SpaceX Awarded First Military Contract

An anonymous reader writes "Ars reports that commercial space company SpaceX has gotten its first launch contracts from a military organization. The United States Air Force has hired SpaceX to launch the NASA DSCOVR satellite aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, and several other satellites aboard a Falcon Heavy. (The Heavy isn't finished yet, and SpaceX currently has no place to launch it, but the contract gives them three years to do so.) 'According to the mission requirements, the Falcon Heavy must carry its payload up to an orbit of 720 km and deploy a COSMIC-2 weather- and atmospheric-monitoring satellite, up to six auxiliary payloads (probably microsats), and up to eight P-POD CubeSat deployers. The rocket should then restart and continue all the way up to a 6,000 x 12,000 km orbit and deploy the ballast, more science experiments and more microsats.'"

Comments

NASA

[schneidafunk]

Is there a clear shift of NASA goals now?

Re:NASA

[Synerg1y]

Some engineers at NASA must be very sad right now. SpaceX is doing what they couldn't: More economical space flight" .

Then again they might've set their sights a little bit further, but still opportunity missed.

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure their goal is the still the same:

Do as much as possible with the funds they have, while simultaneously defending themselves from an incompetent legislature who believes it's more important that we spend money on bombing brown people instead of investing in the future of not only our own country, but our very existence as a species.

That aside, hell yes, SpaceX. While I'm not an idiot who believes the "free" market is the answer to everything, commercial enterprises becoming involved in actual spaceflight is perhaps one of the most important things that will occur during my own lifetime. (I'm still bitter, though, because it's 2012 and I should be living on the Moon by now.)

Re:NASA

[Thud457]

Amazing what you can accomplish when you get Congressional pork-barrel politics out of the way.

We should try that for other failing agencies.
oh dear, did I just say that out loud?

Re:NASA

[YrWrstNtmr]

Then again they might've set their sights a little bit further, but still opportunity missed.

Prety sure that Opportunity not only hit it's target, but is still operating, long past its design date.

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait? Privatized organizations are more lean, organized, efficient and responsible than governments? But the brilliant American people just to assure that out health stays in the hands of the government... I've got a bad feeling about this.

Re:NASA

[jythie]

*smirk* have you ever seen inside the big contractors?

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

That aside, hell yes, SpaceX. While I'm not an idiot who believes the "free" market is the answer to everything, commercial enterprises becoming involved in actual spaceflight is perhaps one of the most important things that will occur during my own lifetime. (I'm still bitter, though, because it's 2012 and I should be living on the Moon by now.)

Space X isn't breaking any grounds that McDonnell Douglas, Lockhead Martin, Boeing, etc., haven't already done before. Commercial space flight has already existed.

Re:NASA

[jythie]

Yeah, it is somewhat easier to do things economic when a government institution has already done decades of legwork for you.

Though yeah, not being sattled down with requirements for who to buy what from does SpaceX, but really it just puts them in the same spot as all the other commercial launch outfits, so they will likely become just as much a part of the problem as all the others.. their newness and geek attention is unlikely to change this.

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

public heath care -> try to save money -> goal, make people healthy so they don't need health care
private health care -> try to earn money -> goal, keep people sick so they need health care

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't actually delivered a Falcon 9 launch at the promised price. They don't even have a launch pad for it yet. Also we wont know the actual cost of the program until they start flying regularly enough to where we see failures and the cost and corrections for those failures can be factored into the price. In the long run my bet is that they wont do it for any cheaper than NASA could do it with similar vehicles.

Re:NASA

[Baloroth]

Amazing what you can accomplish when you get to cut corners .

I know, it's amazing how NASA's government redundancy made sure they never, ever lost a single rocket or satellite ever, much less a manned mission. I mean, NASA rockets never burst into flames on the launch pads or anything, burning the astronauts inside alive. Oh wait.

Re:NASA

[router]

I used to think like that. I have worked for a defense contractor now, and they are wasteful entities. Not as wasteful as government entities, but damn close. Elon did an interview with Wired, it was good. He looked for ways to do things cheaper better faster. In the world of defense contractors, that's very easy pickings. He also put up his own money to start.
I think you would be suprised how cheap a lot of big government purchases could be, if done the same way. We have the examples, SpaceX rockets, Predator drones, Wright Brothers.

The only reason government contractors complain about requirements is they are taking government money to do the DESIGN, PROTOTYPING, and production. If you do it all on your own, you get to do it your way; but if it fails, you get nothing.

andy

Re:NASA

[englishknnigits]

What you actually meant to write:
1) public heath insurance -> try to provide money for campaign contributors -> goal, make people sick so they need health care and are dependent on the government
2) public health care -> try to provide money for campaign contributors -> goal, try to provide the greatest quantity of the most expensive treatments
3) private health insurance -> try to earn money -> goal, pay the least amount for health care (can be through either refusing to cover things, negotiations, and/or keeping clients healthy)
4) private health care -> try to earn money -> goal, try to provide the greatest quantity of the most expensive treatments

1 and 2 are in collusion with each other (bad), 3 and 4 are in opposition to one another (good).

