"[T]he Apollo program was a major effort by the most powerful nation in the world. Falcon/Dragon is happening because a young genius decided to become a Heinlein hero, and so started a rocket-ship company. It's sad that most people have not yet realized it but the most interesting story in the world is unfolding right now."
> Falcon/Dragon is happening because a young genius decided to become a Heinlein hero, and so started a rocket-ship company.
Also, because it's happening 54 years after NASA was setup.
The kind of reading you linked to is disingenuous in the extreme and this kind of stuff seems common in SpaceX fans. Falcon/Dragon comparable to Apollo 11? No, not even remotely, Apollo 11 was the first event of its kind, SpaceX is currently attempting something which has been repeatedly achieved for the last 50 years, something which is almost routine for many nations nowadays: putting payloads in low orbit.
I don't want to put SpaceX down, what they're doing is great and opens the door for cheaper and simpler commercial exploitation of low-orbit, but comparing it to Apollo 11 is infuriatingly off-base and insane. And it's an insult to all of those who came before SpaceX, all of those who've worked in space agencies the world over (and especially NASA).
Most of the SpaceX fans I've seen aren't raving about SpaceX's technology (which, you rightly point out is a direct descendant of NASA). What they are raving about is SpaceX's economic model.
Because their model isn't based strictly on government contracting. It is based on minimizing costs to build a self-sustaining, privately operated space program. Contractors give you the space shuttle: it doesn't matter how expensive it is if it's what was in the RFP.
It's the difference between the government contracting out the F22 versus going to Boeing to buy a 737. And that difference is what makes it exciting.
Consider: if SpaceX's plans for fully reusable launch vehicles come to fruition then we may see a day where it is possible to launch the mass of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier plus 20,000 people into orbit every year for around the same cost as the Shuttle program.
Think on that a while. Think what it would mean even to only partially succeed at those goals, even by a wide margin.
Could you clarify the numbers here? I thought it would be interesting to compare this to the cost of constructing a Nimitz-class carrier here on earth, which seems to be around 5 billion USD.
Er, what needs clarifying? And why would you compare the cost of constructing an aircraft carrier to the cost of launching its equivalent mass? He wasn't speaking of any particular property of a Nimitz carrier other than its mass, and the cost of constructing military and civilian vehicles is not comparable.
The exact costs. I was wondering how much it will hypothetically cost to launch that mass to orbit, in order to compare that number to the cost of the complexity of an aircraft carrier.
It's not really a useful comparison, I know, just thought I might get a kick out of it.
Right now (2012 launch price) it would cost about $500 billion to launch the equivalent mass with Falcon 9s. They expect to cut the current cost in half, and with a very high launch rate Musk has said it could be 1/10th, but the required launch rate may not be achievable.
The entire shuttle program cost around $200 billion in 2010 dollars.
In fact, SpaceX has a technical debt to Apollo which they've been quick to acknowledge --- pointing out, for instance, that the Merlin engine injector design uses techniques pioneered on the Apollo LEM descent engine.
What's odd here is the failure to point out what SpaceX is doing differently --- engineering not for optimal performance, but for price/performance. (Using the same basic engine design on both Falcon 9 stages, for instance, and designing the tankage so that common tooling can be used for both stages. I'm sure there are more decisions along these lines that they haven't made public.)
Next launch window Tuesday, May 22. They seem to have a good process for handling the failure though, which is probably more important than how they handle success (although less exciting for viewers).
They are designed to be held down on the launch pad operating at full power for up to 20 seconds (looking for source) before being released so that they can verify all systems are operating correctly before it is in the air.
No, SpaceX themselves have done it several times, and I'm about 90% sure there's prior precedent as well. It's a theoretical capability of any liquid-fueled rocket, assuming an adequate hold-down system.
That's why I was hoping the hybrid engine Scaled Composites used for the X-prize would work out - it gives you the best of both worlds. Haven't heard much about that lately.
About 3-5 min before the launch time there were many voices chiming in to say "ready". I remember one of them, "OSM" had to be asked twice before they responded ready, which was different than all the rest. Anybody on here know what "OSM" stands for? Is it orbital station module? Anyways, I was just wondering if it might have been connected with the abort (such as they saw the high pressure build up in engine 5).
Elon Musk tweeted that joke too. I find it pretty annoying, he's a senior staff engineer, and that is pretty rude to denigrate him in public like that. Hopefully they know each other well and it's a running joke or something.
Cost is everything in spaceflight and SpaceX has cracked the cost barrier wide open. Even in Russia where they can build rockets out of the same factories they've been using for decades and where labor can be dirt cheap they can't match the costs that SpaceX is capable of, nor can China.
And this is largely because the company is entirely commercial. They build rockets and spacecraft to their own specs not based on government contracts and to government rules and specifications. They have built an entire orbital launch vehicle which is competitive in capabilities to the Ariane 5, the Delta IV, the Atlas V, and the Proton M, all of which took enormous government programs and billions of dollars to develop. SpaceX build their rocket from scratch for less than half a billion dollars all told. That is revolutionary.
More so, they are only the 4th entity in the world who has succeeded in any degree in creating and launching an orbital spacecraft that is capable of being manned and they are almost certain to be the first non-government entity in history to launch astronauts into orbit.
And that is just the prelude. They are also working on the Falcon Heavy, which will provide extra capability and far lower costs than the Falcon 9. And they are working on a fully reusable launch vehicle from the 1st stage up through the crew capsule, which would revolutionize manned spaceflight in a way that we can scarcely imagine today.
The PSLV has about 1/3 the payload of the Falcon 9. On paper it's roughly cost competitive with Soyuz and the current Falcon 9 prices (which is no coincidence, there's little advantage to undercutting the competition, yet). In practice though it's not a serious competitive threat to any existing launcher because it has such a low payload capacity and thus can't be used to launch the vast majority of satellites.
This flight on its own isn't "disruptive", but the process that it's a part of might be. The purpose of this flight is just to prove that the technology works. The process might be disruptive if it continues its cost cutting and space flight becomes cheaper and more accessible.
"we usually spend years to build something to put into orbit, even though 99% of the work is done in six months, because we have to be 1000% sure it will work, as it is too expensive to try again.
If we can send something into space for a tenth of the current cost it means we can do it much more often, do more things, and do it faster."
So, I guess it's like low cost airlines did not change the flight industry (you could go from A to B even before) but they changed the game cause now it's a smaller deal to do it.
It's a step. This is the first time that a private company has ever docked with the International Space Station, a domain previously exclusive to a small club of federal governments.
Well, if you ignore the fact that 95% of the US space industry is private contractors then sure. I mean they are only going because they are being paid to go there.
Facebook has netted us at least one middle-east revolution, so I wouldn't be so quick to write it off. I agree with your sentiment though, I wish more smart people would work on important problems like space travel, instead of devising ways to increase click-through rates.
Because if they can get the $/kg down as far as Musk thinks they can there are a lot of things you can do that were previously too expensive. Things like space-based solar power and orbital manufacturing.
A lot less expensive than an explosion on the launch pad. Plus, this demonstration of ability to detect a possible problem and abort the launch in progress will likely pay off with NASA trust down the road.
True, that did impress me a lot to be honest. I kept expecting it to go boom when they cancelled launch after lighting the engines. Is a very cool capability.
"[T]he Apollo program was a major effort by the most powerful nation in the world. Falcon/Dragon is happening because a young genius decided to become a Heinlein hero, and so started a rocket-ship company. It's sad that most people have not yet realized it but the most interesting story in the world is unfolding right now."