just watched the first commercial spaceship, Dragon, leave earth

well folks here we go!
A NEW AGE IN SPACE EXPLORATION BEGINS!
greetings from titusville florida, where the first commercial spaceflight has just lifted of without a hitch from kennedy space center. what a magnificent sight it was! no pics but trust me it happened!

in a world as innovative as ours how long do you think it will take for our little species to competely commercialize space and what are your visions for such a time?

i think within the decade we will be traveling back and forth from ISS regularly, even scheduling tourism!
we could possibly even begin establishing bases on the moon.
with space exploration out of the private sector there is a lot more room for innovation!

reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat



wow! sounds fun.


but is it safe, with all that space radiation and stuff?

Originally posted by SoymilkAlaska
reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat

 

wow! sounds fun.


but is it safe, with all that space radiation and stuff?

i fear i don't fully grasp your witticism...
and believe me it was awesome... first night launch i have seen since 1999! man that thing was bright!

It sure was a nice watch.
Well done

Originally posted by intergalactic fire
It sure was a nice watch.
Well done

APPRECIATE THE PIC!
on my ps3 so imbedding is near impossible...
you live nearby then?
yes, it was awesome, they always are.
now i've got last shuttl launch and first commercial launch under my belt... nice.

reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat


My personal belief is that commercializing space has already begun. The private sector has trickled hints that they are already up in space getting comfortable. (I have a hunch the moon has more secrets from the general population that NASA or Governmental figures have led on.) No proof, but hopefully time will tell.

Originally posted by BlackTriangleUFO
reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat

 

My personal belief is that commercializing space has already begun. The private sector has trickled hints that they are already up in space getting comfortable. (I have a hunch the moon has more secrets from the general population that NASA or Governmental figures have led on.) No proof, but hopefully time will tell.

i happen to agree with you blacktriangle, it is my firm belief that the side of space exploration we see is just the side they choose to show us, but again simply speculative opinion. fascinating nonetheless!

We are about to have a predawn flyover of ISS followed by Dragon, across the US from Arkansas over Ohio to Maryland.

NASA has a schedule for each US city, here:
spaceflight.nasa.gov...

Go out and look!!

reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat

in a world as innovative as ours how long do you think it will take for our little species to competely commercialize space and what are your visions for such a time?

i think within the decade we will be traveling back and forth from ISS regularly, even scheduling tourism!
we could possibly even begin establishing bases on the moon.
with space exploration out of the private sector there is a lot more room for innovation!

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!! Slow down a second.
Don't jump out of your britches just yet.



Whose gonna pay for all of that?

I'm sure it will happen, eventually, but we're still a long long ways away from saying "WE will be traveling back and forth....."

[color=ADF1FF]The average price of a full-up NASA Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station is $133 million including inflation, or roughly $115m in today’s dollars, and we have a firm, fixed price contract with NASA for 12 missions. This price includes the costs of the Falcon 9 launch, the Dragon spacecraft, all operations, maintenance and overhead, and all of the work required to integrate with the Space Station.

www.spacex.com...

That was from May 4, 2011, but they say it is a fixed price, so......



Oh, and also, these guys are the cheapest. It's gonna cost more if you go with another company.

[color=ADF1FF]MUSK: Sure. So we spent around over $1 billion thus far, and NASA's maybe responsible for about 40 percent of that. And then we've got a bit much private capital that's been raised and payments from other customers and from (unintelligible) that we've already achieved and other launches that we've done. And, yeah, so it ends up being a great deal for the taxpayers because it ends up costing much less than alternative approaches, and in particular when we're launching crew. Because right now - because of the retirement of the space shuttle, American actual attempt to go up on the Russian Soyuz, and it costs over $60 million per seat. And when our vehicle is flying, it'll actually cost around $20 million a seat, so it'll be a huge savings.


[This↑quote was taken from the transcript of a radio interview, from a few days ago.
'Musk' is the CEO of SpaceX.]
www.npr.org...

Originally posted by SoymilkAlaska
reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat

 

wow! sounds fun.


but is it safe, with all that space radiation and stuff?

At the low earth orbit of the space station you are safe from radiation. The biggest danger is from junk and debris floating round up there.

Originally posted by BlackTriangleUFO
reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat

 

My personal belief is that commercializing space has already begun. The private sector has trickled hints that they are already up in space getting comfortable. (I have a hunch the moon has more secrets from the general population that NASA or Governmental figures have led on.) No proof, but hopefully time will tell.

Agreed. I have no proof whatsover (just to clarify) merely a belief based on the progression of air/space technologies from the wright brothers (1900's) to the SR117 Blackbird (1960's) to ???? hmm curious. A logical progression of technology suggests Moon trips are common place and takes hours or less and Mars takes days.

My second (lack of proof) logical thought is that there is no way the US military cannot get to their space based technology now that the shuttle program is grounded. If we are asked to believe that only the Chinese, Russians and Indians can get a man up there and the US would have to hitch a ride with them....????? ......!!!!!!! No chance!

Maybe the Iranians and their magnetic-gravity propulsion system will reveal all........

There is indeed reason to be hopeful but not because the founder of space X has a great interest in space commercialization!

I particularly like the fact that he seems to understand that he is on his own in this short term goal; the future survival of our species is not a issue national governments probably consider...

Musk views space exploration as an important step in expanding—if not preserving—the consciousness of human life.[20] Musk has said that multiplanetary life may serve as a hedge against threats to the survival of the human species. "An asteroid or a super volcano could destroy us, and we face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, catastrophic global warming or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us. Humankind evolved over millions of years, but in the last sixty years atomic weaponry created the potential to extinguish ourselves. Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond this green and blue ball—or go extinct." Musk's goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. He founded SpaceX with $100 million of his early fortune. He remains chief executive officer and chief technology officer of the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company.

