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"The masses" in this context are people who can afford to pay six figures for a joyride to take them to a tenth of the delta-V needed for orbit in an vehicle design that physically cannot scale to orbit.

Meanwhile, actual orbital vehicle development continues. The massive Falcon 9 has not only completed its one engine firing, its two engine firing, and its three engine firing, all flawlessly, but also it's five engine firing. Only one more static firing is scheduled before launch (all nine engines). The smaller Falcon 1, which would have easily reached orbit in its last test flight but for either the lack of a bump *or* the presence of an upper-stage baffle, now is designed both to prevent the bump *and* now has an upper-stage baffle. It will be launching within the next month with its first payload, and the Falcon 9 should launch by the end of the year. The Falcon series represents a two to three fold price cut per kilogram compared to similar sized launch vehicles after almost half a century of price stagnation.

But hey, by all means, Slashdot is free to continue largely ignoring them (dedicating roughly the same number of articles to SpaceShipTwo, of which only minimal info has been released yet as the entire Falcon series through its history) and to keep reporting on every last detail from this unscaleable joyride.

"The masses" in this context are people who can afford to pay six figures for a joyride to take them to a tenth of the delta-V needed for orbit in an vehicle design that physically cannot scale to orbit.

Meanwhile, actual orbital vehicle development continues. The massive Falcon 9 has not only completed its one engine firing, its two engine firing, and its three engine firing, all flawlessly, but also it's five engine firing. Only one more static firing is scheduled before launch (all nine engines). The smaller Falcon 1, which would have easily reached orbit in its last test flight but for either the lack of a bump *or* the presence of an upper-stage baffle, now is designed both to prevent the bump *and* now has an upper-stage baffle. It will be launching within the next month with its first payload, and the Falcon 9 should launch by the end of the year. The Falcon series represents a two to three fold price cut per kilogram compared to similar sized launch vehicles after almost half a century of price stagnation.

But hey, by all means, Slashdot is free to continue largely ignoring them (dedicating roughly the same number of articles to SpaceShipTwo, of which only minimal info has been released yet as the entire Falcon series through its history) and to keep reporting on every last detail from this unscaleable joyride.

Want hols in the ground to hide in? Ok, done
WAnt private enterprise to send differing robots to the moon? Ok, soon to come
Want companies that provide servies such as launch, communications, and perhaps even power?

I'm actually wondering if maybe part of the reason for the announcement is to spare them from having to compete head-to-head with the SpaceX Dragon in the commercial sector, which will likely be carrying crew to orbit in the 2010 timeframe at a lower per-person price than the Soyuz. It'd be kind of humiliating for Energia to be out-done in the commercial space sector by a US startup company, but they can save face if they announce ahead of time that they're exiting the industry due to reasons of national pride.

"and never will." seems a bit strong. Here's a link to a video clip on SpaceX's website showing a simulation of their Dragon capsule approaching ISS, being captured and then docked by the station's arm.

http://www.spacex.com/00Graphics/Videos/Dragon_ISS_Rendezvous.mpg

Granted, it hasn't happened yet, but it sure is in the planning stages.

One would have expected NASA to opt for SpaceX http://www.spacex.com/ had they really been serious about engaging private space efforts. SpaceX has made lots of progress http://www.spacex.com/updates.php and has a range of boosters in the works including ones for heavy payloads http://www.spacex.com/falcon9_heavy.php.

But then, making a suboptimal choice seems to be in-line with NASA history. It is almost as if NASA is trying is doing its best to go slow and waste as much money in the process as possible.

One would have expected NASA to opt for SpaceX http://www.spacex.com/ had they really been serious about engaging private space efforts. SpaceX has made lots of progress http://www.spacex.com/updates.php and has a range of boosters in the works including ones for heavy payloads http://www.spacex.com/falcon9_heavy.php.

But then, making a suboptimal choice seems to be in-line with NASA history. It is almost as if NASA is trying is doing its best to go slow and waste as much money in the process as possible.

