SpaceX Falcon 9 Relatively Cheap Compared To NASA's New Pad

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Motherboard.tv: "As debate over the future of spaceflight rages on — and as the axe all but falls on NASA's mission back to the moon and beyond — the successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 two weeks ago proved at least one of the virtues of the private option: it's a heckuva lot cheaper than government-funded rides to space. In fact, the whole system was built for less than the cost of the service tower that was to be used for NASA's proposed future spaceflight vehicle (yup, the service tower is finished, but the rocket isn't, and the whole program may well be canceled anyway)." CEO Elon Musk spoke recently about some of the ways SpaceX finds to cut costs in the construction of their rockets.

Comments

Cut costs, sure.

[JorDan Clock]

It's great that they cut costs and all, but what about those pesky corners? I'm all for a private space industry, but NASA has a pretty darn good track record of performance to back up their expenditures. Will these cheaper options be more efficient, or just cheaper?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[AnonymousClown]

Will these cheaper options be more efficient, or just cheaper?

More efficient.

Between government salaries, the way they get contracts, how NASA's budget is dependent on pork barrel spending, NASA having to put some projects in certain states to get votes from Congressmen for a budget, price gouging by contractors, etc...

Just eliminating Congress from the loop is going to save billions. Add in businessmen/engineers and you have a much more efficient space program.

Safety? We'll see if it's reduced. But I have a feeling there won't be change in safety record.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[InsertWittyNameHere]

I think the fact that other countries (like India) can launch into space for a fraction of what it costs NASA shows that a private American company can as well.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[jhoegl]

Citation needed....

Oh, and if you want to "wait and see" if its safer, I dare you to be one of the first up.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[dragisha]

NASA sure did great things, but "track record"? As compared to? Which other venture is your baseline?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[drinkypoo]

It's great that they cut costs and all, but what about those pesky corners? I'm all for a private space industry, but NASA has a pretty darn good track record of performance to back up their expenditures. Will these cheaper options be more efficient, or just cheaper?

Are we talking about the same NASA that proceeded with a shuttle launch when the temperature was too cold, when they knew that certain very highly engineered O-Rings were likely to fail, instead of scrubbing the launch because it's expensive to do it all over again? The same NASA that knew they'd be launching in cold weather but accepted specs for these parts that would fail under those conditions rather than spending more money to come up with parts that would operate under the actual operating conditions? Or is this some other NASA?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[DragonDru]

I have heard, but do not have a reputable source, that the overhead on NASA projects is 500%.
For those who do not know, budgets for academia and government work are calculated roughly as:
Actual Costs * Overhead = Budget
The Overhead goes to things like facilities, accounting, IT, etc.
Actual Costs include salaries (possible benefits), parts and supplies.
The Universities I have worked for have overheads around 50%.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Always this cheap? No.
But cheaper than NASA's next set of rockets, yes.
India is doing it today, why can't NASA do it that cheap?

And again, we're talking about now, not always or 60 years ago.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[InsertWittyNameHere]

I don't know how you got any of that from what I wrote... All I said is that it's not unfathomable for the private sector to do it cheaper.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA sure did great things, but "track record"? As compared to? Which other venture is your baseline?

Well, let's see. The space shuttle had 25 launches before its first launch failure. That's a record that has never been equalled by any other venture. As a general thing, new launchers fail a couple of times before they achieve reliability. The only exception to that rule-- so far-- has been the vehicles NASA developed.

So, yes, I'd call this a track record. When Falcon-9 makes 25 flights in a row without failure, they'll have a track record, too. (So far Space-X's record is 3 for 6, by the way.)

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Has NASA got significantly better in 24 years? The last I checked they were just doing 1960s reruns, albeit with better and more expensive technology. Not much innovation.

NASA didn't even like one of the most significant milestones in space that came about recently: space tourism.

Guess where airlines and the airplane industry would be if we didn't have tourists. The first fee paying space tourist was a far more important experiment than most of the experiments done on the ISS.

If they started building space stations that could keep people in space indefinitely without them wasting away (no gravity) or having other problems (radiation), then I'd say they are making progress.

Without a spacecraft that can keep humans alive for years, all that visiting planets stuff is putting the cart before the horse.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[drinkypoo]

Well, I'm glad someone answered my leading question intelligently, or at least, with the sentiment I was looking for. Frankly I don't care about assigning blame for ruining NASA, although by all means, you can go ahead. All I want to say is that NASA is no longer the can-do organization of the past, not least because we're now in the present and times have changed. Private industry is clearly accomplishing today what NASA can not, regardless of the reason. If we can fix NASA, we should, but private industry has even more motivation to achieve these goals than an arm of the government whose direction is set by bureaucracy.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[budgenator]

How sharp do you really need the corners? Seriously NASA has a perfectionist syndrome, many times good enough is better than perfect because perfection can never be achieved.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[rijrunner]

      They have a fair track record, They also have failures. With a competitive fully commercial program, we can actually begin to answer these questions. Mainly, the current safety record is more dominated by the fact that the Delta and Atlas are mature technologies as far as launch vehicles are concerned and have had time to fix errors in the design. Advances in model design were based off upgrading the previous model rather than new designs from scratch. The major telling difference between SpaceX and the Ares rocket is that SpaceX, as a company, was founded in 2002 and has, to date, developed 2 working launch vehicles. NASA selected the Ares design in 2005-2006, awarded contracts in 2007 and estimates first launch in 2014 (although the Augustine Commission thinks 2017 is more likely). Will it be cheaper and more efficient? Barring systemic flaws, which are unlikely, they should have several design generations to apply engineering fixes for problems prior to Ares ever launching.SpaceX is designed for lower operating costs and is fairly conservative in most of its design selection. Theoretically, that should be more efficient in the long run. The specific engineering choices will determine the real answer and only by flying hardware do you get to actually see. For the design path SpaceX has chosen, higher launch failures at the leading edge of the life of the vehicle is not really a bad thing.

      Orbital Sciences has the Pegasus lunch vehicle, which they built on their own funding. It has 40 launches. 3 of those were failures and 2 were partial successes. The failures were all at the beginning of their development line, where you would expect them. To date, they have had over 500 launch missions of various types. Their Taurus rocket is still in its initial development path and has the expected launch failures for that.

      The thing most people have to realize now is that NASA does not really own or control most aspects of the launches now. They contract out to private companies. Those expenditures come from locked in contracts. It is hard to get competitive bidding if your only provider is ULA.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[jedidiah]

No one in government gains anything by being efficient.

This is one key problem of letting government solve any problem. You better have exhausted
all possible alternate approaches first. The problem should really be "too big for anyone"
else because you know that any solution created by beaurocrats is going to have serious
inherent drawbacks.

Elon Musk's example about different engine technologies in the same rocket is the sort
of thing that even goes back to Apollo 13.

No one tries "efficient" because no one is motivated and it would actually interefere
with their personal fiefdom building.

Eventually, any technology has to crawl out of the crib and be done outside of government
before it becomes really effective or widespread.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[pushing-robot]

NASA researches space with experimental hardware.

Companies want to commercialize space with commoditized hardware.

Experimental hardware is great for solving problems and learning new things, but it will never be as cheap or reliable as commoditized hardware.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[ColdWetDog]

Citation needed....

I'll give you my own anecdotal experience for what it's worth. My father started at a Thiokol (when it was Thiokol) and worked for various contractors as well as NASA. He was involved in the Apollo program from it's inception.

I started out Junior High School in Pennsylvania, and essentially commuted (every nine months or so) from Manned Spaceflight Center to Cape Canaveral to the Johnson Space Flight Center (the MSC renamed for it's principal benefactor) to Cape Kennedy (the original named for it's principal benefactor and back again. The government paid for dual facilities, essentially paid for dual school systems, paid our moving costs and a bunch load of other things essentially so other congresscritters could get a piece of the pie.

And I'm even purposefully forgetting a four month stay in the swamps outside of Huntsville....

If you read TFA, that's really what Musk is saying. Everybody is outsourced seven ways from Sunday. That leads to delays and expenses that really don't help you engineering wise. It's all a political decision. And we know how well those work....

Even Yo-Yo Dyne^HBoeing, who had the lead engineering contract for Apollo and whose managers bitched and moaned about the geographic and political separation (it seemed mostly in our back yard) forgot about all of that with the 787 and outsourced it to pretty much every ZIP code on the planet leading to years of delay.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[tibit]

NASA's way of doing things hasn't changed one least bit in that quarter century. That's why two shuttles were lost. Feynman is a big genius in my book since he made an analysis of root organizational issues that NASA had, and that analysis is applicable till this day. We should keep our fingers crossed that NASA won't manage to kill a third crew until the Shuttle program is finished.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sunspot42]

The space shuttle had 25 launches before its first launch failure. That's a record that has never been equalled by any other venture.

The Shuttle got off to a solid start, but given the billions dumped into its development and construction that was hardly some great achievement. The US taxpayer shelled out a fortune for the Shuttle, ultimately to enjoy a mediocre safety record and abysmal performance. Virtually every booster can hoist payloads into orbit for a fraction of what it costs per-pound to launch payloads with the Shuttle, and the other man-rated booster in operation (Soyuz) has proven far safer.

You're citing an "achievement" that's not only proved ultimately useless, but that was also a far less-efficient way of designing, producing and launching safe vehicles. Who cares if boosters fail during their initial test stages, especially if humans aren't onboard? If the boosters are cheap, you just learn from your failures, perfect the technology and then, when it's safe enough, start launching humans. The way the Shuttles were developed was ass-backwards, which is one of the reasons why they've been such a money pit. Lots of boosters developed the way SpaceX is developing Falcon 9 have had way more than 25 launches in a row without a failure. There hasn't been a failure of a manned Soyuz booster in decades, and the last big incident they had (in the early '80s IIRC) didn't result in any casualities.

The Shuttle is probably the best example of how NOT to design a booster, and another demonstration of why NASA should be kept far, far away from the design and construction of launch vehicles. SpaceX proves that the commercial sector is more than capable of doing it better, faster and cheaper than NASA ever could.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[clarkkent09]

I think one reason NASA is stuck in a rut is the unwillingness to take risks. There is a great talk by Burt Rutan on that subject on TED. The other reason of course is that people are never as careful or as efficient when spending other people's money as when they are spending their own.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sznupi]

"Safe" is a large part of "efficient" and "cheap" - if only because cargo is usually quite valuable and time consuming to build.

I still expect SpaceX to get there.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Sir_Lewk]

Think of it this way. Unlike NASA, SpaceX has been building the majority of everything in-house. That means unlike NASA spacecrafts, SpaceX crafts are not build by the lowest bidder.

Of course NASA has had a pretty good track record in recent years, but I think we will find that SpaceX will as well.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Sir_Lewk]

Bad comparison. The shuttles were not the first set of rockets NASA had launched. You are comparing one generation of rockets (a generation pretty late in the game for that matter) with the entirety of SpaceX's run. NASA had quite as few failures back when it was still learning the ropes, as SpaceX did their first launches.

For more fun unfair comparisons, check out the progress NASA made on Ares, then check out the progress SpaceX made on Falcon 9. Pick your "track records" correctly and you can make anybody look better than anyone else, and it's not particularly hard to pick them to make SpaceX look pretty damned good.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sjames]

In that is the key to the big savings, They are 3 for 6 but still cheaper. IF they can then get to 25 without a mishap and still have the program be cheaper overall, then they will have proven that particular model for development. Sometimes a few early failures are much cheaper than designing when failure isn't an option.

Part of NASA's problem is that it came into being as a propaganda machine. It's purpose was to convince the world that communism was inferior and that America was superior to the USSR. Failure carried much higher costs to that mission than the simple loss of the rocket. So they would spend many times as much money making sure the failures were few and far between.

These days, failure is STILL politically expensive for NASA. Now though, it's their opponents in Congress that will crow endlessly about any minor failure (even an EXPECTED failure to gain test data). Pork is added in on top of that.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Idiomatick]

Records of launch vehicles w/ over 50 launches:

Small:
Atlas-Centaur (Lockheed) = 51/61
Kosmos-3M (Russia) = 422/442

Medium:
Tsyklon-2 (Soviet/Ukraine)= 105/106
Delta II (Boeing) = 65/67
Soyuz-U2 (Soviet) = 90/92
Voskhod (Soviet) = 277/300
Vostok-2M (Soviet) = 92/94

Heavy:
Proton (Soviet/Russia) = 294/335
Shuttle(NASA)= 126/128

Also, looking at a company's record Space-X is doing really well. 3/6 might sound bad but every group starting out has had failures.

Lockheed Martin was a missile company for decades. Was building ICBMs and their first launch vehicle was a modified one of these missiles. That is a pretty unfair comparison. They got to launch the things to test tons of times before they put a launch vehicle sticker on it. They also built spacecraft for many years before their 1st launch vehicle. And they still had failures (17% on their most popular vehicle).

Boeing as well aka 'Boeing Defense, Space & Security' is built up from ICBMs and military history. The Delta I is built up from a PGM-17 Thor missile.

Doing so much from scratch is hard but paybacks could be high. Space-X is doing everything right. In the Falcon-9 they have tons of redundancy, hoping for a repeat of the Saturn-V's 12/12 record, they basically have copied what made them successful. They have copied from the recent Delta heavy-lift vehicles for their own (Take a medium lift vehicle and replicate the first stage on the sides, it is cheaper and simpler (therefore safer)). And they've taken things further hope to recover more of the craft. They've added redundancy by making the stages even more similar reusing as many parts as they can. And they have used the same engine in both stages just more of them in the 1st stage.

They might not have a track record yet but they are a good bet. Why do you think everyone has their eyes on them. Why are they getting juicy contracts?

The whole concept of a startup space company going nothing -> Launch in 6 years is crazy, they only had 160~ employees until 2005. And they have been profitable and they only needed 120Million initial investments.

Unless things go horribly wrong Space-X is a BIG TIME game changer.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Nyeerrmm]

What track record? NASA hasn't managed to develop a new manned spacecraft in 30 years.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Sir_Lewk]

So what happened, did you sleep through the 90s?

You know what really grinds my gears? People who take something as awesome as space exploration, and try to spoil it by injecting partisan politics into it.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[ConfusedVorlon]

too much safety can be a bad thing

e.g. payload worth 100mil
you can pick:
a) rocket for 50 mil with 5% chance of failure
b) rocket for 60 mil with 1% chance of failure

cost for option A, plus 5% chance of having to rebuild and relaunch: $157.5 mil
cost for option B, plus 1% chance of having to rebuild and relaunch: $161.6 mil

this ignores double failure - but the point is that your cheaper 'riskier' launch makes more sense.

or with people:

imagine, for 10 billion, we can get 10 astronauts to mars with a probable 2 deaths, or for the same amount of cash we can get two astronauts to the moon with only a 2% chance of any deaths.

perhaps less obvious which is better, but I'm certain we would have no problem getting volunteers for the mars mission.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hardburn]

NASA won't close. No matter how things pan out otherwise, it'll almost certainly keep it's robotic deep space missions and also do advanced aeronautics research.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hardburn]

To nitpick, I'm not quite sure if Apollo 13 should be counted as a "success" or not. Nobody died, but only just.

OTOH, if you want to count the entire Saturn series, then you have 32 launches with the only astronaut deaths in the program being Apollo 1, which never actually launched. Even the unmanned ones have a perfect track record.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hitmark]

so you want NASA to run efficiently, but at the same time spend money on parts. i would say that borders on a contradiction.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hitmark]

NASA is as much a economic life support for the south as it is about space exploration.

Next to military gear, space gear is the perfect line of business. Much of it will either be blown up or sent to unrecoverable locations. This means that the customer will always be coming back for more.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hitmark]

on the other hand, as corporations grow, their concept of "efficiency" results in all kinds of clean ups or secondary effects end up getting payed for by the community rather then the corporation, hiding the true cost of operation.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hitmark]

manned space was about political one-ups. once the moon landing was no longer politically potent, they killed them (at exactly the same time NASA started sending scientist rather then fighter pilots).

and NASA got badly burned when their first launch of a "civilian" ended up in disaster.

then there is the question of what to use space for. There is right now no political, military or economic incentive to send anything more then automated devices into space. Heck, corporation have killed of all kinds of blue sky projects in favor of quick turn around refinements of existing tech to keep the consumer economy going. NASA, LHC, these kinds of projects are getting increasingly hard to fund as the people in power have been raised on a system expecting a quick ROI. There is no interest in looking beyond a year or two, or the next election cycle. The decade plus plan is dead, killed on the altar of short term greed.

i say we need a new world war to remind people that no man is a island.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hitmark]

maybe not if all of them are military personnel with short turn around to train replacements. Tho i wonder if the same is true for someone thats spent most of their life studying for a highly specialized topic.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[CrimsonAvenger]

The US taxpayer shelled out a fortune for the Shuttle, ultimately to enjoy a mediocre safety record and abysmal performance.

Note that Shuttle had two loss-of-crew failures. Shuttle flew more times than all other manned systems combined.

