Posted on 05/25/2012 8:45:26 AM PDT by mandaladon
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The privately bankrolled Dragon capsule arrived at the International Space Station for a historic docking Friday, captured by astronauts wielding a giant robot arm.
It succeeded in making the first commercial delivery into the cosmos.
U.S. astronaut Donald Pettit used the space station's 58-foot robot arm to snare the gleaming white Dragon after a few hours of extra checks and maneuvers. The two vessels came together while sailing above Australia.
"Looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," Pettit announced from 250 miles up once he locked onto Dragon's docking mechanism.
"You've made a lot of folks happy down here over in Hawthorne and right here in Houston," radioed NASA's Mission Control. "Great job guys."
NASA controllers clapped as their counterparts at SpaceX's control center in Hawthorne, Calif. — including SpaceX's billionaire maestro, Elon Musk, of PayPal fame — lifted their arms in triumph and jumped out of their seats to exchange high fives.
This is the first time a private company has attempted to send a vessel to the space station, an achievement previously reserved for a small, elite group of government agencies. And it's the first U.S. craft to visit the station since the final shuttle flight last July.
The astronauts wasted no time getting the Dragon capsule into position for actual docking to the space station. The unmanned capsule is carrying 1,000 pounds of supplies on this unprecedented test flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I looked at the check list yesterday to see where they were on that score. WOWZA! They are further along than I ever expected they would be by now.
They don't have many more line items to test and pass before that is a done deal.
They have done it far cheaper and faster than any gooberment program could have.
To date, they have not killed a single person in the process.
/johnny
NASA is supplying at least half of the funding and its launch and tracking facilties supported the flight. This is supposed to be a public-private partnership. SpaceX did not do this on its own.
“You can put all the lipstick on this pig you want. And whatever jobs are created, many will be overseas.”
Perhaps. Of course, given current policy (and the policies going back to the early 90s) many jobs are going overseas in almost every industry. So?
“The US is broke. We will be in no position to support a major space program.”
That depends on the strength of the economy going forward. If most of 0’s policies can be reversed, and capitalism takes off again, we could actually repay the national debt. However, that will take both political and (especially) public will.
“This privatization of the manned space program is just eyewash put out by Obama and his cronies. You are being sold a bill of goods that attempts to put a good face on a bad situation.”
You mean this contract that 0bama put in place in 2006? LOL
“The same thing is happening with national security. We are reducing our military with the rationalization that we now have a new strategy. No more capability to fight two wars at the same time or one and 1/2 wars. Costs are forcing our strategic withdrawal and the reduction of our forces. It is part of the guns versus butter battle that has played out in other welfare states. The UK, the Soviets, and Western Europe have made the decision that butter is more important, at least politically.”
Again, we’ll see after November. Don’t be such a defeatist.
On the other hand, you might want to take a look at how much we’re outspending the next several major powers put together on defense. Are we getting a good value for our tax dollars?
“Our space program is being scaled back and dismantled. We are told privatization will solve our problems. Nonsense. “
There are two different issues. One involves legitimate government interests in space, primarily scientific and military. The second involves the large-scale development and exploitation of space for our benefit. It makes a great deal of sense for commercial interests to take over this area at this point.
This is likely the beginning of a Golden Age of Space for the human race in general, and America in particular.
“This is supposed to be a public-private partnership. SpaceX did not do this on its own.”
I presume you actually know the meaning of the word “partnership”?
However, I’d submit that whatever government dollars have been spent on SpaceX are getting a better ROI than those spent just about anywhere else.
I'm starting to really dislike your deceit and evasion on this thread.
This scheduling of this is no accident. I watched the head of NASA today extolling Obama's plan to privatize space exploration.
"”In 2006, NASA awarded the company a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract to design and demonstrate a launch system to resupply cargo to the International Space Station (ISS)""
Once again, who was President of the United States in 2006, Mr. kabar?
"Former astronaut Mark Kelly—perhaps best known as the husband of former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords—reveals in an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel that he initially was not a suporter of the Obama Administration’s change in direction for NASA. “I was not a fan at first of canceling the Constellation rocket program. I worried about what it would mean for NASA’s overall mission, and what it would do to the brilliant and patriotic men and women who work there,” he writes.
That assessment has changed, though, he says. “I’m impressed by how far SpaceX has come in the past 17 months,” he states, referring to the company’s Dragon test flight to the ISS this week. “The dramatic cost savings of commercial spaceflight — savings we need to reduce the deficit and grow our economy — let us expand the frontiers of space and stay at the forefront of technological innovation.”
He goes on to express support for various aspects of the administration’s efforts, from commercial crew to infrastructure upgrades at the Kennedy Space Center. “The president made a tough, bold decision — and I now believe he was right,” he concludes. Ironically, it was his wife who, in the debate on the NASA authorization act of 2010 on the House floor, spoke out against the bill that enshrined many elements of the administration’s plan into law."
The bottomline is that this decision is being driven by costs not what is best for this country. Let the rationalization begin.
This scheduling of this is no accident. I watched the head of NASA today extolling Obama's plan to privatize space exploration.
"”In 2006, NASA awarded the company a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract to design and demonstrate a launch system to resupply cargo to the International Space Station (ISS)""
Once again, who was President of the United States in 2006, Mr. kabar?
"Once again, we have the opportunity to raise the bar, to demonstrate what human beings can do if we are challenged and inspired to reach for something just out of our grasp but not out of our sights.
