SpaceX Reveals Plans For Full Launch System Re-usability

FleaPlus writes "During a talk at the National Press Club, SpaceX's Elon Musk revealed the company's plans for making their Falcon 9 rocket fully reusable. A rendering depicts the first stage, upper stage, and Dragon capsule all separately returning to the Earth's surface and making a controlled, rocket-powered landing. During the next few years SpaceX will be testing VTVL (Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing) maneuvers and re-usability with their Falcon 9-based 'Grasshopper' testbed, with up to 70 test launches per year. Musk stated that if reuse is successful, it would result in a 100x reduction in their already-low launch costs, a key step toward Musk's long-term aim of lowering the price of a ticket to Mars to $500K."

Comments

Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Doc Ruby]

I am glad Americans invested in the Space Shuttle programme that gave, among so many other benefits, the basic R&D into reusable space vehicles and launch systems for them, to SpaceX, the rest of the growing private space industry, and to the world in general.

I look forward to SpaceX and its competitors paying the taxes that will repay that investment, even as they make good profits without having had to take the risks or pay the costs of those decades of R&D on their own.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Rakshasa-sensei]

Exactly how... did a space shuttle from the 80's give 30 years of R&D that matched the money poured into it?

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Errrr, the Shuttle proved that reusability *wasn't* fiscally viable.

Each shuttle launch cost much more than a equivalent disposable rocket launch. The shuttle however enabled types of mission that had never been possible before (recovery etc.).

Shuttle technology needed so much re-test of (every single) ‘reusable’ part, and replacement of non-reusable parts - almost to the point where building a new shuttle each time wouldn't have been much more expensive.

The fact that there was more than one, but two never flew at the same time, is a indicator of the huge cost/time involved in preparing each vehicle.

70 test launches a year is amazing, and shows how the safely re-validation time has been cut to pieces. But it has been 40 years since the Enterprise was concieved (seriously btw - the prototypes/mockup was called 'Enterprise')

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Doc Ruby]

You do know that the 1980s were 30 years ago, right? In fact, since the Shuttle R&D started in the 1970s (and of course earlier, using prior designs as departure), it's over 30 years. You do realize that all NASA spaceflight is R&D work, right? People at SpaceX surely know that.

How did it match the money poured into it? Even ignoring the tremendous return on investment from NASA budgets, anyone honest at SpaceX would tell you the new private industry owes a vast debt to NASA's programmes. That it can repay naturally in taxes from its profitable operations.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[ATestR]

Return on investment was pretty good for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The space shuttle... not so much.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Doc Ruby]

R&D is usually valuable mostly for what it rules out. SpaceX doesn't have to learn what not to do, and can concentrate on redoing what worked, and trying what's left as yet untried.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad Americans invested in the Space Shuttle programme that gave, among so many other benefits, the basic R&D into reusable space vehicles and launch systems for them

This sounds more like how the Soviet modules landed since the 1960s (vertical) than how the shuttle did it in the 1980s.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[tmosley]

Not the concept of reusability, just this particular committee designed ass hat when administered by a broken culture.

A private, non-subsidized company will innovate, unlike the monolithic bureaucracy that NASA has become, until they are able to do it, and do it safely. And cheaply too.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[khallow]

Yes, this demonstrates the vast value of government. Throw a few hundred billion in, get a billion dollar rocket out.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[PinchDuck]

For starters, taxes paid aren't allocated to whatever wishing well you think they should go into. Federal taxes go into the general fund, so it's not like NASA's going to be getting a check from SpaceX. Secondly, it's not like SpaceX isn't doing a ton of R&D and taking a lot of risks. Thirdly, I hope that SpaceX has a talented accounting team that allows them to maximize their return on investment, including taking all applicable tax deductions. If you don't like companies taking tax deductions, blame the politicians that create them, not the companies that take them.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

We'd be on Mars now if it weren't for all the money wasted on the shuttle program.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[khallow]

R&D is usually valuable mostly for what it rules out. SpaceX doesn't have to learn what not to do, and can concentrate on redoing what worked, and trying what's left as yet untried.

While I consider risk retirement a useful role for NASA, we shouldn't get delusional here. The Shuttle was designed so that it needed the entire US launch market in order to be competitive, that is, all the military launches and all the commercial launches. After the Challenger accident and the subsequent blamefinding, it became blatantly clear that the Shuttle would never meet that launch frequency goal.

The Shuttle was simply put, too ambitious. It's cost meant that other things weren't done. The US no longer could afford manned missions beyond Earth orbit, it could no longer explore technologies such as solar sails or nuclear propulsion. There's the saying, "It sucked the oxygen out of the room."

I also find it ironic that the grandparent claimed that the Shuttle demonstrated that reusable launch technology was unfeasible. If that were so, then why are there so many reusable vehicles out there. In addition to SpaceX's approach (which I might add doesn't resemble a Shuttle and probably has zero benefit to it from the Shuttle), we have the DoD, Scaled Composites, and XCOR all making (and in the case of the DoD, flying) reusable launch vehicles.

There's only one thing learned from the Shuttle debacle. Namely, don't let NASA build and fly its own launch vehicle. The failure of Constellation should have hammered that point home, but apparently, the political class isn't interested in the lesson plan.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[khallow]

Get yourself an account.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[tgd]

It didn't, but its sort of trendy to wax poetic about the Space Shuttle these days.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Lifyre]

I think you were missing his point when it came to the taxes. NASA's funding comes from the general fund just like most federal agencies. His point was that the investment into NASA for the space shuttle is or will generate a real return in the form of taxes on SpaceX to the general fund that will repay the original investment. If and when that return will equal or exceed the value of the original investment remains to be seen.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Darth Snowshoe]

Just because you are unfamiliar with the real and significant scientific and engineering advances that were part of the shuttle effort, does not mean they do not exist.

You know, I am continually offended and amazed by the amount and quality of the scorn heaped on NASA by slashdot denizens. NASA did what it did, it's easy to look back thirty years and trash talk about how much better you could have done. The real evidence is that no one exceeded or even came close to NASA's accomplishment with the initial shuttles, for many years afterwards.

Noone was keeping private industry from going into space in, say, 1985 or 1992. 1992 was a great year. How many private shuttle flights were there? How many?

If you think the manned space program is too bureaucratic now, well, your government agrees with you, and that's why its taking the steps it is taking. But history is pretty clear that when the shuttles were first designed and built, they were innovations.

It's a political stance, unburdened by facts, that if only the government oppressor, which consumes all resources and innovative ideas, were somehow to be pushed back, Ayn Rand's nephew would show up and build us a wonderful and lucrative train track to Mars. The truth is, we use government as a means to organize ourselves for several tasks we feel everyone should contribute to, be it defense or education or assurance of clean drinking water. NASA did things then, and continues to do things today, for which there is not an immediate payoff but that we feel there is value in doing. Are we always right? Assuredly not. The evidence is clear though that many of the things which NASA did first, others have followed.
   

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[h4rr4r]

No the shuttle was designed so that it needed the entire US military contractor complex. The Shuttle was purpose designed to spend as much tax payer funds as possible.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[khallow]

While that is probably true, it's worth noting that the rationalization for the Shuttle included a 40 launches per year work load, which would have needed the entire launch market of the US to fill.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[ShavedOrangutan]

Surely the government will do better when running our health care.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Andy Dodd]

You clearly don't know much about the Space Shuttle.

In terms of reusability, it was an utter and complete failure.

Yes it was "reusable", but it turned out more expensive to launch than one-shot non-reusable systems because its reusability approach was completely hosed. For example, half the tiles needed to be replaced after each launch.

That's why the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of nonreusable systems.

SpaceX's reuasbility research will use nothing from the shuttle except possibly lessons learned on what NOT to do.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[squidflakes]

Yes, surely corporate CEOs and even private citizens can do the minimal amount of thinking required to see that much of the modern communications infrastructure we take for granted wouldn't have been possible without a functional space program. I am certain that the innovation and materials science that allowed us to get in to space will not be overlooked by anyone, nor will people make the mistake of conflating the sunk costs of basic research with some sort of profit/loss business model that doesn't apply in this situation.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[tmosley]

My my, aren't we defensive?

You will note that I said nothing about scientific or engineering advances that came from that program. You imagined I said that. That speaks more to what is on your mind than what is on mine or anyone else's.

Are you really trying to deny that the Shuttle was designed by committee? For starters, they had no business putting the shuttle on the side of the first stage. It should have been on the top from the start. That simple design change would have saved us a shuttle. Further, the bureaucracy is directly responsible for the other shuttle loss as they forced the launch against the recommendations of their engineers.

NASA was once great. But now it isn't. It's a bureaucratic mess.

Also of note, there were no private shuttle launches because NASA had a government enforced monopoly on space launches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_spaceflight#American_deregulation After that monopoly was repealed, private spaceflight caught up to the capabilities of government sponsered spaceflight in a mere twenty years (and exceeded their number in just seven). Funny how lovers of the state deride private initiative for being ineffective when those private ventures are quite literally forced at gunpoint to stay out of the industry.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[AliasMarlowe]

This 500K$ to Mars thing... Is it so different from "pray this much to get into Heaven"?

Yes. The cost of getting to Mars is empirically measurable, and the target is to get that cost below a specified level.
That makes them as different as fire and ice.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[squidflakes]

You know, I think that if I had to choose, I'd gladly take the Space Nutter religion over it's competitors.

Traditional Religion says that there is a man living in the sky and he sees everything we do.
Space Nutterism put a man in the sky, and has been able to keep them there off and on since the 1970s. Those men were able to see much, and the unmanned cameras we put up along side them have made tremendous contributions to farming, fire fighting, building, and anything else that relies on the weather or accurate maps.

Traditional Religion says that Heaven (and it's equivalents) are beautiful places full of delights and wonders that you'll get to see when you die.
Space Nutterism put cameras on the ground and in space and we now have beautiful, wonderful, delightful pictures of the heavens that anyone can see, just about any time they want.

Traditional Religion says you should live in peace with your fellow man, but you're free to kill them if they disagree on the name of your invisible sky man.
Space Nutterism has pulled together men and women from different nations, religions, and economic classes and caused them all to work together on projects that have made life better for the whole lot of us.

Traditional Religion gives us stories from long ago and states that if you just believe in the invisible sky man hard enough, amazing things could happen to you.
Space Nutterism gives us video, pictures, audio recordings, and the actual artifacts that have been to amazing places and done amazing things.

Traditional Religion says that, through your invisible sky man, all things are possible.
Space Nutterism says that through our own hard work and cleverness, all things are possible.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[slashtivus]

There's only one thing learned from the Shuttle debacle. Namely, don't let NASA build and fly its own launch vehicle.

The shuttle was a bit of a boondoggle, but you are blaming NASA, when in all honesty it had many congress-critters and Air-force fingers involved in its design and deployment. It's rather disingenuous to place all the decision responsibility solely in the hands of NASA.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Falcon 9 does not use any of the Shuttle technology. At least as far as we know. They developed there own engine the Merlin, they are not using the tiles or the solid boosters. So how do you figure this.

Why are you so bothered that the government is not doing this and a private company is are you that myopic in your politics that only the government can do for you? That's really just quite sad.

If the government was doing this it would not be cost effective. It would be years over due and over budget and cost many factors more than what was originally projected to launch as the Space Shuttle did. The Shuttle program was a failure in almost every way. It did not meet it's design goals, launch cost targets, or budget not even close. It was unsafe for human flight. And it's launch costs ate most of NASAs budget for years preventing real research and science from being done.

But never mind that keep your rose coloured glasses on for the Shuttle and the pork based politics that created the abomination that it was.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you USians have nothing to compare to, so you'll never know.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Ihmhi]

It's not just a government problem here.

Serious R&D can be a money sink, but when you come up with the right thing it can bring in a ton of money - in the long term. That's the problem. Businesses today only give a flying fuck about the next quarter's earnings. Having a loss this quarter to make a huge profit five years down the line is blasphemy in the gospel of modern American business.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Required Snark]

I suggest that you never use a weather report for the rest of your life, asshole. Where do you think weather satellites come from, Santy Claus? Any moron knows that without the Feds there would be no weather satellites. I guess you're not even at the level of the average moron.

Of course without the benefit of global weather forecasts international shipping by air and sea would be a lot more expensive, so you should also give up anything made outside North American.

And no GPS for you either. So that means no automated tellers, because they all use GPS time signals for synchronizing transactions.

So just get the hell out of here, since you have no regard for all the technology that has been developed by the US government in the 20th and 21st century. Go to Somalia, or the tribal areas in Pakastan/Iraq, or some other shithole were you can experience the glory of living without technology, or courts and law, or electricity, clean water or medical care. Because without state and federal government none of these things exist.

I'm fed up with freeloading asshats like you whining about the government while you expect all the comfort and perks of civilization handed to you for free on a silver platter. If you can't appreciate what you have here then get the fuck out.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Better then the profit seeking CEOs that run things now. Why should the money I contribute to my healthcare be used to buy new yachts and mansions? I'd rather that money be saved and used down the line when I might really need it. Insurance companies add costs to healthcare just to line their own pockets.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[jnaujok]

Seeing that I looked into what it would take to launch a sub-orbital vehicle in 2000, I can tell you right now there were a lot of barriers to commercial space flight before the X-Prize drove the FAA to loosen regulations.

