The Scottosphere

Photo credit: Gene Blevins/LA Daily News
(via Space­flight Now)

I had the good for­tune to wit­ness one of the final launches of the Space Shut­tle last year, and it was an awe­some expe­ri­ence. The Shut­tle was an incred­i­ble vehicle–a tri­umph of engineering–with an infi­nitely com­plex and expen­sive sup­port infrastructure.

So I was pretty excited when I saw this photo of the recov­ery of the SpaceX Dragon cap­sule today. Why? Because of the guy on the lad­der. Specif­i­cally, because that lad­der is clearly a reg­u­lar lad­der wrapped in foam pipe insu­la­tion and blue mask­ing tape. If this had been a NASA project, he would be using a $10,000 cus­tom climb­ing device made by Boe­ing. Instead, it looks like a late-night project sup­ported by the local True Value store. It speaks vol­umes to what is possible.

This is the future of space exploration.

How to divine a poten­tial supplier’s rep­u­ta­tion from a datasheet:

• Detailed graphs and charts: +5 points
• Accu­rate mechan­i­cal draw­ings: +5 points
• ISO 9001 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion: +5 points
• Type­set in Comic Sans: -1000 points