Slashdot Mirror

As peacefinder pointed out, SpaceX is so badass they post the prices on their site. But I'd like to point out that Musk has said: "Ultimately, I believe $500 per pound or less is very achievable."

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=10

So who knows what we'll be seeing in the next few years.

It used to be that if you wanted to work on space technology (in North America), you had to work at NASA. Well it seems I could now apply at a few different companies to work on that kind of stuff. And that's exciting. More jobs in the field means more research, more activity, more growth. And Space exploration is one field that is exciting for Growth.

On that note, it's worth mentioning that SpaceX is actively hiring. It's not just aerospace/electrical/materials engineering jobs they're recruiting for, either, but also IT staff, technical writers, embedded systems programmers, and so forth.

Clark Lindsay's (really awesome) site has a list of several other private space companies which are hiring.

And, just to round off the fleet, SpaceX has already drafted up plans for a Heavy Lift launcher (see here) that could compete directly with ULA's Delta IV Heavy, the Arianne V, and whatever the Russians will be using for a heavy launcher in the next few years.

Pricing

SpaceX offers open and fixed pricing that is the same for all customers, including a best price guarantee. Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases. A half bay flight of Falcon 9 is available to accommodate customers with payloads in between Falcon 1 and 9.
Mission Type Price*
LEO (s/c80% capacity to the customer orbit) $56M
GTO (s/c3,000 kg)** $49.9M
GTO (s/c up to 4,680 kg) $56M

*Standard Launch Services Pricing through 12/31/10.

Standard prices assumes standard services (see User Guide) and payment in full within the noted calendar period.

Payments made over time subject to LIBOR +2.5% financing rate. Contact SpaceX for standard payment plan.

Standard price includes a SpaceX-developed and produced payload adapter and tension-band separation system. Other systems can be accommodated or provided — contact SpaceX for more information.

Reflight insurance offered at 8.0% of Standard Launch Services Price.

**SpaceX reserves the right to seek a non-interference co-passenger

Rebates to Standard Launch Services Pricing are considered on a case-by case basis to address (i) inaugural launches, (ii) short turn around opportunities and (iii) multiple launch service procurements.

Performance
Launch Site: Cape Canaveral AFS Kwajalein

Mass to Low Earth Orbit (LEO): 10,450 kg (23,050 lb) 8,560 kg (18,870 lb)
Inclination: 28.5 degree 90 degree (polar orbit)

Mass to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO): 4,540 kg (10,000 lb) 4,680 kg (10,320 lb)
Inclination: 28.5 degree 9.1 degree

For further information, contact us at FalconGuide@spacex.com.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said he'd like to retire on mars. That's likely a little far-fetched, but he's more likely to make that happen than NASA. (well, technically his fortune is pretty small in comparison to some other people, but lets say Tesla does really well...) -Taylor

Actually, Tesla is a money sink, and always will be. Its goal was never to cater to anything other than Musk's tiny/imaginary market for luxury electric cars with average performance (for electrics). SpaceX, on the other hand, is turning into a cash cow, tapping into the robust competitive market for small- and medium-sized commercial satellite launches. They already have contracts for 30+ launches with a dozen companies and governments (NASA is the biggest buyer of course), and so far their rockets have been extraordinarily successful. If anything finances Musk's Mars base, it will be SpaceX.

Well, I would certainly hope she could. Though, I suspect SpaceX springs for more RAM than that.

http://www.spacex.com/

You still have a shot. Elon Musk pretty much made the company because he was disappointed with NASA as you are. And the goal/purpose is to put a man on mars... perhaps by 2020-2025 (he has made a bet to that end).

As someone who wasn't alive during the Apollo years, it's pretty exciting for me to see a company that might actually make travel to space sustainable.

As someone who was alive during the Apollo years[and the Mercury and Gemini years], I agree wholeheartedly; it was, and still is exciting. [I got the same goosebumps on launch, and was amazed at the vid quality and abundance!]

