11–20 of 188 posts
SpaceX is just one part of this program... As part of the new agreements, Sierra Nevada will receive $212.5 million, SpaceX will receive $440 million, and Boeing will receive $460 million. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/08/03/nasa-awards-11-bil...
Didn't realize beer was such an integral part of space exploration.
Hats off, Elon Musk. Hats. Off.
I'm impressed that there's $440M left in NASA (or over $1 Billion with Sierra Nevada and Boeing included) to fund a new space shuttle, somehow I was under the false impression that there wouldn't be any more of that type of thing. Hats off, Elon Musk. Hats. Off.
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'm impressed that there's $440M left in NASA (or over $1 Billion with Sierra Nevada and Boeing included) to fund a new space shuttle, somehow I was under the false impression that there wouldn't be any more of that type of thing. Hats off, Elon Musk. Hats. Off.
It's not really funding a new space shuttle. It's essentially NASA buying seats on the human-rated version of the existing Dragon capsule.
SpaceX is just one part of this program... As part of the new agreements, Sierra Nevada will receive $212.5 million, SpaceX will receive $440 million, and Boeing will receive $460 million. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/08/03/nasa-awards-11-bil...
Sierra Nevada will receive $212.5 million Didn't realize beer was such an integral part of space exploration.
Oh I wish they hadn't said that, they said the same thing about the Titanic.
I will be the first to applaud if SpaceX achieves this goal. I am certain that they want to achieve this goal. But when you look at previous launch vehicles from existing agencies that had over 100 launches, their launch failure rate vary from 1.4% (the Space Shuttle) to 14% (US Atlas) with the Russian Soyuz and European Ariane both coming in somewhere around 5%. SpaceX would have to improve on existing rocket designs by several orders of magnitude just to get to a pretty crappy safety record.
So far SpaceX has had 8 launches with 5 consecutive successes. The initial failures were clearly part of the learning process. But their current string of successes does not provide any statistical evidence that they will prove to be safer in the long run than even the worst major rocket program. Sure they plan to be safe. But safety is based on seeing what happens, not what they planned to have happen.
In this light it is worth reviewing http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roger... to see how safe people thought that the Space Shuttle would be. Initial estimates of the safety of a launch went from 1/100 to 1/100,000 with the riskier estimates coming from lower level engineers and the safer ones coming from upper management. Whenever you see numbers in the press, it is guaranteed that they represent the view from the top. We should therefore assume that they will prove to be shockingly optimistic until there is concrete data.