SpaceX Launch Achieves Geostationary Transfer Orbit 131
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket this afternoon in a bid to deliver a large commercial satellite into geostationary orbit. The flight was successful: "Approximately 185 seconds into flight, Falcon 9’s second stage’s single Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20 second burn that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its parking orbit. Eighteen minutes after injection into the parking orbit, the second stage engine relit for just over one minute to carry the SES-8 satellite to its final geostationary transfer orbit. The restart of the Falcon 9 second stage is a requirement for all geostationary transfer missions." This is a significant milestone for SpaceX, and it fulfills another of the three objectives set forth by the U.S. Air Force to certify SpaceX flights for National Security Space missions.
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The United Launch Alliance, at its heart, is just a way for Boeing and Lockheed to monopolize the defense launch market and then charge whatever the hell prices they want. Having at least one competitor in the space is important, if you as a taxpayer don't like getting ripped off.
Yes, yes, whatever.
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If the private sector wants to compete, let it compete: in the private sector. Leave government work for the government.
Are you suggesting that Boeing and Lockheed are government agencies?
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No, he's suggesting that all government satellites be launched directly by the government.
You know, the way all government ground vehicles are built by the government, the way they make all their own computers, their own lightbulbs, their own paper, the way all government cafeteria food is grown by government workers.
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You're being deliberately obtuse. Computers, lightbulbs, paper and cafeteria food are all commodities produced by companies who thrive from supplying a wide range of customers.
Lockheed in particular, and Boeing in great part, are doing custom round-trip design to deployment work often exclusively for the US government. There is no reason not to employ engineers directly, except (from a political PoV) ideological and (from a pragmatic PoV) that Uncle Sam is private business' bitch.
There is one similarity bet
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SpaceX started merely as a loss-making venture poaching ex-government and contractor employees, and taking government money - it really had nothing meritocratic to bring to the table.
You call it poaching, I call it free job market. You call it "nothing meritocratic", I call it an exciting work environment. Work for legacy space transport providers is outright boring and mindnumbing, like work for any big corporation these days. SpaceX cares about their employees a bit more.
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SpaceX started merely as a loss-making venture poaching ex-government and contractor employees, and taking government money - it really had nothing meritocratic to bring to the table.
You call it poaching, I call it free job market. You call it "nothing meritocratic", I call it an exciting work environment. Work for legacy space transport providers is outright boring and mindnumbing, like work for any big corporation these days. SpaceX cares about their employees a bit more.
I'm pretty sure it's more a case of you'd have to do significant work to stop those employees from building rockets with company resources.
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Word.
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>
SpaceX started merely as a loss-making venture poaching ex-government and contractor employees, and taking government money - it really had nothing meritocratic to bring to the table.
Very good point. I'd just like to clarify two minor things...
1. I agree with you, that it is very easy to start a business putting stuff into space that makes money from the outset. There are plenty of real-life examples where real innovation is achieved without any requirement for up-front capital (loss-making business models), usually it's funded from initial sales.
I forget the example business models and companies.... can you remind me of them?
2. Prior to getting "poached" by SpaceX, which "really had no
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Let me add to this great comment, there's also a layer of aerospace high tech suppliers used to making a huge profit supplying to Boeing/Lockheed and the rest of the old school gang.
SpaceX has pretty much gave that gang the boot, producing almost everything that is Space specific in house.
That's a significant part of why their costs are so radically cheaper. ULA is just part (a large part nonetheless) of the whole inefficient space gang.
We need this kind of radical, crazy smart innovation elsewhere. I suspe
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There's nothing economical about United Launch Alliance. There's only United Launch Cartel in my opinion.
Let's see it for what it is, a cartel and a jobs/pork barrel program.
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No, he's suggesting that all government satellites be launched directly by the government.
Once upon a time, thats how it used to be [wikipedia.org]. Then a bunch of retards started screaming about it being a "waste of money" and other nonsense, and raped its budget. Now the US realistically has no space program, despite all the benefits, realized and potential.
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I believe what the AC is saying is that the government should design, build, and launch its own rockets rather than contracting out (and presumably design and build the satellites in-house also) and that without Boeing/Lockheed/TRW/etc. lobbying Congress to buy "necessary" satellites and the rockets to hang them up, there would be substantially fewer launches.