And you youngsters get added bonuses:
1. Better and higher quality coverage of the 'into space' events[see linked video in TFS]. Almost/or real time!
2. The internet.[see above]
3. Competition to drive 'Rocket Scientists®' to innovate again. 'Back then', it was USA astronauts vs. USSR cosmonauts...no holds barred. Now, it is similar, again no holds barred.
4. Maybe your favorite astronaut has a facebook page, or a twitter tweet? ;-)
5. Almost obligatory:
      'And you get to get off my lawn!' ;-)
6. Did I mention the internet?

This ties in with the overall design of the Dragon capsule, which is designed to re-enter with a non-perpendicular angle of attack: presumably to provide some lift to allow some cross-range maneuvering, though it might also help the ergonomics inside the capsule. The heat shield and everything else is designed asymmetrically: presumably the parachutes are set up the same way.

http://www.spacex.com/00Graphics/Images/Dec07%20Web%20Update/17.jpg
http://www.spacex.com/00Graphics/Images/Dec07%20Web%20Update/19.jpg

This ties in with the overall design of the Dragon capsule, which is designed to re-enter with a non-perpendicular angle of attack: presumably to provide some lift to allow some cross-range maneuvering, though it might also help the ergonomics inside the capsule. The heat shield and everything else is designed asymmetrically: presumably the parachutes are set up the same way.

http://www.spacex.com/00Graphics/Images/Dec07%20Web%20Update/17.jpg
http://www.spacex.com/00Graphics/Images/Dec07%20Web%20Update/19.jpg

I agree. Why should you have to pay tax dollars on this?

But at the same time, why should you prevent me through silly regulations (hint, ITAR... look it up if you like) and government policies that explicitly keep me from experimenting with or even attempting to build rockets on my own dime. The question isn't that somebody like you needs to be able to pay for me to go into space, but rather that there are people (perhaps you aren't one of them) that explicitly want to keep me down on this rock at gunpoint and will sabotage any efforts I make in regards to getting off of this rock.

Organizations like NASA are quickly becoming a relic of the past, where the money is merely a way to have a bunch of bureaucrats spin their wheels and keep some disenchanted aerospace engineers and munitions workers busy when a war isn't going on. I certainly wouldn't cry too hard if NASA was completely de-funded and disbanded by Congress.... as if they have been making any sort of relevant progress towards cost-effective spaceflight at any time over the past 40 years anyway. Doubling the NASA budget is only going to double the number of bureaucrats working in Houston, Texas. It isn't going to get anybody off of this rock in a meaningful way.

On the other hand, there are many different private spaceflight companies with real hardware that can get people into space. We don't need a government agency to get that accomplished. Yes, government grants are nice, but it isn't needed to get this task accomplished.

For myself, if government is going to get involved at all, I'd rather they simply give a "tax holiday" for all federal taxes (corporate and personal income taxes... and other kinds too) by companies directly engaged in putting equipment into space. It would certainly be far and away more cost effective than doubling the current NASA budget, and perhaps something would actually be flying beyond Low-Earth orbit too. I definitely think that such a move would cause private space investment to roar into life in a manner that has never been seen before. The loss in taxes would be minor, and I could argue that the taxes raised from support industries would by far and away more than make up for any "lost" tax receipts to such companies.... and certainly be quite a bit less than going through the appropriations meat-grinder of the U.S. Congress.

http://www.spacex.com/careers.php

Relevant expertise required and also US citizenship, apparently.

Well, they're kind of crammed on the Dragon, too.

I'd much rather see an HL-42 styled craft. Give me a horizontal landing, on an actual runway. None of this splashing down in the ocean and waiting for the flippin' navy to rescue you.

Awwww snap! Too bad that the dragon COMMERCIAL SPACECRAFT has already achieved orbit. There are some pretty sweet pics of the launch in the link below. http://www.spacex.com/F9-001.php

Re "Lifeboat Dragon", see the first two "back up" slides here:

http://www.spacex.com/20090617_Elon_Musk_Augustine_Commission.pdf

There was also some blog discussion of delivering a lifeboat Dragon in the Shuttle cargo bay. But since then, the Shuttle life has shortened and SpaceX's schedule has stretched to the point where that's probably impossible.