Re:NASA

[tlambert]

I don't know what you're still crying about.

Private health care has been a disaster, consistently going 0 for 4 on your list of, "lean, organized, efficient and responsible".

Private health care has been very effective.

Private health insurance, on the other hand, truly has been a disaster.

Pay the insurance company for health insurance, to pay your Dr. to pay the insurance company for malpractice insurance, to pay the hospital to pay the insurance company to pay for malpractice and liability insurance, to pay the lab equipment manufacturers to pay the insurance companies for liability insurance.

Private drug companies have also been a disaster.

Develop a cure: get paid once; develop a treatment: get paid over and over again. Microsoft didn't invent the subscription model, Merck , Sandoz, and others did.

Re:NASA

[Dishevel]

Their goals are clear.

Re:NASA

[timeOday]

SpaceX is not governed by humans of a different nature than NASA, but it is a lot younger. Long-running organizations accrue a bit more red tape in response to every mishap, until eventually they are immobilized. It is very difficult to streamline and organization in-place. Not unlike how code gets crufty and has to be re-written, and old people can get very cautious and meticulous (because they lost their glasses once 25 years ago and don't want that to happen again!) A blank sheet of paper grants a lot of freedom. Granted it will lead to repeating past mistakes as well. It will be a real test for SpaceX, the first time they destroy a payload or kill some people.

Re:NASA

[jgtg32a]

I don't think you understand how insurance companies actually make money.

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing what you can accomplish when you get to cut corners .

Completing a mission when any other rocket would have aborted to the ocean is cutting corners? How?

Re:NASA

[Dishevel]

Private health insurance would be a better thing if they had to compete.
But, at least in California, out of state insurance ;carriers are forbidden to offer product in California.
Companies that do offer product in California have to offer certain types of coverage regardless of if the insured needs such coverage or even wants to pay for it.

Re:NASA

[RMingin]

So basically, according to YOUR link, the rocket had a problem with one of it's nine engines (did you think they carried nine because it lines up pretty???) and NASA forbade them from performing the second stage transfer burn, due to safety concerns. Where exactly did corners get cut? Engine failures happened ALL THE TIME on NASA's programs, too. It's a fact of life in rocketry, there are lots of moving parts, so you overprovision for redundancy, and cut over if you have to. That article you linked is a very, very negative spin on a normal launch.

Re:NASA

[FatLittleMonkey]

Yeah, it is somewhat easier to do things economic when a government institution has already done decades of legwork for you.

People keep saying this, and yet they miss their own point... everything SpaceX does was already available to NASA. So... why can't NASA build their own rocket and capsule, SLS/MPCV, for less than $3b per year for more than fifteen years? SpaceX spent less building multiple versions of an entirely new rocket engine, building and flying two entirely new launchers into orbit (~$300m) than NASA spent modifying a single existing shuttle SRB for a stand-alone sub-orbital test launch (Ares-1X, ~$450m).

The annual development budget for Merlin, Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon-cargo would contained entirely with a single minor NASA research program. While a single flagship program, like SLS, ISS or JWST, could fund dozens of parallel programs in the same scale.

Re:NASA

[Koreantoast]

This works under the false assumption that SpaceX doesn't have its own Congressional lobby working for them. This is more a case of Elon Musk and SpaceX heavy lobbying efforts have finally managed to neutralize the lobbyists for established aerospace and defense players. From Day 1 of the company, they've identified key players, cultivated them and their staffs and placed the appropriate bets to ensure support.

SpaceX blasts off literally and politically

Cynically, if there's a lesson to be learned, it's that when you start a new business, you need to grease up Congress from the get go.

Re:NASA

[Johann Lau]

LOLNOPE.

Re:NASA

[Koreantoast]

Bleh... my link didn't work. http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2012/spacex-blasts-literally-and-politically/

Re:NASA

[khallow]

In the long run my bet is that they wont do it for any cheaper than NASA could do it with similar vehicles.

You're already being proven wrong by inches. As to NASA, SpaceX has already shown it can be done while NASA has shown that it isn't even remotely interested in doing cheap space flight. So I'd have to say that while NASA might be able to duplicate SpaceX's prices with the Falcon 9, they haven't and they won't. And i ignore here that NASA isn't allowed any more to launch commercial applications while SpaceX is. That's a big advantage.

Re:NASA

[FatLittleMonkey]

Weird example for you to pick. Health care is the one area where you do have clear examples of the superiority of government run systems. Such as countries with government health care having half the costs per person as US health care. Such as government programs even in the US being more efficient/effective healthcare than rival private systems.

Re:NASA

[FatLittleMonkey]

Indeed. And the proof of the pudding is to ask who Orbcomm is going to use to launch the rest of their next-gen constellation.

Re:NASA

[Teancum]

The N1 would have been an amazing rocket... if it would have ever flown. There were several attempts to fire the thing though, and the second launch of the N1 is supposedly the largest artificial non-nuclear explosion in the history of mankind. That still doesn't take the cake to what happened in China where over 500 people were killed when a rocket went off course and landed in a nearby village.

