- SpaceX pulled off its first private spacewalk.
- Two members of the Polaris Dawn mission’s crew — Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis — stepped outside of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, protected from the harsh environment of space by the company’s suits.
- Isaacman and Gillis spent about seven minutes each outside the capsule, with a focus on testing the mobility of the spacesuits.
If we wait for NASA to get their act together, it’ll be another fifty years, before we get back to the moon. And it’s all been private contractors all the time anyway. NASA doesn’t build any of this stuff themselves. For all three obvious craziness of Elon Musk, SpaceX has provided the best value for money to NASA of all their contractors by a mile.
Since Challenger, NASA has had its hands tied on uber-safety as defined by bureaucrats, and project budgets and timelines reflect that.
I don’t think safety consciousness is the problem here. More like having its funding tied to pork barrel politics. Just look at the SLS. There is no rational reason for this program to even exist. The only reason they can’t shut it down are politicians who can sell it to their constituents that NASA spends the money in their region on manufacturing it.