Space -X

[Thud]

Elan's team did it!
Congradulations to the Space-x team for docking with the space station.
god luck on the return trip.....

Now if he can keep Tesla on the road....& eventualy make something an average Joe could actualy have access to....not just admire from afar.

[Joseph C.]

Now that's class.

[Kin]

Not saying that a 50k car is remotely average joe, but I do have to speak up for the fact I was surprised the baseline Model S, being still so much kickass-cool, is in the price range of other (far more gaseous) luxury sedans. Really impressed me.

Man, I would kill for an 85kwh high density battery. They ought to sell those. Though, i would still have to kill for it at market price. I know someone who has been talking about retrofitting their sailboat with lithium batteries, and a 40kwh Lico battery would be much lighter than the existing SLAs.

[Kingfish]

Shortly after the confirmation that the robotic arm had snagged Dragon, Hawthorn said two quips that had me laugh, first being...
"We've caught a dragon by the tail", &
"Great sim (simulation), we're ready for the real thing now"
or words to that effect

The ethic between Space-X and NASA is so completely different, from the clothes to the cheeky comments... They sure put the fun back into the old stale game.

Congrats to the team on a job well done!
Excited, KF

[deVries]

Russians charge us 63 million to send a manned flight to SS. Our cost to date for unmanned w/SpaceX is 133 million per flight for 1st 12 flights assuming money isn't hidden & funneled around the edges to never know the true costs. Plus, over 400 million in taxpayer money went to seed this company too. That's not a privately funded & supported company, imo.

Why is SpaceX more than double the cost for a manned flight? Manned flight is far more expensive & costly to send a rocket up vs unmanned flight. Hmm, so SpaceX is already double the cost for Russian manned flights.

The Falcon 9 has a wimpy lift capacity of 10,450 kg vs already existing rockets with more than double that.

Let's add-in the cost of yet another so called "private" space rocket company Orbital Sciences Corp., a publicly traded company on the stock exchange, and the duplicity of two of everything to do one thing doesn't necessarily make for efficient savings.

Fact is, there is no privately funded space industry. This is all just smoke & mirrors. The taxpayer is paying for everything yet again, since these companies don't fly without government funding from R&D, to launch facilities & operations, to being the primary customers for these contractors. All the other rocket programs proceeding these seem to have private contractors too; just different company names & different specifications "to build" standards.

SpaceX & Orbital Sciences Corp are just pimping the government for your tax dollars under the thin veil of being a so called independent private space company. Get real folks.

Is it any surprise costs are way over budget too?

Proof from SpaceX's own website claims Falcon 9 launches should be 50-60 million per launch for the military but actual cost is 133m to get to the low earth orbit Space Station (SS) with same launch vehicle??? More than double the cost. Who pays for all these missions? The taxpayer!

In addition, the medium-lift Falcon 9 could support a number of medium-lift Air Force launches at only $50-60M per launch, if SpaceX were allowed to compete for this business.

Hmm, Falcon 9 launches will charge 50-60 million for Air Force vs 133 million 'now' for SS??? SpaceX sucks the big tits of government charging double 'now' to do its private business for NASA vs what it says it will charge "future tense" for the Air Force at less than half that cost??? BS.

Sure, the Space Shuttle is 1970's technology that was really part of the Cold War & Space Race with the USSR. We never needed such an expensive space launch vehicle to create the Space Station. This was a political decision of prestige & inspiration to keep a very high profile for NASA & astronauts flying a reusable vehicle that proved too dangerous and expensive to maintain & relaunch. Common sense dictated that had to change and should have at least 20 years ago.

At least Burt Rutan has the right idea to not be government funded by offering sub-orbital flights to paying passengers, AND he's not making you fund his operations by making you the funding taxpayer slave like SpaceX or Orbital Sciences Corp. is.

Book Your Flight Into Space

[Kingfish]

dV,
The lift capacity quoted is not accurate my friend. The Falcon 9 is near the top of the high-middle weights, and very comparible to Atlas 5 versions. I am quite happy for them

However you bring up a very good point on cost that I had not considered, and so deserves scrutiny.