Finally, it will costs a great deal of money for NASA to get to the moon. So, why not offer up an X-Prize

Finally, screw the moon. The moon is a trap.

Next launch after this one was apparently outright rescheduled to 2011; first one had its share of delays, we'll see how the 2nd goes.

That said, I wouldn't be really surprised if they manage their first cargo sortie to ISS in 2011.

We're about to rely on a foreign country as our sole source supplier for manned access to the ISS for at least several years

No, we are about to rely on a private company, Space X, to ferry astronauts to the ISS. That seems reasonable to me, with the Russians as a backup / lifeboat.

The constellation & Aries may be gone but there are replacements for them, & yes they most definitely are out sourced designs, see http://www.spacex.com/F9-001.php Oh yeah & its in orbit right now! thats 15 years ahead of constellation / Aries.

It looks like the U.S. will never get back to the space. I just wonder why they waste so much money on projects they abort soon.

Contrary to the prevailing public relations blitz that is being put on by ATK and certain entrenched interests within the D.C. beltway, The United States of America is not ceeding leadership in space to other countries. Instead, the paradigm is changing from that of a central government bureaucracy that is responsible for the financing, acquisition, and planning of such an endeavor to something that is more de-centralized, mostly privately led, and allowing freedom to ordinary individuals to try and get into space.

For commercial spaceflight companies, America simply dominates the rest of the world combined. When I hear of things happening in spaceflight and can compare stuff that is happening elsewhere, there are about two to three times as many companies formed and activities like the creation of a new spaceport than anything happening in the rest of the world. No, I'm not saying that private companies aren't being set up elsewhere and there certainly is something afoot in the European Union too in terms of private efforts for getting into space, but if you want to get into the action and see where the hot activity is taking place, it is currently in America. South-western USA to be exact if you want to know where the bulk of these companies are working at.

Never get into space? I suppose that this flight was a figment of my imagination. This is hardly the only company going into space, and I don't see vehicle production lines necessarily getting shut down.... except in Utah. I call that simply ATK having a singular problem trying to figure out how to make a profit in the current market rather than a national crisis. Sometimes dinosaurs go extinct too.

The other problem is that tests are expensive...

It would be interesting to know what sort of budget they had to work with. Contrast the Korean/Russian effort with that of these guys. They seem to be able to afford quite rigorous testing, which I think has had a lot to do with their success on the launch pad.

According to the Falcon 9 user's guide, it's capable of sending a payload of about 2.5 tons to escape velocity (C3=0).

Though I agree, the OP meant "orbit circularization".

Anyway, three cheers for SpaceX, but if I were NASA I'd make damn sure they know what the deal was with that roll before they let a Dragon anywhere near the ISS.

SpaceX will probably release a high quality video in the next few days like they always do. Look out for it here.

I think Elon Musk may have said it better than anyone else:

http://spacex.com/press.php?page=20100415

And his calling out of Senator Shelby was pretty epic:

"A lesser President might have waited until after the upcoming election cycle, not caring that billions more dollars would be wasted. It was disappointing to see how many in Congress did not possess this courage. One senator in particular was determined to achieve a new altitude record in hypocrisy, claiming that the public option was bad in healthcare, but good in space!"