Building rockets is hard, and you are dealing with incredible energies just to get stuff up. Complaining about SpaceX and their record is so minor and insignificant that it is hardly worth even mentioning. The first launch of the Falcon 1 was something stupid on the part of SpaceX, but that company does seem to learn a bit from their mistakes.

Re:NASA

[Talderas]

That's a fairly loose definition of "any other rocket". A reasonable one would be any other rocket that could have been used. Saturns and N1s haven't launched in over 30 years.

Re:NASA

[slew]

While a single flagship program, like SLS, ISS or JWST, could fund dozens of parallel programs in the same scale.

Actually those flagship programs do fund dozens of parallel programs. It's just that those programs aren't directed towards building spacecraft (and many are directed to move money into people's pockets, although some were education and public outreach)...

In fact, just the other day I found out that one of Nasa's prime missions was to

find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering — science, math and engineering.

That stuff doesn't come for free. What is SpaceX doing about that?

Re:NASA

[FatLittleMonkey]

In fact, just the other day I found out that one of Nasa's prime missions was to

find a way to reach out to the Muslim world [...]

You mistook my defence of SpaceX as a sign that I'm one of your fellow close-minded rightwing Fox-News-worshipping cretins. When in fact, I despise you all.

Re:NASA

[radtea]

What you actually meant to write:

I'm pretty sure he actually meant this: "Studies evaluated in this systematic review do not support the claim that the private sector is usually more efficient, accountable, or medically effective than the public sector; however, the public sector appears frequently to lack timeliness and hospitality towards patients." (low and middle income countries)

Or this: "Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This reportâ"an update to two earlier editionsâ"includes data from surveys of patients, as well as information from primary care physicians about their medical practices and views of their countries' health systems. Compared with five other nationsâ"Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdomâ"the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes."

But do please continue to spout ideology-addled "corrections" that contradict reality. It amuses the hell out of the rest of us to watch you do it. And keep on losing those elections while you're at it!

Re:NASA

[khallow]

"NASA has shown that it isn't even remotely interested in doing cheap space flight" because the powers at be have decided to privatize that aspect of the process.

Back in 1984, I might add. And it's proven to be a good idea since.

My point was given X launch vehicle specs who can produce a system to safely deliver hardware to space for Y amount of dollars. You will see no price improvement from commercial space flight companies until A) you see multiple companies doing it regularly and competing for a wide customer base. B) There is surplus payload capacity available on most vehicles entering orbit. As of now the only thing accomplished was subcontracting out for profit something once handled in house by NASA while also basically subsidizing space x to allow them to develop the hardware and techniques on the tax payers dollar.

Point A) is wrong. There are three US companies with orbital launch capabilities and four or five foreign commercial space launch organizations as well. The competition and the market is there, even if it's not as vigorous and large as we would like.

And point B) is irrelevant. It is rare that a payload exactly fills a vehicle, and there's all sorts of tricks for what to do with that wasted space and mass, including just ballast and secondary payloads. But such issues are irrelevant to whether or not NASA should be in the launch business. One merely needs to look at the entire history of NASA to see that it has never launched a cheap vehicle. Never since its birth in 1957!

SpaceX has in the span of less than ten years and less than half a billion dollars achieved things that would take NASA, under tradition government costing methods, about ten times as much to do (that link discusses a NASA study which apparently got a deep look at what SpaceX actually spent on developing three rocket engines, Falcon 1 and 9 rockets, and about half a dozen launch attempts).

To summarize that last sentence (since there is a lot there), SpaceX has already demonstrated that it can develop rockets for an order of magnitude less than NASA can. This already happened. That is why I claimed in my previous post that you are already being proven wrong bit by bit.

Re:NASA

[tqk]

I think you forgot a few steps, this being USA healthcare:

i) ambulance chaser lawyers will be there at every step of the process looking for anything that breathes worth suing.

ii) deep pocketed insurance companies will force everyone involved to go to extremes (where one cat scan would do, only one would not do) to avoid "i)".

Re:NASA

[tqk]

Nobody !@#$%^& cares what your captcha was. Get a life.

Re:NASA

[tlambert]

It would be even better if there were tort reform capping the liability limits for malpractice, and if the same insurance company, or group of companies, didn't get five hits at the insurance trough for you going in for one MRI.

Re:NASA

[englishknnigits]

Those studies are a joke, listen and learn:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/07/scott_atlas_on.html
You are probably unwilling to listen since it contradicts your world view and fervently held system of beliefs. You should continue to close yourself off and only read evidence that supports what you already believe, it makes it easier to be dismissive and to denigrate people you disagree with.

Re:NASA

[geoffball]

I thought it was called MASA now.

Re:NASA

[khallow]

Generally grandma dies earlier, that means sooner when under for profit systems.

From what I've heard it's the exact opposite. The US is better at health care for the elderly.

