It looks like SpaceX will gain the pride of having the 8 by 12 inch American flag left by the last shuttle mission.<p>"The shuttle replica accompanied an expected presentation of a U.S. flag that was flown on the first and last shuttle missions. The 8- by 12-inch flag, which was revealed by President Barack Obama during his call to the astronauts last week, will stay on board the station until the shuttle's successor arrives.<p>"This flag represents not just a symbol of our national pride and honor, but in this particular case, it represents a goal," Ferguson said. "This flag will be flown prominently here by the forward hatch of Node 2, to be returned to Earth once again by an astronaut that launches on a U.S. vehicle, hopefully in just a few years." [9 Weird Things That Flew On NASA's Shuttles]<p>Both the model and flag were hung near and on the hatch where 35 space shuttle crews have entered the station and where the STS-135 astronauts exited for a final time soon after presenting the mementos."<p><a href="https://www.space.com/12335-shuttle-astronauts-flag-model-space-station-tribute.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.space.com/12335-shuttle-astronauts-flag-model-sp...</a>
This is incredibly exciting. Watching SpaceX over the last few years has made me feel like a kid again (watching the livestream of the first Falcon Heavy launch, culminating with footage of Elon's Tesla in orbit, is a memory I won't soon forget). I wish them nothing but continued success, they are an inspiration to many.
> American astronauts on American rockets from American soil
Jim Bridenstine<p>Jim Bridenstine really knows how to talk politics. I must say I very impressed with his tenure so far, the NASA Administrator is not really all that powerful of a position but given how much opposition there was to him being a Trump selection he does do well.<p>This is such a vital step to make LEO a commercial domain. NASA is spending way to much money on LEO and to make any moon/mars future possible that needs to be commercial. NASA only want to launch max. 4 people per ship, but it can take 7. So the price could really be cheap pretty cheap to allow a fair amount of non-NASA groups to send up people.<p>Axiom Space got the contract extending the ISS and a more commercial ISS could operate more efficiently in the longer run.<p>Eventually, with the cost of Cargo Space transportation coming down, we could actually build Space Stations in Space and make them way bigger.