By the time Ares I/Orion program was cancelled earlier this year, the schedule had already slipped five years to 2017 & a full development would have cost another $50 billion. Further, the cost per flight, with estimated overhead, was figured to be at least $1.5 billion each this compared to the $1 billion each for a Shuttle flight, this while lifting only four people to Shuttle's seven & little or no cargo. Cancellation was therefore a matter of time & thankfully the president had the political guts to do the right thing for once. The problem that you see in the media is the claim there is no immediate replacement. The reality is there is a civilian alternative being pushed & it is the same replacement the president looked at when he went to pad 41 at Cape Canaveral launch station & looked at the flight ready vehicle from Spacex, owned by Elon Musk. According to the media the replacement is years away, the reality is the media missing this story. The replacement, is the first flight ready articles of 2 pieces of equipment the Spacex Falcon 9 medium Launch vehicle which on its maiden flight, is already mated to the Dragon Spacecraft. The two items are already at the Cape awaiting the final sign off by the Air Force range safety office & by NASA. That's all that is keeping it on the ground, not a pie in the sky development program that hasn't started yet, this one is 75% complete at this point, that means we have the hardware development mostly complete, all that is needed is permission to launch to prove its viability. Then obviously it will need a series of flights to work off the knee cards if you will & get it man rated, yes that will take years. But not that many years. if you don't believe me, go here & research it yourself; http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

Exactly, I was just going to post about the same thing.

SpaceX looks to be doing exactly the right things, in contrast to the dinosaur aerospace companies.

Check here for more information including videos of their latest rockets and engines.

...is a friggin' sensationalist claim that has no place in science reporting, either on a primary site or on a news aggregation site. Should the first Falcon 9 fail, they will learn from it and launch better designs in the future. Orbital still is working on its Taurus rocket. The EELV program (Atlas and Delta) are still pushing strong in the commercial market. If the first Falcon 9 flight fails, it will not be the end all be all of either Obama's current NASA vision, nor America's role in the space program. So please, keep the hyperbole out of the damned summaries guys.

I totally agree. I'm a huge fan of SpaceX and have a lot of hope for them, but even if they suddenly disappeared into the ubiquitous ether the new NASA plan would still be going strong. As you mentioned, there's quite a few other companies getting fixed-price milestone-based funding from NASA to develop launch vehicles and spacecraft for crew. A quick summary:

Launch vehicles:
* SpaceX Falcon 9 (vehicle mentioned in summary): medium development risk, low-cost
* Lockheed/ULA Atlas V: low-risk (development risk, that is), high cost, but still drastically lower cost than Space Shuttle or Constellation (has been operating for a number of years now, with all 20 launches so far successful)
* Boeing/ULA Delta IV Heavy: low-risk, high cost (could potentially lift Orion spacecraft)
* Orbital Taurus II: medium-risk, medium-cost, although probably better suited for cargo than crew

Spacecraft (potentially launched on a variety of different launch vehicles):
* SpaceX Dragon: capsule is pretty much ready, with a number of test articles, but the development "long pole" is a to-be-developed launch escape system
* Boeing/Bigelow capsule: sometimes termed the "Orion Lite", Bigelow's also interested in this as a way to get to his private space station modules
* Blue Origin: composite capsule, also designing a novel push-based (instead of the traditional tractor-based) escape system adaptable to other capsules
* Sierra Nevada/SpaceDev Dream Chaser: more novel design, using a lifting-body based on the well-tested HL-20; this sort of design provides a gentler reentry from LEO (and potentially upgrades well to lunar/Lagrangian return); the company has already spent at least $10M of its own funds developing the design and building test articles
* Orbital Cygnus: optimized for cargo deliveries to ISS, but can potentially be extended to crew

It's also worth noting that Blue Origin, ULA, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada are all being funded on CCDev contracts (in addition to a certain amount of private funding, which they're all required to have). With these contracts, they only get the full payment if they meet all of their pre-determined milestones (building test articles, performing tests, etc.) by September of 2010. IMHO, this September is when we'll get a better idea of which companies will be competing for crew/cargo delivery in the future, and

Where are you getting that $10M figure from?

SpaceX's site says $44-49M.

SpaceX will have its Dragon module docking with the ISS 4 years before Ares I/Orion's first test flight, and manned missions 2-3 years before Orion. While I agree that it's bad for NASA to stop manned spaceflight before the replacement is available, THAT part was not Obama's plan. Bush decided that in 2004. Obama just wants to cancel the Constellation program, which seems like it's already behind what commercial systems like SpaceX have available.