Re:NASA

[Teancum]

Having NASA kill people didn't really end up being that much of a test of the organization. Oh, they had engineering reviews and all sorts of finger pointing, but in the end nothing really changed and in fact the things that caused the deaths were more or less repeated with only cosmetic changes. Concerns about the tiles and how fragile the shuttle surfaces were looked at from STS-1, yet it seemed to have been a surprise to some people at NASA when the Columbia was lost.

Yes, it will be a test if SpaceX kills people as a result of an engineering flaw or other mishap. As for destroying payloads, they've done that in spades. Do you see anybody complaining? If anything, SpaceX keeps getting new customers in spite of lost payloads in the past.

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

You should continue to close yourself off and only read evidence that supports what you already believe, it makes it easier to be dismissive and to denigrate people you disagree with.

There's a massive dose of dramatic irony here. You do have to realize that it's actually a rather extraordinary claim that US healthcare is "really" better despite numbers that seem on the face of it to say otherwise. In principle, you could be right, but you can't take the position that you're obviously right and everybody else has their fingers in their ears. The easy evidence all over the place says that US healthcare is run poorly in worldwide standards.

He wants you to remove suicides and fatal car accidents, the two biggest US figures, to put the US at the top. First off, those are not unrelated to the healthcare system (unless you died near-instantly in the car crash). Second, you can't just selectively remove the two top non-healthcare killers in the US from all countries and not start removing the two top non-healthcare killers in every other country and see what happens. That's outright skewing data in your favour, which you could do to support virtually any country. I find this one to be an abuse of statistics.

I'm skeptical of the infant mortality claims. I couldn't listen to the actual talk so I linked through to the articles he drew from. I agree that foreign data probably isn't comparable, but I don't see where he's made a cogent argument (in the article) that the US is using a measure that is less likely to under-report than all others, he's just stating that under-reporting happens in "other countries". Also, the differences in "cultural-medical practices" can't really be untangled from the healthcare system. I'm also a bit surprised at the excuse that infant mortality is from ethnic minorities having higher infant mortality and the US having more ethnic minorities because, well, it doesn't. I mean, it's on the higher end of diversity, and that does knock Scandinavia down a bit, but by "New World" standards it's kind of middling, and the fact is that skew is marginal and it comes from, by definition, a minority of the population, so its effect is limited even then. It actually hurts the US argument in comparison to, say, Canada or Brazil.

I think the US is generally acknowledged as having better wait times for non-emergency medical surgeries, which is a fair argument, though somewhat limited. I'll confess to having no idea about worldwide hip replacement stats :).

Re:NASA

[khallow]

Since when is $2.1 billion dollars for 12,000 pounds of ice cream to the ISS "cheap"?

NASA isn't buying ice cream with that money. They're buying much cheaper transportation to the ISS than via Soyuz. Keep in mind that SpaceX has to pass some very expensive tests of its Dragon capsule Imost of which it has since achieved).

Also keep in mind that NASA burned something like $100 billion just creating that destination which allegedly requires ice cream. Spending ridiculous amounts for mundane things is a NASA thing.

SpaceX is a taxpayer financial blackhole just like Elon Musk's other scam Tesla (which has lost one billion dollars and counting).

And how much of that billion dollars is taxpayer money? Especially taxpayer money that wasn't already destined for someone's financial blackhole? It's worth noting here that unlike Tesla, SpaceX has been delivering and been turning a profit.

It's also worth noting that the ISS burns something like two billion dollars a year. A manned Dragon down the road could cut that cost by as much as half a billion per year ($40 million per seat for 12 astronauts going up and down each year). Maybe that won't happen (and SpaceX has experienced delays and failed to meet some goals), but SpaceX has already shown it can do some things cheaper than anyone else has. So we'll just have to see.

Re:NASA

[Teancum]

If you think SpaceX is a black hole, what do you think of ATK and Boeing in regards to the SLS that is spending several billion dollars each year and hasn't even been able to get that rocket system into the air... and won't for another 10 years?

At least SpaceX is delivering cargo, which is a damn sight better than what the other tar pits that I see NASA dumping money into.

Re:NASA

[khallow]

There's something wrong with your business model.

And what would that problem be? SpaceX just got NASA to pay for development of its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 combination and several launches including two successful dockings with the ISS. And NASA still spent considerably less than it did on the Orion capsule prototype (which won't actually fly for a couple of years).

I also can't take your claims seriously when you're comparing the marginal cost of a Soyuz launch with all costs of the Dragon (and some Falcon 9 development) split between two craft. That's not just comparing apples to oranges, but is highly deceptive as well.

Re:NASA

[englishknnigits]

He didn't say it was wonderful and that is nothing but a blatant ad hominem fallacy. He could be the devil himself and still be correct. Listen to his arguments. If you think they are bad, unsupported arguments then that is fine. It is wise to be skeptical of people who have a vested interest, it is foolish to dismiss them because of that interest.

Re:NASA

[englishknnigits]

Sure, his claims are extraordinary but he provides evidence to back them up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence which, in my opinion, he provided.

