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Paypal Founder's Merlin Rocket Engine Fires Up
Baldrson writes "Wired News reports that after 2 years of development, Space Exploration Technology Corp ('SpaceEx') successfully test-fired their new LOX/Kerosene Merlin rocket engine for the 160 seconds required for orbit. SpaceEx was founded by Elon Musk from the proceeds of the 2002 sale of his prior start-up, Paypal, to Ebay. According to Musk, 5 Merlins bundled with the first stage of SpaceEx's powerful Falcon V booster will launch 5 people to orbit by 2010, thereby winning America's Space Prize which was endowed by Robert Bigelow."
Amazing! They managed to get sixty-year-old technology to work!
This is great news. Now, if only they can get their valve radios to work, they'll be in business.
Right, but the history of "let's do better than a standard rocket by .... because we've got $x billion" hasn't been so good.
Case in point, space shuttle.
The big thing to remember is that the Falcon boosters should be signifigantly cheaper than the current crop of launchers and at least partially reusable. So, even though it's not revolutionary, there's much jumpstarting of the launch biz with what he's got.
The problem is that most of the time, you don't need a revolution, just a little evolution.
Gentoo Sucks
See, you don't need exotic new technologies for cheap(er) space access... just cut the NASA fat.
Any word on how they get the lucky orbiters back down? I thought NASA had great difficulty with heat shield design, implementation, etc.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Rockets might not 'feel' right to you, but they exist, are a known technology, and there's over 60 years of large scale design and construction experience behind them.
$1.5 billion is a lot of money when you're looking at buying groceries, but it's peanuts compared to the cost of developing a whole new technology (carbon nanotube, for example which might be needed for space elevators), then testing and building the new technology (literally) from the ground up.
In regards to the 'some new technology that nobody's invented yet' comment, I'd rather take one rocket now versus a hundred ephemeral fairy dust ideas of things that may or may not happen in the future. This isn't the only money that will ever be spent on private aerospace. If new technologies become promising and affordable to develop, then other companies will do that in the future.
These guys may succeed, they may fail. That's a great thing about America, you can take risks with commensurate payback. If every company needed the public to vote on whether to let them do their thing, we'd be where the USSR is. Oh yeah, they don't exist anymore.
Rockets are cheap.
Space elevator? Start thinking about building a space elevator when someone has built a carbon nanotube footbridge.
Something not yet invented? The probability of discovering a new physics is not directly proportional to the number of dollars spent.
So - we're back to rockets. Which are cheap.
NASA's rockets are expensive, because NASA doesn't care where the money comes from. (And NASA's funders in Congress don't care whether NASA's rockets even fly, so long as every district gets its piece of the pork pie.)
If you're Boeing or Lockmart, that's fine -- shuttling rich tourists to orbit and back will barely net you pocket change. So you build big expensive vehicles and you sell 'em to people who don't give a rat's ass about the cost of their ride, because they're using other people's money.
Thanks to Rutan, Bezos, and Musk, there's the possibility of a new market niche for those of us who prefer to use our own money.
It seems to me the original idea of NASA is actualy going to work! NASA was created in the begining to combine all of the branches of the government's space research in one location, to pionere new technologies, then, after a few decades, transfer the exploration of space over to the privite sector. Needless to say, NASA is stil in existance. What is impresive about this is the fact that someone from a company is doing a project like this. The problem with the idea of space being exploited by companies is that the inital cost is too great, and the payoffs too little. So what if it is 60 year old technology? They are still financing something that has little or no consivable payoffs for them in the short OR long run, appart from getting Paypal's name out there. True, a big rocket isnt that creative or inovative, but its better then nothing right? (also, the comparitive size of the rocket is much smaller then the older ones) Just the fact that he could actualy use that much (1.5 bill)money on something like a space flight is impresive. Its a good thing money from companies is going towards space, dont complain that its just a rocket, remember, NASA makes the new stuff! (scramjet)
It just occured to me that the guys doing these space ships are like the rich guys a few centuries ago mounting ocean expeditions, as much for the exploration and adventure as for profit. We all complain about rich people, but many of them tend to be philanthropists and use their money for some kind of public good.
