Comments on: Miles O'Brien on SpaceX Launch: "Space for the Rest of Us"

By: dot hachey

dot hachey — Thu, 24 May 2012 05:50:00 +0000

Actually, it wasn’t the Space Shuttle Endeavour whose “wheels stopped on runway 15 at KSC on July 21, it was Space Shuttle Atlantis’ – STS-135. Endeavour was the second to the last mission, STS-134. :)

By: Ben Carlsen

Ben Carlsen — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:32:00 +0000

This is probably old news to a lot of people, but there’s seriously a space journalist named Miles O’Brien? Does he get a lot of people calling him “Chief?”

By: Andrew Singleton

Andrew Singleton — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:30:00 +0000

Think about it this way. If the Private Sector can handle the people moving bits and monitizing it allows NASA to focus even moreso on the Science and Discovery bits.

By: Joshua Ochs

Joshua Ochs — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:12:00 +0000

Seems a fair assessment, but I always worry that the private sector won’t focus on the basic science and long-term goals that NASA used to (at least before it became the ultimate political football). The private sector is indeed known for efficiency, but it’s also known for being short-sighted and subjecting everything to cost-benefit analysis – and ignoring intangible benefits (i.e, anything that isn’t immediate profit).

I applaud the SpaceX team, and hope this is a new chapter of private-public partnerships, not NASA’s exit from space exploration.