I would agree about his life expectancy argument being statistical trickery if other countries top two killers were non-healthcare related deaths and removing them would have a similar effect on ranking. His argument implies that is not the case but it is worth verifying. You are right that car deaths are not 100% irrelevant for health care but I would argue they aren't nearly as relevant as something like cancer or heart attacks. This makes car deaths disproportionately effect death rates and life expectancy.

As for infant mortality, the US considers an infant alive (and thus capable of dying) once it leaves the womb and shows any sign of life. This is reported by the hospital. I'm not sure how much more stringent you could get than that, doing anything else would result in lower death rates. Other countries do not have hospitals report them (they use in home surveys) or do not consider an infant alive for 24 hours, days, or even weeks after they are born. For a discussion of Western European practices: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2001.00291.x/pdf

I haven't looked into the minority argument enough to really have an opinion on it.

The take away for me is that US healthcare isn't nearly as bad as it has been made to seem in comparison to other countries. Of course it still has huge problems and issues that we absolutely need to address. We just need to be careful that we are modeling our system off of other systems for the right reasons and not based on false assumptions or reasons.

Re:NASA

[khallow]

And when SpaceX is doing it for a third the price of the Soyuz where will your blackhole theory be then?

Introducing marginal cost etc. is pretty much an admission by you that SpaceX indeed cannot do it cheaper than the Russians (Europeans, Japanese).

It's not ADHD, but rather basic economics which you continue to ignore. The first vehicle produced will be very expensive because you have to develop it first. $2.1 billion for two successful dockings with the ISS and with test payloads doesn't mean that future deliveries will be as expensive or have as little payload launched.

Re:NASA

[khallow]

However, I have enough experience to know a fake Rolex when I see one.

Sure, you do. I imagine you'll find a different problem when SpaceX makes this one obsolete.

And at least you are starting to get the numbers right. $2.1billion for 12 jaunts to the ISS.

If so, that's a lot more than 12,000 pounds of ice cream. Maybe some people too, if the manned Dragon is in that.

Wikipedia indicates there would be something like 3300 kg of pressurized payload and a similar amount of unpressurized payload and 2500 kg of return pressurized payload for the cargo-only version of the Dragon. That's up to about 80 metric tons of upmass, half pressurized and 30 metric tons of downmass. That's a bit more than the roughly 5.5 metric tons of ice cream you were claiming would be lifted for the price.

LEO Rapid Transit

[Billy the Mountain]

Sounds like a bus route.

Re:LEO Rapid Transit

[bacon.frankfurter]

You're close! There was actually a New York City Subway company with a similar name, before all of the various companies were consolidated under the MTA.

The Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) was the original name for what is now the MTA's Number 7 - Flushing Local/Express line.

Sure.

[mosb1000]

According to the mission requirements, the Falcon Heavy must carry its payload up to an orbit of 720 km and deploy a COSMIC-2 weather- and atmospheric-monitoring satellite

I'm sure this is the satellite's true function.

Re:Sure.

[Korruptionen]

It's armed with warheads to shoot down hurricanes..... uh.. .err.... yeah. Right?

Re:Sure.

[skelly33]

Yea - I'm sure it has nothing to do with recent weather satellite failures.

Re:Sure.

[afidel]

Yep, and while it might be a civilian asset the military has always had a need for the most accurate weather predictions they can get their hands on.

Re:Sure.

[Jeng]

You test with the unclassified stuff first that is easy to replace.

6000 x 12000

[skelly33]

OK rocket scientists or astrophysicists, what does "6,000 x 12,000 km orbit" mean for us lowly Earth-bound folk?

Re:6000 x 12000

[cbhacking]

Possibly an elliptical orbit, with those representing the closest and furthest distances from Earth? Just a guess; I don't know either.

Re:6000 x 12000

[skelly33]

Sounds pretty plausible - thanks for that!

Progressing in space

[Urkki]

Is it just me, or does deploying 20 satellites with 1 rocket sound like we're still actually getting somewhere, even when it sometimes feels like space tech progress stopped 30 years ago?

Of course, this is thanks to microelectronic revolution, not thanks to advances of rocketry, but still...

And yeah, I hope even those microsats have means to deorbit... Shouldn't take that much hydrazine (or whatever) to change the orbit to be elliptical enough to get them burn up (or down, as it were).

Re:Progressing in space

[YrWrstNtmr]

Is it just me, or does deploying 20 satellites with 1 rocket sound like we're still actually getting somewhere, even when it sometimes feels like space tech progress stopped 30 years ago?

Yes, it's just you. I guess you missed the nuclear powered remote control truck on Mars. Or the constellation of satellites that beam a constant signal down to the computer in your pocket with such precision as to be able to tell you where you are within a few feet. Or the pair of satellites flying in perfect tandem, mapping the gravitational pull of the Moon. Oh look...we might have found water ice in Mercury.

But you're right. I guess we haven't done anything in the last 30 years.

Re:Progressing in space

[Urkki]

Is it just me, or does deploying 20 satellites with 1 rocket sound like we're still actually getting somewhere, even when it sometimes feels like space tech progress stopped 30 years ago?