Appriciative, KF

[deVries]

dV,
The lift capacity quoted is not accurate my friend. The Falcon 9 is near the top of the high-middle weights, and very comparible to Atlas 5 versions. I am quite happy for them

Are you possibly confusing the Falcon 9 with a "future rocket" from SpaceX ???

The Falcon 9 lift capacity I quoted directly from their website: 10,450 kg to LEO.

The Atlas 5 (Atlas V) can do 18,810 kg to LEO. That's a whole different class of rocket that's far more powerful than the Falcon 9.

I'm very keen on the cost of these government payloads coming way down on the total cost of operations. But until that happens & is actually proven with cost analysis, I'm very skeptical. SpaceX is getting most of its funding & support directly from you & me by way of our taxes directly supporting this private company to a huge percentage of their business. Both ends of our candle are lit for SpaceX. We the taxpayer are their biggest customer by far & away, and we are also paying for them to launch our payloads into space with our tax dollars.

Hopefully, their profit margins & business model will work to drive costs down much lower than before. I'm very skeptical about that, since it's damned expensive to get anything into orbit by way of a rocket.

Slinging payloads by rail-gun or flying to high altitude to launch a rocket might be more innovative ways to cut costs, but hell if I know.

Even Burt Rutan & Virgin Galactic are only offering Sub-Orbital flights into space, which I don't know how appealing that will be if you can't orbit the Earth many times & get a higher vantage-point to see the Earth from a more distant perspective.

No billionaires have taken the Russians up on their offer to fly them around the moon for 100 million dollars. That price is affordable for a billionaire, but it seems no billionaires want to do that yet.

I personally think we should have a small colony of mankind on the Moon IF there is enough water there to do it on a permanent or self-sufficient basis. It should be an International sponsored colony, Independent of any nationhood, so there can be no "border wars" in space. Then eventually go to Mars from the Moon, if cheaper & easier to do, but no need to do that in a hundred years (except for a colony on our Moon). A thousand years would be grand to establish permanence on Mars or its Moon, and it's very low risk that a cosmic event would wipe-out mankind on Earth in the meantime. Sending unmanned forward basing & bio-seeding Mars can be done over hundreds of years in the meantime. If billionaire dreamers & their supporters want to do that without my tax money getting them there within a faster timeline, then be my guest Mr. Billionaire on YOUR money PLUS your volunteer collective of supporter's money but not on my "forced" tax dollars. Just raise the money independently, & I'm all for it.

I'm still waiting for the amazing promised windfalls in discoveries for science & medicine to reach the masses in saving lives or some fantastic discovery to justify the enormous Space Station expense! Show me the payback! Where is it?

Elon Musk thinks we're going to Mars in 20 years or less. He wants to colonize Mars using his rockets, of course. Show me YOUR money. He is worth a couple of billion dollars, and that is a miniscule tiny fraction of what it will cost just to get there *not* counting landing & safely returning. Evolution took billions of years to do "man" on spaceship earth. I think at least a thousand years will be needed for Mars living in self-contained dome enclosed atmospheres. It will take tens or hundreds of thousands of years at a minimum to produce a livable open atmosphere on Mars. It's just total BS that Elon Musk runs a private rocket space company, when he is 100% dependent on government funding, meaning your money, to do anything in space. This is what is known as media hype & slick PR that NASA & your government, including Musk, is doing to meet their agendas to get your taxes, your money, your funding of their space agendas. The space hustle shuffle.

[chroot]

100 million dollars ride Russian rocket to ISS?

Now that the Space Shuttle program has ended, the United States relies on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for astronaut transport, costing American taxpayers as much as $62 million a seat. By comparison, Dragon is designed to carry seven astronauts at a time for an unparalleled $20 million per seat.

from http://interspacenews.com/FeatureArticle/tabid/130/Default.aspx?id=7501

[Hillhater]

I am trying to think of one good reason ( beyond the technical challenge) to establish a colony on Mars !
If it were planet "utopia" , land of milk and honey, populated by nymphomaniacs ....maybe.
.. But a frozen red dust bowl ..?? ... no thanks.