Killing Constellation might actually be the best thing for increasing the chances that a kid gets to fly in space. Constellation was going to lock us into a flight architecture that was not suitable for anything other than occasional grandstanding flights to the Moon or Mars. It was not suitable for the basis of a space economy or a scalable transportation system that could support a lunar mining base and orbital facilities to build solar power satellites, for example. NASA clearly doesn't have a direction to get people into space, but now that it's out of the way, maybe other efforts can get a toe hold. (NASA hasn't yet arrived at a formula for stimulating this, the COTS model was fundamentally flawed, but I suspect that perhaps as few as five more years of floundering, and buying rides from Russia, along with watching China and India get into space, will focus America on this problem.) Here are a few potential contenders:

Skylon
Mystery Lockheed Martin Test Program
Vulcan (DARPA)
SpaceX Falcon


Right now, there are too many disposable rockets, chasing too small a launch market. Most of the private efforts are not able to get sufficient funding for the sort of technology advancement which will be required to get the cost per pound in orbit down by much, which in turn is required if anything useful is gonna happen up there. A seldom-recanted but critical part of the X-33 story was that the business model for VentureStar fell apart. There were at least one, if not two satellite phone companies planning to orbit hundreds of telecom sats. They were looking for large buys, on the order of a flight per week, for years on end, of Shuttle-class payloads (50,000 lbs), and wanted lower cost per pound. When those companies looked like they were going to fail, the primary contractor concluded that the remaining launch market (NASA plus industry at roughly the level we see today) wasn't big enough to justify private funding for the VentureStar, even after they X-33 notorious technical issues were studied and believed to be resolvable.

Show me one commercial launch of relevant throw weight that costs less than a million dollars. So no dinky little sounding rocket with a cubesat at the tip. I mean heavy lifters, twenty tons to LEO/ten tons to GTO. The cheapest of the bunch is probably the Proton, but that's still near $100M.

That SpaceX heavy lifter they keep talking about would actually be more expensive than the Proton, if their website is to be believed.

Uhm, hello? We've been outsourcing a lot of manned space flights (to the ISS) to Russia for years since the Columbia disintegrated, plus lots of cargo flights too.

The Ares rocket program is already years behind and billions over budget. The design has huge flaws that may actually make it completely unusable.

So ask yourself this question as an American taxpayer: Do I want NASA to pay the Russians to hitch a ride to the ISS, or should we, oh gee I don't know, pay an American company for the same thing?

Those of you flipping out about this really need to take a look at the web page of SpaceX http://www.spacex.com/ In just a few years, they have built a fantastic family of rockets, from scratch, for vastly less than NASA spends in one year, and also much less than the pre-existing space industry giants.

NASA, for all of its past glory, is the absolute worst government bureaucracy there is. We CAN do better!

Necron69

The article from the "Orlando Sentinel" is just a bit slanted. Perhaps things aren't as bleak as that article and the summary suggest.

If we lose Constellation, it doesn't follow that the Manned Space Program is gone- just that we can't afford Constellation. See the Augustine Commission's report that claims that Constellation will only work if we give it another $3 billion a year. And this would have been for a program 5 years behind schedule, with no real test flights and several significant safety issues that haven't been resolved as of yet.

So what alternatives does the Obama administration have to look at? Well, as the article notes, Nasa will look at other heavy lift launch designs and come up with a plan to use one of those to replace the Ares V. As the Ares I was for Crew only, Nasa will look at the commercial launch vehicles such as the Dragon that we can use to ferry astronauts to the ISS and back. Nasa will get $200-300 million more a year to look at the new designs. This seems like a reasonable idea. We'll use commercial space services to lift the light stuff, and let NASA design the expensive, heavy lift vehicles.

The other point made in the article is that a new program won't be ready any time soon, implying that the new program would be starting from scratch. Given that Constellation wasn't going to be ready before 2017 at best, I'm not sure that we're going to lose any time we would have made up with Constellation. The other thing is that we won't be starting from scratch. Worst case, we start with the NLS review vehicle that NASA worked on back in 1993. Best case, we let those hard-working NASA engineers start with the DIRECT V3 proposal and get something up by 2015, a full 2 years before Ares would have been ready.

