Sooner Would Have Been Much Better

摘要

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), which plans to begin executing next year on a $1.6 billion NASA contract to deliver cargo to the international space station, did itself no favors by taking so long to publicly acknowledge that an engine anomaly occurred during a Dec. 8 demonstration flight of its Falcon 9 rocket. The commercial spaceflight startup says the incident was blown out of proportion, and that looks to be the case, but the company's months-long silence is at least partly to blame for that.