Currently they have to throw away the rockets used for GTO missions (around half of them) and can only attempt landings on LEO missions such as the ISS resupplies. Given their last few landing attempts, it's pretty likely that they'll be able to land a rocket sometime this year, which means that starting next year they might be able to reuse all of their F9 Rockets.
A lot of customers may not want to fly on a used rocket though (no one knows the risks), so SpaceX may end up with quite a large number of rockets, which they'll have to fly to establish costs/risks/etc.
It looks like at least a some part of their satellite internet plan was meant to take advantage of this large launch capacity. I'm also very curious to see what the prices for a used rocket launch are. Rockets are obviously expensive, but so are the operational costs in setting them up.
Anyway, these are probably the most exciting times in spaceflight since the 60s!
> Anyway, these are probably the most exciting times in
> spaceflight since the 60s!
Yes it is, and we get to use technology from the future this time :-). It is bittersweet for me, the opportunity lost to keep funding NASA at a reasonable level could have a lot of useful data in the 'bank' as it were, but by and large much of the stuff that makes what SpaceX does possible is relatively new. In particular the avionics and MEMs manufacturing has allowed the mass fraction of the operations bits of the rocket to plummet.
I'm still curious though how they got a 30% improvement, and if it was a retelling of the Merlin 1C -> 1D evolution of if this is really a Merlin 1D+. They have also hinted at a project "Raptor" which is a ginormous engine.
And finally it really puts a bad light on "Cost Plus" contracts and the folks at Boeing and ULA who have supplied launch platforms for the last few decades. Clearly nobody in the "old guard" really cared about space, they just wanted to keep the money flowing. I am profoundly glad that they are being shaken up. Perhaps some of the management there will actually listen to what the engineers have been proposing for years and years.
"It is bittersweet for me, the opportunity lost to keep funding NASA at a reasonable level could have a lot of useful data in the 'bank' as it were, but by and large much of the stuff that makes what SpaceX does possible is relatively new."
Minimally, the pintle engine technology came out of NASA work and I suspect much of their technical knowledge comes either directly or indirectly from NASA funding.
" Clearly nobody in the "old guard" really cared about space, they just wanted to keep the money flowing. I am profoundly glad that they are being shaken up."
I think many of their engineers cared. But their corporate culture doesn't seem that interested in spaceflight, or at least spaceflight beyond the status quo.
>It is bittersweet for me, the opportunity lost to keep funding NASA at a reasonable level...
We spent more than enough money on NASA to have been decades ago where SpaceX is today. Unfortunately, Congress sees NASA as a source of patronage funding and not a space agency. If it had been run as a space program the shuttle would have been cancelled in the early '80s when it became The Monster That Ate The Budget.
I may disagree about which programs should be cut or not, but I agree with your sentiment: we could have paid NASA 10x and not advanced significantly. It would have just all flowed into various Congressional districts. We're advancing in spaceflight because we have no other choice: the money's ran out -- years ago, really.
Political systems of organization (organizations of people set up based on the desires of the electorate and controlled by politicians) exist and act for political reasons. Getting to the moon was a political goal, not a scientific one. The shuttle and ISS were political goals. Even privatizing like we've done is a political act.
We really need to build a mass driver on Earth for cargo launches. It would not be crazy expensive, and it would make a huge difference in the cost of LEO construction. Our order of priority should be 1) reduce cost to LEO to 1/100th of what it currently is, and 2) make orbital construction costs as close as possible to other oddball ground-based construction costs, like building underwater or in Antarctica. If we can focus on dropping costs, there are thousands of industries and other actors that will do some really cool stuff with the tools we provide. But that's a really tough thing to sell politically. The real reason we have SpaceX is because nobody wanted to explain to the folks how we lost a huge amount of our launch capacity when we retired the shuttle.
I agree that we need to build a mass launcher. However, I don't think we need to build it on the Earth. I think we need to build it on an airplane.
