Dragon arrives at space station in historic 1st

[vpt]

My nephew, who is in 8th or 9th grade, has a science experiment that went up on this flight. An experiment about how soy beans grow in a ~zero G environment.

I think spaceX is not just business as usual, and a meaningful move toward private enterprise taking over the space business.

Finest regards,

doug

I have always wondered if fish can survive in space (in water of course).

[lazlo]

Commercial corporations are more willing to risk peoples lives, in the name of profit, then the government agencies like NASA. If something goes horribly wrong then they just fold and disappear, NASA has to stick around and face the music.

Plus the government agency has a ton of beauracracy and dead weight. No $500 toilet seats in a commercial startup.

[justanengineer]

Plus the government agency has a ton of beauracracy and dead weight. No $500 toilet seats in a commercial startup.

Just like the wars overseas were expensive bc we overpaid our soldiers at $30k/yr and not bc of the private $150k/yr crappy food servers and poor laundry service? Get real.

NASA has run extremely lean when all programs are considered. Not too many large entities govt or private dont purchase new trucks every few years, and NASA has been reusing many of the same vehicles since before Apollo. If you want a great look back in time at tools, visit the Cape sometime. Beyond this, the current SpaceX resupply contract costs the govt (read taxpayers) more than the Russian unmanned rockets plain and simple. Considering NASA gave them the key to the kingdom via simulation and other key software/technology/work performed, and its more expensive than paying our red friends, how is it a savings? 1 answer - bc our current administration said it is.

Comparing the Dragon to the space shuttle is also rather ludicrous (unmanned vs manned, IOW a tin can vs a bus, but here is an attempt at comparing cost. As taxpayers, we are paying $130M to transport a max of 10k lbs payload, or $13k/lb. The last Space Shuttle flights carried 50k lb at $450M, or $9k/lb, plus a crew.

[lazlo]

Just like the wars overseas were expensive bc we overpaid our soldiers at $30k/yr and not bc of the private $150k/yr crappy food servers and poor laundry service? Get real.

It costs $390,000 per soldier per year, deployed to Iraq/Afghanistan.

I was an engineer for Army Research Labs for 10 years -- and yes, there's a TON of bureaucracy, dead weight, and corruption. That's true of any government agency in any country.

Comparing the Dragon to the space shuttle is also rather ludicrous (unmanned vs manned, IOW a tin can vs a bus, but here is an attempt at comparing cost. As taxpayers, we are paying $130M to transport a max of 10k lbs payload, or $13k/lb. The last Space Shuttle flights carried 50k lb at $450M, or $9k/lb, plus a crew.

No question -- we argued this on the asteroid mining thread. SpaceX is at Apollo-era launch capability. There's a long road ahead to get to a space shuttle, but they're off to a damn good start!

[danlb]

Plus the government agency has a ton of beauracracy and dead weight. No $500 toilet seats in a commercial startup.

I worked at a lot of startups. Since they run on venture capital they are riddled with the equivalent of $500 toilet seats. I observed $200 an hour consultants that are billing for 18 hours a day to do mundane work. I saw dual biometric locks on a door to a room with sheet-rock walls and windows. I saw a room full of consumer grade computers bought for $25,000 each.

I saw a LOT of high priced waste.

The difference is that it's easy to see the $490 markup on a $10 toilet seat. It's harder to see the $1000 markup on the $10,000 piece of hardware.

Back On Topic.... I'm glad that we have a way to get a capsule to low earth orbit. I'd be much happier if it was more capable than the Gemini capsules of the early 1960s. I'd be very happy if it could rival the Apollo achievements. I'd be ecstatic if it could equal the space shuttle AND go beyond Low Earth Orbit.

I was supposed to be able to vacation on the moon by now. The moon is a harsh mistress

Dan

[michigan doug]

Yes, fish can survive in space. Both the russians and at the ISS facility, there have been experiments with fish in space.

I couldn't find any video of fish in space, but this one with water in space is pretty interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaHLw...eature=related


Finest regards,


doug

[Evan]

Commercial corporations are more willing to risk peoples lives, in the name of profit, then the government agencies like NASA. If something goes horribly wrong then they just fold and disappear, NASA has to stick around and face the music. Unfortunately the only way to get into space in a big way is to cut the governments of the world out of the picture.

I don't think anybody is starting up a "go to orbit" enterprise just for the money. There has to be some element of "dreaming about space travel" involved and getting off this planet. I certainly agree that the governments need to be uninvolved, completely. The old aerospace companies are the ones to blame for the $500 hammers, not NASA directly. The politicians are also to blame for inconsistent funding. Space programs don't happen in just one funding cycle and many a program has been cancelled after large amounts of money were spent resulting in large amounts of wasted funding.

The major aerospace firms are nearly all prime cases of pork barrel funding with the money dished out according to everything except what is the best for the programs. The amount of wasted money is probably ten times greater than the money spent to good effect.

[lazlo]

The old aerospace companies are the ones to blame for the $500 hammers, not NASA directly.

The major aerospace firms are nearly all prime cases of pork barrel funding with the money dished out according to everything except what is the best for the programs.

*Totally* agree Evan. When I worked in the Army Space Programs Office, it was generally believed that the US spy satellite program was so secretive because it was so Un-Godly expensive. A basic tenet of Mutually Assured Destruction and arms control treaties is that your opponent needs to know the capabilities of your monitoring equipment. The Russians and Chinese "somehow" knew (know) the details of our satellites, so the theory goes that the military-industrial complex was hiding the expense of the program from the general public.

I was involved in a technical audit of a piece of terrestrial equipment being developed by a well-known defense contractor (who as Evan points out was also manufacturing major components of the Space Shuttle). We noticed they were using space-qualified fasteners in a VCR panel mount, of all places. Turns out, they had billed the government an obscene amount for these fasteners for a space program, had a large excess supply, and were double-billing the program for a completely unrelated use.

That's where the $500 hammers come from, and why we spend more on defense than the 20 largest military budgets combined: about a third of our annual federal budget, and about a 1/4 of our GDP.

[beanbag]

I certainly agree that the governments need to be uninvolved, completely. .

Just wait until somebody dies in a horrible explosion, and then there will be congressional hearings and calls for "more regulation".

[loose nut]

$500 toilet seat and $20000 hammers is how much of the "black" budgets are funded.