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SpaceX to Attempt Launch of Falcon 1 Today
fatron writes "After yesterday's flight readiness review, SpaceX announced they will be attempting the second launch of their Falcon 1 Spacecraft today. The launch is scheduled for 4:00PM Pacific time with a webcast available from T-60 minutes until launch."
Given that Musk has stated that his patients and pockets are not unlimited, and we only have a few more shots at this, lets all hope that today's launch goes off as planned. It's a nice design overall, and I'd hate to see it fail due to a few technical glitches.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
This is something that the general public is fairly misinformed about. The majority of rocket launches in the US are using rockets designed and build by private companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Orbital Sciences. This includes NASA launches. Space X would be competing with these companies, not with NASA.
Is this in any way a space vehicle, or is this just another "single stage to balloon height" effort ?
Um, it's delivering a payload into orbit.
For anybody looking for more frequently-updated sources of info and don't feel like watching the entire webcase, here's some other useful sources of info:
* SpaceFlight Now's Mission Status Center: According to the status center, they're having some problems with remotely-monitoring the telemetry stream, which may end up postponing the launch.
* Kimbal Musk's "Kwajalein Atoll and Rockets" blog: Kimbal is Elon Musk's brother, and often posts interesting (and highly unofficial) updates from the launch site. He sometimes goes into liveblogging mode, but hasn't done this yet today.
From Space.com
MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2007
2257 GMT (6:57 p.m. EDT)
NEW LAUNCH TIME. Liftoff is now targeted for 2345 GMT (7:45 p.m. EDT). Fueling of the rocket had been suspended while trying to correct the data transmission problem between Omelek Island and the company's headquarters in El Segundo, California. So the launch team is now working to get back on track for liftoff.
Letter To Iran
You mean like Haliburton?
I think we can be pretty certain that any industry which caters primarily to the government will not be dramatically more efficient than the government at doing anything, and possibly less efficient. All the negative risk aversion aspects of government decision making are retained, with whole new opportunities for graft and fraud added on.
At best, it's like the difference between a golf ball landing on some blade of grass, and a golf ball landing on a particular blade of grass. Buying something on the open market is like the golf ball landing on some blade of grass. If there are things out there which are proven to do the job, the might not be exactly what you'd want, but the difference between perfect and good enough is negligible. The difference between landing on one blade of grass on the green and another a foot or so away is negligible.
Specifying something for government consumption is like trying to get a golf ball to land on a particular blade of grass. In order to make sure the competition is fair, you have to ensure a level playing field. In order to ensure that the playing field is level, you have to make sure everybody is proposing to deliver exactly the same thing more or less. Not only does the solution have fewer degrees of freedom, the number of organizations who can respond to such an RFP is limited. In other words, the usual suspects. In other words Haliburton.
And so far we've been talking about the best case.
The worst case, you assume that because the private sector is supposed to be more efficient, you are saving money by using a private contractor. There are very few companies capable of delivering certain things the government wants, and fewer still who can negotiate the contracting process as well. This means that when the government buys those things from the private sector, it is not necessarily buying them from the free market.
I'm not saying that buying from the private sector is a bad idea. What I'm saying is that the problem of financial efficiency, when we are talking goods and services primarily consumed by the government, is an orthagonal problem to insourcing or outsourcing.
It's not a bad idea, it's just not an automatic win. Not until there is a healthy industry that can exist without government business.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Terminal count abort. No launch.
I think you missed one minor point, but otherwise you were hitting dead on.
Where the government can save money is to buy commodity equipment/goods that are sold on a larger basis than just to government contracts. Even this has some problems (for example, the Army buying diesel fuel for trucks... still needs specialized logistics). But as has been said, if an Army private can purchase a hammer for $5 at the local Home Depot, he should be permitted to do that instead of going through the normal supply chain where the same hammer will cost $100 due to logistical overhead and layers of approval.
And some efforts to allow this sort of "petty cash" spending has been introduced into some military units and smaller government agencies, precisely because of this sort of savings.
I certainly think the military was much more efficient with the use of money during WWII, when nearly every position was an actual sworn officer or enlisted member of the military. Of course there was graft and corruption, but you also stood to have a military tribunal if you were caught, or even receive battlefield justice. Such stuff doesn't happen with Haliburton and its sub-contractors.
No it isn't. And if it was they wouldn't want to use it.
This is brought up in every slashdot article about returning to the moon and it is a really bad idea. First off the Saturn was designed to use 1960's technology. Now there is nothing wrong with that, except that you can't get it anymore. And the manufacturing techniques are different than the techniques we use today. So right off the bat you'd have to rework the design to be updated with modern components and manufacturing capability. Now you need someone who understands the rocket in order to make these changes. Unfortunately, those people aren't around anymore. This is something that far too many managers don't get - designs themselves are not nearly as useful without the working knowledge as to why the design is the way it is, and all the small little lessons learned while creating and building the design. Furthermore, we have learned a lot since then. We are much better at making lightweight materials, which is a big deal since the amount of fuel and thrust needed increases exponentially with weight. We are better at designing engines to operate more efficiently, again saving even more weight for payload.
Lastly, as much as people like to ditch on the shuttle, it's boosters are incredibly safe and reliable, and they are fairly powerful too. The problem is that overweight, poorly positioned excuse for a crew module. I have to agree with NASA that it is a much better idea to build off of the portions of a currently flying system such as the shuttle or Delta IV, than to start over from scratch, which is effectively what they would be doing with the Saturn. We are not wasting time and money reinventing something new, we are saving money by adapting a known good design, and wasting time by doing it on a small yearly budget, and by continuing with the ISS.
As for Space X it would be an even worse idea to them to use the Saturn design for the Falcon 1, as they are planning on using it for completely different reasons. As an entrant into the launcher business, it makes sense for them to start with LEO capability and work up from there. The Saturn was created as a no expense spared, get to the moon as quickly as possible, arm-race machine. Space X is trying to decrease the cost of getting to orbit by an order of magnitude over current launchers which are already significantly less expensive than the Saturn was. And they are trying to do it without sacrificing reliability. The way they are doing this is by decreasing the complexity of the rocket as much as possible. The engineering on the Saturn V was incredibly impressive and complex. It had five engines on the first stage, another 5 engines on the second, and one more on the third. This is complete overkill for what Falcon 1 is trying to achieve.
The Falcon 9 on the other hand, does pretty much what I explained above. It takes the overall architecture of the Saturn V (redundant engines etc), updates it with modern manufacturing, new efficient engines, and improves upon the simplicity of it's construction and design. It is a smart way to go about building a rocket.