In Praise Of Space-X

Dear:

Your Saturday morning newspaper...I'm always mentioning those very important words:

"The devil is in the detail."

Boeing has been paid some $4,200,000,000 US by NASA to develop a space capsule to take astronauts to the International Space Station. After over three years of work, Boeing launched an unmanned space capsule. The goal was to go into orbit. Then the orbit would be changed to allow the space capsule to dock with the International Space Station. The launch was smooth. The capsule achieved orbit. That was a great start. Then came the time to fire the capsule thrusters to send the capsule to the ISS. Some idiot technician had set the time wrong in a minor subsystem. The capsule failed to change its orbit. Now we have delays and the cost of another test. If astronauts had been on board, they could have caught the error and got the capsule to the ISS.

In contrast, Space-X was awarded a contract of only $2,600,000,000 US to build the Dragon manned capsule to take astronauts to the ISS. On the first attempt to dock a Dragon capsule with the ISS, Space-X ran into a glitch like this. They were able to change some software and get the capsule to the ISS. Space-X has sent Dragon capsules to the ISS since May of 2012.