
Elon Musk Wants SpaceX to Replace Russia as NASA's Space Station Transport - lelf
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-30/elon-musk-wants-spacex-to-replace-russia-as-nasas-space-station-transport#r=read
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InclinedPlane
This is already in the cards via the commercial crew development process.
SpaceX has already flown a pressurized capsule and returned it safely to Earth
several times, they are currently working on a manned capsule which will be
one of the most capable manned spacecraft in quite some time. And it will
almost certainly be used to ferry US crew to the ISS.

However, a lot of people don't realize that the commercial crew program is not
fully funded by congress. There's a little bit of funding for developing
certain novel aspects of manned spacecraft, which has been doled out to the
current commercial crew hopefuls (SpaceX, Boeing, and SNC). But, even if any
or all of those companies deliver a capable manned spacecraft there's no
guarantee whatsoever that there will be money available for a contract.

One of the important things that Musk is doing here is drawing attention to
that fact.

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valarauca1
The number of titles that follow the format, "Elon Musk wants X" I think are
starting to warrant a browser extension that replaces them with "No Mr. Bond
Elon Musk wants the World" or something similar.

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sschueller
Should just replace his name with Hugo Drax [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Drax](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Drax)

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Pxtl
I was thinking Hank Scorpio.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEsjd1WZuY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QEsjd1WZuY)

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pepon
I was thinking about the classical "My butt" replacement. Like in
[https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-
butt](https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt)

~~~
bnferguson
Be careful if you use the GitHub "Web Flow" (edit button on files on GitHub)
and this Extension. Saw one commit where someone was editing a readme to make
some small correction. Well, the extension went ahead and replaced all the
instances of "the cloud" with "my butt" along side his changes.

He didn't notice, and it was amazing.

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higherpurpose
> Musk, also the founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors (TSLA),
> established SpaceX in 2002 as part of his broader mission to make other
> planets habitable by humans.

That reads like something you'd see in history books 100 years from now, after
we've already inhabited other planets.

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Zenst
Not sure if will replace just yet as the industry has a very robust tried and
tested approach and rightly so when safety is concerned. Yes the Russian set-
up is older than Windows XP, but they keep on updating and patching it. When
you view it like that, it works.

Now that all said, yes some competition is needed and SpaceX can only be a
good thing. But even if the better solution on many levels, including
politics. It is still a very young platform that will take a few a bit more
time to get that level of not only knowing that it works. But also knowing
what can go wrong.

It is often in engineering better to have a part that you know exactly how it
will fail than a better part that you do not know exactly how it will fail.
That is what separates safely engineering design in contrast to IT people who
are more conditioned to new is better mentality. So when you read about some 8
bit system running on a bit of kit that your dad would of deemed old, it is
not because the latest is better, it is because it just works and all possible
fault outcomes have been worked out fully.

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jotm
I thought this was always the plan... Why pay a foreign (and not so friendly)
country when a private company can do it cheaper, faster and better (and you
have much more influence over it)?

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eiji
The russian space program and their entanglement with NASA is something I
would really like to keep going forward. I think I understand the other
factors, but this helps to keep US politics in check, even if just by a tiny
bit.

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JPKab
If you think that anything space related has pull on US politics, you are
wrong. Our current congress would cut NASA's funding in a heartbeat if it
remotely conflicted with any of their interests.

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avelis
This is unfortunately true per Neil Degrasse Tyson's (NDT) speech in front of
Congress to increase NASA's federal budget. It currently stands at 0.48% of
the Federal Budget. There is a great youtube video highlighted NDT's points on
this. I believe the video was around the initiative
[http://www.penny4nasa.org](http://www.penny4nasa.org)

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sidcool
If it was anyone else, I would have been sceptical, but it's Elon Musk.

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osipov
he is constantly lionized on HN but what did he personally accomplish besides
getting acquired by PayPal?

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ykl
He built Tesla Motors and SpaceX, for a start.

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jerf
And I'd further observe in context that SpaceX has _already_ delivered to the
Space Station, in rockets designed to carry humans that simply haven't been
certified and trusted by experience yet, as opposed to rockets that are
fundamentally incapable of carrying humans for some reason. It's essentially
impossible to have any more credibility here without actually having delivered
astronauts to the space station, which is nearly the only step remaining.

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mabbo
Also, Pepsi wishes to replace Coke at McDonald's.

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pitnips
More like Boeing wants to replace Airbus (if US airlines strictly used Airbus)
in the US.

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muyuu
If Airbus was a nation with a rogue government.

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mahouse
Not much roguer than the US.

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gottasayit
Please. Look at what's happening in the Ukraine. Can you see the US invading
Mexico or Canada and keeping the territory because our President was a
megalomaniac?

Even when we do invade somewhere to take out someone like UBL, Saddam Hussein,
or Noriega; when we're done we clean up, rebuild some infrastructure, and
leave.

No other nation on earth in history has restricted the wars it fights in such
a principled way, rather than using them as excuses to just take more
territory.

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mahouse
The US never leave, they leave a puppet leader and ensure the new regime that
is set in that country will always obey the "US standards of quality".

