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SpaceX Given Approval For ISS Mission
An anonymous reader sends this snippet from an AFP report:
"California-based rocket maker SpaceX said that it will make a test flight in late November to the International Space Station, now that NASA has retired its space shuttle program. 'SpaceX has been hard at work preparing for our next flight — a mission designed to demonstrate that a privately-developed space transportation system can deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS),' the company, also called Space Exploration Technologies, said in a statement. The mission is the second to be carried out by SpaceX, one of a handful of firms competing to make a spaceship to replace the now-defunct US shuttle, which had been used to carry supplies and equipment to the orbiting outpost. 'NASA has given us a November 30, 2011 launch date, which should be followed nine days later by Dragon berthing at the ISS,' the company said."
SpaceX has an information sheet for the Dragon capsule, as well as an interesting post about the costs involved in their launches.
YEAH, NIGGER BITCHES
As far as I know, NASA doesn't have a factory. Everything they used was made by the likes of Boeing, Lockheed and others. All NASA added was 50 layers of management, to ensure that everything was behind schedule and over budget.
Space-X may be the future of space travel. They designed that thing. It's not a NASA design, and it didn't go through NASA's process of spreading everything out among contractors spread across the US.
Surrounded by "the void" as you contemplate the approach of a mass hurtling along at 22,000 MPH (give or take) whose design was dictated by a cost vs. capabilities calculation...that would be exciting.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I remember they pushed them up when the Shuttle retirement was announced.
whatever Space X said about their topic- who cares i mean like normal people only knows that the scientists are planing to use satellites "how to stop comet crashing with earth"?
SpaceX Update
This goes more into what's been going on running up to the launch, and has some great pictures of the rocket/capsule/facility in hawthorne (I took one of them :P)
yup i agreed i also getting this point the scientists are using the lazer satellite who hit that comet which will be coming on earth to change their direction after hit the lazer.
i love the america f*ck yeah in the costing sheet...
I see, they've taken inspiration from the Kerbal Space Program.
There's no better way to advertise your essay writting service than to make a non-sensical post with poor grammar and shit capitalization! Keep up the great work, I'm sure many posters here will need your services completing their 5th grade special education exam essays!
Sending NASA back to the drawing boards to develop breakthrough technologies for deep space exploration is what it should do, let private enterprise do what has already been proven. Breaking the power of the aero-industrial complex with their legions of lobbyists and congressmen in their pockets took guts to do. This is a giant leap in the right direction.
Ironic that people (used to?) claim that Obama was a socialist. Sure he spent taxpayer money to save the auto industry. Now it is being paid back although admittedly projections are that the government will lose 1.5 Billion upfront. Still, considering how many Millions of jobs were directly and indirectly (suppliers, communities) saved, that $1.5 Billion was well spent. And that's not even considering the taxes these now highly profitable enterprises (record sales and growth) are returning to the treasury and will be doing so (hopefully) for many years to come.
From TFA: "If there are cost overruns, SpaceX will cover the difference."
With what? Oh, right, by hiking up the prices of launches that will follow, because even the engineers at SpaceX don't have their money tree working properly yet.
So "these prices are not arbitrary, premised on capturing a dominant share of the market, or “teaser” rates meant to lure in an eager market only to be increased later"; perhaps not, but you already announce that SpaceX will cover any cost overruns and will pay for them "themselves", i.e. the customer after you will pay for them. It's a name game, but sounds to me like arbitrary pricing, aimed at capturing a decent share of the market and it looks like they're succeeding at teasing in an eager, Space Shuttle-less market.
Don't get me wrong, I think commercial spaceflight is the way to go, but this kind of talk doesn't exactly help to give me the feeling SpaceX is being entirely forthcoming. And I dread the day we'll be picking up the pieces from the first failure from someone's backyard. Who will explain to Timmy's mom and dad why all those safety regulations (which are generally something hiking up the prices quite a bit) were struck?
Spacex, along with Google, Armadillo and few others is what makes America as something more than a hated bully.
Here we go again... Tax payers money spent over 30 years to design, test and refine technology to the point where it can now be handed over to private companies so that they can make profits. Just like the airline industry, the computer/electronics industry etc...
Still dreaming that we live in a capitalist, free market society? People should at least be honest about calling this corporate welfare or a form of sate sponsored socialism.
And please, don't spew crap about how this company has invented everything from scratch from their own pockets. Slashdot readers should know better than that.
