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."
Cost (Score:1, Interesting)
Exactly how much did this cost?
YES!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been waiting for their success for the past 5 years or so, and I'm absolutely ecstatic.
They have a couple more Falcon 1 flights scheduled for this year, with their first Falcon 9 flight next year. The Falcon 9 is considerably larger, and is the vehicle SpaceX plans to use for delivering cargo and crew to the International Space Station.
I imagine that there's been a number of announcements waiting in the wings for SpaceX's first successful flight. Perhaps we'll be hearing soon about a more formal arrangement between SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace with their private space station plans?
Re:Cost (Score:4, Interesting)
Inspiring (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen plenty of launch videos before, but watching this and hearing them cheer when the stages separate... well, it warmed my heart. It's a beautiful example of bright people getting together to do something that people thought was unreasonable my many. That is one very small organization to break free from the surface of our little planet. Congrats to them.
Re:Week of newsworth orbits (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially when they've purchased a large quantity of the required technology from Russia.
Re:Not THAT impressive (Score:3, Interesting)
Why am I being so rough? 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. Don't expect everyone to fall at the feet of this guy simply because he fits in with your ideological predispositions; he is quite far behind.
Vulgarity aside, you miss the point entirely. True, the Chinese have accomplished quite a bit. But they've had thousands of people working on it and spent hundreds of billions of yuan on it. Musk has only a few hundred and hasn't even spent a billion dollars. His project has accomplished a first for humanity -- a privately-financed launch platform. Praising him does not diminish the Chinese accomplishment, but Musk deserves credit for seeing this through to success. His objective was not to duplicate government launch abilities, it was to change the economics of launching. If his success continues, SpaceX -- and others like it -- will change all of humanity by vastly lowering the cost of getting into orbit.
If anything, you could apply your argument to the diminution of the Chinese. They've accomplished nothing that Apollo and Soyuz didn't already do forty years ago. Using your measuring stick, they have a tremendous amount of catching up to do. I don't subscribe to your measuring stick, mind you, but I thought you might easier see your argument's fallacies from a different perspective.
Re:Not THAT impressive (Score:3, Interesting)
SpaceX employs about 500 people. There was a crew of about 25 people down there actually handling the rocket. Yes, a 25% success rate sucks badly and SpaceX will need to work hard to stay alive. But they put, as I understand it, almost 200 kilograms in orbit. That's useful and something people will pay for. There's no one else who can get by with that little manpower.
Also consider that SpaceX was started in mid 2002. So over a bit over six years, SpaceX has developed two launch vehicles, the Falcon I and the Falcon V, two rocket engines, the Kestrel and three versions of the Merlin. They're also working on a manned vehicle, the Dragon. They've launched four vehicles with one success.
My take is that SpaceX is doing a hell of a lot with limited manpower. Further, the services that SpaceX provides are valuable and economical. This will be another step to greater commercial activity in space and a commercial manned presence. That outcome is far superior to China's feeble manned efforts.
Re:Learn some fucking maths (Score:1, Interesting)
Falcon 1: $7 million/165kg = $42,424/kg
Russian Proton: $85 million/21,600kg = $4,302/kg
The retards saying that Falcon 1 is some revolution in price need to shut the fuck up and check their facts.
Falcon 9 might beat (well, equal) Proton for price/kg if, repeat IF, it ever flies. This joker has got the simplest possible liquid fueled rocket flying after blowing up three of them, it will at least take him a while to figure out how to cluster engines.
But after all this work he will only be able to equal the price of the old Russia stalwart, whats the fucking point? Nobody in their right mind will buy a launch from a billionaire with too much time on his hands when they can choose a far more proven launcher.
Here are some maths worth noting...
Linus Torvalds started with a programming team of one, and in a few years his kernel moved throughout the globe eventually swallowing up GNU. And back then where was this kernel and some rag tag tools compared against the Microsoft empire? A hobby. Now look at 2.6 and how and by whom it is used.
Falcon 1 is a revolution: not because it's cheaper at this point, but in twenty years, it will be cheaper and more reliable than anything Russia or the US has to put up in orbit.
You may win the battle with your simple ratios of price/weight, but you will lose the war. Falcon 1 is the start of the privatization and mass replication of space travel.
Elon Musk is like the Linus Torvalds of space travel. One man, one vision, one purpose.