Ahh ! just thought of a reason ... penal colony !

[deVries]

I am trying to think of one good reason ( beyond the technical challenge) to establish a colony on Mars !
If it were planet "utopia" , land of milk and honey, populated by nymphomaniacs ....maybe.
.. But a frozen red dust bowl ..?? ... no thanks.

Ahh ! just thought of a reason ... penal colony !

Love that Down Under thinking except the one-way tickets are too expensive this time round.

I think the alternative "proof of concept" is nations should invest proportional shares in the spoils of so called trillion dollar asteroids to mine for earthlings benefit. Maybe setup a mining industry on the Moon, since there's no atmosphere to burn the trillion dollar asteroid up in smoke. Just gently land it on the Moon. Houston, we have a problem... with re-entry maybe???

I think we could bio-engineer Mars over tens of thousands of years to possibly make it a second home for mankind, but there's no way to sustain a self-sufficient "Total Recall" colony on Mars in the near term. Besides, what intelligent life form deserves another planet if it destroys the one it came from anyway??????

[Dauntless]

Our cost to date for unmanned w/SpaceX is 133 million per flight for 1st 12 flights assuming money isn't hidden & funneled around the edges to never know the true costs. Plus, over 400 million in taxpayer money went to seed this company too. That's not a privately funded & supported company, imo.

I just can't figure out where you came up with those numbers. All references I find say $20-30 million per flight. One says ". . . .approximately 21,000 lb (9,500 kg) to low Earth orbit, priced at $27 million per flight ($1286/lb)" And an advance payment on the contract from the government AS USUAL, the way they always do, nothing to point the finger over.

Just another cut and paste: "As of May 2012, SpaceX has operated on total funding of approximately one billion dollars in its first ten years of operation. Of this, private equity has provided about $200M, with Musk investing approximately $100M and other investors having put in about $100M. The remainder has come from progress payments on long-term launch contracts and development contracts. NASA has put in about $400-500M of this amount, with most of that as progress payments on launch contracts. SpaceX currently has contracts for 40 launch missions, and each of those contracts provide down payments at contract signing, plus many are paying progress payments as launch vehicle components are built in advance of mission launch, driven in part by US accounting rules for recognizing long-term revenue."

[deVries]

Our cost to date for unmanned w/SpaceX is 133 million per flight for 1st 12 flights assuming money isn't hidden & funneled around the edges to never know the true costs. Plus, over 400 million in taxpayer money went to seed this company too. That's not a privately funded & supported company, imo.

I just can't figure out where you came up with those numbers. All references I find say $20-30 million per flight. One says ". . . .approximately 21,000 lb (9,500 kg) to low Earth orbit, priced at $27 million per flight ($1286/lb)" And an advance payment on the contract from the government AS USUAL, the way they always do, nothing to point the finger over.

Just another cut and paste: "As of May 2012, SpaceX has operated on total funding of approximately one billion dollars in its first ten years of operation. Of this, private equity has provided about $200M, with Musk investing approximately $100M and other investors having put in about $100M. The remainder has come from progress payments on long-term launch contracts and development contracts. NASA has put in about $400-500M of this amount, with most of that as progress payments on launch contracts. SpaceX currently has contracts for 40 launch missions, and each of those contracts provide down payments at contract signing, plus many are paying progress payments as launch vehicle components are built in advance of mission launch, driven in part by US accounting rules for recognizing long-term revenue."

I got the 133 million per 12 flights = 1.6 billion contract from here:

The company, with about 1,800 employees, has a $1.6-billion contract to haul cargo in 12 flights to the space station for NASA. If the current mission is successful, SpaceX will begin fulfilling the contract this year.

LA Times Story on SpaceX

[chroot]

I think it is not just per astronaut, Obiviously 1.6 billions that involves paying 1800 employees building 12 of the rockets (12 months) + included astronaut transport to the ISS.

Russian didn't tell you completely costs involve paying the employees who are building the rockets but they did say 63 million per astronant. Maybe 100-200 million each rocket AND employees costs. My estimate.