One would have expected NASA to opt for SpaceX http://www.spacex.com/ had they really been serious about engaging private space efforts. SpaceX has made lots of progress http://www.spacex.com/updates.php and has a range of boosters in the works including ones for heavy payloads http://www.spacex.com/falcon9_heavy.php.

But then, making a suboptimal choice seems to be in-line with NASA history. It is almost as if NASA is trying is doing its best to go slow and waste as much money in the process as possible.

It's projected to be $35 for the lightest fare on a falcon9 and that is just to orbit. Still, the prize won't cover the fare.

Until then though, let's let the governments "waste" their money by developing them themselves, ok?

Erm, that's actually what NASA is doing: They're spending several billion dollars on cost-plus contracts to have the Ares rockets developed according to their specifications. COTS is basically a side-bet, with them spending a total of $500 million (which will only get paid if the companies meet pre-specified milestones) on the chance that private industry will be able to develop their own rockets which can meet NASA's needs.

The funny thing is, it's looking like the side-bet is doing better than the house's bet right now. SpaceX already has a few test flights under their belt; they didn't make it to orbit, but they have a good idea of what the problems were and fixed them. They also had a multi-engine test firing in preparation for their medium/heavy-lift Falcon 9 rocket earlier this week. Meanwhile, it's looking like Ares is running into some fundamental design problems; there are of course possible fixes, but they may very well end up having such a large weight penalty that the usefulness of Ares will be largely impacted.

So yeah, it looks like (as you desire) the government is wasting more than enough money to develop a solution themselves, but it's looking quite fortunate that they also took a small chance on private industry.

I should add that I'm only criticizing SS1/SS2. I have nothing against WK1 or WK2; they're quite nice carrier aircraft. But SS1 and SS2 are completely meaningless. If you want small companies doing meaningful rocketry, check out SpaceX. Their Falcon 9, a rocket whose heavy version will carry as much payload as NASA's beleagured (and possibly dead in the water) Ares, including its own spacecraft that can dock with the ISS, will be launching this June. The typical launch cost of payloads in the west is $10k/kg. In Russia, China, and India, $7k/kg is the standard. Sometimes you can get discounts down toi as low as $4-5k/kg. The Falcon 9 is $2-3k/kg. And looking over its construction, design, stats, etc, these numbers definitely appear credible.

Cheer for the rocketry not matters, not the irrelevant joyrides.

NASA's other option lies in the private sector; but thus far, the progress from that quarter does not look sufficient to meet the 2011 deadline.

Although it says this in the summary, the linked article doesn't seem to actually have anything to support this claim. In fact, it's looking like according to their current schedule the private SpaceX Dragon crew/cargo capsule will be flying demonstration flights 2008-2010. With an additional purchase commitment from NASA, they could probably finish and be able to transport cargo and crew to the ISS even sooner.

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

[the STS is] the only manned launcher the USA has so they've got to work with it until Orion becomes available.

This misses the point. The problem is that NASA told congress that they could indeed keep flying the shuttle while developing Orion, for an extra $1B per year. Congress said, "great. keep flying the shuttle, develop Orion, and do it without the $1B." NASA is not getting enough money to do both. The point of retiring the shuttle is to free up that ~$6B/year and spend it on the next-generation launch system, Orion, instead. We can't do both without a significant increase in budget, which is just not going to happen.

As for not having American access to the Station in the interim, we'll just have to deal with paying the Russians. Unless the NASA COTS system works out. Elon Musk over at SpaceX may very well have his Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 launch vehicle ready about that time to take over from the Shuttle.

While Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites are certainly the focus of this particular article and thread, they are hardly the only commercial spacecraft corporation that is making some significant progress and will be making headlines in 2008 (assuming that everything is still working the way it should).

