341–350 of 368 posts
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The EELV program doesn't actually require two different providers to guarantee access to space. It requires two different families of launch vehicles. ULA had the Atlas V and Delta IV families.
... and Delta IV Medium is being retired, because it's expensive and no longer needed as the second medium launch vehicle.
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I'm familiar with this article. First, "adventure" is a reason to go there, not to settle. Second, I'm not buying the "drastically improve humanity's chance at survival" argument. There have been several mass extinction events in the past, so in order to survive one that might be coming, we should move to a place where there is likely no life at all? That does not make any sense to me. If we can survive on mars, we c…
> If we can survive on mars, we can survive on Earth no matter what can plausibly happen to it. Exactly. So going to Mars and staying there long-term will require us to develop many solutions that can be applied here on Earth. Both under current conditions and conditions that would currently be civilisation-threatening.
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Next time, just spend 15 minutes to automate it. :)
Then 2 hours maintaining and improving it.
javascript:void((function(doc)%7Bif(typeof jQuery%3D%3D%27undefined%27)%7Bvar script_jQuery%3Ddocument.createElement(%27script%27)%3Bscript_jQuery.setAttribute(%27src%27,%27//code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js%27)%3Bdocument.body.appendChild(script_jQuery)%3Bconsole.log(%27jQuery included %5E_%5E%27)%3B%7Delse%7Bconsole.log(%27jQuery already included ...%27)%3B%7D%7D)(document))%3B
copy(jQuery("a").filter(function(idx,el) { return jQuery(el).attr('href').indexOf('vote')!==-1; }).map(function(idx,el) { return 'https://news.ycombinator.com/' + jQuery(el).attr('href'); }).toArray())
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bulk-url-opener-ex...
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Just need a pissing contest between SpaceX and Blue Origin now and everyone will benefit
Blue origin isn't even in the same league. Their rockets go straight up, stay there for a bit and down again. Spacex achieves magnitudes higher velocity, altitude and actually delivers things to orbit. BlueOrigin is Bezos' pet project akin to taking a heli tour around the city while SpaceX is doing a transcontinental flight half way around the world.
It's also true that BO are not standing still and their plans look good overall. I think it's inevitable that the industry will explode with competition at some point not too far from now.
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It's a bit disappointing to me that poverty, human trafficking, addiction, habitat destruxtion, cultural erasure, genocide, torture, extinction, etc aren't very powerful motivators for such people. I feel such pressure to use our new skills to solve these problems, but I know 10 years ago they were a combination of invisible/impossible to me. If I hadn't been aggressively pushed by smart feminists to examine my life…
The thing about Mars is that it does not solve any problem. It just give us time to solve the problem. It mulitply the chance of humanity surviving a problem that kills our only "capsule", Earth. And that dangerous event could be external to humanity. So Mars is a part of a solution for all that : buy all the rest of humanity time to solve that problem and making sure enough humans can be born and live so that at lea…
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Russians no chance the degree of corruption makes any serious project a guaranteed failure
You're underestimating Russia ridiculously.
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That's not really a fair comparison. The amount of money you lose if something bad happens is more than just the cost of replacing your payload (which is what insurance covers)
Why wouldn't they obtain insurance for the total cost of the mishap?
Beyond the cost of a new satellite (covered by insurance) and a new launch (SpaceX is giving them one for free) Spacecom still has to provide coverage for their customers. The solution is to lease someone else's satellite for 4 years, which cost them $88 million [1]. On top of that, they were in the middle of selling the company for $285 million. The deal was contingent on the Amos-6 satellite being fully operational. Supposedly, the buyer only wants to pay $190 million now. They may also end up backing out.
Someone else's launch going badly can also be bad for your company. The explosion that took out Amos-6 also damaged the pad and threw off SpaceX's schedule (which was already oversubscribed). Inmarsat was required by the EU to start using their spectrum by a given deadline, which they ended up missing. Theoretically, the EU could take away their spectrum allocation (although they probably won't). Inmarsat did end up having to buy a launch with another provider though, which probably cost them a ton of money[3].
[1] http://spacenews.com/spacecom-begins-service-with-a-borrowed...
[2] http://spacenews.com/spacecom-reports-lull-in-talks-with-chi...
[3] http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13883640/spacex-satellite-...
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You're underestimating Russia ridiculously.
Would you care to provide an example to the contrary? Look at Rosnano, Scolocovo or any other multi-billion dollar project with 0 ROI.
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Would you care to provide an example to the contrary? Look at Rosnano, Scolocovo or any other multi-billion dollar project with 0 ROI.
I don't doubt that Russia is swimming in corruption and that it makes a lot of things more difficult. But to say that they're incapable of a major engineering project, even if Putin takes a personal interest? I think you'll need to justify that.
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Arianespace is their biggest competitor, they are the de facto rulers of the commercial launch market, with SpaceX hot on their heels. The Ariane 5 launches twin payloads about 7 times a year, for a total of about 14 total spacecraft launches per year. SpaceX is about at a similar cadence but has yet to hit the overall schedule and mission reliability figures that Arianespace has achieved so it's still a bit of a rac…
The one part of the market where they will continue to see competition is for those payloads/trajectories where there is no way to land the booster.