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SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

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Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#21

Post by fsloth »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #11
mattlondon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable . Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to g…

When we're drooling over these accomplishments, we should direct more of our praise to the thousands of really, really good engineers who did the work, built on the accumulated experience of millions, over decades. People seem to be very eager to ascribe success to heroic individuals, and while leadership is certainly something remarkable, I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achie…

Well, there is a mass grave of failed private space companies that predate SpaceX so Mr. Musk was entering some pretty hazardous territory, business wise. While the engineering work is of course non-trivial, in this case I would not downplay Mr. Musk's role in creating a company that put payload to orbit before becoming bankrupt.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#22

Post by jpgvm »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #11
mattlondon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable . Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to g…

When we're drooling over these accomplishments, we should direct more of our praise to the thousands of really, really good engineers who did the work, built on the accumulated experience of millions, over decades. People seem to be very eager to ascribe success to heroic individuals, and while leadership is certainly something remarkable, I think that there is a severe imbalance in who we're thanking for these achie…

Or if you are going to pick an individual it should be Gwynne Shotwell at least.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#23

Post by jpgvm »

fumblebee wrote: post #18

Is this something SpaceX eventually plan to commercialise, like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are doing? Seems to me that orbital spaceflight as a proposition is an order of magnitude more enticing than scratching the Kármán line. And for the people who could afford it, they'd surely pay an order of magnitude more.

I don't think they intend to commercialize it from a tourism perspective, they very much intend to do point-to-point terrestrial transportation via rockets though and that will be a commercial endeavor that carries people and cargo.

I don't know if it will happen in practice, or if it will be successful when they try it but it would be damn cool.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#24

Post by mkl »

mattlondon wrote: post #3
tpmx wrote: post #2

Civilian apparently meaning non-government here, not non-military. I guess not to be confused with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:NASA_civilian_astrona...

I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable . Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to g…

> It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable.

10 years ago many people thought it would happen well before 2021. The "first operational Dragon spacecraft was launched in December 2010" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX) and commercial flights to the ISS were right around the corner (cargo first happened May 2012).

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#25

Post by ashtonkem »

jpgvm wrote: post #23
fumblebee wrote: post #18

Is this something SpaceX eventually plan to commercialise, like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are doing? Seems to me that orbital spaceflight as a proposition is an order of magnitude more enticing than scratching the Kármán line. And for the people who could afford it, they'd surely pay an order of magnitude more.

I don't think they intend to commercialize it from a tourism perspective, they very much intend to do point-to-point terrestrial transportation via rockets though and that will be a commercial endeavor that carries people and cargo. I don't know if it will happen in practice, or if it will be successful when they try it but it would be damn cool.

Very cool, but a pretty worrying acceleration of fuel consumption for transit by the world’s rich. A Falcon 9 uses ~75,000 (depending on payload) gallons of RP-1, which is a type of kerosine. Meanwhile a LA to NYC flight takes roughly 5,000 gallons of kerosene (depending on direction). There’s obviously a sizable difference between the number of people in a typical cross country flight and in a Dragon crewed vehicle.

Our usage of fuel for regular jet travel is already becoming A Problem. Making it easier to burn more fuel for fewer people to travel faster is emphatically not what we need right now.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#26

Post by fallingknife »

tsimionescu wrote: post #13
mattlondon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable . Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to g…

While Elon Musk deserves credit for SpaceX, I fail to see what credit he deserves for Tesla. The founders of Tesla and the designers of the first car should absolutely get credit, but Musk is neither. He delayed the release of their first car to get rid of the founder, in fact.

The first Tesla is a car for rich people only. The reason for Tesla's 700b valuation is the innovation that Tesla has made in producing the model y and model 3 and the current goal of producing the first $25k mass produced electric car.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#27

Post by sneak »

ashtonkem wrote: post #25
jpgvm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they intend to commercialize it from a tourism perspective, they very much intend to do point-to-point terrestrial transportation via rockets though and that will be a commercial endeavor that carries people and cargo. I don't know if it will happen in practice, or if it will be successful when they try it but it would be damn cool.

Very cool, but a pretty worrying acceleration of fuel consumption for transit by the world’s rich. A Falcon 9 uses ~75,000 (depending on payload) gallons of RP-1, which is a type of kerosine. Meanwhile a LA to NYC flight takes roughly 5,000 gallons of kerosene (depending on direction). There’s obviously a sizable difference between the number of people in a typical cross country flight and in a Dragon crewed vehicle.…

Yeah, someone over there at SpaceX should really address the issue of transportation fossil fuel use on a large scale. To only build orbital rockets while ignoring the climate crisis here on Earth would be irresponsible.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#28

Post by grecy »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #19

3 days in space means that there must be facilities for eating, and toilet facilities. Are these detailed anywhere?

There was quite a bit of talk about the toilet on Dragon during the ISS missions.. but I don't know if it's ever been documented in detail anywhere

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#29

Post by garyclarke27 »

starfallg wrote: post #4
mattlondon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point here is, this is the first "private" space mission that wasn't using government/military hardware or staff. It is a rocket designed by a commercial company, flying people who just made a few calls and then paid to do it. It is pretty wild when you think about it - not so long ago (10 years maybe?) this sort of thing would have been unthinkable . Say what you will about Elon Musk, but you've got to g…

Wouldn't Virgin Galactic's flight be the first for this then?

Virgin Galactic only reached Mach 3 speed and was nowhere near achieving orbital velocity which requires Mach 23 (28,000 kph) ie order of magnitude more difficult.

Re: SpaceX cleared for historic civilian launch next week

#30

Post by avian »

ashtonkem wrote: post #25
jpgvm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they intend to commercialize it from a tourism perspective, they very much intend to do point-to-point terrestrial transportation via rockets though and that will be a commercial endeavor that carries people and cargo. I don't know if it will happen in practice, or if it will be successful when they try it but it would be damn cool.

Very cool, but a pretty worrying acceleration of fuel consumption for transit by the world’s rich. A Falcon 9 uses ~75,000 (depending on payload) gallons of RP-1, which is a type of kerosine. Meanwhile a LA to NYC flight takes roughly 5,000 gallons of kerosene (depending on direction). There’s obviously a sizable difference between the number of people in a typical cross country flight and in a Dragon crewed vehicle.…

All terrestrial transport ideas from SpaceX I've seen involved Starship, not Falcon 9/Dragon.

I don't know how that compares with a typical airliner in terms of miles per gallon (probably not much better than Dragon). However Starship runs on methane and that should in theory be easy to produce from atmospheric CO2 and electricity from renewable sources.

In any case, I don't think many people took the idea of using Starship as a terrestrial passenger transport seriously.

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