Dragon splashed down off the coast of Mexico, far south of SpaceX ‘s Southern California facilities in the Los Angeles suburb off Hawthorne. The bulk of the actual flight data from the spacecraft’s on-orbit performance remains unknown as well at the time of this posting so the public– and the investor class– really have no clear idea of knowing if Dragon is a gem– or a deathtrap, other than the spin from commercial space advocates, their shills and SpaceX’s own press releases.

Meanwhile, NASA and the Russian space agency have been successfully conducting human spaceflight operations for half a century.

It’s worth repeating, to date, SpaceX has flown NOBODY.

Essentially, SpaceX, a ‘commercial’ company, today orbited an empty can from government owned launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, recently refurbished with help from taxpayer stimulus funds for their operations. This might have looked like daring stuff in the cutting edge missile days of the early 1960’s but it’s a relative yawn in 2010, as today’s muted media coverage clearly indicates. In fact, it’s pretty routine these days.

The company needs on-going government contracts as private sector capital markets remain wary and already know space is a limited and risky market with questionable returns on investment requiring heavy upfront investments. And a quick review of investors associated with SpaceX indicates the pool has not expanded much beyond Musk’s own circle of cronies, although to Musk’s credit, he invests his own fortune in the firm.

There’s nothing particularly ‘earth-shattering’ about SpaceX duplicating a feat accomplished by NASA 45 years ago. In March, 1965, when the government funded civilian space agency lofted the likes of Gemini 3– it was a new technology then and Gemini 3 carried two astronaut pilots, John Young and Gus Grissom, up and around the planet several times and returned them safely to Earth. The Dragon spacecraft orbited today, as 2010 draws to a close, was unmanned.

SpaceX has had half a century of successful, government funded human space operations to build upon, not to mention 80-plus years of government funded rocket development as well to draw from. If anything, it should be easier for SpaceX today than it was for the NASA of the early ’60’s.

The real benchmark for any commercial space venture will be to launch, orbit and return crewed vehicles safely to Earth. Until then, it’s all an exercise of “been there, done that.” Even China is years ahead of SpaceX in that regard, having already orbited and returned crews safely.

The day a privately funded, crewed, commerical spacecraft is launched, orbited and safely returned to earth is the day the world will truly change for human spaceflight.

Not necessarily. You should see the debate take a different form. Hopefully and after today all bets are off the Moon will be explored and exploited by private enterprises, US enterprises. Today showed the spirit will claim for the USA. Some have just completely lost the notion that the USA builds its strength on its entrepreneurial spirit and even if every day is gloom now there is hope, HOPE. http://www.spacex.com

“Actually, you seem ill-prepared for how failure is greeted in the free market.”

The failure rate of new launch vehicles is fully anticipated by the market. Launch prices are adjusted accordingly (downward) as are insurance premiums (upwards).

Repeating mindless cliches just makes you look more like an idiot than usual.

Actually, you seem ill-prepared for how failure is greeted in the free market. As Von Braun often noted, failure is a great educator presenting an opportunities to learn. But then, his failures were paid for by governments which could absord costly losses, unlike the profit-centered free market. Yes, Cernan was correct- ‘… they don’t know what they don’t know yet.’ But they’ll be learning it fast. For SpaceX, as Kranz once said, ‘failure is not an option.’ When they fly, they must succeed. The last thing SpaceX needs now is to drop a flaming Dragon into the sea. Nobody who believes in and supports spaceflight, from which ever point of the compass you come from, wants to see them fail.

“My comment on the Saturn class of vehicle, is that if we had sustained it, we would quite probably have a base on the Moon by now.”

Never forget, we stopped making the Saturn 5, because we stopped doing the things that (we believed) required it…NOT, NOT, NOT the other way around.

(Same for NERVA development, at that time. No more plans for Mars or major post-Apollo where it would have been of value, no clear reason to continue with it.)

You don’t keep that production line open and *hope* there will be work for them at the end. (and ‘warehousing’ something like those would be most…interesting) I’ve walked around one of the two once flight-ready Saturn 5s (at JSC) that were built but never flown, because their specific intended missions were canceled, and they were given nothing else.

Sustain it? We did not even use up the Saturns we had.

Those lawn ornaments should tell you something about how much the mere existence and availability of a heavy-lift rocket, is necessarily a driver of missions and projects for them…