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SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

nasa.gov

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Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#31

Post by mikeash »

jerf wrote: post #27
mikeash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm imagining something like a thruster getting stuck on at a distance where it's far enough to build up some speed but close enough to have a decent chance of hitting. I know the relative speeds aren't high, but the ISS isn't exactly heavily armored either. I doubt it would take much of a speed difference in a collision to do some real damage. I'm sure the odds of anything like that going wrong are extremely low, bu…

While that window is non-zero, it is also very, very small.

I'm sure. It's just that the urge to CYA for a unique $100 billion object has got to be huge.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#32

Post by cryptoz »

blakefrost wrote: post #29
MPSimmons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love a sysadmin position there. A lot. I do't have the Windows background that they prefer, though. Maybe later.

Please tell me their spaceship doesn't run on windows.

Nah, the ships themselves run linux. They use Windows for the ERP stuff, like parts tracking, analytics, reporting, etc.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#33

Post by joshuahedlund »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

I'll add my voice to the chorus of folks gushing about how awesome this is, but here's a list of reason on just WHY this is so awesome. Straight off the top, this is only the third launch of the Falcon 9. This rocket alone represents a dramatic disruption of the entire orbital launch industry, offering to make launch of both humans and cargo cheaper than it's ever been by an incredibly wide margin. If this rocket pro…

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#34

Post by StevenRayOrr »

I get caught up in the romantics of this.

We could be explorers again like Magellan or Shackleton, this time charting the vast, infinitude of the stars. We could see planets and moons that are but specks in a telescope. It has been so easy, over the last few years, to become jaded with politics and our society and the minutia of technology. SpaceX gets me excited about "the future (of our species)" which hasn't happened in a long time.

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#35

Post by ramidarigaz »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #33
InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

I'll add my voice to the chorus of folks gushing about how awesome this is, but here's a list of reason on just WHY this is so awesome. Straight off the top, this is only the third launch of the Falcon 9. This rocket alone represents a dramatic disruption of the entire orbital launch industry, offering to make launch of both humans and cargo cheaper than it's ever been by an incredibly wide margin. If this rocket pro…

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

SpaceX lists launch prices on their website. The prices for the Falcon 9 are a little ways down on this page: http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#36

Post by Arjuna »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #33
InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

I'll add my voice to the chorus of folks gushing about how awesome this is, but here's a list of reason on just WHY this is so awesome. Straight off the top, this is only the third launch of the Falcon 9. This rocket alone represents a dramatic disruption of the entire orbital launch industry, offering to make launch of both humans and cargo cheaper than it's ever been by an incredibly wide margin. If this rocket pro…

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

"Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?"

"Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle? A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission." [1]

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl...

"The average price of a full-up NASA Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station is $133 million including inflation, or roughly $115m in today's dollars, and we have a firm, fixed price contract with NASA for 12 missions. This price includes the costs of the Falcon 9 launch, the Dragon spacecraft, all operations, maintenance and overhead, and all of the work required to integrate with the Space Station. If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference. (This concept may be foreign to some traditional government space contractors that seem to believe that cost overruns should be the responsibility of the taxpayer.)

The total company expenditures since being founded in 2002 through the 2010 fiscal year were less than $800 million, which includes all the development costs for the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon. Included in this $800 million are the costs of building launch sites at Vandenberg, Cape Canaveral and Kwajalein, as well as the corporate manufacturing facility that can support up to 12 Falcon 9 and Dragon missions per year. This total also includes the cost of five flights of Falcon 1, two flights of Falcon 9, and one up and back flight of Dragon." [2]

[2] http://www.spacex.com/usa.php

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#37

Post by slug »

cryptoz wrote: post #7

I can't wait! SpaceX is the most amazing company right now. They're work is the exact opposite of the trivial-to-start social networking apps, the tedium of online advertising. They want to send people to Mars . And they're launching to the ISS tomorrow, the most expensive object ever built by humanity. They have the world's trust. They have the world's best engineers. And they have some intense ambition and lots of…

I would love to work there but they only recruit U.S. citizens and although I was contacted by them last year, it ended up going nowhere when I mentioned this "small" detail.

Can you elaborate on your phone interview?

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#38

Post by [deleted] »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #33
InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

I'll add my voice to the chorus of folks gushing about how awesome this is, but here's a list of reason on just WHY this is so awesome. Straight off the top, this is only the third launch of the Falcon 9. This rocket alone represents a dramatic disruption of the entire orbital launch industry, offering to make launch of both humans and cargo cheaper than it's ever been by an incredibly wide margin. If this rocket pro…

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

[deleted]

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#39

Post by starpilot »

slug wrote: post #37
cryptoz wrote: post #7

I can't wait! SpaceX is the most amazing company right now. They're work is the exact opposite of the trivial-to-start social networking apps, the tedium of online advertising. They want to send people to Mars . And they're launching to the ISS tomorrow, the most expensive object ever built by humanity. They have the world's trust. They have the world's best engineers. And they have some intense ambition and lots of…

I would love to work there but they only recruit U.S. citizens and although I was contacted by them last year, it ended up going nowhere when I mentioned this "small" detail. Can you elaborate on your phone interview?

Glassdoor has some info on SpaceX interviews: http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Space-Exploration-Technol...

Re: SpaceX headed to the ISS tomorrow

#40

Post by ChuckMcM »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #33
InclinedPlane wrote: post #30

I'll add my voice to the chorus of folks gushing about how awesome this is, but here's a list of reason on just WHY this is so awesome. Straight off the top, this is only the third launch of the Falcon 9. This rocket alone represents a dramatic disruption of the entire orbital launch industry, offering to make launch of both humans and cargo cheaper than it's ever been by an incredibly wide margin. If this rocket pro…

Can you give some numbers for some of the "vast" cost difference we're talking about (even if they're ballpark figures)?

It it difficult to 'cost out' the current Soyuz infrastructure because so much of it can be accounted to zero with basic accounting. (The cost of design and development was paid off over 15 years of launches according to an old press release but that was also at a time when the then Soviets had even less of an independent press than they do today)

For me however, this in itself is a pretty amazing thing, because SpaceX is a 'company' rather than a 'nation-state' the cost accounting is actually grounded in an independent currency and without hidden funding sources (like much of both the US and Soviet space programs benefited hugely from the investment in inter-continental ballistic missile technology which was 'defense' spending rather than 'space' spending. Such games are not possible at SpaceX.

So it would be accurate to say that the Falcon9 launch system is the first system for which we know the true cost of the system. And that is pretty amazing to my way of thinking.

When you combine that with a fixed price to get various tonnage in LEO or a into a Geo/Lunar transfer orbit, you can make statements like "Getting this into orbit costs $X" with overruns/delays/randomness priced out.

With some newer work being developed for on orbit vehicles, things like Lunar exploitation and Lagrange point stations become an exercise in money rather than politics and money. And that is also a huge shift.

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