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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.
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.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
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.
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.