So Friday should be the big day.
I’m all for Obama’s Space Program proposal. NASA doesn’t do space and technology exploration so much as it does CYA Protection, and that needs to change. The Shuttle has long outlived whatever limited usefulness it had, it’s time to move on.
Hopefully the Falcon 9 is only the first of many commercially, and eventually cheaper, alternatives to NASA. There’s a lot of grief over America losing the edge in space if we abandon NASA in this manner, but NASA has already lost the edge. Even if NASA wanted to go back to the Moon, China will beat us there. For years our manned program has been limited to low-Earth-orbit (limited by the Shuttle itself no less,) while other nations have set their sights farther out.
So Kudos to Elon Musk, SpaceX, and the Falcon 9. I doubt that the space race will ever attain the same fervor and National pre-occupation as it did back in the 50s and 60s, but this is the first time I’ve been excited about mankind actually exploring space since I was a kid and didn’t know any better.