Commercial orbital taxis won’t have to retrace NASA’s footsteps
The White House’s policy for future spaceflight relies on a crucial unknown: Can private companies build and operate space vehicles safe enough to carry astronauts?
Many veteran engineers from NASA are skeptical about the idea that less experienced teams with fewer resources could possibly replicate the space agency’s success at developing spacecraft to carry humans — ranging from the Mercury and Gemini capsules to the Apollo command module and the space shuttle.
But the task may be far less daunting than the skeptics think. This is because the “goal posts” in human spaceflight have shifted over the decades, and the required know-how has spread even as the general level of aerospace engineering capabilities has risen. The commercial space shippers of the 2010s will not be recapitulating the research, development and designs of the 1960s.
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