SpaceX, or Space Exploration Technologies, the company started by Paypal founder Elon Musk, is scheduled to perform their final test flight for the Falcon 1 in January, 2008. If all goes well, they may even get a flight of their larger Falcon 9 spacecraft before the end of the year. This is particularly significant for manned spaceflight, as their Dragon spacecraft is reliant upon the successful launches of these vehicles. Unlike the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, the Dragon spacecraft is going to have the capabilities of sending as many as six passengers to the ISS.... or anywhere else in Low-earth orbit. In many ways, I think this is going to be far more significant than what Branson is doing with Virgin Galactic.

In addition, the Lunar Landing Challenge will likely be "won" this time next year with the nearly dozen rocket teams competing for the purse. My heart broke when Armadillo Aerospace crashed and burned this year and failed to win the price objectives, but they certainly learned from their experience and will roll those designs into the next generation of their spacecraft. This particular challenge is certainly breeding many future commercial spaceflight companies that are flying real hardware, and not just some imaginative designs on paper that will never see the light of day.

I also don't know what Blue Origin is doing, but that is certainly a company to keep a close ear to the ground and at least try to watch for developments over this next year. Unlike several of the spacecraft manufacturers, they are avoiding the appearance of vaporware by simply not really announcing anything other than the fact that they own one heck of a lot of real estate in Texas and that they have had several successful test flights of their rocketry hardware.... and a long term goal of also doing commercial passenger space travel. They also have some investors with some deep pockets that can help get them there without having to "go public".

I'm just scratching the surface here as well, but there are some amazing groups of individuals who have been devoting resources to commercial spaceflight, and 2008 really could be "the year of the spacecraft", at least in terms of headlines generated by the mainstream press. Virgin Galactic certainly isn't going to be the only one in the headlines here, although they may be the first to send paying passengers into space on something other than a Soyuz capsule.

I was discussing this with an engineer friend. Let's say we wanted to get back into the race? Simple enough, you just dust off the plans for the Saturn V, setup the tooling, and...
 
Oh, shit... Not only don't we have the tooling, but we don't even have enough kids trained in running a drafting pencil to design the tooling. WE WOULD HAVE TO OUTSOURCE THE DESIGN AND FABRICATION TO --- Yup. Asia.

Actually, just because the Feds won't have their vehicle ready doesn't mean that we will be limited to Russian launches. http://www.spacex.com/

And you can get to LEO for $7M to $8.5M on a Falcon 1.

You can't buy an OldSpace duopoly launch for 30m. Luckily, we have companies like http://www.spacex.com/ which has agreed to provide a small discount over their usual low low prices on launch.

The first thing to do is reduce our impact on the planet: make technologies more efficient and our cities, transport systems and industrial processes less damaging to ecosystems. We rely on the web of life to sustain us: we need bees to pollinate, trees to make oxygen and worms to aerate the soil, or we would swiftly perish.

And after that? Do we mandate population controls? Do we nominate an arbitrary age at which people need to 'retire', as in the dystopian fictional vision of Logan's Run? Because populations will continue to grow, especially as child mortality falls and science finds ways of extending human lives. The logical thing to do is to expand beyond Earth : to build colonies on Mars, floating habitats in Earth's Lagrange orbits, mines on the Moon and the asteroids, and expand deeper into our Solar System.

It's a damn shame that a nice launch vehicle also happens to make a nice ICBM, but the progress of getting off this rock is a teenie bit more important that keeping foreign countries from spending less than a few million dollars and a few years of research and development to make their own design. Meanwhile, the much harder problem of making a man rated rocket is being done over and over and over again. Talk about duplication of efforts.

First, there have been 2 flights. The first was a total failure on the same order as what other launch systems have shown. The 2'nd was a partial failure. The first stage worked perfectly. Separation worked. but control did not, leading to a failure just prior to insertion. As it is, the DOD is satisfied that they have their act together and is allowing them to launch live on the next one. For a new system, this is actually one of the cleanest start-ups having happened. EU and China had far more failures. So did American and USSR, but I do not believe it is fair to count them, since they were do the heavy work on research.

