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SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

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Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#101

Post by alpine »

alpine wrote: post #88
natep wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what mechanism, exactly do you think this will happen? He has no plans to sell. He'd like to go to Mars himself, but not if he doesn't think the mission of SpaceX would continue without him. So...that leaves it becoming 'a nationalised company of the US Federal Government"....aka, the gov't takes it over by force? How likely do you really think that is? It only took over Ford because they were bankrupt, so all he…

He has no plans to sell It is a brave man that gets in to bed with the government thinking he can withstand the intolerable pressure they can bring, if they decide, to bend his will. Nationalisation... How likely do you really think that is? Surely, it is for the oracles to strike a claim on future events, but when you consider gold confiscation in the 1930s, oil nationalisation in the 1950s, the absurd nationalisati…

How many NASA contractors have been nationalized in the past?

Probably not zero, if you are genuinely interested. However, lazy quips aside, the past is not the future.

Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#102

Post by btilly »

arrrg wrote: post #99
btilly wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering its predecessor, the shuttle, was one of the least safe rockets ever designed... According to http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/000940.html as of 2003, the space shuttle had the best safety record of any rocket design that had been flown to space at least 100x. That fact would argue strongly against your claim.

Those comparisons make no sense and are just plain wrong. First point: When looking at safety we care about injuries and deaths, not the launch failure rate. A broken parked car might not be reliable but it certainly is safe. Don’t confuse reliability and safety. The two are certainly related – but not one and the same. The biggest problem with the Space Shuttle, for example, is that there is no plan B (most of the t…

You are right, I was confusing reliability and safety.

That said, we currently have little reliability data on various SpaceX technologies, and no safety data at all. They are doing everything they should do to make those numbers good, but until those numbers come in we won't know what to think of them.

Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#104

Post by stcredzero »

alpine wrote: post #49
derekp7 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The job of the rockets isn't to gain height (that is a side effect), unless you are working with a sub-orbital design. The job is to accelerate the payload to around Mach 25 or so. The reason this is challenging is that you not only have to accelerate the payload, you also have to accelerate the fuel, fuel tanks, engines, and other associated hardware too. Which is why the promising techs mostly revolve around using…

Actually, the job of the rocket is to to increase the potential energy of the payload, so using a He balloon to put some distance between the rocket/payload package and the ground is an entirely sensible proposition.

Most of it is kinetic energy.

Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#106

Post by HodCarrier »

btilly wrote: post #46
ceejayoz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is easy to use superlatives like "safest rocket ever designed". But a lot of stuff can go wrong - fast - when you're sitting on a big pile of potential explosives that under other circumstances you'd keep a safe distance from. Until they actually achieve it, you shouldn't throw the superlatives around. This claim revolves more around the fact that the rocket can do a powered abort at any time, I think. It's pure…

So what you're telling me is that they have a more sophisticated system than previous ones with sophisticated backups. When it comes to reliability sophisticated can go either way - it can be better or can just give more things than can go wrong. For instance what happens on your vertical landing if a sensor malfunction causes the software to decide that the rocket is not vertical unless it is at a 20% tilt? (Don't l…

> (Don't laugh - based on the description that Elon gave in an interview, the failure of their third launch was due to a sensor that concluded they were in high in the atmosphere while they were still on the ground.

Source? If you're talking about F1-003, you're incorrect. If you're talking about something else, I'm interested.

Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#107

Post by stcredzero »

learc83 wrote: post #51
hammock wrote: post #38

So SpaceX is now officially a government contractor. This may be the beginning of the end for them. Can we name any govt contractor with a $400MM contract that has stayed true to its entrepreneurial principles and not fallen into the rent-seeking abyss?

From their previous contracts, unlike other contractors SpaceX is responsible for any cost overruns.

From what I understand, they also did a phenomenally good job of making the uploading slick.

Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#108

Post by alpine »

stcredzero wrote: post #104
alpine wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the job of the rocket is to to increase the potential energy of the payload, so using a He balloon to put some distance between the rocket/payload package and the ground is an entirely sensible proposition.

Most of it is kinetic energy.

Most of what is kinetic energy? Its job?

A rocket that reaches escape velocity from Earth can have zero kinetic energy.

Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#109

Post by erikpukinskis »

dfriedmn wrote: post #7
javanix wrote: post #3

According to http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl... each Shuttle launch cost about $450 million. This contract amount seems to suggest that SpaceX launches will come in significantly lower than the Shuttle - a very good sign for continued space research.

One of Musk's original goals was to do it 10x cheaper, and accd to his recent discussion with NPR, he's already at 1/8th of the cost(1). What an amazing accomplishment. 1. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/18/153015277/on-eve-of-launch-spa...

I commend SpaceX for the work they've done to reduce the costs, but it's not particularly fair to compare to the Shuttle program for several reasons:

1) SpaceX employs engineers who worked on the Shuttle, thus getting all of their lessons learned for free.

2) SpaceX gets to use facilities NASA built, like launchpads and testing facilities much more cheaply than if they had to build their own facilities. They tested their heat shields at NASA Ames, for example.

3) Everything is cheaper now. Not just raw materials, but imagine the cost savings when every engineer has a (Shuttle Era) supercomputer on their desk. Testing is dramatically less expensive.

4) Everything is better now. The (NASA developed) heat shields are much higher performance than those available in the Shuttle era. The level of computer control is much more sophisticated. Better technology means you can do more with less.

In short, SpaceX has massive, massive advantages over the original Shuttle team. I would hope that they could do more, more safely, at less cost.

Re: SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

#110

Post by btilly »

HodCarrier wrote: post #106
btilly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're telling me is that they have a more sophisticated system than previous ones with sophisticated backups. When it comes to reliability sophisticated can go either way - it can be better or can just give more things than can go wrong. For instance what happens on your vertical landing if a sensor malfunction causes the software to decide that the rocket is not vertical unless it is at a 20% tilt? (Don't l…

> (Don't laugh - based on the description that Elon gave in an interview, the failure of their third launch was due to a sensor that concluded they were in high in the atmosphere while they were still on the ground. Source? If you're talking about F1-003, you're incorrect. If you're talking about something else, I'm interested.

http://pandodaily.com/2012/07/12/pandomonthly-presents-a-fir... around 17:45.

And yes, I had remembered it wrong from when I watched it a few weeks ago. I remembered the bit about dropping below sea level pressure, but not the rest of the cascade.

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