I am appalled at the lack of 'mainstream media' coverage of this historic event. SpaceX has accomplished something that only governments have done before. Let the 2nd space race begin :)
The launch went great and the Dragon capsule is in orbit. It will be doing 2 to 3 orbits and with the de-orbit burn in about 2 hours from now. Very cool!
If a foreign government had done this rather than a private US corporation it would be heralded as the start of that country's manned space program and receive far more coverage in the media.
As it stands this is probably much more significant than if a government had done it, it heralds a new era of private manned spaceflight. An era that may see space travel opened up not just to a handful of carefully selected astronauts but to the entire public at large.
I don't this this is about government vs. private corporation. I just don't think anyone cares about space anymore.
My sister goes to Purdue and when they dedicated the Neil Armstrong building the school had just built, there were apparently 15 or 16 astronauts in attendance. You know how many students showed up to hear them talk? A few dozen. Purdue has like 30 or 40k students and they couldn't even fill a classroom.
>I just don't think anyone cares about space anymore.
because of the stagnation of the government space exploration programs there have been very little new achieved in space in decades - thus lack of general interest (with notable exceptions may be like Hubble&Chandra, Mars rovers, and GPS/mapping - each of which spurned a lot of interest, activity and development in their respective niches). Put the man on Mars - you'll have all the 40K trying to squeeze in to listen. Or even back on the Moon ... just for a week :)
Being a government astronaut doesn't have the same allure as it once did, largely because they tend to do the same sorts of things that astronauts already did 40 years ago. Or, indeed, less interesting things as humans haven't left low Earth orbit since the mid '70s.
Doesn't SpaceX have a $1.6B contract with Nasa right now?
edit, 1.9B contract, 600M spent by SpaceX so far, 300M of that from NASA, the rest from private money.
Don't forget, NASA is nursing the private industry to life. They're not stupid, they know their budget would go much farther if they had cheap access to launch into space. Constellation was largely welfare for Boeing and Lockheed.
To be fair to NASA, Constellation was a human space flight program with the ultimate aim of leaving LEO (Low Earth Orbit) so it is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison.
I am not however excusing the Constellation program, it is a sad chapter in NASA's history and one they may never come back from.
I saw it by chance while driving in Tampa and because of the "missile off California" hoopla convinced myself it was a contrail. Always nice to see a launch, even if not close up.
I am appalled at the lack of 'mainstream media' coverage of this historic event. SpaceX has accomplished something that only governments have done before. Let the 2nd space race begin :)