Simply very cool news confirmed by Mashable.com this morning...
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket with the unmanned capsule Dragon, which got scrubbed from launch a few days ago, blasted off successfully early this morning from Cape Canaveral heading for the International Space Station with around 1200 pounds of supplies for the ISS. If it successfully docks with the space station, it will make history as the first private corporation to successfully launch a spaceship into orbit and dock with the ISS. A second private company, Orbital Sciences Corp., is set to test launch their rocket this summer. Today's launch marks a the beginning of a huge era, in which private companies are contracted to haul cargo into space for orbiting platforms like the ISS.
Perhaps even more historically significant for geekdom is that the remains of Star Trek actor James Doohan (Scotty) and Mercury and Gemini astronaut Gordon Cooper, along with the ashes of Brady Watson Kane, a teacher who died in a Colorado skydiving accident, Francis Edward McShane, who died of a heart attack in the parking lot of the hospital where he was employed, and Steve Julian, who died of cancer but always dreamed of being an astronaut since the Sputnik launch.
Both poignantly moving and rather fantastic at the same time! To go where no one has gone before indeed...
http://mashable.com/2012/05/22/spacex-dragon-scotty/
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/spacex-launch-falcon-rocket-carries-cremated-ashes-james/t/story?id=16398839
Peace...
M.D.
@michaeldunkle
Flagrant Nerd is everything geek. It's whatever nerdy, geeky, dork-a-rama subject, theme, pastime, issue, matter, interest, and/or event that I feel like blogging. So grab a Mountain Dew and some Cheetos because we all have a little bit of an inner nerd that is struggling to get out. As it has been written, "Blessed are the geek, for they shall inherit the Earth."
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