I believe that SpaceX will either win the ASP or will miss it by less than 6 months. But I do believe that they will be on the space station by end of 2010. They will not be going out of business. I have no doubt that Musk could have 1-2 billion thrown into his venture just by calling any number of investors from silicon valley or even in redmond. If he feels that he can not keep investing, he will almsot certainly take the standing offer that is from Google (who would love to get in on spacex).

Did anyone else notice the bump the Kestrel engine took during stage separation? On the 40MB video from SpaceX, it happend at 3:28 in or at T+00:02:52 on the screen clock. Maybe this is normal for the engine, but it was rather odd looking to me.

Also, there was a story earlier that the 2nd launch was delayed "due to concerns over a thrust vector control pitch actuator on the Falcon 1 booster's second stage". I wonder if this came back to bite them?

Finally, I'm impressed as hell that they could experience an abort after engine start yet still cycle back and launch in just another hour! When the Shuttle once aborted after engine start it took them a month to change out the engines and try again.

For those of you who didnt catch the webcast:
YouTube : launch
SpaceX official, high-res: http://www.spacex.com/video_gallery.php

Five minutes of fame !

Here you go: http://spacex.com/00Graphics/Videos/Falcon%201%20D emo2%20Launch%202007%20-%20High%20Quality.wmv WMV format only, sorry. Amazing stuff, really exciting.

SpaceX just announced that the abort happened because of a glitch when handing off monitoring and control systems to the internal guidance computers, as a communcations delay resulted in a delay from the rocket. (see http://spacex.com/updates.php)

The launch is back on for 4 PM PDT (-7 hours GMT).

Let's hope that SpaceX has all of their ducks in a row on this one. This is just one of those things that happens when you have to get out of the lab and where simulations break down. Sometimes you have to actually have to fire the thing to see what happens.

This is also why it is called "rocket science".

The American people will still have a vibrant space agency, that can focus on exploration, rather than on space launch, which is rapidly becoming a normal, commercial business.

NASA's COTS contract also includes Rocketplane, which also includes demonstrations for ISS support.

The COTS contract was a polite way for Congress to buy some insurance in case Lockheed's Space Shuttle Replacement spins out of cost control in terms of either dollars or time.

Which I think is a great move as a taxpayer, having watched ISS cost much more than planned and delivering much less than expected.

We just need the safest, soonest, and cheapest way to get people and stuff into space. I don't care who does it, so Lockheed and those people at NASA in bed with Lockheed, watch out, you've got competition.

The American people will still have a vibrant space agency, that can focus on exploration, rather than on space launch, which is rapidly becoming a normal, commercial business.

NASA's COTS contract also includes Rocketplane, which also includes demonstrations for ISS support.

The COTS contract was a polite way for Congress to buy some insurance in case Lockheed's Space Shuttle Replacement spins out of cost control in terms of either dollars or time.

Which I think is a great move as a taxpayer, having watched ISS cost much more than planned and delivering much less than expected.

We just need the safest, soonest, and cheapest way to get people and stuff into space. I don't care who does it, so Lockheed and those people at NASA in bed with Lockheed, watch out, you've got competition.

The American people will still have a vibrant space agency, that can focus on exploration, rather than on space launch, which is rapidly becoming a normal, commercial business.

NASA's COTS contract also includes Rocketplane, which also includes demonstrations for ISS support.

The COTS contract was a polite way for Congress to buy some insurance in case Lockheed's Space Shuttle Replacement spins out of cost control in terms of either dollars or time.

Which I think is a great move as a taxpayer, having watched ISS cost much more than planned and delivering much less than expected.

We just need the safest, soonest, and cheapest way to get people and stuff into space. I don't care who does it, so Lockheed and those people at NASA in bed with Lockheed, watch out, you've got competition.

... they just don't have the funds or capabilities of NASA. Yet. They are all backed by "angel investors" from other industries who want to see private companies enter space, hence they started their own companies to try and bring commercial space into fruition:

Armadillo Aerospace (John Carmack)

Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos)

SpaceX (Elon Munsk)

XCOR(various members of RRS and others)

Right now the Falcon 9 is slated to cost between $27 and $35 million per launch. However, Musk has stated that the Falcon 9 is to be reusable, so I suspect that figure assumes that plan works out.