Seriously, the limiting factor in how small you can make an orbital launch packet is atmospheric drag. The more atmospheric drag, the more mass to surface area ratio you need to reduce the losses to an acceptable level. The smaller you can make the orbital packet, the smaller you can make the mass launcher. The smaller the mass launcher, the smaller the capital expense. A small mass launcher also fits on a smaller airplane.
We already have plenty of airplanes capable of flying in the stratosphere which can mount a mass launcher of a few tons weight. If the goal is getting mass up there, it doesn't matter whether it is 1000 launches of 1 kg each, or 1 launch of 1000 kg. But 1000 launches of 1 kg each could be done with much less capital expense.
The whole reason we don't have a mass launcher is because it is perceived as too expensive. Sea-level, or even mountain-level mass launchers need to launch large packets by their nature. But a high-flying airplane could launch many smaller packets with a cost which is actually doable.
The rocket is paid for with its primary mission. Elon has said that the fuel is a very small cost compared to the entire launch, so I would assume the cost to refly a "used" rocket is going to be orders of magnitude cheaper than the original flight.
I could see SpaceX segmenting their customers into two tiers: mission completion sensitive, and cost sensitive, with who gets which rockets straightforward.
Unfortunately, they can not reuse the second stage yet and they might never be able to with Falcon 9. I think Elon has already stated as much. The payload penalty due to the required heat shield, thrusters, fuel and legs for the second stage would be too much.
For arguments sake, lets assume that the second stage was 10% of the manufacturing cost and the first stage was 90%. You could argue, that the engines are what's most expensive and the first stage has nine times as many. Ignoring the cost for lunch, landing, refuelling etc. you could at best reduce the cost by 90%, a single order of magnitude.
Unfortunately, the first stage might be worth much more. I wouldn't be surprised if the cost distribution is closer to 50-50. The second stage has all the avionics, a special vacuum version of the Merlin engine and might be more weight optimised due to the larger effect on maximum payload.
Lets hope the Mars rocket (BFR) will allow full, low cost reusability. I'm sure SpaceX is working very hard on that.
I believe they've said that the second stage is about 25% of the total cost. Not cheap by any means, but just being able to reuse the first stage will be a huge boon. Even more so for Falcon Heavy, which still has a regular second stage, but has three first stage cores.
I wonder if instead of letting the second stage burn up, they could dock them in space somewhere to serve as material and fluid storage. They might not work for long term cryogenic storage, but a ton of pure aluminum has to be worth something up there.
They launch to specific orbits desired by the customers. It might well be extremely expensive to move the second stage from these orbits to some common one where could dock.
Yes, definitely cost prohibitive from a fuel perspective to change orbits, but the vehicle could be safed for future use. I do not have enough information as to whether though would be valuable unless Tesla as some way to produce fuel on-orbit for the waiting, safed second stages.
Well, FWIW, it works in Kerbal Space Program. But as you said, this would require for the fuel to be brought from somewhere else than Earth's gravity well. Maybe Planetary Resources will find some kerosene on a near-Earth asteroid?
No it doesn't, not if you launch satellites where customers want them. Kerbal Space Program should really bring home the big fundamental about orbital mechanics: plane changes are really expensive.
There are ways to make plane changes cheap (do them high enough, use gravity assist, etc.) and they could be useful when shipping fuel higher from Earth's gravity well, but I admit, current space missions are nowhere near that complicated.
Also, while expensive, plane changes are still cheaper delta-V-wise than punching through the soup our atmosphere is.
If the 2nd stage at least had a small solar panel and magnetic tether, it could (slowly) change orbits into something useful. Not sure what the weight penalty for a minimally viable system would be. For the 2nd stage, every gram counts, much more so than for the 1st stage.
It's going to be cheaper, but still in the millions, and not just because you still need to pay for a new second stage. There's also nontrivial cost associated with range safety, payload setup, and so forth (which are operations that still involve lots of highly trained personnel, with limited opportunities for automation because, among other things, the payloads aren't all alike).