Soyuz also had two loss-of-crew accidents. Soyuz flew more than all other manned systems combined (other than Shuttle).

Apollo had one loss-of-crew accident. On the ground. And 16 successful manned flights. As opposed to the 100+ for each of Soyuz and Shuttle.

In other words, Shuttle's safety record isn't mediocre. It's better than Apollo, better than Soyuz.

I won't go into "abysmal performance" beyond noting that 30 ton cargo capacity. When you find another manned space vehicle that can carry as much as five tons of cargo, let me know....

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[NormalVisual]

Sure they can, after they find a bunch of engineers willing to work for $15K/year while disregarding all those pesky environmental and other regulations.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[R3d M3rcury]

I'd point out that one of your Shuttle mission failures is a problem in re-entry, something that the other boosters don't have to deal with.

Or, to quote Tom Lehrer, "'The rockets go up. Who cares where they come down?' These are the words of Werner Von Braun."

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sznupi]

Yes, and insurance is a response to risks ("safe" part) and directly influences costs ("efficient" and "cheap"). Essentially isn't a factor in itself, just a intermediary between things I mentioned. Even beancounters should realize it's not a business focused on short-term financial reports...

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[glwtta]

To nitpick, I'm not quite sure if Apollo 13 should be counted as a "success" or not. Nobody died, but only just.

Well, if everyone died, but "only just" you'd still call that a failure, right?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Geoffrey.landis]

The space shuttle had 25 launches before its first launch failure. That's a record that has never been equalled by any other venture.

The Shuttle got off to a solid start, but given the billions dumped into its development and construction that was hardly some great achievement.

Precisely.

Phrasing it slightly differently, the U.S. taxpayers demanded reliability and safety from the very first flight. If you demand reliability starting from the very first fllght, this is going to be expensive. But that is what the taxpayers demanded out of NASA, and the historical record shows that NASA has been pretty much best record ever in achieving it.

So, if Space-X can be allowed to operate in a mode where they're allowed to fail, and learn from their failures, and fly again-- they are likely to indeed be cheaper. Some people say this is "learning the hard way"-- but, in fact, learning from failure is a very good way to learn.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[DavidShor]

Another reason why NASA has blown through so much money over the years

.

People tend to massively over-estimate how much money the government spends on NASA. It's about 15 billion a year, or about .05% of the federal budget, or about $50 per person per year. That's roughly equal to the amount of money we spend on over-priced coffee machines or on skateboards. We literally spend about 50 times as much on our military...

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[DavidShor]

It's not cheaper if the payload took two years and several hundred million dollars to develop. Or if the payload can only be launched during brief windows every two years due to orbital considerations.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sunspot42]

NASA proves that it has been capable of (more or less) safe spacegoing for the last 50 years, which the private sector just couldn't do.

NASA "proves" that it can blow $200 billion on a money pit like the Shuttle and "only" incinerate 14 astronauts. Not a great track record, given the human *or* financial cost. Up until recently, few were willing to finance private launch initiatives. Now the government has - finally - turned to independent private sector entities to develop launch capabilities, and (surprise, surprise) one company has already developed a successful launcher for less than it costs NASA to build a freaking launch PAD.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[DavidShor]

You'll have to be more specific about what you mean by "actual costs". Running a space program is vastly different then running a university, so I don't see why they shouldn't have different cost-structures...

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[HereIAmJH]

BP executives may be responsible for many bad decisions, but I doubt the disaster at Deepwater Horizon is the result of short term thinking. They have been getting away with so many things that they simply discounted the risks as being over-inflated. BP has been fined 760 times for OHSA violations compared to Exxon's 1 time. If those violations didn't result in employee lawsuits then the fines were trivial and not really a risk factor. And if you went back a few months and discussed oil spills and natural disasters, Exxon Valdez would be top of the list and BP might not have even been mentioned.

Even now, oil company executives don't believe the US government will shut down off shore drilling, even though Congress has mentioned it as an option until all the rigs can be properly inspected. They assume that the economic damage it would cause makes the risk of a shutdown minimal. I personally thought we should have shut down every rig until the blowout preventers were tested as soon as we knew that Deepwater Horizon's failed it's sole task.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sunspot42]

Shuttle flew more times than all other manned systems combined.

Yes, at a tremendous cost in money and lives.

In other words, Shuttle's safety record isn't mediocre. It's better than Apollo, better than Soyuz.

The Shuttle's safety record is abysmal given its cost. Worse, there's little indication the craft is any safer now than it was the day it first launched - if anything, age seems to be making the Shuttle less reliable (or at least, increasingly expensive to maintain at a safe level). Whereas Soyuz has clearly improved over the decades, both in terms of performance as well as reliability, and hasn't suffered a fatality since the earliest missions of the 1970's. In no way is the Shuttle's safety record "better" than that of today's Soyuz.

I won't go into "abysmal performance" beyond noting that 30 ton cargo capacity. When you find another manned space vehicle that can carry as much as five tons of cargo, let me know....

Shuttle defenders always cite some useless capability the Shuttle possesses in their attempts to justify this enormous white elephant. "But it can haul 30 tons of cargo!" "But it has more tiles than the average public restroom!" "But it can cook 7 astronauts at once!". The Saturn V could boost 120 tons into orbit. We gave that up in order to build a launcher that could only lob 30 tons into orbit, yet ended up costing around as much per-launch. Some deal!

As if humans need to ride along with cargo, anyhow. You can boost a bunch of humans into orbit cheaper and safer with smaller boosters, and save the heavy lifters for cargo runs. The Soviets figured this out early on, which is why their program was able to accomplish a lot without spending a lot of money, and why their rockets continue to dominate any price/performance comparisons you'd care to make with the stuff NASA built post 1970.

The Falcon 9, by the way, is capable of launching 28,000kg into LEO, compared to the Shuttle's 24,400kg. Falcon 9 is slated to cost around $94 million a launch. The Shuttles are running somewhere between $200 - $500 million a launch (depending on how you handle the accounting). Ouch.

The Shuttle has been a 30 year disaster for the US space program, and the Ares "replacement" rockets looked to be equally disastrous cash sinkholes. Fortunately, it now looks as though the private sector will prove more than capable of producing safe, reliable, inexpensive alternatives.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[HereIAmJH]

A profit opportunity exists for them, not because of anything valuable up there we can get to, but because we need to keep the ISS going.

Even without ISS there would still be satellite launches. I seem to remember reading earlier this week that SpaceX won a contract to launch the new Iridium constellation. There are a lot of launches not related in any way to the ISS.

Space X has done what exactly? Create a LEO capable rocket. Yay! Something NASA pulled off in the 50s.

I used to have a boss that liked to say "what have you done for me lately?" SpaceX may be using 1960s rocket technology with current guidance technology. And NASA is using a 1980's shuttle fleet with at space station that could have been built in the 70's. (Skylab, Mir)

Government agencies breaking ground in new industries is fine, but at some point you need to turn day-to-day business over to private industry so that it can be streamlined. Imagine if we had never allowed private parcel carriers. We'd be sitting here saying that FedEx and UPS are only doing what the USPS have been doing for a century.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sunspot42]

Phrasing it slightly differently, the U.S. taxpayers demanded reliability and safety from the very first flight. If you demand reliability starting from the very first fllght, this is going to be expensive.

That's not really what taxpayers demanded, though. The need for flawless reliability from the first flight was driven primarily by the Shuttle's form factor, it's "re-usability" and outrageous cost. The damn thing was so expensive NASA literally couldn't afford a failure simply from a price perspective (forget the astronauts), so a ton of expensive testing and engineering had to be baked into the program as a result.

When the Shuttle was originally conceived as a much smaller manned glider to ride piggyback on a Saturn booster it was a much cheaper and simpler affair, and the Saturns had already been tested and deployed. Nixon nixed that plan due to the cost, and directed NASA to build an independent Shuttle with its own - supposedly cheaper - launch system, based around the reusable craft itself. Huge mistake, especially when the military got involved and bloated up the size and capabilities of the craft (abilities they pretty much never used).

NASA tried to justify the exploding cost of the Shuttles by making utterly unrealistic plans to fly dozens of missions a year in an attempt to recoup their development costs. Never happened. They never even came close. But the annual program costs never came down, in spite of only running a handful of flights a year. In fact I read somewhere recently that launch costs are up to around $1 billion a flight, simply because so few Shuttles get launched each year, yet it costs NASA billions just to keep the program's lights on.

Of course, all that pork made the Shuttles a sacred pig in Washington, so the program lived on like a cash eating zombie decades after it was obvious the Shuttle had failed to provide any kind of improvement over the Saturn V launcher it replaced. Not only was it not an improvement, it ultimately proved far more costly to run, and it totally eliminated our heavy launch abilities. The Shuttle was a catastrophic failure long before Challenger blew, and the taxpayers are probably the only people not to blame for that (apart from continuing to elect morons year after year, anyhow).

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[blueturffan]

We should keep our fingers crossed that NASA won't manage to kill a third crew until the Shuttle program is finished.

I think you mean "We should keep our fingers crossed that NASA won't manage to kill a third crew before the Shuttle program is finished". Unless you're suggesting that NASA will kill a third crew upon the completion of the program...

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[turbidostato]

"BP executives may be responsible for many bad decisions, but I doubt the disaster at Deepwater Horizon is the result of short term thinking."

So risking the big amount of money that the Deepwater Horizon costed just to let it sink down is not a short term thinking result? So expending a lot of millions designing, building and positioning the blowout preventers just to let them fail is not a short term thinking result?

"If those violations didn't result in employee lawsuits then the fines were trivial and not really a risk factor."

It's obvious that a big accident in deept waters will result in life loss not mentioning the financial damage.

There were obvious danger signs; there were millions of already deployed structure at risk; there were oil to be lost in the ocean instead of being pumped out to the oil market; there were human lives at risk. And all that was overlooked so production could start this quarter instead of next one. Tell me *that* is not the result of short term thinking pushed by the most egregious greed.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[quanticle]

The only exception to that rule-- so far-- has been the vehicles NASA developed.

Not so. In the immediate aftermath of Sputnik, NASA had a number of well publicized launch failures that caused much hand wringing. Heck, even today, NASA rockets blow up. Even in the realm of manned spaceflight, NASA had the Apollo 1 disaster, where a brand new human-carrying vehicle failed on the launch pad, resulting in the deaths of three astronauts.

The only reason that NASA has the track record that it does today is because it has the benefit (and institutional memory) of its previous failures.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[quanticle]

The Shuttle has great performance, to be sure. But, then again, so does a Ferrari. It doesn't mean that either is a cost-effective means of transportation. The one big problem I have with the Space Shuttle design is that it combines cargo hauling with crew transport. Cargo can handle much more stress and people have a much greater tolerance for failure for cargo launches. Combining cargo and crew transport means that you have to have the same tolerances for launching cargo as you do for launching human crews. Obviously, this means that your cargo launches are unnecessarily expensive.

Had NASA separated its cargo and crew launchers (as their original plan would have had them do) the STS program would have been able to launch more tonnage, more quickly than it was able to.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[HereIAmJH]

Tell me *that* is not the result of short term thinking pushed by the most egregious greed.

It's not short term thinking because they didn't believe they were increasing their risks. They had been able to get away with things for so long they discounted the reasoning behind the safeguards they were flaunting.

In 30 years I've never been involved in a car accident that was my fault. Statistically I could say buying liability insurance is an unneeded expense. If I then have an accident everyone would say I've been short sighted. If I continue as in the past it would be easy to think that the risks of not carrying insurance were exaggerated.

It doesn't relieve any of BP's responsibility, it points to a different systemic problem. Rather than it being optimizing profits from quarter to quarter, it's discounting risks as being unlikely/inconsequential without determining the true costs.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[quanticle]

It depends on what you're measuring the success of. If you're looking at the Saturn V booster, then Apollo 13 was a success. There was nothing the booster could have done to prevent or exacerbate the later problems caused by the oxygen tank explosion in the command module.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[dbIII]

Remember that inquiry a few years ago where the engineers had to sneak around the layers of management to get the real story to Feynman? That's a very good starting point. Those o-rings that failed were only there so that the designed part could be made in two pieces instead of one. As two parts they were made in different states for a bit of pork barrelling. Dead astronauts traded for votes.
Another thing to consider from recent events is the extra bit tacked onto the Afganistan supply bill to get funding for a cancelled aerospace project through the back door and make anyone that opposed it look as if they wanted the troops to die. Not a major bit of evil but still most definitely an evil and corrupt abuse of the system that nobody worth an inch of trust would ever contemplate.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[mano.m]

Unless you're suggesting that NASA will kill a third crew upon the completion of the program...

Well with NASA you never know....

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[dlgeek]

s/These are the words of/'That's not my department' says/

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[camperdave]

It does not hurt the cargo any to be launched at stress levels that humans can handle. There's no reason to have separate launch vehicles for crew and cargo as long as, in the event of an abort, you can get the crew off safely. Apollo used this method. The crew rode in the conical command module at the top of the rocket stack. The cargo (lunar module, service module, etc.) rode beneath. The launch abort system would pull the command module and crew to safety. DIRECT would also use this plan.

In part, it was the idea of requiring separate launch vehicles for crew and cargo that doomed the ARES program. Two rockets cost more to develop than one. The crew rocket was underpowered, so they kept having to make the cargo launcher more and more powerful.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Nutria]

And NASA is using a 1980's shuttle fleet

I'd say more like 1970s, since that's when they were designed and all the tech was man-rated.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Nutria]

Yes, at a tremendous cost in money and lives.

How ironic.

When private industry does a cost-benefit analysis, and decides that as-safe-as-possible is just too expensive, everyone wails how horrible, and how life is sooooooooo damned important.

Yet, when gov't spends as much as necessary to make flight as-safe-as-possible, everyone wails on how expensive and time-consuming it is.

MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MINDS, PEOPLE!!!!!

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[khallow]

I'd point out that one of your Shuttle mission failures is a problem in re-entry

Caused by damage on launch. That makes it a launch-related failure.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[khallow]

I won't go into "abysmal performance" beyond noting that 30 ton cargo capacity. When you find another manned space vehicle that can carry as much as five tons of cargo, let me know....

That's one of the few valid observations of the Constellation program. You don't need your manned vehicle to handle 30 tons of payload. Wasted capability is in my view just as bad as not having capability you really need. That's because having an overbuilt program takes resources from other places.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[camperdave]

NASA has started development of several manned spacecraft over the past 30 years: The HL-42 and the X-33 are just two examples. They were cancelled because of a lack of development money.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Nyeerrmm]

Exactly. Thats the track record. Every single development effort since the shuttle ended has failed. Lets try something different.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Hognoxious]

and NASA got badly burned when their first launch of a "civilian" ended up in disaster.

Not as badly burned as the civilian.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sunspot42]

Yet, when gov't spends as much as necessary to make flight as-safe-as-possible, everyone wails on how expensive and time-consuming it is.

Nobody is complaining about the government making their launchers as safe as possible. The problem with NASA for the past 40 years has been their insistence on spending a fortune trying to make a vehicle that's inherently less-safe than a simple Saturn V or Soyuz-style booster "as-safe-as-possible". Not surprisingly, they wasted a ton of taxpayer cash and were left with a vehicle that wasn't as safe, as reliable, or as capable as its predecessors. It was, however, fantastically more expensive. If they'd performed an accurate cost-benefit analysis, they would have never built the Shuttle in the first place.

Private industry performed the dreaded cost-benefit analysis, and with a comparative pittance in government support one private firm has already successfully launched a new heavy booster - something NASA hasn't been able to accomplish in 30 years, after literally spending tens of billions on failed Shuttle replacements. SpaceX went with a proven form factor and utilized their engineering smarts to simplify their booster as much as possible, further enhancing its inherent reliability and making it far easier to maintain and improve that reliability as development advances. Most of the other private companies have employed a similar strategy, so it wouldn't surprise me if many of them ultimately reap similar results.

NASA's behavior over the past 4 decades is a classic illustration of the famous Sun Tzu statement, "Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Nutria]

Private industry performed the dreaded cost-benefit analysis, and with a comparative pittance in government support one private firm has already successfully launched a new heavy booster - something NASA hasn't been able to accomplish in 30 years, after literally spending tens of billions on failed Shuttle replacements.

What about the Delta IV and Atlas V, both of which lift more into LEO?

Is the United Launch Alliance not considered "private enterprise", being too cuddled up with NASA and the USAF?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sunspot42]

There's no reason to have separate launch vehicles for crew and cargo as long as, in the event of an abort, you can get the crew off safely.

Well, yes and no. It doesn't hurt, but producing a man-rated booster is a lot more expensive, especially when it has to be man-rated from the start. And man rating a really big launcher - one capable of boosting large cargo into orbit at once - can add all sorts of unnecessary cost and complexity to an already expensive heavy booster project. The Russians have been running two separate launchers - Soyuz for people and Proton for cargo - for decades, which has been very cost-effective for them.

