Считаю удачным опыт совместной работы со специалистом из другой области, как как именно он предложил использовать метод определения расстояния между текстами, использованный в пункте. 2.1.3 «Вычисление сходства между текстами о космических достижениях и о бизнесе». Самостоятельно выбрать этот подход для исследования я не могла в силу недостатка компетенции в области компьютерного анализа текстов.

Проблема количественного анализа текстов проявилась после его проведения. Оказалось, что выбранная база материалов Factiva, вероятно, присваивала тег Space Exploration/Travel в 2003-2004 и в 2005-2016 годах по разному принципу. Об этом свидетельствует нехарактерный скачок в количестве текстов, отмеченных этим тегом, в 2005 году (см. рис. 6). Из-за этого дальнейшая интерпретация количественного анализа текстов, вышедших в 2003 и 2004 году проводилась с оговорками.

Выбранные методы исследования не позволяли определить все типы текстов о космических исследованиях, как это сделано в работе-предтече, описанной в параграфе 1.6 «Предпосылки для анализа космических достижений в медиа». В этой работе проводили контент-анализ, размечая тексты вручную. Но так как перед исследованием не стояла задача провести типологию статей о космосе, то данное ограничение не лишает проделанную работу смысла. Тем не менее, в будущих исследованиях может возникнуть потребность по-новому сгруппировать статьи о космических достижениях, так как их риторика изменилась.

Выбранное направление исследования не исчерпывается данной работой. Как заявлено во введении, статьи The New York Times не отображают всю картину медиапространства США. Для дальнейшего исследования вопроса необходимо изучить материалы других изданий: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times и так далее. Также для полноты картины следует обратиться к другим платформам -- телеканалам, журналам, радио.

Другой подход, который позволит углубиться в исследовании текстов о космосе заключается в анализе визуального языка СМИ. Космические достижения имеют ограниченный набор визуального воплощения, поэтому изучение фотографий и видеосюжетов может выявить новые типы репрезентации отрасти и их трансформацию на уровне изображения.



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Приложения

Приложение 1. The Gambles and Gaffes Behind Two Tragic Space Shuttle Disasters

By PHILIP M. BOFFEY

830 words

31 August 2003

For those of us who covered the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, the parallels with the latest inquest into the disintegration of the shuttle Columbia in the skies over Texas are eerie, and deeply disturbing. One can only hope that the remedial actions NASA now takes prove more successful than its fixes the last time around. The odds are not good given the pressures and weaknesses that hobble this once-proud agency.

As the final report of the latest investigation made clear last week, it is striking how closely history repeated itself in these two tragedies. The Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff, the victim of faulty O-ring seals that allowed hot gases to escape from a booster rocket and ignite the huge external fuel tank. The Columbia disintegrated on its way back to Earth, the victim of a chunk of foam insulation that broke off the external tank and hit the leading edge of a wing, allowing hot gases to penetrate and melt the innards. In both cases, there had been ample warning of problems that were never quite fixed and were tolerated as acceptable risks.

During the Challenger inquiry, Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate who served on the investigating commission, described the process as a form of ''Russian roulette'' in which NASA managers ignored signs of seal erosion and kept launching the shuttles because they ''got away with it last time.'' Much the same attitude prevailed in recent years when chunks of foam repeatedly fell off the external tank and gouged small holes in the shuttles' thermal protection system. This was treated as a maintenance problem, not a threat to shuttle safety.

In both tragedies, even dedicated employees who were deeply worried about potential risks flinched from transmitting the depth of their concerns to top managers. After the Challenger accident, I asked one NASA analyst, who had warned in internal memos that the faulty seals could cause a catastrophe, why he had not voiced his concerns for all to hear. He explained that NASA meetings were large, lots of smart and powerful people wanted to get on with the launches, and he was not 100 percent sure he was right so he dared not throw up roadblocks.

Much the same attitude could be seen this year in the reluctance of engineers to insist that shuttle managers pay more heed to the possibility that a chunk of foam had mortally wounded the Columbia during liftoff. One engineer wrote an e-mail message that warned of ''potentially grave hazards'' and described NASA's failure to seek photographs of the foam-strike area as ''bordering on irresponsible,'' but he backed away from sending it. Other engineers told investigators they feared ridicule if they were too vocal.

