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SpaceX, Rocketplane Kistler Win NASA Competition
An anonymous reader writes "Two emerging space companies have won a NASA competition to provide low cost commercial transport to the International Space Station. SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is developing its two-stage reusable Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, but it is making changes after the loss of Falcon 1 during its maiden launch. Rocketplane Kistler's K-1 is a two-stage reusable launch vehicle that has been in development for over a decade. Both companies represent a departure from business as usual at NASA. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the largest companies in the aerospace industry and win most NASA contracts."
but the Falcon 9 series gives me a hard-on. Theoretically the Falcon 9-S5 will be able to launch almost 25 tons for $78 million. That is about half the cost of a Delta IV Heavy or the Ariane 5 ES ATV (not including the ATV of course). The Falcon 9 series is exactly what the space transportation business has needed for a long time: competition! Cheap heavy lift vehicles are going to make realistic space transportation possible in the future.
There is a lot to be said for a smaller, focused, agile group of people with a unified dream. They can often do amazing things that (as evidenced by TFA) larger, more cumbersome groups who are weighed down by the inherent bureaucracy of a large group of people (and large amounts of government/corporate money) simply can not.
This sort of thing should be applauded and promoted. The American space industry has become one of "throw money at the issue until it's fixed" while the Russians, with much less money, were having pretty comparable successes for quite some time by just being more efficient and clever about their problems. We need to get back to a "less is more" approach whereby the simplest, easiest, cheapest solutions are the ones that we use, both because they work and because they allow for much greater flexibility and rapid growth for a program that is ailing, to say the least.
Maybe I'm of the minority opinion, but curing someone of malaria (and saving their life) is of greater immediate importance than sending a shuttle up to look at some rocks. Mr Gates has been doing this on such a large scale that his money is quite literally saving entire villages of people.
Next time I'm in Africa, I'll stop to ask whether they'd rather have a space shuttle launch than to live through the week.
Bill Gates is giving away Billions for medices but how much could he realy do for the hunan race if he put that money into spce explolration
Or better yet, remedial spelling lessons. Though I did have a nice dinner tonight, as made by the "hunan" race. Duck, it was. It was that or the peeking chicken.
What is it with people that think it's one or the other? Space exploration/commercialization and things like vaccines and education for kids around the globe are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd venture to say that a whole lot of other resources, as needed currently for defense, etc., would no longer need to be spent if some of the crustier parts of the world could be talked into providing a decent, non-Apocolyptic education for their kids. To that end, be sure to thank Bill Gates heartily for what he and his wife are doing, and just have a little patience. And, it's not like Jeff Bezos is a pauper, either.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Invest in the the people who already exist on the planet, you will get a much better return!
While this is true, I question how much good external investment can really do.
I think there's something very wrong when the number one way to improve a significant fraction of the world's population (my take, one third to half of the global population) is to get them an airline ticket and a work visa somewhere in the developed world. At one time, the developed world started with pretty much the same primitive culture that everyone had. But they turned that into the advanced societies that are leading the way in human endeavors like space development.
The Gates Foundation targets low lying fruit like treatable but widespread diseases and parasites because in part you don't need a functioning society to fix the problem. Education and some basic infrastructure (like water wells) can be accomplished in such an environment. But ultimately, you need a system of reasonable laws, fairly applied and a democratic process for selecting the local governments, the lawmakers, and the heads of state. I think that more than anything else is what seperates the developed world from everyone else.
Once you have this basic structure, the society can heal itself and invest in its citizens and infrastructure. But without it, you are limited to how you can invest in citizens of this society.
Here's where I'm going with this. Chosing between space development/exploitation and human investment is a false dilemma. Any society where you can measurably improve someone's life and value has social and legal infrastructure that will naturally encourage investment in those people. The places that still hurt are places external sources have limited effect on.
Space development is important for several reasons. First, it allows access to a vast amount of resources. There is far more mass, energy, and space in the Solar System than there is on Earth. Much of the technology developed in space will have tremendous value on Earth. For example, I think the science of arcologies will be greatly advanced by space settlements. Space settlements will have to recycle resources at a level of efficiency unimaginable on Earth.The summary is misleading. These companies won a "competition" but it was not to provide low-cost commercial transport to ISS. The competion was for NASA funding to develop a demonstration of this capability. Once a particpant actually demonstrates this capability, the project will move into the services phase where they will have the opportunity to bid on a service contract for cargo transportation services.
Both companies represent a departure from business as usual at NASA.
I don't think it is the companies themselves that represent the departure from business as usual as much as it is the whole concept behind COTS: NASA seed money (in the form of firm, fixed-price milestone awards) for commercial partners to develop a new technology. NASA isn't buying/developing anything. They are germinating a seed and nurturing it.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
He's not being suficiently nuanced about mining. Boosting up to orbit, mining stuff in space and shipping it down to Earth makes no sense. But, once we as a species have multiple populated worlds, it makes far more sense to ship something to a factory in Earth orbit from the asteroid belt, than up from Earth. Just as it makes more sense to manufacture in orbit and drop the product down the well than to manufacture on the ground and boost it up. The core principle being: avoid boosting anything up to planetary orbit. It's just so ridiculously expensive that fetching the same stuff from anywhere else in the solar system will always be cheaper.
Think of what $500 million US could do for the shrinking portion devote to the NASA science budget; which, by the way, has helped to fund the current and next generations of astronomy and astrophysics researchers in the US.
You should really think in longer terms. Investing that money now in lowering transportation costs will allow us to perform much more space science with the same money in the future.