Re:Oh great (Score:5, Informative)
I have no idea why the NSA/USAF requirements is such a big deal, as it really doesn't have much of anything to do with a private company (in this case SES... an operator of GEO telecommunications satellites) is spending its money on another private company (SpaceX) to accomplish an otherwise very public mission. People are going to be pointing their satellite dishes at this satellite for crying out loud and watching television coming from it. I don't know how more public you can make such a flight.
The USAF is simply throwing up some BS that SpaceX needs to fly a few more missions and prove it can deliver satellites into various kinds of orbits before they are able to tell Boeing and Lockheed-Martin lobbyists where to go when the next round of launch contracts come out. Those two companies (in the form of the United Launch Alliance... jointly owned by both companies) want to pretend they are the only people in America capable of launching anything into orbit at all.
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More customers.
Yes, SpaceX wants to sell its products to as many people as it can. Funny thing is that ULA didn't need this kind of certification process when they tried to get the Atlas & Delta rockets certified for carrying USAF payloads. Yes, that is some time in the past, but they even had the federal government pay for early failures too. I find it all that more ironic that SpaceX has been able to build up its reputation and certify its rocket in spite of almost no subsidies to make that happen.
ULA must just b
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If I were launching a $300,000,000 payload on a rocket with fewer than a dozen launches, the insurance company is going to laugh me out of their office.
Happens all the time. The insurance company probably just charge you $100,000,000+ for insurance.
If your satellite is going to make you $1,000,000,000 a year and operate for twenty years. That's not a big deal.
Re:It ain't bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
The United States relies too much on ULA for its space-launch, ULA has easily raised its price and the tax-payers ended up having to cough up the dough.
FTFY. This is the first commercial satellite launched in the US since November 23, 2009 when Intelsat 14 launched on an Atlas V from LC-41. [blogspot.com]
Re:It ain't bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
> What if one day Russia or Iran or China ends up owning SpaceX ?
What if one day large corporations could pay-off american politicians, on a large and wide scale, with many people knowing it happens. And those people end up determining how the country is run?
We both know that already happens, and *this* is what your worried about?
What does it even matter if Russia or the Chinese own SpaceX, they dont, but who cares. They have their own space agencies... ones that actually still operate.
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I remember congress preventing middle eastern interest from purchasing a couple of east coast ports.
If they can prevent sale of ports, then why couldn't they prevent sale of a company that produces ITAR protected equipment ?
If the US govt can't be trusted to step in, then it can't be trusted for launching their rockets.
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Doubtful. For services of this kind, who else is able to pay and needs these services? There are a few, but losing US contracts would kill them.
This is more akin to the mutually beneficial relationship between China and US sovereign debt. Sure, they could divest, but *where*, exactly, would they get a safer investment vehicle? The only reason one party would pull out is for non-economic reasons, because it sure isn't beneficial to do so.
No one wins if SpaceX starts trying to milk the US too hard. And in the
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What's the alternative? The majority extorting funds from the minority?
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Wow, who do you work for? Lockheed Martin? Boeing? The US has plenty contractors on hand for cost-plus contracts. And if all else fails I'm sure ESA would give you Ariane rockets for a price. And worst case if everyone had collective amnesia you should be able to pull off an Apollo program much faster and cheaper today than in the 60s. And when it really comes down to it the real "space" war is still 99% ICBMs, which I doubt the military will forget how to make. The ISS isn't exactly critical defense infras
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And that would be different than having Boeing build rockets and planes and so on, how exactly?
Even in your crazy scenarios there are a bunch of obvious options:
The US denies the sale to Russia or Iran or China - just like they have always done with sales and mergers that impact national security.
The US nationalizes SpaceX.
The US dusts off its old NASA stuff and goes from there.
Re:It ain't bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
SpaceX could easily raise its price 100-fold and the tax-payers will end up having to cough up the dough.
What the heck are you talking about? Why would Boing or Lockheed (the current owners of the US govt launch monopoly) be and different? How is *more* competition from SpaceX going to lead to price increases and fewer options?
What if one day Russia or Iran or China ends up owning SpaceX ?
And what if some day Russia or Iran of China owns General Dynamics, Lockheed, Honeywell, Northrup, etc? Then those companies will no longer be US defense contractors, and others will *happily* step up to take over their cushy multibillion dollar cost-overrun laden US military contracts. So it's a totally absurd concern that would be no different 30 years ago than it is today.
When your #1 customer spends more than the rest of the world combined, you don't piss them off.
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Much better than ULA that already holds the US government hostage to the tune of one billion US$ per year.