>The rocket is paid for with its primary mission. Elon has said that the fuel is a very small cost compared to the entire launch, so I would assume the cost to refly a "used" rocket is going to be orders of magnitude cheaper than the original flight.
Engineers have been scratching their heads for decades trying to figure out where all the money goes. For shuttle launches, depending on who's doing the accounting, fuel was something on the order of 2% of total launch costs. And the shuttle was reusable as well.
I think it's that disparity that attracted Musk to the rocket business in the first place. You look at the cost breakdowns and think "What? How can this be so expensive?" If everything goes his way he'll have cut the vehicle cost by a factor of at least 20 by the time he's done.
> A lot of customers may not want to fly on a used rocket though (no one knows the risks)
I am certain the insurers will be happy to take a crack at figuring out the risk.
That matters a lot. Whether or not you "want to fly on a used rocket," if your company can purchase a flight and insurance on a used rocket for a lot less than it can purchase a flight and insurance on a new rocket, you might be obligated to try it because of the decreased costs.
(I'm ignorant as to who actually buys the insurance for these flights, the customer or SpaceX or what, but I'm sure the point still stands)
Other than costs, another advantage of flying the first stage back is that they can be analyzed to see how all the components perform or wear, and the design improved based on the findings. It's harder to do that when you crash them into the Atlantic every time. Over time, this could mean that reusable rockets are actually more reliable than one-time use rockets, though only if you fly enough times to get the benefit of evolving the design.
It's not a straightforward question whether the risk would be higher with a used or new rocket. Machines this complicated have significant infant mortality, and it may well be that the second flight actually has lower risk of failure than the first. Only time will tell.
It's not a straightforward insurance matter since many many applications are time critical. If a rocket blows up they may need many more years until a replacement cargo can be manufactured, fitted into the launch schedule, etc. The coverage for that (specially opportunity costs, which are hard to measure anyway) might be too high, making the insurance premium larger than the gain provided by reusability.
I'd believe most companies could prefer [more certain] safety -- which just means SpaceX will have to work on increasing reused rocket numbers by whatever means.
> It's not a straightforward insurance matter since many many applications are time critical.
If you can put a dollar figure on the potential time loss, it's still a pretty straightforward matter.
If you're flying with a "we must get this in orbit ASAP or the world will catch on fire" priority then, eventually, one will probably pay more for that. (the government will contract out a series of flights so it will play out differently for them)
It's going to take some flying for that to all shake out. As others have pointed out, it's not obvious that the first flight will have the lowest risk. It will be the most expensive in the beginning because its risk is the best understood.
Being timely is pretty important in the satellite business, there are things like communication licenses which expire.
It may not seem like it, but launch costs are still only a fraction of the total system cost. Ground for example infrastructure is more expansive by a large factor. Even the sat manufacturing costs overshadow launch costs for most systems. That's why customers might prefer safety until reliability is proven. Cutting corners on launch can jeopardize the whole system.
The fact that payloads are so expensive is partially caused by the launches being so expensive, so reducing the launch price tag will cause reduction in payload costs.
All true. The first used F9 payloads will likely be Geosynchronous communications satellites, where the smaller payload is mostly fuel for apogee kick and station keeping, and the rest is mostly off the shelf hardware.
Alternately, operators of large constellations, eg. Iridium that can replace the payload relatively quickly and cheaply. Opportunity cost can be mitigated if some of the payload is intended as on-orbit spares.
You are right though, that there are far more than monetary concerns to consider. Sometimes it seems as though people, particularly on HN, believe that money is the only thing of consideration in any endeavor.
"It's about a 30% increase in performance, maybe a little more. What it does is it allows us to land the first stage for GTO missions on the drone ship."
I am constantly blown away by SpaceX. This is an absurd level of improvement for an already mature, commercially successful rocket.