Both shuttles were propelled to their doom by managers more concerned with meeting launch schedules than responding to nervous engineers. In the Challenger tragedy, engineers at Morton Thiokol, maker of the shuttle's booster rockets, counseled delay for fear the O-rings might malfunction in January's cold weather, but a manager at NASA bullied the company into submission with an outburst, ''My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch, next April?'' Similarly, in the Columbia tragedy, mission managers were less concerned that the foam might have harmed the Columbia than that it might force a delay in future flights if deemed too serious. Investigators said managers rushed to a preconceived bottom line that there was no safety-of-flight issue and erected ''huge barriers against dissenting opinions.''

In the end, both investigations attributed the accidents to a similar array of causes, including scheduling pressures, flawed communications, a largely ''silent'' safety-assurance system and a mistaken belief that the shuttle could be considered a routine operational vehicle instead of the finicky experimental vehicle that it really is. Both inquiries decried a NASA culture that forced engineers to prove that something was unsafe when the burden should more properly fall on shuttle managers to ensure that their operations are safe.

Now that the Columbia findings are in, Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, has pledged to comply with the recommendations, upgrade the checks and balances meant to ensure safety, and lead the agency to a change in ''the way we do business.'' That sounds much like NASA's pledges after the Challenger accident, yet over time the agency's vigilance waned and its structural reforms eroded. As Mr. O'Keefe tries to reshape the agency once again, he will have to cope with intense scheduling pressures driven by the need for shuttle flights to complete the International Space Station now limping along overhead. He will have to rely on a work force that has been greatly weakened by manpower cuts and a transfer of many responsibilities to private contractors. All the dedication he can muster may be insufficient to the task.



Приложение 2. Fly Me to L 1

By Buzz Aldrin

1026 words

5 December 2003

LOS ANGELES -- For the last 24 hours, news reports have been soaring into orbit that President Bush and NASA are busy preparing their vision for the future of America's space program -- and that this vision may involve sending astronauts back to the moon, and perhaps establishing some sort of permanent base there. I applaud the instinct, but I think that a moon shot alone seems more like reaching for past glory than striving for new triumphs.

Instead, I think the next step in our space program should be to create a floating launching pad for manned and unmanned missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This is not a task for the unfinished International Space Station, which is intended to be a floating laboratory rather than a bridge to the heavens.

A much more practical destination than the moon or the space station is a region of space called L 1, which is more than two-thirds of the way to the moon and is where the gravity fields between the Earth and Moon are in balance. Setting up a space port there would offer a highly stable platform from which spacecraft could head toward near-Earth asteroids, the lunar surface, the moons of Mars and wherever else mankind decides to travel.

Unlike the Moon and the International Space Station, which is in low-earth orbit, L 1 is not the site of strong gravitational pulls, meaning that spacecraft can leave there without using much energy. Thus L 1 would be the most sensible position for a base that would function as a test area and way-point for robotic flights as well as a support station and safe haven for human exploration of the solar system.

It would also be relatively cheap, at least in terms of space travel. To create a port at L 1 we can use the building methods that have already proved successful for Skylab and the International Space Station -- and we can probably get it up and running for $10 billion to $15 billion, significantly less than the International Space Station, which will likely exceed $100 billion in the end. We can also save money by shifting away from using the space shuttle as the transport vehicle and by developing a new, more flexible launch vehicle and crew module to get people and cargo up to the L 1 port.

Unfortunately, NASA's work on future vehicles -- including the much-ballyhooed ''orbital space plane'' -- has stalled since the disaster with the Shuttle Columbia. And even before then, the agency had been focusing on the wrong sort of craft: one limited to transporting four astronauts at a time with little or no cargo-carrying capability. Such a craft would essentially be duplicating what the Russian Soyuz craft already does adequately: bringing several astronauts up and back from a space station, but little else. Moreover, NASA's ''Supersized Soyuz'' approach focuses only on serving the International Space Station, rather than working toward a more expansive vision.

There are better ways to invest our money in a new craft. One that would be relatively quick and easy would be to keep what works in the current space transportation system -- the rocket boosters, external tank and trained staff -- and combine them with new elements. The tanks and boosters we now use will soon be predictable and safe, as a part of NASA's post-Columbia efforts. And if we stick with them, no new buildings or untested ground-transportation methods would need to be built.

The big change would be to replace the aging shuttle orbiter with a new crew module that would hold perhaps eight or more astronauts, and build a so-called heavy-lift vehicle, capable of carrying cargo, that would attach behind the module. This craft would be capable of variable crew and cargo configurations. The crew module would need built-in escape and rescue capabilities for the people aboard. The early version might have to make parachute or parafoil landings in the ocean, although eventually it should be modified to make runway landings.