Space-X is probably lot cheaper than Russian's Proton rocket and employees salary costs.

PSS. found info Proton rocket cost

one industry official said that while ILS has increased some of its prices in recent months, dedicated Proton launches today are selling for less than $110 million.

I got the 133 million per 12 flights = 1.6 billion contract from here:

The company, with about 1,800 employees, has a $1.6-billion contract to haul cargo in 12 flights to the space station for NASA. If the current mission is successful, SpaceX will begin fulfilling the contract this year.

LA Times Story on SpaceX

[deVries]

I think it is not just per astronaut, Obiviously 1.6 billions that involves paying 1800 employees building 12 of the rockets (12 months) + included astronaut transport to the ISS.

Russian didn't tell you completely costs involve paying the employees who are building the rockets but they did say 63 million per astronant. Maybe 100-200 million each rocket AND employees costs. My estimate.

Space-X is probably lot cheaper than Russian's Proton rocket and employees salary costs.

PSS. found info Proton rocket cost

one industry official said that while ILS has increased some of its prices in recent months, dedicated Proton launches today are selling for less than $110 million.

SpaceX 133 million per launch is for cargo load (not astronauts) vs 110 million for Russian cargo load. IF a SpaceX cargo launch is filled to the max, then it's probably cheaper with SpaceX. Otherwise, the ILS Russian launch will be cheaper than SpaceX up to about 7,150 kg max payload for certain orbital locations.

SpaceX hasn't announced a launch price for astronauts, since it's not even approved by NASA to launch astronauts yet. The ILS Russians will just drop the price, imo, to beat the price of SpaceX. ILS is probably going to be the low cost launch service, but their rockets cannot do the really heavy payloads above 7,150 kg. However, IF NASA needs to send 7 astronauts to the SS, then only SpaceX can do that, when and if approved, but ILS can not. I don't know what the astronaut limit is for any current ILS rocket, but it's not seven for sure.

[chroot]

Oh cargo, I got it. Space-X are working on the Dragon 7 seats for astronauts and ILS only give 3 seats.

Sent from my Tbolt smartphone using Endless Sphere app

[Kingfish]

Dragon just splashed down!

dV,
The lift capacity quoted is not accurate my friend. The Falcon 9 is near the top of the high-middle weights, and very comparible to Atlas 5 versions. I am quite happy for them

Are you possibly confusing the Falcon 9 with a "future rocket" from SpaceX ???

The Falcon 9 lift capacity I quoted directly from their website: 10,450 kg to LEO.

The Atlas 5 (Atlas V) can do 18,810 kg to LEO. That's a whole different class of rocket that's far more powerful than the Falcon 9.

<snip>

Yes, sorry for the confusion; I meant the Falcon Heavy.

By coincidence, this was posted today: SpaceX signs first customer for its powerful new rocket

Uplifted, KF

[Nehmo]

Russians charge us 63 million to send a manned flight to SS. Our cost to date for unmanned w/SpaceX is 133 million per flight for 1st 12 flights assuming money isn't hidden & funneled around the edges to never know the true costs. Plus, over 400 million in taxpayer money went to seed this company too. That's not a privately funded & supported company, imo.

Why is SpaceX more than double the cost for a manned flight? Manned flight is far more expensive & costly to send a rocket up vs unmanned flight. Hmm, so SpaceX is already double the cost for Russian manned flights...

It leads to nonsense when comparing private business (PB) expenditures to government (Gov) ones.

The result of a PB purchase is simply the goods-in, and PB’s purpose is the maximize PB's possession of money. To do this, PB tries to pay the lowest price it can.

The result when Gov makes a purchase is the goods-in plus a bunch of rewarded contractors and politicians. These rewarded contractors and politicians are actually the ones who persuaded Gov to make the purchase. They did this because, in return, they expected part of the money the Gov spent to do the buying. The more money the Gov spends for the thing, the more money there is to distribute among the people who made the deal happen. To do this, Gov tries to pay the highest price it can.