Yes, it's just you. I guess you missed the nuclear powered remote control truck on Mars. Or the constellation of satellites that beam a constant signal down to the computer in your pocket with such precision as to be able to tell you where you are within a few feet. Or the pair of satellites flying in perfect tandem, mapping the gravitational pull of the Moon. Oh look...we might have found water ice in Mercury.

But you're right. I guess we haven't done anything in the last 30 years.

Well, we have certainly done stuff, some of which is pretty amazing, like Opportunity still operating. But apart from the bad-ass landing scheme of Curiosity, Mars rovers are not that different from a merger of Lunahod rovers and Viking landers, for example. GPS development started in the '70s. I don't think finding water ice on Mercury is something we couldn't have done with '80s tech already, easily. All this mostly feels like stuff we could have done 30 years ago, we just didn't get around to it until now, and thanks to the tech getting gradually cheaper, we still get to do this stuff even with dwindling science budgets.

The only truly encouraing thing I can think of right now is actually using ion thursters in real missions like Deep Space 1 and Hayabusa. But give me something like high-thrust electric propulsion or nuclear propulsion in an interplanetary probe, then I'll say we're really going somewhere, again. Or to put it another way, give me a sample return mission from the surface of Titan, for example.

Re:Progressing in space

[nitehawk214]

Mars rovers are not that different from a merger of Lunahod rovers and Viking landers.

Every part of that sentence is wrong. Unless you include that taking a ship from Europe to North America is not that different than Columbus' crossing.

There are a lot of exciting space technologies being deployed today... at least they are exciting to people interested in such things. To the general public nothing aside from putting people on the moon matters. There is just no way around that opinion, and NASA does not have the budget to put people on moons/other planets currently, so they just continue to do exciting science with the budget they have.

Re:Progressing in space

[Megane]

give me a sample return mission from the surface of Titan

I'm sure it would be fun trying to make a rocket thruster that can take off from a moon with a hydrocarbon-based atmosphere at cryogenic temperatures. Imagine what it would take just to test that the rocket will work at all!

Re:Progressing in space

[robot256]

It's not sexy, but a lot of the technological advancement of NASA missions comes from optics and detector technology. Cameras used in rovers and satellites today have orders of magnitude more pixels than anything they imagined in in the 80's. And it's not just advances in civilian CMOS technology being transferred over: researchers at NASA are constantly improving detectors over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including infrared, ultraviolet, gamma rays, X-rays, all the time making our science results more and more accurate and insightful. The gravitational mapping of the moon is only possible because the two GRAIL probes use laser interferometry to fly in formation--kilometers apart, but accurate to within micrometers. The number of cameras on each Mars rover doubles or triples with each generation. The James Webb Space Telescope is going to get into orbit and unfold like a freaking transformer robot; and use not one, but 16 mirrors, all flexing separately to autonomously focus a huge image of the cosmos. Sure, it's mostly incremental improvements, but what we're doing today was considered a pipe dream even 10 or 20 years ago.

But you're right--if we took all the money from the Iraq war and threw it at high technology research, we would probably have a moon colony by now. As it is, we have to make all the incremental projects fit within whatever pot scrapings Congress throws at us, so we're slowly accumulating the bits and pieces of tech we'll need to make something truly ambitious a success, if we ever get the money and the mandate to put it together.

Re:Progressing in space

[Urkki]

Welcome to the 2010s. DS1 and Hayabusa are done, Dawn is the ion-propelled spacecraft that's buzzing about the asteroid belt breaking records these days.

Note: Buzzing around the freaking asteroid belt. It's orbited Vesta for a few months, then deorbited, and is now on its way to Ceres. Will be first probe ever to orbit two different bodies in deep space (i.e. past the moon), and the spacecraft itself (not the launch vehicle) has already thrust over 7km/s. If that's not remarkable progress from 1982, you're brain-dead.

Yeah, I intentionally listed the first ion thruster probes and wrote "...like Deep Space 1...". And I wouldn't call Dawn exactly buzzing, but still, why do you think I don't think it is remarkable? Didn't I spend an entire paragraph saying that flying probes with ion thrusters is the only encouraging thing I could think of? Still, considering that electrostatic ion thrusters have flown already in the 60's SERT 1 mission, this is just getting back on track. The time between SERT 2 and Deep Space 1 is awfully long... I can't help wondering, a bit sadly, where that tech would be if it would have been pushed just a bit more agressively during the decades between...

Re:Progressing in space

[Urkki]

JWST is something to be exited about, definitely... Once it's actually up!

And now that I think of it, Hubble isn't that old tech either, especially considering the repair missions. It's a bit sad we (the humanity, I'm not an American) have currently lost the capability to do the kind of "rescue" repair. Well, probably lost, who knows what the X-37 is actually capable of... (And no, this is not longing to get the space shuttle back).

Re:Progressing in space

[Urkki]

Oh, I'm not slagging the science done in space (and not just by NASA) at all. Instrument improvements have been amazing for the science. I'm also not so much after putting man on the moon, but being able to, because that means ability to do a whole lot of other things, too.