To launch a sub-orbital sounding rocket in 2000, I would have needed a government approved launch site, would have had to acquire something in the neighborhood of a million dollars of permits from the FAA, then paid to have multiple reentry studies done by "accredited research facilites" (read NASA and JPL) to determine the potential damage of a failed launch on down-field areas, at a cost of no less than $500,000 each. It was required under FAA regulations to carry at least one *billion* (yes, billion) dollars of insurance in case of launch failure, and the rocket would require a complete abort system capable of destroying the craft, which would have to be shown as reliable through no less than three successful static tests resulting in the full destruction of the vehicle.

That's just off the top of my head from what I remember. I went and actually got all the information I could find and it was a stack of requirements near two inches thick. And all I was trying to do was break the altitude record for a "model" rocket. But because I had the potential of breaking 100km of altitude, it was no longer considered a "model" and FAA rules applied to it.

So don't say there were no barriers in 1985 or 1992. That's just not true. No start-up could have afforded all the licensing and regulation overhead required to get their first rocket off the ground. The launch market was a locked-in old boys club between the existing military contractors like Lockheed and Boeing so they could continue to control the lucrative pricing structure. Unless you really think it cost Lockheed 10 times as much to build a rocket than it costs SpaceX?

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[mrchaotica]

That's why the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of nonreusable systems.

I believe you're mistaken: the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of NOTHING AT ALL.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[socrplayr813]

SpaceX's reuasbility research will use nothing from the shuttle except possibly lessons learned on what NOT to do.

Regardless of the success or failure of the shuttle, that work helped pave the way for the current situation. NASA pioneered a huge amount of research, both successful and less so. You can't take any credit away from them just because the shuttle was less than spectacular. NASA's contributions to knowledge and technology in general over the years have been staggering. Some of that knowledge is relevant, even if it's not a direct copy-and-paste situation for SpaceX.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Gravatron]

COTS? Hello?

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Nyeerrmm]

Thats how its supposed to work. Governments should be doing the things private industry and individuals can't -- in this case development of technologies that have the potential to benefit society as a whole that are expensive enough and uncertain enough to never make a valid business plan or hobby project.

Then, those developments should be fed back to the citizens (and the companies they form), so that when its possible for the private entities to take advantage of it, they can. I work for NASA, and personally I'd much rather SpaceX/Boeing/Lockheed/Orbital build launch vehicles and let us worry about high-risk tech development and exploration.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[FleaPlus]

Actually, I'd argue that SpaceX has benefitted much more from NASA's efforts in unmanned exploration and low-cost space technology than it has from the much higher-funded Space Shuttle program. For example, SpaceX has used and improved on technology like the PICA heat shield material (now the PICA-X used on Dragon) and the principles from the Fastrac experimental low-cost engine were used in the first version of SpaceX's Merlin engine. I can't think of a single thing from the Shuttle program that has benefited SpaceX, unless you count it as an example of how -not- to design a reusable spacecraft.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think the computer you are typing on came from? Yeah, the Apollo program. Without Apollo, IC development and NASA buying virtually all of the early silicon of the 1960s to early 1970s, IBM's vision would be correct. There would be a worldwide market for 5 or 6 computers.

R&D comes from going places you think you can't go. Moon base and then Mars would be next logical steps. R&D for buildings underground, fossil-fuel and low water consuming energy creation, life support, plant biology, human biology, etc. etc. all are waiting for us to invest in. Without a goal like permanent moon base or Mars settlement, this research will just not happen.

So yeah, imagine US without computers today. Great Depression of 1930s would probably look very nice in comparison.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[John Bresnahan]

I think someone needs a time out.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[camperdave]

So that means no automated tellers, because they all use GPS time signals for synchronizing transactions.

ATMs do not use GPS. They get their time signal when they connect to the network to do the transaction. If they used GPS then they would have to be outside so they could get line of sight to the GPS constellation. Now, some ATMs do have GPS units built into them, but those are for tracking the unit when somebody walks off with the whole machine.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[homer_ca]

For just one example of many, you may want to look up "cross range capability". That was a very expensive requirement to satisfy the Air Force... for something they never used.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[amliebsch]

That's ridiculous. Are we supposed to believe that, without Apollo, nobody at all would have seen the value of the integrated circuit? A friendly reminder: correlation is not causation. The fact that Apollo coincided and affected the development of the IC does not mean that Apollo *caused* the development of the IC. Furthermore, even if Apollo *did* cause the IC, it doesn't mean that something else wouldn't have caused the IC if Apollo had not.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[camperdave]

There may be all sorts of electronics, sensors, materials, etc. that wer developed for the shuttle systems that SpaceX may have incorporated into the Falcon and Dragon rockets.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[cycleflight]

For starters, they had no business putting the shuttle on the side of the first stage. It should have been on the top from the start. That simple design change would have saved us a shuttle.

Well, it _was_ on the top from the start. Then budgets got cut, structures had to be lightened, and the only way to make the damn thing go up at all was to put it on the side. The amount of smug coming from your post should at least align with the amount of fact contained therein. Reference: Chris C. Kraft.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[0123456]

That's ridiculous. Are we supposed to believe that, without Apollo, nobody at all would have seen the value of the integrated circuit?

Indeed. The IC pre-dated the AGC and while NASA definitely assisted their development by buying a lot of them the difference would probably just have been a few years delay in production ramp-up; we'd be using Core 2s right now instead of i7s.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[jafac]

"half the tiles" is an exaggeration.

The source of that problem, really, is the ATK/Thiokol SRB boosters.
The source of THAT problem was that these external strap-on boosters were congressionally-mandated components. (also-known-as. . . . PORK). In fact, the replacement system, Ares, was mandated, also, to use ATK boosters. It was designed to use the 5-segment boosters that ATK PROMISED to deliver in 1979, and never did.

The SRB's burn unevenly, causing immense vibrations, which shook-loose the external tank insulation. (among many other unnecessary problems). The insulation caused much of the tile damage. This was responsible for the loss of Columbia.

The loss of Challenger, of course, was due to a faulty seal on the side of a Thiokol booster.

Solid-fuel rockets in manned spaceflight is a ridiculous absurdity, and while I mourn the loss of NASA's heavy-lift capability, I think that it HAD to happen this way. Because we had politicians designing rockets, not rocket-scientists.

The shuttle was a GREAT idea that was absolutely ruined on capitol-hill. I am amazed that it ever flew.

That said: ATK/Thiokol makes GREAT ballistic missiles. Senators just need to stay out of the rocket-design business. Write the check and stay the fuck out of it.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[ColdWetDog]

Return on investment was pretty good for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The space shuttle... not so much.

The X-37B folks beg to differ. Smile for the camera!

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[ColdWetDog]

Group Hug time!

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[ColdWetDog]

Exactly. Most of research is learning 'what not to do'.

Douglas Adams quote:

A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Teancum]

At roughly a billion dollars per launch.... you really think the Space Shuttle was a good return on investment?

How many billion dollars do you think all of that expenditure was worth to build the X-37? Was it really worth the $150-$200 billion dumped on the shuttle program over the years?

Yeah, It was great for the investors into North American Rockwell (and subsequently Boeing), but that was because they got a sweet scam going with NASA. Want to try again?

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Teancum]

Errrr, the Shuttle proved that reusability *wasn't* fiscally viable.

The Shuttle proved that a government program focused on spreading work through as many congressional districts as possible intended to subsidize aeronautical and space engineering efforts jointly with military programs on a vehicle which just happened to also be about 10% reusable wasn't fiscally viable.

This doesn't suggest it was the reusability of the Shuttle that was the problem.... and in fact that might have actually saved a little bit of money along the way. There were so many other problems with the Shuttle program including shifting design requirements and putting all of the hopes and dreams of NASA into just one concept that resulted in the fiscal disaster known as the Space Shuttle.

Then again, I've argued that had the Saturn V production continued for the past 40 years, we could have accomplished everything that was done with the Shuttle program including launching and servicing the Hubble Telescope and even been able to send some astronauts back to the Moon a few times for the same cost or even quite a bit cheaper than it cost to run the Shuttle program alone. In the end, after you go over the costs, a Shuttle flight was roughly the same or even more than a Saturn V launch.

Then again, the design of the Saturn V was rather strongly focused on accomplishing one specific mission: getting people to the Moon and bringing them back alive. The Shuttle's mission: To do..... almost everything imaginable for NASA and the Department of Defense. THAT is why the Shuttle was messed up and not cost effective. There wasn't a real mission in mind when it was built other than to keep NASA contractors busy.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather someone who's afraid I'll take my money elsewhere be the one to provide me service than someone who knows he can put a gun to my head to take my money provide me the same service.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Teancum]

There may be all sorts of electronics, sensors, materials, etc. that wer developed for the shuttle systems that SpaceX may have incorporated into the Falcon and Dragon rockets.

Not much at all. The Falcon rocket is most notable as being the first rocket to be using Ethernet protocols (TCP/IP) as a part of the main communications bus for internal signals within the rocket (I think it uses a fiber optic cable) and much more modern electronics. The original Shuttle guidance computer was basically a 16 bit computer not much more sophisticated than the 8088 CPU that IBM used for the original IBM PC. The controller on each separate Merlin engine is considerably more sophisticated where the R&D for their development comes more from the operations of the M1A1 tank than from anything NASA did (in terms of milspec electronics).

Mind you, this is just the electronics portion that I'm familiar with. Most of the rest of the computers used by the Space Shuttle were standard computers like a MacIntosh laptop or stuff that came from the major aircraft manufacturers that was later engineered for the Shuttle more as an afterthought. The Space Shuttle certainly was not on the bleeding edge of technology for electronics or even sensors.

Advances in materials? Again, it really didn't impact the Falcon or Dragon development. I'll admit that in the 1970's the tile designs were original and brought about new classes of ceramics that were used in many other projects. Still.... how many years ago was that?

The Space Shuttle Main Engine certainly is a jewel of technical achievement.... but it is designed to use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as fuels. The Merlin engine on the Falcon uses rocket-grade kerosene.... which has very different performance characteristics. Again, not much in terms of technical heritage and in fact the Merlin engine owes much more to the F1 engine built for the Saturn V.

Sorry, this argument simply doesn't hold water unless you can provide some much better examples than the ones I've laid out here. Most of the advances in materials and technology which was used in the Falcon and in the Dragon capsule came either from private industry or from military developments (where I suppose you can claim TCP/IP in an extreme fashion). Technology from NASA? Not much.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[FatLittleMonkey]

anyone honest at SpaceX would tell you the new private industry owes a vast debt to NASA's programmes.

Errr, they do. Openly. Like Bigelow acknowledges that their modules are based on Transhab.

What people like you seem to be unable to acknowledge, is that all of that NASA R&D has been available to NASA for the entire time they've failed to develop a shuttle replacement.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[camperdave]

I was thinking mostly in terms of gyroscope chips, GPS modules, etc. - specialty electronics, maybe certain space-worthy adhesives... stuff like that. It should be noted that SpaceX has contracted Paragon Space Development Corporation to build the life support systems for the Dragon. This is the same company that has done work on Spacehab, the ISS, Orion, NASA space suits, etc. There might be some cross-over tech there.

However, I agree with you. The level is somewhere between none at all, and not very much, with a heavy leaning towards the none at all end of that spectrum.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Chris Tucker]

Pathetic troll is pathetic.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[tmosley]

Yes, a committee made a shitty decision that lead to the loss of a shuttle. What part of your post contradicts my post, other than the ad hominemesque suggestion that I am "smug", and therefore wrong.

The engineers put it on top, the bureaucrats put it on the side. The engineers said don't launch when it is freezing outside, the bureaucrats wanted to avoid embarrassment at any cost. Do you see the pattern here? Private enterprise has the correct incentives. You don't get promotions and raises by longevity, and avoid losing them by being embarrassed, you get them with results. And if the result is catastrophic failure, you lose your job, along with everyone else (more than likely), and the next in line gets a shot.

I'm not sure why this is apparently so hard to understand.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Truth is life]

The truth is much more complicated. There were literally dozens of variations of shuttle design, and most (even from the very very beginning of the design program, way back in '67 or so) involved the final orbiter hanging off the side of something. Initially, it was because it is hard to design an airplane which doesn't have an aerodynamic nose (the original booster designs were generally airplane-like). Later, it was because the needed tankage for the hydrogen and oxygen to be used by the orbiter was very bulky and would be too difficult to house in the orbiter itself, so they decided to make it external. Obviously, it's hard to fire your engines sitting on top of something, so that meant it had to be on the side.

This, by the way, means that tmosley is wrong. There were always good engineering reasons to put the Orbiter on the side of the ET, which is why that design was adopted. And if he thinks that private industry would have less reason to cost-cut (especially if there probably wouldn't be much risk until you had already made it golden)...

