This past Saturday, for the first time in nine years, the United States launched American astronauts on an American-made rocket from American soil.  With the Coronavirus pandemic and protests focused on racial inequality taking center stage, the launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon a/k/a Endeavour provided a brief respite, as well as an example of innovation, ingenuity, and partnership people can accomplish by working together. The launch of Endeavour is the first partnership of its kind between NASA and a private company (SpaceX) where the private company developed, built, and operated a space vehicle that took astronauts into space.  The SpaceX Crew Dragon is not only the start of a new generation of space pods (complete will touch-screen controls!) after NASA’s retirement of the space shuttle program but a departure from NASA’s nearly 60 years of being primarily responsible for astronauts-staffed vehicles and missions.  While the NASA-SpaceX partnership is a new way of sending astronauts into space, it is one of many examples of NASA partnering with the private sector and commercial organizations in connection with the space program.  An early example of such an innovative partnership if found at another inflection point in NASA’s history.  After the fire on Apollo 1 in on the launch pad in 1967 took the lives of the three astronauts aboard, NASA’s was looking to restore public confidence in the space program (like the Challenger tragedy nearly 20 years like the Apollo 1 disaster played out on live television) and worked with Charles Schulz- […]
The post The U.S. Space Program – Partnerships in Innovation appeared first on Cohen Schneider Law, P.C..
