SpaceX ISS Dragon resupply mission is today(new.livestream.com)
new.livestream.com
SpaceX ISS Dragon resupply mission is today
http://new.livestream.com/accounts/142499/events/1579124/videos/4530165
8 comments
Given that a publically funded manned Mars mission would be at least $10B, a private mission would be difficult even if the cost were reduced 10x. And SpaceX can't even reduce orbital launch costs by 10x over today's gold standard; according to Wikpedia, the Russians have the currently cheapest operational LEO system on a per kilogram basis. Meanwhile, SpaceX's costs are 2x over original estimates. While the Space Shuttle was such a boondoggle that almost anyone could reduce costs as compared to it, contemporary Russian programs are not nearly as poorly designed and executed.
Russian programs are not contemporary: they are early 1970s projects with some 21st century trim jobs. They R&D costs and production lines were amortized before Reagan came to power.
That doesn't make it any less contemporary or cheap. They are operating today, and they cost less. If your goal is to get mass to orbit for the least amount of cash, that's all that matters.
There's also the march of technology to consider. 1970's technology isn't going to be cost competitive forever, even with amortized R&D costs. When SpaceX gets to the point of delivering complete reusability, there's going to be a shakeup.
From what I have read on Forbes, Quora, and the link below, it looks like wikipedia might be incorrect. http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/spacex-dragon-takes-f... and http://satellite.tmcnet.com/topics/satellite/articles/171190...
If cost would be reduced 10x, I figure there's a pretty high chance the Government will pay them for it.
> for taking people off-planet and (eventually) to other ones, and back.
Aren't they planning one way trips ?
Aren't they planning one way trips ?
There will be money to be made from return tickets.
To me, this is nothing short of amazing. This is the first time we are seeing commercial entities working closely with national/international government run space programs. This is a new era for space exploration because this is the first time private money will start rolling into space exploration programs.
The problem with government funded programs is they are underfunded, limited in scope and often have no competition that would push them forward. One of the reasons why Apollo programs were so successful is because Americans and Russians were trying to out do each others and that created a healthy environment for amazing new tech to emerge. The problem today is that no country really cares about space exploration anymore... at least not to the extent they used to.
When you allow free market forces and commercial competition to do their thing, you end up with all sorts of great things that otherwise never would've been. Can all of you imagine where we would be right now if everything computer related was ever researched and invented solely by governmental research programs? Probably somewhere in the 80s/90s, tech wise. If it weren't for Apple and Google trying to make as much money as possible in the phone market, we'd still likely be stuck with black and white phones with mechanical keypads. Same thing is about to happen with space programs. It's the capitalism, competition and free markets that allow for great inventions to emerge. Human greed CAN be a good thing.
The problem with government funded programs is they are underfunded, limited in scope and often have no competition that would push them forward. One of the reasons why Apollo programs were so successful is because Americans and Russians were trying to out do each others and that created a healthy environment for amazing new tech to emerge. The problem today is that no country really cares about space exploration anymore... at least not to the extent they used to.
When you allow free market forces and commercial competition to do their thing, you end up with all sorts of great things that otherwise never would've been. Can all of you imagine where we would be right now if everything computer related was ever researched and invented solely by governmental research programs? Probably somewhere in the 80s/90s, tech wise. If it weren't for Apple and Google trying to make as much money as possible in the phone market, we'd still likely be stuck with black and white phones with mechanical keypads. Same thing is about to happen with space programs. It's the capitalism, competition and free markets that allow for great inventions to emerge. Human greed CAN be a good thing.
The Space Shuttle was designed and built by a private contractor (North American Rockwell) after a competitive selection process among many private parties; even in the SpaceX case, the funding is provided by the government to private parties through the age-old bidding process. So I'm not sure what's so revolutionary here, especially given an almost zero potential for space profits absent government support. Mining the asteroids might be an opportunity the private sector could exploit in a few decades.
The big difference is SpaceX was able to keep the cost down because they put the money in up front and thus weren't forced by Congress to spread the work over 20 states. But that will change now that they have government contracts.
