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Progress on the commercial space front

Progress on the commercial space front.

The most important announcement is NASA’s official acceptance of SpaceX’s COTS contract to transport cargo to and from ISS. The first official cargo mission is set for no earlier than October 8.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • jwing

    Is the SpaceX and NASA edreavor “progress” or is it just another form of Obam’a crony capitalism/socialism? I just finished reading an article posted on http://www.breitbart.com by George Landruth entitled, “SpaceX: Solyndra in Space.” The article makes some solid points: if a true free market mechanism was employed, SpaceX would initiallyhave invested its own money or private venture capital not NASA. Also, NASA would not own thetechnologies but SpaceX would if it was truly a private enterprise. Check out this article as I would appreciate reading the comments by posters to Behind the Black who have a far greater understanding of the current developments in space and SpaceX as a company. Thanks.

  • Jim,

    You should know that:

    1. SpaceX did and continues to invest its own money in Dragon/Falcon 9. NASA’s money is essentially a subsidy.
    2. SpaceX owns the technologies, not NASA.

    These two points, especially the second, are what make this approach so different from every other past NASA effort to build a replacement to the shuttle.

    Nonetheless, it would preferable if the government didn’t subsidize these companies, but merely bought their product like any other customer.

    One final point: Unlike Solyndra, where the CEO was a big fund-raiser and contributor to the Obama campaign, Elon Musk has not been a campaign contributor, as far as I know. (If he has, the sums have been inconsequential.) Moreover, unlike Solyndra, where gigantic sums of government money were given to a company before it had achieved anything, SpaceX has gotten its NASA subsidies as a reward for actual achievement. There is a difference between the two.

  • jwing

    Robert,
    Thank you for that informative reply. I was hoping you or someone would be able to confiim my original impressions of the private space industry. Not that there isn’t a place for NASA, but my hope is that private industry will ultimately be the innovator and vanguard. When will SpaceX go public?
    Jim

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