A PB purchase is a method to get something. A Gov purchase is a method to distribute money; getting the thing is just a means to make the distribution.

Caveat: This is a simplification

[deVries]

The more money the Gov spends for the thing, the more money there is to distribute among the people who made the deal happen. To do this, Gov tries to pay the highest price it can.

...

A Gov purchase is a method to distribute money; getting the thing is just a means to make the distribution.

No, not necessarily so in the case of these space adventures, whether you agree with any specific space launch/program or not. The government (NASA, Congress, & Private Business Power & their K Street Lobbyists) deems a public good or service is necessary to carry out, so these contracts are let-out to qualified bidders. Prices are constrained by the bid process, unless the demand outweighs the supply available or the bidding is artificially limited to preferred contractors.

Space-X, ILS (Russian Launches), and Orbital Sciences Corp are all private contractors that bid for some or all of these "space contracts" along with other aerospace companies. SpaceX got government contracts because demand outweighed the supply from available contractors, and their bid price was lower in some or possibly all instances too. Politics is in business & government, so preferred relationships do form over time. SpaceX's claim "to fame" is they are "truly" lower cost than other launch providers. I don't know. Who does know for sure???

IF they are not proven to be lower cost over time, then it's possible the political clout of SpaceX and/or NASA corrupted the process of saving money for the taxpayer. Then you do probably have a valid point by what you said above.

I'm already skeptical about SpaceX considering Elon Musk's highly outspoken personal agenda to do manned Mars missions before 2020, even before SpaceX existed, which is exactly what NASA wants since the 1960's w/Von Braun. I think NASA found their "private company" front man to do their agenda too. Low cost launches to Mars??? Hmm...

[spinningmagnets]

Virgin Galactic is closing in on a finalized design for their low earth orbit communications satellite delivery vehicle. This will be the stable long-term money stream for them, as there are only so many millionaires that want to pay for a trip into space.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/virgin-galactic-announces-new-launch-vehicle/

[Kingfish]

SpaceX's Elon Musk shows off Grasshopper test rocket's latest hop


SpaceX's Grasshopper prototype rocket lifts off from its test pad in McGregor, Texas, for a test flight, as shown in a company-provided video with Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" playing as the soundtrack.

SpaceX's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, gave attendees at the South by Southwest festival in Texas the first public look at the fourth flight test carried out by his company's reusable self-landing rocket, nicknamed the Grasshopper.

This latest "hop," conducted on Thursday at SpaceX's rocket test facility in McGregor, Texas, sent the Grasshopper twice as high as it ever went previously: In a statement, the company said the 10-story-tall rocket rose 24 stories off the ground (262.8 feet, or 80.1 meters), hovered for 34 seconds and landed safely on its own.

"Grasshopper touched down with its most accurate thus far on the centermost part of the launch pad," SpaceX said. "At touchdown, the thrust-to-weight ratio of the vehicle was greater than one, proving a key landing algorithm for Falcon 9."

Thursday's test builds on test flights conducted last September, November and December. During his keynote address at the annual SXSW gathering in Austin on Saturday, Musk joked that this flight was the "Johnny Cash hover slam," according to an account from NewSpace Journal. Johnny Cash's song about a "burning ring of fire" was playing in the background as the video rolled.

Grasshopper's vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing technology is considered a key part of SpaceX's plan to make its Falcon 9 rockets more reusable. "With Grasshopper, SpaceX engineers are testing the technology that would enable a launched rocket to land intact, rather than burning up upon re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere," the company said.

A Falcon 9 rocket delivered an unmanned SpaceX Dragon capsule safely to the International Space Station last week, and that capsule will soon be filled up with more than a ton of cargo for return to Earth. Eventually, SpaceX plans to refurbish Dragon capsules as well as Falcon boosters for reuse, but the company hasn't gotten to that stage yet. NASA has contracted with the California-based company to make 12 Dragon deliveries over the next several years at a cost of $1.6 billion. The current cargo mission is the second under the terms of the contract.

