SpaceX's Dragon capsule captured by ISS

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hdonk
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Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:14 am

SpaceX's Dragon capsule captured by ISS

Post by hdonk »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18195772

Well I for one am happy to see that government + private companies can produce big engineering results cost effectively...

krenshala
Posts: 914
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:20 pm
Location: Austin, TX, NorAm, Sol III

Post by krenshala »

Been watching NASA TV and its been interesting. Just enough going on at work this morning I haven't been able to hunt up the SpaceX equivalent that is probably also being streamed, though.

JoeP
Posts: 523
Joined: Sat Jun 25, 2011 5:10 am

Post by JoeP »

This is great news.

I'm confident that private companies with the vision of people like Musk are the future of space exploration. Not large and unwieldy national government projects.

Hopefully we will get out of Earth orbit again with some manned missions before I kick the bucket. Always wanted to see someone on Mars someday.

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

Elon Musk is my hero! I am not the kind of person to look up to celebrities, but Musk earned my sympathy.
Cant wait for them to fly Grasshopper. RLVs will change the way we do space.

AcesHigh
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Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:59 am

Post by AcesHigh »

as soon as Obama announced his vision for supporting private space, he got a lot of flak.

the transition was so fast we barely noticed some missions to the ISS were carried by the russians...

Betruger
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Joined: Tue May 06, 2008 11:54 am

Post by Betruger »

"His", "vision"?

Putting aside for now whether he did or didn't get a lot of flak, that was or wasn't deserved.
You can do anything you want with laws except make Americans obey them. | What I want to do is to look up S. . . . I call him the Schadenfreudean Man.

GIThruster
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

KitemanSA
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Location: OlyPen WA

Post by KitemanSA »

NICE!!!

GIThruster
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

AcesHigh wrote:as soon as Obama announced his vision for supporting private space, he got a lot of flak.

the transition was so fast we barely noticed some missions to the ISS were carried by the russians...
Em, "vision" is usually ascribed to people looking forward into the future and seeing established their hopes, dreams, expectations, etc, not looking backward 6 years to a program begun by someone else.

Obama's "vision" as regards space has been missing since he took office, but that's no surprise since he said he was going to loot NASA back when he was running in the Democratic primary.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

Em, "vision" is usually ascribed to people looking forward into the future and seeing established their hopes, dreams, expectations, etc, not looking backward 6 years to a program begun by someone else.

Obama's "vision" as regards space has been missing since he took office, but that's no surprise since he said he was going to loot NASA back when he was running in the Democratic primary.
LOL!
Obama's vision was what gave us commercial crew and what did away with the horrible Constellation abomination. Unfortuantely a greedy congress insisted on sucking money out of commercial crew and science projects to fund the equally horrible SLS. Most of all Hutchinson, Shelby, Wolf, Hatch but also Nelson...
Still these mostly republicans had no problem with "big government pork" projects as long as it fed money to their favorite defense contractors...
Nelson is just an idiot on top of that.

mvanwink5
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Location: N.C. Mountains

Post by mvanwink5 »

LOL a Democrat talking about Republican cronyism! ROFL! Obama would only shift something to the private sector if he had cronies there, which he did.

Did you see the difference between the legacy Nasa control room vs the SpaceX control room?

Best regards,
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

Obama would only shift something to the private sector if he had cronies there, which he did.
Who? And actually it was an independent panel of experts (consisting of both republicans and democrats) that put together a list of suggestions (the Augustine commission, read up on it!) and Obama pretty much followed all the suggestions they gave him within the budget constraints.
So far this has worked very well. For a few hundred million the US got a new rocket and a new space craft. They also got several more in the works and a space industry in the making (look at stratolaunch, planetary resources, etc) because suddenly investors feel like space can be done with a realistic budget, not mulit billions in government money.
Did you see the difference between the legacy Nasa control room vs the SpaceX control room?
Yes I saw it. What about it?

mvanwink5
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Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:07 am
Location: N.C. Mountains

Post by mvanwink5 »

Nasa had physical manuals for one thing. SpaceX had tables for their computers for another. The SpaceX control room looked like an office.

And the head of SpaceX is a big supporter of Obama, or had you not noticed for some reason? R's & D's are both on the gravy train, it is just that sometimes they use the same trough. It looks like SpaceX is doing a good job, it is just lucky, it could have ended up like Solendra, or did you forget that crony deal too?

Best regards
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

GIThruster
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Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 8:17 pm

Post by GIThruster »

Skipjack wrote: Obama's vision was what gave us commercial crew. . .
All of COTS was begun in 2006. Obama had nothing to do with it. Likewise, you can't congratulate Obama for SLS. He tried to scrap all human spaceflight but was unsuccessful. Finally, I will remind you, when you say "Obama's vision was what gave us commercial crew" you are pretending once more you're an American, and you're not. Your tax dollars are not going toward COTS, so your opinion here is not required.

How many times do you need to be told that it is offensive for you to continue to pretend you're an American, and therefore your opinion matters in things that are entirely American, when in fact you are not? You have no right to criticize our Senators. Just who is it you think you are?
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ScottL
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Joined: Thu Jun 02, 2011 11:26 pm

Post by ScottL »

Space travel is an industry best left to private companies to innovate while being overseen by a regulatory organization. NASA should just piggyback and continue the science, not try to reinvent the wheel every few years at the tune of copius amounts of tax payer dollars. My opinion, but I don't think they're qualified anymore to say what's best for getting us there. SpaceX just hammers my idea home even further.

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