I don't think so. The "spread the work around" will be through the diversity of COTS projects, of which SpaceX is only one. But SpaceX has contracts, which could keep them profitable for long enough to pay off investors. Then they can drop the bottom out of the space transport market.
>I don't think so. The "spread the work around" will be through the diversity of COTS projects, of which SpaceX is only one.
Congress certainly isn't above putting these kinds of restrictions on COTS project funding. If they can't, then they'll just zero out the COTS funding and fund everything through traditional cost+ projects. The biggest hole in the the thinking of space enthusiasts is the gap between their perception of space projects and How Things Work politically. To me and you it's all about science and fancy engineering and, you know, going where no man has gone before.
To Congress these projects are just a way to bring jobs to the district and get campaign contributions flowing. That's where their consideration ends. They don't even care if anything actually works as long as the jobs are there. That's why Constellation is still alive, and why NASA has ten different campuses. That's why it took twenty years longer than it should have to kill the space shuttle. Hell, that's why mission control is in Houston instead of Florida.
SpaceX will not be immune from the laws of political gravity. The only way they're going to be able to stay relatively efficient is to stick with the commercial market. But Elon Musk seems fixated on Mars, so I doubt that's how things will play out.
Congress certainly isn't above putting these kinds of restrictions on COTS project funding. If they can't, then they'll just zero out the COTS funding and fund everything through traditional cost+ projects. The biggest hole in the the thinking of space enthusiasts is the gap between their perception of space projects and How Things Work politically. To me and you it's all about science and fancy engineering and, you know, going where no man has gone before.
To Congress these projects are just a way to bring jobs to the district and get campaign contributions flowing. That's where their consideration ends. They don't even care if anything actually works as long as the jobs are there. That's why Constellation is still alive, and why NASA has ten different campuses. That's why it took twenty years longer than it should have to kill the space shuttle. Hell, that's why mission control is in Houston instead of Florida.
SpaceX will not be immune from the laws of political gravity. The only way they're going to be able to stay relatively efficient is to stick with the commercial market. But Elon Musk seems fixated on Mars, so I doubt that's how things will play out.
The difference is extreme. In the Space Shuttle case NASA signed off on every little detail of the design and manufacture of the vehicle and told Rockwell to go build it, deliver it to them, and then they undertook operations with the vehicle. This is very comparable to, say, the US military procuring and operating a fighter jet such as the F-22.
Now let's look at SpaceX's Falcon/Dragon. SpaceX financed, designed, and proved the Falcon-9 launch vehicle on its own. To its own specs. To its own design. And to its own internal budget. Similarly, SpaceX began designing the Dragon pressurized spacecraft on its own. NASA came along and offered up the potential for a contract for resupply of the ISS, they did not specify the design or method of construction of the launch vehicle and spacecraft to achieve this goal, nor did they fund the complete development costs of such a system. Instead, SpaceX stepped up and said "hey, we have something that we think could fit your needs" (as did Orbital Sciences Corp.) and then NASA provided some moderate funding to help with specialized development costs for ISS resupply and then extended the opportunity for ISS resupply contracts after a successful demonstration. This is comparable to buying a plane ticket.
SpaceX's NASA contracts are quite lucrative for them (because they can provide a service at a lower price than the competition but it is a very highly priced service) but even without them they are poised to reap massive profits from bog-standard commercial launch services. They have a contract with Orbcomm to launch 18 satellites, and contracts with MDA Corp., SES, Thaicom, NSPO, Asiasat, SS/Loral, Argentina, Israel, and others to launch commercial satellites over the coming years. Because SpaceX is able to set the retail price of its launches at the current market floor (somewhere around the per kg price of the Long March, Soyuz, or Proton) despite their underlying costs being much lower they are able to pocket a healthy profit per launch, which should fatten their wallets mightily even over the next few years let alone the next decade or so.