The linked article mentioned the "rebel billionaire" buying a new fleet of SpaceShipTwos for commercial trips to the upper stratosphere and back, which in my opinion is a prety foolish way for him to waste his accquired wealth. Unlike the Concords, which were also expensive and could actually transport you to useful places in small amounts of time, no celebrity or politicial figure would ever want to spend a couple thousand dollars just go up high in a potentially unsafe civilian spacecrat for the sole purpose of floating around in their seat and coming back down. There are easier and cheaper ways to obtain the thrills of floating in null-g that have been around for years, and not many people have expressed much interest in those, so why would anyone feel differently about the SpaceShipTwos? Don't get me wrong, I am excited about SpaceShipOne and the X-Prize (which it won), I just don't feel that this would be the correct application of the current technology.
I want to hear everyones' thoughts... please post comments!
Yeah they got it right. So right it flew only one test orbital flight and unmanned at that.
Ok so that's related to economics BUT you can't really judge a launch vehicle's performance and call it "right" if it never really got a chance to do its job.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I'd also be curious to know if his interest in space predated his dotcom activities. One early microcomputer pioneer is reputed to have motivated his employees with claims that if his company was successful, they'd intest in space development. He even invested in a couple of rocket companies-and then retreated to other interests. The technology has improved since then, but frankly, I think a lot of folks are less trusting of the rich and powerful now than they were then.
Quite a few rich folks find their money brings them neither happiness or satisfaction.
I personally have a strong distrust of concentrations of wealth or political power. However, I would suggest that if humanity doesn't develop real, physical frontiers, the future for humanity is pretty dim-maybe just a high tech replay of ancient Egypt--a highly developed but stagnant culture that gradually drifts into oblivion.
The future for humanity with frontiers could be quite an interesting adventure.
...basically build the elevator on the ground, make it long enough (say, would 500 miles long do it? 1000? I'm thinking in terms of Pak Protector scale projects here) -- presupposing you could get that much land to lay it out, etc. could you just anchor one end, weight the other, shorten the cable and let the change in the moment of intertia fling the sucker up?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
If I had the type of money these guys have, there's no way I'd waste it on something ... risky and untested
Wait. I think I see why you don't have the type of money those guys have.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Check the website. There's are good arguments in favor of candidate sites, which include Vandenburg, White Sands, which both have acceptable mountain slopes, and yes, Hawaii. Carlton Meyer of skyramp.org thinks building a ramp on the barren slope of Mauna Loa may not be as big a deal with environmentalists as detractors think, and there is also the jobs issue in favor, as there aren't a lot of high-paying jobs on the big island.
Now, with respect to your point about launching rockets over water rather than land, don't space launches from Vandenburg AFB in California cross the continental United States? And now that Bezos guy from Amazon intends to start launching rockets from West Texas; those will spend at least some portion of their flight over land.
As for the old argument in favor of siting spaceports as far south as possible, what we have learned since building the installation in Cape Kennedy is that launching from sites with a lower air density (as in higher altitude) is more important than getting a little boost to velocity from a more southerly location's better angular momentum. This is why the Russian launch site in Kazakhstan is arguably better than Cape Kennedy, even though it's at like 40 degrees north. Of course, best of all would be a mountainside in Ecuador, but politics would never allow for a U.S.-funded site to be built there.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
See, the Russians are perfectly capable of making safe, well-engineered stuff. It's just that we don't always recognize it.
A F-16 has a jet intake under the cockpit. Thus, it's awfully easy for it to suck up any debris on the ground while taxing or taking off. Therefore, debris control is important. They need to scout the airport every morning. Our jets need a whole mobile maintenence facility to keep them flying.
A Mig-29? It's got a screen that deploys in front of the engines and auxiliary upward-facing intakes. So they don't need to wory about operating from poorly-prepared fields. They make it such that everything needed right now for an aircraft fits on a single truck. If it's more important than that, you make sure it won't need to be replaced in the middle of your campaign.
The Soyuz has primitive components, yes. But they've got stuff that won't stop working. Like a primitive optical periscope that gives you enough margin to do a re-entry without guidance. They make sure that the systems that are important just won't fail.
Gentoo Sucks