Private Rocket Firm Under Pressure to Fill Space Shuttle Void

space.com ^ | 04/13/11 | Denise Chow

[KevinDavis]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Private rocket builder SpaceX is trying to speed up testing of its new Dragon spaceship to enable it to visit the International Space Station on the next demonstration flight.

With NASA's space shuttle programset to retire later this year, the pressure is on for commercial providers to compensate for the loss of the shuttles' enormous cargo-carrying capability.

[KevinDavis]

[Brilliant]

“Dragon?”

Are you sure this isn’t made in China?

[SERKIT]

Privatize Orion and bring back the Saturn V.

[originalbuckeye]

Thanks for posting. I have a friend whose husband works for SpaceX and I have been following their activities for a long time. I hope we SOON have something in the way of manned spaceflight again. Obummer’s plan for NASA to become just a Muslim outreach program is ridiculous.

[Kakaze]

"What we've been told by NASA is that if we don't reach the space station by the end of this year, there's a risk that they will have to de-man the space station next year.

Build it for over a decade and then toss it in the ocean if private industry doesn't save it...........brilliant.

We should be on Mars and using that base to move out of through the solar system, damn gov't

[Brett66]

Spacex could easily fulfill NASA’s needs and save them a lot of money. Their Falcon Heavy will have 1/2 the LEO payload capacity of a Saturn V and cost around $100/lb. to LEO. That’s more than an order of magnitude less than the obsolete shuttles could provide.

[Brett66]

Correction- that’s more than two orders of magnitude less.

[TYVets]

Obummer’s plan for NASA to become just a Muslim outreach program is ridiculous.

Mussies in space and Dr James Hensen on the ground preaching the global warming hoax.

Two more of 0bama's mountain of failures.

[Moonman62]

For the most part, NASA’s shortcomings are due to political meddling. But people should know during this transition in manned spaceflight that NASA has an incredibly successful unmanned program, which gets little attention.

[Vince Ferrer]

For me this is a good transition, and oddly one of the few good things Obama has done, to speed private space development. For me NASA had a giant jump the shark moment when the Russians started selling rides, and NASA scoffed at the Russians for demeaning space by putting capitalists in it. The next wave in space is precisely to put capitalists in space.

[Texas Eagle]

Well, good. If we can privatize space travel, we can privatize rail travel, auto manufacturing, home loans, student loans, etc.

In other words, if we can put a man on the moon....

[Carley]

And just who is doing the pressuring?

Are federal dollars being dangled as incentive?

Salazar has decimated the energy industry in CO, perhaps this is a payoff to that state?

[cripplecreek]

To truly move forward in space, private industry needs to be free to do more than play taxi and freight hauler.

[cruise_missile]

Did the Muslims approve of this?

[TYVets]

For the most part, NASA’s shortcomings are due to political meddling.

But people should know during this transition in manned spaceflight that NASA has an incredibly successful unmanned program, which gets little attention.

Manned space flights get the publicity, unmanned flights gather the knowledge.

When Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon an estimated 1 billion people watched it live. The exploration of the surface of Mars by the Rovers is probably the closest unmanned project that the taxpayers heard about.

Since the late 1950's the horrendously expensive manned flights sell the budget that produces the funds for the unmanned flights. Manned flights provide NASA with the PR.

[Flag_This]

"...manned flights sell the budget that produces the funds for the unmanned flights."

They had it all wrong in "The Right Stuff" - they should have said, "No Buck Rogers, no Bucks."

[TheOldLady]

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[PIF]

Privatize Orion and bring back the Saturn V.

—

It is the engines which count, and the tools and dies, blueprints were destroyed. No one living knows how to bulid one, so it is on to reinventing them via Space X.

[PIF]

rail travel has yet to be privatized...