It's not called ransom by the US government, but anyone looking at it with an open mind should reach the conclusion it is ransom !
The requirement should be that any launch services supplier must make no more than 50% of launch revenues from US govt launches, and keep at a minimum two completely independent suppliers (as in a CARTEL together like Boeing and Lockheed).
PS: This criteria is taylor made to f
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The media is totally biased in its coverage... the old-space industry launches satellites all the time. Yet, when SpaceX does it, there is an endless stream of news articles announcing the fact. When will the media stop ganging up and play fair?
Media bias is spread thin and fair all across the political spectrum, from Fox to Msnbc to Al Jazeera... Any point of view can be propagandized these days. Say what you will about America, the press is still quite free.
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They are all biased. The only way I know to counter that is to watch a diverse mix of media with a lot of different biases, and try to put together a composite picture of current events from all of them.
Most people simply pick a few media sources that are biased towards their own views, then dismiss all others as liars or a manipulative conspiracy.
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Maybe the idea of a self made guy building his own rocket company from the ground up and successfully competing against entrenched corporations makes for a compelling human interest story.
It sure as hell piques my interest.
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Re:Biased Media Coverage (Score:5, Insightful)
When you accomplish something of this complexity for near half the price of the competition the media better be extolling the accomplishment.
Re:Biased Media Coverage (Score:5, Interesting)
Near half? Closer to one tenth. A Falcon 9 costs $56.5 million. The last ULA launch cost $465 million. I don't know that the price difference is all that much of an accomplishment though. How hard is it to beat a bloated cost-plus military-industrial complex dinosaur that exists mainly as welfare for mediocre engineers? The short fabrication and assembly times, the incredibly short integration time, the miniscule size of the launch crew, all while conducting rocket surgery—now those are accomplishments worth extolling.
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If they succeed in landing all three stages for reuse as they plan, that will be the real game changer in terms of cost per launch.
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that exists mainly as welfare for mediocre engineers?
Would you care to elaborate on or support this point? I find it is needlessly inflammatory and just downright rude. By what metric of engineering excellence are you using? Where are all the excellent rocket engineers working? Are the only good rocket engineers in the US working for SpaceX? Because the two 800 lb gorillas in the industry have a lock on the rocket launch business, one could argue that it is they who have the wherewithal to hire the best engineers.
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Do you work in the defense aerospace industry? Because the part I worked for boasted that it was white collar welfare. In the specific instance, what do you call an industry that is getting paid 10X what it should cost (as defined by what cost someone else to do it) to deliver something? I mean, if you paid fast food cashiers 72.50$/hr (10X minimum wage) simply becuase they work in a niche industry using revolving door lobbyists to gather no competition govt contracts, what would you call that? What if you
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I'm not talking about the cost argument, or the corporate welfare comments. I'm talking about the denigrating tone used with "mediocre engineers." So are you suggesting that if you're an excellent engineer who wants to work on some really cool shit like big-assed rockets and launching stuff into space (maybe that doesn't tickle your fancy, but some people think that is pretty cool stuff), and you can get a job doing that and get, by your estimate, paid 10 times what you could get doing some other engineer
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SpaceX didn't go hiring a bunch of ULA engineers to build the Falcon series of rockets; there's a quote floating around that it was like 5% came from existing rocket related enterprises. It turns out that rocket science and engineering is just science and engineering; anyone can do it.
And yeah, if you're an engineer and working for a company that employs 4 guys who keep a chair warm, 2 guys who create make work for everyone else, 1 guy who is a drooling moron, and you, and you're consequently spending 10 en
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Nobody but you said he was the great second coming, you anonymous prick.
The price of the Model S says that, for all we decry the price of modern cars, that price is, in fact, cost-driven, and those costs are not avoidable. Unlike launch costs, which have now been unequivocally proven to be inflated with bogus "costs" that are entirely avoidable.
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But to cast shit blindly upon the thousands of people who work at places like that, to me, is arrogant, dumb, and ignorant.
It was neither blind nor ignorant. As with router/andy, I too once worked for one of those companies. I held a Top Secret clearance. I saw exactly who worked for those companies, up close and personal. They sent me to training classes for software they used, and the instructor wanted to know if I'd worked with it before. I hadn't. I was fresh out of college and had never even heard of it before. But I picked it up so fast, he thought I'd already seen it. That was one of many things that told me the
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But they are playing fair. The old-space industry is boring. I wouldn't want to work for them, and I'm sure many way more clever people than myself wouldn't work for a lazy corporate behemoth either. There's only so much fun to be had in a stuffy cubicle. I mean, heck, these days you can't even have a nice secretary to look at. Something is to be said for work conditions impacting the creativity, productivity and general willingness of the workforce to, you know, work there. The results - overpriced stuffin
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Because SpaceX is doing it without massive govt subsidies.
