On Fourth Launch Attempt, SpaceX Falcon 1 Reaches Orbit 518
xp65 writes with the just-announced success of Elon Musk's SpaceX's long efforts to reach orbit with a privately-developed launching craft: "T+0:08:21 Falcon 1 reached orbital velocity, 5200 m/s Nominal Second stage cut off (SECO) — Falcon 1 has made history as the first privately developed liquid fueled launch vehicle to achieve earth orbit!"
dbullard adds "This was a completely new vehicle — it's not using any previously developed hardware. All developed from scratch. No government supplied hardware, Russian engines, or old ICBM motors. My hat's off to the employees of Space X — all 550 of them. (Note — no 'cast of thousands,' just 550).
They've got video of the entire launch."
A toast (Score:2, Insightful)
Congrats ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Frickin awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Elon Musk is friggin' Hank Rearden man.
Now he is really gonna swim in the money. Tip my hat to all involved. :-)
grats! (Score:2, Insightful)
Week of newsworth orbits (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say I'm even more impressed by this than by China's manned spaceflight.
This is something new and very interesting. It's relatively trivial for a nation of over a billion people and a strong centralized government to develop a space program. But a privately funded orbital rocket. That's a game changer.
Congratulations to China and especially congratulations to the groundbreaking team at SpaceX!
Re:If the chinese can do it --- (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, like that whole gun powder and rocket propulsion thing...
Re:What A Bunch Of Fuckups (Score:5, Insightful)
ill bite: i think youre being a little unfair. considering that no other private space-flight company has ever achieved an orbit in space (as opposed to suborbit), this is a monumental achievement. the gemini programs had their fair share of failures too, yet i dont hear anything but admiration and pride in the people involved there.
i say well done, SpaceX! this is a moment in history - no longer is spaceflight limited to governmental agencies. usher in the era privately funded space access, and may that lead to mass produced spacecraft for private use!
Re:Frickin awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
ugh...
i know you meant that as a compliment, but i highly doubt someone like Musk would want to be compared with a protagonist form an Ayn Rand novel.
FYI, Musk invested much of his profits from PayPal in Tesla Motors. considering the altruistic goals (echoing the company's namesake) of the company to ultimately bring affordable electric vehicles to market, not to mention the various philanthropic projects funded by the Musk foundation, i really don't think it's appropriate to label him as the archetypal Randian objectivist.
he seems more like someone who's made his millions, and is now trying to use that wealth to better society rather than a staunch capitalist obsessed with acquiring money and power.
Re:Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
>>Exactly how much did this cost?
You? nothing. Which is precisely why it's so significant. This is private enterprise, vs. a mandatory government space program. You get to choose whether to be a part of this, or not.
Oh, and as far as "cost", I think it's more accurate to consider it an "investment" for soon these space shots will generate income.
Re:Frickin awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
The Space Review has an article on the motives of entrepreneurs:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1216/1 [thespacereview.com]
The author, Bob Clarebrough, suggests that the "economic rational" motives proclaimed by Adam Smith are really only surface effects of the greater motivation: passion and vision.
Re:Recent discussion/interview with SpaceX's CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
Elon Musk: Depends on how common. If we can make reusability work well, I think we can get the cost per person to orbit down to a few million dollars within eight to ten years. If reusability works well and demand is strong, so that we can distribute overhead over a large number of launches, it could one day get to under $1M.
This strikes me as one of those quotes that people are going to laugh at 30 years from now, like the oft-repeated quotes on how someday computers will be 'only a few tons' and 'take up only one room'. At least, I hope so.
Re:Not THAT impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking what the Big Nasty State of China just did, private enterprise is looking positively lame. Even with this launch, Musk's rocket still has only a 25% success rate and can only launch a few kilos into orbit.
Uh sure, and to get to this point SpaceX's total expenditures (over 6 years) have been around a half billion dollars. In contrast, China spends around $2 billion every year. China may be ahead of SpaceX for the time being, but it'll be interesting to see where they are a few years from now.
Slashdotters seem more than willing to jump on Elon Musk's "entrepreneurial" cock but at the same time make racist statements when the Chinese government achieves a far more significant space milestone.
Um, what? I didn't see much of that myself, although I usually only read at +3 or higher. Are the people who are congratulating Elon Musk the same folks who were making racist statements about Chinese efforts?