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[khallow]

Yet you are all foaming and drooling at doing things many orders of magnitude more energy intensive, and with no new materials. How, precisely, will any of this work? And how, exactly, is it NOT just a stunt for billionaires?

First, the energy consumption is not that significant. It takes as much energy to reach orbit per kg as a long airplane flight consumes. Second, there's the obvious economy of scale of launch frequency. Every rocket in existence has had high fixed costs from a variety of sources (lot of skilled labor required, launch pads and control rooms, payload integration infrastructure, etc). So a lot of launches using that same infrastructure will be cheaper per launch than a few launches. No new materials are required. No magical technology. Just more volume.

I wonder why you rant so much about spaceflight on Slashdot given your ignorance of basic rocket physics and economics.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[khallow]

I'm fed up with freeloading asshats like you whining about the government while you expect all the comfort and perks of civilization handed to you for free on a silver platter. If you can't appreciate what you have here then get the fuck out.

And if that was all government did, then you would have a point and wouldn't be an idiot. As to freeloading, don't give me stuff, if you don't want me to take it. Call my bluff. If you aren't going to be responsible with Other Peoples' Money, then you don't have any cause to criticize someone else for freeloading.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[khallow]

NASA bears the responsibility, hence, NASA gets the blame.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Savantissimo]

The network, however, uses GPS time signals. Everything ultimately uses GPS time signals. Even labs with cesium and maser clocks use GPS time signals.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Savantissimo]

"Errrr, the Shuttle proved that reusability *wasn't* fiscally viable."

No, the Shuttle proved that making a spaceship into an airplane makes even less sense than making an airplane into a car. It was just the wrong way to do reusable launch. As rocket pioneer Bob Truax noted back in the 80s, the airplane features accounted for nearly 2/3 of the weight (1/68 payload/liftoff for the Shuttle vs.1/25 for Saturn V).

You can certainly make a craft reusable for less than 3x the base weight. But the real driver of costs is not weight, it's complexity, and the airplane-like portions of the shuttle added hundreds of thousands of parts and innumerable interfaces. Together with the common but misguided western aerospace mindset of trying make everything as light as possible, engineered from scratch and tested and documented in fabulous detail, this made the Shuttle the most expensive launch vehicle ever. Despite the expense of so many parts being bespoke milled by teams of elves out of solid unobtainium, the overall system those parts formed was still kludgy, unreliable and dangerous.

To make the most economical launch, reusability is essential, but it can't be done with vehicles that have been pared down to the last gram. Weight, when properly used, leads to robustness and far lower costs per pound in the design - and the fixed overhead of the design is a main driver of overall program costs, especially for low numbers of launches (and that's all launch vehicles types so far). The most significant driver of design, construction and refurbishment costs is the number of parts in the design, followed by tolerances, material types and the manufacturing methods needed to make the parts. The size and weight of those parts is much less important.

So a good reusable design sets a realistic target launch cost based on a realistic number of launches, uses the simplest possible design with the fewest possible parts made from available materials to moderate tolerances using common manufacturing techniques, and designs the maximum payload capacity possible under those constraints. This will be much more lift than the market thinks it needs, but payload engineering could cost a fifth or a tenth as much if the payloads weighed two or three times what they do today, since the cost drivers of complexity and over-engineering operate in payloads even more than launch vehicles.

Truax applied these principles back in the early 60s with the Sea Dragon, which was a fully fleshed-out design with over $1M in design studies and preliminary tests (early 60s dollars, ~7.4 times that in today's money). The costs were calculated carefully and independently verified - in today's money, the Sea Dragon would need $20B for development, including test flights, over a period of six years, and a direct per-launch cost of $90-$180M for up to 1.1M pounds payload to low-earth orbit. That's $165 -$330 direct costs per kilo at max payload. Spreading the development costs over 150 launches would roughly double that to $330 - $660/kg. (For comparison the Falcon 9 launch costs $5300/kg, and the Shuttle several times that, at least $30K/kg.)

How did he get such a low cost? He designed it big. (500 feet long, 75 feet wide / 152m x 24m). Rockets are mostly tanks, tubes and shells - their dry weight goes roughly as the square of their size, while their capacity goes as the cube. Tolerances on big parts are much less critical. Material is available in common sizes - no special milling down to ribbed foil, and some of what was gained in the cube-square advantage can be spent on using common alloys rather than fancy, expensive ones, and the rest (and then some) in making it stronger. (The design was for aluminum tanks and 18% Ni maraging stainless steel for nearly everything else, including the engines. Propellant fraction 89%, vs. 93-95% for conventional desig

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[SecurityGuy]

I note that cars still only move on the ground and move at pretty much the same speeds.

And having seen how people drive them (just yesterday some moron decided he wanted to be in my lane, in the precise spot where I was in, and leaning on the horn did nothing to persuade him he COULDN'T actually occupy the same space I'm in at the same time), I say again "Thank $DIETY!".

Cars will fly until people no longer drive them. The carnage would be prohibitive. Thankfully, self driving cars are a very active area of research.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Half the tiles replaced? From someone who worked on the shuttle, we replaced very few tiles between launches. Go look at the stacking pictures taken in the vab. New tiles are dark black. You will see very few, mostly around the gear doors. Why dont you stfu if you don't know what the fuck you are talking about

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Muad'Dave]

A hint for the next time you want to try this: Fed-Ex your rocket to a country with less strict rules, fly yourself there, and launch it! Perhaps an uninhabited Bahamian Island?

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[jnaujok]

Do you know what the paperwork on shipping nearly 1000 pounds of rocket fuel out of the country is like? Not to mention a 31 foot long rocket body.

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

You clearly don't know much about the Space Shuttle.

In terms of reusability, it was an utter and complete failure.

Yes it was "reusable", but it turned out more expensive to launch than one-shot non-reusable systems because its reusability approach was completely hosed. For example, half the tiles needed to be replaced after each launch.

That's why the Space Shuttle has been decommissioned in favor of nonreusable systems.

SpaceX's reuasbility research will use nothing from the shuttle except possibly lessons learned on what NOT to do.

Tell that to the guys at NASA who actually know what they're talking about - and challenged Congress last week to stop being miserly asses.
Now the alternative is....paying the Russians to put stuff up, nice irony...

Re:Thanks, Space Shuttle

[Muad'Dave]

I assume you're using APCP or some other high-performance oxidizer+fuel combo.

In looking around a little, wikipedia has this quote: "On March 16, 2009, it was ruled that APCP is not an explosive and that manufacture and use of APCP no longer requires a license or permit from the ATF." That's gotta help reduce the paperwork.

Looking in the Emergency Response guide, I didn't find APCP or rocket fuel, but Ammonium Perchlorate is listed as placard 1442 with response 143 - not particularly dangerous, but a decent oxidizer.

A standard 40' shipping container has 39.5 feet of usable length inside - plenty for your RB and strapping/padding.

Another option would be to ship the RB and have the fuel delivered professionally - that is, if you order the fuel from a company have them deal with shipping it. Of course if you make it yourself, that's a different story. Perhaps you could make it/have it manufactured at your destination?

I intended for my previous response to be encouraging - there are generally ways of getting something done by thinking outside the box (or country, in this case).

Flash! Aaaa-aaaaah!

[Lemming Mark]

Bizarrely, it's starting to feel like the old Flash Gordon / old cartoon style "rocket ships" are actually the future! I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see them as "retro" and less futuristic-looking than the shuttle, no matter how much more advanced and practical they actually are.

This is one right way to do space.

[queazocotal]

Commercially, without massive amounts of money spent on lobbying, and showing you can do it by generating significant results rather than shiny piles of paper that do not fly.

I note in the speech - at around 33 minutes - one telling quote.
(Paraphrasing, as it was yesterday I watched it) "We have 1% of the lobbying power of Boeing and Lockmart. If the decision depends on lobbying power, we're screwed'.

This was about the decision to extend the sole-source monopoly for airforce rockets.
And he notes also that the rationale to do this is to keep the industry alive. Engines for those rockets are built in russia, other parts in switzerland, whereas SpaceX builds all key subsystems themselves in the US.

Re:This is one right way to do space.

[osu-neko]

Yes, but... if Musk is half as successful as he thinks he will be, the USAF can go take a flying leap, plenty of others will be falling over each other to buy his services.

Re:This is one right way to do space.

[ravenshrike]

Unless the .gov regulates him out of existence.

Re:This is one right way to do space.

[Teancum]

Lucky for SpaceX, they have a guardian congressman in the form of Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) who has been rather vocal about their interests. I'm not saying that LockMart or Boeing are kind here nor is SpaceX immune from political games, but the time to have shut down SpaceX was in the past. Shutting the company down now due to new regulations is going to get several members of congress having their telephones ringing off the hook, including having people like city mayors and county executives that members of congress simply can't ignore trying to rip their heads off.

It might be hard for a newer company like Masten or Armadillo Aerospace to get going, but SpaceX is doing pretty well right now. At this point, SpaceX pretty much has to put up or shut up. I'm looking forward to the upcoming Falcon 9 launch that is scheduled to happen some time before the end of this year... unless there is a major schedule slip.

Re:This is one right way to do space.

[Narishma]

It was supposed to happen in November, but it all depends on how quickly the Russians fix their Soyuz problems. The astronauts with the training to handle the Dragon still aren't on the ISS, and they can't launch before that. I wouldn't be surprised if it's pushed to next year.

Round Trip?

[A10Mechanic]

500K ? Is that a return-ticket? Or one way?

Re:Round Trip?

[Dolphinzilla]

more than likely its a one way ticket for the investors to bankruptcy....

Re:Round Trip?

[Anonymous Coward]

Return. But the price excludes airport taxes and fuel surcharge. Price per person sharing. Subject to availability.

Re:Round Trip?

[Dolphinzilla]

also its 5 millions dollars per checked bag - no carry on

Re:Round Trip?

[Confusador]

It was in the context of colonization.

Re:Round Trip?

[wvmarle]

Then better buy some clean clothes at the destination airport. Euhm... wait a minute... what destination airport?

Re:Round Trip?

[tgd]

If there's one human being on this planet who can make that claim and have it mean something, its Elon Musk.

Re:Round Trip?

[AliasMarlowe]

Then better buy some clean clothes at the destination airport. Euhm... wait a minute... what destination airport?

It's OK, leave the clothes behind. As yet, there are no laws against nudity in space.
A good shave and a powerful laxative will cut the launch weight down a tad more.

Re:Round Trip?

[Nethemas the Great]

You would be wise to learn that you should never bet against a geek with a dream and the passion, drive and intelligence to back it up. Elon is just such a person. The only way this guy will fail is if the MIC starts playing dirty.

"we should not be afraid to die"

[OzPeter]

That was a line from the backing song. Interesting choice.
 
On a different topic. It takes X amount of rocket fuel to move a payload to orbit. It takes Y amount of rocket fuel to soft land the components back to Earth. So can anyone give ball park figures for X and Y that would make sense in the context of delivering people to the ISS? It seems to me that scaling up X to include Y in the payload is a losing game.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Talderas]

As long as the extra cost from the extra fuel needed plus the cost of the fuel for soft landing the rocket is less than the cost of building a new rocket it's a winning game.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[trout007]

Good question. I don't have an answer but here is something to consider.

On the way up you have to fight air resistance for quite a while.On the way down it works for you. On the way up you aim the pointy end into the wind and on the way down you point the long side into the wind. Then you only need enough fuel to go from terminal velocity to stop.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[steelyeyedmissileman]

You'd also need fuel for course correction. Gas jets do great for orbital maneuvering, but won't help you stick a landing on a relatively small target like a launchpad.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[camperdave]

Barring aerodynamic effects, it takes as much effort to lift a mass to orbit as to lower it from orbit. (You can consider a launch/landing as a special orbit that intersects the planet's surface.) However, there are certain things to take note of:

• Booster rockets are almost never empty when they are jettisoned. They will all have extra fuel on board. (You want to make sure the boosters run at least the minimum length of time it takes to get the rocket up.)
• Boosters will already have small ullage or kick motors to make them fall away properly, so to get them to flip the booster around is not a big deal
• There are atmospheric effects that you can use to your advantage on the way back down, eg. aerobraking, backgliding, etc.
• Since the various stages are expending fuel, they don't mass as much on landing as they do on launch, so it doesn't take as much effort to land as it did to take off.

Having said that, though, the extra fuel they need to load on to make the landings possible will cut into their payload delivery capacity. Of course, the payload capacity of a Falcon 9 is far more than what's needed to launch a fully loaded Dragon to the ISS, so they have the margin to play with.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[wvmarle]

No matter what, getting stuff up there is expensive. So I'm surprised they want to bring fuel for a rocket-assisted soft landing, as that's a lot of extra weight to carry, and it directly decreases the payload (and in effect pushes up the cost per kg of payload).

Personally I'd rather go for a shuttle-type rocket plane that can glide back to earth. Or, that failing, parachutes. Of course recovery is harder as you can't guide them so well but it's surely cheaper than a soft landing using rockets when you have a thick atmosphere to help you.