ULA rockets were developed with pork barrel money.
SpaceX designed and launched Falcon 1 with private money.
Then NASA stepped in with the CRS contract and helped Falcon 9 development, they invested less than a single Space Shuttle launch would have costed, and that investment more than paid itself with the 4 CRS launches to the ISS executed.
And BTW, SpaceX isn't NASA's sweetheart, they are COMPETING with Orbital Sciences, and Boeing is trying to get i
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Bottom line is STS was as much as ULA pork/jobs programs is today.
I wouldn't put up much of an argument on that point. However,the costs don't compare very well directly. If SpaceX also designed a human-compatible orbiter capable of reentry and providing life support for two week missions, and factor in the safety factors and all the extra regulations that comes with a manned mission, then their costs would go up significantly. If you got rid of the orbiter and converted it to a dead lift vehicle, then I imagine the STS costs would come down quite a bit. It isn't clea
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But the conversion to a dead lift vehicle would cost ... Humm ... Let me guess... Some 41 billion dollars ?
That's called SLS ! This number is a realistic assessment by people that have no incentive to hide the real cost of things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Program_costs [wikipedia.org]
With those 41 billion dollars, SpaceX can design replacements to everything the SLS program aims to do, build a nuclear thermal rocket second stage, and execute one demo mission to the moon, one demo mission to mars, an
SpaceX is so cheap (Score:5, Informative)
that existing space providers are in big trouble.
Even the Chinese are quaking in their boots, as they can't do it as cheaply as SpaceX. And EADS is frantically redesigning their new Ariane 6 to try to be more cost competitive with the Falcon.
SpaceX has completely rocked the space industry upside down, and A LOT of naysayers need to eat crow now. As recently as 2012 (see this article [airspacemag.com]), managers at NASA were poo-pooing Elon saying rockets are hard and noobs shouldn't try.
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Re:SpaceX is so cheap (Score:4, Funny)
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Oh well, back to making planes that don't fly. Or catch fire.
Yes, but rockets are supposed to catch fire.
Re:SpaceX is so cheap (Score:4, Informative)
Oh well, back to making planes that don't fly. Or catch fire.
Are you talking about the Tesla?
Nah, more likely Boeing's Dreamliner. The Tesla has nothing on Boeing for self-combusting batteries. At least the Tesla needs major damage to trigger one. :)
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Dreamliner ? You mean phoenix surely? That damn thing is always rising from the flames.
I'd kill for an airline to nickname their fleet Firebird 1 - Firebird X for each dreamliner :)
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If you look down-thread, you'll see one now, yammering about loss leaders and Musk-balls.
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I wish ULA was publicly traded. I'd be shorting the shit out of them right about now :) The parent companies' stake is too small to bet big time on, not yet ...
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It's a marketing excerise.
Considering SpaceX has hired a lot of ex-NASA/JPL folks and aerospace experts and that to make the custom-ground up built rockets cheap, Musk has heavily invested his own dollar bills. SpaceX is in the red currently and if they can market the heck out their rockets to Wall Street (for funding) and undercut everyone, hopefully timing will allow them to get into the black.
They do great work, but either SpaceX will survive as much as OSC did in the 90's (they did well to start subcomp
Re:SpaceX is so cheap (Score:4, Informative)
And the BBC claims they have $4 billion of satellite launches booked.
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"booked" is not the same as having it in the bank. They need to launch or they don't earn the money.
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"booked" is not the same as having it in the bank. They need to launch or they don't earn the money.
There is no way SpaceX ramps up its production line without customers paying something up front, and I'm pretty sure that one of the requirements to get the $56.5 M [spacex.com] price is payment in full before launch. Either way, according to SpaceX [spacex.com] and many comments from Musk, SpaceX is already profitable and cash-flow positive. They have development funds from NASA for the Dragon capsule and $1.6 billion in Falcon 9 launches alone. At this point, they seem to be a viable enterprise and will have to screw up really ser
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Re:SpaceX is so cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
What debt? The time when it was extremely critical for SpaceX to make money was during the Falcon 1 flights, where Elon Musk openly admitted that he was about two weeks away from throwing in the towel and declaring chapter 13 bankruptcy. Had Falcon 1 Flight 4 not been able to get into orbit, SpaceX would have been toast as a company.