Over time, more powerful engines and reusable rocket boosters could be added to make possible sending even larger payloads and more passengers into space at a lower cost per person and per pound. But the important thing for the president to think about at this point is the long-term future of space flight and for NASA to pursue all avenues, big and small, to come up with the best plan.

Unfortunately, NASA has limited its $135 million orbital space plane development contracts to a few giants: proposals by Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. As a result, the space agency has shut the door on the smaller, entrepreneurial companies that are responsible for some of the most innovative current thinking on space technology. The farther reaching scope of an L 1 effort calls for collaboration and competition -- two qualities that should be part of the cultural change NASA pledged to undertake after loss of the Columbia.

In addition, NASA might even look at a new competitor as a possible partner. The modernized, Soyuz-like manned capsule that China sent into orbit in October is potentially safer and seems technologically more robust than the Russian version. Working jointly with China would not only fill a needed gap when America's agreement with Russia on using Soyuz runs out in 2006, but it would also make a potentially important political alliance. China and America are on the verge of a new space race -- with economic competition expected from Japan, Europe and perhaps India -- and it is better to start off with cooperation than with confrontation.

The tragedy of the Columbia, combined with China's successful launch, have put NASA at a crossroads. America's continued leadership in space depends on decisions made now. President Bush should realize that the first step is a bold new vision from the top.



Приложение 3. An Expanding Universe of Space Apps

By KIT EATON

964 words

4 February 2016

CORRECTION APPENDEDFROM the reusable rockets by SpaceX to the stunning photos of dim and distant Pluto, space is all over the news. While becoming an astronaut is out of reach for most of us, there are plenty of apps that can take your mind on a journey to the final frontier.

Start with the official NASA app, which is easy to navigate and is free on iOS and Android, and for Amazon Fire devices. The app features photos and videos, news about current missions, NASA tweets and more.

Using your location on Earth, the app can even calculate when you'll next be able to spot the International Space Station. My favorite feature is the live video feed from the station itself: There's something humbling and uplifting about seeing our planet from that vantage point in real time.

The NASA app is educational, and it's both fun and enlightening to browse through the news and recent images from NASA's many missions.

Although the app is inherently technology-focused, the interface and controls seem slightly old-fashioned. Still, exploring the NASA app is more likely to enrich your brain than playing a round of Angry Birds Space.

Space Images (free on iOS and Android) offers a different way to learn about space. Coming from NASA's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this app catalogs recent images of planets, moons, asteroids and other features of the cosmos, captured by NASA-affiliated space programs.

The app has easy-to-use, icon-based navigation, and you can sort by either the top-rated images or the latest photos from NASA, like those still arriving from the Dawn spacecraft's mission to the dwarf planet Ceres. You can zoom in to explore the images in greater detail, and explanations about the photos are available with just a tap or two.

This app is science-forward, meaning it requires some concentration. It won't appeal to everyone, and children using the app may need an adult to explain some of the material.

While the NASA apps offer interesting photos of our planet snapped from space, for a truly 21st-century space image experience check out EO Science 2.0 AR from the European Space Agency (free on iOS and Android). To use it, you first print out a special image and lay it on a surface in front of you. Then you launch the app, click start and point your smartphone's camera at the printout.

The app then shows you a 3-D augmented reality image of Earth spinning over the printout. You can move your phone to look around or zoom in on the image. Tapping on Earth changes the image to show different maps incorporating data obtained from space, including height and depth, land cover, and ocean chlorophyll concentrations.

EO Science 2.0 AR won't keep you occupied for long: While it's visually attractive, it doesn't contain much real science or explanation -- you'll have to search online for that information to better understand the maps. But the app is a lot of fun and will excite younger users.

For a completely different way to keep up with the latest news from orbit, take a look at Space, Astronomy and NASA News from Newsfusion, which is free on iOS and Android. The app aggregates news stories from a long list of online sources and covers NASA and European Space Agency news as well as breakthroughs in space science. Its interface has big, bold images and uses simple taps and swipes to navigate. You can even choose filters to see only the space news that's relevant to your interests.

And remember that winter nights can be perfect for exploring space using nothing more than your own eyes, if the weather is cooperative and skies are clear. To help you understand what you're seeing up there, check out my new favorite astronomy app: Night Sky.