Have they sent anything into orbit?

Um, yes, much more often than NASA. For example, the United Launch Alliance has commercially launched 36 rockets in the past 36 months, SpaceX has had a number of successful launches (and seems to have worked out of their growing pains), and Orbital also launches regularly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight#Commercial_launchers

Have they made a trip to the ISS?

If you're include non-US companies, Arianespace has used their Ariane 5 rocket to launch an ATV to the ISS. If you're only including US companies, SpaceX will be launching a prototype of their Dragon capsule this month, with two missions to the ISS this year: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

Any other questions?

Frankly, I'm now glad to see the shuttle retiring and I'm greatly looking forward to the impending launch of the first SpaceX Falcon 9 this spring ( http://www.spacex.com/updates.php ) . Space will not be conquered with government programs, but by private enterprise and individuals looking to make a profit and a better life.

Necron69

"I doubt the government would give a billion dollars to Elon Musk to fund his private space company. If Musk wants to compete with the public sector, let him use his only money. "

...
"Big news today was SpaceX winning the NASA CRS contract for an initial $1.6 billion, representing 12 flights to the International Space Station starting in 2010." - http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

So now China buys SpaceX, turns on its rice-in-manufactured-stuff-out formula to mass produce the Falcon 9 Heavy and conquers the solar system while Obama hands out funny money to his buddies' buddies' buddies'.

Let's see - couple of examples:

Downloading/simulating human minds: the philosophical and social implications of that are a recurring theme in Greg Egan's work - Permutation City, Diaspora and several of his shorts (such as "Learning to be Me"). If you want a side-order of ultraviolence with that, there's Richard Morgan's "Altered Carbon". Of course, that's never gonna happen.

Post-scarcity economics: Not tech in itself, but the implications of tech. What if we had sufficient resources and robotic "labour" that everybody could just take whatever they reasonably wanted? How would the capitalism/socialism debate change that? This is the basis for Iain Banks' "Culture", but it also crops up a bit in Star Trek TNG.

Ain't never gonna happen. I'd better explain that one: software is a microcosm in which a "post scarcity" economy is possible because the marginal cost of "manufacturing" and distributing software has become negligible.

Near-future space flight: Stephen Baxter wrote a whole series of books on the general thesis "NASA rejected my application to be an astronaut: NASA sucks!". We have Time which had private enterprise saving the space program; Voyage (what would happen if Apollo had stayed on track and gone to Mars) and Titan (what would happen if an anti-science US president didn't replace the shuttle and we suddenly had a good reason for wanting to go to Titan).

Desperately cobbling together a cheap launcher from surplus shuttle components? Going back to an Apollo-style capsule instead of wasting fuel boosting space-planes into orbit? Private spaceflight saving the day? Ain't Never Gonna happen

(Interesting lack of US authors in that list, though...)

The fact that you think moving from a single engine per stage small rocket like Falcon 1 to a heavy lift, cluster powered rocket like Falcon 9 is just 'the next stage in the game' betrays your abject ignorance of the subject.

Clustering liquid engines is actually fairly easy compared to the much more difficult problem of developing a liquid engine and single-engine rocket stage in the first place (as SpaceX has already done). SpaceX has also already performed test firings of its full 9-engine first stage.

Which, given the fact that fairings don't particularly represent a difficult design or development problem, indicates that something (major) is wrong at SpaceX.

So, you're saying that fairings are, to use the phrase, "not rocket science"? It's certainly true that a fairing design and implementation is not nearly as difficult a nut to crack as designing a new liquid-fueled engine completely from scratch, but fairings and fairing separations aren't something so inherently mundane that they can be ignored.