Re:Not only men, I hope (Score:3, Interesting)
There are problems with women in space. The catheters they use for space suits are still pretty awkward, and menstruation is apparently very awkward. But heck yes, bring women. They're lighter and take less oxygen/kilo and fewer calories/workload.
Re:Congrats! (Score:3, Interesting)
What monopoly? The U.S. government didn't do anything to prevent these guys from their commercial enterprise...they didn't do anything anti-competitive.
Sure NASA has problems, but they need to fix the problems, not mothball the whole agency!
Private industry will never replace public endeavor. THEY HAVE DIFFERENT GOALS. Sure both are going to space, but one is going to make money, the other is going for more altruistic reasons...you know...science (among many other reasons...don't flame me).
If you want to respond...please address my main point, which is: We can have BOTH successful private space development AND publicly funded scientific exploration...they are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, if it wasn't for publicly funded exploration (which did orbital flights 50 years ago ;) this company wouldn't exist.
Re:Not only men, I hope (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only that, but women are better psychologically suited to endurance missions: we're biased toward consensus, flexibility and efficient group dynamics, where men are biased toward rigid hierarchies and a "winner-take-all" mentality at the expense of the group. There were even a set of studies done by the US Navy (can't remember the citation off the top of my head) that recommended that all SSBNs be crewed by female sailors for just that reason - given the tours assigned to ballistic missile submarines, in which sailors must spend several months submerged and completely cut off from the surface world, all-female crews were thought to be less prone to psychological "breakage" under those conditions.
Re:Not THAT impressive (Score:2, Interesting)
The Chinese have spent about 20 times what Musk has (going on what my opponents say) and have come out with more than 20 times the value in terms of their results.
The amount spent by the Chinese is undoubtedly large, but no one outside the Chinese government may know the true cost. Given the secrecy surrounding the project as well as the government obfuscation (i.e. only announcing launches after they're successful), I'd suspect the number is a good deal higher than anything they've announced publicly.
Further, your claim that they're getting "20 times the value" is nebulous at best. You're guessing and reaching all at the same time. Do you have some kind of axe to grind that motivates you to so thoroughly abandon logic?
You can't even compare three man capsules and spacewalks to launching microsatellites on the same playing field.
Really? Why not? Both involve similar engineering and scientific feats. Both are fantastically expensive. The difference is in scale and efficiency only. China has the scale, Musk has the efficiency. It's as simple as that. Further, Musk isn't trying to reach the scale of China, Russia, or the U.S. His goal -- the one you're completely ignorant of -- is to make space access affordable.
It remains to be seen whether China can match Musk's efficiency or whether Musk can match China's -- or any other government-sponsored launch system's -- scale. However, in the sense that he's got a working launch platform that met all its design goals, it is huge success.
Re:Even better - space midgets (Score:5, Interesting)
That's vaguely funny, but completely wrong. The fat being transformed back to energy is quite inefficient: it's far more effective to send up the fat as food, and not pay the water and oxygen and space costs of storing it as live fat in the body, especially because it will change the size of their space suits. Also, a lot of midgets have a lot of other medical issues, and limited body strength. Sending up all that spare organ space just to get a really short pair of arms up there seems pretty inefficient.
Now, people with their legs chopped off might be more effective. I bet there are quite a few military veterans right now who'd be happy for the ride, and have a lot of upper body strength to bring to their efforts.
Re:Cost (Score:4, Interesting)
$7.9M for 420 kg
I reckon thats enough mass for a partly reusable single person capsule. Add two million for the capsule and operational support and you are still at half the price of a trip to the ISS with the Russians.
Re:Cost (Score:4, Interesting)
He sure seems to have a streak for investing in 'nice' companies as well as being successful.
I'm very happy to see him succeed.