At this point, SpaceX is clearing its manifest, collecting so many customers that its manifest is continuing to grow with an ever longer back log of waiting time for new customers, and at this point plans to launch 15 rockets (according to their manifest) next year. Admittedly SpaceX claims that is only 15 rockets that will be delivered to the launch pads before January 2015, but that is incredibly ambitious. That is manufacturing over 150 new Merlin engines, or about 3-4 engines per week that need to be completed. In other words, a very real assembly line and mass production scales of efficiency.
More importantly, assuming that SpaceX actually pulls this off, they will have more than a couple billion dollars of revenue next year and a healthy hunk of that will be profit. Far be it that SpaceX is going to be swimming in debt, I think they are more likely going to struggle in terms of finding legitimate ways to reinvest that money. Elon Musk also seems to be very frugal and wise with how that money is being spent too. At this point, the SpaceX budget is going to be likely larger than NASA's robotic exploration program.... the whole thing.
If for some reason SpaceX can't get the reusable Falcon 9 to work and there becomes a huge downturn in the global satellite launcher market, I would agree that the potential exists for SpaceX to go down in flames. SpaceX is gambling on the idea where substantially cheaper launch prices (they are aiming for less than $1000/kg to LEO) will increase the market demand for orbital launches and that this same rate of launching at least one rocket every month is going to continue indefinitely. The orbital launch market has seen crashes before, and OSC was one company in particular who was ramping up production precisely when that market crash happened.
Regardless, I fail to see where SpaceX is going to crash from debt alone. They are past the critical cash crunch period that new start-up companies all go through and there are numerous people (especially after today's launch) that would be willing to chip in some additional capital if it was needed.
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At this point, SpaceX is clearing its manifest, collecting so many customers that its manifest is continuing to grow with an ever longer back log of waiting time for new customers, and at this point plans to launch 15 rockets (according to their manifest) next year. Admittedly SpaceX claims that is only 15 rockets that will be delivered to the launch pads before January 2015, but that is incredibly ambitious. That is manufacturing over 150 new Merlin engines, or about 3-4 engines per week that need to be completed. In other words, a very real assembly line and mass production scales of efficiency.
If I'm counting engines right (10 for each Falcon 9, and 28 for the Heavy), their manifest of future missions through to the end of 2014 [spacex.com] will require 178 Merlin and Merlin Vacuum engines.
Re:SpaceX is so cheap (Score:4, Informative)
His 150 engines number might be right after all, considering the first recovery of a first stage may happen as early as CRS-3. Mr. Musk has said that some of next year's contracts require new rockets, but some have clauses that allow reuse of a first stage, for a price break and at the customer's option. It remains to be seen if any of next year's customers will have to nerve to exercise that option, but it's possible.
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They already stated that Falcon 9 v1.1 is far more mass production friendly than the original recipe Falcon 9.
All you need to do is to follow the pipeline. Between one F9 in the Cape, McGregor and finishing production, there are at least 3-4 rockets in various stages of production/testing/integration for launch.
Right now it looks like the critical stage is a single facility in the cape and any delays during the static fire and launch delaying everything else.
There are 15 launches scheduled to deliver rocket
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You're mostly right. One thing though.
I think they are more likely going to struggle in terms of finding legitimate ways to reinvest that money.
SpaceX is privately held, and Elon Musk has ironclad control of it and Elon Musk has publicly stated on more than one occasion that he wants to make humanity a multi-planet species. In other words, he wants to put a viable colony on Mars. He can and will spend as many trillions of dollars as he can get his hands on in order to do it, all quite legitimately.
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I'm sure SpaceX can find places to spend money, but the trick is to spend it in a way that doesn't just toss it down a fiscal black hole and throw it into the wind.
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Note that even if they can not do this, they are already getting launch cheaper than competitors.
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SpaceX already has a 4-5 year fully booked launch backlog.
The company is safe.
I argue that their lower launch prices will cause an substantial increase in launch demands.
Cubesats + satellites in the 50-200 Kg weight should become commonplace.
Multiple LEO communication satellite networks should emerge.
A replacement to the ISS will become viable.