I mean, just looking at progress from 1950-1980, and then from 1980-2010... I wouldn't be so negative if I believed the "basic" space tech has reached a plateau, but especially in the electric propulsion and miniature nuclear power (not just RTG) areas, I believe there's so much room for improvement, that last 30 years seem like just wasting time.

Re:Progressing in space

[nitehawk214]

Well that is probably true, now that we are not putting a significant portion of our GDP into the space race, things have slowed down. The problem is we dont have any better way of getting into space than building a giant disintegrating totem pole and lighting a bunch of explosives under it.

And I suppose things like RTG powering Curiousity are impressive, but hardly revolutionary. It is just an incremental The Voyager probes have been running on RTG power since the 70s.

Re:Progressing in space

[Teancum]

The JWST isn't going to fly. Of course neither will the Orion space capsule, especially on the SLS system, but who is counting?

The only thing those programs do is provide "make work" jobs for engineers and technicians. The SLS is being built explicitly to keep the Ammonium Perchlorate plants running for the next decade until the next major buy of ICBMs happen. For what expense and if there might be more productive ways to get that accomplished is certainly something to be asking, but it has nothing to do with accomplishing anything in space and especially nothing at all to do with science.

5 ton ballast? lol

[Rakshasa-sensei]

"The second, a Falcon Heavy launch, will put up several satellites and a 5 metric ton ballast, in an effort to demonstrate the Falcon 9 Heavy for the Air Force."

Why don't they just say "we're going to launch a 5 ton spy satellite and several decoys", it's not like anyone who follows this doesn't know.

Military contract?

[3seas]

My tax dollars at work..... But I want laser cannons that can incinerate a person or bigger.items. And I want it hack able, like military secrets. .

Re:Military contract?

[turbidostato]

Yeah, sure. And I want head-mounted sharks on those lasers!
Oh, wait...

ground minus 300km

[FatLittleMonkey]

I would assume that's an altitude at perigee of 6000km, not the actual perigee.

Re:ground minus 300km

[simonbp]

And you would be right. A "6000x12000 km" orbit is 12000 km from the center of the Earth at closest (since the Earth's radius is about 6000 km), and 18000 km from the center of the Earth at farthest. The energy of the orbit is defined by the average distance, which is 15000 km. The initial orbit is about 6300 km, so it's 2.4 times as energetic as the final, meaning a large burn by the rocket's upper stage to loose that energy and change orbits.

On top of that, the final orbit is also inclined at 45 degrees to the equator, compared to 28 degrees for the intial orbit. That requires another big out-of-plane burn which means more fuel.

Really, this is an orbit that you would only go to if you had big powerful hot rod of a rocket that you wanted to try out...

Re:ground minus 300km

[Teancum]

Right.... because a 6000km x 12,000km from the center of the Earth would be a sub-orbital flight.

Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[Bruce Perens]

Given how expensive it is to lift anything to space, lifting ballast to space is a sin. Lift another satellite in its place.

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[Jeng]

Given how expensive the satellite is it would be foolish to launch it on an unproven platform.

If you really think it is a sin go find a company that wants a 5 ton satellite launched for free, with the possibility of loosing it.

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you really think it is a sin go find a company that wants a 5 ton satellite launched for free, with the possibility of loosing it.

If the insurance cost is lower than the launch cost, this is an easy one (unless the payload is very time critical).

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[Strider-]

Given how expensive it is to lift anything to space, lifting ballast to space is a sin. Lift another satellite in its place.

Ballast is always a necessity in rocketry. In order for the thing to fly in a straight line, the thrust vector must be aligned with the vehicle's centre of mass. The upshot of this is that if your spacecraft (Rocket and payload) doesn't have the center of mass precisely down the centerline, you need to add ballast weights in order to keep the thing from coming apart. If you look closely of an image of the shuttle at launch, the exhaust from the main engines (not the solids) is on an angle compared to the rest of the vehicle. As the fuel is burned off and the SRBs jettisoned, the center of mass changes, and the engines will gimbal to keep things on course.

On traditional rockets, the same thing is accomplished by adding weights so the whole thing is balanced. Back in the day, the way that most amateur radio satellites got launched was as ballast on a launch with some larger payload. That's getting tougher and tougher in the modern era due to competition for that space, and also, to put it bluntly, it's a lot easier to certify a lump of concrete for flight than it is to certify a satellite built by a bunch of guys you don't necessarily trust, sometimes int heir basement.

Launching a big lump of nothing also makes sense, given that this is really just an all-up test of the launch platform. Are you going to entrust a $500,000,000 payload to an unproven launch vehicle? If they did and it went boom (which tends to happen in rocketry a lot), we'd here no end of their choice of an untested vehicle. If the test passes, then there is more confidence in the subsequent launches being safe enough.

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[Bruce Perens]

Ballast is always a necessity in rocketry.

