SpaceX to Attempt Launch of Falcon 1 Today 194
fatron writes "After yesterday's flight readiness review, SpaceX announced they will be attempting the second launch of their Falcon 1 Spacecraft today. The launch is scheduled for 4:00PM Pacific time with a webcast available from T-60 minutes until launch."
Let's hope (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's hope his PATIENTS are NOT unlimited (Score:3, Interesting)
Back on topic: it's such a shame that they have Kwaj as a launch site. It's a horrible place due to corrosion, shipping costs are high, and if you discover that you need something that you don't have onsite, it's a major blow to your schedule.
Re:Most launches are private rockets. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if we could only do the same with the exploration missions, such as Mars and the moon.
Can you imagine the glorious caucophony if NASA turned its budget into prizes? $1B for the first Mars rock returned to Earth. $2B for the first Mars ground base active for one year. $4B for the first human on Mars. $4B for the first man-year on Mars.
And what a fantastic spectator sport it would become again. GE, Lockheed, Chevrolet, HP, maybe even Google might all be in a literal race for the prizes. It would be consensually dangerous, as corners got cut to save time and money. The risks would attract more volunteers than ever.
To my eye, one of the great benefits of space exploration is its entertainment and inspirational value. NASA has managed to destroy that by becoming bureaucratically risk-averse. They can't allow even a broken fingernail during a mission, else they get castigated in the next Senate budget conference. And that ruins the experience of being a fan, of the sort we once had in the 1960s.
No, an IP attorney (Score:3, Interesting)
Although who am I kidding here. When he is successful Boeing will pull out a stealth patent they developed for the Delta IV and demand "fair and reasonable" royalties to put Elon's prices on par with other Loc-Mart rockets.
Commodity vs. specialized equipment (Score:5, Interesting)
Where the government can save money is to buy commodity equipment/goods that are sold on a larger basis than just to government contracts. Even this has some problems (for example, the Army buying diesel fuel for trucks... still needs specialized logistics). But as has been said, if an Army private can purchase a hammer for $5 at the local Home Depot, he should be permitted to do that instead of going through the normal supply chain where the same hammer will cost $100 due to logistical overhead and layers of approval.
And some efforts to allow this sort of "petty cash" spending has been introduced into some military units and smaller government agencies, precisely because of this sort of savings.
I certainly think the military was much more efficient with the use of money during WWII, when nearly every position was an actual sworn officer or enlisted member of the military. Of course there was graft and corruption, but you also stood to have a military tribunal if you were caught, or even receive battlefield justice. Such stuff doesn't happen with Haliburton and its sub-contractors.
Cost, Simplicity, Feasability (Score:5, Interesting)
No it isn't. And if it was they wouldn't want to use it.
This is brought up in every slashdot article about returning to the moon and it is a really bad idea. First off the Saturn was designed to use 1960's technology. Now there is nothing wrong with that, except that you can't get it anymore. And the manufacturing techniques are different than the techniques we use today. So right off the bat you'd have to rework the design to be updated with modern components and manufacturing capability. Now you need someone who understands the rocket in order to make these changes. Unfortunately, those people aren't around anymore. This is something that far too many managers don't get - designs themselves are not nearly as useful without the working knowledge as to why the design is the way it is, and all the small little lessons learned while creating and building the design. Furthermore, we have learned a lot since then. We are much better at making lightweight materials, which is a big deal since the amount of fuel and thrust needed increases exponentially with weight. We are better at designing engines to operate more efficiently, again saving even more weight for payload.
Lastly, as much as people like to ditch on the shuttle, it's boosters are incredibly safe and reliable, and they are fairly powerful too. The problem is that overweight, poorly positioned excuse for a crew module. I have to agree with NASA that it is a much better idea to build off of the portions of a currently flying system such as the shuttle or Delta IV, than to start over from scratch, which is effectively what they would be doing with the Saturn. We are not wasting time and money reinventing something new, we are saving money by adapting a known good design, and wasting time by doing it on a small yearly budget, and by continuing with the ISS.
As for Space X it would be an even worse idea to them to use the Saturn design for the Falcon 1, as they are planning on using it for completely different reasons. As an entrant into the launcher business, it makes sense for them to start with LEO capability and work up from there. The Saturn was created as a no expense spared, get to the moon as quickly as possible, arm-race machine. Space X is trying to decrease the cost of getting to orbit by an order of magnitude over current launchers which are already significantly less expensive than the Saturn was. And they are trying to do it without sacrificing reliability. The way they are doing this is by decreasing the complexity of the rocket as much as possible. The engineering on the Saturn V was incredibly impressive and complex. It had five engines on the first stage, another 5 engines on the second, and one more on the third. This is complete overkill for what Falcon 1 is trying to achieve.
The Falcon 9 on the other hand, does pretty much what I explained above. It takes the overall architecture of the Saturn V (redundant engines etc), updates it with modern manufacturing, new efficient engines, and improves upon the simplicity of it's construction and design. It is a smart way to go about building a rocket.
Re:Commodity vs. specialized equipment (Score:1, Interesting)
That's a good example in the way you didn't mean.
Send a private to get a hammer at Home Depot and you'll get any old junk. The Army requires good equipment to avoid downtime and personnel injury. I was a carpenter for a decade, so please just trust me that it really does matter with hammers to keep this post short, 'kay? (Or imagine buying Kwik-E-Mart keyboards instead of IBM Model M's, if that helps.)
I absolutely agree you don't want a bureaucratic foodchain making hammers cost $100 and taking forever to get where they need to be, but that's a management issue. The Army is 9/10ths management, so we better require them to be good at it.
Your example is a great example of how sound-bite solutions are often wrong, and corporations & their elected critters make a lot of traction by duping voters with this sort of guff.
> I certainly think the military was much more efficient with the use of money during WWII, when nearly every position was an actual sworn officer or enlisted member of the military.
Most of them were also brand new to the job, so played by the book. But mainly money was used more efficiently because it was hard to get. With the huge expansion and maximum effort there was enormous competition for resources. It wasn't until about 44 that basic items like aluminum and rubber were being produced in quantities to meet all demands.