If even 1% of the world's companies in other sectors worked this well, I can only imagine how much our quality of life would improve. Musk seems extremely adept at applying the best of software development practices to hardware design.
Some things that stand out:
-Extreme streamlining of the product range
-Complete control of the design, prototyping, testing and manufacturing cycles achieved by keeping the entire process in-house
- Optimal product iteration roadmap, which balances maximum improvement per iteration with minimum time-to-market
I think Musk should open an engineering management consulting firm, and hire a few smart people to analyze SpaceX and transfer some of its engineering management methodologies into a set of training modules. I'm usually of the opinion that good management is just common sense, but the degree to which SpaceX is outdoing its competitors suggests they've made a significant breakthrough in their engineering/management processes.
Disclaimer: I work in the space industry for one of SpaceX's competitors. None of my work is in competition with SpaceX (totally different systems), but it bears mentioning. I've also never worked for SpaceX, so a lot of what I'm saying here is opinion and hearsay.
SpaceX does excellent work, and has an amazing track record for such a young space company. That being said, it's important to highlight that the 'absurd level of improvement' that we're seeing not just the product of good engineering management practices. Much of it comes as a result of some pretty extreme expectations placed on the employees working there.
I've lost track of the number of people who've told me that they'd love to work at SpaceX, if only the culture wasn't so oppressively work-centric. These comments have come from students looking for full time jobs having previously interned within the aerospace industry as well as NASA civil servants and contractors who have been putting stuff into space for decades.
The aerospace industry is practically built around overworking its engineers, and, for almost everyone in it, working here was a conscious sacrifice to be able to do some Very Cool Shit. SpaceX takes that concept and turns it up to 11, expecting people to eat, breathe, and live their jobs. The last thing I would want is a firm dedicated to propagating these ideals.
SpaceX takes that concept and turns it up to 11, expecting people to eat, breathe, and live their jobs. The last thing I would want is a firm dedicated to propagating these ideals.
On the other hand, if that's what you love it starts to not feel like work. In my experience getting that the match right is super difficult but perhaps that's what SpaceX is aiming for - not really looking for employees but members.
> I think Musk should open an engineering management consulting firm, and hire a few smart people to analyze SpaceX and transfer some of its engineering management methodologies into a set of training modules.
It's a nice idea, but it wouldn't make any sense. Big institutions are arranged a certain way because of the incentives. You're not going to change the incentives because the people at the top fundamentally don't understand the way R&D works. Further, big organizations tend to reward a track record of successes no matter how small, rather than rewarding herculean efforts that only succeed halfway (or fail). The culture is generally anathema to taking risk.
Because the organizations are the way they are, nothing will change unless you change management to the highest ranks and empower people at all levels to make things better. Sadly that rarely happens in big companies; people manage to claw their way up and they're not going to risk that job, power or prestige unless it's a sure thing. Which R&D never is.
I completely agree, and if you look at my past posts, I am quite cynical with most modern companies precisely because I understand that human primal impulses, such as the insatiable drive for status and wealth accumulation, tend to completely sabotage any potential for innovation.
Musk's companies are two of the very few exceptions to this universal empirical reality, and as such underscore the need to try and understand what makes them (SpaceX and Tesla) different, right down to the psychology of the executive team and founders. In my opinion, nothing is more important for the success of a company than the psychological foundations of the executive team and investors. They set the incentive structures, and their subordinates do their best to carry them out.
In most companies, the incentive structure is to get paid as much as possible by playing office politics. Hence, we get golden parachutes, "cost-centers", and an obsession with stock price and quarterly profits.
