Sunday, November 17, 2013

Buying an Apollo Launch Platform from NASA

Maybe it seems a great loss to history that NASA is selling its Apollo launch platforms.  It would be true if the sale were to some scrap metal outfit but that isn't what is happening.  There are two potential buyers who have the money and concepts for application sufficiently interesting and beneficial enough to make sale to them worthwhile.

There are two outfits in contention.  The Bad Guys are represented by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.  You know they're Bad Guys as one of the supporters is Lockheed Martin, a foremost manufacturer of death weapons in the U.S.  The Good Guys are represented by Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX which has already successfully launched a rocket and docked with the International Space Station.

It seems that SpaceX has intentions most akin to what NASA does anyway and hopefully they have no intention of soliciting military contracts.  Elon Musk has said already he wants to send a spacecraft to Mars so it doesn't seem likely that military projects would get far with him.  However, Lockheed Martin would almost certainly pervert what Cape Canaveral has always been.  Selling it to them would be like requiring Olympic athletes to wear Go Army t-shirts.

Reference:  RT  NASA sells platforms that launched Apollo missions

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