As Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Those pearls of wisdom from the 40th President of the United States apply to life — as well as space travel, apparently.
“A SpaceX rocket blasted off Monday night from Florida, the first trip to put humans into an orbit that takes them over both of Earth’s poles,” The New York Times reported.
Yes, that’s Department of Government Efficiency head and Tesla boss Elon Musk’s SpaceX, beating the government-backed NASA to putting humans into orbit over Earth’s poles.
The mission is set to last for three to five days, where the travelers can see the entire planet spinning from the pole.
Speaking of the travelers, it’s worth noting that this mission was privately funded by Chun Wang, “who made his fortune in blockchain and cryptocurrency mining,” per the Times.
The outlet added: “Mr. Wang paid an undisclosed amount and selected three people to accompany him.”
“During the mission, called Fram2, the four private astronauts are orbiting about 270 miles above Earth in their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, passing over the North and South Poles multiple times a day.”
According to ABC News, each orbit takes approximately 46 minutes.
Will SpaceX be the first to successfully put a man on Mars?
It’s a cool accomplishment showing the ingenuity of human innovation — especially when government bloat isn’t weighing it down.
Whatever one may think of capitalism, it’s a much better arena for innovation than the government sector. There’s just no arguing that.
And Musk’s SpaceX might be the perfect crystallization of that contrast.
Just look at what the private startup founded by Musk in 2002 has done in its short existence, compared to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has been around since the late 1950s.
While perhaps a bit biased, just look at SpaceX’s own documentation of its historic achievements:
- “In 2012 our Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station.”
- “And in 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to take humans there as well.”
- In 2017, “SpaceX achieved the world’s first reflight of an orbital class rocket” with its reusable rocket Falcon-9.
And there’s this historic gem:
That’s to say nothing of the sheer frequency and successes of missions launched by SpaceX, which deals with less government red tape.
More recently, SpaceX received quite a bit of national attention simply for being good Samaritans.
Musk and his company helped play a vital role in bringing both of the stranded American astronauts on the International Space Station back home.
While NASA helped in their return, the bulk of the credit went to SpaceX.
And can anyone be blamed for that? NASA has had quite some time to bring those two home.
Trump made a Truth Social post specifically tagging SpaceX, asking them to resolve the issue:
“I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration,” he posted in late January.
The astronauts would be back on Earth less than two months after that post.
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