Tuesday, December 3, 2013

The Race Is On...

Between China, India, SpaceX and others...

Within the past week we have seen India's Mars probe exit Earth orbit and successfully transition to its outbound trajectory, China launch its Moon rover set to arrive in a few days and SpaceX put its first commercial satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.  And here the US government is sitting with its thumb up its keester...

With the hope for US space ambitions firmly in the hands of the private sector SpaceX is our leading hope.  With today's 100% successful launch SpaceX has completed its second of three required successful launches in order to become eligible for US Military and other government agency work.  While SpaceX has a big backlog of commercial work ahead of it, opening up another revenue stream is never a bad thing.  Nor is getting a big satellite to a position about 1/9 of the way to the moon.  Only bigger and better things to come from SpaceX as they will continue to expand and build upon their run of success lately...

Is it so wrong of me to hope for the Chinese rover to impact the Moon at some uncontrollable rate, disintegrating on impact??   At some point if all these entities continue on their courses, SpaceX interests will conflict with Chinese or Indian interests...will the US be strong enough or willing enough to protect its own private enterprises since it no longer seems willing to protect itself or its interests in space??

SpaceX Completes First GTO Mission...

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