SpaceX Cleared For US Military Launches 62
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Air Force has given private rocket company SpaceX clearance to launch military satellites into orbit. This disrupts the lock that Boeing and Lockheed Martin have had on military launches for almost a decade. SpaceX will get its first opportunity to bid for such launches in June, when the Air Force posts a contract to launch GPS satellites.
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He's not your guy, pal.
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mailto:feedback@slashdot.org [mailto]
Time to buy some SpaceX stocks....oh wait... (Score:4, Informative)
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Spelling "foul"... spelling is for the birds.
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Yep.. and the etymologies are totally unrelated. "Foul" is believed to possibly trace back back to an onomatopoeic word "*pu", meaning foul or rotten, being the sound a person makes when smelling such an object (*p underwent an early shift to f). "Fowl" and "fly" are both believed to trace back to "*pleuk", meaning to fly. The proto-germanic for bird, fuglaz, could be thought of as "that which flies". There are lots of cognates in modern languages - for example, in Icelandic, "u" often equates to an "ow" so
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Not as much as you might think and it is not as "reliable" as it once was.
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what's reassuring about this (Score:3)
I love it that the Military is making this a level playing field. In the past there have been instances where the Military industrial complex promised jobs to retiring Majors close to the purchase reccomendation process, tilting things. Then there's the stockholm syndrome and the nobody-ever-got-fired for buying IBM decision.
But for the past decade the military has gone very pragmatic. It's all about what protects the warfighter. What works. It even tells congress it doesn't actually want a lot of the b
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Maybe the Army has been pretty pragmatic about what works and getting rid of boondoggle projects this last decade. But the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps sure do seem to be fully committed to burning billions upon billions of dollars in the F-35 money pit.
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Even worse is that they not only suckered the Australian government into buying that flying piece of crap but got them to place a second order for more of them :(
There are far better things our government could be spending money on than shiny new toys for our military.
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While I think the f35 is a complete waste Australia needed a replacement for the f111s and the super hornets are only a stop gap. Because of our geography we need a decent airforce to protect the country, too much land and too much coast. If you accept that Aus needs a military at all then you have to accept we need a decent fighter platform.
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We do need an air force but I don't buy into the argument that Australia is going to be invaded or attacked anytime soon and therefore we need a top-of-the-line air force with the most expensive fighters money can buy. There are plenty of fighter options (both from the yanks and from Europe) that give Australia what it actually needs but don't cost anywhere near as much as the F-35 is costing us.
The whole "China is a threat" thing is overblown. Why would China attack Australia or the US?
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I agree with you about the F35. I think it is a terrible waste of money. So far it isn't even lining up as being particularly good. That said the f111s were getting very long in the tooth and needed significant upgrades to remain viable. The biggest problem, as I see it, with the F35 is it is trying to be everything to everyone. Instead they should have built 2 different planes. One an air superiority fighter and one ground attack.
As for the China threat, the issues will come around territorial claims
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Industry serving the military. Hmm. You decide.
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Maybe.
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Yes and no... Yes, they are competing in the same market; No, they are not "joined at the hip" with the rest of them. Yes, they do business with many, but SpaceX is not yet "assimilated" into the BORG. And as a privately held company, it's much easier to resist that pull. Elon has been quite clear on this. He won't do a SpaceX IPO until he's certain the company is going to Mars, with or without him.
More to the point, I would argue that membership in the MIC would imply a disposition toward warfare befitti
Re: So, does this make them part of (Score:2)
Why? *Someone* is going to get that contract if there's a bid request, so it may as well be the company that will do what we would regard as the most good with the profits from the sale.
Great way to cut back on military spending! (Score:2)
>> disrupts the lock that Boeing and Lockheed Martin have had
Wow, that seems like a great way to cut back on military spending!
>> (reality)
Oh sh*t. Nevermind.
Elon Hours (Score:3)
And now Elon Musk will encounter the hordes of defense contractors who will refuse to work his infamous 60 hour weeks.
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So basically you got paid the equivalent of less than 35K/year.
100k/year.
50k/year for 40 hours.
34.4k/year for 251 days/year.
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That is before taxes.
According to US income tax brackets on Wikipedia (I'm not a US citizen) and some calculations you would pay about 4800,- federal income tax if you earn 35K per year. With a yearly income of 100K you pay 21300,- federal taxes. Doing a little more calculation we get that the hourly net income with 100K with 80 hours per week for 52 weeks is less than a normal job for 31K per year.
So basically he got paid the equivalent of less than 31K/year.
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That's great, but you can make those bucks without that kind of effort.
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What parties?
Context (Score:4, Informative)
This ends a situation in which two companies that would otherwise have been competitive bidders decided that it would cost them less to be a monopoly, and created their own cartel. Since they were a sole provider, they persuaded the government to pay them a Billion dollars a year simply so that they would retain the capability to manufacture rockets to government requirements.
Yes, there will be at least that Billion in savings and SpaceX so far seems more than competitive with the prices United Launch Alliance was charging. There will be other bidders eventually, as well.
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Don't worry, Bruce, now that the Air Force has experienced real competition, they want to keep it even if they have to pay a lot more to keep United Launch Alliance in business.
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ULA was the result of exactly this. The four biggest aerospace companies all merged into two, Boeing/McDonald Douglass and Lockheed/Martin, then those two formed ULA as a joint venture. This is why ULA's Delta and Atlas are entirely different systems. They were created by different companies. They realized it was smart to not compete since they had nearly all big military launches.
Presumably their next rocket, Vulcan [wikipedia.org], will be a replacement for both Delta and Atlas.
Also, Alliant bought Orbital to form Orbita
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The Orbital ATK merger is different because they had complementary capabilities and weren't really competitors. Orbital didn't have any experience building rocket motors; they have always refurbished ICBMs for military launches, or purchased motors for their private launches. Whereas Thiokol produced many of those original ICBM motors that Oribital was reusing, and was already contracting with them to produce new motors for Antares. There was/is some overlap in the non-launch services parts of the companies
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That is a good point, Orbital ATK was more of a vertical integration move. This seems like it is more possible to create efficiency instead of trying to screw the customer (the US government) out of more money.
Though it is a nice system. Thiokol got government contracts to build way too many ICBMs, and Orbital gets contracts to turn those ICBMs into satellite launchers.
Either way, they understand the future is their own completely new rockets. Antares will be flying again soon.
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Too busy making comments, probably.
Russian rocket motors (Score:1)
Isn't this just the result of Russia withdrawing supply of motors for military use?
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As I understand it, Russia threatened to, but didn't actually withdraw the supply of rocket motors (i.e., the RD-180 used by the Atlas V), but the US Congress has prevented any military contractors from giving Russia any money (e.g, ULA for rocket motors) because of the Crimea/Ukraine situation. Sadly, Russia probably just inadvertently seeded the idea to the US congress and they ran with it...
Apparently, there is an out. In the event of a national emergency, NASA can actually finish purchases of these roc
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Hehe, in other words:
Party A: You're fired!
Party B: Too late, I quit!
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Russia would like for us to continue gifting them with cash for 40-year-old missle motors, it's our own government that doesn't want them any longer. For good reason. That did not cause SpaceX to enter the competitive process, they want the U.S. military as a customer. But it probably did make it go faster.
Also, ULA is flying 1960 technology, stuff that Mercury astronauts used, and only recently came up with concept drawings for something new due to competitive pressure from SpaceX. So, I am sure that folks
Unfair competition (Score:5, Funny)