It would probably be cheaper and simpler to design a booster with the longterm goal of man-rating it, but to not support that in the initial development. I think ESA took that approach with Ariane V, although no work has commenced on man-rating that launcher (yet, anyhow). The Russians intend to man-rate the under-development Proton replacement Angara rocket at some point, once it's been successfully deployed as an unmanned booster.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[M1FCJ]

Certainly robotic deep space missions should not be a mission of NASA/ESA. That's why we have research institutes like universities which have the expertise on the science and technology all around the world.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[M1FCJ]

NASA building hardware is a very popular myth. It's all designed and built by subcontractors like Boeing and it has been like that all the time. In 60s NASA put humans to orbit on ICBMs, military designs. The only non-military design ever was Saturn, which was itself derived from von Braun's military rockets. The reason the Shuttle was such a disaster was the insistence of military requirements (wings, single polar orbit flights).

All NASA does is spend the pork barrel and shell out the contracts and take all the glory.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[M1FCJ]

NASA payload, Orbital Sciences rocket, not designed and operated by NASA.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sznupi]

Rocket failures, especially of vehicles not using hypergolic (or otherwise toxic) fuels, don't result in many problems, anywhere, except simply increasing the cost of making business with that launch company.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[drinkypoo]

so you want NASA to run efficiently, but at the same time spend money on parts. i would say that borders on a contradiction.

"Saving money" by cutting corners and losing shuttles as a result (both shuttle explosions were the result of cut corners) is not efficient. There is no contradiction. Further, I want them to change strategies less often; changing direction costs money. Then there's more money for parts.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[camperdave]

It would probably be cheaper and simpler to design a booster with the longterm goal of man-rating it, but to not support that in the initial development.

I'm not sure I buy that. Certain factors (maximum vibration, g-forces, etc) that man rated systems have to meet/not-exceed have to be built in from the very start. I suppose factors like using a non-rated engine while you wait for a man-rated variant to come online may come into play. However, since you have to man-rate elements of the design very early on, my gut feeling is that you'd be better off going full bore right from the start.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Geoffrey.landis]

Bad comparison. The shuttles were not the first set of rockets NASA had launched. You are comparing one generation of rockets (a generation pretty late in the game for that matter) with the entirety of SpaceX's run.

OK.

The first rocket that NASA developed was Saturn 1. Perfect record; ten launches, no failures. The second rocket that NASA developed was Saturn 1B. Perfect record, nine launches, no failures. The third rocket that NASA developed was Saturn V. Prefect record, 13 launches, no failures.

Doesn't change my basic point.

NASA had quite as few failures back when it was still learning the ropes, as SpaceX did their first launches.

Actually, no. Contractor-developed rockets failed.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[hitmark]

then i would recommend getting the politicians to say away and let NASA make their own plans.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[turbidostato]

"It's not short term thinking because they didn't believe they were increasing their risks."

They *wanted* to be blind about the risks: regarding engineering failures it's both guild knowledge and best practices not to ask what will happen *if* it fails but asking what will happen *when* it fails.

"It doesn't relieve any of BP's responsibility, it points to a different systemic problem. Rather than it being optimizing profits from quarter to quarter, it's discounting risks as being unlikely/inconsequential without determining the true costs."

It is exactly the same thing. They discount the risk because, frankly, chances are that it won't happen *this* quarter and that's all I'm interested in, not that it won't happen: Shortsightness at its best.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Sir_Lewk]

The Saturn 1's maiden flight was in October 27, 1961. And it wasn't developed in a vacuum either, it was build after experience with Vanguard, Atlas, and Titan rockets. In fact, large portions of the Saturn 1 rockets were components taken from previous rockets. Drawing the line between contractor developed and NASA developed to whitewash Americas early spaceflight history is pretty disingenuous. Basically you are again ignoring previous lines of development, cherry-picking your track records to paint the picture you want to see.

Fact remains:

Falcon 9 record: Perfect.
Aries record: None.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[yndrd1984]

-To nitpick, I'm not quite sure if Apollo 13 should be counted as a "success" or not. Nobody died, but only just.

Well, if everyone died, but "only just" you'd still call that a failure, right?

But they failed to complete the mission, right?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Alioth]

Don't blame NASA for the shuttle's compromised design - that was the doing of the military.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Idiomatick]

Yeah. And space shuttle was 126/128 ... but 127 completed the mission ... just they all died on the way back sooooo. I'd personally call a round trip, complete mission and no deaths a success.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Idiomatick]

Yep I'm sure there are many more contentious launches but I'm not well versed on the few hundred launches listed to sort them out more than that. It is FAIRLY accurate though.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[evilviper]

any solution created by beaurocrats is going to have serious
inherent drawbacks.

What is your background, or your sources, which allow you to claim to know that government is vastly less efficient than private companies? Or are you just spouting urban myths and legends?

I've seen the insides of several large companies, and the problems you list are on display, in full force, in every one of them. I also see massive amounts of flagrant waste and stupidity on display on a routine basis.

What makes you so sure a politician is worse than a corporate manager, in this or any other regard?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[winwar]

"I'm all for a private space industry, but NASA has a pretty darn good track record of performance to back up their expenditures."

Please name one launch vehicle designed and produced by NASA.

I'm waiting.

This is a rhetorical question.

Every single NASA launch vehicle was produced by the private industry under contract.

As for the track record, I would rate NASA below Europe and Russia.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[crawling_chaos]

The first three manned boosters in the American space program were not designed as man-rated initially: they were all IRBMs (Redstone) or ICBMs (Atlas, Titan) rebuilt to NASA's specifications. Hell, in the original Grumman concept for the SRB assisted Shuttle, the SRBs were not custom made: they were off the shelf Minuteman IIIs to save money. The Soviets similarly used military hardware for most of their early program.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Geoffrey.landis]

The Saturn 1's maiden flight was in October 27, 1961. And it wasn't developed in a vacuum either, it was build after experience with Vanguard,

Navy

Atlas

Convair (General Dynamics), under contract to the Air Force.

, and Titan rockets.

Martin, also under contract to the Air Force.

If your point is, NASA was not the first organization to ever launch an orbital rocket, well, sure. Absolutely. Of course. Nor Space-X.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[caldodge]

Prime example of pork-barrelling - Mission Control is in Houston because LBJ demanded it, not because it was the best location.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Ganthor]

Woah- back it up a little there.

Yes it was designed in the 70's. In fact, it was first proposed before Apollo was completed.

However just like every other airframe out there, it has undergone significant change over the years to keep it state of the art.
Check out the write up in this months "Air and Space". Evolution of the Space Shuttle.

Then look at the alternative - The Soyuz. When was that developed? And again undergone continual evolution.

This "Public / Private Partnership" has to be the next step in Space Exploration. As governments have less to prove out in space, spending will be cut. This means private industries will take up the slack and find commercial opportunities. What they will bring to the table are commercial imperatives which drive operating costs down, and profit margins up. I for one believe that in order for us to start colonizing the solar system, we need to demonstrate commercial viability.

The Safety issue? - Yes it's important and we need to make sure cost cutting does not increase the risk to human life.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Nutria]

However just like every other airframe out there, it has undergone significant change over the years to keep it state of the art.
Check out the write up in this months "Air and Space". Evolution of the Space Shuttle.

Just read it. I see nothing in the article, though, which describes a significant technical upgrade or modification.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[jhoegl]

Uhg... how old is the technology India is using to launch a rocket vs NASA?
And yeah... comparing launching satellites to humans is a HUGE cost difference.
There are variables people do not see and I think its short sighted jackassery that allows for our country to fail.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[jhoegl]

I got it from what you wrote because of the facts that are put in place based on your statement.
- Launching rockets is cheaper when less safety is put in place.
-Launching humans costs more due to safety.
-India can always out-bid USA because of their class system, education, and financial system.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Calinous]

Sometime it's cheaper to accept accidents than to go for absolutely secure, absolutely perfect. If you could send 5 payloads for the price of two, with a 20% chance of failure, you still have four payloads.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Calinous]

The cargo is quite valuable because it is so difficult to get it in orbit (long waits and very very expensive). If there wouldn't be such a long wait, and it would be less expensive to launch it, probably companies would accept a much lower "readiness status" (like "it will work with 90% assurance" instead of the 110% assurance they want now.
      Overengineering isn't always good - you could buy a car that will work for you 15 years, or you could buy two cars that will work for you seven years and a half.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Calinous]

How old is the technology used by NASA? Or by SpaceX? It goes back in time to the chinese gunpowder rockets, or if you want a recent equivalent:
"In the autumn of 1929, Oberth conducted a static firing of his first liquid-fueled rocket motor, which he named the Kegeldüse. He was helped in this experiment by his students at the Technical University of Berlin, one of whom was Wernher von Braun, who would later become a giant in both German and American rocket engineering from the 1940s onward"
taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Oberth

I'm looking forward for newer technologies, but as of right now, that's all we have.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Calinous]

"they were off the shelf Minuteman IIIs"
      If you can even call a nuclear ballistic missile "off the shelf" :)

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Calinous]

The Apollo 13 was a near-failure, but not on the launch vehicle - the launch vehicle was a complete success.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[camperdave]

So, if it is cheaper to use what you have, why not reuse the shuttle parts (which are already man-rated), instead of developing new rockets?

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[sznupi]

Which to me is still part of that equation, more or less.

Though I really don't know where you're getting at with your example ;P - one car I'm often driving is 11 years old, works flawlessly (I realised some time ago that I still perceive it as "new"), I expect it to last gracefully at least another 4 years.
And it's an econobox hatchback of average price.

Generally, it might be that "overengineering", when it comes to quality, often isn't as expensive as you assume it is, compared to other costs.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Sir_Lewk]

You are again attempting to underplay the the relationship between the Saturn 1 and previous rockets. The early Saturn rockets were basically comglomerations of components from older, less sucessful rocket designs.

The Falcon 1 was independantly developed by Spacex and had issues, but the Falcon 9, independantly designed by spacex and built up from Falcon 1 technology has so far been an enourmous success.

If you want to whitewash Americas early space program, then logically you should do the same for SpaceX. The parallels are not to be ignored.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[dbialac]

Meanwhile SpaceX didn't have to build or maintain a launch facility, probably has zero budget for the safety department and will react with an "Oh, whoops!" when the first one blows up.

Add on the fact that it uses Kerosene for its launches rather than hydrogen which pollutes the upper atmosphere (you know, such as the ozone layer). Kerosene has for years been known to be a cheaper fuel than liquid hydrogen, but NASA won't use it because of the ecological impacts.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[tibit]

Heck, even as a European-born grammar nazi, I didn't catch that. Thanks for pointing it out. Seriously.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[BJ_Covert_Action]

...with the 787 and outsourced it to pretty much every ZIP code on the planet [zimbio.com] leading to years of delay.

Heh, that reminded me of one of the projects I worked on when I was at Lockheed Martin. We had posters and paraphernalia that we would give to visitors that bragged about how our subcontractor's subcontractor's subcontractors were located in 47 of the 50 United States. When I went on a tour of one of the other facilities, and one of the VPs was proudly bragging about how that was a great achievement, I asked what effect such distribution had on transportation and infrastructure costs to the project. That one question earned me a dirty look and a well-rehearsed line about how transportation costs were trivial compared to the budget of the entire project....I had to bite my lip to keep back a quip about how the entire project was, technically speaking, over budget and behind schedule, so such a distinction seemed trivial....

Needless to say, I didn't fit in so well at that company.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Well, technically both Delta and Atlas were developed to be private enterprise vehicles, but they ended up costing enough per launch that nobody beside the USAF, NASA, and a few other US companies wanted to use them. In other words, the international lifters ended up being cheaper.

Anyways, that aside, I am not sure what point you are trying to make, but it does reaffirm what the parent was arguing. Delta and Atlas were developed by Boeing and Lockheed respectively. They were not, in any way, developed by NASA. Also, NASA does not currently control or oversee the ULA launch programs that currently utilize Delta and Atlas. As such, those two lifters are evidence of the exact point the parent is trying to make. NASA does not design and launch good launch vehicles anymore (Saturn is history). The private companies in the US do. If anything, ULA is evidence of this...

So again, I am not sure what point you are trying to make...

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Geoffrey.landis]

You are again attempting to underplay the the relationship between the Saturn 1 and previous rockets. The early Saturn rockets were basically comglomerations of components from older, less sucessful rocket designs.

And apparently you don't happen to actually know which rockets those were, since they weren't any of the ones you listed.

The original comment was a mention of NASA's "track record of performance," and the question of what that track record was. OK, I think the question has been addressed. If you now want to go on and ask which technologies developed by which entities were used in what boosters, that's interesting I'm sure, but it's getting a little away from the question.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Nutria]

So again, I am not sure what point you are trying to make...

This point:

technically both Delta and Atlas were developed to be private enterprise vehicles, but they ended up costing enough per launch that nobody beside the USAF, NASA, and a few other US companies wanted to use them.

Private industry that's been snuggled up to NASA and the DoD for decades can't do anything cheaply/efficiently anymore.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[thechao]

The upper bound average on costs are, respectively, 157.895 and 161.616. However, the rate of risk of the second option is 4% lower; for a 2.36% increase in upper bound average cost I can reduce my risk 4%? That seems like a good trade to me!

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[Ganthor]

Ummm, Are we reading the same article?

Yes it's been incremental changes but the net result is a significant change.

Perhaps it's just a difference of opinion of what constitutes a major change

In any case it's getting off topic.

Re:Cut costs, sure.

[anOminousCow]

Further, I want them to change strategies less often; changing direction costs money.

Agreed. But NASA gets their direction from Congress and since their projects take so long to complete, they don't have a chance to complete one before getting jerked around and forced to head in a new direction by a new Administration.

My opinion - NASA will never again be able to complete the development of a manned launch system.

Have you seen the rocket?

[mlw4428]

It's nowhere near the complexity of the Shuttle. It's great that they can launch a rocket cheaper than NASA can launch a shuttle...but you're comparing the cost of a garage of a Pinto to that of a Lamborghini.

Re:Have you seen the rocket?

[fredmosby]

It's simpler and cheeper than the shuttle, but it replaces all of it's important roles. That makes it a better solution overall. It's also cheeper than all the other rockets NASA has available.

Re:Have you seen the rocket?

[tomhudson]

It's nowhere near the complexity of the Shuttle. It's great that they can launch a rocket cheaper than NASA can launch a shuttle...but you're comparing the cost of a garage of a Pinto to that of a Lamborghini.

The shuttle was a series of mistakes. First there were the design compromises necessary for accommodating the defense department's wanting to launch bulkier payloads at high angles to the elliptic, for a large reduction in capacity. Then there was the whole fiasco with costs and turn-around times for each launch because it has to practically be re-built each time. So much for 25 to 60 flight a year.

Evem early in the game, the solid booster system was known to result in a cost increase of 60% per pound into orbit.

Re:Have you seen the rocket?

[sznupi]

SpaceX seems to be building "Lamborghinis", too...just of a much more useful kind.

(and generally, you really think complexicity of something is a good thing?)

Re:Have you seen the rocket?

[sznupi]

Was recovering satellites (hence also building a vehicle that can do that by wasting most of its mass that's put to LEO on airframe) ever shown to be economically justified? Why no commercial launch companies and satellite operators seem to interested in it now?

Plus, we already have launchers that can put the same amount as Shuttle into LEO. And they are cheaper, they rule the commercial launch market. SpaceX is likely to push the market into even lower prices.

Re:Have you seen the rocket?

[Nyeerrmm]

I think a more appropriate comparison is of a Model-T to contemporary Olds or Daimler. Less flashy, but more affordable.

I've never understood why people say that the shuttle is one of the most complex machines in the world like its a good thing.

Re:Have you seen the rocket?

[anOminousCow]

It's great that they can launch a rocket cheaper than NASA can launch a shuttle.

Well nearly any rocket can be launched cheaper than NASA can launch a shuttle, that's not a big deal.

BTW, which one would be the Pinto? The one that burned up on occasion?

Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Moskit]

As simple as that.

While I agree that often cost of private enterprise is much lower than a government one, one needs to compare apples to apples to be fair.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[ae1294]

Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo. As simple as that.

It's not if people are willing to sign a wavier and climb on-board the "cargo" version....

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Waffle Iron]

And the operational history of the Shuttle program shows that "manrated" = meaningless.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Ethanol]

Actually, the Falcon 9, unlike most reusable boosters, was designed in advance to carry humans. It meets all of NASA's requirements for a human-rated vehicle except for an escape system. SpaceX has stated their intention to dot that final i within a couple of years. The Dragon spacecraft they're designing for the Falcon 9 will support a crew of 7.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Ethanol]

Whoops, I meant "nonreusable", sorry. (Though I believe they're also planning to make the Falcon recoverable and reusable eventually.)

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Anonymous Coward]

Falcon isn't manrated yet, but the dragon capsule is intended to carry people, so I assume it will be eventually. And if it's "eventually" we're talking about, ares isn't manrated yet either. And at the current rate (even if the budget wasn't axed) Falcon will be ready sooner and for less money.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[RobVB]

I'm guessing cargo spaceships don't have life support systems.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[ae1294]

I'm guessing cargo spaceships don't have life support systems.

