Attention, space nuts

If you’re interested in SpaceX, Dragon, and the future of private enterprise in the U.S. space program, I hope you saw this evening’s “60 Minutes” segment on SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. If you missed it, click the link and go watch it. Interesting stuff. When I was watching Dragon’s reentry and recovery a few days ago, I was not aware that Musk is an immigrant from South Africa, a co-founder of PayPal, and the founder of Tesla Motors. I didn’t know that Musk had bet the company on its fourth attempt to get a spacecraft into orbit and that had it failed, the company would have failed. And I was deeply moved to see how emotional he got when discussing the fact that two of his heroes, Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, had publicly opposed his efforts. But that was before Dragon’s success this week.

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