There is one possible answer that is both obvious and unfortunate (for businesses) - it's because they actually care. For most of the companies, profit is the primary goal and the thing they do is an afterthought (I like to call such entities "toilet-paper companies", because they'd happily drop whatever they're doing and start selling toilet paper if that was more profitable). For SpaceX and Tesla, making humanity multiplanetary and electrification of transport seem to be the primary, terminal goals, while profit is only instrumental. I don't know how many employees care about those goals the way Elon does (but I suspect many, at least in SpaceX - from what people are telling, you wouldn't be able to stand working there otherwise), but if there is enough of them, if that forms the company culture, then it's quite easy to see how the operations will be mostly immune "insatiable drive for status and wealth accumulation". I bet many would love to work for them even for free. I know I would.
Why is this answer unfortunate (for other businesses)? Because you can't really fake caring about something. Many of the problems you see in most modern companies stem from the very fact that they exist primarily to make money, and they comprise of people thinking mostly profit - looking at their company through IAbstractMoneyMakingEntity interface, without really caring about what services or goods the company actually provides.
> This is an absurd level of improvement for an already mature, commercially successful rocket.
What are you basing that on? And an absurd level of improvement can just as easily mean that V1 was just really bad, not that V2 is just that good.
I mean, the Merlin-1D has really good thrust to weight ratio, but the actual amount of thrust and the ISP at sea level is lacking compared to, say, the space shuttle's main engines (even with +30% the 1D is going to come short of 1,000 kN thurst, whereas the RS-25 on the shuttle was 1,860 kN).
It also runs on RP-1 which is a supply-constrained fuel choice that also has a max theoretical ISP that's lower than the ISP that the space shuttle's main engine actually achieved at sea level. And the RS-25's vacuum ISP is so far out of the 1D's reach it's not even funny. Not saying the RS-25 is particularly unique here, there are 17 liquid-fueled rocket engines that have an ISP over 400 in a vacuum, 9 of which also have more thrust than the 1D. The 1D by contrast has an ISP of 340 in a vacuum. 9 engines that have more thrust and more efficiency than the 1D. 9. But somehow Space-X is the one that blows you away?
So sure, it has good thrust to weight - at the cost of using a limited fuel, with low efficiency, and low total thrust. Wow that sure is worthy of just being blown away by absurd level of improvement
The one thing Space-X and Elon Musk do deserve credit on is they sure know how to market effectively. He is really, really good at making mundane tech sound amazing.
To bad people down voted you without commenting on why. Here's what I think:
>>I mean, the Merlin-1D has really good thrust to weight ratio, but the actual amount of thrust and the ISP at sea level is lacking compared to, say, the space shuttle's main engines (even with +30% the 1D is going to come short of 1,000 kN thurst, whereas the RS-25 on the shuttle was 1,860 kN).
The Saturn's F1 engine had an even lower Isp, and was also KeroLox. Your focus on Isp is a bit misguided. Sure the SSME's have a stellar Isp, but guess what? The shuttle solid rocket boosters had a terrible Isp (Shuttle basically ran the RS-25 at lift off only to verify they'd start. They weren't throttled up until well into flight). When it comes to hauling millions of pounds off the launch pad, past the tower, Isp is not what you want. You want mass expelled at a tremendous rate. In other words, why not use electric ion engines with >2000 Isp for the first stage? Thrust to weight matters on lift off is why.
Sure, but the Merlin 1D is still on the very low end of the spectrum for total thrust, which you seem to ignore.
You'll note I only focused on Isp for engines with similar or better thrust than the 1D. And you can't just blindly ignore this. The lower the Isp of the engine the more fuel you need and the worse the thrust-to-weight of the vehicle total ends up being.
Having a very light but very low Isp engine will not get you off the ground efficiently. And if your claim to fame is being cost-effective, efficiency is kinda important.
Or put another way, the RS-25 at 7,480lb each represents a tiny, tiny fraction of the shuttle's total launch weight of 4,400,000 lbs. Using a 5,000lb engine instead would change nothing. Similarly your claim they only ran at lift off to verify they'd start is wrong. The RS-25 represented 30% of the launch thrust.
