That was Korolev’s quote from sixty-five years ago, when Sputnik launched.
[Afternoon update]
It’s also the eighteenth anniversary of the flight that won the X-Prize. I missed this at the time, but I’m greatly saddened to learn that my friend (and office mate at Rotary Rocket in the 90s), Brian Binnie, died a couple weeks ago.
I hadn’t realized that he finally published his book. I read and offered to publish a draft of it years ago, but at that time, he wasn’t able to publish it due to constraints from Northrop Grumman. I wonder what changed?
We’ll be seeing a lot of innovation to replace the capabilities that were lost with the Shuttle, and probably more willingness to accept risk.
What I haven’t heard is how they propose to do the EVA from Dragon. They don’t have an airlock, so presumably they’d have to blow down the cabin, and then repressurize when they come back in. Did SpaceX cold plate the avionics so it doesn’t need cabin atmosphere for cooling?
"Semper Supra" was revealed during @SpaceForceCSO Gen. Raymond's keynote speech at the 2022 Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. #ASC22
Starship will be an incredible enabler for science. Full reusability & high production rate drive several orders of magnitude improvement in $/kg to orbit & beyond.
Next gen Starlink constellation is primary user of this rocket, so science doesn’t need to cover fixed cost.
The world has finally seen a launch system that can find out what the price-demand elasticity curve looks like. Elon wants to maximize flight rate and revenue, because he wants to drive costs down to make Mars more affordable.
First he called cost-plus contracts a “plague” on the agency, and now he’s praising SpaceX (while pretending that he wasn’t one of the “poo pooers” himself, who told Lori to “get her boy Elon in line”). And I love this:
“
When there was the beginning of the space cargo and crew [programs], the two serious bidders were SpaceX and Boeing, and everybody poo-pooed SpaceX and said, ‘Oh, Boeing is a legacy company,'” Nelson said. “Well, guess who is about to make its sixth flight after its first test flight with astronauts, and guess who’s still on the ground?”