Two private astronauts took a spacewalk Thursday morning—yes, it was historic | “Today’s success represents a giant leap forward for the commercial space industry.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/two-private-astronauts-took-a-spacewalk-thursday-morning-yes-it-was-historic/

7 Comments

  1. Spacewalk? Hardly. They stood and poked their heads through the door. They didn’t get out at all.

  2. I love space, utterly adore it with every fiber of my being but truly we must focus on making earth better. The inflation we are paying for is lining the pockets of rich guys going to space. I’m in Business Financials and if we let billionaires space travel on our extorted dime then space travel will only ever be for the elite.

  3. LogicallySound_ on

    I think we should really reserve the title astronaut for actual careers. Seems distasteful to lump these dumbass billionaires in with the men and women who commit hundreds of hours to training and academia to land a slot.

  4. Yea, normal ppl with normal problems dont care what private billionaires, who got their wealth by causing those problems for said normal people, are doing. How can you have any pudding if you havent eat your meat.

  5. TerminalStaffLarry on

    From what I’ve read everybody’s excuse for these billionaires is “there will always be problems on earth”. Nobody is saying there won’t be but a billionaire using those same funds to plant agriculture or more safe infrastructure or even parks or nature reserves? But no they wanted to stick they heads out of an airless bay and look down upon us. If you believe they did this to push science then you’re an idiot, pushing science was just the pleasant side effect.

  6. Wow, this sub is cranky this morning. At worst, this is a capabilities expansion for the world’s most reliable launch system. In theory, the ability to do spacewalks from Dragon could allow for repairs to other satellites like Hubble (though my understanding is that NASA has said no to that idea for the time being).

    The fact that it’s being funded by a billionaire just means our tax dollars are being saved. It’s hard for me to see this anything but a resounding success.