Even on the fairly light and small Falcon 9, the total vehicle weight is 1,115,200 lbs. The engine weight here is important but far, far from being the single most important attribute. And with a higher Isp engine with enough thrust you could then carry less fuel. Pretty sure you could spend 10,000 lbs on the engines to save 240,000 lbs of fuel (Falcon 9 has ~822,000 lbs of propellant, the RS-25's Isp is +30% the 1D at sea level)
Don't want to diminish SpaceX achievements, but for some comparable systems results could be similarly interesting. For example, Soyuz rockets are launched at least twice (at least 12 per year, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_R-7_launches_%282010%E... ) more often than Falcon last year (highest frequency so far), their pumps and chambers, modules of first stage are manufactured in corresponding numbers (6 pumps per rocket, 20 main thrust chambers for 1 and 2 stages alone, 4 modules of first stage), the rocket is largely - though not completely - manufactured in one closely tied cluster of companies (in Samara city on Volga river, where it is also designed and upgraded). Admittedly these results came after half a century of incremental improvements - but it's interesting to compare SpaceX results with some other offerings.
And how many launches can a single R7 make? That's the difference that has all of our jaws droppping, because it's going to reduce the price for access to space by an order of magnitude.
"It's about a 30% increase in performance, maybe a little more." That's pretty amazing increase in performance for an existing platform.
Also interesting to see that the Falcon Heavy boosters are literally just Falcon 9s strapped to the sides of a larger rocket. They will be producing just two separate rockets on the factory floor. This is how SpaceX will really squeeze out manufacturing efficiencies.
Given the Falcon 9 reusability, we're going to see launch costs drop by two entire magnitudes. Instead of destroying an $60MM launch vehicle, each launch just burns $200,000 in fuel. This will open up space in ways we have never imagined.
I agree that the changes will be revolutionary, and drastically reduce launch costs; but SpaceX is only prepared to recover the first stage in the near term, and the second stage is still quite costly. In the long term, launch costs will go down as much as you say, but SpaceX is not quite there yet.[1]
Yes, yes, definitely agree they're not there yet, but when you look at space technology from the 60's to now, and how quickly SpaceX has moved from inception to first successful stage landing, it's extremely impressive.
Part of the Shuttle's reusability problems stemmed from Congress (and other decision-makers) forcing NASA to use facilities in ~40-50 different states and multiple subcontractors. And, full & rapid reusability was never in the Shuttle plans. They aimed for moderate reusability and then failed spectacularly at that. SpaceX is much more centralized and much more efficient.
There are certainly comparisons to me made, and lessons to be learned, but I think that SpaceX has already met/surpassed all levels of success that NASA achieved in reusability, the only caveat being that they haven't technically done it in a production environment yet.
We should put less focus on reusability, and pay more attention to labor (inspection and repair time) per launch. If you compare SpaceX and NASA under this paradigm, or by looking at launch cost per unit of mass, SpaceX has long since surpassed all other launch providers.
The shuttle had a number of issues, including design issues due to DoD requirements, engine pressure issues due to internal NASA priorities, and budget trade-offs due to Congressional directives. The most important lesson to take away from the shuttle is that returning the most costly components to earth does not necessarily translate into cost savings.
The Shuttle pushed the envelope in a dozen different ways and always operated right on the edge, which made it incredibly complicated and caused it to require extensive refurbishment after each flight.
If you look at costs relative to constructing new launchers, reusing the Shuttle was quite cost effective. Cost per launch was in the neighborhood of $500 million, while the cost of building a new orbiter was in the neighborhood of $2 billion. The trouble was just that the system was so expensive that even the reused cost was really high compared to expendables.
None of that applies to Falcon. It's a conservative system and it's already one of the cheapest out there without any reuse. If they match the Shuttle on cost reduction (launching a reused vehicle costs 25% of the original) then they'll have substantially dropped the cost of getting things into orbit, because they're starting at ~$60 million per vehicle, instead of billions.