That's ok, I'll bring my own...

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Lifyre]

Shaken Rocket Syndrome?

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[wjsteele]

"Besides, Ares isn't even near being tested..."

Umm, apparently you missed it, but the Ares I-X launched last October!!!

Bill

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[FleaPlus]

Actually, the Falcon 9, unlike most reusable boosters, was designed in advance to carry humans. It meets all of NASA's requirements for a human-rated vehicle except for an escape system. SpaceX has stated their intention to dot that final i within a couple of years. The Dragon spacecraft they're designing for the Falcon 9 will support a crew of 7.

A few additional points:

* As you allude to, Falcon 9 is designed and built to NASA's human-rating standards. With Ares I on the other hand, NASA had to lower the human-rating standards when it turned out Ares was unable to adequately meet them.

* Falcon 9 is an all-liquid rocket, meaning it isn't prone to catastrophic solid propellant explosions like the Ares I is. The Ares I design uses a gigantic solid rocket as its first stage, and a USAF analysis showed that an explosion of that stage would create a giant cloud of solid propellant debris which would melt parachutes on the escaping capsule, with 100% chance of killing the crew.

* The sort of PRA analysis used to show that Ares I was the "safest rocket ever" with a supposedly "1 in 3145" chance of losing crew tend to have a fairly loose correlation with how safe a rocket actually ends up being, as the types of failures accounted for in a PRA (probabilistic risk assessment) end up being only a fairly small fraction of all launch failures. Most launch failures are caused by unexpected failure modes in a design, which are completely unaccounted for in a PRA.

* The best way to determine rocket reliability is through its track record. By the time humans are first launched on the Falcon 9, it will have had at least a dozen or so unmanned flights to prove itself. The Ares I, on the other hand, plans on carrying crew on its -second- flight ever.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Moskit]

It looks a bit as if "manrated" in government version means that a lot of money has to be spent testing and certifying and following specific procedures as a CYA. This inflates costs, I guess...

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Moskit]

Track record is a tricky beast: Saturn V carried people on its third launch (Apollo 8), right after previous flight (Apollo 6) failure ;-)

Thanks for your comments - I was not aware that Falcon is actually man-rated, I thought it was just supposed to get man-rated in a later incarnation.

Does the man-rating apply also to launch pad?
I am wondering if change from cargo to human-rated Falcon would require also changes in pad construction/approval procedures. Regardless of people who will sign off anything to get in space ;-)

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[tibit]

Not eventually. That was their plan from day one. The recovery system failed on Falcon 9 flight 1, but it was there. They'll try to recover flight 2, and so on.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Idiomatick]

What? being the rocket with the best safety record of any launch vehicle (with over 50 launches) is now bad??? NASA fucked up a lot of things w/ the shuttle but safety was pretty damn good. It just was stupidly expensive and had shitty launch capability.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[ColdWetDog]

Umm, apparently you missed it, but the Ares I-X launched last October!!!

True enough, but Ares I-X is only a approximation of an Ares system:

Ares I-X was the first stage prototype and design concept demonstrator in the Ares I program, a launch system for human spaceflight currently under development by the United States space agency NASA. Ares I-X was successfully launched on October 28, 2009. The project cost was $445 million.[1] The Ares I-X vehicle used in the test flight was similar in shape, weight, and size to the planned configuration of later Ares I vehicles, but had largely dissimilar internal hardware consisting of only one powered stage. Ares I vehicles are intended to launch Orion crew exploration vehicles. Along with the Ares V launch system and the Altair lunar lander, Ares I and Orion are part of NASA's Constellation Program, which is developing spacecraft for U.S. human spaceflight after the Space Shuttle fleet is expected to retire from service in 2010.

(my emphasis)

So they take a shuttle booster, dress it up and fire it off. Color me underwhelmed.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[0123456]

NASA fucked up a lot of things w/ the shuttle but safety was pretty damn good.

In which universe does killing the entire crew one time in fifty count as 'pretty damn good' safety?

If the Falcon merely has to kill the crew one time in fifty to be 'man-rated' then it's pretty much trivial.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo

Better comparison: Ares = nonexistent, Falcon = flying.

Not much point in comparing Ares to Falcon till there is an Ares out there to compare. Because the Falcon isn't going into stasis - there's the Heavy Lift version in the pipe, the planned man-rated version (Dragon is intended to have both a cargo and a manned version), etc.

Just where Falcon's development plan is going to be when (if) the first Area flies isn't terribly clear just yet.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[bruce_the_loon]

Solid rockets are way less likely to explode than liquids. Their propellant burns from the inside outwards and only on the surface of the propellant core. The entire bulk of the propellant isn't burning at the same time. They are also much less likely to fail to produce 100% thrust since they don't have turbo-pumps, nozzle cooling ducts and mixer-ignition chambers like liquid rockets.

A liquid rocket can have a failure in any number of pipes, ducts, tanks and pumps leading to a catastrophic failure of the vehicle. And having multiple engines increases the number of points-of-failure. The Soviets learned that lesson the very hard way with the N1.

And lastly the reason for my reply. The USAF report is based on an abort of launch by detonation of the rocket by the range control officer, not on a catastrophic explosion of the launch vehicle. It is a damning report. Solids aren't the best, you cannot switch them off and because of that, if you have more than one, you're screwed if one doesn't fire. But they hardly ever fail. 264 ignitions, 264 full firings. 1 failure that wouldn't have caused a problem in a properly designed vertically stacked vehicle.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[WindBourne]

The USSR was in a race so they built a system with 30 engines and it was in the early days of rocketry. At that same time, Saturn prototypes had 8 engines and did just fine. It was then moved back to 5 engine. While all systems have had engine-outs, there have been few catastrophic ones such as the Challenger.

The advantage of liquid is that when an error occurs, you can detect it right away and shut down a number of systems. Basically, liquid does NOT have to blow. OTH, with solid, if something goes wrong (bad QA, etc), then it WILL blow. OTH, SpaceX has a rocket with 9 engines. They will later on sling together 3 rockets to create a new launch vehicle. As has been proven with the move from serial supercomputers to parallel supercomputers, it works once you have the tech figured out. Basically, to compare falcon 9H to the USSR's 30 engine 4 attempts is a joke.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[rijrunner]

They would have to actually build and test the Ares to get it the "manrated" certification, which is at least a decade away.

    One of these is flying, the other is not. You have to compare apples to apples to be fair.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[dbIII]

Yes but they blew up a lot of engines on the ground in Saturn V development - sometimes deliberately. I'm not sure whether more modern developments had the luxury to spend so much on testing and we still don't really know enough about fluid flow to do it all on computer.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[strack]

Ares = does not exist yet, Falcon = orbiting the earth right now

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[strack]

yes. while it was stupidly expensive and had shitty launch capability, at least it was somewhat dangerous, and had no real crew escape system for launch.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[strack]

thats why the first stage of the falcon 9 has 9 liquid engines, so that if one fails at any point, theres still enough thrust to complete the mission. and i might remind you that the space shuttle main engines have never failed on any mission.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[DerekLyons]

The best way to determine rocket reliability is through its track record. By the time humans are first launched on the Falcon 9, it will have had at least a dozen or so unmanned flights to prove itself. The Ares I, on the other hand, plans on carrying crew on its -second- flight ever.

And in reality, the difference in track record between one flight and a dozen flights is to some extent meaningless - because every flight of an expendable is a first flight. Also, your statistical error is proportional to your sample, in this case, 1/12 or 8%. So after a dozen test flights, your confidence is only 92% - hideously unsafe even by the abysmally low standards of safety in manned spaceflight. (I once calculated that if commercial jets failed at the same 2% rate as commercial space launchers - there would be over fifty crashes a day just at Sea-Tac alone.)
 
For comparison, Boeing is currently testing a new airliner - and the fifth aircraft in the test program just flew this week. The six and seventh, which complete the test fleet, will fly by the end of July. In just the two weeks of testing (in Dec 2009), with just one aircraft, they racked up more powered flight hours than the Falcon 9 will have by the time it first flies manned. By the time it enters revenue service (carrying paying passengers) it will have undergone a year of intense flight testing with thousands and thousands of hours in the air.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[sunspot42]

And in reality, the difference in track record between one flight and a dozen flights is to some extent meaningless - because every flight of an expendable is a first flight.

No, this isn't accurate. While each vehicle is different - there's always the potential for vehicle-specific manufacturing defects or incidents on launch (a lightning or bird strike, for example) - after a certain number of successful flights you can be pretty certain there aren't any obvious inherent design flaws with the vehicle that'll lead to serious safety issues.

Of course, there could still be some non-obvious stuff that'll bite you in the ass 20 or 40 missions out, but the less complex the vehicle the less likely it is you'll have those kind of issues.

I might add that our "reusable" Shuttle seems especially prone to the very kind of vehicle-specific manufacturing defects and launch incidents that can also wreck expendable boosters. And unfortunately, there was no cost-effective way to alter its . . . unusual . . . design to mitigate its propensity to suffer from those kind of issues. Which is a pity, as the taxpayers sunk a ridiculous fortune into its development and deployment.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[Necron69]

Oh please. How about this one?

Ares = paper rocket that doesn't actually exist, planned to cost BILLIONS

Falcon 9 = Saw it fly!! Cost is $50 million/launch. You can book a contract today if you like.

The next Falcon 9 flight in August will have a fully functional Dragon capsule on it. The only thing missing for the mythical "man-rating" is the launch abort system. SpaceX estimates 2-3 years to fully develop that and install it in Dragon. SpaceX is unlikely to break even one billion in investment to get to this point.

Necron69

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[DerekLyons]

And in reality, the difference in track record between one flight and a dozen flights is to some extent meaningless - because every flight of an expendable is a first flight.

No, this isn't accurate.

Oh? Cite me a case where an expendable flew for a second time.
 

While each vehicle is different - there's always the potential for vehicle-specific manufacturing defects or incidents on launch (a lightning or bird strike, for example) - after a certain number of successful flights you can be pretty certain there aren't any obvious inherent design flaws with the vehicle that'll lead to serious safety issues.

The Shuttle flew for years, much more than the 'dozen or so' flights you cite for Falcon/Dragon to be ready to carry men, with at least two inherent design flaws that could have killed at any time. So, you're questionable on that count too, at least in the 'certain number of flights'.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[tizzo]

Quite right. In the end Falcon 9 may very well be a more cost effective rocket than anything else NASA can launch. But we can't know this from an analysis comparing it with a man-rated system. Why not compare it with the Atlas or Delta variants that are closest in capabilities? To my mind, the SpaceX story is perfectly illustrative of the proper roles of government and private sector in space. SpaceX exists because there is sufficient profit motive in getting cargo into space to make their business model viable. This wasn't always the case, and NASA's work, together with their contractors, over the decades is directly responsible for the fact that now it is. SpaceX is the next step in the transition of space launching from a scientific endeavor to a commercial one. If they do end up proving more cost effective than COMPARABLE services from Boeing and Lockheed, then these current operators will either be squeezed out of the industry, or will adapt in order to compete. That's capitalism. Human space flight, on the other hand, is still a completely different animal. It is still an exploratory, purely scientific, and high-risk high-cost activity. No reasonable business person would expect to be able to turn a profit developing a man-rated system, because there is no commercial demand for putting humans into space. You have a market with exactly one customer, and in which the barrier to entry is so high that if you put forth the investment and don't win the business, your company simply ceases to exist. It really is the height of irony that the current administration, which sees a government role in such inherently private endeavors as health care, automobile manufacturing, and banking, appears to believe that the one and only human endeavor where the government should not take the lead role is in human space exploration. I don't know that there is a better illustration of someone who just doesn't "get it".

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[anOminousCow]

So they take a shuttle booster, dress it up and fire it off. Color me underwhelmed.

Quite true. The solid booster even only had four fueled segments instead of the five that would be on the Ares-I. (The top segment was a 'boilerplate') As far as I can tell, the only things it 'checked out' were the thrust vectoring system and something for controlling oscillations in the booster.

With the $445 million NASA spent just to launch a vehicle with hardly any new active components, SpaceX would have been able to develop and fly a whole new rocket. Heck NASA couldn't even build a launchpad on the money SpaceX used to develop the Falcon 9.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[anOminousCow]

Bottom Line: Which launch vehicle would I take if I had to make a choice: The one with a track record of a dozen successful launches, (or maybe even one or two failures in them, but for which the cause has been determined and corrected.) Or the one with just one successful launch?

My choice - the one with the track record. The one with just one sucessful launch may have been very lucky on the first launch. The one with the track record, I know what I'm getting into.

The reason we test software code is because you find more errors in software ( design errors) running the code for two hours than you will in a months worth of code reviews.

Re:Ares = manrated, Falcon = cargo.

[DerekLyons]

My choice - the one with the track record. The one with just one sucessful launch may have been very lucky on the first launch. The one with the track record, I know what I'm getting into.

The one with the 'track record' you think you know what you're getting into - but they may have just been lucky too. Consider the O-rings on the Shuttle, which could have failed on any flight and nearly did on several flights prior to Challenger's loss. But by your logic you'd have happily climbed on board. The same goes for the foam - over a hundred flights, on any one of which it could have caused a disaster, yet you'd happily have climbed aboard Columbia too... because she had a 'track record'.

If it's only about the cost, give the money

[melted]

If it's only about the cost, give the money to Russians. If you pay a little more, they'll even let you have the blueprints for stuff. They've been launching stuff into space on the cheap for decades now.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[Narishma]

The problem with relying on the Russians is that they keep increasing prices every few years.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[melted]

Well, so does my dentist and my the grocery store, and everybody else. But even if they do, a decade from now it's still going to be cheaper than building stuff here in the US. Their engineers are more than happy to get $1K a month for their work. Over here, it's forty bucks an hour, all things considered. Materials are cheaper there too (seeing that they don't import anything).

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[QuantumG]

There's a limit on how much the Russians can launch, so there's fundamental benefit to having more providers in the market.

For the US Government, there's a strong need to keep that capability in the US too.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[Narishma]

When your dentist or grocery store increase their prices it's by a few dollars, not dozens of millions.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[melted]

My grocery bill doubled in the last 10 years. My dentist now charges about 35 percent more than she did in 2001.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[melted]

They can launch every month if need be. Their designs are perfected already, the only holdup is the lack of budget (Russia spends very little on space).

>>For the US Government, there's a strong need to keep that capability in the US too.

Why? The only real need is to keep the ballistic missile capabilities up to date. I'd rather NASA focused on things Russians can't do - advanced satellites, autonomous robotics, materials research, next generation engines, stuff like that.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[sznupi]

"Can't"? A bit too strong wording.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[sznupi]

...and in the meantime Mir 3 is planned to be outright a space dry dock; not that much of a problem, it seems, even with their launching sites & orbits.

Re:If it's only about the cost, give the money

[sznupi]

Accidentally, the SpaceX launcher even looks (the flame) and sounds quite a bit..."Russian" ;)

(must be the fuel)

Misread the title

[Rockoon]

Read it as "SpaceX Falcon 9 Relatively Cheap Compared To NASA's New iPad"

Re:About to get more expensive!

[ae1294]

The Falcon-9 is about to get 50% more expensive.
Musk has just proposed to NASA that Space-X will fly only two demonstration flights of Falcon-9, instead of three... but he still wants to be paid for all three.

I read TFA you linked and you make it sound all evil. If they can prove everything in two flights (three if you count the first launch) then good for them, they should get paid for not fucking up. I guess you'd rather just waste everyones time having an extra flight instead of moving forward and getting shit done. I'd rather move forward and start suppling the station instead of flying by it a few times and waving...

Re:About to get more expensive!

[Loadmaster]

Well, the deal was for certain things to be accomplished and not just to launch another rocket. If they can achieve the next to goals of the COTS missions why shouldn't they get paid?

Re:About to get more expensive!

[RobVB]

That's a rather single-sided interpretation of that article (though I'm not saying it's wrong).

“The goal of the program was the demonstration of cargo transport to and from the station. The goal was not three flights,” Musk told Space News in a June 10 interview. “That is a means to an end. But if there is a better means to that end, it makes more sense to go with the better means to that end.”

[...]

Musk says if the modified second flight is unsuccessful, the third demo flight could serve as a backup. But if his plan works, the combined demo would clear the way for SpaceX to begin delivering cargo to the orbiting outpost under a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract it signed with NASA in December 2008.

They're keeping the third one as a backup (so they're not cancelling the plans yet), and if they can do what they have to do with two flights instead of three, why not? Among other things, it means they'll be ready for "real" launches a lot sooner.

Cancel Greater than Develop

[Yergle143]

I read that the Falcon cost about 700 million to develop, the government was having to put out one billion just to cancel the Constellation program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/science/space/11nasa.html?hpw

Musk may be the Henry Ford of space travel.

