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Just saw Elon Musk's SpaceX anniversary talk. The guy is crazy... in a good way maybe, but still crazy. Hard to believe it was only a year ago when he announced his "BFR", and now he's already got an engineering prototype that's supposed to start test flights in a matter of months, and "to reach orbit in 6 months". True, those are "Elon months", but still. It'll be interesting to see if he actually gets 2 of these rockets done in time for an unmanned Mars test flight/mission at the next transfer window in 2022. He's also previously said that he might land one on the moon during testing.. because "It may literally be easier to just land Starship on the moon than try to convince NASA that we can."
https://arstechnica.com/features/2019/09/after-starship-unveiling-mars-seems-a-little-closer/-
It is absolutely insane how much he has accomplished in a few years (especially compared to ESA/NASA). If he actually manages to achieve his planned goals in the next 5-10 years, I seriously think NASA should just hand over their budget to him
My uncle (worked on astrophysics stuff) is a huge fan of his, so I always get the latest updates from him
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I would love to see that happen. NASA has their own planes and such for research purposes, but they don't own and operate their own "NASA airlines". In the same way I'd like to see NASA do the same for space R&D and regulation and just buy transportation to/from space like they do for air travel. Cost-plus contracts and Congressional pork seem to be the main obstacles to commercial space these days. Don't get me wrong, NASA does a lot for air travel, safety, research, and regulation. That first "A" in "NASA" is for "Aeronautics" after all. I'd really like to see NASA do things the same way for the "S" and drop the semi-operational, perpetually over-budget NASA-sponsored programs like SLS in favor of buying commercial services from the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin.
NASA does have a "COTS" - commercial off the shelf - program for some space operations like satellite launches and cargo delivery to the ISS, so there's some progress there. I'm hoping space travel will quickly commercialize as a transport industry like it did for airplanes back in the day. The time between the Wright Flyer in 1903 and the Ford Trimotor (airplane used in the first commercial airline in the US) was only about 8 years, and the DC-3 was in service by the end of the 1930s. I'll make allowances for space travel being harder - not to mention that there's no established extraterrestrial destinations to justify a scheduled service to - and give them a little more time but I'm really looking forward to the first regular commercial "spaceline" service!
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