Billing itself as ''your own personal planetarium,'' Night Sky acts like a virtual reality guide to what you can see in the sky above you: When you hold your phone up it shows a view of the stars as seen from your location. It also contains news about coming stargazing events.

The app's detailed weather forecasting section predicts naked-eye star viewing conditions for the week ahead. And if you pay to upgrade to the pro version, the app offers even more features, including very detailed information about galaxies, planets, constellations, stars and satellites, all displayed in an attractive, image-heavy interface. Night Sky Lite is free on iOS and Android, but is limited in its features. The more complete versions cost $1 and up.

Have fun traveling to infinity and beyond from the comfort of your armchair.

Quick Call

Microsoft has a new, free iOS app intended to deliver news that's relevant to your professional interests. The app, News Pro, connects to your LinkedIn and Facebook pages to learn about your work, then chooses news stories for you from various online sources. Released late last month, the app may be a bit buggy, but it's an interesting way to consume news.

Correction: February 19, 2016, Friday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An article on the Personal Tech pages on Feb. 4 about apps related to space exploration misidentified the dwarf planet visited by the spacecraft Dawn. It is Ceres, not Pluto.



Приложение 4. NASA Announces Extension of 9 Spacecraft Missions

By KENNETH CHANG

673 words

3 July 2016

Just before the spacecraft Juno finishes a five-year trip to Jupiter on Monday, NASA has decided to extend the missions of nine older robotic explorers that have lived beyond original expectations.

The agency announced the decision on Friday, saying the nine are still producing bounties of observations for scientists.

Most of the extensions were expected. The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto last year, had already been steered toward a new target, known as 2014 MU69, one of the small icy objects in the ring of debris beyond Neptune.

But one of NASA's decisions, about the Dawn spacecraft orbiting Ceres, the dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, was somewhat of a surprise -- as well as a disappointment to some working on the mission.

It was a bit unexpected because Dawn is low on fuel. ''Less than a year ago, I would have thought it was ridiculous that the spacecraft would even be operating at this point,'' said Marc D. Rayman, the chief engineer for the Dawn mission.

The Dawn spacecraft was designed to use four spinning wheels to pivot in different directions. But at its previous destination, the asteroid Vesta, two of the four wheels overheated and failed. At Ceres, the wheels stayed off, and the spacecraft used its thrusters instead to pivot.

In December, Dawn reached its lowest orbit, just 240 miles above Ceres. Dr. Rayman said he and his team had expected Dawn to exhaust its remaining propellant by March.

But they spun up the wheels again. That succeeded, cutting the use of the thrusters. ''It all worked out beautifully,'' Dr. Rayman said. That left enough fuel to contemplate doing something more.

On Thursday, Dr. Rayman's blog made a stunning announcement: Dawn would leave Ceres and head toward a flyby of a third asteroid, Adeona, in 2019.

The posting was yanked. A member of Dawn's social media team had mistakenly published an unfinished draft that Dr. Rayman had started writing in case NASA selected that course.

On Friday, around noon, Dr. Rayman received word from officials at NASA headquarters that they had decided on the other option proffered by the Dawn team: Dawn will stay where it is, continuing observations of Ceres.

Dr. Rayman said Dawn could continue until next spring, as long as the spinning wheels kept working.

''The long-term monitoring of Ceres, particularly as it gets closer to perihelion -- the part of its orbit with the shortest distance to the sun -- has the potential to provide more significant science discoveries than a flyby of Adeona,'' James L. Green, NASA's director of planetary science, said in a statement.

Dr. Rayman said he did not have a preference. But the mission's principal investigator, Christopher T. Russell, said he was disappointed.

''Almost every time when you are doing exploration, a new path is going to provide more return on your investment (time or money) than continuing to repeat the old well-worn path,'' Dr. Russell, a professor of geophysics and space physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in an email.

''Nevertheless, given that we were told to stay at Ceres, we will continue our exploration of Ceres and do our best possible work in the time we have remaining,'' he said. ''There is still science that can be done here.''

The other missions receiving extensions are the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and a flotilla of spacecraft at Mars: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, the Mars Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, and NASA's support for the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission.

NASA officials periodically ask managers of the long-lived missions to justify the cost of their continued operations. Final decisions depend on whether NASA has enough money in its budget for all of them.

On Monday, Juno will be on NASA's center stage as it begins 20 months of orbiting Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet.



Приложение 5. One Small Step for NASA, One Giant Leap for GIFs

By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH

828 words

15 December 2016

Last week, NASA announced that it would open an official account at Giphy, a GIF database and social media platform, bringing the space agency up to speed with the way young people communicate in the internet age.