Re:Congrats ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? So there can be advertising on the face of the moon?
Why do we 'need' tacky, crappy private space companies firing off rockets that fail 3/4 of the time?
Depends on your payload... (Score:2, Insightful)
If your payload is only 150kg, then a Russian Proton is going to be pretty damned expensive. Not everyone needs to put 21,600kg into space. On the other hand, if your payload is 166kg, you still need another flight vehicle vendor (for now)
Re:All Aboard! 80% Launch Failure Rate! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not THAT impressive (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not impressed by 550 people pulling off something that took China the resources of 1.3 billion people plus a close partnership with the Russian space agency to pull off?
China's accomplishments are impressive, but no more so than the ESA's -- a government with immense funding learning from partners who already have the technology. SpaceX has pulled off a real, independent first -- more like Russia or the USA did in decades past.
Re:What A Bunch Of Fuckups (Score:3, Insightful)
Clustering 9 engines considering the shit they went through getting one to work. Its going to be some pretty fireworks.
Are there any particular failure modes you have in mind that they might be prone to? Do you believe they'll be unable to replicate the procedures which led to success on this past flight? Why not?
Re:Learn some fucking maths (Score:2, Insightful)
If you've got ~165kg to launch, why would you pay $85m instead of $7m?
Re:Learn some fucking maths (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Week of newsworth orbits (Score:5, Insightful)
While China's accomplishments are noteworthy, SpaceX together with Rutan's engineering at Virgin Galactic assure me that America will continue to be a leader in space.
Re:Recent discussion/interview with SpaceX's CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
The amazing shrinking transistor is a whole different kettle of fish from chemical rocket propulsion. Spaceflight may get cheaper, but there certainly won't be any price reduction like a 1960's supercomputer to the 1990's scientific calculator.
There could be a major breakthrough in (non-chemical) propulsion, but if so we're still looking at the "vaccuum tube" era where those "only a few tons" predictions were entirely appropriate and even optimistic.
Re:A toast (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost fifty-one years after Sputnik, the private sector catches up, sort of. Woo-hoo, Alpha Centauri here we come.
"Sort of" is right. The thing to remember is that if SpaceX can deliver the Falcon 9 with the price point they claim, then it will be a game changer. As I understand it, the price of launching things into space by a US company will drop by a factor of 3 or 4. That's new. The Russians and Chinese are in that territory. but they subsidize their rockets. Having the cheapest launcher on the market being mostly unsubsidized. That will be different indeed.
Re:Recent discussion/interview with SpaceX's CEO (Score:2, Insightful)
There could be a major breakthrough in (non-chemical) propulsion
If rocket improvements are going to compare to transistor improvements, you're right - there's just no room for a half dozen orders of magnitude improvement with currently foreseeable rocket technology.
But wouldn't just a couple orders of magnitude in price reduction be pretty nice? Most of the cost of spaceflight isn't directly due to propulsion. You can literally manufacture most of your rocket fuel out of thin air, and even the rest is cheap enough to be negligible compared the the rest of your flight costs. What's historically been expensive has been the armies of engineers needed to design and operate orbital rockets, as well as the manufacturing costs of building or rebuilding a vehicle for every flight. SpaceX's actions have just proven that they've got a good shot at fixing the first problem, and their statements prove that they're at least working on fixing the second.
Re:Oi... what an idiot... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm also curious, but at what point would you consider SpaceX deserving of congratulations? Their first successful Falcon 9 launch? Their first manned launch? Their first launch to a private space station? Their first circumlunar navigation? Their first lunar landing? Their first Mars landing?
Would you consider them deserving of kudos at that point, or would you still find something to gripe about them?
Re:Cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because it comes from someone else's bank account does not make that 'cost' zero. Ignoring the 'cost' of that up-front investment, irrelevant of some unspecified 'income' that the project will generate, is how Dotcom companies go out of business: don't encourage that kind of sloppy thinking here.
It's also exactly the sort of question potential investors should be asking. Don't just blow it off with voodoo economics.
Re:A lame toast (Score:5, Insightful)
Grand parent sounded ridiculous with his 'toast' to man finally reaching to the stars...there was, you know, the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo programs, whatever the Soviets called their programs, dozens of probes, satellites, etc...all done decades ago.
I applaud what SpaceX is doing, but I cannot stand when people praise them like retarded donkeys while pretending they are space pioneers. They are pioneers of funding...the stuff they are doing has already been done several times. If you look at what they're doing IN CONTEXT it's still remarkable!
