SpaceX successfully launched its commercial rocket today marking the first time a private company has sent a spacecraft to the space station. The Falcon 9 rocket along with the Dragon capsule is loaded with the hopes and dreams of hundreds of students from around the USA.
The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP), launched June 2010 by the National Center for Earth and Space ScienceEducation (NCESSE) in partnership with NanoRacks, LLC, is an important U.S. national Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education initiative that gives students across a community the ability to design and propose real experiments to fly in low Earth orbit, first aboard the final flights of the Space Shuttle, and then on the International Space Station (ISS)—America’s newest National Laboratory.
The SpaceX Falcon/Dragon ship launch successfully marks a new era in commercial space transportation. It will deliver cargo, for now, and astronauts later, saving money for NASA and the government.
I’m gonna try to say this only one time, but fuck Elon Musk and SpaceX. If you think private spaceflight designed to line that douchebag’s pockets is a good thing, then you are high as a kite.