While I agree with your point I don't think it's necessarily fair to compare a for-profit company to a government agency with no requirements to create a profit. A company should always be moving in the direction of the highest profits while a government agency seems to always head in the direction of higher bureaucracy.
I think it's more accurate to say that companies exist to make money, so that's what they optimize. Government agencies exist to provide political capital to their supporters, so they optimize both the political capital created and the number of supporters it's created for.
30% increase can mean a lot of things.. it's almost certainly not a 30% thrust increase (helpful but not earthshaking) or 30% increase in specific impulse (nobel prize time). From the wording of the quote it sounds like it's probably a 30% increase in payload to LEO, which is certainly nowhere near 2 orders of magnitude in cost reduction.
As a programmer baffled by hardware, i find these performance enhancements on physical systems remarkable. Congrats to them for pushing the spaceflight envelope.
i'm similarly baffled... but this is what elon says 'I think it's worth noting that when somebody has a breakthrough innovation it is rarely one little thing. Very rarely is it one little thing. It's usually a whole bunch of things that collectively amount to a huge innovation. But the problem is because it's hard to convey a complicated thing to people the innovator or the innovator's PR department will say such and such is the reason why it's better. This little catch phrase. Like what was it with ebay, Pam wants to do Beanie Babies or something. I mean really, that's not the basis of ebay. Oh right, yeah pes dispenser. It's like something the PR department made up. So really innovation is a collection of complex things which are usually difficult to convey so there is some soundbite that's given. You know why's South-West Airlines the most popular Airline in the whole business. It's not just because they use 737s. I mean if it was that easy everybody could do it.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xohhz9Hn8p0
Yup, that line sent my eyebrows north at a rapid rate! I would never have thought that it was possible to see such rapid advancement in the field of rocketry - it'd been close to stagnant for pretty much all of my 40 years until SpaceX showed up.
Considering that the cheaper "used" launch cost will lower the bar for getting satellites to LEO, I wonder how long until we need to worry about Kessler Syndrome[1].
I did my undergraduate capstone class on the Kessler Syndrome. UNCOPUOS, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space dictate that a satellite must deorbit itself within 25 years after mission completion.
The Kessler Syndrome right now is a potentially exponential problem that we should be conscientious of because our access to space depends on open orbital lanes.
I want to submit a YC application proposing an orbital debris mitigation as a service company but im not sure if it's an idea YC will facilitate
The science behind the movie Gravity wasn't too accurate but the scenario the characters found themselves in is very very plausible.
I can't wait for junkyard micro-satellites equipped with an ion thruster. They are launched in the hundreds at a time, each locates their specific target, attaches and start a slow descend to burn in the atmosphere. This process is done automatically over a time-frame of months, since ion thrusters work slowly, which is great for automation.
The information that came out in this article is not news. There has been significant discussions about not only the improved performance of the engines, but customers debating whether or not they wanted to be the first to fly on those upgraded engines.
Meanwhile the helium leak problem & reshuffling of schedule is an actual bit of news. We have known about the helium leaks before, but this is the first time it got so bad they had to so dramatically change the launch schedule. If it is a fundamental problem (which is sure seems to be), it might put this years launch schedule in some jeopardy.
I don't know if I agree that either of these items is "news" in the "there was no other way to find out about it" sense, but if you take the classical definition of "news" is something reported by a "reporter" (or journalist) then by reporting something it becomes "news" by definition.
I realize that is sort of semantic hand waving but when you assert something it "not news" you are, in the framework of that definition, making a false-by-definition statement asserted as truth. That irritates me unreasonably.
That said, in terms of impact to the schedule and expectedness the helium leak is no unexpected. So it isn't really "news" by your definition either. The whole point of doing these preflight tests is to ferret out these issues, and by their nature a minimum weight helium tank is a tricky thing to both manufacture and install. You need only search for the phrase "SpaceX Helium Leak" on your favorite search engine and you will find this not an uncommon issue which delays launches.