[maillemaker]

What Elon Musk is doing is similar to the assembly line process Henry Ford brought to the automotive industry.

Instead of each item being lovingly hand-crafted by thousands of pork-fueled constituents, SpaceX is making a rocket factory. It's fantastic.

Re:Cut costs....

[Lohrno]

I was thinking the exact same thing.

I'll go

[tivoKlr]

I'm game, send me first and I'll let you know one way or another if it's safe. I'm sure it'll be fun regardless...It's probably safer than driving.

Re:I'll go

[Pseudonym]

If safety is what's important, consider this: When's the last time that there has been a fatality involving a Soyuz/R7?

Moon-Mars was never more than a pipe dream...

[elwinc]

Bush announced Moon-Mars and provided about a billion dollars of funding to "study" Moon Mars. No one ever said where the remaining hundreds of billions of dollars would come from. Moon Mars never had a chance because no one could fund it. However, NASA took billions from unmanned space science to continue to "study" Moon Mars. It's too bad, but since we're not going to pay for a Moon Mars mission, space science is better off spending those billions on robotic probes than on never-to-be-implemented "studies."

Re:Moon-Mars was never more than a pipe dream...

[DesScorp]

Moon Mars never had a chance because no one could fund it.

Moon Mars never had a chance because we came to our senses and realized that getting a manned trip to Mars is impossible right now, and that simply returning to the Moon without doing anything new was a waste of time and money.

Re:Moon-Mars was never more than a pipe dream...

[dbIII]

How else can you expect to keep those "think tanks" that are a parking lot for future politicians fed? You can bet that most of the people in the "study" were recent graduates in anything other than science or engineering. Like many other political announcements it was just a confidence trick on the voters.

Re:About to get more expensive!

[Geoffrey.landis]

That's a rather single-sided interpretation of that article (though I'm not saying it's wrong).

I'll accept "not wrong."

The contract was for three flights. He's now proposing to do two flights, and says "but of course we will be paid the full contract."

That's fifty percent more expensive.

If he had said "we can demonstrate what we need to demonstrate in two flights, and we propose saving the government money by flying one less flight"---I would have been cheering. But when he says "we will take the money but won't do the flights that we signed a contract to do"-- that's not unacceptable. He's saying "We'll do less than we contracted, which will save us money, and we pocket the difference."

I have to bow to his awesome ability to spin the facts. He's saying "how about we won't do what we signed the contract to do, but still get the money..." and three different people post to say "sure, that sounds reasonable."

Re:Not a valid comparison

[wjsteele]

You're slightly mistaken. There are two rockets in the Ares program, the Ares I man rated version, which is designed to get astronauts into orbit and the Ares V heavy lift vehicle, which is designed to carry the rest of the equipment that the voyage will need.

The Falcon 9 would be the equivalent of the Ares I rocket. There is no equivalent of the Ares V, except the defunct Saturn V and the Russian N-1. Only the upper (escape and cruise) stages of the Ares V are actually manrated.

Bill

Actually - it has already been done, sort of

[sznupi]

We already had a mass produced, succesfull, and very cheap launcher. Suborbital, sure - but while orbit requires from rocket an order or magnitude more work, the logistics & manufacturing aren't that dissimilar...

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html

Sadly, the lesson was forgotten. Until now?

Re:Actually - it has already been done, sort of

[damburger]

The lesson that you should use slave labour to build small, simple, suborbital rockets?

Re:Actually - it has already been done, sort of

[sznupi]

Slave labour forgotten? When?

(srsly, those doubts are adressed in the article and were mentioned in my post...)

Re:Actually - it has already been done, sort of

[khallow]

The lesson that you should use slave labour to build small, simple, suborbital rockets?

Why do you think slave labor makes it cheaper? As I see it, the Nazis used slave labor because they were stretched really thin on labor and they had built up a scapegoat class. That's similar to the reason they used expensive synthetic oil (derived from coal) instead of the real thing.

Re:Actually - it has already been done, sort of

[Mike610544]

Interesting paper (although the author openly admits to some hand waving.) Is there a major flaw in the premise that orbital launches can be done that cheaply? I would guess the comparison of the rocket engines to a DOHC turbo V8 might be questionable, but engine design is a one time cost. Seriously, what the hell is so hard about launching rockets?

Maybe this article is evidence that the answer is nothing.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[sznupi]

As has already been pointed out, Ares I and Falcon 9 are very similar in capabilities.

But furthermore - if Falcon 9 (or some other launcher for that matter) can launch a comparable mass to LEO, in several launches (we're good at rendezvous by now...), as one launch of the heavy Ares V (that's the rocket you're thinking of), and if it can do it still much cheaper (despite needing several launches) - then why wish for Ares V? A rocket which would be launched very rarely, hence driving the costs even more up btw.

In contrast, a launcher in the league of Falcon 9 is quite universal.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[sznupi]

... except the defunct Saturn V and the Russian N-1

Also Energia (and too bad its heaviest variant, Energia Vulcan, never had a chance; that would be some sight). Not so old, and part of it still flies (Zenit). Though even if it would be possible to ressurect it, there's no funds to do it and no reason to direct them (Ares V has the same problem - what's wrong with rendezvous in orbit using few cheap launches?). Plus politics: Russia wouldn't want to depend on Ukraine, so they're building new heavy launcher - Angara; heaviest variants of which aren't quite in the league of Saturn V, N-1 or Energia, but are halfway there. Might be useful for Mir 3, I guess.

Friction Stir Welding

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

The transcript in the third link mis-quotes Musk as saying "The tanks are friction steel welding". He actually said "friction stir welding". The articles fail to mention that this technology is used in aerospace " including welding the seams of the aluminum main Space Shuttle external tank, Orion Crew Vehicle test article, Boeing Delta II and Delta IV Expendable Launch Vehicles." Very Light Jet (VLJ) maker Eclipse Aviation uses the technology to produce a passenger-certified fuselage with far fewer labor-intensive rivets.

Re:Friction Stir Welding

[cheesybagel]

Yeah. Except SpaceX uses it in the entire vehicle. They also manufacture the stages out of Al-Li and have a composite material interstage. The stages use a design which is lighter than the isogrid design used in Atlas V (which is a pretty modern design). In fact SpaceX manufactured some of the lightest rocket stages in history. This allows them have a two stage LOX/Kerosene vehicle with a decent payload, where the Russians usually employ three stage LOX/Kerosene vehicles even when they have higher efficiency engines.

Re:Friction Stir Welding

[strack]

actully im pretty sure spacex has more efficient hydrocarbon engines.

Re:Friction Stir Welding

[cheesybagel]

RD-171 (Zenit), RD-180 (Atlas V), RD-191 (Angara) are staged combustion engines with higher performance than a gas generator design such as SpaceX's. The issue with a staged combustion engine is that it is much more complicated to design and expensive to manufacture than a gas generator design.

Re:Friction Stir Welding

[anOminousCow]

Spacex's engines are more efficient than other American hydrocarbon engines, but the Russians are still better than SpaceX. That's to say the Russians have better technology for this type of engine than any Americans. But, Americans have concentrated on building efficient LH/LOX and Solid motors as opposed to RP-1/LOX.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[tibit]

But there is an equivalent of Ares V: Falcon 9 heavy.

A woman/man can do it

[Yergle143]

If there is one thing the humaned space program has shown, it's that we're really good at putting stuff together and fixing stuff (cf. Hubble and that hulking massive space station). But the sole brass ring seemingly out of reach -- correct me if I'm wrong -- is refueling. If we can do that multiple launches lock and load just about any vessel.

Re:A woman/man can do it

[sznupi]

We do refueling in orbit quite often. ISS is refueled every few months; and the version of docking ports used by Progress even has provisions for fuel transfer IIRC.

Re:Cut costs....

[Idiomatick]

Because those two things are perfectly logically connected and that isn't at all a poor argument.

One big step for Corporations

[Goboxer]

At this rate the corporations are going to be setting up moon hotels while NASA is still trying to get off the planet.

Have we forgotten about Pegasus?

[kriston]

Have we forgotten about Pegasus from Orbital?

http://www.orbital.com/SpaceLaunch/

It's important to note the existing, efficient commercial solutions out there. The government-supplied rockets can be replaced with commercial versions.

Re:Have we forgotten about Pegasus?

[cheesybagel]

Pegasus is awfully expensive per kg of payload. Most people who need to launch in that payload category, and do not have issues with where their payload is launched from, use one of the small Russian launchers made from second hand ICBMs. Taurus II promises to be much cheaper per kg of payload. We will see. Orbital has a nice track record, they actually deliver, but cheap that they are not.

This is not news

[surveyork]

I think it was widely known that Falcon 9 is cheaper than NASA's designs, specially Ares. The engines are much cheaper, for starters. Perhaps it was just known. Not widely.

Re:This is not news

[tsotha]

The Ares and the Falcon were designed with different goals in mind. The Falcon was designed to safely lift a (potentially living) cargo out of the atmosphere at minimum cost.

The Ares was designed to employ all the people that currently work on the shuttle program, so it never had any hope of being inexpensive. It was designed to be expensive.

Re:This is not news

[WindBourne]

Actually, the Falcon was designed from the git-go for humans. Ares I would have required more reg deferments while the Falcon had none WRT the shuttle, Saturn, and even Ares I. To be fair, NASA is designing a whole new set of regs, but what is interesting is that all of the NASA vehicles will fail miserably on.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[0123456]

There are two rockets in the Ares program, the Ares I man rated version, which is designed to get astronauts into orbit and the Ares V heavy lift vehicle, which is designed to carry the rest of the equipment that the voyage will need.

The funny part is that astronauts are easier to replace than the 'rest of the equipment' required to get to the Moon; so in any rational world the 'Ares V' should have been designed to be _safer_ than the 'Ares I'. If you lose an 'Ares I' but the translunar stage gets into orbit then you can have another crew up there in a few days... lose the translunar stage and you'll be waiting months to replace it.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[wjsteele]

Check the specs... the Falcon 9 Heavy can only loft 71,000lbs to LEO, the Ares V can loft 350,000lbs, the Saturn V can loft 262,000lbs. So, it's not even close to the same class.

Bill

Re:Cut costs....

[Lohrno]

They sort of are...at least the words in the news these days "BP...oil spill...overzealous cost cutting, etc." I wouldn't really make the argument that NASA should be the only people doing this sort of thing though. It has to be realized though that with more spaceflight will come more accidents. It's inevitable. The question is - Is it worth it? I would say yes.

Ideological nonsense

[damburger]

A completely bullshit comparison used to push some idiotic market-fundamentalist position. What these comparisons never take into account is the different standards of accountability faced by government and big corporations. The government has to be far more transparent, and can rarely externalise. The corporations lies its arse off and passes costs onto others (normally the general public). In this instance, the development of Falcon 9 was so cheap because they simply used existing techniques and systems developed with public money.

Re:Ideological nonsense

[Nyeerrmm]

Then why isn't NASA simply using existing techniques and systems? Ares is unnecessarily complicated and poorly designed because Congress got involved in the design -- no one would want to continue to use solid boosters on a manned system if it didn't keep jobs in Utah. It isn't market-fundamentalist, its just simply logical.

Re:Ideological nonsense

[strack]

yeah, developed with public money. back in the *60s*. kerosene/LOX fuelled single pintle turbopump engines. really? i mean, damn dude, isnt that the whole point of government funded basic research and technology development? to better society as a whole? theres no caveat on that that excludes corporations. and even if there was, id say 50 years is enough bloody time to let something fall into the public domain. and its not like nasa has been using it to make getting to orbit any cheaper in the near half a goddamn century since. perhaps you could point to some costs that spacex has 'externalised' considering they make 95% of their flight hardware *in house*. or maybe what lies spacex has issued. otherwise your just ignorant, ill informed, and spouting some generic propaganda that doesnt really fit this particular company.

Re:Ideological nonsense

[damburger]

I've no problem with using government developed technology, but then when the people who've obtained this technology *for free* turn around and say 'hah! our R&D costs are lower! government sucks! corporations ftw!' its kind of irritating and retarded.

Re:Ideological nonsense

[damburger]

What you've highlighted is a specific problem with the current way NASA is run. The problem comes when some douchebag tries to extrapolate from this to some idiotic randroid political jibe.

Re:Ideological nonsense

[Nyeerrmm]

As I pointed out before: this isn't comparing SpaceX of the present to NASA of the 1960s, which would be a very unfair comparison for the reasons you're saying. Its comparing SpaceX to the NASA of now -- which can use exactly the same developed technologies. Somehow NASA has ended up doing things that cost 10x as much and are destined to be cancelled due to the realities of a system that is rooted in politics.

Many of us involved with the space program are simply fed up and want to try something, anything, different that might make things work better than the failure of the past 30 years to develop a viable launch vehicle using cost-plus contracts. This isn't gov't vs. corporations. Its behemoths that suckle at the gov't teat and profit off of the taxpayer vs. smaller entrepreneurial ventures. The people who get the most out of the current system are the higher-ups at Boeing, Lockheed and ATK, and the politicians who get the votes from bringing the pork home.

You can have good and bad gov't programs: the unmanned programs and aeronautical research are astounding at NASA. Its just that in manned spaceflight, the JSC/MSFC way of doing things has demonstrated itself as insufficient. For basic launch services, things that don't require new research and insane amounts of risk, we're better off going with a more standard contracting method: the government purchases a service for a fixed-price rather than paying for development and paying for overruns as well. Its not idealogical, its practical.

Re:Ideological nonsense

[damburger]

You make a fair point about JSC/MSFC, but the article and summary however tried to turn this into a kind of libertarian gotcha which it is not. I might seem over sensitive on this issue, but Slashdot is full to the brim of 19-year old libertarians cherry picking examples of government doing badly and business doing well then going 'ZOMG WHO IS JOHN GALT' or some such shit.

Dear NASA,

[LifesABeach]

You know we had some really good memories. Why did it have to end this way?

I guess you really don't understand.

It's not about sitting on my @** and discovering the universe, it's going into the universe to discover it.

Lets just part as friends.

What about the Russians and Soyuz?

[fantomas]

"What Elon Musk is doing is similar to the assembly line process Henry Ford brought to the automotive industry."

What about the Russians and the Soyuz ships? They've built over 1700 launchers so far, from the 60s to present... surely that's got to count as "assembly line process"?

inventors

[Tom]

Not having to reinvent everything from scratch certainly helps the budget. Never forget that when NASA started out, there was no such thing as space travel.

Going into orbit after someone else figured out how to put people on the moon and robots on Mars and Venus is a lot less of a challenge then going into orbit when nobody quite knows how to do it.

It's still a great feat, but don't forget that a lot of the cost savings are also because someone else invested a lot of money into figuring it all out.

Re:inventors

[wiredlogic]

Also take note that much of SpaceX's engineering staff is drawn from existing players in the industry and collectively they have a lot more experience in developing spacecraft than their 8 year history would suggest.

Re:inventors

[fermion]

Also remember that, for the most part, there was not much need to know how to weld a cylinder 33 feet in diamater. Or know how to make quartz glass that could withstand low pressure on the outside. or turbo pumps. Or electronics that would not fry under the radiation. I remember on one project I worked on the challenge was to find a machine shop that could work on the specialized alloy we wanted in the dimension we needed. We can't say it enough. We may think we understand space, but the fact is there will always be a surprise which will make the cost rise. Over the past fifty years the technology has been developed to allow the routine access of LEO. Even so, commercial human flight is going to be an issue.

On another note, we also have to realize what happens when disaster strikes. A government vehicle raining debris over Texas will only result in statutory payments. A commercial vehicle exploding over texas, leaving a stretch of debris, will result in many lawsuits that might make the Deep Water Horizon fiasco look tame. It is not going to be a plane crash, where one house is destroyed. We are talking jet fuel raining over large areas and huge chunks of metal. It would be an environmental disaster. With a government vehicle, these costs are not a factor. With a commercial vehicle, we are talking 20 billion.

Re:inventors

[Tom]

Correct.

The big machine that NASA has become certainly plays a role. However, policies also do. NASA has the guide to never lose a life. It still happens, but they work as if the loss of life is inacceptable. We all know about diminishing returns, so pushing the risk from 1% down to 0.5% is massively expensive, even if you only plan 20 flights, so even at 1% it would statistically never happen.

I'm pretty sure the private companies are a tiny bit less risk-averse. Entrepeneurs are usually risk takers.

Re:inventors

[Tom]

With a commercial vehicle, we are talking 20 billion.

Not really. We're talking chapter 7 of the one company that is legally responsible, structured to be as small as legally allowed, and a couple lawsuits against the holding, etc. to try and recover at least some money from them.

Really, responsibility in the corporate sector is a case of your lawyers being too stupid to set up your company so it doesn't affect you. Or you being too big or too political to think it's worth the effort (BP, I'm looking at you).

Re:inventors

[BJ_Covert_Action]

...drawn from existing players in the industry ...

Players which have the freedom to do good engineering now that they have been liberated from the oppressive heel of congressional funding.

