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Space Station grabs SpaceX Dragon ship

(www.bbc.co.uk)
585 points mocko | 1 comments | 25 May 12 14:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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jasonadriaan ◴[25 May 12 15:15 UTC] No.4023812[source]▶
It's incredibly difficult to overstate the importance of this moment for science and humanity as a whole. The commercialization of space travel is the only way that we will ever see the stars, as no longer are we at the mercy of the fluctuating interest in space travel from the already over-extended tax payers of certain nations. This is a beautiful moment for humanity, and a damn awesome way to start the weekend!
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impldefined ◴[25 May 12 15:28 UTC] No.4023880[source]▶
Personally my view is the exact opposite. Privatizing space travel will never bring us to the stars. It will get us into orbit for very high fees but e.g. deep space exploration? Too expensive, too low likelyhood of payoff. But for the really long term survival of humanity, it's a must.
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1. ippisl ◴[25 May 12 18:13 UTC] No.4024744[source]▶
Peter diamandis new company is aimed at mining asteroids. One of the ideas of how to do this is to build an engine that will move asteroids or large parts of asteroids to orbit. This kind of engine, if developed, seems very useful for space colonization.

Getting investment for such a company probably wouldn't have been possible without a private space industry.