Maybe I should give you some more context. I work with an organization called AMSAT on leading-edge digital communications technology. We are a non-profit, volunteer organization that has been running the most successful private space program, as hitch-hikers on government and commercial payloads since 1963. We have put up something more than 60 satellites in that time, often working with universities in many nations. We will give you a working satellite in place of that ballast. We've done this for one of the initial test flights of Arianne 5, and for other missions.

There is not any good reason to launch a stupid dead weight into space. There are many university and other projects that will be happy to use that weight.

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[slew]

Given how expensive the satellite is it would be foolish to launch it on an unproven platform.

If you really think it is a sin go find a company that wants a 5 ton satellite launched for free, with the possibility of loosing it.

It's not 5-tons, but SpaceX is working with a company (Orbcomm) that apparently is willing to launch a 1/4 ton satellite on an unproven platform. Unfortunatly, their OG2 satellite didn't fare well with its recent experience with SpaceX (they are filing a $10M insurance claim for this loss).

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[Bruce Perens]

AMSAT is very experienced in putting together satellites at low cost, and having them integrated successfully. What they need is a ride. The same is true for many universities. Figure out the launch cost for 5 tons. There would be a long line of folks who would want a discount on that.

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[Strider-]

Hi Bruce,

I'm well aware of AMSAT, as I've worked them myself (And also been to Bob's lab at NRL). Alas, it's a whole lot easier and cheaper to flight qualify a lump of concrete than it is to qualify a satellite built by AMSAT and its volunteers. I'm not meaning to denigrate the AMSAT folks, as they've shown that they can build and operate very reliable spacecraft (Just look at AO-7) but from the point of view of the launch provider, it's a huge risk. Add to this the current ITAR regime, and it unfortunately doesn't bode that well, imho.

I would absolutely love to see a replacement for AO-40, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

Re:Lifting Ballast to Space is a Sin!

[Bruce Perens]

We have an ITAR 121 carve-out for Open Source due to the lawsuit Phil Karn brought against the government some years ago. This is used successfully by DIY Drones, which IMO has a much bigger problem than AMSAT.

I a number of smaller replacements for AO-40 would be better than a large one.

And the end begins.

[lemur3]

I don't know why everyone is all happy and gleeful about this...

Here I was hoping that SpaceX wouldnt become another Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grummen/General Dynamics/ etc.. defense contractor.

In 10.. 20 years will we all be applauding the 'success' of the free market when these guys are just as slimy and nasty as any of the other contractors who will gladly make any weapons system you want ?

Re:And the end begins.

[Jeng]

A customer is a customer.

And when you are a start up you don't remove the biggest customer available to you just because they are the military.

Also, not sure if you noticed, but other countries who also spend money on their military tend to do very not nice things to people and you need a military to stop that so pick a side.

Re:And the end begins.

[lemur3]

The ends (make profit) justify the means (by catering to the war machine) ?

Re:And the end begins.

[Jeng]

Having a well funded military is a necessity.

There would be a lot more little wars by small violent countries that are otherwise contained because the US sticks its nose where it doesn't belong. Think North Korea.

One more step

[hEpen]

... towards there being a viable market for space piracy and thus space pirates.

15 747's

[magarity]

"the liftoff thrust of the Falcon Heavy equals fifteen Boeing 747 aircraft at full power."

So, I just need to figure out how to mount 60 engines on a 747.

Re:15 747's

[FatLittleMonkey]

"Very carefully".

Re:15 747's

[slew]

"the liftoff thrust of the Falcon Heavy equals fifteen Boeing 747 aircraft at full power."

So, I just need to figure out how to mount 60 engines on a 747.

That sounds impressive until you realize that a 747 has 4 engines, and the Falcon Heavy takes off with 18 Merlin booster engines (AFAIK the other 9 merlin engines in the first stage core aren't used until the boosters have depleted their fuel).

That means those Merlin engines are less than 4x more powerful than an engine that was first made in 1970 (of course merlin is a rocket engine and can work in a vaccum, not a high-bypass turbo-fan, so it's not really comparable), or say something like the Saturn F1 engine which is more than 10x the Merlin...

Re:15 747's

[T-Bone-T]

Or they could be using the stats from the 747-8I engine that produces 20,000lbs more thrust or the -400ER that produces 16,000lbs more thrust than the engine type on the original -100B.

New space companies, old-style financing

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

Right. It seems that to stay afloat, thesome of the so-called new space companies still require a healthy infusion of government funds, just like the Defense industry. The company closest to achieving "private" space is probably the group assoicated with Virgin Space since they'll mostly be dealing with rich non-governmental passengers, a.ka. space tourists, rather than NASA or the almighty US military.

How about moon supply dumps

[mattr]

Now that we have an unmanned cargo to orbit, I would like to see a bounty for private industry to establish fuel, water and food dumps on the Moon using unmanned landers and remote controlled semi-automatic construction. Surely such an asset would be of use to future projects?

Space drones

[Seeteufel]

From outer space it will dive down and kill you while you type on your computer subversive messages. Or fight the space nazis and the little green men or anything, No idea.