The aerodynamics are not so trivial you can just say, "Eh, that looks about right..." and be at an energy-optimal solution. Additionally, while it's trivial to overbuild a solution that will protect the payload during ascent, reducing the mass of the fairing system is not so easy. (Like most things in engineering, the first bits are easy, with additional improvements coming with greater and greater effort.) Having additional time to shave off a few more kilograms from the fairing is certainly a net positive.

Now, as for fairing separation incidents, there have not been many, but a quick check does turn up three of note in the last decade or so:

• KSLV-1 (South Korea): Faulty fairing separation identified as main cause in failure of Narohoâ(TM)s satellite launch
• Taurus/OCO (Orbital Science): The Case Of The Fairing That Would Not
• Athena 2: Futron Design Reliability study (See table on page 4)

I cannot speak to the failure potential of a new fairing design on a new launch vehicle as compared to existing fairings on well-traveled vehicles, but if I were to go with a "feeling", I would certainly doubt that it is less.

(By the way, your ad hominem song and dance routine was hardly mature. Will you be coming to Geowoodstock next year up in your area? I'm thinking of possibly heading up for the event and some cold water diving next year, and I wouldn't mind betting a batch of my homemade chocolate chip cookies on SpaceX -- perhaps you can bet a family-restaurant-level dinner? I don't drink, so it shouldn't be expensive.)

Don't forget, NASA has already contracted SpaceX for resupply vessels. $3.5 billion contract. This was covered previously.

SpaceX is moving forward, without asking the government for money. http://www.spacex.com/

Nice submission, although here's a few more details from my own submission:

Excalibur Almaz has come out of stealth mode and unveiled their reusable spacecraft capable of carrying a crew of three and/or cargo to orbit for up to a week. According to VP (and former NASA astronaut) Leroy Chiao, the spacecraft are designed to be launched on a variety of rockets, and are modernized versions of vehicles developed and flight-tested for the Soviet Union's military space station program (the company has also purchased some of the space stations for potential future use). EA plans to begin flight tests in 2012, with revenue flights starting in 2013. The company will likely be competing with the SpaceX Dragon and Bigelow Aerospace's recently-announced "Orion Lite" for a chunk of the emerging commercial orbital transportation market.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the original Soviet Almaz space station carried a rapid-fire cannon and performed a successful test-firing on a target satellite. I'm assuming the space stations which Excalibur Almaz bought don't have the cannons anymore. :(

More to the point, SpaceX is going to launch the first flight of the Falcon 9 sometime later this year. It is the next flight on their manifest, and has passed several key performance tests including pressure tests of the first stage and full simulated mission tests for both stages and their engines. The device that simulates the operation of the second stage engine in a vacuum is one incredible piece of engineering in its own right.

At least I haven't forgotten about this vehicle. As to the price to get up to the ISS, that isn't something as easily determined. The Falcon 9 will cost about $50 million, but that figure doesn't include support services for manned spaceflight. A reasonable guess is that a flight of the Dragon capsule will cost on the order of about $100 million, but with seven seats if you want the figure per astronaut. SpaceX plans to make a profit at this price figure too, and the price is a flat fee.

As for Orbital's vehicle, that was originally intended to be an unmanned carrier. That is still useful and it is important to maintenance of the ISS, but it can't quite be compared to the Ares/Shuttle/Apollo heritage vehicles.

The original COTS contract was only for unmanned cargo, but it was Elon Musk who raised the stakes and decided that he would push for a manned vehicle rating on his own dime. His intention for the Falcon 9 and the Dragon (planned even before the COTS contract was offered) was for manned spaceflight, but the extra NASA money certainly helped to keep the company profitable, especially now that he has met contract goals and has cashed a few of the NASA checks already.

Has everybody forgotten this Slashdot Article, where SpaceX & Orbital have pending contracts to resupply the Space Station once their much further progressed vehicles are ready?

A liquid-fueled, multi-stage rocket and their dragon capsule uses an ablative shielding?

While Ares I is years off, spacex has already successfully tested the first stage of the Falcon 9 and are on schedule for a Falcon 9 launch later this year,
and a Falcon 9-heavy which will be able to do most anything Ares I can do cheaper and safer will be launched in 2010.

