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They said it could not be done. They scoffed at the very Idea of a private space company. The company had a tumultuous start in the early 2000's as their first 3 launches ended in failure to their critics delight. But they had somehow managed to scrounge up just enough money for one more do-or-die launch and on 28 September 2008 SpaceX became the first private rocket company to reach orbit. This was not enough to silence the critics. Nor was it enough when in 2010 they became the first private company to dock with the international space station. By that time they had delivered enough private satellites to orbit that NASA could trust them with this kind of mission and they would be foolish not to as the cost per launch of a SpaceX rocket was more than 7 times less (~$60 million vs ~$450 million) than that of prior government contractors. On the 28th of June this year; SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly shortly after launch. It was the first blemish on SpaceX's otherwise flawless record with their state of the art Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket is updated every other mission with the latest aerospace tech, upgrades coming at a pace previously unheard of in space exploration. For example the Soyuz spacecraft used to send astronauts to the International space station is virtually unchanged since the 1960's. (I am so glad that a government is not making my phone!) The critics were quick to exploit the tragedy. It seemed as if they were right all along, it was only a matter of time before all that cost cutting caught up with them. Its was only a matter of time before they went too far, typical capitalist greed. Through all that noise, for 6 months SpaceX diligently combed though the wreckage trying to pinpoint the most likely cause of the mishap. And through this process upgraded almost every facet of the rocket, ultimately increasing its power output by 33 percent. They vowed not only to return to flight but to do so while in hot pursuit of the holy grail of rocketry. See, the problem with a rocket is that it is really expensive and you can only use it once. $60 million a pop (or $450 million from NASA: good luck with that). But, What if you could reuse a rocket much like a plane. That would change the game, lowering the cost of space travel dramatically. SpaceX has had this goal since its inception, they were ridiculed for it and in fact have failed many times trying to land a rocket as a secondary objective after a successful primary mission. But they persevered, the CEO of SpaceX would often say "go down to first principles and tell me why it cant be done?" Let us take a moment to appreciate human ingenuity, Mathematics, Thermodynamics, Science, or just call it rational Philosophy in action. Not political, economic and spiritual mysticism, what have they done lately?

I've released the current version of "Chapter 3 - On Nothing, Space, and Matter" of my book, "The Beard's Last Call: For a New Hope"! Wordpress.com site: https://thebeardslastcall.wordpress.com/ Title Pages: https://thebeardslastcall.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/title-pages/ Table of Contents: https://thebeardslastcall.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/table-of-contents/ Chapter 1 - On Language and Words: https://thebeardslastcall.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/on-language-and-words/ Chapter 2 - On Truth and Understanding: https://thebeardslastcall.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/on-truth-and-understanding/ Chapter 3 - On Nothing, Space, and Matter: https://thebeardslastcall.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/on-nothing-space-and-matter/ This represents about 6-7% of the total current book content. Share if you like it and let me know what you think, good or bad! Thanks for your interest. Donate to help - Bitcoin: 1NBA1GQiVZ73W2FyzHeTAffywbYx66PeH8 Edit: You can contact me by email at [email protected]

As some make the claim that war and violence can lead to revolutions in technology and human organizations, I am going to propose the claim that it also prepares the human race against external threats. Namely, aLieNS. Here's why. When we meet aliens they will likely be aggressive. In fact, if we look at life on this planet as evidence, life seems to be pretty aggressive! Think about it. Complicated life forms need to eat other life forms in order to survive.That means most of the life on the planet has to be aggressive to others in order for its very survival. Like almost all of it! Almost every living thing is a savage beast devouring other life forms constantly........... So you really think aliens are going to FOR SURE be that cool? Not likely, from the evidence. Even if they have totally switched to using synthetics for their energy, I would still see the obvious evolutionary advantage to keeping an aggressive, opportunistic gene in the gene pool. War and violence and governments and large corporations and huge superpower forces of humanity all struggling against each other in a human eat human world might be our only chance to mature enough to deal with aliens. Most large scale animals are completely dominated, as is most vegetation and land mass. We have some issues with bacterial and viral forms of life but that's about it right now. But as a race? As a power in the universe? We are doing crazy good! We just took over a planet for crying out loud. One life form suddenly gaining dominance over most others would be a strain on any planet, we deserve a pat on the back. And we did this all by "aggression" towards the natural state of the planet. Otherwise we wouldn't even have food let alone shoes, cellphones and rocketships. Maybe being aggressive towards another is exactly what we need to harden and expand our power at this point. Unless we completely annihilate ourselves, we are the only thing left to challenge us. And as most capitalists would agree, competition breeds streamlined and effective systems. Which we will need when the aliens come.... It just doesn't seem like the NAP is a stable system, or that it even does any good for humanity as a struggling species. It only makes sense for small local systems that have no outside forces or ability to expand. Fortunately for us, we are starting to hit up the solar system for energy and resources so really we are in expansion mode. A bit of good old fashioned evolutionary brute competition might just be what the doctor ordered. grin As long as we don't end it all by accident first.