In seven years, SpaceX has designed the family of Falcon launch vehicles and the Dragon multi-purpose spacecraft from the ground-up. In September 2009, SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket became the first privately funded liquid-fueled vehicle to put a satellite into Earth orbit. NASA selected SpaceX to be part of the first program that entrusts private companies to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. This contract, which has a minimum value of $1.6 billion and a maximum value of $3.1 billion, has become a cornerstone of the Space Station. In addition to these services, SpaceX's goals include simultaneously lowering the price of orbital spaceflight and improving reliability, both by a factor of ten, while creating the first fully reusable orbital launch vehicle. In the coming years, Musk will focus on delivering astronauts to the International Space Station, but has stated his personal goal of eventually enabling human exploration and settlement of Mars. In a 2011 interview, he said he hopes to send humans to Mars' surface within 10–20 years.[21].

en.wikipedia.org...

Stellar

Originally posted by yorkshirelad

Originally posted by BlackTriangleUFO
reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat

 

My personal belief is that commercializing space has already begun. The private sector has trickled hints that they are already up in space getting comfortable. (I have a hunch the moon has more secrets from the general population that NASA or Governmental figures have led on.) No proof, but hopefully time will tell.

Agreed. I have no proof whatsover (just to clarify) merely a belief based on the progression of air/space technologies from the wright brothers (1900's) to the SR117 Blackbird (1960's) to ???? hmm curious. A logical progression of technology suggests Moon trips are common place and takes hours or less and Mars takes days.

My second (lack of proof) logical thought is that there is no way the US military cannot get to their space based technology now that the shuttle program is grounded. If we are asked to believe that only the Chinese, Russians and Indians can get a man up there and the US would have to hitch a ride with them....????? ......!!!!!!! No chance!

Maybe the Iranians and their magnetic-gravity propulsion system will reveal all........

I hope space progression happens fast as well, but you've got to think of it like this. Building planes is almost like crossing a river, it's tough to do but it can be done, and we did do it. But space, it's almost like the ocean. it took us many many years to build a ship good enough to cross oceans, and even then, let's just say for arguments sake, that ship was built in 1500. Well, it wasn't until about 1820 that we built ships (steam ships) that were faster than the original wind ships. What I'm trying to say is, it took us 320 years to "upgrade" our ocean ships so how long will it take us to upgrade our space ships?

While this was certainly big news, for the sake of accuracy, Tuesday morning's Dragon launch was NOT the first commercial space launch.

It was the first private firm to fully develop and launch a mission for NASA, and it will be the first time NASA used a commercial launch to visit the International Space Station (ISS), and it's the first commercial "space vehicle" (a cargo vehicle now, potentially a crew vehicle later) that is not just a satellitte launched by a private firm, but this was not the first launch payloads into orbit by a private company.

There have been a few other commercial companies launching private satellites into space since the 1990s. This wasn't even the first commercial launch for SpaceX Corporation. SpaceX first launched a satellite (for a private company) into orbit in 2008, using its Falcon 1 rocket. Today's launch was using a Falcon 9.

Granted, NASA using a private company to potentially send supplies and (someday) astronauts to the space station is a HUGE milestone, but I just thought it should be clarified that several other private firms have been in the satellite launch business for 15+ years.

Other companies that have been providing private launch services for commercial satellites [click each link for information]:

International Launch Services, which has launched almost 100 commercial satellites since 1996.

Sea Launch Corporation and its subsidiary Land Launch, which has made at least 40 commercial launches of communications satellites since 1995. Sea Launch uses a sea-based launch platform floating in the ocean at the equator (the equator is an optimum place from which to get to orbit), and Land Launch launches from Russia.

Orbital Sciences Corporation, or simply "Orbital", which has conducted 60+ launches of commercial payloads since the 1990s. Orbital specializes in small payloads to low earth orbit, some of which are sent into orbit using a Pegasus Rocket launched from an airplane.

For those who have missed the launch.
Arcticle and video
www.universetoday.com...

Thjats the first trekkie in space right?

Scotty's ashes went up?

Originally posted by Shadowalker
Thjats the first trekkie in space right?

Scotty's ashes went up?

Finally -- "The third time's a charm" as they say.

they tried to send Scotty's (James Doohan's) ashes into space twice before, in 2007 and 2008, but both rocket launches failed.

The last time, in 2008, it was also SpaceX Corporation (the company involved with this latest launch) who was trying to send up the ashes, along with 200+ other people's ashes and three satellites. The launch failed, and SpaceX lost all of the ashes and the three satellites in the Pacific Ocean.

Story on the failed attempts here:
www.nationalreview.com...

and on this latest attempt (this story was written prior to the successful launch):
www.nationalreview.com...

There is going to be an orbiting hotel...expected as soon as this year! Maybe by the time my toddler is working age it won't just be for the uber rich anymore.(doubtfully but I can dream) I don't think I can imagine how awesome the future of pushing limits will be. I know my Grandma never thought she would see man in space, yet she has been there to watch a shuttle defy logic. I'm sure we will all know that feeling soon enough.
Your too lucky to have witnessed this OP, I'm jealous lol. S&F
Space hotel

reply to post by CagliostroTheGreat


You seem to forget, this is private as of NOW......Just wait until people (who "they" deem) can start going to space!! This will not be allowed, or your brain will be washed of all knowledge upon arrival on Earth!! TPTB will never allow disclosure of anything by an average person!! Won't happen.....

The government will have their hand in this somewhere along the way......

I'm so happy for all the wealthy people who can afford to piss that much money away on a leisure trip into space. Yay for the rich!

By the time the commoner can afford a trip into space, there will be litter on the moon and McDonald's bags floating through space on the way there. And the rest of us will be about 120 years old before we can afford that kind of enjoyment.