Solid rocket costs

[DragonHawk]

"Evem early in the game, the solid booster system was known to result in a cost increase of 60% per pound into orbit."

Can you provide a reference for that? I've been told by an actual rocket scientist that solid fuel rockets are significantly cheaper than liquid fuel rockets, especially for the boost phase, where thrust-to-weight matters more than propellant efficiency.

I've also seen inflation-adjusted figures for Saturn V vs STS, and the Saturn V was vastly more expensive. Now, they only flew about two dozen Saturn V's, so they never had a chance to develop economies of scale, but it's not like the STS is a huge win in that department either. The Saturn V also had a much greater total lift capacity, so this may be apples-to-oranges in the first place.

Certainly, liquid fuel rockets have a number of advantages, but I haven't seen anything to suggest cost is one of them.

(Note that I'm not saying the STS SRBs were an overall win. Good design theory won't save a badly run program. I just question the idea that's it's *because* they were solid rockets that costs were high.)

Re:Solid rocket costs

[cheesybagel]

Solid rockets have significantly cheaper R&D costs. The per flight costs are not better. Especially when you are comparing versus a reusable liquid fueled stage.

Re:Solid rocket costs

[tomhudson]

I already did! Read the link. The SRBs are more expensive per flight.

A high-pressure liquid fueled series or parallel burn Booster was projected to cost $7 billion to develop and $100 per pound of payload to operate.

A parallel burn Booster utilizing large solid rocket boosters was projected to cost $5.5 billion to develop and $160 per pound of payload to operate.

While the Booster employing large solid rocket boosters would likely be more expensive to operate, NASA opted to take advantage of huge cost savings up front.

Since costs of ultimate operation could be absorbed throughout the life of the Space Shuttle program, the parallel burn Booster using large solid rocket boosters was selected.

The SRBs were actually worse than projected in the above quote. They could not be re-used "100 to 500x each", they wiped out all the dev. savings with the Challenger explosion and then some ... and the SRBs were not up to military spec (single-piece body).

They never got anywhere near $160/lb. - not at over $10,000/kg.

Re:Solid rocket costs

[dbIII]

A solid fuel rocket is like a firecracker - once you light it there is nothing you can do to control it in any way. Other systems have to be changed to compensate for that.
In outward appearance the shuttle looks somewhat insane from an engineering perspective due to the compromises required on the original design. Strapping to the side of a rocket instead of on top of it created a large number of challenges that took years to overcome and reduced the performance. It's like bolting a Volkswagen to the roof of a formula 1 car and trying to get the whole thing to be stable at high speed.

Saturn V record

[DragonHawk]

"... hoping for a repeat of the Saturn-V's 12/12 record ..."

It's worth pointing out that 12 mission launches is not much data to draw on. And at least one Saturn V component blew up in a test flight, so it was not perfect, either.

I'm not saying the Saturn V wasn't an achievement, or that it wasn't a good design, just that we should beware of romantic illusions.

Re:Saturn V record

[Idiomatick]

Just saying that they aren't shying from good ideas. And Saturn V was a good record (and comparison to the Falcon) because it was a new thing. The falcon being built by a new company with a new design, the Saturn V being a first for all kinds of shit. So from that view the Saturn was wildly successful. The shuttle from a safety POV was a new weird design and wildly successful at that but it failed everywhere else which is why I avoided the comparison.

Large organizations are the problem

[DragonHawk]

"No one tries 'efficient' because no one is motivated and it would actually interefere with their personal fiefdom building."

In fairness, that happens all the time in private companies, too. It's just less public because they're, ya know, private.

I'm not saying this to defend government so much as to also criticize private companies. They both suck.

If there's any conclusion I can reach, it's that large organizations of any type are the problem. When you scale up, you inevitably get longer lines of communications, a higher tolerance for mediocrity (you need more people than the cream of the crop can provide), the need for more formal procedures (to compensate for the first two), deeper pocket to fund fief building, and more places to hide it all.

I think Space-X wins because they're small, nimble, and fresh. And more power to them for it.

Military likes stuff that lasts

[DragonHawk]

"Next to military gear, space gear is the perfect line of business. Much of it will either be blown up or sent to unrecoverable locations. This means that the customer will always be coming back for more."

For that matter, the military generally wants the stuff that isn't supposed to blow up to last forever.

Of course, lots of that is achieved through sustained maintenance, which is also good for business. But I have to deal with the "disposable" mentality in the commercial sector, and I'm not sure the military doesn't have the right idea there.

Easy to be cheap when you don't have a history.

[trout007]

The reason things move slow and are expensive at NASA is because there are a lot of reviews. It isn't a government vs commercial thing at all. There are very few actual NASA employees. Most are contractors. NASA employees are there to write the contracts and provide a unbroken link of institutional knowledge. For example 3 employees of Scaled Composites died during a test where an engine exploded. If that test was going to be done at a NASA facility someone in NASA safety would have calculated the potential energy in the rocket test and established a radius where spectators had to be behind. Why? Because many years ago someone was either hurt, killed or had a close call. That institutional knowledge is passed on and maintained which causes development to go slow because there is someone that did something similar that has a warning for you. Some call that the bureaucracy that slows down innovation. SpaceX right now I'm sure has very little of this. So far their luck has held and I hope it continues. But someday they will have a close call or an accident. Then they will have to slow down and grow their own bureaucracy. Or most likely come ask the greybeards at NASA what went wrong and someone will have a story about the same thing happening in 1964.

It is very similar to the BP disaster. I'm sure all of the oil companies operate this way BP's luck just ran out. So they will most likely go bankrupt eventually paying for this because they will have so many eyes on them that they won't be competitive. Then their competitors with a little more luck and maybe a bit smarted will continue until the next accident.

Re:Easy to be cheap when you don't have a history.

[strack]

it is a government vs commercial sort of thing, actully. the reason most are contractors is so they can spread the pork around the country and ensure support. and then theres the conflicting factors in vehicle design if the military gets involved, and some senator who dosent want to see the contractor in their district shut down, and so forth, and you then end up with expensive abominations like the shuttle.

Re:Easy to be cheap when you don't have a history.

[evilviper]

institutional knowledge is passed on [...] Some call that the bureaucracy

Except that's not bureaucracy at all.

The bureaucracy comes in when X is applied to Y, where it really doesn't belong.

eg. People get hurt when testing rocket engines. New safety regulations say valet parking personnel now requires bullet-proof barricades.

Re:Easy to be cheap when you don't have a history.

[evilviper]

It is very similar to the BP disaster. I'm sure all of the oil companies operate this way BP's luck just ran out.

Actually, it's extremely clear to anyone who knows anything about the industry, that BP is the bottom of the barrel. Sure, other oil companies cut corners, but BP is by far the worst offender.

This can be seen by the lay-person quite easily, just by noting that whenever there has been a major accident in the recent past, BP has been to blame. Deepwater being just one. Take the Alaska oil pipeline leak of just a couple years ago, or BP's refinery explosion in 2005. All three caused by gross negligence on BP's part. By all means, try to name any other major oil company with a recent track record worse than BP's. The only difference this time, is that they hit the disaster jackpot, and the consequences are vastly more catastrophic than BP's more routine failures, which simply result in small fines. It is most appropriate that this disaster has exceeded the Exxon Valdez spill, eliminating any and all debate over the title of the most disastrous oil company in western history.

BP's existence (as a major player) is a result of acquiring numerous other small oil services companies at bottom dollar, and cutting operating costs even lower to bring them into competition. This fact/behavior/mindset has been outlined in numerous after-accident reports, particularly the BP US refinery explosion.

I highly recomend the following article:

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2007/dec/22/bz-victims-of-bp-refinery-explosion-force-company-/

If only in they had predicted an imminent disaster that would overshadow all others in 2007 when that article was written...

Yes, but...

[zaivala]

The only problem with this is that SpaceX has yet to have a fully successful launch -- so all the money they've spent to date is money down the drain, or chalked up to experience. Their last launch was "successful", even though it fell off trajectory early on and the "payload" never reached its intended destination. This is fiduciary efficiency?

Re:Yes, but...

[bbn]

Is this a message from the past?

You are talking about launch #2 of Falcon 1 (failed). They have since done launch #3 (failed), #4 (success), #5 (success put a commercial satelite in orbit), #6 (success, first launch of Falcon 9).

Re:Yes, but...

[zaivala]

Calling Launch #6 a success is not paying attention to SpaceX's own press release. It was a guarded success, in that it got off the pad, but did not meet all the specifications of the flight.

Re:Yes, but...

[bbn]

In what parallel world are you living in? The press release is titled "SpaceX Achieves Orbital Bullseye With Inaugural Flight of Falcon 9 Rocket".

The launch was a complete success except for failing to recover the first stage for reuse.

The Apollo astronauts were not stupid

[DragonHawk]

"once the moon landing was no longer politically potent, they killed them (at exactly the same time NASA started sending scientist rather then fighter pilots)."

In fairness, the Apollo "fighter pilot" astronauts are/were prolly smarter than you or I. Neil Armstrong obtained an aerospace engineering degree before he became a test pilot. Buzz Aldrin was an MIT PhD. Yah, they were stick jockeys, too, but they were the elite of that field. They weren't jarheads.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[cheesybagel]

The Falcon 9 Heavy is actually the equivalent of an Ares I. The Ares I was over designed because it was supposed to launch a moon trip capable capsule with loads of passengers. A simple Falcon 9 is enough to launch loads of passengers to ISS.

Solid rocket robustness

[DragonHawk]

"Falcon 9 is an all-liquid rocket, meaning it isn't prone to catastrophic solid propellant explosions like the Ares I is."

Right, it's "prone" to catastrophic liquid propellant explosions instead.

Historically, solid rockets are more reliable when it comes to them not exploding. They're much simpler designs, and much more robust. Heck, parts of the SRBs on STS-51-L (the one that killed Challenger) survived the initial explosion and kept flying. They had to detonate the range safety charges to stop them. If it hadn't been for the giant liquid fuel tank next to the SRBs, the O-ring leak wouldn't have been a problem. (Obviously, since there was a giant liquid fuel tank, that's a huge problem, but the point of discussion is the reliability and robustness of solid rockets, not the STS as a whole.)

Solid rockets are cheaper, simpler, more robust, and have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio. But control options are limited. You can't vary thrust from plan, and once lit they will consume their entire fuel supply. No stop-and-restart.

Liquid rockets are more controllable, restartable, and have better propellant efficiency. But they are more costly, more complex, and more fragile. To quote a rocket scientist I was conversing with, "There are plenty of examples of liquid rockets going BOOM and everyone being surprised."

Now, I believe the mechanics of launch to orbit dictate that you pretty much need at least one liquid fuel stage. SpaceX reasons that you're better off using the same technology everywhere, to reduce overall design, manufacturing, and support costs. I suspect they are correct. If you have to build a good liquid rocket engine, you might as well use it everywhere. Using two different technologies means twice as many problems.

Re:Solid rocket robustness

[DerekLyons]

Solid rockets are cheaper, simpler, more robust, and have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio. But control options are limited. You can't vary thrust from plan, and once lit they will consume their entire fuel supply. No stop-and-restart.

Actually, while you can't restart 'em - you can shut them down.
 

Now, I believe the mechanics of launch to orbit dictate that you pretty much need at least one liquid fuel stage.

Actually, you can go all solid if you really want to, or all solid except for a small liquid OMS. You don't need a full stage, just the ability to control your final velocity fairly closely.

Re:Solid rocket robustness

[sznupi]

Contrary to popular belief, Challenger was actually mostly broken up by aerodynamic forces, when an SRB that destroyed one of its attachment points not only started to wreck havoc but also rapidly changed orientation of whole stack. There was really no explosion - what looked like one was basically just burning of fuel, behind the vehicle, dumped from severely structurally damaged ET. A thing to which "tough" (simply required, and the only reason why they survived such aerodynamic forces - but whole rocket stack build from them probably wouldn't survive anyway; in case of Challenger SRB the assymetry of thrust quickly became so great that the corrections involved to a large degree...also liquid fuelled block), high thrust SRB greatly contributed. Plus either way, "capsule" / cabin also survived the disintegration - unfortunatelly it had a really weird design, wasn't meant for operation without 80 or so tons of waste around it.

I syspect you present solid rockets in a bit too good light probably. When talking about really big ones, they end up a bit risky and expensive to manufacture and handle (liquid rocket is in comparison virtualy inert most of the time). Higher thrust to mass ratio at liftoff, to minimise both aerodynamic and gravity drag, is also often achieved using denser liquid fuels like kerosene - that's another way of dealing with problems which liquid hydrogen has (hm, IIRC mostly rockets which do use liquid hydrogen in first stage rely greatly on solid boosters...seems it's perhaps largely about bringing the characteristics to an area of denser liquid fuels?). Plus it's certainly not a coincidence that our orbital rockets rely mostly on liquid propellants (especially in commercial segment, where cost considerations are the quickest to take over) - higher specific impulse is good to have after all, for starters. Very lightweight structure is a good thing for a rocket. Plus liquid rocket engine can be tested before using it... (and btw, failure of the seal as on Challenger is one of the more common modes of failure for solid rockets)

Hybrid rocket engines seem to be interesting BTW; performance close to liquid, safety might end up better than anything we use.

Re:Solid rocket robustness

[DragonHawk]

"Contrary to popular belief, Challenger was actually mostly broken up by aerodynamic forces..."

I never stated otherwise. What does that have to do with what I was talking about? As I stated, the point was the robustness of solid rockets, not the STS as a whole.

And, no offense, but the third sentence (with parenthetical) in your first paragraph is so incoherent I can't figure out what point you might be trying to make.

"(liquid rocket is in comparison virtualy inert most of the time)."

Hmmm, that's a good point. I wonder if the gentleman I was talking to was considering that.

Certainly the PEPCON disaster showed that while solid rocket fuel might be relatively safe compared to liquid fuels, it's not inert by any stretch of the imagination.

"Plus it's certainly not a coincidence that our orbital rockets rely mostly on liquid propellants ... higher specific impulse is good to have after all, for starters."

Well, for starters, using a conventional solid rocket for orbital insertion and maneuvering would be close to impossible, since you don't have the control needed. So I'm not sure what you hope to prove with that. :)

Beyond that, I'm told that during the boost phase, when you're trying to climb out of the gravity well, you want a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, which solids are good at. During the second phase, when you're trying to accelerate downrange to orbital velocity, efficiency matters more, and liquids are a win there.

"failure of the seal as on Challenger is one of the more common modes of failure for solid rockets"

And is normally not a huge concern, since the rocket is robust enough to survive it. The problems happen when you put something vulnerable next to the solids. When it's vulnerable and explosive, it's a recipe for disaster. Again, not arguing the overall design of STS.

I'm also not arguing solid rockets are an overall design win. All I'm saying is that they are a simple, robust technology.

"Hybrid rocket engines seem to be interesting..."

Yah, new concept to me, which I'm just reading up on now. Interesting, indeed.

Re:Solid rocket robustness

[sznupi]

But you said "...parts of the SRBs on STS-51-L (the one that killed Challenger) survived the initial explosion...".
And robustness of solid rockets is probably slightly deceiving - yes, as a functional block they are tough (they need to be), but what about when you want to build more of the stack from them? What about when, because of some blowout from the side due to faulty seal (the most common failure, what happened to Challenger; something which might also destroy the couplings of "more solid" stack) or any other assymetrical thrust scenario (easier with solids, they are less controllable), the whole stack is overstressed by aeorodynamic forces? Among it - an orbiter on its side, with the "capsule" buried deep in the structure that is being disintegrated. Or - stack of something like Ares I veering off course and/or not surviving increased lateral forces. You have the end of the mission anyway, the ultimate outcome due to secondary factors. That's mostly what I was saying in that third sentence (well, middle of the night & trying to find something to do...)

IIRC the other poster is an ex silo grunt, in which case it would be a bit natural that he was trained to value long storage, when conditions are stable, plus instant readiness...and generally will love (or smth) his old darlings. Which didn't have a lot of budget limitations (not of the same kind, anyway). And are suborbital to boot.

I was trying to "prove" ("show", really) that not a lot of commercial launchers rely on solids to such a large degree as the advantages would suggest - when one would expect at least rockets with solid whole first stage to be the rule. Or our first true steps into space relying on them, at the least. But it isn't so, and that can't be a coincidence.
OTOH many operational rockets rely mostly on first stage with denser liquid fuel which also has quite good thrust-to-weight ratio, while accidentally having lower specific impulse. Many Russian launchers for example; or Saturn V.

Again: Citation needed

[DragonHawk]

"Solid rockets have significantly cheaper R&D costs. The per flight costs are not better. Especially when you are comparing versus a reusable liquid fueled stage."

Again, please provide a reference. A solid rocket is basically propellant in a tube. (Okay, there will be some sophistication at the nozzle for flight control.) A liquid fuel rocket engine is an incredible complex of pipes, pumps, valves, controls, and injectors. They need sophisticated fuel generation and storage facilities.