Looking further ahead, SpaceX aims to adapt its boosters and crew vehicles to send astronauts to Mars. The 41-year-old Musk told the SXSW crowd that he might well end up being one of those astronauts. "I've said I want to die on Mars," CNET quoted him as saying. "Just not on impact."

Update for 7:45 p.m. ET March 9: At about the 1:15 mark in that video, you might notice a dummy cowboy standing on the rocket. That's not the first time a ringer for a wrangler has taken a ride on the Grasshopper.

Go man go! KF

[deronmoped]

So if SpaceX is more expensive then why are they getting any contracts? Would it not make more sense to just let NASA do all the launching, I mean NASA must have it down by now. Heck, if Russia is cheaper, just send the business there way.

[Kingfish]

Russia is NOT cheaper: After the Space Shuttle retired, Russia doubled the price per seat in a move that was widely anticipated. It is one of many reasons why the United States has fielded several private companies with seed money to bootstrap and take over LEO operations - freeing up NASA to do what it does best: R&D, Mission Planning, Exploration...

~KF

[Nehmo]

Russia is NOT cheaper: After the Space Shuttle retired, Russia doubled the price per seat in a move that was widely anticipated. ..
~KF

Price gouging by Russia's Federal Space Agency? What's your cite on this? NASA spokesman Joshua Buck says the rate of increase is 8.5%/year.

[Kingfish]

That might be Now(); but if you go back to when the Shuttle was flying it was only $30M a seat.

NASA to Fly Astronauts on Russian Spaceships at Nearly $63 Million per Seat

NASA has struck a new $753 million deal with Russia for 12 round trips to the International Space Station, but will now have to pay more per seat – almost $63 million, the U.S. space agency announced today (March 14).

The new deal will allow NASA to fly a dozen astronauts from the U.S. or its partner agencies on Russia's venerable Soyuz spacecraft between 2014 and 2015 at a cost of about $62.7 million per seat. That's an increase from the $55.8 million per seat NASA paid under a deal for six round trips to the station in 2013 and 2014.

This is the same article you referenced.

31 October 2000: Dennis Tito, American reportedly paid $20M for his trip. He was followed in April 2002 by South African businessman Mark Shuttleworth who paid the same. The full list of paying passengers is given here: Space Adventures. The publicized price for flights brokered by Space Adventures to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft have been US$20–35 million, during the period 2001–2009 (Wikipedia).

22 March 2010: US space companies present Soyuz-busting price plans

Matching Russian rides to the International Space Station after the space shuttle retires will be difficult without "extraordinary" US government help, a senior NASA insider said on Thursday. But the private space firm SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, says it is ready to step into the breach by undercutting the current $50 million-per-astronaut round-trip ticket for travelling to the ISS aboard the Russian Soyuz craft.

"We can guarantee crew flights to the ISS for less than $50 million a seat," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told a hearing held by the US Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation.

This was 3 years ago, so in 3 years the cost has increased 25% which is on par with the 8.5% annual increase previously quoted. If we extrapolate that backwards to 2007, the figure equates to $40M, and three years before that it's close to $30M. That number - $30M has been used over and over to compare the cost of Shuttle rides vs Soyuz; it was always presumed these prices could double once the Shuttle was out of the picture and fomented long arguments before Congress to speed up replacements.

The Russians claim the cost increase is due to the strength of the Dollars vs. Rubles. I see it as price gouging. What economy survives inflationary costs at 8.5% year after year? They're are sitting on arguably the largest deposits of petroleum and diamonds by virtue of land mass. They have a cost+ economy for being the fuel pump to Europe - and they're gouging that market too... which is part of the reason why Germany and other countries are obsessive with renewables.

I grant you that the Shuttle was terribly expensive per seat. I tend to believe it was not entirely successful at reducing cost for trucking cargo to LEO. So we got a few satellites into orbit, and a pretty dang nice space station up there, but it flubbed taking us anywhere else - except perhaps to the movies.

FWIW, I support private commercial endeavors as being less expensive and competitive. Though I guess we'll have to wait and see if their inflationary costs will be less than 8.5%.

~KF