[ExI] FW: SpaceX achieves orbit!

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Tue Sep 30 12:27:16 UTC 2008


2008/9/30 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
>
> Subject: SpaceX achieves orbit!
>
> Paypal founder Elon Musk's SpaceX has achieved orbit yesterday with a
> privately developed vehicle.  This video gives a good idea of what it takes
> to get up to orbit velocity:
>
> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/space-x-did-it.html
>
> This with only 550 employees.    Hearty congratulations, this is long
> overdue.

This is of course encouraging but I wonder at the ability of any
private organisation to achieve real advances in space exploration,
when even a great nation like China is so cautious in their claims:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKTRE48T0TX20080930

'But Chinese experts stressed that their country's next big goals in
space face big technological hurdles.

Two "tougher and more complicated" skills still to be mastered are
docking craft in space and learning how to keep astronauts alive and
well in orbit for long periods, said Ma Xingrui, a deputy commander of
the manned space mission, according to Xinhua news agency.

Another senior engineer told state television that China was studying
space docking, but warned it was no easy feat.

"I think it's like launching a needle up there, then having a thread
on the ground, hundreds of kilometres below, and finally you have to
put the thread through the needle," said the engineer, Su Shuangning.

To send aloft the much larger, 20-tonne space station that China has
planned, it will also need a new generation of more powerful rockets.
Technological delays have held back the launch of those new rockets
until about midway through the next decade, officials have said.

"China is still quite far behind the United States and Russia (in
space technology)," Jiao Weixin, a space scientist at Peking
University, told Reuters. "It's unrealistic to speak of us catching
up. We're just doing our best to narrow the gap."



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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