Posted on 05/15/2012 7:05:52 PM PDT by KevinDavis
The private spaceflight company SpaceX is poised to launch a robotic capsule toward the International Space Station Saturday (May 19) on a test flight that, if successful, could be a watershed moment for the commercial space industry. But while SpaceX has a NASA contract to provide cargo deliveries to the space station, the company and other private spaceship developers are looking to a future beyond NASA funding.
The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX is one of several aerospace firms who are competing for NASA funding under the third and final phase of NASA's commercial crew development program. Proposals for this stage of the competition, called Commercial Crew integrated Capability(CCiCap), require companies to present a complete launch system — rocket and vehicle — for consideration.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Go Farther
That should be the motto
Go Farther and Make It Stick
could be the long form
Consider this.. The porkulus almost cost a billion dollars.. Now if we spent that money on NASA, that have brought at least 2 missions to Mars and the benefits would have been great..
Private is fine for hefting the NASA missions into orbit as long as they get past the government contract work and go it alone as well.
There was a show about mining on the history channel today and they covered the potential for space mining as well. The earth’s crust is something like 5% iron and mars crust is around 15% iron. The real mother lode is in the asteroids with many believed to have iron content in the 90% + range. Vesta is believed to have an iron core more than 70 miles in diameter.
Yes, I totally agree with that.
Asteroids have almost no gravity well, so much easier to get to and back from. In some ways easier than landing on the moon.
There is gold in them planetoids...
Occupy Youranus... ;)
Asteroids are the natural space stations of the solar system.
Just last night I was ponderin the possibility of building a telescope array in the asteroid belt. The bigger the array the deeper and better we’ll be able to see into space. Then on to a Kuiper belt array and finally a light years across ort cloud array.
and a lot of that wouldn’t have to be manned either, right?
Telescope arrays wouldn’t need to be manned. I would imagine freighters wouldn’t need to be manned either.
Thank you for the reminder of Mel Brooks masterpiece.
Get Real....we ain't leaving this planet as viable humans other then as ice cubes.....small ones..... U do the math and science and get back to me....
My Gawd Man..are u insane?
At least I’m not a Luddite like you.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.