New Photos of SpaceX's Falcon 9 Assembly 122
RobGoldsmith writes "New images are now available of SpaceX's Falcon 9 being assembled. The images are accompanied with a small update from SpaceX. If there are no unexpected delays, it's possible Falcon 9 will be completely integrated by the end of the year. This update shows real flight hardware and really brings the rocket alive. View images of the Falcon 9 nearing completion now!"
by the end of the year? (Score:5, Insightful)
as in the end of 2009? or tomorrow? Or somewhere in between, like the Chinese new year or Rosh Hashanah?
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The Power of Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
This really shows the power of capitalism in this time of government failing. Yes, although the Congress and administration would like you to believe that the current "crisis" is a result of greed, the bottom line is that the money had to come from someplace, and it came from them. Anyway, by looking at Scaled Composites and SpaceX and seeing what they can do when freed from the binders of government "fairness" (corruption, really, since nothing is truely fair) has simply been fascinating. Space flight is finally coming of age.
Look at this project in comparison to "Orion". A small team vs. thousands. A few designers vs. hundreds of engineers using bulky project management. It goes to show that you really only need project management to do something the first time (IE, not knowing where the major failing points will be). After that, you need something lightweight and agile so that you aren't throwing away the experience of your people by second guessing them until they are unable to make quick decisions.
Will the NASA craft be somehow safer as a result of this rigor? I doubt it. Because the project is so tedious it's probably likely some things were just given up on. SpaceX will get it through testing, trial and error, and will find out more in two throw-away tests than NASA will in 10 years of rigorous development. And because they are only supporting one application, a proprietary one, they don't have to be "fair", and spend 10x as much to ensure compatibility with vendor specifications.
Now I'm not saying the government should get out of the space business, but I do think they need to lean it out and put more on the contractors, and open it up to more competition. The fact that this is finally possible is in large part due to the decrease in cost of computers. From project management software to CAD to anything else, it's now possible to wield the same level of computational and data harnessing power on your desktop that was previously limited to only government-sized resources. The gap is closing because there's really not a lot they can do that we can't (with computers). In fact, the increase in the size of government recently seems to be it trying to preserve itself by creating more jobs. "Let's move those computers to something the private industry will never be trusted to do", they think, "such as listening to all the telephone and internet traffic or studying weapons."
All that NASA is good at doing these days is burning money. Obama, if you're listening, clean it out. In fact, delete it entirely and create a new space agency with modern roots! Imagine what we could do with 500 billion over 10 years with a modern and efficient CIVILIAN organization.
The power of government... (Score:5, Insightful)
Next time free enterprise puts a man on the moon, you let me know.
If you capitalists hadn't have f--- up with your stupid lending decisions and dumb investments, there wouldn't be a government bailout now, would there? There was no need for government to momentarily take control of everything, until the people that previously controlled things utterly screwed up.
Re:The Power of Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
All that NASA is good at doing these days is burning money.
Deary me - isn't that a little unfair? The only thing they can do is burn money? You don't see any value at all in the various Mars missions, the fascinating output of Cassini-Huygens, or SOHO, or...? And so on.
Check out the NASA Current Missions [nasa.gov] for a bit of an overview of some of the amazing work that NASA are doing.
Whilst I don't disagree with your main point that small, nimble, commercial outfits can often work smarter and quicker than monolithic government departments, I don't think it's fair cast NASA as nothing but a bottomless sinkhole for cash.
It might also be worth considering how many of those current projects would never even get to the drawing board stage if the only space enterprises we had were entirely commercial.
Re:The Power of Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, although the Congress and administration would like you to believe that the current "crisis" is a result of greed, the bottom line is that the money had to come from someplace, and it came from them.
Yes, in a way it did come from the government -- it's called deregulation. IOW, "freer" free enterprise. Since the bad boys in the banks didn't have Big Brother looking over their shoulder, they were free to do very risky things -- bordering on outright fraud -- with other people's money. That's what caused the bailout, that's what caused the economic collapse. Don't just take my word for it -- read what's been coming out of the mouths of economists.
Look at this project in comparison to "Orion". A small team vs. thousands. A few designers vs. hundreds of engineers using bulky project management. It goes to show that you really only need project management to do something the first time (IE, not knowing where the major failing points will be). After that, you need something lightweight and agile so that you aren't throwing away the experience of your people by second guessing them until they are unable to make quick decisions.
You can't compare the two. Orion's eventual goal is go to Mars. First Orion will go back to the moon to 'practice', and what is learned there will be used to further develop the Orion program for a manned mission to Mars. Let me know when Elan Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are even remotely planning anything on that scale. Then we can compare.
