The SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launch
On May 30th, the next chapter of U.S. space exploration began with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch to the International Space Station. Jason Riggs, Director, Aerospace Business Unit for The Technetics Group, spoke with host Tyler Kern about this momentous event.
“This is definitely a new chapter in human space flight,” Riggs said. “Since the shuttle program ended in 2011, we’ve relied on Russia to get our astronauts up to space. With this successful mission, I believe this puts NASA and the U.S. back in the driver’s seat of our own space program.”
The Commercial Crew program will likely be a significant part of the equation for the future of U.S. space flight.
“With this public/private partnership, they were able to demonstrate they can deliver the capability, which we saw with the launch a couple of weeks ago, and deliver massive cost savings and a reduction in time to execute,” Riggs said.
And this type of partnership provides much need capabilities within the industrial base. For Technetics’ part, Riggs said they’ve been lending their support, knowledge, and technical capabilities to all partners in this joint Commercial Crew venture to ensure the programs are as good as can be.
As for SpaceX, did the successful launch on May 30th change the opinion that they can realize the dream of commercial space flights?
“They’ve demonstrated their reuse capabilities many times over and demonstrated similar capabilities with the Falcon 9 in a manned space flight environment. So, I think the questions around, can they do this? Can they do this efficiently? Can they do this quickly? Cost-effectively? I think they’ve put a lot of those questions to rest,” Riggs said.