Now let's look at SpaceX's Falcon/Dragon. SpaceX financed, designed, and proved the Falcon-9 launch vehicle on its own. To its own specs. To its own design. And to its own internal budget. Similarly, SpaceX began designing the Dragon pressurized spacecraft on its own. NASA came along and offered up the potential for a contract for resupply of the ISS, they did not specify the design or method of construction of the launch vehicle and spacecraft to achieve this goal, nor did they fund the complete development costs of such a system. Instead, SpaceX stepped up and said "hey, we have something that we think could fit your needs" (as did Orbital Sciences Corp.) and then NASA provided some moderate funding to help with specialized development costs for ISS resupply and then extended the opportunity for ISS resupply contracts after a successful demonstration. This is comparable to buying a plane ticket.
SpaceX's NASA contracts are quite lucrative for them (because they can provide a service at a lower price than the competition but it is a very highly priced service) but even without them they are poised to reap massive profits from bog-standard commercial launch services. They have a contract with Orbcomm to launch 18 satellites, and contracts with MDA Corp., SES, Thaicom, NSPO, Asiasat, SS/Loral, Argentina, Israel, and others to launch commercial satellites over the coming years. Because SpaceX is able to set the retail price of its launches at the current market floor (somewhere around the per kg price of the Long March, Soyuz, or Proton) despite their underlying costs being much lower they are able to pocket a healthy profit per launch, which should fatten their wallets mightily even over the next few years let alone the next decade or so.
> Because SpaceX is able to set the retail price of its launches at the current market floor (somewhere around the per kg price of the Long March, Soyuz, or Proton) despite their underlying costs being much lower they are able to pocket a healthy profit per launch, which should fatten their wallets mightily even over the next few years let alone the next decade or so.
Then once they pay off investors this way, we'll start seeing even more cost reduction.
Then once they pay off investors this way, we'll start seeing even more cost reduction.
Even before then. The launch business is lucrative enough the Russians and the Chinese and the Europeans aren't going to sit on their collective thumbs and let SpaceX undercut them for very long.
There's nothing revolutionary about the Falcon series in the sense that there are special gizmos hidden from potential competitors. If necessary the other players on the market will simply copy them.
There's nothing revolutionary about the Falcon series in the sense that there are special gizmos hidden from potential competitors. If necessary the other players on the market will simply copy them.
"There's nothing revolutionary about the Falcon series in the sense that there are special gizmos hidden from potential competitors."
This is a common misunderstanding of launch vehicle design. There has long been the idea that "spaceflight is hard", that launch vehicles are inherently expensive, that the only way to progress is through revolutionary, bleeding-edge designs (aerospike engines, SSTO, composite fuel tanks, SCRAMJETs, what-have-you) or "special gizmos" that provide some sort of edge. This turns out to be exactly opposite from reality. The important thing is to have a clean, elegant, robust design which is streamlined for manufacturing. And that's what SpaceX has done. At its heart the Falcon 9 is basically a 6 decade old rocket design. Two stages, LOX/Kerosene. In some ways the Saturn-IB (first launched in 1966) was more advanced because it used a LOX/LH2 2nd stage. But SpaceX has concentrated on streamlining production and on making the rocket very robust (through greater damage tolerance in the engines, the ability to do on-pad aborts, etc.)
And it's this concentration on manufacturing and on robustness that has led to SpaceX's low costs. This isn't something that you can simply bolt-on to an existing rocket design (such as Soyuz, Proton, Long March, etc.) It's a property of the organization, and of the entire rocket design as a whole. And it's also not something that is easy to copy because as much as anything it's about corporate culture and institutional policies and talent.
I'd like to see more companies follow in SpaceX's footsteps but this is something that I think it's unlikely the established rocket makers will be able to do (because it would mean fundamentally reinventing themselves from the bottom up), but I do think it's possible that new companies will come on the scene that are able to match that level of pragmatism and efficiency.