In particular, I've seen the SSMEs called the most expensive rocket engines ever to fly. A single engine unit costs more than an entire Delta launch. They can only be used a limited number of times, and they have to be rebrurb'ed after every launch.

References:

http://www.donaldfrobertson.com/ssme.html

http://www.outofthecradle.net/archives/2006/05/nasa-chooses-rs-68-main-engine-for-constellation-cargo-launch-vehicle/

Re:Again: Citation needed

[cheesybagel]

A solid rocket is propellant in a tube. However the way you mix and cast the propellant is much more complex and error prone than fueling a liquid rocket. Small manufacturing errors can lead to cracks in the solid fuel which can cause the whole thing to explode. The oxidizer (e.g. ammonium perchlorate) is mixed together with the fuel (e.g. some kind of rubber). If you make one mistake during the mixing process, the whole thing can explode. Solid propellant is much more expensive per kg than liquid propellant such as LOX/Kerosene.

In a liquid fuel rocket most of the expense is in the engine, rather than the fuel. If you reuse the engine N times, you are reducing engine cost by a similar proportion.

SSME is expensive, but if you consider the fact that the engine is reused, it costs about the same as other engines in the same engine thrust class. SSME has had several revisions. The latest revision is able to do 10 or more flights between overhauls. As time went by and the SSME was upgraded, its costs kept decreasing while solid rocket costs kept increasing. You can read about that here in the Shuttle Operations funding requirement in page 23, here. The cost of External Tank+SSME is lower than Reusable Solid Rocket Motor+Solid Rocket Booster. In fact even manufacturing the expendable external tanks costs more than SSME.

Re:Again: Citation needed

[cheesybagel]

PS:

Your first reference is wrong in several aspects. The Russians, or rather the Soviet Union, did in fact make a staged combustion LOX/LH2 engine named RD-0120, which was used in Buran in parallel with staged combustion LOX/Kerosene engine RD-170. RD-0120 had similar performance to the SSME except it was designed to be non-reusable, with much cheaper construction using less parts.

Also several things have happened after that article was written. ESA has been working on a staged combustion LOX/LH2 engine codenamed VEDA. The Russians have recently switched the Soyuz second stage to the staged combustion LOX/Kerosene RD-0124 engine and have in fact proposed replacing all Soyuz engines with staged combustion variants. Atlas V uses the staged combustion RD-180 LOX/Kerosene engine. Angara and Long March 5 are planned to use staged combustion technology. Taurus II is planned to use the NK-33 staged combustion LOX/Kerosene engine.

The fact is staged combustion technology has been increasingly used in space launch applications contrary to what the article claims.

Nevile Shute Book: "Slide Rule"

[Steve1952]

Nevile Shute, the author of books such as "On the Beach" and "A Town Like Alice" was a professional aeronautical engineer turned author. In the early 1930's, he worked a private company that was producing an airship. His company was in competition with a much better funded government effort. He wrote a novel about his experience, called "Slide Rule", that is still in print.

In it, he contrasts the private company style to the government effort, and made a lot of good observations that are worth thinking about even today. In the end, the government project went way over budget, and their airship crashed. By contrast, the well managed private effort worked great. Nevile felt that one of the main reasons why airships were abandoned in the 1930's was due to bad government designs.

To Be Fair...

[DynaSoar]

SpaceX's main cost-cut compared to NASA is they're building it for themselves, by themselves. NASA doesn't build any spacecraft, they hire contractors. They have to pay their own people to operate the project plus the contractors to make the vehicle.

To be honest as well as fair, this is where things should expand into the BigAero Sucking NASA'a Corporate Welfare Teat Dry, but everybody knows that one already and the punchline sucks. Or used to. Looks like the new punchline just might be 'SpaceX', which, to quote Spock, "thrills me no end."

Re:To Be Fair...

[DaveV1.0]

You forgot the part where SpaceX didn't do any R&D. Instead, they used old technologies developed by... wait for it... NASA.

And, SpaceX didn't build a launch facility, instead they used.... NASA's.

No wonder SpaceX didn't spend much, they didn't do anything new.

Re:To Be Fair...

[strack]

what, you mean how they demolished the old titan launch tower and pretty much started again? and only needed a much smaller tower? and developed all their engines in-house, while learning from the past? and yes. there not doing anything all that new, apart from trying to recover and reuse the first stage, and mass manufacturing of rocket engines in house for economies of scale.

Re:To Be Fair...

[confused one]

Sure, they build on a NASA/Air Force legacy. but...

the launch facility is an old Titan site that was rebuilt almost entirely from scratch after they tore down the old launch structure. New buildings. new strongback. New LOX facility. New RP fuel depot. The rocket avionics are new. The engines are a new design. The capsule is a new design...

No, they didn't do the R&D from scratch. neither do the automotive or aircraft manufacturers each time they design a new vehicle. They build on a legacy of existing published design knowledge and the working knowledge of the people whom they hire.

Re:To Be Fair...

[evilviper]

You forgot the part where SpaceX didn't do any R&D. Instead, they used old technologies developed by... wait for it... NASA.

Wasn't it NASA who claimed that re-using old Saturn V rocket designs wouldn't be any cheaper than designing an entirely new rocket, hence the birth of Ares?

Re:To Be Fair...

[DynaSoar]

You forgot the part where SpaceX didn't do any R&D. Instead, they used old technologies developed by... wait for it... NASA.

And, SpaceX didn't build a launch facility, instead they used.... NASA's.

No wonder SpaceX didn't spend much, they didn't do anything new.

You forgot the part where NASA is not only supposed to develop new technologies on behalf of its citizens who pay for it with their taxes, for use by them and their commercial ventures, but has a technology office to facilitate this. You also forgot the part where NASA is supposed to make its facilities available to qualified users who've paid for them.

BigAero has all the same access, but SpaceX still built and flew a Falcon 9 for less than even Skunkworks could have only built it. That's new. SpaceX also used some technologies that had been developed or even just suggested, for scrapped projects and had never been used before. They had to perfect these. Those are new. SpaceX has made no secret of its own inventions from its R&D. Those are new, and obviously new to the point of complete surprise to you despite SpaceX's horn tooting website (or else, to quote the manufacturer of the largest solid rocket motors that can be purchased by amateurs, "you're just blowing smoke out your ass"). If you're going to credit originators of concepts despite later and much greater developments and refinements, what's not 'new' didn't come from NASA, it came from the likes of von Braun and Goddard.

What's not new is the extensive efforts SpaceX put into simplifying the systems to improve reliability while reducing costs. That kind of thing was championed by Truax, but was turned down both as an engineering concept and as fully designed systems by ... wait for it ... NASA. And to be fair NASA did actually use a very simplified design at one time, for the LEM motors. Because they were under time pressure and nobody could make the more complicated designs work soon enough. Those would be the same LEM motors that saved Apollo 13 after the Beech Aircraft oxygen tanks blew the side off of the North American Rockwell built service module disabled the Aerojet General motor, because the subsubcontractor that made the cryo-thermostats never got told that the CSM's planned operating voltage was changed from 28 to 65 volts in 1962, and the contractor and subcontractor didn't bother to check them. Ah yes, avoiding Cluster Fuck. That's what else SpaceX did that was new.

Re:To Be Fair...

[DaveV1.0]

So, stop crowing about how much better SpaceX is than NASA when SpaceX is just reusing NASA's leftover tech from 30 years ago.

They can put years into "simplifying the systems to improve reliability while reducing costs" but the fact is they are not doing anything new or groundbreaking. They are simply riding NASA's coattails.

Re:To Be Fair...

[WindBourne]

First off, how much of the costs of Ares I was RD? Lets see.

1. The first stage uses a solid rocket motor that was running on the shuttle. It is a one off, but far far less then the merlin was a change.
2. The J-2X engine is simply a one-off of the famous J2 Saturn engine.

Gee all of that RD was done by private business in conjunction with NASA back in the 50-70's. Yet, we are spending more for the RD on J2x then it costs for the entire Falcon 1 AND 9.
NASA is great BECAUSE of their RD and deserves their applause/bow. But the simple fact is that SpaceX HAS done their work as well and deserves their own applause/bow. Ppl like you can not take it away from either of these 2 great entities, and to be fair, I wish that you would stop.

Re:To Be Fair...

[DynaSoar]

> So, stop crowing about how much better SpaceX is than NASA when SpaceX is just reusing
> NASA's leftover tech from 30 years ago.
>
> They can put years into "simplifying the systems to improve reliability while reducing
> costs" but the fact is they are not doing anything new or groundbreaking. They are simply
> riding NASA's coattails.

SpaceX built a rocket that put something in orbit. What rocket did NASA build? Not contractors, NASA. Speaking on 30 years old, NASA's 'new' rocket is recycled old tech they were prepared to pay full, new rocket price for. Are you clear on which one is NASA and which is SpaceX?

SpaceX lists their inventions. Their patents can be searched for via Google.

Just the efforts at simplification are groundbreaking. NASA only did/allowed it when they needed to and refused it the rest of the time.

Since these have been pointed out to you and you refuse to face facts I'll assume you're not a troll, nor do you have your head up your ass as evidenced by the large volume of smoke you continually blow from it. OK, so maybe you are just a troll. The smoke remains.

Re:To Be Fair...

[anOminousCow]

NASA doesn't build any spacecraft, they hire contractors.

So basically NASA is a contractor that hires other contractors that hire subcontractors that hire sub-subcontractors....

I think I see the problem here.

Elon's Penny Pinching

[DynaSoar]

Not sure what they're doing for test sites now, but early on SpaceX tested (sometimes destructively though probably not intentionally) firing chambers and other hotloud technology on a cattle ranch a mile or so east of their McGregor TX site. I've seen (as well as not seen but tripped over) rusty pieces of kaboomage while hunting down my own far more modest but adequately errant rockets during Dallas Area Rocket Society high-power launches. It's obviously not a top dollar test range. I'm thinking they probably had to move elsewhere when stuff got big and bad enough that the vehicles and/or pieces could travel 5 miles downrange before doing some high speed post hole digging. It's 5 miles to Bush's ranch at Crawford.

Not to be out-cheaped, DARS flies smaller stuff at a site that's loaned free, near Rockwall TX. On the land there's a cement pad that used to be a garage floor. On the pad there's marks that used to be some of early Armadillo's H2O2 exhaust. Of the source of the exhaust, I found no traces. Found plenty of my own though.

Maybe that's why they and Blue Origins favor Texas. There's so much land that you can always find some cheap.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[Moofie]

Ares 1 was not designed to go to the moon. Ares 5 does not exist. Your argument seems to ignore that distinction.

Re:About to get more expensive!

[khallow]

The Falcon-9 is about to get 50% more expensive. Musk has just proposed to NASA that Space-X will fly only two demonstration flights of Falcon-9, instead of three...

Don't see the problem here. SpaceX isn't being paid a cost plus contract where their payout is a function of the costs that they can rack up. If they can fulfill the contract with less work than expected, then good for SpaceX. This is the sort of innovation that they should be trying to make.

Re:About to get more expensive!

[ae1294]

I have to bow to his awesome ability to spin the facts. He's saying "how about we won't do what we signed the contract to do, but still get the money..." and three different people post to say "sure, that sounds reasonable."

A normally government contracts works like this...

Contractor: We will build x and do y for 100 million!
Government: Great that's a really low bid, your hired! ...Time passes...
Contractor: We had problems, the new cost is 150 million.
Government: Well, these things happen, no problem carry on... ...Time passes...
Contractor: OK well it's done but it doesn't do Y yet.
Government: Well we really sort of need it to do Y.
Contractor: Sure we understand, but it will cost another 100 Million?
Government: Well... alright then.. ...Time passes..
Contractor: Alright done, but well it does do Y but sometimes it also does X?
Government: Ah well screw it, works good enough! Here's a bonus!

So you see if this company can get everything that was to be done in 3 flights done in just 2 then that's a shockingly good thing. If you haven't noticed we have a nice shiny space station and no damn way to get people up to it without Russia's help. It would, kind-of be nice to have a private entity available you know... If SpaceX can figure out ways to save money and "everyones" time while providing the same service why should we punish them for that? They can make extra money, that's OK for a business to do, as long as the job gets done properly and the business is on the hook for any fuck up.

But you're right NASA does have the right to force them to do all 3 even if the third is pointless. But honestly what the hell is the point and how is it going to encourage cost cutting and cheaper rates in the future? How will that build a good business relationship with SpaceX?

If you hire me to install a network and I tell you it will take 3 days and it only takes 2 are you going to make me sit on my ass that third day? Well I guess you probably would but if I ever did business with you again in the future, unlikely, I'd ream your ass.

Comparing Morons vs. Oranges

[Required Snark]

Well, if you click through the cited article you find out that the cost of the launch tower was $500,000. I don't know if this is just the tower or the tower and associated launch pad infrastructure, although I suspect the later. This is being compared to the cost of the Falcon program at about $700,000 according to a previous post.

Look at the cost of cars vs. highways. You can easily buy a Honda for between $15000 and $20000. You can buy other cars for less. According to this source http://www-pam.usc.edu/volume2/v2i1a3s2.html

Elevated multi-lane highways through cities can be costly because of the displacement of current infrastructure. For example, recent costs in the New York City area have been $333 million per mile (Wieman, 1996). However, these high costs are not representative of other major cities. Even with considerable displacement, the costs were only half of that amount in the Los Angeles area 710 freeway extension (Moe, 1994), and only $127 million per mile for Los Angeles' Century Freeway, which is still criticized as having been too costly (Smith, 1993), even though it was relatively cheap in comparison to other projects.

...

In 1996 dollars, the Federal Highway Administration has calculated the "weighted rural and urban combined" costs per mile of interstate highway to be $20.6 million.(9) Other highway construction normally ranges from $1 million to $5 million per mile, but in mountainous regions, like West Virginia, the costs can be as high as $15 million per mile (Brogan, 1997).

So if you compare the $20,000 Honda to a $20 Million mile of road, you can buy 1000 Hondas for the same price as a mile of road. If you take the $127 Million per mile for the Century Freeway in LA, you can buy over 60,000 Hondas for the price of a mile of road.

Using the logic of the posted article, no roads should be built because cars are cheap compared to roads. Heck, you can buy thousands of cars instead of building a mile of road, so clearly a car is a better (cheaper) purchase.

Gosh I wonder if there might be a flaw in this logic? Maybe in the real world fixed infrastructure has high initial costs that are amortized over time, so comparing those costs to vehicle development costs is not a meaningful measure: trains vs. track, ships vs. harbors, airports vs. airplanes,....

Let's face it, this is another anti-NASA hit piece. Someone found numbers that were roughly comparable, even though they were costs of wildly different kinds of projects, and they put them together to make NASA look bad. And as is always the case, the Slashdot Pundits responded like well trained dogs and started barking and howling in unison. Not much higher mental activity going on in this discussion.

So where do the morons and oranges come in? Well, obviously the morons are the barking Slashdot hoards. The oranges have absolutely nothing to do with dogs or Slashdot, making as much sense as the article that started the ruckus.

Re:Comparing Morons vs. Oranges

[strack]

um... the falcon program cost under a million? wha? i think you got your numbers wrong there.

Apple Tomato Comparison

[prefec2]

The article compares tomatoes with apples. This rocket is designed as a cargo transportation system. Like Ariane 5 which is also a very low cost space transportation system. That's why they have a 50% market share in commercial space flight. However, the Ares I launch system is for people. Therefore the launch tower needs a way to deliver people to the top of the system. The rocket itself has also to be much more reliable than a cargo system.

And by the way, while looking at the missile photos it has 9 engines. This is like one of those ancient Russian designs, based on the fact that they cannot build a bigger engine. This is normally more expensive in testing and you get a higher possibility of failure. however they claim to be cheaper than Arianespace on launch basis. Ariane 5 approx USD 120 while Falcon 9 approx. USD 50.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[strack]

your a real internet expert arent you. you can totally tell by the pixels that its unreliable. maybe you should expand your meagre perception to encompass what might happen if one of those engines fails mid-flight. yes. thats right. there are 8 other engines to pick up the slack and allow it to still complete its mission. its called redundancy.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[prefec2]

Redundancy does not work here, as you need all engines working perfectly to get it into orbit correctly. So if one engines fails, the missile is not going where it is supposed to go. And if it explodes, it will destroy the entire device. So it is not like you have redundant parts who can compensate for each other, like in redundant web-servers, it is more like an n-tier installation and if one tier fails the whole system is no longer usable.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[amliebsch]

You're wrong - the design specifications of Falcon 9 permit the loss of at least one engine without affecting mission goals. A slightly different flight trajectory would be the result, but by adjusting burn times the ultimate orbital insertion would be the same.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[prefec2]

So instead of p^9 = p_falcon (where p is the value for not breaking down) it is 1-((1-p)^2) = p_falcon if I am not mistaken. It is a little late. However, I think the possibility of a breakdown is still higher than by a one engine design. And the mass is bigger. At least that is the line of argumentation for the Ariane 5 rocket and other single engine designs. (I know the Ariane 5 is also using two boosters as supplement).