Actually, Musk has stated the opposite -- the current price assumes that they would be unable to successfully reuse any of the components, and that the price would come down more if it turned out they were able to reuse components effectively.

From here:

Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 will be the world's first launch vehicles where all stages are designed for reuse. The Falcon 1 has a reusable first stage, but an expendable upper stage. Reuse is not factored into launch prices. When the economics of stage recovery and checkout are fully understood, SpaceX will make further reductions in launch prices.

The SpaceX "Dragon" capsule will launch on the Falcon 9 launcher, not the Falcon 1 which costs $6 million and change.

The Falcon 9 list price (see http://www.spacex.com/falcon_overview.php ) is $27 million for the basic 3.6 meter diameter fairing. For that price, you get around 9 tons (9,300 kg) lifted to low earth orbit, based on the announced specifications.

I am glad to see that they got one of the contracts. This is good for the industry. So is the Rocketplane Kistler thing, sort of, but there's already been $500 million spent on the Kistler vehicle and it's only half-built, so I have my worries about that one...

Your mileage may vary, they haven't built a Falcon 9 yet or successfully launched a Falcon 1 yet, etc.

Disclaimer: my company was a COTS phase 1 competitor, proposing to launch on a Falcon 9, which SpaceX was cheerfully interested in selling me despite their own Dragon project.

Their first launch failed, but they found the cause (a rusted nut) and have fixed the problem and also implemented checks to catch it and many other potential problems in advance next time. They're planning to launch again in a couple months.

They are also at work on substantially larger vehicles, including a manned capsule.

If I were planning a manned space program 15-30 years out, I would be looking to buy my launch services and focus on the other parts, like what to do and how to do it once I got there.

Nasa has been milking TRILLIONS out of the U.S. for decades.

Time to give Spacedev http://www.spacedev.com/ a shot

and

SpaceX a shot http://www.spacex.com/

I just checked the SpaceX website, and their updates page more information about the failure. This is preliminary, and they can't speak officially until they've gotten some feedback from the government investigators they have to work with, so it doesn't seem worth a new article at the moment.

According to Musk, a fuel leak cause a fire at T+25, damaging the pneumatics and causing an engine shutdown at T+29. They haven't figured out the cause of the leak yet, but he says everything was going "picture perfect" until then. He also mentioned that the insulating blanket many people pointed out flapping in the onboard camera view does not seem to have played a role. There's a couple pictures of the rocket lifting off and looking beautiful except for that small flame coming from somewhere above the combustion chamber. It's too soon to say when the next launch will be.

Oh, and this quote is golden: "A friend of mine wrote to remind me that only 5 of the first 9 Pegasus launches succeeded; 3 of 5 for Ariane; 9 of 20 for Atlas; 9 of 21 for Soyuz; and 9 of 18 for Proton."

Try looking in their media gallery and in particular at the videos called, for instance, 'Merlin Engine Full Duration Firing'.

Uh, the SpaceX website at http://www.spacex.com/? There's even a video of a full-length static test.

Boy, you're a real smart one. It's not like most of SpaceX's employees are from NASA/Boeing/TRW or anything.

http://www.spacex.com/index.html?section=aboutus&c ontent=http%3A//www.spacex.com/profiles.php

I guess you didn't look at the picture?