This is a common misunderstanding of launch vehicle design. There has long been the idea that "spaceflight is hard", that launch vehicles are inherently expensive, that the only way to progress is through revolutionary, bleeding-edge designs (aerospike engines, SSTO, composite fuel tanks, SCRAMJETs, what-have-you) or "special gizmos" that provide some sort of edge. This turns out to be exactly opposite from reality. The important thing is to have a clean, elegant, robust design which is streamlined for manufacturing. And that's what SpaceX has done. At its heart the Falcon 9 is basically a 6 decade old rocket design. Two stages, LOX/Kerosene. In some ways the Saturn-IB (first launched in 1966) was more advanced because it used a LOX/LH2 2nd stage. But SpaceX has concentrated on streamlining production and on making the rocket very robust (through greater damage tolerance in the engines, the ability to do on-pad aborts, etc.)
And it's this concentration on manufacturing and on robustness that has led to SpaceX's low costs. This isn't something that you can simply bolt-on to an existing rocket design (such as Soyuz, Proton, Long March, etc.) It's a property of the organization, and of the entire rocket design as a whole. And it's also not something that is easy to copy because as much as anything it's about corporate culture and institutional policies and talent.
I'd like to see more companies follow in SpaceX's footsteps but this is something that I think it's unlikely the established rocket makers will be able to do (because it would mean fundamentally reinventing themselves from the bottom up), but I do think it's possible that new companies will come on the scene that are able to match that level of pragmatism and efficiency.
Established rocket makers can do this. They've never had the incentive before, at least in the US, because the more you cut costs in a cost plus contract the less money you make. But they certainly have the engineering chops, and they can spin off a subsidiary if the organizational pressures are too unwieldy.
The problem is they're in the same position AOL was in when people started to get high speed internet. There's no way they can make a cheaper rocket without gutting their own high-margin government business, so they'll pretend as long as they can.
The problem is they're in the same position AOL was in when people started to get high speed internet. There's no way they can make a cheaper rocket without gutting their own high-margin government business, so they'll pretend as long as they can.
SpaceX may have speculatively designed the Dragon in advance of NASA's resupply program (though I doubt it: the program was announced only one year after the Dragon began design, and two years after Columbia, when it was clear the Shuttle was toast). My point is simply that this is not the first foray of for profit enterprise into the space market. If you count the satellite market, then SpaceX is even less novel, as other companies (Orbital Sciences) have been servicing this market for 20 years. That said, their designs may be quite novel, even revolutionary; we'll see.
I sometimes wonder why space exploration interest ever waned. You would think as population increases and natural resource supplies tighten, that the world would be a bit more motivated. I'm convinced that interest is low because the problem is just too damn hard.
Because once you've won a race there is no point in continuing to run.
Access to space never was about access to space to begin with, it was a showdown on the world political stage.
Access to space never was about access to space to begin with, it was a showdown on the world political stage.
Exactly. And what is the end goal of space exploration? Colonize another planet? Do you know how impossible that seems -air, food, facilities?? Billions spent for what exactly...mining operations?
So what is the catalyst that sets off "real" space exploration? Near-exhaustion of Earth's resources?
If by "today" you mean "tomorrow".
I really hope this goes well. The Falcon 9 is still a pretty new rocket, and the Dragon is still a pretty new capsule. Give me five more good launches and I'll be able to watch without holding my breath.
I really hope this goes well. The Falcon 9 is still a pretty new rocket, and the Dragon is still a pretty new capsule. Give me five more good launches and I'll be able to watch without holding my breath.
> Give me five more good launches and I'll be able to watch without holding my breath.
Until they put people in them. And then the breath-holding starts all over.
Until they put people in them. And then the breath-holding starts all over.
IIRC the safest class you can get a rocket into occurs once it has 14 successful launches in a row. PS I'm not an expert in this.
Launch of this first commercial resupply mission (SpaceX CRS-1) to the complex is set for 8:35PM EDT Sunday, October 7 from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
Hmm, the site says we're still 23 hrs from launch so perhaps they meant "tomorrow" in the headline. Aka "Sunday"
FYI - A bit strange, but the actual pre-launch news conference doesn't start until 37:15 into the video on the page this story links to.
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Planetary Resources excites me for similar reasons. Though I don't think they have quite the same degree of talent at the top in a single guy as with the case of SpaceX. But still, very promising team, vision and approach.