SpaceX

[chris_gerrib]

So, a private company, SpaceX, has successfully placed a capsule in orbit and retrieved it. SpaceX becomes only the seventh organization, and the first non-governmental organization, to acomplish this feat. Said launch was a test flight of SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which has an unmanned cargo version and a manned transport version.

I've talked about cost to orbit in my space colonization discussions. SpaceX's solution is not cheap, but vastly cheaper than any existing one. Nor are they alone - other companies are working on the problem. I am convinced that (relatively) low cost to orbit is coming. The question isn't "if," it's "when" and "how low?"

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect that with the current crop of technologies we're going to quickly find the How Long and it'll be lower than we have but _probably_ not an order of magnitude... they might get that... not sure.

The prices that I've seen quoted for a seat to orbit mean that SpaceX plus Bigelow becomes practical as a Space Tourism option for the seriously well off.

On that note, back to the startup mines.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I've talked about cost to orbit in my space colonization discussions. SpaceX's solution is not cheap, but vastly cheaper than any existing one. Nor are they alone - other companies are working on the problem. I am convinced that (relatively) low cost to orbit is coming. The question isn't "if," it's "when" and "how low?"

The important point about this is that we are on the verge of NASA subcontracting cargo hauling to a private agency (in fact, SpaceX already has the ISS contract, they simply have to prove ability to perform now). This means that commercial spaceflight moves from being in competition with national space programs which can call on government power to shut them down to being in support of national space programs, which now have an incentive to use their influence to make commercial space operations legally easier.

And of course we are also on the verge of having competing commercial spaceflight providers in day-to-day operation against one another. This is vital because it engages the forces of capitalist competitions in favor of space travel, rendering it inevitable (assuming that it's technologically possible) that space launch and flight costs will drop asymptotically toward the irreducible minimums.

As this happens, we will see a larger and larger commercial space launch and flight infrastructure growing. This infrastructure will lower the entry costs of any organization planning extraterrestrial operations -- of any sort.

This is the start of a new and brighter Space Age. Over the next few decades we are going to see the start of not merely the exploration, but also the exploitation and colonization, of other worlds.