Well, kind of. The agency announced its new account (and one on Pinterest) in somewhat bureaucratic, defiantly non-millennial terms.

''NASA engages and inspires the public by sharing unique content through social media,'' it said in a news release. ''Don't forget to check out NASA's accounts regularly, as there are more Pins and GIFs to come.''

(Animated GIFs -- or graphics interchange format -- are short, looped video clips often shared around the internet. You may not know the term, but you've seen them.)

Part of NASA's official mission is to educate the public, and the agency has been using new media to accomplish that task for more than half a century, even as the cutting edge has shifted from the TV screen to the computer screen.

On July 20, 1969, an estimated 600 million people watched live as the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the moon.

During the 1980s, NASA specialists communicated with interested members of the public on Usenet, a digital forerunner of modern web forums -- like an early version of Reddit's A.M.A.'s.

In the 1990s, NASA had a site on Gopher, an early system for sharing information over the internet, which featured downloadable image links and technical papers.

Tyler Menzel, Giphy's editorial director, said that NASA had approached them about the partnership. The agency's decades of ''mind blowing footage of planets, space travel and astronauts flipping around in zero gravity'' made it an ideal partner, he said.

''What more would you want from a partner?'' he asked. ''Someone comes to you and is like, 'We've got this. What do we do with it now?' ''

The site's editorial team helped NASA translate its videos into the more than 462 short clips now featured on its giphy page, no charge, it said. They include footage of engineers celebrating in a mission control room, astronauts experimenting aboard a spacecraft and a rover that seems to wave from the surface of Mars.

Steve Jones, a professor at the University of Illinois who specializes in new media, said communicating with the public has become more complicated for NASA as the internet has grown more commercial since those early days of Usenet forum chats.

''I think they've done a good job within the constraints that they have to operate,'' he said.

''As a government agency, they can't play favorites with corporate entities,'' he added. ''And they can reach millions of people easily; I think they have to be careful about how they do that.''

Tim Pyle, a graphic artist who has worked with NASA for over a decade, said that he created his first GIF for the agency about a year and a half ago. It was an artistic imagination of Kepler-452b, an exoplanet that NASAdescribed as Earth's ''bigger, older cousin.''

''I love what an animated GIF like this gives you,'' Mr. Pyle said. ''There's no real beginning or end to it, which I think creates a very 'you are there' vibe. You can imagine sitting in your spaceship parked next to this thing, just watching it spinning on its axis forever.''

GIFs have become a ubiquitous feature of digital communication. If emojis can be seen as the virtual equivalent of body language, as some linguists have argued, then GIFs could be seen as representing particularly outsized gestures, experts say.

Loren Grush, who reports on space for The Verge, described GIFs as essential to online expression.

''As someone who writes about space and who communicates primarily with moving images that last just a few seconds in length, a NASA Giphy account is basically an entire dictionary for me,'' she wrote. (Ms. Grush is the daughter of two former NASA engineers.)

Jason Eppink, a curator of digital media at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens who recently put together an exhibit on reaction GIFs, explained the operative feature of GIFs. He said that GIFs were one of the few mediums people were content to watch over and over again, as the duration of each loop is so short, often only a few seconds.

He said that NASA was a particularly good fit for the medium, both because space ''captures the imagination'' as the best GIFs do, and because celestial bodies tend to do the same thing over and over again.

''Anything that's been around for billions of years is probably doing something repeatable,'' he said. ''The motion of the stars, planets and moons, all orbiting other bodies: There's a sort of cosmic symmetry there that intuitively seems to make sense for GIFs.''



Приложение 6. In the Continuing Space Race, Private Firms Play a Big Role

By JAMES FLANIGAN

1274 words

15 November 2007

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 -- China's success in shooting down one of its own satellites last January has given new energy to efforts in the United States to develop and launch more -- and cheaper -- satellites.

Significantly, the new approach to satellites is getting a boost not just from giant aerospace corporations but from small, entrepreneurial companies. Entrepreneurs have also been behind other recent efforts to move ahead in space, including the Ansari X Prize, the $10 million competition that put a pilot in space without government financing in 2004.

The efforts of the entrepreneurs are also seen as crucial to keeping the United States at the forefront of space technology as Russia, Europe and increasingly China become more technically adept.