The same for getting up: use wings for the first 15-20 km or so, rockets from there. Launching off an airplane. Much cheaper, energy wise. Or at least use an engine that can breath air while it's still in plentiful supply, though admittedly it sounds hard to design a rocket type engine that can both work on atmospheric air and on pure (liquid) oxygen.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[khallow]

So can anyone give ball park figures for X and Y that would make sense in the context of delivering people to the ISS?

As I recall, putting stuff into LEO (but perhaps a bit lower than the ISS) was around $30 per kg for kerosene/LOX and $100 per kg for liquid hydrogen and LOX. The rest of the cost is other stuff like the launch vehicle, ground staff, etc.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[camperdave]

Hey Slashdot! What happened to my bullets? You indented the list, but the bullets are missing.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the fuel is much cheaper than the hardware. Spend a little more on fuel, spend a lot less on hardware for the next launch. Given SpaceX's record so far, I don't think they'd mis-estimate their costs by over 100x. So unless they're outright lying, I'm happy to be hopeful.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Anonymous Coward]

So can anyone give ball park figures for X and Y that would make sense in the context of delivering people to the ISS? It seems to me that scaling up X to include Y in the payload is a losing game.

Y = large amount
X = near 0

ISS falls out of orbit without periodic boosting of the orbit. The amount of fuel required to bring whatever from orbit back to earth is small. 99.99% of the work is done by the atmosphere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGqxjK1I8KI

Only few seconds for actual engine to get you out of orbit. Minutes and minutes to get up into orbit.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the cost of refurbishing, re-assembling and testing the rocket before relaunch? It seems to me that this could approach the cost of a new rocket, since it would be very labor intensive.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Nethemas the Great]

Elon had made a comment that the fuel for a launch was about $200,000. All the money is tied up in the hardware of which most cannot be reused. If they don't have to keep building new launchers ($50M) each time, things get real cheap, real fast. The fuel required for power descent is a pretty small fraction relative to what it takes to achieve orbit. Even if they had to make two or three trips to get the same mass to orbit the total cost is still two orders of magnitude lower. Being able to reuse the "whole" vehicle is game changing. Even if they could only come up with a miserable failure rate, let say a 50/50 chance of successful reentry and landing of the launch vehicle it'd still be a huge savings.

When Elon pulls this off space will become accessible to a whole new crowd. It won't just be large corporations and multi-millionaire tourists.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd also need fuel for course correction.

Obviously.

Gas jets do great for orbital maneuvering, but won't help you stick a landing on a relatively small target like a launchpad.

[pedantic]A rocket is a gas jet[/pedantic]

Actually gas jets will do just fine for "sticking a landing on a relatively small target". However, it would be easier to use the surplus fuel in the booster or use hypergolic fluids than to haul up tanks of compressed gas.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[ssyladin]

Absolutely. *GETTING* to orbit, from a mass and technology point of view, isn't a huge hurdle any more. It's getting there affordably. Elon stated a $50M Falcon has $200,000 worth of fuel, or 0.4% of the launch price. All the rest is split between building/refurbishing the rocket in the first place, launch prep (largely labor driven), fixed overheads (buildings) and profit. If you soft-land, theoretically you're "building" once, and doing a lot less "refurbishing" because there was no jolt from a parachute landing, or corrosive salt-water to clean up. SpaceX is hammering launch prep costs already by being able to setup and launch a rocket in days not weeks/months. By reducing these costs, you're able to sell cheaper and launch more frequently, which drives the overhead allocation to any one lauch down as well.

In summary, while you may get a lower mass fraction to orbit by having soft-landing lower stage, the amount of money/equipment lost per launch is less, making the whole setup cheaper. Drop some extra coin on fuel to get more into orbit, it's still cheaper than a smaller, higher mass-fraction throw-away rocket.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Nethemas the Great]

Wings are a b*tch on your MPGs when you're trying to reach orbit. The weight of all the extras needed for glider/airplane mode are a b*tch on your MPGs. Further, do you know that they aren't planning on using aero-dynamic drag to slow the vehicle down first before lighting the landing motors? I guarantee you that they are. Powered descent is far easier to steer than gliding on a parachute. Further, the chutes alone still won't be able to make terminal velocity 0 or at least close to enough to protect the hardware. You'll still need motors for final touch down regardless. If the engineers claim they can make it cheaper by adding the expense of chutes vs. a bit more fuel to burn off an extra ~100MPH or so of an ~200MPH terminal velocity of an ascent stage falling belly side down they'll do so. My guess though is it probably isn't worth the added complexity, and cost of components.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[ColdWetDog]

Hey Slashdot! What happened to my bullets? You indented the list, but the bullets are missing.

The Slashdot coders are waiting for the next buzz word technology concept to come along before they support unordered lists. Or Unicode.

Just be glad they've figured out ASCII. This web site would be a bitch in EBCDIC.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Talderas]

I imagine some economies of scale are going on as well as the ability to launch more frequently since you don't have to fabricate a whole new rocket for each launch.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[trout007]

They already have a hypergol cluster for the dragon.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk has said that every 5 lbs of added weight on the first stage subtracts 1 lbs from the total payload.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[camperdave]

Just be glad they've figured out ASCII. This web site would be a bitch in EBCDIC.

I suppose I should be glad of that. However, ordered and unordered lists were working just fine before their latest "upgrade".

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[erice]

I imagine some economies of scale are going on as well as the ability to launch more frequently since you don't have to fabricate a whole new rocket for each launch.

Economies of scale actually favor expendables. Building a rocket becomes a routine, assembly line afair. Each rocket becomes cheaper. Also, refurbishing is essentially a "hand built" since time is going to be little bit different.

Re:"we should not be afraid to die"

[Savantissimo]

I estimate (guess) that this will cut about 25% of the payload, they will lose or wreck 5% of the returning vehicles, it will take about 20% of the new manufacturing cost of a vehicle to refurbish and recertify the vehicle after it lands (8% of customer launch cost), and new vehicle manufacturing cost is 40% of overall customer launch costs (the rest being design costs, range costs, overhead and profits). If the added design, manufacturing and added risk costs of the recovery system are low, it looks like it barely might make economic sense now, but if the payload penalty or loss rates are lower or refurbishing is cheaper, it could make a profit.

Yeah, right

[Shivetya]

No, I am truly in awe of this idea, if they pull off even a third of it they will roflstomp the national programs. As someone else commented, the music was an interesting choice, it really confers they are high confident of their design and eventuality of success. Frankly, stuff like this is what it will take to inspire the next generation about space because it is so fantastic looking.

Re:Yeah, right

[bondsbw]

if they pull off even a third of it they will roflstomp the national programs

Not so sure that getting a third of the way into space will do anything to those national programs.

Re:Yeah, right

[Sperbels]

Don't be silly. NASA could build this. There are no revolutionary concepts here, they go back to a time before we even launched a single rocket into space. But the question is, is it safe and practical? Frankly, I don't see how it could be. High performance rocket engines are not inherently reusable things. And the more fuel you leave on the rocket for controlled re-entry and a powered landing, means a lot less cargo you can take into orbit. SpaceX is wasting their time pursuing this.

Re:Yeah, right

[0123456]

Don't be silly. NASA could build this.

Given how many development programs they've cancelled since the shuttle, that's debatable.

High performance rocket engines are not inherently reusable things.

That's why reliability is more important than performance if you want a reusable engine.

And the more fuel you leave on the rocket for controlled re-entry and a powered landing, means a lot less cargo you can take into orbit. SpaceX is wasting their time pursuing this.

If halving the payload means you can reuse the stages ten times, then you can launch up to five times as much for the same amount of money. You seem to have fallen into the 'efficiency is everything' mindset which plagued NASA when designing the shuttle and is why it ended up costing so much.

Re:Yeah, right

[Anonymous Coward]

if they pull off even a third of it they will roflstomp the national programs

Not so sure that getting a third of the way into space will do anything to those national programs.

Shush you and your reality. Don't you understand that aaaaaallllll the engineers before didn't know how to use the periodic table of elements? Elon Musk, HE knows where the magical materials and energy sources are!

This is all delusional. In ten years, no one will talk about this bilge. For one thing, we're running out of the cheap energy known as oil. For another, Musk is the classic tech egomaniac; he lucked his way into big bucks with a few lines of code, now he thinks anything is possible and that Star Trek is a documentary.

The universe will show him in due time how nuts he is.

Speaking of space, whatever happened to that Japanese space hotel from 1997? Oh yeah, nothing. How about that space-based solar power deal with PG&E and Solaren? Oh yeah, total BS scam. You'll make more energy pointing the rocket at a windmill than you'll get from space.

Re:Yeah, right

[Nethemas the Great]

Fuel is ~$200,000/launch compared to a ~$51,000,000 rocket. Do the math then explain their fallacy of thinking to us.

Re:Yeah, right

[Issarlk]

> cheap energy known as oil
Considering the cost of fuel is 200000$, even if oil cost 10 time as much it would still be about 4% of the cost of the rocket. Also, I'm sure fuel made with solar power will be around for a long time.

Re:Yeah, right

[Sperbels]

Given how many development programs they've cancelled since the shuttle, that's debatable.

Many of those development programs weren't realistic to begin with. There were at least a couple of SSTO programs that failed because they were gambling on technology that hadn't been developed yet. The most efficient design here is just a big fucking rocket with a payload on the top. Efficiency is the most important thing...because it costs so bloody much to put anything into orbit.

If halving the payload means you can reuse the stages ten times, then you can launch up to five times as much for the same amount of money. You seem to have fallen into the 'efficiency is everything' mindset which plagued NASA when designing the shuttle and is why it ended up costing so much.

Um, no. This is an even worse idea than the space shuttle. The Saturn 5 had 3-4 times the launch capacity of the shuttle. But to build the ISS all we had was the space shuttle. So we had to build it in dozens of little pieces and spend 1 Billion+ per launch to get them up there. With the Saturn 5, we could have orbited the same amount of cargo in far fewer launches. Since one Saturn 5 launch actually cost less than 1 shuttle launch...you do the math... you tell me...what's better?

Conventional disposable rockets are the way to go. It's all about how much cargo you can get into orbit, and a conventional rocket is clearly the cheapest most efficient way to do it. It's a design dictated by physics....not science fiction authors who like SSTO space planes. You have this wild belief that reusability can be made to work. Why do so many people want to waste the future of our space program gambling on the idea that this could be true. Just build a big figgin' rocket. That's all you need.

Re:Yeah, right

[Sperbels]

Fuel is ~$200,000/launch compared to a ~$51,000,000 rocket. Do the math then explain their fallacy of thinking to us.

How about this. Call me when you have a working prototype made with your own money. What your describing is science fiction.

Re:Yeah, right

[FatLittleMonkey]

The most efficient design here is just a big fucking rocket with a payload on the top.

It costs $X to build the fixed facilities. $Y/yr to maintain the facilities and minimum workforce. And $Z to build the actual rocket. Therefore the cost of launch of one rocket is $X/total-rockets + $Y/rockets-per-year + $Z.

So now your giant rocket costs $2X to build the facilities, $2Y to maintain the facilities. And $2Z to build. But it launches 4 times the payload. So it's twice as efficient, right? Except that you are launching 1/4 of the rockets for the same payload.

So that's $8X/rockets + $8Y/rockets-per-year + $2Z. Still potentially more efficient, if Z is larger than X+Y. But it's not. In rocketry, X+Y is always the dominant part of the costs. NASA's annual shuttle budget was almost the same whether they launched one shuttle per year or four (or none).

SpaceX's ReallyBigRocket has the advantage of using two F9 first stages as boosters for another F9 first stage. That increases their production rates without adding whole new designs. Likewise, they use lots of Merlin engines on all their rockets, F1, F9 and FH. Lots of units-per-year, lower cost-per-unit.

Nasa's ReallyBigRocket uses shuttle engines on the first stage, solid rockets motors on the boosters, and yet another rocket engine on the second stage. It will launch about once a year. Therefore the cost per launch is the entire annual budget of the program, plus a year's worth of the amortised cost of developing and maintaining three different systems. Horrible way to do business.

tl;dr - Economies of scale in rocketry is based on the number of units per year, not the size of the units.

Re: ISS cost.

The high cost of ISS wasn't due to its modularity. It was due to the lack of incremental development of technology leading up to its design. NASA didn't learn how to build space stations before they tried to design and build the Freedom Space Station. (Same thing happened with the shuttle. Trying to go from a 6 tonne Apollo capsule to a 100 tonne spaceplane in one step.)

Have you ever built anything that required a completely new skillset? Did you notice that the third one you built was easier than the first? Did you notice that scaling up slowly made it easier still? (In fact, scaling up was often easier than building that first small version.)

Apollo followed from Gemini which followed from Mercury, all within the same decade, which followed from the previous decade's missile development. Even within Apollo, each flight added and tested one extra step of the final mission. One flight, one mission.

tl;dr - Learn your craft before you design your "craft".

This seems unlikely to work

[JoshuaZ]

This requires separate landing systems for each stage of the rocket. This is a lot more added mass. And the worst thing to add to a rocket is more mass. Simple reusable systems like parachutes (as were used by the shuttle's solid rocket boosters) are one thing, but full-out rocket powered landing will weigh a lot more, will require a lot of additional fuel, and will add all sorts of technical requirements.