It would be great if someone would have some real numbers for the equation. So we would be able to compare results and not just propulsion concept arguments, which can become very pointless. For example let say p_ariane = 0.99 and the falcon single engine is 0.9 than it would be as stable as the other system.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[confused one]

sorry, they certainly could test larger engines. They test the engines as a cluster, 9 at a time. So, it stands to reason their facility can handle a full power test from an engine nearly 10 times the size of their current engine.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[confused one]

It's intentionally designed with "engine out" capability. That means they can lose one engine and still make it to their intended orbit, by burning the remaining 8 longer. They can lose 2 engines and still make it to orbit; albeit a lower orbit. A catastrophic failure would mean loss of vehicle, of course. There are, however, ways of designing for that (designing to contain the failure) -- you haven't heard of a plane falling out of the sky due to a catastrophic engine failure in recent history, for a reason.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[anOminousCow]

And by the way, while looking at the missile photos it has 9 engines. This is like one of those ancient Russian designs,

Its actually a lot like one of those ancient American designs too, the Saturn I. Eight engines. And, oh, check out the miserable launch record of that one.

Re:Apple Tomato Comparison

[anOminousCow]

And if it explodes, it will destroy the entire device.

If you've seen pictures of the Falcon 9 engine mountings, you'll note that between each engine is a metal barrier of approximately 1.5 cm thickness. As these are not part of the thrust structure, or the engines, I'm guessing that the purpose of these is to block fragments from an exploding engine in one compartment from damaging engines in nearby compartments. So I rather doubt that part from a disintegrating turbine or combustion chamber in one engine is going to fly out and damage an engine in the next compartment.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[sznupi]

How often we would have such a payload though? That's not how we build things - even large oceanic ships are built in segments. Cargo moved in containers.
Even available launchers shouldn't be too limiting when it comes to engine block, fuel tanks (or integrated packages of the two), crew compartments (plus it's nice to have at least one of them easily surrounded by fuel tanks), science platform. Connect them as required; with the possibility of greater part off the assembly line that way, too. As would be already the case with launchers (which might also improve gradually to give somewhat heavier options, but still sharing most of the components with "standard" ones), instead of an almost custom design used quite intermittently (but still with the need of maintaining standing army and infrastructure to make it)

And the biggest bonus: if one launch fails, you don't loose much.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[Necron69]

No, the Ares V CAN'T loft anything to orbit, because it does not exist. Likewise the Saturn V could launch that much weight, but also no longer exists.

This is irrelevant anyway, as there is need whatsoever for a heavy lift launch vehicle. Build your spacecraft in parts and assemble them in orbit for vastly less money.

The bigger your launch vehicle is, the more it will cost, and the lower flight rate it will have. It will cost much more per pound into orbit. The only purpose for a heavy lift vehicle is to be a massive jobs program for NASA.

Necron69

Solid rocket control

[DragonHawk]

"A solid fuel rocket is like a firecracker - once you light it there is nothing you can do to control it in any way. Other systems have to be changed to compensate for that."

From what I'm given to understand, there *are* controls available to a solid fuel rocket. There is thrust vectoring, of course. But they can vary the side and shape of the burn channel, and they can vary the formulation of the fuel. This changes the performance characteristics of the propellant, giving you something like a throttle.

The big difference is this has to be decided at manufacturing time. Obviously, liquid fuel rockets give you more flexibility in that the plan can be changed in-flight. However, I'm also told that the realities of flight dynamics mean there's a fairly narrow range of safe maneuvering options, beyond which the vehicle will breakup. And it isn't like you can just prematurely "turn off" a rocket and expect things to end well. So the reduced control that comes from a solid fuel rocket design is apparently not as big a problem as one might expect at first glance.

Now, I'm not arguing that solid rockets are the best possible option. From what I understand, they just have cost and reliability on their side. And the cost claim has been challenged in a fair fashion elsewhere in this subthread, so I'm even less sure about that now.

Re:Solid rocket control

[dbIII]

Hence my comment that "once you light it there is nothing you can do to control it in any way" - which implied getting it to change what it was set to do at manufacture. I'm not saying it's good or bad, just that it is a constraint, and as I said "Other systems have to be changed to compensate for that", for instance having liquid fueled rockets in other portions of the shuttle.
The comment was really to enlighten those that think the things can be turned off or throttled down and not for those that know there is no "off" switch for a solid fueled rocket.

Shutting down a solid rocket

[DragonHawk]

DragonHawk: "...once lit they will consume their entire fuel supply. No stop-and-restart."

DerekLyons: "Actually, while you can't restart 'em - you can shut them down."

Interesting. Mind explaining how, or at least giving me a term to Google?

(If you're talking about thrust venting, I'm aware. But they still consume their entire fuel supply. Thrust venting simply cancels out the thrust; the fuel still burns to completion.)

Re:Shutting down a solid rocket

[DerekLyons]

The question wasn't "how much fuel they consume", it was "can they be stopped (rendered zero thrust)", which is the question I answered. From a safety POV, they amount to the same thing.

Re:Shutting down a solid rocket

[tgd]

Actually you can both stop and restart them, at least in theory.

The rocket engines on SpaceShip 1 and Virgin's craft are controllable solid fuel rockets.

Thanks for the info

[DragonHawk]

"I already did! Read the link. The SRBs are more expensive per flight."

Ah, sorry. I ass-umed that since your statement on solid fuel costs came after the link, it was an independent point. Thanks for the correction.

"They never got anywhere near $160/lb. - not at over $10,000/kg."

Like I said, I wasn't defending the cost efficiency of STS, or even just the SRBs. The shuttle program is notorious for its high costs and budget overruns. I had just been lead to believe that solid rockets were cheaper in general. Your reference obviously contradicts that.

I wish your reference got into more detail as to why the solid booster option was expected to be more expensive to operate (post-development). I'm working on very meager information already, and this just complicates things. :-(

Re:Thanks for the info

[tomhudson]

Simple - the whole of the SRB has to be capable of resisting the pressure of combustion (it's one big combustion chamber) , as opposed to just the smaller combustion chamber and bell housing of liquid fuel rockets.

That's also a lot more dead weight.

Thanks!

[DragonHawk]

Thanks for the info.

Last time I got in a discussion on this subject on Slashdot, nobody had any references, it was all just supposition. Your links, especially the second, are much more solid (pun unintended).

This issue gets more and more complicated the more I look at it.

Thrust venting safety

[DragonHawk]

"From a safety POV, they amount to the same thing."

Me, I see a big safety difference between a giant geyser of flame spewing out of each end, and a full shutdown (like Gemini 6). Also, I haven't been able to find any information on just how practical thrust venting really is. (Which is not to say such information doesn't exist, just that I don't have it.) There's going to be a payload/crew module -- either on top of the rocket, or right next to it, in the case of an outrigger booster. I imagine the thrust being vented would be quite hazardous. So how does that work?

Re:Thrust venting safety

[DerekLyons]

You time your separation to avoid the plume and recontact between the booster and the separating module. The basic techniques were mastered back in the late 50's/early 60's for the SUBROC/ASROC and the Polaris A-1.

And really the plume is less than you might think, when the pressure in the booster drops, so does the combustion rate.

Re:Thrust venting safety

[DragonHawk]

You time your separation to avoid the plume and recontact between the booster and the separating module.

If the rocket is already in the air and we can afford to jettison the booster, why would we care about equalizing thrust? If we can do a separation, we do it, and now the booster can do whatever the heck it wants to -- splash down into the ocean, explode into a million tiny pieces, etc. No?

And really the plume is less than you might think, when the pressure in the booster drops, so does the combustion rate.

I imagine that would take a few seconds, though. Challenger's ET blew apart quickly enough from contact with a relatively tiny plume. I imagine half the total trust from an SRB would be pretty dangerous, even if it's nominally directed up and not sideways. And if the crew capsule is directly on top the solid rocket...

Re:Thrust venting safety

[DerekLyons]

You time your separation to avoid the plume and recontact between the booster and the separating module.

If the rocket is already in the air and we can afford to jettison the booster, why would we care about equalizing thrust? If we can do a separation, we do it, and now the booster can do whatever the heck it wants to -- splash down into the ocean, explode into a million tiny pieces, etc. No?

Sometimes. But the question was again, was it possible, not was it desirable.
 

And really the plume is less than you might think, when the pressure in the booster drops, so does the combustion rate.

I imagine that would take a few seconds, though. Challenger's ET blew apart quickly enough from contact with a relatively tiny plume. I imagine half the total trust from an SRB would be pretty dangerous, even if it's nominally directed up and not sideways. And if the crew capsule is directly on top the solid rocket...

The Challenger's ET blew from the direct force of a full pressure plume for some six seconds (depending on what you choose as the starting and termination event) - while in a 'normal' (for lack of a better term) thrust venting situation the plume is being sent up and to the side, so your departing module catches only the very edges of that half the thrust. (It's a matter of sizing and pointing the vent stacks appropriately.) Since at the same time, it's slowing down and you're departing the vicinity... With as little as 1G of acceleration relative to the booster for a couple of seconds, after six seconds you're a couple of hundred feet away. The situation isn't even remotely the same.

WOW

[WindBourne]

When NASA and Russia have launches like these, they call them major successes, not failures. I suspect that you are one of those that classify it for those groups as well as being a success, but a failure for SpaceX just because ..

The bastards did it

[marco.antonio.costa]

Mission Type Price* LEO (s/c80% capacity to the customer orbit) $56M GTO (s/c

Considering the maximum cargo capacity for LEO being about 10 tons, it would cost me 350K to fly up to the ISS. This is a seriously insane cost reduction. And the heavy version has even more cost cutting potential.

Re:The bastards did it

[marco.antonio.costa]

Shit, I was pretty sure I hit 'Preview'.

Oh well, fail.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[tibit]

I stand corrected. Thanks.

Thrust venting practicality

[DragonHawk]

DragonHawk: "I haven't been able to find any information on just how practical thrust venting really is."

DerekLyons: "You time your separation ..."

DragonHawk: "If the rocket is already in the air and we can afford to jettison the booster, why would we care about equalizing thrust? If we can do a separation, we do it, and now the booster can do whatever the heck it wants to -- splash down into the ocean, explode into a million tiny pieces, etc. No?"

DerekLyons: "Sometimes. But the question was again, was it possible, not was it desirable.

Um, no, my question was whether it was practical. Not as a theoretical possibility, but, would this be useful in the real world?

DerekLyons: "... in a 'normal' (for lack of a better term) thrust venting situation the plume is being sent up and to the side , so your departing module catches only the very edges of that half the thrust."

(Emphasis added.)

As it's been explained to me, thrust venting works by opening both ends of the rocket. Since the thrust is now exiting equally from top and bottom, they cancel each other out. Given that, I would think that if you instead tried to direct the vented thrust to the side, that would not cancel out the "normal" exhaust. The rocket would instead veer sharply to one side. In the case of an outrigger (like STS), that would be directly into the main vehicle. In the case of a single rocket stack, it would still leave the normal exhaust pushing the solid rocket into the next stage. Am I missing something here?

I might buy the idea that venting an outrigger straight out the top would be a practical way to abort a launch. For example, suppose for the sake of discussion one of the STS SRBs ignites accidentally. In that hypothetical situation, you blow the top of that SRB, the thrust equalizes, net impulse zero. The LV sits on the pad in a cloud of smoke and flame for a minute or so, but otherwise is okay.

But in the case of a solid rocket in-line with another stage (such as the Ares design), you can't do that, because there are more stages and/or payload and/or crew above the solid rocket. No?

And once the vehicle is in flight, if you can afford to jettison the solid rocket, I don't see the point in bothering with thrust venting. You don't need the solid so you don't care what happens to it. If you did care what happens to it, thrust venting would prolly be a bad idea anyway, because once you cancel thrust, gravity takes over, and that generally ends badly for a rocket.

The one hypothetical situation I can think of for in-flight thrust venting being useful would be if you want to both recovery the spent solid and you *also* want to limit how far down range you have to go to retrieve it. But that seems like a big stretch. Even the STS SRBs end up within a hundred miles or so of Florida.

Re:Thrust venting practicality

[DerekLyons]

Um, no, my question was whether it was practical. Not as a theoretical possibility, but, would this be useful in the real world?

Certainly.

In the case of an abort near the pad, thrust termination ensures the discarded booster doesn't punch a hole in VAB or a hotel full of tourists. In any abort scenario it ensures the discarded booster stays within the bounds of the range (I.E. the area kept clear for the launch). It prevents recontact between the discarded booster or it's plume with the departing module. It ensures the discarded booster lands well clear of the descending module. (And it means your escape boost system can be smaller and lighter.)

I.E. pretty much the same reasons that liquid fueled boosters have the capability to be shut down and destroyed.

As it's been explained to me, thrust venting works by opening both ends of the rocket. Since the thrust is now exiting equally from top and bottom, they cancel each other out. Given that, I would think that if you instead tried to direct the vented thrust to the side, that would not cancel out the "normal" exhaust. The rocket would instead veer sharply to one side. In the case of an outrigger (like STS), that would be directly into the main vehicle. In the case of a single rocket stack, it would still leave the normal exhaust pushing the solid rocket into the next stage. Am I missing something here?

You're missing several things... Yes, venting to side does contribute to canceling out the 'normal' thrust, both by directing the vented thrust in a useful direction (usually about 45 degrees from the vehicle's axis) and by controlling the relative vent areas between the forward and aft ends of the vehicle.

Keep in mind that you don't simply blow the end(s) off the vehicle. The usual method of venting the forward end is to provide a stack (a pipe) between the motor dome and the skin of the vehicle. When the time comes to vent, you blow a hole in the motor dome and in the skin and the stacks direct the vented gas in the chosen direction. If you look at this picture of a Poseidon missile, you'll see a series of ovals at the forward end of the missile - those are the skin panels over the end of the trust termination stacks. (Poseidon narrows at that point for other reasons, it's not strictly needed for thrust termination.) This picture shows the Orion escape rocket being tested (so it's pointed at the ground so as not to take flight), but it shows roughly what the front end of the Poseidon shown above would have looked like during thrust termination.

The nozzle may or may not be blown off depending on the desired thrust termination profile. Equal (and large) areas provide maximum thrust decay, proving larger vents forward (or not blowing off the nozzle) provides maximum deceleration and separation between the discarded booster and the departing module. The designer chooses the relative areas and timing of blowing the vents at each end to provide the desired profile.

The vehicle doesn't veer because you design the vents so that they vent symmetrically about the vehicles axis. In the case of the design originally proposed for the shuttle, if you look at the shuttle from the nose and imagine the orbiter is on North side of the vehicle, then (relative to the ET center line) the 'East' SRB vented to the NE, E, and SE, while the 'West' SRB vented to the NW, W, and SW. No veering and no vent plume directly impinging on vehicle structure. You can see the same symmetrical effects in the picture of the Orion escape system above.

And once the vehicle is in flight, if you can afford to jettison the solid rocket, I don't see the point in bothering with thrust venting. You don'

Robust != overall better

[DragonHawk]

But you said "...parts of the SRBs on STS-51-L (the one that killed Challenger) survived the initial explosion...".

Okay, yes, I did write that. I should have written "deflagration and break-up". I'll apologize to the Pedantic Semantics Council. ;-)

And robustness of solid rockets is probably slightly deceiving - yes, as a functional block they are tough (they need to be)

You've remarked twice now that solid rockets are robust because they need to be robust to work at all. I fail to see how that's a bad thing by itself. Yes, it's an inherent requirement of the design, but it still means a tougher vehicle. Now, you could argue that the need for a more robust vehicle increases weight/cost/etc., but I don't get why you seem to be implying robustness doesn't count just because it's inherent.

... not a lot of commercial launchers rely on solids to such a large degree as the advantages would suggest...

Again, I was never arguing that SRBs are an overall design win. I think I made it quite clear in my initial post that both technologies have advantages and disadvantages, and that liquids are prolly the overall design win.

Re:Not a valid comparison

[anOminousCow]

Yes. But what I can't figure out is why NASA thought it needed a heavy lift vehicle just to launch a capsule into LEO or ISS orbit. Wasn't the Ares V supposed to do the heavy lifting for Moon and interplanetary missions?

The idea is to have your man rated launcher be only what is needed to get to the ISS or LEO. The rest of the equipment was to be launched on Ares V. That means the Ares I launched capsule would dock with the command module/space lab needed to carry the astronauts to Moon or Mars. There's no need for a big heavy capsule like the Orion to be launched on Ares I.

An Atlas V/Delta IV/Falcon 9 sized launch system is what was needed. WTF was NASA doing developing things as large as the Ares I and Orion?

Thanks

[DragonHawk]

Ah.... at last, light dawns in the forest. I'm not sure why I couldn't get my head wrapped around the idea of multiple, opposing, angled vents yielding a net lateral force of zero, but it took your explanation to get it through to me. Thanks for taking the time to explain all that!