President Obama has given us a Mission with a capital "M" -- to focus again on the big picture of exploration and the crucial research and development that will be required for us to move beyond low Earth orbit. He's charged us with carrying out the inspiring missions that only NASA can do, which will take us farther than we've ever been –to orbit Mars and eventually land on it.
He's asked us to startplanning a mission to an asteroid, and right now our Dawn spacecraft is approaching one of the biggest in the solar system, Vesta, and we’re scheduled to drop into orbit around that asteroid the middle of this month. What it finds out could help inform such a mission. The President is asking us to harness that American spirit of innovation, the drive to solve problems and create capabilities that is so embedded in our story and has led us to the Moon, to great observatories, and to humans living and working in space, possibly indefinitely.
Fifty years ago, a young President gave NASA a grand challenge, one chosen not for its simplicity, but for its audacity, to "best measure and organize our collective energies and skills." In accomplishing that goal, NASA not only defined America, it made a lasting imprint on the economic, national security and geopolitical landscape of the time.
Today, we have another young President, Barack Obama, who has outlined an urgent national need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build our competitors and create new capabilities that will take us farther into the solar system and help us learn even more about our place in it.
President Obama not only honors the Kennedy space legacy, but also again challenges the nation with his vision for the NEXT ERA of exploration. And NASA is ready for this grand challenge."
If these statements are not barf worthy enough, Bolden couldn't praise Obama enought just after the Dragon launch and capture. It is all propaganda. It reminds me of when Obama trotted out the Volt as the answer to America's pollution problem and global warming.
Yes, it was new. It was the first time that NASA didn't design the vehicle and have a contractor build it. NASA set the specs on functions, and Space-X designed it, on their own, without NASA micro-management, to meet those specs.
And it was a fixed, firm price contract with progress payments, not cost plus.
/johnny
So, what’s the profit angle on this? My understanding is that private money paid for the ‘mission’ - how does that investment result in a return?
/johnny
I've got tens of thousands invested in a proof of concept deployment (not space releated). I expect that after that is successful, I'll get a significant ROI. I am seeing enough return to help pay the bills on it now.
Same kind of thing with Space-X. Musk knows that he'll have to bankroll Falcon Heavy himself because no-one wants to be the first customer on an untested launch platform.
Wanna make money, gotta risk money. But watch it very carefully, and make good decisions.
/johnny
What a cluster fornication.
Big waste of money, people killer, and generally unproductive.
I pray the government never repeats that kind of committee engineering nightmare.
/johnny
Obama Vows Renewed Space Program--April 2010
"KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Pointing to Mars and asteroids as destinations, President Obama on Thursday forcefully countered criticisms that he was trying to end the nation’s human spaceflight program.
This was the first time that the president had lent his personal political capital in an increasingly testy fight over the future of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
“The bottom line is, nobody is more committed to manned spaceflight, to human exploration of space than I am,” he said in a speech to about 200 attendees of a White House-sponsored space conference here.
But he was unwavering in insisting that NASA must change in sending people into space. “We’ve got to do it in a smart way,” Mr. Obama said, “and we can’t just keep on doing the same old things we’ve been doing and thinking that’s going to get us where we want to go.”
Instead of earlier vague assurances by Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, and other administration officials that NASA would eventually venture beyond Earth orbit, Mr. Obama gave dates and destinations for astronauts. But the goals would be achieved long after he leaves office: a visit to an asteroid after 2025, reaching Mars by the mid-2030s.
“Step by step, we will push the boundaries not only of where we can go but what we can do,” Mr. Obama said. “In short, 50 years after the creation of NASA, our goal is no longer just a destination to reach. Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn, operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time.”
Mr. Obama noted that President John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to land on the Moon in 1961 — the year the current president was born. But the plan Mr. Obama laid out for now through the 2030s was unlike the Kennedy vision: It was a call for private industry to innovate its way to Mars, rather than a call for a national effort to demonstrate American predominance.
Mr. Obama’s budget request to Congress in February proposed a major shift for NASA: canceling the Constellation program, started five years ago to send astronauts back to the Moon, and turning to private companies for carrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
Strikingly, Mr. Obama used the speech to blame his predecessors for lacking leadership on space policy and the critics of his own plan for failing to recognize that times have changed. NASA’s budgets, he noted, have “risen and fallen with the political winds.” That appeared to be a shot at President George W. Bush, who announced a new plan for NASA after the Columbia disaster and barely mentioned space policy again for the rest of his presidency. And he argued that turning to private entrepreneurs would result in more space flights and more astronauts in orbit than the space plan he inherited.
“In the end, this seems like an expensive proposition that makes simply continuing to use the Russians for crew rescue look like a bargain,” Michael D. Griffin, the former NASA administrator who oversaw the creation of Constellation, wrote in an e-mail message.
Elon Musk, the chief executive of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, cheered the president’s speech and policy. He said the Dragon capsule that his company is developing could also serve as a lifeboat, and its design would also allow six-month stays at the station.
"”In 2006, NASA awarded the company a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract to design and demonstrate a launch system to resupply cargo to the International Space Station (ISS)""
Who was President of the United States in 2006 Mr. kabar?
Mr. kabar runs for the tall grass everytime that question is asked.
See my post #154.
"”In 2006, NASA awarded the company a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract to design and demonstrate a launch system to resupply cargo to the International Space Station (ISS)""
Who was President of the United States in 2006 Mr. kabar?
I've seen your long winded posts.
Feel free to answer the question now.
I had to put it in bold because you must have missed it in my post #154.
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