''The world is moving to new uses of space, and our technology in the United States has not progressed because of the time and expense it takes us to do a mission,'' said Robert Conger, vice president of Microcosm Inc., a small company that is working to perfect a low-cost launching vehicle at its factory in Hawthorne, Calif.

Making launchings cheaper and quicker would benefit both the military and National Aeronautics and Space Administration because critical satellites could easily be replaced if damaged. And, proponents say, such launchings could unleash a spate of educational, commercial and scientific uses of space that are not being pursued because of expense.

Not even counting the cost of a satellite itself, most space launchings now cost $30 million to $100 million. The private companies aim to reduce those costs to $4.6 million to $7 million, and one specialized space mission company is under contract to launch two satellites at a cost of $11.5 million apiece. Because of the costs and lengthy preparations for a launch, there were just 22 successful government and commercial launchings in the United States in 2006. Russia, France and other countries put 40 satellites into orbit last year.

James Wertz, who teaches astronautics at government space agencies in the United States, Canada and Europe and has written basic textbooks on space mission design and costs, is among those arguing that many more satellites could be launched each year.

''Look at it this way,'' said Mr. Wertz, who is also president of Microcosm. ''If we could have launched a satellite within 20 hours of the Asian tsunami in 2004, we could have found villages needing help right away rather than a week or two later. We could have saved more lives.''

Mr. Wertz founded Microcosm in 1984 to conduct research for the Air Force and to specialize in reducing the cost of space missions. The company, which has 40 employees, is working under contract with the Air Force to develop a rocket that can put a satellite weighing less than 800 pounds in orbit, with eight hours' notice, for $4.6 million. The rocket and fuel assembly -- the launching vehicle -- will cost $3.9 million of that total, Mr. Conger said.

A prime difficulty in the process, Mr. Conger said, is designing a fuel tank and pump assembly that can hold liquid oxygen under great pressure and push fuel out fast enough to attain a speed of 4.7 miles a second to achieve orbit, while being light enough to hold down costs. Microcosm engineers, he said, are using composite materials for the fuel tanks.

Another company in the same pursuit of low-cost rocketry, but more advanced because it has a major investment from its founder, is Space Exploration Technologies, which calls itself SpaceX. Also based in Hawthorne, it is trying to create an array of rockets, ranging from a low-price Falcon 1, for light satellite payloads, to a Falcon 9, which the company hopes will be able to deliver cargo to the International Space Station in 2009.

The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, who started Zip2, a software company, in 1995 and sold it in 1999 for $307 million. He then founded PayPal, the electronic payment system, which went public and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. Mr. Musk, now 36, then began SpaceX. So far, ''I've invested $100 million in the company,'' he said.

Two test firings of the Falcon 1 have failed to reach orbit, but in the second attempt the rocket's propulsion system worked as planned, Mr. Musk said. A third launch is scheduled for January. The launching vehicle's cost will be $7 million, Mr. Musk said.

SpaceX, which has 330 employees, also has a $278 million contract from NASA to demonstrate the Falcon 9 rocket and a spaceship, with the goal of carrying cargo in 2009 to the International Space Station.

''We can do any payload for one-half to one-third the price of larger competitors,'' Mr. Musk said, referring to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Arianespace of France, ISC Kosmotras and Dnepr space launching system of Russia and the Orbital Sciences Corporation.The main competitor for the entrepreneurial upstarts is Orbital Sciences, which was founded in 1982 to develop smaller, less expensive space and rocket systems. Orbital, based in Dulles, Va., has 3,300 employees and has had 24 successful launch missions over the last 12 years for its Pegasus system, which sends payloads into orbit on the back of an L-1011 jetliner.

The cost of a mission is roughly $30 million. But Orbital -- which gets about $63 million of its $1.05 billion in annual revenue from the launch vehicle business and the balance from missile and satellite development for the military and NASA -- also has a lower-cost launching vehicle named Minotaur 1. That vehicle is putting two satellites in orbit for the Air Force at an average cost of $11.5 million each. Government-supplied rocket engines help hold down costs for the Minotaur.

''We have the capability and reliability,'' said Barron S. Beneski, vice president for investor relations for Orbital. ''And reliability doesn't come cheap.''

The pressure to make lower-cost, more frequent space launches is real, Mr. Conger of Microcosm said. ''Our economy is dependent on satellites these days. Think of credit card verification, flows of information on the Internet, global positioning for navigation,'' he said. And the more important challenge is global competitiveness, he added.