Re:Not only men, I hope (Score:5, Interesting)
we're biased toward consensus, flexibility and efficient group dynamics
A couple of quotes by women, about women:
In fact (Score:5, Interesting)
And WRT Spacex, Musk is changing the game. Many ppl on this site certainly hate him. Surest way to tell if somebody works at lmart, raytheon, Boeing, etc is to find a rocket science guy and ask what they think of spacex. If they work at one of the standard companies, they will RIP spacex. If not, the love them (conditionally). And if person is not rocket science, then they just seem to love them unconditionally
Re:Frickin awesome (Score:3, Interesting)
sulfur-spewing
Sulfur doesn't cause mental retardation...
with toxic MTBE
Congress said, "Oxygenate your fuel", so the oil companies oxygenated their fuel. Now they're mad at the oil companies for obeying the law.
orbital photovoltaic
Orbital photovoltaics are one of the least practical ideas ever conceived. There's too much (man-made and natural) junk up there to ever make it workable. Not to mention the cost of boosting all that mass into orbit, and the atmospheric heating and resultant climate change.
fusion
Things that make REALLY BIG BOMBS tend to be difficult to control. Don't hold your breath waiting for economically-viable fusion power.
Remember this? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Optimism, pessimism, f-ck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=638755&cid=24508563 [slashdot.org]
Interesting to go back and reread those comments now, see who thought the CEO was "a man who gets things done" and who thought he was "a man who can drive your company in to the ground faster than a failed Falcon 1" and "a man who is altogether too comfortable with profanity and who cares little for the problems faced by his team".
Disclaimer: I didn't post in the original discussion, but I was also curious if that attitude would work when launching rockets. I guess he proved it did. :)
Re:Private Enterprise != Free (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cost (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure the Orlando Sentinel will be very unbiased in its assessment of SpaceX, an upstart that threatens the established contractors, with many of their employees living and working in central Florida. That's like reading the LA Times for its opinion on copyright legislation, or the Detroit Free Press for their opinions on the success of import car companies.
The welfare you speak of is paying for launches at the going rate (which is well below development costs), and funding development of a manned rocket (dragon) that won a contract that NASA actively and openly solicited entries for. While not really "free", competition for best design for the lowest bid is hardly "welfare" either.
The existing aerospace contractors had become far too set in their ways and were hardly competing with one another on efficiency or cost. SpaceX seems like it could really change the game. Note that the old guard doesn't have to go away, it just has to adapt, and a new competitor will give them the urgency they seem to have lost.
Re:Not THAT impressive (Score:3, Interesting)
So because some people who post here refuse to consider that the Chinese might actually have accomplished what they say they did you are going to insult SpaceX and Musk? It's not the fault of SpaceX or Musk that some people refuse to give credit to the Chinese (presumably due to either political ideology or racism). So attacking the accomplishments of SpaceX and Musk only adds another injured party to the list.
Personally I think those who try to deny the accomplishments of the Chinese are being idiots. If they had not done what they claim by now the U.S. and Russia would be bringing forward evidence of it. The same as the U.S.S.R would have done if the U.S. had faked the Lunar landings as some claim. Of course your attacks on SpaceX and Musk are just as bad and you are no better than they are.
Re:Private Enterprise != Free (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't it good if people move from NASA (highly bureaucratic red tap environment) to the private sector (either to SpaceX, which will expand to provide more launch capabilities, or to Boeing or Lockheed)? Shit actually gets done.
Not exactly.
When you split up a group of knowledgeable individuals, you lose their collective wisdom and break up their organizational culture.
There's a reason I said "institutional knowledge" and not "skilled individuals"
As for Boeing or Lockheed and "shit gets done", how often do they finish big government projects on time and on budget? Hell, how often do they accept anything big other than with a cost plus contract [wikipedia.org]?
If I had to choose between a private contractor wasting tax payer money or civil servants wasting the exact same amount, I'd just as soon keep it in house. That said, SpaceX doesn't seem like it's going to be a waste of taxpayer dollars, because even after you add in their profit margin, they're still vastly cheaper than the Boeings & Lockheeds of the aerospace industry.
That looked scary... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Private Enterprise != Free (Score:4, Interesting)
Aha! It was all Janet Reno's fault! I knew it! And those endless generic subdivisions in Phoenix and Las Vegas were meant for black people.
Seriously though, that is a very selective and limited analysis. There was more than enough encouragement from the deregulation happy Republicans. And adjustable rate mortgages pushed by a Fed subservient to a spend-your-way-to-success *Republican* White House are what has brought millions of Americans to brink of foreclosure and thus screwed Wall Street.
And lets not forget the role of the absurdly low capital gains tax rate in encouraging risky behaviour and an 'asset bubble' in the financial industry.
But I know, blaming minorities has always been a fun and profitable strategy for right wingers.