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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."
he can just sell the thing on ebay...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
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 $x billion" hasn't been so good.
Case in point, space shuttle.
The big thing to remember is that the Falcon boosters should be signifigantly cheaper than the current crop of launchers and at least partially reusable. So, even though it's not revolutionary, there's much jumpstarting of the launch biz with what he's got.
The problem is that most of the time, you don't need a revolution, just a little evolution.
Gentoo Sucks
Any word on how they get the lucky orbiters back down? I thought NASA had great difficulty with heat shield design, implementation, etc.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
SpaceEx was founded by Elon Musk from the proceeds of the 2002 sale of his prior start-up, Paypal, to Ebay.
Now here's one person who hasn't left the proceeds of his sale into his PayPal account. I mean, imagine that, buying rocket and space stuff like that, they'd have frozen his account immediately, for no reason, without any explanation besides "what goes on looks strange".
Well done Elon! (and when you have time, please tell your former employees to f*)(*&@$ing give me back my $150 in my account they locked up about, oh, 5 years ago...)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Does that mean that they used all stolen credit cards and "frozen" account assets to pay for this ridiculous thing? That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling...
I don't respond to AC's.
$1.5 B won't even by a B2 plane these days...
Because owning a B2 bomber is your childhood fantasy?
Frankly, mine involves bras and suspenders and don't cost remotely as much.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
2 <> all of these .com executives
And, if all of those that entered into early aviation, using the money they made in other industries (see, for example, Howard Hughes), thought the way you do, we'd be way behind and probably would have lost WWII.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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.
There is no way that SpaceX would be profitable selling rockets for $6 and $12 million each if he spent $1.5 billion developing them. That's part of the reason why normal space launch rockets cost $40 to $250 million (or more...).
First, read this article.
Right now, launch costs are the biggest barrier to having lots of cool things (orbital hotels, factories, lunar bases, etc.) zipping around in space. According to this interview, Musk was previously planning on self-funding a mission to put an experimental greenhouse on Mars, but decided to start SpaceX when he realized that the overall mission cost would be dominated by the launch price.
SpaceX's Falcon I is designed to compete with the Pegasus rocket, which currently dominates the "low-cost" launch market. The Pegasus costs around $20 million to launch 375kg into space. The Falcon I will cost $6 million to launch 670kg into space. Stated differently, the Pegasus costs around $53,000 per kg, while the Falcon I will cost around $9000 per kg.
Things change even more with SpaceX's larger Falcon V rocket, scheduled for a launch this November. This will compete directly with the Delta IV Medium, which costs $90 million to lift 8600kg to LEO. The Falcon V will cost $12 million to lift 6020kg to LEO. That's around $10000 per kg for the Delta IV Medium and around $2000 per kg for the Falcon V.
One of SpaceX's goals is to reuse as much in terms of engines, components, and software as they build larger and larger rocket. As they benefit from economies of scale and build larger rockets, the costs will only drop.
I've mentioned it elsewhere in this discussion, but a couple years ago HobbySpace's RLV News had a very good interview with Elon Musk.
:)
Here's a quote:
HS: Private rocket development by startup companies in the post-Apollo era includes projects such as Truax's Volksrocket in the late 70s, Conestoga I and AMROC in the 80s, Beal Aerospace and several other ELV and RLV companies in the 1990s. They all came up short of space and many see their history as nothing but a tale of woe and failure. To me, though, they each appear to build on what was learned before them and to provide significant advancements in the technical and strategic knowledge needed to develop a rocket business from scratch.
It looks like SpaceX will be the startup company that finally makes it to orbit. When you studied prior efforts, what were some of the lessons [you] learned on what to do and, perhaps most importantly, what not to do?
Musk: Well, I have tried to learn as much as possible from prior attempts. If nothing else, we are committed to failing in a new way
The ones I'm familiar with failed on one or more of the following:
1. Lacked a critical mass of technical skill.
2. Insufficient capital to reach the finish line, particularly if an unexpected setback occurred.
3. Success was reliant on a series of technology breakthroughs that did not happen.
The above modes can obviously cross-feed one another.
HS: John Carmack has said something to the effect that the gap between what could be done versus what is being done is bigger in aerospace than in any other industry. Gary Hudson said that he was "amazed by how much easier the job of getting to orbit is today than even a few years go"..."Software, avionics and manufacturing technology have all improved measurably" and drastically reduced the number of people needed to design a launcher.
Now that you've gone through the rocket vehicle design phase and are well into construction, does your experience support their views or has the Falcon development perhaps been more difficult than you initially expected?
Musk: Well, hard and easy are somewhat nebulous terms. I think I have high standards and would classify getting Falcon to orbit as quite difficult. Overall though, I think we have had quite a smooth development so far, which is a credit to the hard work of the SpaceX engineering team.
The design tools, such as solid modeling and finite element analysis software are substantially more powerful than ten years ago, so that's a clear advantage. Obviously, most electronics have improved a lot too, except gyroscopes and flight termination systems.