Elon Musk's SpaceX did a sortie to Int'l Space Station (ISS) last year replenishing stocks and successfully returning to earth.
It was a first for the private sector paving the way for a fearful and forceful presence of private sector in space exploratory and ISS replenishing flights.
It did this though at $45 million compared to ISRO's $15 million for its experimental Reusable Launch Vehicle flight and $1400 million for the now shameful, disgraced and retired NASA's Space Shuttle mission.
It is at this point that US Dept of Defence is giving SpaceX a $88 million contract to launch its military use GPS satellite. It must be noted that the US private sector has wholly embraced ISRO for low-medium satellite launches. ISRO is getting ready to launch 13 US satellites on PSLV C33 flight by end of June '16.
Even the US private sector rocket industry like SpaceX finds Indian ISRO too hot to handle, as SpaceX costs roughly 300% of ISRO costs for the reusable rockets..
Cost leadership arising out of great cost Innovation will hopefully decide leadership in global space exploration for the next couple of centuries..
Click here for the CNN news..
US needs to think of some means of unsettling Indian space research agency either by bringing some spurious charges against it or by ganging up other countries to deny any space launch business to India. Better known as opportunists, US would never ever try out the latter strategy, I am sure.
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