Hutchison, industry hail successful commercial space flight

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) joined the commercial space industry this week in congratulating SpaceX for becoming the first commercial firm to launch and recover a spacecraft from orbiting the Earth.

“This launch represents an important milestone that reflects the wisdom of the balanced approach outlined in the recently enacted NASA authorization law," Hutchison said. "Supporting the development of these commercial activities will allow NASA to focus its efforts on the development of a new launch system and crew exploration vehicle to move beyond low-Earth orbit, which the new law established as one of NASA’s highest priorities."

SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 Rocket Dragon space capsule on Wednesday morning from Cape Canaveral and watched it orbit the Earth at speeds in excess of 17,000 mph and later land in the Pacific Ocean shortly after 2 p.m. Members of the space industry hailed the event as a milestone on the path to commercial human spaceflight.

"It's historic in that it's the beginning of a paradigm shift from a government human spaceflight architecture to one that opens up human spaceflight to the private sector," said Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Hutchison's statement references the NASA reauthorization passed in September that largely eliminated the nation's human spaceflight program in the near term in favor of the Obama administration's plan to boost funding to the commercial space industry. Critics, including Hutchison, fought back against the plan, arguing it would leave the U.S. reliant on nations such as Russia to ferry cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station.

"Falcon 9, Dragon and similar commercial rockets and spacecraft will open up commercial spaceflight in new ways, and make NASA's Space Station program far stronger," said Dr. Alan Stern, former NASA associate administrator for science and now associate vice president at the Southwest Research Institute. "They'll also someday hopefully reduce or eliminate the need to depend on Russian launchers to get NASA astronauts to and from the Station, and that's extremely important."

Wednesday's flight was the first under the administration's program to develop a commercial capacity for those trips. Once the space shuttle program is retired next year after two final missions, SpaceX will fly at least 12 missions to the International Space Station as part of a Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.