

Lunar entrepreneurs: privately funded SpaceX orbits Earth. - FrancofileL
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/technology/090720/space-commercialization-private-firms-rocket-launch

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JunkDNA
I love what SpaceX is doing and I really, really hope they succeed. I'm not
sure if it's founded or not, but I fear we're at risk of losing a bit of
institutional knowledge as the original crop of "rocket scientists" retire. In
my mind, SpaceX is pushing the R&D process along, keeping that knowledge going
and expanding it outside the traditional government-run, risk-averse space
bureaucracy. I have to nit-pick about one thing in the article though:

"Livingston said drugs are so profitable that pharmaceutical companies could
become commercial space customers if they had routine and reliable ways to get
crystallization experiments into space and back again."

I have plenty of experience in the pharmaceutical industry and I have to say,
if they're looking for money from this, they will be waiting a long time. This
meme always makes for a nice tidy tag-line in a grant proposal for space
research, but it's not really based in business reality. Protein crystal
structures are certainly important in pharmaceutical development, but they
rarely make or break a drug program. The problem is that protein structures
obtained from crystals don't always accurately reflect what the protein does
in solution. Furthermore, even if you _do_ end up using a crystal structure to
design a compound, your problem is only just beginning. The big problem with
drugs is that they fail spectacularly when they get to the clinic because they
have an unacceptable safety profile or they just plain don't work. The protein
structure is fairly irrelevant in these cases because the rest of the biology
is so maddeningly complex and unpredictable.

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tocomment
Surely it's not the first private company to launch something into orbit.
Haven't Boeing and/or Lockheed been doing this for years? What's
different/special about SpaceX?

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ori_b
Haven't Boeing and Lockheed been doing government stuff for almost all their
launching? I could be wrong, but I don't remember hearing about their in-house
rocketry.

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tocomment
Boeing says they have commercial customers: [http://www.boeing.com/defense-
space/space/bls/deltaHistory.h...](http://www.boeing.com/defense-
space/space/bls/deltaHistory.html)

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gaius
Yes but development of the Delta was 100% underwritten by the DoD.

Kinda like how the 747 was subsidized by the AWACS contract... And they've the
nerve to complain when the French government bungs a few Euros to Airbus.

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evgen
747!?!? Try 707. All of Boeing's commercial airframe have been self-funded
since before Airbus existed. There may be internal cross-subsidy from other
defense projects (e.g. borrowing to develop A by using the federal funding of
B as a loan guarantee) but no Boeing airframe you can buy today was started or
funded as a DoD project.

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roryokane
I just saw a discussion about commercial vs. government space travel on XKCD
IRC yesterday. I'm curious; did whoever submitted this read or participate in
that chat and investigate? Is commercial space travel that popular a subject
these days? Or was it just a coincidence?

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zandorg
It's just that it's SpaceX's 2nd successful launch, and nearly as important as
the 1st last year. It's just recent news.