Its one company, and one guy running the company with his own money for a hell of a lot less than the Ares I.

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9_heavy.php

Unlike NASA they learn from their mistakes, and dont put politics before safety and reliability.

Also because its liquid fueled you can shut off the damn rocket at T-0:00

Yes they have already launched Falcon 1 rockets and used those rockets as the basis for updating the designs
of Falcon 9 and Falcon 9-heavy
 

Nope. The SSME [wikipedia.org], RS-68 [wikipedia.org] were developed after the 60's

You're correct. According to SpaceX's own publicity material: "The Merlin 1C next generation liquid fueled rocket booster engine is among the highest performing gas generator cycle kerosene engines ever built, exceeding the Boeing Delta II main engine, the Lockheed Atlas II main engine, and on par with the Saturn V F-1 engine. It is the first new American booster engine in a decade and only the second American booster engine since the Space Shuttle Main Engine was developed thirty years ago."

Sure, SpaceX is behind the schedule with the Falcon 9 and recently lost a customer ( http://spacefellowship.com/2009/07/13/spacex-lost-falcon-9-customer/ ). But if we look on the bright side, what SpaceX have accomplished so far, took two superpowers and a brewing cold war last time, for example the Merlin engine is the first new engine designed in the US since the 60's , they have launched Falcon 1 successfully recently ( http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20090715 ) and pushes forward with the Dragon spacecraft ( http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php ). I think all this speaks volume about private space flight and the very important role that X-Prize and such plays.

Sure, SpaceX is behind the schedule with the Falcon 9 and recently lost a customer ( http://spacefellowship.com/2009/07/13/spacex-lost-falcon-9-customer/ ). But if we look on the bright side, what SpaceX have accomplished so far, took two superpowers and a brewing cold war last time, for example the Merlin engine is the first new engine designed in the US since the 60's , they have launched Falcon 1 successfully recently ( http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20090715 ) and pushes forward with the Dragon spacecraft ( http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php ). I think all this speaks volume about private space flight and the very important role that X-Prize and such plays.

I know a lot of other people might be down on NASA. They say its too much of this, or too much of that, should be privatized, etc.. but...last time I checked:

NASA was the only organization to put a man on the moon, land a couple of rovers on Mars, fly by Jupiter, Saturn, and the outer planets, build and operate a space plane and a space station.

NASA's done a lot of great things, but the Ares I-X isn't one of them. It's just a suborbital rocket model being put together mostly for political reasons, and has almost nothing in common with the Ares I rocket it's supposed to be a test for. It's been designed to specifically avoid all the big problems and question-marks which are threatening to doom the Ares I, making it almost useless as a test. I feel really bad for all the skilled NASA engineers whose time has been wasted on this make-work project instead of something more fruitful.

Like another commenter, I'm quite a bit more impressed by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which is already at Cape Canaveral, even if it isn't using the MLP. That's going to be quite a bit more important to the future of spaceflight than the Ares I-X.

Actually, his point is pretty valid. How much does the satellite system cost per unit energy delivered? How does it affect my cost per kw-hr? If it's more than a coal system's current cost, shelve it and come up with something more practical until the coal price increases enough to make it worthwhile.

For example, let's say the mass of the satellite is 1000kg and that the price quoted from this site is for LEO only, which is about 40% the cost (guessed from spacex's maximum limits ratio from LEO to GTO) of a geosynchronous orbit for a rough estimate of 7170 USD per KG to GEO. Say 7.2m USD + cost of the satellite, which I'll baselessly assume costs 2.8 million to make the math easy.

I pay 9.5 cents per kw-hr. At that rate, once this bird is in orbit, it'll generate about 19k USD per hour, ignoring conversion and line losses, administration, maintenance, etc. It'll pay for itself in 526 hours of operation. Even at 10 times the cost and merely 10% efficiency, it pays for itself in 6.0 years.

Seems OK to me.