At this point, it doesn't seem that chemical rockets will become that more efficient barring major breakthroughs, like much lighter alloys, or totally new chemical reactions for the fuel. Neither of these seem very likely right now, and the second seems to be much less likely. The first also won't do that much. At this point, I have to be wondering if we should be spending a lot more resources on researching non-rocket methods of going to space. It seems like we may have a bad example of technological lockin since we've put so much work into chemical rockets.

But there are a lot of other methods out there and we should be looking at them. Nuclear rockets are an obvious example, and they can be built without having any serious radioactivity (you use a conventional fission reactor to heat steam). The basic reactor can be suprisingly light- in the 1950s the US and the USSR both experimented with nuclear powered aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_aircraft and reactor technology has improved a lot since then. Another possibility is a space gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_gun. They have been successfully used to do suborbital lobs. They are completely reusable. And since they don't require sending most of their own fuel into space they avoid the common problem of needing more fuel to lift fuel (which is why rockets get bigger fast compared to the size of payload). There are more exotic ideas also like launch loops, space elevators, and space fountains but they seem to be much further from practicality at this point. In the case of space elevators, the main technical problem is making enough high quality nanotubes in a supporting resin, and research into that is ongoing because high quality carbon nanotubes will be useful a large number of different much more mundane technologies.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[Anonymous Coward]

The space gun concept is interesting, but what if you could do it with a maglev subway train in a partial vacuum and a 50-mile long track? Would the G-force be under 5 for orbital velocity then? It would still be expensive, but not in the long run.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[EdZ]

Forget nuclear aircraft, the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA?useskin=monobook]NERVA[/url] engine was pretty well tested (at least one destructive test too).

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[bondsbw]

Space guns are impractical for launching humans to full orbital velocity due to high G-forces and atmospheric drag. However, combined with rockets, a hybrid system could do the trick and reduce onboard fuel. That is essentially the launch system used in aircraft carriers, but on a massive scale.

And I like the idea from the AC, although you still have the fundamental problem of high atmospheric drag at low altitudes. Perhaps we should add a ramp built a few miles upward... :)

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[Anonymous Coward]

If we can split cargo and human into two separate stages with the cargo could be pickup in space, it would allow for cheaper launch cost or a longer traveling distance due to extended supplies. Of course this method is much more complex and would either require a docking station (too bad ISS can't fill this roll) or orbital pickup.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[camperdave]

Forget nuclear aircraft, the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA?useskin=monobook]NERVA[/url] engine was pretty well tested (at least one destructive test too).

Forget nuclear aircraft, the NERVA engine was pretty well tested (at least one destructive test too).

FTFY

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[tgd]

If you can cut your payload in half, and in return cut your costs to launch that payload in half, you break even on your launches.

If you cut your payload in half to have recoverable rockets, but you cut the cost of the launch by 90%, you can launch five times as much to orbit for the same price.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in conjunction with their las system (launch escape system) which is already required by agreement between them and nasa for man travel. That means instead of a new system that has to be added, it's merely an extension of one that will already exist so the extra weight won't be quite as bad.

Fuel/weight cost isn't the only aspect to consider. Inspection vs construction cost is another aspect. Also, the rocket must still be recovered due to environmental and security reasons which also adds the aspect of recovery cost. While the launch cost increases, the recovery cost and vehical cost decreases (as they only need to inspect rather then rebuild the first two stages).

Overall, sounds like a great goal if difficult to achieve since this is an extension of a system they already must develop.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[FleaPlus]

This requires separate landing systems for each stage of the rocket. This is a lot more added mass. And the worst thing to add to a rocket is more mass. ... At this point, it doesn't seem that chemical rockets will become that more efficient barring major breakthroughs, like much lighter alloys, or totally new chemical reactions for the fuel. Neither of these seem very likely right now, and the second seems to be much less likely.

Actually, the Merlin engines SpaceX has been using have been getting more efficient, with the new engines providing 50% more thrust and a slightly higher ISP than their earlier engines. This extra capability is presumably what allows them to "spend" mass on things like VTVL landing systems and the required excess propellant.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[david.given]

This requires separate landing systems for each stage of the rocket. This is a lot more added mass. And the worst thing to add to a rocket is more mass. Simple reusable systems like parachutes (as were used by the shuttle's solid rocket boosters) are one thing, but full-out rocket powered landing will weigh a lot more, will require a lot of additional fuel, and will add all sorts of technical requirements.

Does it?

Don't forget, those Merlin engines are restartable (something NASA never went in for much). So the first two stages land on the engines they took off with. And now they're empty, so they're very light. The second stage needs an heat shield, but other than that the only extra mass you need are the landing gear, avionics and attitude control, and the fuel. And even some of the fuel comes for free too, as there's a hefty safety margin in both stages, which you can eat into when landing.

So yeah, you are going to need more mass to do this, which will eat into the payload, but not as much as you might think. If the cost advantages of being able to recycle the stages outweighs the decrease in payload, then it'll be worth it. (Which, of course, for the shuttle it wasn't.)

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[Nethemas the Great]

Fuel is ~$200,000 per launch, the rocket is ~$51,000,000. Even if they failed to recover the launcher 50% of the time... Even if they had to launch twice for every non-recoverable launcher they're still outclassing the non-reusable launcher on cost by two orders of magnitude. SpaceX would be brain dead to not try.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[camperdave]

The ISS orbits at 7600m/s. To reach that velocity at 5G would take...
[Calculation]
v^2=u^2+2as
7600^2=0^2+2*5*9.8*s
s= approximately 589,000 metres
[/Calculation]
... a track about 600 km long, or about 366 miles.

Re:This seems unlikely to work

[Anonymous Coward]

and this is without them doing anything exotic like thrust vectoring or aerospikes like the x33 used.
they were effecient enough to let it do SSTO. (those fuel tanks never went anywhere though)

if they make an eventual merlin using those systems and scale some more, their effeincy will fly through the roof, like having the payload of a 747 jumbo jet, at the price range of a concorde flight to get to ISS orbit.

No Parachutes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be wise to include parachutes at some stage of the descent, to conserve some fuel?

Re:No Parachutes?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is a parachute?

Re:No Parachutes?

[mark_osmd]

I was thinking the same thing but then you lose the predictability of where the vehicle would land. They want to get back to that particular pad. If you just want to splash in the 50km by 50km box in the ocean, parachutes work well.

Slightly worrying

[EdZ]

Something else tucked away in there:

Musk also confirmed that the currently scheduled November or December flight of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to the space station will likely be delayed due to the failure of a Soyuz rocket carrying a Progress re-supply ship to the ISS on August 24, 2011.
“It actually will likely result in a delay to our launch to the ISS,” Musk said, “and NASA rightly wants to have the appropriate level of astronauts with the right training when we arrive, so it looks like January for the launch to space station, and that is contingent upon the Russians meeting the schedule they’ve currently stating."

It sounds reasonable, but it also sounds like someone doesn't want SpaceX to have the enormous PR gain of launching a mission to the ISS when everyone else's pants are down.

Re:Slightly worrying

[camperdave]

It sounds reasonable, but it also sounds like someone doesn't want SpaceX to have the enormous PR gain of launching a mission to the ISS when everyone else's pants are down.

For the tests, SpaceX needs two astronauts onboard the ISS who are qualified to operate the DEXTRE/Canadarm2 robotic arm. One is on board, and the other was set to launch on a Soyuz around this time. However, the accident has shifted the launch schedules, so the second astronaut won't make it up in time for SpaceX to make their qualification flight this year.

But maybe you're right. Maybe they blew up a Progress re-supply ship and endangered the lives of not only the ISS crew, but all the ground crew at the launch site (not to mention the millions of dollars that a supply schedule slip brings about), just to make SpaceX look bad.

Re:Slightly worrying

[khallow]

If they did so, it may well be good return on investment. Aerospace is a remarkably cutthroat business, the Russians have few legal constraints against this sort of thing, and SpaceX looks to be a very dangerous competitor.

Re:Slightly worrying

[Anonymous Coward]

With the shuttle program shut down there is not enough ISS re-supply capacity to keep the station running. Even with SpaceX, the Russians would still have to operate at full capacity.

Re:Slightly worrying

[EdZ]

But maybe you're right. Maybe they blew up a Progress re-supply ship and endangered the lives of not only the ISS crew, but all the ground crew at the launch site (not to mention the millions of dollars that a supply schedule slip brings about), just to make SpaceX look bad.

I'm not sure how you possibly got that idea from my post.
My point was that at the scheduled launch time for COTS2, with Progress being unavailable, SpaceX would have the only resupply vehicle available (the next ESA ATV isn't scheduled for another 6 months). Like with the 'wheel of cheese' on COTS1, I wouldn't have put it past SpaceX to add a large quantity of unofficial resupply material as 'test mass'.

Re:Slightly worrying

[khallow]

With the shuttle program shut down there is not enough ISS re-supply capacity to keep the station running. Even with SpaceX, the Russians would still have to operate at full capacity.

The Russians can increase their launch capacity and they probably are. The theoretical launch frequency for rockets is probably similar to planes, namely, thousands to hundreds of thousands of launches a day. I don't think deliberate sabotage actually happened, just that the Russians figured out how to inconvenience a major threat as part of their recovery plan.

DCX - SSTO

[tekrat]

I peripherally worked on the DC-X program which was a single stage to orbit concept vehicle that would have eventually lead to a larger rocket that was considered as a shuttle replacement.

The problem with the DCX was that it had to reserve fuel for the landing. The whole idea was to take off from something no bigger than a heli-pad (no gantry, and just a few people manning launch control) fly, and land back on the heli-pad.

Worked great until you got to the landing part: Two big issues were during landing, thrust would bounce off the tarmac, and end up setting the rocket on fire, the other problem was the landing gear. On one test flight, one leg failed to deploy, the rocket landed, then tipped over and exploded... which essentially killed the project.

The DCX was conceived during Reagen's "Star Wars" project, and built and flown during the Clinton era.

Unless there's been some breakthrough for the Falcon, I believe Musk is going to run into exactly the same issues.

Personally, I believe Rutan is on a better track, following the X-15 and scaling up. That's the only method for full re-useability.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[Arlet]

Unless there's been some breakthrough for the Falcon, I believe Musk is going to run into exactly the same issues.

You mean that on one test flight, one leg will fail to deploy, the rocket will land, tip over and explode, and Musk will cancel the project ?

Re:DCX - SSTO

[joh]

The DC-X failure happened because they were on a shoestring budget, couldn't afford neither redundancy in the pneumatic lines for leg deployment nor someone checking twice (someone forgot to connect a line before launch)...

What do you think would have happened to the Space Shuttle if they had treated the hardware the same way? *Everything* operated like DC-X would fail. There is no room for amateurs in spaceflight, period.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[rufty_tufty]

Don't forget DCX was also trying out composite fuel tanks, aerospike engines and new body lift profile and I'm sure lots of other things that I can't remember off the top of my head.
I get the impression it was typical modern NASA, everyone put their latest pet project/ "cool idea" onto the one thing that has funding and then it doesn't work because it's too many new things at once. The whole thing goes up in flames and we're left with the shuttle.
If they just did normal engineering and what they used to do which was 1 test project per technology. But no NASA knows better.
This is why I really have hope for Space-X they're doing one small step at a time.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[tekrat]

No, you're thinking of the X-33 VentureStar.

The project I'm talking about was the DC-X Delta Clipper. It looked like a flying salt shaker, took off and landed vertically (i.e. on its tail).

The engines were not aerospike, but gimbaled like the shuttle engines, so they could individually pivot to maintain balance as well as provide a form of thrust vectoring (the vehicle could hover for example, and then slide sideways to a different landing area, while maintaining an upright flight profile).
 

Re:DCX - SSTO

[0123456]

What do you think would have happened to the Space Shuttle if they had treated the hardware the same way?

It would have exploded and killed the crew one flight in sixty?

Re:DCX - SSTO

[John Bresnahan]

No, you're mixing up the DC/X with the X33.

The DC/X was an inexpensive test vehicle, using off-the-shelf technology. The X33 was a hugely expensive boondoggle that perfectly demonstrates what's wrong with NASA.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[cycleflight]

If the space shuttle landing gears were deployed pneumatically they wouldn't be the space shuttle landing gears. While there is redundancy in the system, they're actually pyrotechnically actuated. Explosions are still the most reliable way to actuate anything because all that needs to happen is to manufacture a part correctly, not damage it/make it damage tolerant, and then release potential energy. Likely any landing gear needed for a spacecraft such as the Falcon would be similarly actuated, as there is no reason for retraction to occur outside of preparation for its next launch.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[J05H]

This is one of the advantages of older water-landing proposals like the Boeing LEO from the 70s. It would have reached terminal velocity in the atmosphere then propulsive braking and dropped into a freshwater landing pond. That was for much, much larger hardware. Jon Goff has done extensive trades on propulsive vs heatshield/chute/etc reentry methods and propulsive comes out looking pretty good.

