Last week marked the ten year anniversary of the Hawthorne, CA based Space Exploration Technologies. Founded on the realization that launch vehicles were prohibitively expensive to open up space technology and travel to anyone besides large business, and countries, Mr. Elon Musk set out on a journey to challenge the status quo. The goal? Reduce the cost of a launch to < 1000$ a pound. This is the way SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary.In late April, SpaceX will be seeking to launch and rendezvous its Dragon spacecraft with the International Space Station (ISS). A vehicle traveling nearly 17,500 miles an hour in orbit over our heads. This is an incredibly complex task, one that SpaceX is seeking to do more cheaply then ever before, to service the astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory.
It has been a long journey for commercial space, but the government has finally started to make this a possibility, stemming innovation in an industry that clings to heritage. Innovation is the key word. Thats how dreams are met. Thats how the hopes of yesterday become the realities of today, as Dr. Robert Goddard so notably quoted. Whether you believe commercial space to be the answer to opening up the last frontier or not, you should be inspired by the direction the aerospace companies are going. Remember the words of George Bernard shaw.
"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
Make no mistake about it, the government is helping it happen by providing seed money for these technologies, competitively bid for, and allowing the companies to keep almost all rights to their products.
I will be covering commercial space in later blogs post as we get closer to the launch, but I wanted to post this today, as 60 minutes will be showing an episode highlighting what SpaceX is doing for commercial space, and for the country as a whole. Check it out tonight at 7 pm est.
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