Look at the posts here that whine about government taxes paying for a space programme now being entered by private American companies. See their total lack of a vision for America and humanity? See their commitment to destroying what is perhaps America's - and humanity's - greatest achievements and endeavors? See them demanding we do nothing but the purely private business that would never have gone to space, or if it eventually did (after much loss of life and limb) would never have shared any of what it saw or got there?
Then look at the posts celebrating America's space programme. Look at the effort it inspired, the ambition it provokes, the achievements it propels.
Your tax dollars at work. Vs your neighborhood libertarian's corporate anarchy. Space isn't the only ice-cold vacuum: you can have it here on Earth by voting Republican in 2012.
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make install -not war
it's goiNg, and what supplies Infinitesimally
and other companies trying to compete in this area.
Government contractors usually get to hide behind the same government. So when they screw up they get paid more to do it right the next time. Private contractors cannot afford the screw ups. Oh I am sure they will screw up but when your trying to make a buck in a high risk area you do your damned best to eliminate all those risks, especially ones that will end your business like losing a life.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
a full-time GNAA and piis cocktail. Lube or we sell and reports and It there. Bring Rapid, With any sort
The name "Dragon" sounds a bit ... Chinese. Our biggest rival. I don't think they'd call their spaceship "Eagle".
which should be followed nine days later by Dragon berthing at the ISS
Dragons roost- they do not 'berth'.
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
"Although NASA subcontracts for 'parts' and equipment, they are pretty much a top down organization, much like Apple in that respect. It doesn't mean they aren't in full control of their projects. Without NASA, we wouldn't have been the first on the Moon."
The contractors in the Apollo program did a lot of their own engineering. I remember watching a documentary about the LEM, and how Grumman had to solve a lot of challenges, flowing change requests up to NASA. Sure NASA was heavily involved, but it wasn't like all ideas originated from the top.
I don't intend this post as a knock against NASA, just your perception of them.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
"Private contractors cannot afford the screw ups."
You ever work for a private contractor? I assure you, they screw up all the time. Sometimes it costs them, sometimes they dodge it. Sometimes they learn, sometimes they don't. Cronyism, nepotism, favoritism, bureaucracy, inertia, etc., all exist in the corporate world, too.
SpaceX succeeds because they're new and small and nimble and aren't tied to existing dead weight. And more power to them for it.
The main advantage of private industry is that (ideally) there are opportunities for competitors to replace the defective ones. (It doesn't always work that way in practice, due to startup costs, network effects, etc., of course.)
Aerospace has high startup costs, so it's been a tough one. Fortunately, with SpaceX, some investors with very deep pockets have decided to have a go. They've also gotten funding from the government, but so far have largely avoided getting tied into any existing pork, which is great.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
If Elon Musk can cut the cost of Falcon/Dragon even half as successfully as he did with the price of the $100k Tesla Roadster, while bowling over giants of the industry like the Toyota Prius, we would have a slam dunk champion of cheap orbital delivery system here.
Huh what? The Roadster is discontinued? Who says?
So "these prices are not arbitrary, premised on capturing a dominant share of the market, or âoeteaserâ rates meant to lure in an eager market only to be increased later"; perhaps not, but you already announce that SpaceX will cover any cost overruns and will pay for them "themselves", i.e. the customer after you will pay for them.
Or by taking less profits (or more loss), like most companies do when their cost to provide a service is not aligned with what they are able to sell the service for.
This notion that if a company's costs increase for any reason, that cost will necessarily be passed on to the customer makes the illogical un-capitalistic assumption that the company is not already charging as much as they can without reducing sales such that they make less money.
In other words, it assumes that the company has not already tried to optimize their price structure in order to maximize revenue.
If costs increase such that that optimized revenue is less than the costs, then the company just takes a loss. Jacking up prices to try to cover the cost will just mean they end up taking in less revenue, for a greater loss.
So the only way it makes sense to charge one price now but increase it later if there are cost overruns is if the current price is a "teaser", and they planned to increase costs to what the market will actually bear later. If you believe them when they say that's not the case, if you believe that they think the price they are planning to charge is the price they believe will get them the most revenue (i.e. you believe their accountants and business planners know what they are doing), then no, you should not expect them to jack up prices just because they take a loss on some missions.
The enemies of Democracy are
SpaceX is NASA's baby brother. It is nominally "private" but it receives public funds and has NASA engineers and scientists working for them. Everything is made "in-house", that is why it is cheap. No contracts to private companies.
NASA is now free of military demands on its resources (the military now have their own shuttle) and it is also free from mundane taxi and supply duties to LEO. NASA, for the first time, can now concentrate on exploration and pushing the frontiers.