91–100 of 102 posts
I was recently watching a documentary about the early jet era and I remember being amazed at the innovation showed by those at De Havilland, Boeing, DC and thinking 'this would never happen again, everything is too expensive' - and here we have a private company getting us into space at 20% of the cost.
The table here doesn't give cost comparisons for the other launch vehicles, but in the press conference Elon Musk said that the Delta IV Heavy costs roughly 3x the Falcon Heavy, meaning that the FH is approximately 6x cheaper in $/lb to low earth orbit. The figures quoted on the page work out to $1,070 per lb to LEO. That's less than $200k to lift the mass of a 180lb human.
No, it's $80-$125 million to lift 650 humans, packed like intermodal containers in stacks roughly 20 bodies high. Which technically amortizes to ~$150k/sardine, but I don't think this is meaningful!
This really is impressive news. Out of curiosity, is there a plan by any government to clean up the ever increasing mess of space junk in LEO ?
I am totally blown away by how a private company has done this, especially at a cost much lower to what government programs have managed to achieve. I was recently watching a documentary about the early jet era and I remember being amazed at the innovation showed by those at De Havilland, Boeing, DC and thinking 'this would never happen again, everything is too expensive' - and here we have a private company getting…
This really is impressive news. Out of curiosity, is there a plan by any government to clean up the ever increasing mess of space junk in LEO ?
http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2010/34/ST...
Aside from the giant spike when China decided to blow up a satellite, it seemed to be leveling out...
Elon Musk seems to be someone who really knows how to do cool things with the spoils of a successful software company. Are there any other good examples of people like this that have taken one big win and parlayed it into investing in seriously futuristic technology?
Richard Branson is a good example of an "adventure capitalist". Here is his Wikipedia profile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson Here is the Wikipedia page for his space tourism company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic Also worthy of a mention is Mark Shuttleworth, who was the world's second space tourist (and also the founder of the Ubuntu Foundation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttl…
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At $1.11 billion per launch, though. SpaceX is promising $80-$125 million for half the payload.
I'm actually surprised things haven't gotten cheaper by more than a factor of 5 in half a century. (If anyone's wondering, $1.11 Billion is in 2011 dollars.) Does anyone know what the primary costs are? People, construction, raw materials, etc.?
We're used to electronics getting cheaper as we find ways to make smaller and faster chips. We get change driven by Moore's law.
Getting to orbit is governed by simple lifting against gravity, and that hasn't changed at all. ( It's still 9.8 m/s^2 ) A Falcon rocket looks a lot like a Saturn rocket, so desipite a lot of ideas, a radically different and better design hasn't been commericialised yet.
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Unless you extract fuel from the environment on your stop, it's a very bad idea to make a stop when you are shipping cargo to space. Any change in trajectory spends fuel. If you absolutely have to send the vehicle in pieces, you'd better send them to the lowest energy orbit, assemble them there and blast off. The ISS is not on a particularly useful orbit for this and the only reason I imagine to stop by would be to u…
I didn't mean to suggest the ISS in any way. I am talking about the various plans such as von Braun's Das Marsprojekt, where you assemble a fleet of (for example) 3720 ton Mars ships in orbit: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/41pegasus/01archives/Von_Braun_... It's not possible to launch a 3720 ton ship to Mars from the surface in one shot, it has to be assembled in space from parts and fuel shipped up in multiple launch…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia could lift up to 100 tons to LEO in the tested configuration and up to 200 tons in Hercules configuration (which never tested though).
I am totally blown away by how a private company has done this, especially at a cost much lower to what government programs have managed to achieve. I was recently watching a documentary about the early jet era and I remember being amazed at the innovation showed by those at De Havilland, Boeing, DC and thinking 'this would never happen again, everything is too expensive' - and here we have a private company getting…
You better not let a US military-industrial corporation like Boeing acquire SpaceX. Those low cost launches will disappear instantly.
They have a number of government contracts now, in the value of billions of dollars. They have only raised $125M total, so they may not need to raise much in an IPO.