As SpaceX seems to be fairly familiar with the problem, and they have fixed leaky tanks a number of times, it seems to me that it is close to, if it hasn't already, entered into the operational readyness plan, where there might be "Step 1. Find the helium leak we know is out there. Step 2. Apply the appropiate fix prior to launch." So I don't really see how you could support the claim that this is a threat to the launch schedule.
Pretty sure you must be the only person in the world to think like this. News is generally considered to be objective, factual etc. A journalist reporting on an event but who was paid by a company or working off a PR media release is generally not considered news. I am not saying that this is an example either way just that your definition is pretty odd.
Ok, interesting digression. I'm trying to parse your argument, where you claim:
> A journalist reporting on an event but who was paid by
> a company or working off a PR media release is
> generally not considered news.
So there are a lot of unhooked elements in this claim. Does it change if "a company" is a traditional media company (say News Corp) or a blog like Spaceflight Now? And is a "PR media release" the same thing as a "press release" (that would be a bunch of stuff a company announces and puts on a variety of distribution sources (like PR Newswire)? Does it change is the human was present and listening to the talk, or if they weren't present and not listening to talk given?
Let me put that in a different context, if Obama gives a speech, and releases the speech to the media ahead of time, and a "news outlet" prints, or shows, or somehow makes available a "story" which is consumed by a reader or a viewer or a listener, was that not "news" that they heard? What would they call it? When you listen to the program on the radio they call that segment a "news update" what do you call it?
Do reporters have agendas? Sure they are reporters. Does the same "news" sound different coming from CNN and Fox and ABC ? Yes. And while we can all indict the media for being dupes, I expect stories that unless stories are paid placement (and neither example in this thread appears to have been a paid placement) are considered to be "news stories" by most people. Perhaps biased news based on the biases of the news organization but news none the less.
I do like and support SpaceX, but they sure seem to have an impressive PR machine also. They seem to get a lot more buzz and press than every other space company combined. Maybe it's a Silicon Valley-inspired tradition of working with and courting the press, as opposed to a more secrecy-focused environment in companies that mostly do military contracting?
Impressive PR machine, yes. However, von Braun reportedly said "Late to bed, early to rise, work like hell - and advertise" so underscoring the importance of PR.
We need to judge both by PR and actual performance. So far there is plenty of both to talk about.
PR is a big thing especially with private rockets. On the CRS-1 mission, they referred to the engine anomaly that occured During ascent as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" when really it was a rupture in the engine fuel dome. Luckily the Falcon has an engine out capability so it still completed its primary mission. Had this been a NASA or other public company like ULA, the vehicle would've been grounded for X amount of months pending investigation, which in the case of SpaceX, would kill it's revenue stream. No launch, no profit.
that's partially why ULA keeps both the ATLAS and Delta family rockets. If one is grounded you have the other to rely on. SpaceX only has the Falcon. Hell, even the Millenium Falcon had problems with its hyperdrive.
Not trying to knock SpaceX here, I'm actually trying to get a job with them in aerospace engineering. They just have both an advantage and disadvantage by having one rocket system.
> PR is a big thing especially with private rockets. On the CRS-1 mission, they referred to the engine anomaly that occured During ascent as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" when really it was a rupture in the engine fuel dome.
"Rapid unscheduled disassembly" is a standard space industry term. Just like some other fun euphemisms - e.g. an "anomaly" or "lithobraking" (i.e. crashing hard into the ground). It's just a jargon, not PR. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever invented these terms had a good laugh over them.
A lot of customers may not want to fly on a used rocket though (no one knows the risks), so SpaceX may end up with quite a large number of rockets, which they'll have to fly to establish costs/risks/etc.
It looks like at least a some part of their satellite internet plan was meant to take advantage of this large launch capacity. I'm also very curious to see what the prices for a used rocket launch are. Rockets are obviously expensive, but so are the operational costs in setting them up.
Anyway, these are probably the most exciting times in spaceflight since the 60s!