A number of private spaceflight firms mentioned in the article are looking for people to hire. These companies are looking for folks with expertise in a variety of areas, from web design, to aerospace/mechanical engineering, to programming. Here's a few links (courtesy of RLV News, listed roughly in order of available resources), with descriptions of what the company does:
 
* Bigelow Aerospace: Inflatable space station modules for orbital research and tourism. Despite being inflatable, their modules are better at withstanding space debris than the ISS, as they're made of a material twice as strong as kevlar. Out of all the private spaceflight firms, they probably have the most resources.
* SpaceX: Orbital rockets which are drastically cheaper than the competition, with plans for building manned orbital rockets. They should be launching their first rocket next month.
* Scaled Composites: Burt Rutan's company and winner of the X Prize. They're currently working on building SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.
* SpaceDev: They build microsatellites and propulsion systems.
* Blue Origin: Suborbital vehicle company started by Amazon.com's CEO, Jeff Bezos. Author Neal Stephenson also works for them, hoping for the "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a minor character in a Robert Heinlein novel."
* Rocketplane Limited: Suborbital spaceplanes
* Masten Space Systems: Suborbital launch vehicles.
* TGV Rockets: Suborbital launch

A number of private spaceflight firms which are periodically posted about on slashdot are looking for students to hire as summer interns, as well as full-time jobs. These companies are looking for folks with expertise in a variety of areas, from web design, to aerospace/mechanical engineering, to programming. Here's a few links (courtesy of RLV News), with descriptions of what the company does:

* SpaceX: Orbital rockets which are drastically cheaper than the competition, with plans for building manned orbital rockets. They should be launching their first rocket next month.
* Blue Origin: Suborbital vehicle company started by Amazon.com's CEO, Jeff Bezos.
* Masten Space Systems: Suborbital launch vehicles.
* Rocketplane Limited: Suborbital spaceplanes

Also, a few more hiring only for full-time jobs:
* Bigelow Aerospace: Inflatable space station modules for orbital research and tourism. Out of all the private spaceflight firms, they probably have the most resources.
* Scaled Composites: Burt Rutan's company and winner of the X Prize. They're currently working on building SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.
* SpaceDev: They build microsatellites and propulsion systems.
* TGV Rockets: Suborbital launch

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I'd have to disagree. As far as space companies go, I'd say that SpaceX is almost absurdly informative. Can you point me to the pages for Boeing and Lockheed-Martin where they describe and analyze in detail why their launches were delayed or failed?

And his website sucks. While it's kind of pretty, there's almost no content. The news, in particular, is weak --three sentences and movie that won't play on Linux about the most recent static firing.

You're probably looking for the updates page. There's a good bit of commentary and videos there, especially if you go into the archives. For (very) unofficial info there's Kwajalein Atoll and Rockets, maintained by Elon's brother Kimbal. Of course, despite his photographs he insists that he's in a basement somewhere in Colorado, and not actually at the Atoll. ;)

I contrast this with Carmack's spectacular Armadillo Aerospace site. All of his successes, failures, dead ends, oopses -- all presented in more detail than any sane person could ever want. With Carmack, you really feel like you can understand the process as much as you can without picking up a welding torch.

Sure, that's Carmack, but he's very much the exception rather than the rule. In fact, John Carmack is the only spaceflight person I can think of who comments more than Elon Musk.

I'm a big fan of Musk, too, and of private space enterprise in general.

My biggest problem with Musk is the lack of information at his website. If you want to generate a political movement (and that's what he's trying to do -- vying for Air Force contracts is the very definition of politics) you need to have much better publicity.

And his website sucks. While it's kind of pretty, there's almost no content. The news, in particular, is weak --three sentences and movie that won't play on Linux about the most recent static firing.

He has no excuse. He built PayPal! He knows the 'net! He has seen the kind of virtuous circle that can be built up through good communication. I cannot for the life of me understand why SpaceX fails so spectacularly in the communication mission.

And don't say that they are trying to keep their proprietary details secret -- if he's really interested in promoting inexpensive space travel, he'd *want* those secrets out there!

I contrast this with Carmack's spectacular Armadillo Aerospace site. All of his successes, failures, dead ends, oopses -- all presented in more detail than any sane person could ever want. With Carmack, you really feel like you can understand the process as much as you can without picking up a welding torch.

Anyway, I really can't complain. I'm sitting around making movies instead of spaceships -- please treat this rant as constructive criticism.

Thad Beier