Aerospace Must Revive Its Spirit

On June 4, Falcon 9 achieved orbit, and I won a number of bets. In most cases, the people I bet against were predicting failure for reasons related to SpaceX’s lack of experience and heritage hardware. The young crew at the heart of SpaceX, and their leader, Elon Musk, sure don’t look like their peers at Lockheed Martin, Boeing or Orbital Sciences! They do lack experience and definitely lack heritage hardware. Yet ...