Thank you, Dragon

With the successful splashdown and recovery of the Dragon capsule yesterday of the SpaceX flight, the U.S. is once again able to send things to the International Space Station AND return things, without the assistance of a foreign government.  It meant privatizing the space industry.  I’ve never quite forgiven the government for its lack of funding to NASA.  “We’re going to send people to Mars,” but first we’re going to take the space program away from our space agency.  I agree we needed to move beyond shuttle and perhaps the government was not the most efficient way to do it.

It’s been almost 7 years since the Ansari X Prize was given to Burt Rutan and Paul Allen’s group for successfully getting a manned vehicle “to the edge of space” [defined as >100km] in 2 weeks or less.  This team, in cooperation with SpaceX, has announced a new venture into space flight with a vehicle capable of taking cargo to low earth orbit (LEO).  It can take off from an airport runway [http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/14/2633926/paul-allen-burt-rutan-spacex-cooperate-giant-space-launch-system].

A lot of people think getting objects to LEO is not useful, but getting mass out of the Earth’s gravity well is the single biggest use of resources in spaceflight.  Current designs burn most of the vehicles up instead of reusing them.  In my mind, this paves the way for a future with vehicles that stay in space and don’t come back to earth.  They get supplies to build spaceships, space stations, and survive from something that looks like a huge airplane when it takes off (it’s multi-stage).

This is a subject on which I’m quite passionate.  I’m sure you’ll hear more in the future.

Internal Jukebox: How Can I Keep From Singing, an anthem we are working on at church.