Tag: Elon Musk

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Dragon into Orbit

Elon Musk, Mars,

It’s been nine years since NASA launched astronauts into space, but the agency is scheduled to break that dry spell today.

This time it’s different, though, for the space agency has sub-​contracted out the rocketry and launch control to SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace company. “Only three countries have launched humans — Russia, the U.S. and China in that order — making SpaceX’s attempt all the more impressive,” NBC News reports.

Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are the American astronauts slated to go into orbit in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule sitting atop a Falcon 9 rocket. They are headed to the International Space Station, where only one American, Chris Cassidy, now works … and he got there courtesy of the Russians, launching rockets out of Kazakhstan.

The future of space travel depends on private enterprise, but moving from nation-​state efforts has been slow. Even now, the relationship between NASA and SpaceX is … a big government/​big business partnership. 

Of which we have ample reason to be skeptical.

Elon Musk has been in the news, recently, even more so than usual. You have probably heard about he and his wife’s baby naming issue, or his “red pill moment” on Twitter.

And Musk’s true color probably is red, as in the Red Planet, Mars. He wants to get there.

He is not alone. India has an unmanned probe orbiting Mars right now, and, like China, has plans to get there as well.

Ever since astronomers Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell claimed to have espied “canali” on the Red Planet, our imaginations have been on overdrive. From Edgar Rice Burroughs novels to obsessions about The Face, our thoughts have leaned to the alien.

Human exploration and colonization? Not alien at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Red Roadster Rides Outer Space

Tesla, Elon Musk, SpaceX, launch, space, orbit, government

On Tuesday, SpaceX launched one of the largest rockets ever, the Falcon Heavy. Because it is still experimental, it didn’t carry up an expensive satellite. Too early for that. Instead, it has sent up a Tesla Roadster.

And it’s not aiming for orbit … around Earth. 

It’s aiming for, well, “a precessing Earth-​Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.”

All the while playing the late David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

This is all very bizarre, of course. But SpaceX is headed by Elon Musk, who is one of those daring people who do daring things. The very fact that he kept finding funding (no small amount of it from taxpayers, sadly) for Tesla Motors (which he also founded), while failing to make a profit, is a tribute to … something.

Sending Musk’s personal car into space — to circuit Sol for a billion years — is, the visionary says, at least not boring. (Musk, perhaps not coincidentally for that word choice, also founded the Boring Company.) The Roadster, “piloted” by a dummy “Starman,” is an upgrade with flair.

But who is he playing to? The masses of auto buffs? Stargazers? Science fiction fans?* 

Maybe the mad-​scientist/​eccentric-​mogul is playing for bureaucrats, Capitol Hill staffers, and politicians. For, by one estimate, his companies have received $4.9 billion in government subsidies.

So, think of what’s going into orbit as just another part of the skyrocketing — spacerocketing — federal debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The odd payload choice might make sense in sci-​fi context, for, in the early days of science fiction, one idea often mentioned was to literally send a bomb to the Moon: an explosion, after all, could be seen, in early Space Age days, with old technology right here from Planet Earth surface. This was the case in the boys’ book The Rocket’s Shadow as imagined in 1947.

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free trade & free markets individual achievement

Not Just a Recycled Rocket

SpaceX, Space X, space exploration, private, privatization, Elon Musk, landing, rocket, spaceship

Last Thursday, SpaceX successfully re-​used a previously flown rocket to launch a payload into orbit.

Sure, NASA had re-​cycled rocket parts before. That is, the U.S. space agency had recovered spent rockets.* But those were rebuilds.

SpaceX’s most recent triumph was to launch a “stage one” rocket that had gone into space before —and returned. Last April it delivered a payload to the International Space Station and then safely touched down vertically** — just like in 1950s sci-fi!

You could see the evidence: the weathered look of the rocket fuselage. 

This Falcon 9 rocket not only placed its Luxembourg-​owned SES-​10 into orbit last week, it then returned — again! — to its ocean “drone ship” platform. 

A new age in space commerce thereby hit a new landmark. 

Or would that be “spacemark”?

Re-​using a rocket is like how airlines re-​use jet aircraft. Less waste, expense. Making the whole industry more viable. The technology and expertise to safely land and recover the rocket is astounding.

Alas, videocasting of the most amazing part of the effort, the landing and recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket, failed — noticeable by its lack in both the live Periscope feed and the YouTube archive. But we had seen that very same rocket land last April, onto SpaceX’s charmingly named droneship, Of Course I Still Love You.

Ocean mark? Drone mark? It hit the mark, whatever you call it.

Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, had every reason to breathe a sigh of relief, as well as engage in some apt exultation, after the mission.

We can, too. Space industry privatization and progress? Actually happening.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The Space Shuttle was a different technology entirely, a re-​usable spacecraft. What we are talking about today is the powerhouse stage-​one booster rocket, like the old Saturn V that the Apollo program famously exploited.

** The Space Shuttle, remember, landed horizontally, like an airplane. Future re-​usable manned spacecraft will no doubt do this. A private return-​entry spacecraft, like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip Two, put into orbit by a re-​usable Falcon 9 rocket, would be the next logical new achievement. Though, obviously, these are different companies with tech that is not, I think, meant to work together.

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free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement

Falcon 9 Delivers Eleven

SpaceX, Falcon 9, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Space, NASA, Common Sense, illustration

Earlier this week, SpaceX made history. Again.

Back in 2008, the company had launched the Falcon 1 into orbit —a big deal in the Space Age, previously dominated by governments.

Blue Origin, which is the baby of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has been providing Elon Musk’s SpaceX some stiff competition. A few weeks ago, Blue Origin sent up the New Shepard rocket — and returned it to earth vertically.

This week, SpaceX pulled ahead, sending its Falcon 9 up beyond New Shepard’s suborbital heights, putting eleven (count ’em: 11) satellites into orbit … and returning to touch down safely onto dry land — on the launch pad — vertically.

Just like we imagined when we (well, some of us oldsters) were young, before we witnessed Mercury and Apollo splashdowns.

Back in 2012, when I wrote about SpaceX — and NASA’s outsourcing of launches — I called it progress. One reader worried about the whole thing, though: “A spy satellite is still a spy satellite even if some telecom conglomerate puts it in space.” He was afraid of privatizing tyranny. That would be bad, but it doesn’t seem to apply to this week’s new satellites … unless M2M (machine-​to-​machine) Internet devices mean something different than what I understand them to be.

In any case, costs have been contained: while NASA’s Space Shuttle was also reusable, it cost about half a billion bucks per launch, which, we’re told, is “about eight times the current cost of a Falcon 9.”

Free enterprise: delivering the goods at a fraction of the cost.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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