Entrepreneurs say satellites could do many more things if launching them could be made more affordable. ''Satellites can track not only velocity but the direction of winds over large areas, so we'll be able to know well in advance where a hurricane is going -- enormously helpful for reducing property damage,'' Mr. Wertz said.

In an interview, he and Mr. Conger projected a wide variety of uses for future space missions, from education to specialized manufacturing at zero gravity to soil analysis and surveys of water availability.

But Mr. Wertz said he was concerned about continued financing for the cheaper rockets. The company's total investment over more than eight years in the program, which it calls Scorpius Low-Cost Launch Services, is now $65 million from government and $15 million from the company.

''We've got $40 million to go,'' Mr. Wertz said, ''and these are challenging times.''



Приложение 7. On the Launching Pad: A $20 Million Childhood Dream

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

904 words

7 April 2007

At 17, Charles Simonyi slipped out of Soviet-controlled Hungary to seek freedom. At 33, he slipped away from the safety of a large corporation, Xerox, in search of fortune at a young start-up named Microsoft.

And today, at 58, that fortune is allowing him to slip the surly bonds of Earth, at least for a couple of weeks, to visit the International Space Station.

Dr. Simonyi is the fifth so-called space tourist -- a phrase those who buy the flights dislike -- and by a large margin the wealthiest. A software pioneer who led the teams that gave the world Microsoft Word and Excel, he has amassed a personal fortune of about a billion dollars, according to Forbes Magazine.

That kind of wealth has bought him two jets -- which he pilots himself -- and a 233-foot-yacht, along with other expensive toys. In comparison to an average American family's worth, the estimated $20 million he paid to blast off in a Soyuz spacecraft is the equivalent to something like a visit to an amusement park or a weekend getaway.

''A trip to outer space is actually, for someone like Charles, a logical step,'' Martha Stewart said in an e-mail message from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, where she has gone to see her friend launched into space and to film the event for her television program. Ms. Stewart called Dr. Simonyi ''intrepid, inquisitive, curious and actually very bold,'' adding that his adventure had created a wish to take a trip of her own.

Those with less means than Ms. Stewart to buy a ticket can follow Dr. Simonyi's trip on his Web site, CharlesinSpace.com, which details the months of preparation for the flight, including gaining zero-gravity experience aboard an airplane, survival training, working in a spacesuit and practicing helicopter rescues.

He follows four other space tourists -- Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Gregory Olsen and Anousheh Ansari -- whose trips were arranged by Space Adventures Ltd., a company in Vienna, Va.

In an interview from Russia, Dr. Simonyi said he would spend his time in space photographing Earth and taking part in experiments. Many involve things like blood tests, he said, so ''I'm more the experimental subject than the experimenter.''

He has prepared for the possibility of the nausea many space voyagers encounter with Russian conditioning methods that include riding in a spinning chair and sleeping with his legs elevated above his head. ''It's one of those don't try-it-at-home things,'' he said, explaining that it left his head feeling bloated and heavy. ''It's the feeling that you're going to get a headache, but you don't.''

Like any good guest, he will take a gift: takeout. Ms. Stewart selected the menu, and Alain Ducasse, the French chef, prepared it for April 12, Cosmonauts Day in Russia. The meal includes quail roasted in Madiran wine, duck breast confit with capers and semolina cake with dried apricots.

Dr. Simonyi will fly up with Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov, both Russian cosmonauts, and return with Mikhail Tyurin, a cosmonaut, and Capt. Michael E. Lopez-Alegria of the Navy, who are finishing their six-month mission.

The trip caps a lifelong interest in space and technology for Dr. Simonyi. At 13, he won a contest to be Hungary's ''junior astronaut'' and met a cosmonaut in Moscow. As a student, he punched holes in paper tape to program the Soviet Ural-2 computer. Wanting to read English-language accounts of the United States' space program, he said, was ''one of my motivations in learning English.''

His interest stayed strong; in his first year at Microsoft, he persuaded another space enthusiast, Paul G. Allen, to fly to Florida for the first space shuttle launching. Mr. Allen, now one of the world's richest men, has pursued his own interest in space by paying for the development of SpaceShipOne, the small craft that won the Ansari X Prize in 2004.

Dr. Simonyi said that he admired those who were trying to bring about a new space industry, but that when it came to space: ''I am not an entrepreneur. I'm a customer.'' (His company, Intentional Software, is creating a product to simplify the process of writing computer programs.)

