Here Be Dragons is the story of SpaceX.In the pre-dawn hours of May 22, 2012, a conventional looking rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on what was only its third flight. Yet it was carrying a spacecraft to conduct history’s first commercial mission to the International Space Station, and along with it, America’s best chance to restore its space-faring capability.
The total taxpayer cost for developing the rocket and the spacecraft, including its previous flights, was $396 million, a fraction of the amount
NASA had spent on any comparable project. For Elon Musk and SpaceX Exploration Technologies Corp, a company founded only a decade earlier, it was a stunning accomplishment, yet it was only one stop on a journey which leads all the way to Mars.
From its earliest trials and near disaster on the remote Pacific atoll of Kwajalein to four successful missions to the International Space Station, Here Be Dragons vividly details the first era of SpaceX.
Set against a national space program in complete disarray at the end of the Shuttle era, it is also the story of a unique public/ private partnership with NASA, one that holds the promise of a new era of space exploration.
For anyone who has ever looked to the small, ruddy planet in the night sky and felt its inexorable pull, it may also be the story of something much greater, the opening act in one of the most significant developments in human history, the founding of a second branch of human civilization... on Mars.
Mr. Stewart Money is a freelance writer who lives in Alabama. He holds a B.A. in History from Auburn University and a M.A. in Science, Technology and Public Policy from The George Washington University. He is a founding member of The Mars Society and the editor of Innerspace.net.
posted 06-24-2014 02:16 PM
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