Outsourced Space Flight

[LPH]

Lift-off for SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket occurred this morning at 3:44 a.m. EDT at Cape Canaveral, Fla. It's the first private company launch at NASA facilities, with many more flights planned. The payload for the rocket is a seven astronaut capsule which is expected to dock with the space station.

According to the LA Times, "After years of testing, NASA is hoping to turn the job of carrying cargo and crews over to private industry at a lower cost. Meanwhile, the agency will focus on deep-space missions to land probes on asteroids and Mars."

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[Robert Heiny]

That's good news! Congratulations SpaceX. This is a memorable day in flight history. Their effort reminds me of stories from the 1930s when commercial airlines started carrying U.S. Mail, because the government mail carriers were unreliable. So, government took over control of the airways rather than using them for domestic reasons.