Re:The Power of Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, the 50 years of accumulated NASA research and experience has been completely useless to SpaceX, an organization that has accomplished everything so far by starting from Newtonian first principles.
I mean, think about it. "Delete it entirely and create a new space agency" - so, where shall we get experienced scientists and engineers to man this agency? And, where shall we find contractors to build everything this agency designs? Hey, this is all looking kinda familiar...
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Re:The power of government... (Score:5, Insightful)
the Federal Reserve had nothing to do with predatory lending practices (which had been going on in the credit industry long before the mortgage crisis). and for the most part, the investment banking industry has been self-regulated--which is an inherent conflict of interest.
do a little research into the history of industry regulations in the U.S., and you'll see exactly why these regulations are necessary. anyone who thinks a laissez-faire free market economy is the solution to all the world's problems is clearly ignorant of our past and needs a reality check.
despite what many libertarians seem to believe, greed does not inherently promote public welfare or ethical/responsible behavior. the truth is quite the opposite, which is historically why regulations have been legislated in the first place.
Re:The Power of Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, as has been mentioned by other posters here, SpaceX (like all the other companies in the industry) has only been able to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time because they have had 50+ years of government funded rocket/space reasearch at their disposal (not just NASA or US reasearch, but also German reasearch funded during WWII as well as Russian research released after the end of the Cold War). Nothing ever stopped private companies from developing spacecraft. The reason they didn't was that the cost-benefit analysis said that even if they could afford to develop the tech it would have a pay-off to make the capital investment worth while or that pay-off was to far off in the future to sell the idea to investors. Thats one of the things government funding of research is good for. Governments can think in the long-term and do the unprofitable early research that make the technology more profitable for later private enterprise. They also do things for national defense reasons that serve the same effect, trickling down to non-military applications once the tech is cheaper to produce.
You say that all NASA is good for, these days, is burning money but you ignore all the incredible things they've achieved such as the reacent Mars explorers that not only succeeded in their mission but ran for far far longer than their planned operational lives. What you aren't accounting for is the fact that, even with those 50+ years of research, space exploration is still extremely expensive because of the extreme nature of the environment. Try looking up the total cost of the Apollo program and converting that number to 2008 dollars. The price was astronomical. Compared to what it took to put people on the moon, what NASA has today is nothing.
Now is the time for private companies to start looking at exploiting space, but we aren't ready yet to just get rid of NASA. Maybe, when one or two of these companies has a fully operational spacecraft capable of intra-solarsystem travel we could concider it. Right now we have nothing that could even come close to taking the place of NASA.
Re:The power of government... (Score:3, Insightful)
Next time free enterprise puts a man on the moon, you let me know.
Part of the reason it hasn't happened yet is that there's nothing to be gained from putting another man on the moon right now. Most of the scientifically valuable data either has been gathered already or can be gathered by remote-controlled probes; and other uses for the moon (mining, colonization) are economically or technically infeasible right now.
Governments, on the other hand, are mostly free from such constraints. They can (for example) spend fantastic amounts of taxpayer money to send men to the Moon, just so they can gain bragging rights over a certain rival country.
I'm not denying that the manned Moon missions had value, by the way; I just think there were better ways to spend that money, including unmanned probes or other types of research. Once the benefits of sending a man to the Moon exceeded the costs, free enterprise would have done so, and more cheaply than NASA ever could.
IS free enterprise really less expensive? (Score:3, Insightful)
Once the benefits of sending a man to the Moon exceeded the costs, free enterprise would have done so, and more cheaply than NASA ever could.
I think it is time that we challenge some basic assertions thrown around here.
I really have to dispute the idea that free enterprise is inherently less expensive than the government. Innately, the government has enormous economies of scale, and, the ability to offer its workers additional power in addition to economic compensation.
While it may have been fashionable in the 1980s to argue on behalf of the smaller, more nimble corporation as compared to a vast government, 30 years of mergers and acquisitions have left us with fewer corporations that are so large and slow they are practically governments themselves. How often have we used the word "Synergy", like it is a joke? If you can believe in any Wall Street merger, than certainly, would not the merger of all rivals into the government be the ultimate in "synergies". Clearly, libertarian arguments about the private sector versus the government are inconsistent.
What is the real case is that the free enterprise system really exists to allow the government to offload the risk of engaging in new forms of commerce, most of which are honestly speculative, onto the private citizenry. Instead of the crown gambling with its money, it allows the people to gamble, and merely takes a cut of the successful. Thus, the government does not need to be in the business of making personal computers or cars, only to tax those that are successful, in order to satisfy the needs of the crown. That's the advantage of the free market, and really, nothing else. However, it is the case when the free market collapses, and citizens are not willing to assume private risk, then the government must step in.