A safe landing!
What a week for U.S. Space Travel!
- Thread starter Snagglefoot
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I still can not believe the USA let this happen to our country after the shuttle.
I agree NASA shouldn’t have left it 10 years but it looks to me that it took 10 years to shift to privatization of launch services plus a shift from near-orbit projects to ultimately a mission to Mars. Maybe someone who has been following this transistion can explain it better. 
I have no idea why we stopped launching from the US. Political, old tech, both etc. I think the Russians were getting paid around 100 million per American astronaut to the ISS.
SpaceX is able to do the whole thing cheaper by being able to reuse everything. I’m not sure why we got back into the game, but I’m glad we did.
I also have no idea how close or not close we are to Mars. I will say we are probably closer than what we were 10 years ago because of all the new tech. Pretty obvious answer, but we’re certainly going the right direction.
SpaceX is able to do the whole thing cheaper by being able to reuse everything. I’m not sure why we got back into the game, but I’m glad we did.
I also have no idea how close or not close we are to Mars. I will say we are probably closer than what we were 10 years ago because of all the new tech. Pretty obvious answer, but we’re certainly going the right direction.
I've always thought it was because of the Columbia shuttle explosion in 2003 that pretty much nix'd the shuttle program.
Oh shoot, I stand corrected then. I was only in 6th grade when the Columbia blew and I remember the shock from that.
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