This reusable Falcon will have the same fireproof curtaining between it's engines and the rest of the outside is metal so not much of it will burn. Still has the issue of blast coming back from the tarmac. The animation's landing legs are pretty hefty, have to wait and see on real hardware.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[Anonymous Coward]

Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, and possibly Blue Origin all seem to have rocket translation and landing pretty well under control.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[joh]

The Shuttle landing gear is spring/gravity deployed with a pyro backup.

Re:DCX - SSTO

[cycleflight]

The Shuttle landing gear is spring/gravity deployed with a pyro backup...

... that fired on every single landing ever done by any space shuttle, since not getting the gear down falls in the way-not-good category for crew survival. You're right that they were technically a "backup," but they weren't contingency based, they fired every time.

Why Mars?

[Bardwick]

I know it it has some merit, but I would think establishing a perm. moon base would be "what's next". Your only three or four days out, can work out the logistics, effects, communication, etc... See if people really do turn into jellyfish after 6 months in what 1/6 gravity. The only reason I can see for colonizing mars (at this point) is "because". Let's bet on black before we bet on green zero.

Re:Why Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd aim for the moon before Mars as well, given the choice, but really, an actual space *station*, floating in near-zero orbit around a gravity anchor, is almost certainly the future of space habitation. That is where we need to thrive, if we are going to move Earth-life from its gravity-bound existence. Isn't that why Momma Nature saw fit to evolve big brains in us?

No wear rockets?

[sgt scrub]

/-- So if could reuse it would lead to 100 times reduction in cost.

If they can (launch + re-assemble + launch) * 100 at no additional cost for repairs they need to let the engineers of the world know wtf they are making this rocket out of. I don't know of any substance or design that allows for that much use. These guys probably have private shark tanks with full laser gear so I'm not going to completely discount them. Regardless, the numbers sound way fishy.

Re:No wear rockets?

[pavon]

Yeah, even ignoring wear on the rocket, these number would mean that their integration, test, fuel, launch ops and profit only account for less than 1% of the cost of a current launch. There is no way that is correct. Either someone took that number out of context or they are on crack (I'm guessing the former).

Re:No wear rockets?

[Thagg]

I was with Musk right up until he said 100x cheaper.

If he had said 2x cheaper, that would have been a revolution, 10x cheaper is substantially beyond believability, but 100x cheaper just means that he's lying, and doesn't care that you know it.

Landing the first stage makes some sense -- it's the biggest part, and it's not going all that fast at burnout, and it's not all that far from the launch pad at that point, either. It's light and has a lot of drag, and should slow down quickly.

The second stage though, is really iffy. It appears that they're going to land it at the end of the first orbit. All the weight of the stage is toward the back -- the engines, and the landing struts. But, they're showing the stage re-entering nose-first -- unless they're carrying a lot of balllast (or a *lot* of fuel) the stage will be unstable for reentry -- and stability during reentry is not something you want to be unsure about! Keeping the cryogenic fuel and oxidizer cold in flight-weight tanks during four of five minutes of reentry is going to be a massive challenge -- and if you're going to do it with ablative surfaces then it's really not all that reusable, is it?

Anyway, I admire the man and the company enormously; and wish him all the best. There are surely things I don't know about the program, but I'll enjoy watching!

Re:No wear rockets?

[Dolphinzilla]

don't forget the Millennium Falcon can fly too - I've seen it on the big screen !

Re:No wear rockets?

[x6060]

Um, I think they are saying that rocket fuel is cheap (which it is), but the rockets themselves are not.

Re:No wear rockets?

[sgt scrub]

The sentence I quoted is saying they do not have the expense of replacing, repairing, or maintaining the rockets in 100 launches.

Re:No wear rockets?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has a target of $500,000 per person to Mars. If you throw out all other other costs to mars beyond a dragon launch he has to bring the cost of a launch to $3.5M per launch. So he is definitely targeting more than a 10x reduction in price.

He reports the per mission fuel cost is $200000 a 100x reduction in launch cost from $50M results would mean that $300000 would have to be
for integration, test, and launch ops. That seems a paltry sum until you figure he plans to run 70 launches a year. Which lets him spend $21M
per year on all of the overheads. That $21M does seem too small to believe. So I expect a lot of the question becomes how many launches
a year are needed for economies of scale to drop launch costs 100x.

It doesn't look like he needs to make his 100x number to make the per person cost to mars $500,000 so I will take it with a grain of salt and say that
100x looks like a darn good engineering target, and the closer Space-X can come to that 100x reduction the more space becomes feasible.

Re:No wear rockets?

[queazocotal]

As I understood the speech - at this point he took off onto what was achievable in the far future.
It's reasonable to assume that with a mature technology - you can get an order of magnitude or two on launch cycles, with a similar mass fraction.
Can the current hardware do 100 launches - even with service - vanishingly unlikely.

Re:No wear rockets?

[FleaPlus]

It's worthnoting that the bulk of the mass and cost is in the first stage and its engines. For example, the Falcon 9 first stage has 9 Merlin engines and the upper stage only has one. This is even more extreme with the Falcon Heavy's 27:1 ratio. Reusing just the first stage might not get them a 100x cost reduction, but it should get them most of the way there.

Re:No wear rockets?

[x6060]

No, no it doesn't. It says 100x reduction in cost.

That means if you have rockets that cost 10,000,000$ and it is 50,000$ in fuel for each launch, and carries 100kg into orbit, but it is non-reusable to get 10,000kg into space it costs 1,005,000,000$ or 100,000$/kg

Now if you have a rocket that costs about the same, has the same weight capacity but is reusable but takes a bit more fuel per launch (lets say 60,000$), Lets say you only fire the rockets 10 times, that means you need 10 rockets. Total cost is 160,000,000$ or 16,000$/kg.

With only launching the rocket 10 times you reduced the cost to only 16% of its original cost.

Rocket fuel is cheap compared to the actual expense of the rockets themselves. No, this one technology allow will probably not get that 100x reduction, however even if they get just a few launches out of each vehicle then this is a HUGE step in the right direction.

Re:No wear rockets?

[Teancum]

don't forget the Millennium Falcon can fly too - I've seen it on the big screen !

Don't forget.... the Falcon rocket IS the Millennium Falcon. Just ask Elon Musk where he got the name for the rocket!

Re:No wear rockets?

[J05H]

100X cheaper is roughly $100 per pound to LEO. That is absolutely doable with robust RLV architectures. It's just that no one has really tried yet. Musk has shown an entirely new way of building and operating otherwise conservative rockets. He chose the most known path (single core, 2nd stage, capsule) for a default cargo/crew system but used his knowledge of innovation to make that into the most affordable rocket on the planet, in 8 years.

Re:No wear rockets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your equation is wrong. The justification for 100x cheaper is that he plans to fly each Falcon 9 not 100 times, but 1000 times:

From http://www.space.com/13140-spacex-private-reusable-rocket-elon-musk.html:
"But the cost of the fuel and oxygen and so forth is only about $200,000," Musk said."So obviously, if we can reuse the rocket, say, a thousand times, then that would make the capital cost of the rocket for launch only about $50,000."

Re:No wear rockets?

[Anonymous Coward]

The justification for being 100 times cheaper is that he plans to fly each Falcon 9 up to 1,000 times. This gives plenty of slack for refurbishment.

From space.com:

But a fully reusable rocket could change the equation dramatically. Musk illustrated the point by citing SpaceX's Falcon 9, which costs between $50 million to $60 million per launch in its current configuration.

"But the cost of the fuel and oxygen and so forth is only about $200,000," Musk said."So obviously, if we can reuse the rocket, say, a thousand times, then that would make the capital cost of the rocket for launch only about $50,000."

Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

SpaceX Reveals Plans For Full Launch System Re-usability

And I'm revealing my plans for world domination with an army of supermodels.

SpaceX might want to do a little less revealing of plans and a little more flying in space. I'm getting tired of hearing about what they're gonna do and would like to hear a little more about what they've done besides send up another roman candle.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[Haelyn]

And I'm revealing my plans for world domination with an army of supermodels.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[Teancum]

SpaceX might want to do a little less revealing of plans and a little more flying in space.

SpaceX has plenty of experience operating spacecraft in space and sending stuff up. The reason they can brag about what they are going to do next is because they can also brag about what they've done.

If you think you are going to get an army of supermodels, I dare you to produce even an autograph of one of those women first... preferably with a phone number that you've called to hear you get humiliated if you've even been able to get that far with your plans. I might give you the benefit of the doubt that you've been a private in some army.... perhaps. I guess that gives you some experience in running an army of any kind?

Re:Another Big Announcement

[FatLittleMonkey]

I'm getting tired of hearing about what they're gonna do and would like to hear a little more about what they've done

Between June 2002 to December 2010, they: Designed, built and flew an entirely new rocket engine. And designed, built and flew two completely new launchers based on that new rocket engine. And designed, built, flew and landed and recovered an entirely new pressurised cargo capsule large enough to be modified to carry crew. And they spent about $600 million on all those developments. NASA and its prime contractors literally cannot do that.

Now they are working on man-rating their launcher. And making that launcher reusable. And building an entirely new type of launch abort system for their capsule. And make a crewed version of that capsule. And building an even bigger launcher. And building a new bigger rocket engine. And getting commercial and government customers for their existing launchers. And all for a shoestring contribution from NASA.

In the same period NASA and its prime contractors tried to build two new launchers based on existing hardware, with a new capsule, for several tens of billions of dollars. And failed. So they are now hoping to build one big launcher based on existing hardware, and a capsule, for several more tens of billions of dollars. And if they are very lucky, they will have it ready for manned launch by 2020.

And I'm revealing my plans for world domination with an army of supermodels.

And if you had already taken over several nations with a battalion of regular models, I would take you more seriously.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

Between June 2002 to December 2010, they: Designed, built and flew an entirely new rocket engine.

It took them nearly a decade to put an unmanned vehicle into orbit. And that was in 2010.

How long did it take NASA from its inception to putting a man in orbit? Four years? And that was in 1958-62 when they had to invent practically everything they used.

Again, we have NASA putting a man in orbit in FOUR YEARS starting in 1958. Private industry, half a century later, takes 8 years to put an unmanned vehicle into orbit (with the government's help - see SpaceNews, August 30).

So far, the highly vaunted private industry efforts to reproduce what the federal government did 50 years earlier have not really knocked anyone's socks off. Apparently, John Galt ain't all that.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

The reason they can brag about what they are going to do next is because they can also brag about what they've done.

"What they've done"? Is putting an unmanned vehicle into orbit, with help from NASA, in 2010 such a big deal? Really?

Didn't NASA do that about fifty years ago?

Re:Another Big Announcement

[FatLittleMonkey]

Firstly NASA didn't build the Redstone and Atlas that launched the Mercury capsules. They were ICBMs developed over the previous decade. Secondly, NASA consumed 4.5% of the US budget during the 1960's. Thirdly, and most importantly, NASA cannot do those things any more. They haven't successfully built or commissioned a new launcher in 30 years.

SpaceX built two new launchers, and brand new rocket engine, and a capsule, for less than NASA spent on the Ares I/Orion launch abort system. Why is it so hard for people like you to celebrate that? Hell, you can't even accept other people celebrating it. Does it really hurt you so much?

Apparently, John Galt ain't all that.

I am not a Randroid. Randroids are universally cretins.

SpaceX (and those like them) gives NASA (and taxpayers) more bang for their buck than NASA's traditional contractors. Therefore we should do more of that. (OTOH, public health care is cheaper and less wasteful than private health care. Therefore we should do more of that.)

Re:Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

SpaceX (and those like them) gives NASA (and taxpayers) more bang for their buck than NASA's traditional contractors.

It's not hard to give "more bang for their buck" when you're not concerned with making a profit.

Let's see what happens when SpaceX has to show shareholders a balance sheet. When you've got a business model besides "eccentric billionaire's hobby" then you can talk about "giving more bang for buck". To say that SpaceX did something "for less than NASA spent on the Ares I/Orion launch system" is not really meaningful when you're doing something without profit. I assure you, when Lockheed-Martin did the work for NASA, they got paid handsome profits. When SpaceX starts spending the kind of lobbying dollars that those guys spent to get contracts and that all gets baked into the bottom line along with profits it's not going to be such a huge savings.

I suppose there is a segment of the population that "celebrates" when a hitter smacks 10 home runs in a season, but normally you bring out the ticker tape when you break new ground or at least come within hailing distance of the record or at least do something that wasn't done half a century ago. And when NASA was consuming 4.5% of the US budget they were in a race to put a guy on the moon for the first time in an age when supercomputers were about as powerful as the solar-powered calculators they give out for free at trade shows. In 1960, Orville Wright had only been dead about 10 years. SpaceX is putting out press releases about an unmanned craft in orbit when there have been manned space stations in orbit for FORTY YEARS. Think about it for just a moment.