And all of this is without any reusability. Elon already stated they have figured out all the major pieces to recover the first stage. My only question is in what sha
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The main deal about 1st stage recovery is to simply make it cheaper to refurbish the vehicle as opposed to rebuilding it brand new. Any additional savings by performing such refurbishment is just additional profit or substantial cost savings.
Regardless, I'm still not convinced that a reduction of price to 10% of typical prices before SpaceX formed in the launcher market, at least over the relatively near term (aka 10-20 years), is going to result in 10x or more launches happening. I've looked over potenti
Re:SpaceX is so cheap (Score:4, Informative)
SpaceX is in the red currently and if they can market the heck out their rockets to Wall Street (for funding) and undercut everyone, hopefully timing will allow them to get into the black.
They do great work, but either SpaceX will survive as much as OSC did in the 90's (they did well to start subcompanies) or they will flame out hard from debt.
SpaceX doesn't need funding, they have paying customers [spacex.com]. And unless something goes terribly wrong, they are about to get a bunch more.
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Having enough paying customers is all that really matters, ultimately, as long as the expected future income is sufficient to service your debt.
Many companies are "in the red", in that their liabilities exceed their assets. Especially young companies. What matters is cash flow, which is all you need to pay your bills. If I borrow $10 million today and pay it off over 3 years, I can be "in the red" the entire time but still be a wildly "successful" company. I'm just a machine for moving money from customers
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Dragon Rider (modifications to the capsule for human launch by 2015) which will likely be ready 2 years ahead of other commercial cars and the ability to land on earth, the moon and mars;
Falcon Heavy for launching 53 tonnes to LEO for less than 100 million starting in 201
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The current Dragon could launch humans into space.
NASA and SpaceX agreed it would be better to conduct a very thorough human certification process, if a human were a stowaway in any of the current Dragon launches, he/she would have made it into the ISS safely.
With just the Falcon 9 margin of safety of being able to loose two engines and still reach a high enough altitude to engage the Dragon parachutes and do a normal ocean landing is already in theory safer than the Space Shuttle. Plus the simple fact they
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I'm sure there is a liability factor there too- nobody wants astronauts to die in a spacex/dragon launch. If this was 100% NASA it'd be a loss and PR disaster and as bad as the hit would be, they'd move on. If it happens in the first couple (dozen?) dragon launches it will sink the company and with it the falcon and the possibility of cheap launches.
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managers at NASA were poo-pooing Elon saying rockets are hard and noobs shouldn't try
maybe because that's definitely rocket science...
Is Elon an amateur scientist? (Score:2)
A day or so ago there was a discussion [slashdot.org] about whether amateurs could do real science. The consensus among professional researchers was that no amateur could do significant research without first getting an advanced degree.
One poster challenged the readers to give an example of an amateur scientist who had contributed in a meaningful way to an existing field of study.
Elon Musk has a BSc. in physics. Does this count?
(Or is this more engineering than science? Or maybe he's more of a bank-roller than a scientist
Re:Is Elon an amateur scientist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Forrest M. Mims, III. Caught a NASA satellite's instrument mis-calibration. Very much an amateur when it comes to astroscience anything. A rather decent educator, and man, does he have good handwriting or what.
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Elon Musk is an inventor / engineer.
So far he hasn't made any science breakthroughs. Yet.
There's far more money / success / prestige in what he's doing than in science. He's in the right business.
Re:SpaceX is so cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor track record? How so? They haven't popped one on the pad, as all the majors did getting to this point. They built an EELV class launcher for less than ULA charges to keep the manufacturing base available for DeltaIV/Atlas V.
These posts are so three years ago. SpaceX is bi-coastal and in business. All legacy launch companies are done. SLS? Done. It will go to the real commercial world for 3B$ instead of 30+. Lockmart and Boring cannot compete in any non rigged contest (CPFF what?). No more white collar welfare in the launch business.
Oh, and birds don't have to be 1/4B$ if launch costs drop by an order of magnitude. You don't have to be that careful. You can afford to lose a few. And, you can afford to use technologies developed this century as a bonus. "Flight Proven" == 1960's tech.
And we might get humans living off this rock this century, as a bonus. Or we can keep paying the tards to keep tarding.
andy
It is not about losing a bird (Score:2)
... but about losing its cargo.
While SpaceX might be able to afford that (and perhaps even an insurance covers the loss of the launch vehicle _and_ the payload) the customer might not be in the position to replace it at all (or in a timely manner).
