'll let it get close enough to dock. I suspect (though I have no actual information on this) that once they get past the "test flight" phase, it will take a similar amount to time to Soyuz/Progress/Shuttle to get there.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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My kingdom for a mod point...
+6 Truth
Re:And now we can cut off space funding. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it had been left to the private sector, we'd wouldn't have got to the moon, mars, the heliosheath. And despite the fact that earth orbit is profitable, probably no private sector project would have made the investment or taken the risk to go to space at all.
Space X can only do what it's doing now because it's standing on the shoulders of previous public sector projects. And heck this very project is being paid for by the public sector.
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If it had been left to the private sector, we'd wouldn't have got to the moon, mars, the heliosheath. And despite the fact that earth orbit is profitable, probably no private sector project would have made the investment or taken the risk to go to space at all.
Perhaps not though such things weren't left to the private sector so we won't know for a while. But what we can say is that public sector projects make up in inefficient, graft, and sheer incompetence, what they gain in resources. Hence, we've been to the Moon, but haven't returned in almost four decades. And we've never been to anywhere else outside of Earth orbit (when are you sending people?).
Meanwhile private projects while generally far smaller than public projects are greatly more effective with th
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Public often is big and has no competition by default, so the problem is aggravated.
I spoke of symptoms, you speak here of causes. It is the same thing.
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What keeps companies lean and competent is the ability for new companies to come into the industry. If you and a bunch of your buddies can start up a new rocket company (assuming you have the skills necessary to make them), you should be able to start bending metal and put them into the air.
When new companies can form, it also allows for those bloated and inefficient companies to go bankrupt because they can't compete against these new start-up companies. For something like spaceflight, there are benefits
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If it had been left to the private sector, we'd wouldn't have got to the moon, mars, the heliosheath.
How come? Because private individuals aren't explorers?
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You have that right. This goes back to fight between Howard Hughes and LBJ during the space race. While it doesn't get much mention anymore. Before Apollo, there was the Surveyor missions from 1966 to 1968. Hughes put soft landing probes on moon at a tenth of the cost of Apollo. He had designs for putting a pressurized capsule in the same launch mechanism and even a plan for commerical sponsorship. LBJ and his cronies stopped it turning Apollow and the Space Shuttle into a jobs project. Hughes was a
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It's wrong to think so much of the public vs. private thing. Ultimately corporations and individuals act at the request of the government and have a role in influencing it. And large corporations like Boeing or Lockheed Martin act as administrative units in themselves, establishing rules and regulations for their workforce, holding elections among their shareholders, sending lobbiests to congress and so fourth.
The main difference here is the way NASA and SpaceX are working together. Rather than issuing a co
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Which is why NASA sank $300m into SpaceX am-I-right?
Re:And now we can cut off space funding. (Score:4, Insightful)
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But you can't rent seek (at least for half a century or more) without a government or other really stable and powerful entity to provide the noncompetitive revenue stream.
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Ah, there you go, thinking that Private industry isn't innovative enough to learn how to do that without the government.
No, not "innovative", private industry isn't powerful enough to do that. As to the comments about people, the reward system has to change. If businesses are rewarded for being scoundrel rather than useful members of society, then scoundrels will be what comes.
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It is made +5 interesting because it is true.
While there has been some private commercial space projects, most of those (especially Intelsat [wikipedia.org]) had essentially a government granted monopoly on certain aspects of space development. It really had much more in common with... well 1930's Germany than a true form of capitalism and a free market. While technically "commercial" and "private companies", the distinction between what these companies were doing in space and a government agency is mostly semantics. Fo
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No but we are realist. If we can get the privatised military industrial complex to focus on privatised space exploration instead, millions of people wont have to pointlessly die in fabricated wars. So although the privatisation of space exploration will inevitably be chaotic and many people will die in space and on the ground (privatisation doing it on the cheap and falling to the ground all over the place) overall we will all still be far better off. All they need is lotteries for a space trip so the chee
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sarcasm meter seems to be suffering some sort of malfunction there.
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