Would you "celebrate" if a company announced they were bringing out a 14,400 baud modem? Would you celebrate if a company announced that they had built and were preparing to sell a computer with 9k of memory that was as big as a couple of refrigerators for $120,000? Well that was what a PDP-1 cost in 1960, the year NASA first put a vehicle in orbit. When SpaceX put an unmanned vehicle in orbit last year, how much computing power could you buy for $120,000?

I'm not sure why a segment of the tech nerd community has decided to be wowed by SpaceX. I don't know if they really believe that this is going to herald in some new age of being able to hop on a space elevator for the cost of a Chicago-Minneapolis flight and visit Alpha Centauri or something. If any other technology company was making as much hoopla about so little as SpaceX, they'd be laughed off Slashdot's Idle page.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[FatLittleMonkey]

It's not hard to give "more bang for their buck" when you're not concerned with making a profit.

SpaceX has been profitable for the past few years. It has $3 Billion of orders on the books. (For example, they have the contract for the Iridium constellation upgrade.)

To say that SpaceX did something "for less than NASA spent on the Ares I/Orion launch system" is not really meaningful when you're doing something without profit.

"Did something"? For the price NASA paid for one single component of their capsule, SpaceX built a whole capsule, and the whole launcher, and "tested" them by actually putting it into orbit and recovering it.

(Oh, and it was "Launch Abort System". Not "launch system". The launch abort system is that little tower on top of the capsule, with small rockets that pull the capsule away from an aborted launch. $600 Million spent so far for just that.)

When SpaceX starts spending the kind of lobbying dollars that those guys spent to get contracts and that all gets baked into the bottom line along with profits it's not going to be such a huge savings.

And that's a criticism of SpaceX? Seriously? Are you out of your fucking mind?

or at least do something that wasn't done half a century ago.

Let me repeat: NASA today cannot do any of those things any more. Nor can any of NASA's traditional contractors. They have less capability today than they had in 1960. NASA cannot put men into orbit. NASA can't even deliver cargo to the ISS. And the money they have already spent failing to develop a single new launcher and capsule is over an order of magnitude higher than SpaceX has spent in its entire existence.

The price that NASA will pay trying to develop SLS could pay for the development of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and the man-rating of Falcon9+Dragon and buy over ONE HUNDRED LAUNCHES OF EACH. Ie, 5000 tons to orbit, and 700 astronauts. Why don't you think about that for a moment.

SpaceX is putting out press releases about an unmanned craft in orbit

No, SpaceX PUT a capsule in orbit. They didn't just talk about it. They are the first commercial launch company in history to launch and recover a space-capsule.

NASA recently put out a press release (and video) of a single test firing of the J-2X engine. SpaceX (in an FAA application) stated that it averages FIVE tests of Merlin engines PER WEEK, and a test of a full nine engine F9 first stage every two months.

Oh, and NASA will pay $1.2 Billion to develop that J-2X engine (the upper stage engine for the SLS.) That's over four times what SpaceX spent building and launching the ENTIRE Falcon 9. Just for a single upper stage engine, not even for the whole upper stage.

I'm not sure why a segment of the tech nerd community has decided to be wowed by SpaceX. I don't know if they really believe that this is going to herald in some new age of being able to hop on a space elevator for the cost of a Chicago-Minneapolis flight and visit Alpha Centauri or something. If any other technology company was making as much hoopla about so little as SpaceX, they'd be laughed off Slashdot's Idle page.

US commercial launch operators have lost the commercial satellite launch market. The only satellites they launch today are for DoD and NASA. All the commercial satellite market has gone to Europe and Russia, with India and China catching up. Worse, the primary US government launcher, Atlas, relies entirely on imported Russian rocket engines. And the US operators had no ambition to try to win that market back (nor to lessen their dependence on Russian engines.)

Until SpaceX.

SpaceX's existing two launchers are already the cheapest in the world. And it's third launcher will be the largest in the world.

Cheapest in the world. Largest in the world. Already profitable. Massively ambitious. Why does that so offend you?

Re:Another Big Announcement

[Teancum]

"What they've done"? Is putting an unmanned vehicle into orbit, with help from NASA, in 2010 such a big deal? Really?

Didn't NASA do that about fifty years ago?

I certainly would put SpaceX on par with the Chinese space program at the very least.... with admittedly a lack of actually sending an astronaut into space.

The "unmanned vehicle" was a test article for what will be a manned spacecraft.... which is a big deal. More significantly, SpaceX not only sent the thing up and into orbit, but they got it to return with a successful re-entry. How many other private companies can make that claim?

My point is that they have done stuff in space and thus have at least some credibility. You on the other hand....

Re:Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

My point is that they have done stuff in space and thus have at least some credibility. You on the other hand....

Ah, the famous, "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?" argument. A favorite tool of those who assert a weak point.

It's impressive whenever something is sent into orbit, but we are told over and over that being a "private company" is an advantage. Well, SpaceX is a "private company" that exists to get government contracts, and their main accomplishment is doing something that was done in 1960. In 1961, NASA sent a man into orbit and brought him down safely. As soon as SpaceX shows a profit, I will raise a glass. As long as they are a billionaire's vanity project and their accomplishments are considerably less than that of 1961's NASA, I will wish them well and yawn.

I'm all for SpaceX doing well. But I'm not ready to have a ticker tape parade on their behalf until they are able to do something that was not already done 50 years ago and make a profit doing so. "Private industry" is supposed to have all these advantages over "big government". I'm still waiting for evidence.

And SpaceX has indeed "done stuff in space" and absolutely has credibility. Have you? (see how irritating that can be?)

Actually, I've sent up numerous Estes model rockets, up to three stages (some with living (briefly) payloads), which were recovered (some via parachute and some via glide). And I did this at the age of 11. So it looks like I have at least as much "credibility" as you.

Re:Another Big Announcement

[PopeRatzo]

It has $3 Billion of orders on the books.

They still haven't delivered on those orders, nor have they collected on their accounts receivable. Their "profits" are projections. That means they have not happened yet.

So no, SpaceX is not profitable yet in any real sense.

Cheapest in the world. Largest in the world. Already profitable.

The will be the cheapest in the world once they actually deliver a product. They will be the largest in the world once they actually build it's third launcher. They will be profitable once they actually collect more revenue than they spend.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I will be the greatest concert pianist who ever lived, once I learn to play the piano. But that doesn't mean I can go play Carnegie Hall tonight.

I am pleased for SpaceX. I really want them to succeed. But the hosannas being offered to their unprecedented success are way premature. There appears to be a special pleading in their behalf around here, where the usual yardstick for success is replaced by "the tallest midget".

Recovery Systems

[DanielRavenNest]

It's not just the fuel you need to soft land, but all of the other added components (heat shield, landing legs, incremental fuel tank size) to make up a "recovery system" that you need to consider. The fuel is the cheapest part of the formula. Against that incremental recovery system cost you have the savings of recovering the expensive parts of the rocket such as the engines. Since fuel tanks are relatively cheap compared to engines, on a per kg basis, it's worth spending a bit more on larger tanks to get the expensive engines back.

The actual numbers for the recovery systems depends on what stage of the vehicle, and thus what velocity it is returning from. From the video, it seems like the first stage is flying a "blastback" trajectory, meaning it returns to the launch site. Since first stages are not traveling very fast, it does not take that much fuel to do that, and you don't need much in the way of heat shielding. For example the Space Shuttle solid boosters really didn't have heat shielding. Air drag will slow you down some, so fuel used to land is not that much. I can't give any numbers without knowing the stage velocities.

The second stage and payload capsule are going much faster, and so need a substantial heat shield to come back from orbit or near orbit. You pay for carrying that heat shield with more fuel going up, but you still come out ahead if you do it right. The correct question to ask is "how much extra cost is the recovery system for each stage vs how much expensive hardware do I get back and can use again?" When working that question, you should factor in 2-5% loss rate from failures, rather than assuming 100% recovery every time.

Re:Flash! Aaaa-aaaaah!

[khallow]

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see them as "retro" and less futuristic-looking than the shuttle, no matter how much more advanced and practical they actually are.

Doesn't matter. There's a good reason we don't use fancy Italian sports cars to haul our garbage. Function trumps style.

People seem to forget one thing

[magamiako1]

SpaceX has yet to put a person into space, let alone to the ISS, let alone returning safely, let alone a person on the moon.

All of this talk about how "SUPER CHEAP AND AWESOME IT CAN BE WHILE BEING PRIVATIZED" means NOTHING until they show that they can do it safely and repeatedly with a human being.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[joh]

It already IS "super cheap and awesome", really. SpaceX is the first private company to have flown a craft to orbit and return it again. And after Russia, the US and China as nations/states the fourth at all. OK, fifth if you count the subscale demonstrator ESA flew decades ago. And all of this on a budget that wouldn't be enough for NASA or ESA to even build a launchpad, not to speak of a launcher and a capsule (and two launchpads as SpaceX built).

I'm not saying that SpaceX is able to do miracles, but it already did some things that are fucking awesome and cheap, yes.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[magamiako1]

Putting a satellite into space is cheaper than putting a human into space. I mean, if you want to go there, nearly anyone could throw a "capsule" up into orbit provided they have enough money--but is that capsule capable of supporting a human being?

And you can't even compare a capsule to the shuttle--a freaking giant flying space-bound airplane that lets you *land it* and return safely.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[jnaujok]

The Dragon capsule they sent up and recovered is built man-rated. Had you been in the capsule they launched (and had they turned on an oxygen supply) you would have had, in the words of Elon Musk, "a really sweet ride."

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[jafac]

. . . I just hope that Elon Musk is prepared for WHEN, (not if) a human dies on one of his vehicles. He's never been really good at public relations. . .

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Space X _did_ develop two new rockets and the Dragon capsule, successfully launched Falcon-9 twice, brought the Dragon back to earth intact all for less than NASA spent on just building the _launch tower_ for the now cancelled Ares-1... It's not all that surprising that people are feeling a great deal of confidence and enthusiasm for SpaceX in the light of this.

Incidentally, had a person been onboard the last Dragon test flight, they would have returned safe and sound.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Private industry built the hardware that won the space race. Private industry designs and builds insanely complex and safety-critical computer systems, aircraft, ships, power plants, bridges, oil platforms, etc. Why is space a magical exception?

The goal posts keep moving, don't they? First it was "oh they can't put anything in orbit." They did. Then it was "oh, they can't put a decent sized payload in orbit." They did. Then it was "oh, they can't get anything back from orbit." They did. With life support, the first Dragon launch would have been comfortable enough for human passengers. So I say, be patient and optimistic.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[CaptainLard]

show that they can do it safely and repeatedly with a human being.

Thats exactly what they are doing step by step. You gotta walk before you can run. They've had several successful launches and are working toward their goal very successfully, especially given the difficulty of the task. Haven't you ever produced a schedule for work? Or do you just keep your boss out of the loop for 6 months and just show up one day with the final product?

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a mighty certain "WHEN" there. You do realize that the ONLY spacecraft that has killed people in the last 40 years was the shuttle? There has not been ONE death on "Capsule-on-rocket" designs since 1971.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[Teancum]

The Dragon capsule they sent up and recovered is built man-rated.

Not quite. SpaceX is still working on the launch escape mechanism and trying to get some of the other features going to ensure the safety of the crew.

Still, your sentiment is largely correct. I heard it said that had somebody been inside of the capsule with SCUBA gear and a bean bag placed on top of the cheese wheel, they would have come back to the Earth with a wild story and likely would have been alive to tell the tale about their trip.

BTW, in regards to the comment that somehow the Shuttle is better because you can fly it to its final destination with precision.... SpaceX nailed the landing of the Dragon to within a kilometer of the intended destination. I really don't know what the glider aspect offers for a reentry vehicle other than the fact you need a huge runway costing nearly a billion dollars just for landing (or a dry lake bed in the middle of nowhere).

Manned vehicles are coming, and even the Apollo program had several unmanned trips into space before Apollo 7 finally made the trip with a crew. If that is the yardstick for comparison, SpaceX is doing just fine.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[khallow]

I would agree. There is some risk to space travel. I'd expect no loss of life only if the Dragon capsule never gets used much for manned spaceflight. SpaceX has made some PR mistakes in the face of its early rocket launch failures. Having said that, I think they are perfectly capable of handling the inevitable accident.

Re:People seem to forget one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

the reasons for that are more political than technical. so id not hold that against them.

Re:Space Guns

[DanielRavenNest]

Take a look at the big island of Hawaii. On the west side you have a nearly constant slope formed by lava flows. You can build a "space gun" there with a barrel d = 20 km long. Assume you want to limit it to a = 3 g's (30 m/s^2) so humans can ride. The muzzle velocity is then sqrt ( 2 * a * d ) = 1100 m/s (Mach 3.6). This is in the range of what rocket first stage boosters do. The rest of the trip uses normal rocket stages.

Now assume what you are launching masses 100 tons (100,000 kg) and has a diameter of 5 meters. The pressure in the barrel then needs to be 153 kPa (22 psi). Gun is not really the right metaphor at those pressures, it's more like overgrown pneumatic tube. With the first stage taken care of, it is reasonable to expect 5% net payload, so you get 5 tons to orbit, which is enough to carry several crew.

