SpaceX Dragon Docks with International Space Station

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,400
Three’s a charm with the SpaceX Dragon that blasted off toward the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral on Friday and successfully docking this morning. This is the third mission to the ISS by SpaceX carrying cargo and it's looking like private enterprise space flights are a resounding success.

The docking wasn't the only successful part of SpaceX’s launch. It was also making its first test of its Falcon 9′s reusable first stage – a step towards the company’s goal of a reusable rocket.
 
they also had another phonesat on it... satellite made with smartphone parts, going to try and listen for it this afternoon
 
I actually woke up early enough to watch the grapple and docking live this morning. Tomorrow they'll open the hatches between both the ISS and Dragon and begin unloading the cargo, I'm looking forward to seeing that. I can't wait to see when they start testing Falcon Heavy I believe later this year or early next year, with crewed test flights on the crewed version of the Dragon capsule beginning next year.
 
The very concept is an abomination.

Congrats Republicans, you killed NASA because they dared to insist that the earth was round and orbited the Sun .... in opposition to the Word of the Lord.

'Murica :rolleyes:
 
The very concept is an abomination.

Congrats Republicans, you killed NASA because they dared to insist that the earth was round and orbited the Sun .... in opposition to the Word of the Lord.

'Murica :rolleyes:

Why should tax payers pay to subsidize something that corporations seem to have no problem paying for?

'Liberals :rolleyes:
 
The very concept is an abomination.

Congrats Republicans, you killed NASA because they dared to insist that the earth was round and orbited the Sun .... in opposition to the Word of the Lord.

'Murica :rolleyes:

NASA phased out the shuttle missions because they though Russia would be a reliable partner in the ground-to-space part of the deal, freeing them up to spend the money on actual science.
This worked fine until Russia's amnesia wore off and it remembered it was a world superpower and decided to flex it's muscles again.

I can just imagine what the SpaceX salesman would have said, in front of the NASA funding committee:
"You can contract the supply mission to us.........or you can deal with the Russians"
 
NASA phased out the shuttle missions because they though Russia would be a reliable partner in the ground-to-space part of the deal, freeing them up to spend the money on actual science.

Not exactly. I'm sure the low cost of Russian launches was a factor, but the Space Shuttle was far more expensive than projected and dangerous to fly. Beyond that, NASA ran into the same problem they ran into at the end of the Apollo program: They don't have the budget to maintain and launch older hardware while developing new hardware. We ended up with almost a decade gap between the last Saturn V launch and the first Space Shuttle flights. That's why Bush's Consellation program and other half-hearted attempts at replacing the shuttle never went anywhere. Now that the Shuttle is gone development on the new Space Launch System has been progressing. They have an unmanned flight to the moon scheduled for 2017.

Why should tax payers pay to subsidize something that corporations seem to have no problem paying for?

SpaceX is completely dependent on the government, as are the asteroid mining startups you may have heard about. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that of course, it frees up NASA to focus on the big stuff that private operations can't do yet.
 
I love it in media how they want to say ahh the Russians blew it, you see we were so nice in paying all this money, and they are so evil...
As if the second we can give money to some rich here, we were not. As if we are doing them some kind of favor.
Space X had been in development for a while.
 
Congrats Republicans, you killed NASA because they dared to insist that the earth was round and orbited the Sun .... in opposition to the Word of the Lord.
While I think NASA is criminally underfunded, this post demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the situation. The recent push towards privatization of routine spaceflight operations began under the Obama administration. Actually, the Orion, NASA's own heavy rocket system, was only kept alive because Republican House and Senate members demanded it so to save jobs in their constituencies... even though the program no longer has a strongly defined purpose.

SpaceX has thus far shown that they can lift cargo more cheaply into low Earth orbit than anyone else. Anyone who is excited about space travel should welcome that development.
 
The very concept is an abomination.

Congrats Republicans, you killed NASA because they dared to insist that the earth was round and orbited the Sun .... in opposition to the Word of the Lord.

'Murica :rolleyes:

Seriously? You are seriously going to be miffed that FRIKIN SPACE has CEASED to be the domain strictly of governments and that you know.. private people are doing damn near everything the governments are doing?

That's like saying oooh horrible political party XYZ... everyone has the internet now. Or dman them for letting everyone have computers or televisions or GPS, or complex communications networks.

Shit that becomes a desirable commodity happens MUCH more, MUCH more rapidly than any government program could hope to do.

But that's bad news, because mindless fucking partisan sheep.
 
Back
Top