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Seriously? Have you just crawled out of a cave? They've had multiple issues in Falcon V's seven launches to date. (Not to mention the Falcoln I.)
No, they're reality. No matter how hard you try and bury your head in the sand or how many ignorant "have they popped one on the pad" comments you make.
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So, do you work for Orbital, Boring, or Lockmart? ESA? Major sub? Trying to do SLS? Even work(ed) in Aerospace?
This is a mature Delta II launch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsVzpE7ltb8 [youtube.com]
A Titan 34D (carying a 1B$ KH-x spy satellite, no less):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBl03wVHOY [youtube.com]
Early failures:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8 [youtube.com]
All of these were funded ENTIRELY by the US Federal Government on a Cost Plus Fixed Fee basis, meaning even when they failed we paid costs AND profit to the contractors. S
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Look, SpaceX launched 2 last year, will launch 4 this year (roughly 1 every 3 months; however, 3 came in the last 3 months) and supposedly will do 15 next year (i.e. 1 every 3 weeks).
How does that compare to Ariane [wikipedia.org]?
ariane launched 4 this year; 7 in 2012; 5 in 2011; 6 in 2010.
IOW, ariane is NOT much better than SpaceX this year, and if SpaceX is successful next year, they will do double what Ariane did in their best year.
So, how about Atlas [wikipedia.org] and Delta [wikipedia.org]? in 2013
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, SpaceX is cheap, and yes, they could trivially match the Indian Mars probe price. You know how I know that? The Price Sheet [spacex.com] says a Falcon 9 launch is $56.5 million. Leaving plenty of slack to build a little Mars probe. Considering a ULA launch costs literally 10 times as much, cheap is an understatement.
They've been profitable for 5 years and their price has never been higher than that. Since they're profitable, they're obviously not loss leaders. Why would it go up now? Especially considering S
Re: (Score:1)
Likewise, MOM is a 1.3 metric tonne orbiting satellite, of which less than 15 kgs is devoted to the actual 5 simple instruments that were provided by other nations. Compare that to 2.5 tonnes maven with 65 kg devoted to 8 complex instruments, all produced in USA.
In addition, it is a near
Too Advanced (Score:1)
A 20 second burn that lasted 5 minutes - truly awesome.
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Merlin vacuum engine ignited to begin a five minute, 20 second burn that delivered the SES-8 A 20 second burn that lasted 5 minutes - truly awesome.
Rocket engine efficiency is measured in seconds, so it is entirely possible to have a 20 second burn that lasts 5 minutes.
Re: (Score:2)
Rocket engine efficiency is measured in seconds, so it is entirely possible to have a 20 second burn that lasts 5 minutes.
Isn't it amazing how people will fail to use wikipedia or even dictionary.com before disagreeing with some point that they know nothing about? Shocking.
There's plenty of room for misunderstanding or just plain being wrong but jiminy.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't it amazing how people will fail to use wikipedia or even dictionary.com before disagreeing with some point that they know nothing about? Shocking.
There's plenty of room for misunderstanding or just plain being wrong but jiminy.
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but on the off chance that you're referring to me:
Specific impulse (usually abbreviated Isp) is a way to describe the efficiency of rocket and jet engines. It represents the force with respect to the amount of propellant used per unit time.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_impulse [wikipedia.org]
If the "amount" of propellant ... is given in terms of weight (such as in kiloponds or newtons), then specific impulse has units of time.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_impulse [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Controlled booster stage attempt? (Score:1)
I thought they were going to try controlled descents with each Falcon launch. Anyone see a reference to this? Couldn't find any news.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For the SES-8 and Thaicom-6 launches SpaceX commited 100% of the rocket's capabilities to boost the rocket into a super sync orbit.
A GTO orbit is less than 36000Km x 185Km.
SES-8 was inserted into a 80000Km x 295Km orbit.
It reaches apogee when the moon is close by.
This trick helps save fuel to allow SES-8 to live much longer. Typically satellites useful lives are limited by fuel used for station keeping maneuvers.
In this sense, SES-8 and Thaicom-6 launches are even more valuable to their operators than a typ
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too bad.. I'd love to see them succeed at that as well
Re: (Score:1)
Don't worry, they will try again (and keep trying), just not on this flight. Although reusability is essential to Elon's long-term vision of colonizing Mars, right now it's more important to SpaceX's long-term survival to prove the F9's GTO capability. So, apply the KISS principle... save the fancy stuff for another less-critical launch.
(Posting as AC to preserve mod points.)