SpaceX Launch - Indirect Disclosure?

I think the SpaceX launch and rendezvous with the ISS with their generic, nameless astronauts is essentially the capitalist power elite symbolically proclaiming to everybody that smack dab in the middle of all the worldwide chaos they are now in charge.

Forget your piddling national pride or competition or social problems.

Private industry is now ruling the world. Get used to it!

a reply to: Blue Shift

With cars, you missed the biggest change is power source, Tesla, electricity, cleanish? not hydrocarbon based.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
I think the SpaceX launch and rendezvous with the ISS with their generic, nameless astronauts...

The astronauts on the SpaceX Dragon capsule are NASA astronauts, not SpaceX astronauts. They work for NASA.

The point of the NASA program under which SpaceX built the Dragon2 is to provide a taxi service for NASA to send their astronauts to and from the ISS. That's what NASA is paying for with the $3.1 Billion dollars they paid to SpaceX.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: Blue Shift
I think the SpaceX launch and rendezvous with the ISS with their generic, nameless astronauts...

The astronauts on the SpaceX Dragon capsule are NASA astronauts, not SpaceX astronauts. They work for NASA.

And their names, without looking them up?

The point of the NASA program under which SpaceX built the Dragon2 is to provide a taxi service for NASA to send their astronauts to and from the ISS. That's what NASA is paying for with the $3.1 Billion dollars they paid to SpaceX.

That's what it says on paper. Sure, they're all completely separate organizations, no different than when the Department of Transportation hires a contractor builds a stretch of highway. But when it comes to the flow of money and personnel and the overall philosophy of the participants, it's all just one big corporation with a fairly clear goal. Dominance.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: Blue Shift
I think the SpaceX launch and rendezvous with the ISS with their generic, nameless astronauts...

The astronauts on the SpaceX Dragon capsule are NASA astronauts, not SpaceX astronauts. They work for NASA.

And their names, without looking them up?

"Bob and Doug" are easy to remember because of SCTV's Bob and Doug Mackenzie.

As for last names, it's Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken (I only looked it up to spell Behnken's name properly because I knew it had an "h" somewhere in it).

Doug Hurley is also easy to remember because of the added oddity that he was also part of the crew the last time the U.S. launched people into space; he was pilot of the final Endeavor mission in 2011, which was the final launch of the entire shuttle program. So Hurley flew back-to-back flights of American spacecraft, although those flights were 9 years apart.

And frankly, how many astronauts are actually remembered? Most of the shuttle astronauts were nameless faces to most people. Same for skylab and Apollo-Soyuz before the Shuttle. Heck, I bet a lot of people -- even people who have a slightly more than casual interest in space -- don't know some of the Apollo mission astronauts.

I mean, I have no idea who the CM pilot was for Apollo 14......[looks it up).....It was Stuart Roosa. I suppose the name is a little familiar to me since I follow the space program, but I bet even casual fans of NASA never heard of him. There's some guy named David Scott who was one of the 12 people to walk on the Moon. Most people, myself included, upon hearing the name David Scott might say "who's that?"