Another tech-millionaire-turned-space-entrepreneur, Elon Musk, said that being a private astronaut ''does not do much to advance the greater cause of space exploration,'' which he said was best furthered by companies like his, SpaceX, which has won a NASA contract to ferry astronauts to the space station after the space shuttle program shuts down in 2010.

For Dr. Simonyi's part, he said he was just happy to be finally on his way. He said he fully understood the risks of space travel, like the station's being hit by orbital space debris, but added that in relative terms, ''the actual risk is very small.'' Besides, he said, ''if you ask whether I'd like to be in a head-on collision on the freeway or be hit by orbital debris, it's the latter.''

And, to tie his past to his present adventure, he is taking a paper tape from the Ural-2 with him to orbit.



Приложение 8. SpaceX Blast Puts Big Goals Into Question

By KENNETH CHANG, MIKE ISAAC and MATT RICHTEL

1346 words

2 September 2016

A spectacular explosion of a SpaceX rocket on Thursday destroyed a $200 million communications satellite that would have extended Facebook's reach across Africa, dealing a serious setback to Elon Musk, the billionaire who runs the rocket company.

The blast is likely to disrupt NASA's cargo deliveries to the International Space Station, exposing the risks of the agency's growing reliance on private companies like SpaceX to carry materials and, soon, astronauts.

The explosion, at Cape Canaveral, Fla., intensified questions about whether Mr. Musk is moving too quickly in his headlong investment in some of the biggest and most complex industries, not just space travel but carmakers and electric utilities.

This is not the first problem Mr. Musk has suffered as he tries to create space travel that is cheap and commonplace. Each of his companies, including Tesla and SolarCity, has hit major stumbling blocks recently. The owner of a Tesla car died in May in a crash using the company's autopilot software, and SolarCity faces major financial challenges.

''SpaceX is running a punishing schedule,'' said Scott Pace, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and a former NASA official.

''There is probably some human factor involved here. To what extent was human error part of this? And if so, why? Are you running your people too hard? What are your safety requirements?''

Dr. Pace, said an internal investigation would have to look at the company's operations as it tried to ramp up the pace of launches.

The company's president, Gwynne Shotwell, said in a statement, ''Our No. 1 priority is to safely and reliably return to flight for our customers, and we will carefully investigate and address this issue.''

The Falcon 9 rocket burst into flames in a violent series of blasts starting at 9:07 a.m., spewing plumes of dark smoke around the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and sending vibrations felt by residents nearby.

The rocket had been set to launch on Saturday, carrying a satellite for Spacecom, an Israeli company.

The explosion was particularly painful news for Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who is touring Kenya, promoting a program reliant on the satellite, known as Amos-6, with entrepreneurs in the country. He had promised them connectivity.

Just hours after the news of the explosion broke, Mr. Zuckerberg expressed disappointment on his Facebook page ''that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite,'' a swipe at Mr. Musk and his team, who were still trying to figure out what went wrong.Mr. Musk did not respond publicly to Mr. Zuckerberg. But he posted a brief explanation on Twitter: ''Loss of Falcon vehicle today during propellant fill operation. Originated around upper stage oxygen tank. Cause still unknown. More soon.''

The Falcon 9, developed by SpaceX with NASA financing, has had previous problems. In June 2015, a rocket carrying NASA cargo to the International Space Station fell apart in-flight when a strut holding a helium bottle snapped, setting off a chain of events that destroyed the rocket moments later. This latest episode is likely to push back the timetable NASA had after hiring SpaceX and Boeing to carry astronauts to the space station by the end of next year.

NASA said it was too soon to say how the explosion would affect its space station operations, asserting that it remained ''confident'' in its commercial partners. ''Today's incident -- while it was not a NASA launch -- is a reminder that spaceflight is an incredible challenge, but our partners learn from each success and setback,'' the agency said.

SpaceX's next cargo mission to the space station is scheduled for November.

Coincidentally on Thursday, a report released by NASA's inspector general, Paul K. Martin, said SpaceX and Boeing were likely to face additional delays in their launch schedules anyway.

Launches with crews will probably not lift off before the second half of 2018, three years later than planned, the inspector general said.

Changes that SpaceX is making to the design of the capsule, to allow landing in water instead of on land, are causing the latest delays, Mr. Martin said. In addition, NASA has been slow in examining safety reviews submitted by the companies, and as a result, late and costly redesigns might be needed, Mr. Martin said.

SpaceX lists about 40 launches of satellites and other cargo on its manifest for commercial companies, NASA and the Air Force.