SpaceX craft launches from Florida
cnn.com
cnn.com
I am appalled at the lack of 'mainstream media' coverage of this historic event. SpaceX has accomplished something that only governments have done before. Let the 2nd space race begin :)
A link to the press kit:
http://www.spacex.com/downloads/cots1-20101206.pdf
Elon is saying cargo to the ISS in a year.
As it stands this is probably much more significant than if a government had done it, it heralds a new era of private manned spaceflight. An era that may see space travel opened up not just to a handful of carefully selected astronauts but to the entire public at large.
My sister goes to Purdue and when they dedicated the Neil Armstrong building the school had just built, there were apparently 15 or 16 astronauts in attendance. You know how many students showed up to hear them talk? A few dozen. Purdue has like 30 or 40k students and they couldn't even fill a classroom.
because of the stagnation of the government space exploration programs there have been very little new achieved in space in decades - thus lack of general interest (with notable exceptions may be like Hubble&Chandra, Mars rovers, and GPS/mapping - each of which spurned a lot of interest, activity and development in their respective niches). Put the man on Mars - you'll have all the 40K trying to squeeze in to listen. Or even back on the Moon ... just for a week :)
SpaceX total expenditures $0.4B
Result: Launch vehicle developed, capsule successfully launched into orbit and recovered
Government-run Constellation program total expenditures $10B
Result: at least eight years and $15B from such a test
Score: 1-0 private sector
edit, 1.9B contract, 600M spent by SpaceX so far, 300M of that from NASA, the rest from private money.
Don't forget, NASA is nursing the private industry to life. They're not stupid, they know their budget would go much farther if they had cheap access to launch into space. Constellation was largely welfare for Boeing and Lockheed.
Bang for buck is good, $1/4B vs $25B for Constellation.
I am not however excusing the Constellation program, it is a sad chapter in NASA's history and one they may never come back from.