re: #227 freetoken

They really are living in the past:

Missouri Congressman Mistakenly Refers To ‘Soviet Union’ In Anti-Obama Space Policy Press Release

Paradoxically, the right wing is denouncing Obama’s plan to turn some spaceflight, notably space station re-supply, over to what the media describe as “private contractors”. Actually, this contractor, SpaceX, has achieved and demonstrated some unprecedented improvements in efficiency and reliability with it Falcon family of rockets. Media coverage draws a sharp distinction between SpaceX’s contracts and past NASA efforts, but in fact the latter were also run by contractors in recent years and the vehicles themselves were, of course, built by contractors. The difference is that SpaceX undertook the Falcon development on its own and without a guarantee of profit from the government. This somehow resulted in a launch system that is less than half the cost of comparable commercial systems originally developed under government contract.
The founder of SpaceX is none other Elon Musk, also founder of PayPal. When he first announced that he would put some of his internet loot into spaceflight, in 2002, a lot of people thought he was nuts, just another over-age kid who made too much money too fast. They stopped laughing and pointing when SpaceX launched a one ton satellite with is own rocket a couple of years ago. The scaled up version that will service the space station is about to fly and SpaceX’s own Dragon capsule is in advanced development to partner it.