As far as the analogies that the parent is speaking of...let's just drop the BS...you can look right through the 'government does it first' and the 'private industry does it first' counter argument and see its just your standard liberal vs. conservative circular argument.
Sure the military and other gov't agencies have pioneered several technologies (the internet springs to mind...ARPANET anyone?), and private industry has had its successes as well.
We can, you know, have both...
Private Enterprise != Free (Score:4, Insightful)
Do I get to choose whether or not I'm part of the $700,000,000,000 Wall Street bailout? That was private enterprise too.
Re:Frickin awesome (Score:2, Insightful)
they have a true desire to reduce our society's dependence on oil (particularly foreign oil)
And burn lots more mercury-spewing coal? And lose all that energy to transmission and conversion inefficiencies?
Sadly, gasoline (trailed slightly by diesel) is still the best fuel for powering wheeled vehicles.
as well as promote environmentally friendly technology such as electric vehicles.
Making lithium batteries is a pretty toxic process, and they need to be recycled carefully.
Re:implied (Score:3, Insightful)
I do think there are a number of things that NASA has and is doing wrong in terms of its general attitude toward spaceflight development and its focus towards a useful mission that NASA can play.
NASA can and should be in the space exploration business, not the business of providing space transportation services. Travel to low-earth orbit may have been remarkable back in the 1950's, but it isn't even news any more. Heck, even this launch... which I do believe to be not just newsworthy but down right historic... is just a footnote in science columns right now if it is being covered by "mainstream" news media at all.
Recent announcements by Mike Griffin and NASA that the new Ares V rocket is going to be in the commercial spaceflight business makes me really question what, if anything, NASA really intends to do in the near future. Perhaps that was just a mistake on a power-point slide I was looking at, but the "mission" of NASA certainly not very well defined at the moment.
Re:Not only men, I hope (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Private Enterprise != Free (Score:4, Insightful)
Do I get to choose whether or not I'm part of the $700,000,000,000 Wall Street bailout? That was private enterprise too.
Which was "encouraged" by Democrats (Janet Reno: if you don't make lots of home loans to poor black people who can't afford it, we'll prosecute you for housing discrimination) who then killed the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which was designed to regulate the FNMA and FHLMC.
Re:Private Enterprise != Free (Score:4, Insightful)
Do I get to choose whether or not I'm part of the $700,000,000,000 Wall Street bailout? That was private enterprise too.
Considering that the banks & financial institutions operate in essentially a walled garden, setup by the various regulatory agencies & the Federal Reserve, you can't exactly claim that the enterprise they've been engaged in is "private".
Especially when you look at some of the biggest players (Freddie, Fannie, Ginnie, the Fed Reserve Bank) and discover that they're all quasi-public in nature.
To keep this on topic: The only real problem with privatizing the space industry is that NASA will lose a lot of generally useful institutional knowledge as the people associated with the Shuttle program are moved to other projects, retired, or go into private industry.
Re:Cost (Score:3, Insightful)
So, no. You don't get to choose, and instead of funding a publicly owned space launch capability, we give Elon Musk and other SpaceX investors a cut off the top.
I guess you thought that Titan, Atlas, Delta, Saturn and STS were designed and built by gov't employees, eh, instead of The Martin Company,Consolidated-Vultee, Douglas Aircraft, Chrysler, Rockwell and Morton-Thiokol, plus dozens of other companies.
The bottom line is that the US has NEVER had a "publicly owned space launch capability".
Re:Cost (Score:2, Insightful)
They were built by government contractors, and paid for by the government. They're as publicly owned as a school building built by a local construction company.
Would we get more bang for our taxpayer buck if we'd just hired engineers and designers directly? Maybe, maybe not. You lose some of the efficiency that competition can bring out, but on the other hand you don't have the stockholders and top management of Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, et. al., taking a percentage off the top.
Who owned the rockets that sent the Apollo missions to the moon? Who owns the shuttles? The United States. Boeing might have made 'em, but we bought 'em. A bunch of moon rockets, or a shuttle fleet, is most definitely a "publicly owned space launch capability".
defense (Score:5, Insightful)
this is not an exhaustive defense...at all...not even close
This sounds like a anarcho-capitalist argument against all taxes. I don't have the energy for a political discussion, but I think it's important to acknowledge going in that the core of critics like you is not about how to do science or anything of that nature...you're against all taxes.
don't flame this topic...please. I'm a left-leaning libertarian, just fyi.