And in other news, ..

[capo_dei_capi]

Elon Musk has a new startup that sells an experimental weightless fuel.

Powered Landings in Populated Areas

[cadeon]

I don't know about you, but I live fairly near the cape- and the last thing I want is half a rocket returning to Florida with... well, anything... not working.

It's rather easy to miss your mark when re-entering. It's even easier to miss your mark when you can't maneuver freely after heating. Things get worse yet still if the booster has a guidance failure or gimpy motor.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of a reusable rocket and I'm excited they are willing to try something so very, very ambitious. But I am certainly beginning to feel a bit of the "Not in my back yard" syndrome.

keeping the hu'mans down

[Thud457]

come clean, this is really k'breel, speaker for the council, isn't it?

Re:keeping the hu'mans down

[Anonymous Coward]

come clean, this is really k'breel, speaker for the council, isn't it?

Nope, it's Quantum Apostrophe, a well-known life-extension vs spaceflight troll over on Fark. He ignores the fact that his pet issue is a false dichotomy. There are good arguments for robots over manned spaceflight in the context of getting more science done for the buck, but QA doesn't make them. His thesis is that if humanity would eliminate all efforts at spaceflight, it would then devote its R&D efforts that would prevent him from dying of old age.

Re:keeping the hu'mans down

[Thud457]

Aactually, given our current understanding of physics, extended lifetimes would be very helpful in expansion into the universe.
cfcBlish's millions living today will never die in "Cities in Flight"

But yeah, mr "space nutters" guy seems like such a perfectly tailored troll for a geek audience, much like Dr Bob RIP

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Yeah, right, let me know when this system is working as depicted.

For all the pie-in-the-sky science fiction shown in that CGI they should have at least made all three parts stack themselves on the launch platform ready to be refuelled and relaunched immediately.

Not in our lifetimes.

Re:Space Guns

[Anonymous Coward]

First stage usually do Mach 11. Orbital velocity is around Mach 25. Studied millions of times, never found economical.

Re:Space Guns

[andycal]

Rail gun instead of cannon
Start way out at sea

Geez, what a lot of negative comments

[Anonymous Coward]

100x reduction is cost to orbit?!? $500k tickets to MARS?!? Plus a (admittedly short) trackrecord of low-cost, successful engineering and reasonably successful launch history thrown in. And no obvious "throw money at us to play around with tech demonstrations" angle.

I want to know they're going to do it as much as the next geek, but they're out there trying to make it work. And have the business sense to not be 100% loony in those cost estimates, even if they're off by an order of magnitude. It basically costs me nothing to give them a resounding

  "Hell, yes! Show me what you can do, SpaceX!"
(and please tell me more about how you plan to do it)

Reusable Falcons

[mbone]

I was there for the talk, and had a little chat with Mr. Musk beforehand. The first thing to note is that he said that the video (which should go on their web page soon) is incomplete and may be vague about certain things, for proprietary reasons. What follows is my reverse engineering.

This is what the Grasshopper described previously in Slashdot is all about. Mr. Musk didn't use the word Grasshopper at all, so it must have been some sort of code word, but the tests in Texas will clearly be for Falcon reuse engineering.

Now, it makes no sense to return the first stage to the landing pad (as he said). The first stage is on a ballistic trajectory which (for a launch from Cape Canaveral) would have it impact somewhere far out at sea. It makes no sense at all to have the first stage reverse course and fly back to the Cape, as that would take as much delta-V as the original launch. It would make a lot more sense to land that stage in Ascension Island, Africa or Nova Scotia (depending on the inclination of the orbit). The first stage could then brought back by ship or plane.

The second stage actually goes into orbit, and the plan is to deorbit it one rev later. The trouble with that is the Earth rotates and the Earth will have rotated by ~ 20 degrees of longitude. That (again for a launch from the Cape) puts it over Texas, and it could conveniently land at McGregor, Texas, where SpaceX is doing their Grasshopper tests. So, although they haven't said so, I bet that McGregor will be the second stage landing area, and probably the Dragon landing area as well.

Re:Reusable Falcons

[FleaPlus]

My personal suspicion is that they'd prefer landing on a platform at sea. Blue Origin has a patent on this, though, so I can see why they wouldn't want to put this in their videos.

Re:Reusable Falcons

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the plan was that 1st stage would land on a barge somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.

Would also ensure that if something goes wrong, there would be a huge area around the barge where it could splash without much issue.

Re:Reusable Falcons

[zerospeaks]

I see no problem returning the first stage to the cape considering how light it is after expelling cargo and 90% of fuel.

Re:Reusable Falcons

[mbone]

That may be the plan, but that was not what Mr. Musk said, or what the video showed.

WHERE the heck are they going to launch it?

[wisebabo]

Look, the first stage doesn't just go up, it goes (presumably) eastwards to take advantage of the earth's rotation. So, if they launch from Florida the nearest land is, Africa. That means a foreign country and transport back by sea, not good for cost savings. If they launch from say California then you have all the hazards of a launch over land (isn't Vandenberg used primarily for westward ICBM testing and polar launches for this reason?).

Also, the second stage, even though it looks like it might go all the way to orbit doesn't appear to have much cross-range capability (no aerodynamic surfaces). So its choice of landing sites might be severely restricted. Finally, just to nitpick, the system isn't "completely" reusable, the service module looks like it is abandoned in orbit.

By the way, I think Elon Musk should henceforth be given the mantle of "Rocketman"! NOTHING (other than the heat shields) is used to slow down the stages AND CAPSULE other than ROCKETS; not parachutes or lifting bodies or airbags! He's got a LOT of faith that they will function in absolutely split second critical situations. WOW.

Still I say, go for it! If he can make the rockets work, maybe they can launch from that spaceport in New Mexico. (Maybe he'll have to give the FAA a destruct switch on a MANNED spacecraft in order to launch over populated areas). Has engineering gone so far as to really make these things that reliable?

Re:WHERE the heck are they going to launch it?

[amliebsch]

By the way, I think Elon Musk should henceforth be given the mantle of "Rocketman"! NOTHING (other than the heat shields) is used to slow down the stages AND CAPSULE other than ROCKETS; not parachutes or lifting bodies or airbags! He's got a LOT of faith that they will function in absolutely split second critical situations. WOW.

Still I say, go for it! If he can make the rockets work, maybe they can launch from that spaceport in New Mexico. (Maybe he'll have to give the FAA a destruct switch on a MANNED spacecraft in order to launch over populated areas). Has engineering gone so far as to really make these things that reliable?

Rocket engines are not substantially more complicated than jet engines (in fact, much simpler in some ways), and millions of people have no problem at all relying on nothing but those to keep them alive. Keep in mind that the man-rated capsule would still have emergency chutes in case the rockets fail. Where's your chute when you climb on that Airbus?

Re:WHERE the heck are they going to launch it?

[Teancum]

To point out what should be glaringly obvious, the current launch location for the Falcon 9 is at pad 40 at Cap Canaveral... literally the pad right next to where the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle all launched from. The "where" this will launch is going to be at that spot unless they move it somewhere else like Texas or Kwajalein (where SpaceX also has an existing facility). SpaceX is also working up launches at Vandenberg, but you are correct that those won't likely be used for manned spaceflight, but instead primarily D.O.D. payloads and launches which need a polar orbit. The only commercial payloads I can think of off the top of my head would be communications satellites like the Iridium satellites, but you can add what details you want there.

I won't even respond to the rest of your post because it sounds like pure ignorance.

Re:WHERE the heck are they going to launch it?

[Anonymous Coward]

that some RANDOM capitalisation there. and the thing you gotta remember is that for the first and second stage powered landing, theres not really any cargo or human lives at stake, so they dont really need to be pedantically reliable. the capsule is a different matter i guess, at least when its manned.

Re:WHERE the heck are they going to launch it?

[mbone]

Mr Musk specifically said that they don't really want to use the Kwaj facility as due to the logistics problems it creates.

Re:WHERE the heck are they going to launch it?

[urusan]

Transporting the first stage back by sea is not a big deal cost-savings-wise. The cost of building the rocket is most of the launch cost (something like >90% if I remember correctly). The Falcon 9 costs around $50 million USD to launch. Therefore one of the stages costs something like $20 million (or more) to build. Unless the cost of shipping a used first stage back to the launch site exceeds $20 million, then it makes economic sense to recover it even if it has to land somewhere inconvenient. Having it land somewhere nicer shaves a tiny percentage off the total cost of the launch, and so other concerns may dominate (such as regulatory issues, the location of existing launch pads, or increasing payload).

Also, the Dragon capsule does have a parachute.

Re:Space Guns

[Gravatron]

i'm having final fantasy VIII flashbacks now. the Ragnarok launched via an electric driven rail and a ginormous ramp prior to it's rockets igniting. Normal spacecraft launched via a giant canon.

Re:Space Guns

[cycleflight]

Your idea needs a new island... I don't think there are any Hawaiians too keen on putting much of anything on the big island.

NASA ROI

[sjbe]

Yes, this demonstrates the vast value of government. Throw a few hundred billion in, get a billion dollar rocket out.

I hope you were joking because the ROI on research dollars invested in NASA to the US economy is somewhere between 3X and 14X depending on which study you look at. There are over 1650 spin off technologies. NASA may run an inefficient manned space program but they are a genuine research powerhouse that MORE than pays for itself once you consider it's net effect on the economy. Just because the benefit isn't a direct one doesn't mean it isn't a benefit.

Re:NASA ROI

[khallow]

I hope you were joking because the ROI on research dollars invested in NASA to the US economy is somewhere between 3X and 14X depending on which study you look at. There are over 1650 spin off technologies.

You might as well claim those spinoffs for the Roman Catholic Church. A number of monks and clergy from that religion also contributed to scientific endeavors, in the process tainting virtually all modern scientific and engineering endeavors in the process.

As you might guess from my previous paragraph, I find the spinoff claim particularly obnoxious. The first problem is the "taint" problem. A bit of NASA money shows up somewhere in a development sequence and then the outcome of the whole sequence is attributed to NASA. Eventually, as in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, or indeed, any sufficiently old organization such as Switzerland or the Freemasons, all research will eventually have a bit of NASA research somewhere in its DNA.

Second, absolutely no consideration is given to whether the research or technology development would have occurred anyway. For example, another poster has claimed erroneously that NASA was responsible for the IC revolution, ignoring both that hardcore, Moore's law IC development predated NASA involvement and that any contribution from NASA would have happened anyway.

Third, NASA isn't particularly good at this. The DoD is much bigger a spinoff producer and the NSF has better return on investment.

Re:NASA ROI

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep saying that but not quantifying the numbers.

You seem to forget one other thing...

[FatLittleMonkey]

NASA can't do any of those things either. Even though it spends fifty to a hundred times as much as SpaceX for the privilege of not doing those things.

Experiment One

[camperdave]

However, there are certain things to take note of:

• Booster rockets are almost never empty when they are jettisoned. They will all have extra fuel on board. (You want to make sure the boosters run at least the minimum length of time it takes to get the rocket up.)
• Boosters will already have small ullage or kick motors to make them fall away properly, so to get them to flip the booster around is not a big deal
• There are atmospheric effects that you can use to your advantage on the way back down, eg. aerobraking, backgliding, etc.

Experiment Two

[camperdave]

However, there are certain things to take note of:

1. Booster rockets are almost never empty when they are jettisoned. They will all have extra fuel on board. (You want to make sure the boosters run at least the minimum length of time it takes to get the rocket up.)
2. Boosters will already have small ullage or kick motors to make them fall away properly, so to get them to flip the booster around is not a big deal
3. There are atmospheric effects that you can use to your advantage on the way back down, eg. aerobraking, backgliding, etc.

Shipping

[Goonie]

A rocket lower stage isn't *that* big or heavy. Say it costs $500,000 to ship it back. That's still a massive win, right?

Re:Shipping

[zerospeaks]

buy a transport ship. cut cost drastically.

Re:Space Guns

[Savantissimo]

There's a better site in Ecuador. Also, gas guns are expensive and finicky.

A track made of conventional, passive coils carrying a sled cradle with either permanent magnets or conventional electromagnets gives a maglev which will be much cheaper. Use this to launch a reusable ramjet 1st stage which needs only about mach 1 or so to get going and you have either a shorter track or lower g-forces. The ramjet has much better Isp than a rocket and can be more robust and simple for reusability than a conventional rocket. This gets you up to about mach 5 at over 100,000 feet with a good angle. Either stage to a conventional rocket for a normal launch or switch to internal oxidizer to get to mach 13 and and rendezvous with a rotovator tether tip, transfer the payload capsule and land the 1st stage as an airplane. Fly the 1st stage most of the way back as a ramjet. Use a wing parachute for controlled low-speed landing, powered by the remaining fuel and oxidizer used in a smaller rocket engine. Landing gear can be light - no need to be able to raise gear, support high loads or high speeds.

Why not use jets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use jets instead of rockets? If you're planning to land on Earth then there's plenty of oxygen at sea level, where you'll be landing. No need to lug all that cryo-oxygen around, just some avgas.