Raising the stakes.. heck, raising the whole cow!

Y'herd thisun?

“Some critics of manned space flight on Capital Hill are said to be using their influence to hold down the amount of research on this subject [of Human-affecting radiation in Space]; this could be an indirect way of slowing the pace of flights to the moon and Mars.”

from Space Commerce, Materials Processing by Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. John L. McLucas

Posted April 05, 2011 10:19AM by Robert Smith

Now I'm really kicking myself for not going to DC this week for Chris Carberry's ISS to Mars conference :

This morning in DC Elon Musk, CEO Space Exploration Technologies, officially announced the SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy.

"This is a rocket of truly huge scale"

"If you compared capacity to the Space Shuttle or the Delta 4 Heavy, which are the two most capable vehicles in the world today, we're more than twice the payload capacity of those vehicles."

"Its more payload capability than any vehicle in history apart from the Saturn V"

"Although the Space Shuttle is going to be retired this year, this is something that America can be really proud of - the fact that this is gong to be a vehicle with twice the capability of the Space Shuttle"

And... what the government programs appear to be having so much difficulty with: SpaceX is growing jobs in Texas, Florida and California.

Go see the full video of the press conference. Here. And if that doesn't work just go to SpaceX.com. Right now the link is at the top of the home page, in short time it will be on their Media page.