I think space exploration should be funded by the government because of the inherent nature of this type of exploration. It's expensive, requires decades of planning and preparation, and has very high stakes. It really is 'the final frontier' and as the original US astronauts liked to call it, "pushing the edge of the envelope."
I advocate government funded scientific endeavor of all types. We're talking about space, but the benefits of expanding our knowledge through space exploration are seen in practically ever scientific discipline.
Here's a ridiculously cursory list:
1. Survival of our species. Depending on who you talk to, we may have already ruined it. Climate change is a recognized fact. Of course there is always an asteroid, war, overpopulation, pandemic, FPS video games, etc. Take your pick. Space exploration as I (and many others) see it is a way to expand the human presence beyond our world, and in doing so dramatically increase our chances of moving past the dangerous times in which we live.
2. Science. I shouldn't have to go into this too much on /. Seriously...this is /. Space exploration lets us look deeper into space with telescopes, which allows us to test our theories about how the universe, and our planet came into being in the first place. It helps us understand how the most fundamental aspects of our existence function...idk, like say, gravity. Like I said, this is /. and I think this point is self-explanitory.
3. Technology. The trip to the moon pushed the US to develop technology that wasn't necessarily 'marketable' at the time, and may not have ever gotten developed. I really don't have time to put up links with specifics, but increased computer capacity for guidance systems and all the communications technology spring to mind. Private exploration can take risks with technology that may not make financial sense at the time but reap huge rewards later.
Corporations are risk averse and profit from defective design (DRM anyone?). Public endeavors have fewer limits on what they can do.
4. Promoting increasing knowledge. I know some hardcore anarcho-capitalist is going to say "it's not the government's job to blah blah blah"...that's a straw man argument. I'm not advocating Soviet style government mandated work programs! I'm saying that because of our space endeavors in the 50s and 60s generations were inspired to get involved in science and engineering. That's priceless.
That's 4...in no way presented to represent all the reasons why public funded space exploration is a good investment.
Now, if you want to talk about how NASA's mission and policies need to be focused and reformed, of course we can improve!...that's a different discussion. This discussion, if you read the parent is not about that aspect. This is about whether the US should even do it in the first place, and the answer is a big fat yes.
Re:implied (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you implying that public funded space exploration is wrong for some reason? If so you are dead wrong.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I used to work for NASA in the 1980s and I think that yes, public funded space exploration is wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG.
We could have had something like this about three decades ago if there weren't so many stupid government restrictions in this area.
Re:Private Enterprise != Free (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html [nasa.gov]
Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle?
A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.
Re:All Aboard! 80% Launch Failure Rate! (Score:2, Insightful)
And, considering the first failure of the 1c engine really didn't have anything to do with the hardware, but software, I'd say 100% success for the 1c engine but a 50% failure on separation!
Re:implied (Score:3, Insightful)
You really believe that you're being deprived of your liberty? Then vote. Get people to vote with you. Or do you only believe in the kind of liberty that is given to you, not taken; just a whiner who want's "liberty" without working to preserve it?
Hats off to Musk. He's worked for his (and indirectly humanities) great benefit, and is showing wonderful success.
Re:Cost (Score:3, Insightful)
You realise that the space shuttle is strapped to a fucking huge rocket right? See parent's post, your second sentence is exactly what he said.
Re:implied (Score:2, Insightful)
The inherent flaw in Libertarian property rights is the principle of original acquisition. Your so-called liberty based morality fails to take into account on any level the historically unequal distribution of resources that results from the seizure of property through force or coercion. Further, libertarianism assumes, for no reason whatsoever, that I am morally superior (or at the very least deserve a larger share of resources) simply because I am more talented/intelligent/lucky than the next guy. Are the handicapped inherently less deserving of needed resources simply because they were born less capable of providing for themselves? Should a percentage of the old starve because they were too stupid to set aside funds for their retirement? Is this consistent with your conception of justice?
True free market principles have failed to produce a favorable outcome anywhere. See: The Great Depression, Argentina under the Chicago Boys, the current deregulation clusterfuck with sub prime mortgages.
In short, Libertarianism is a failed theory clinging to flawed moral reasoning to justify why the rich should get richer.