Commercial launch a milestone

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
EMAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Commercial launch a milestone
Rice University’s George Abbey, former director of Johnson Space Center, and Rice Space Institute Director Pat Reiff available to comment on Space X flight

Today’s flight by Space X of the Falcon 9 rocket marks the first successful commercial launch into orbit of a spacecraft, the Dragon, which could soon bring crews and supplies to the International Space Station.

The unmanned Dragon launched from Cape Canaveral this morning and splashed down safely in the Pacific this afternoon after two orbits of Earth. A future test flight will bring Dragon to the ISS before the beginning of regular cargo flights. NASA has contracted Space X for 12 resupply missions to the ISS at a cost of $1.6 billion.

George Abbey, the Baker Botts Senior Fellow in Space Policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, has argued in a series of white papers issued by the Baker Institute that the United States needs to bolster the competitiveness of its commercial space industry.

“There’s a well-know Chinese proverb that says, ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,'” Abbey said. “Space X has taken that first step with this successful launch.”

Patricia Reiff, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and director of the Rice Space Institute, is also available to comment on the scientific implications of commercial space flight.

To interview Abbey or Reiff, contact Franz Brotzen, senior media relations specialist, at franz.brotzen@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

The white papers by Abbey and Neal Lane, Baker Institute senior fellow in science and technology policy and Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice, are available at http://bakerinstitute.org/programs/space-policy.