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Reusable SpaceX Rocket Has Implications For a Return To the Moon (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: While it is unclear what, if any, implications the recent successful landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 first stage means for the future of space travel, planetary scientist and space commentator Paul Spudis suggested that the feat and the similar one performed earlier by Blue Origin could have some benefit for a return to the moon. In the meantime, a test of the engines in the recovered first stage had mixed results. The engines fired alright, but SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reported, "thrust fluctuations" that might have been caused by "debris ingestion."
Would dropping the cost of getting payloads to orbit have implications for a return to the moon? Hmm.... let's see... I can't quite tell...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Return to the moon?
So still no new ideas then NASA?
Forget the moon, we should make a mission to go to the dyson sphere.
These rockets are putting some 50000 lb in LEO. It hurts to add weight that reduces pay load. But SpaceX claims the first stage is worth 60 million dollars. May be if they would come up with some kind of system that would fire a cable with grappling hooks at the last moment to snag a cable hung between towers like a clothesline and end up hanging without hitting the ground. It could be heavier than three struts and take some away from payload capacity. By that might be less demanding than precisely landing on three legs, and save enough money make up for it in the next launch.
But anyway it is an amazing achievement. I really hated to see Wired mag calling it "botched" in its head line. May be it is not an inaccurate description, may be they were using standard headline language to find smaller words. But still, if most projects achieve this much in their botched operations ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I have it on good word that there's whales there. Me and some of the boys from Nantucket are looking into what it'd cost to get up there.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
You have heard that Titan has lakes of hydrocarbons (methane (natural gas), ethane, etc) right?
[2] No life means no downtrodden people to exploit.
Doesn't that just mean we have to put those people there? which is a great reason for returning there :).
Just put them there, they can't get back without your help, and they need you for lots of vital things to stay alive. It's perfect!
Huh? Were you thinking of stowing away in the Falcon's first stage?
There are no plans by SpaceX to ever have people land in that manner. Dragon (the part humans actually ride in) has both parachutes both retrorockets, only one of which needs to work, and a degree of "crumple zone" (shock-absorbing legs plus the heat shield and service hardware) in case of partial failures of either of the two.
Perhaps you also missed the fifty or so times that the SpaceX newscasters added the word "experimental" before the word "landing". Would you prefer that like most companies they keep their development work in secret? Or should every company be like them, with, say, car manufacturers releasing footage every time, say, a new experimental safety-critical system ends up with a test car plowing into a fence?
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
Hey, it's the first step to catch the radio signal from the Tiberians, then grab the Encyclopedia! ;)
Learn.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I do not agree with your statement's overall claim.
However, in order to make you feel better, you can think of these space ventures simply as income redistribution. The "rich guys with a fantasy for space" and "wealthy people" you refer too spend money doing this. Lots of money. This money goes to high-tech jobs that pay well, that in themselves allow money to be distributed. If more of the 1% spent their money this way, there would be even more money distributed around, driving the economy that you and I derive our incomes from.
So rather than being negative on this, you should be banging the drum to make more and more of the 1% interested in this. Make those 1%ers prefer to spend their resources acquiring expensive services that feed the highest paying technical staff, We don't want those folks spending their money on things or on low-value services, we want them to spend them on services that can only be provided at great cost by technical people. Get those bank accounts spending money on high tech services provided by your neighbours !
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
So, how would you advance mankind? Keep using earth resources till they run out? Then teleport to the next place? Limit the amount of people on earth, dumb them down where the follow the next Donald to the next war and, etc, etc? Or open new fields of exploration? Maybe inhabit new arena, try to live peacefully among new vistas, develop new tastes, find new friends, where one asteroid does not send us back to cavemen.
Yes but "How to Serve Man" is still just a cookbook...
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The first stage isn't supposed to land with humans on board. It's just designed to land so that they don't have to build another one from scratch every time they launch a customers' payload into orbit.
This will mean they don't have so much cost per launch, so they can either pass those savings on to their customer (customer wins), don't pass those savings on to their customer (SpaceX profits), or pass SOME savings on to the customer (so both parties benefit).
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
To me, an everyday citizen of the Roman Empire, it seems that indoor plumbing will become nothing more then a expensive luxury product. The one percent will have another reason to spend their money. I have yet to read a practical use for these so called "pipes" except for supplying the estates of rich people, for which Plumbnus Tertullius has obtained that contract. Otherwise none of these pipes seem important in supplying water to Rome at large. They are just rich guys with a fantasy for not walking to the river every morning. Giving wealthy people an indoor bath is not a municipal water supply.
Advance mankind? Kill all the politicians and lawyers, to start with.
Those pesky 1%ers
I was doing some napkin math/blueprints on putting humans on the first stage for tourism. People require too much stuff to make economic sense, especially when you factor in the 'i went boom my family sues you" part. Besides that you would have them laying down and they would not get to see much. Might as well send them though a centrifuge.
Knowing it all since the late 70's.
If - and I stress if - launch costs can be brought down to anywhere close to the propellant costs, space would be affordable to everyday people. If propellant was half of the total cost you might be looking at $10-50/kg. If a "passenger liner" version had about 50% of its mass comprised of passengers and the other 50% with structure and consumables, then you would be looking at ticket prices on the order of $1.5-7k.
The problem is, while it's certainly possible, we're nowhere even close to that. Fuel today isn't half the cost of a launch, it's 0,01 to 0,1 percent of the cost. If SpaceX can cut the cost of their launches from $5k/kg to $2k/kg or even $1k, then that would be great. But it's still not nearly enough for "general public" access to space. General public access to space is doable - there's no physics standing in the way, or any other sort of practicable barriers - but it's going to take not simply reusables. It will need a long, slow process of optimizing every aspect of rocket launches. And it'll require a steady buildup of launch rates along the way to pay for it. One's going to need a spike in customers at $1k/kg to pay for the scaleup that can bring costs down to $500/kg, another spike at $500/kg to bring it down to $250/kg, another spike at $250 to bring it down to $125... etc.
There's no fundamental reason why rockets can't be launched en masse, like aircraft; aircraft, too, were once toys for the rich and the military. But there's an awful lot of work to do before then, and a market to prove.
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
Huh? Were you thinking of stowing away in the Falcon's first stage?
Huh? Ohhhh!! So that's why I've been failing all my space tourism mission in Kerbal Space Program so far.
Elok
So much fails in this one single post.
To me space will become nothing more then a expensive tourist trap. The one percent will have another reason to spend their money.
So you prefer that they kept their money in bank? I tough that one of the problem with 1%er is that they doesn't spend enough money.
I have yet to read a practical use for these private space ventures except for supplying the Space station which SpaceX has obtained that contract.
Here's one reason. But I could name you a dozen over the top of my head (Tourism, mining, electricity production, telecom, science etc.) that could become feasible if SpaceX achieve to offer commercial space flight for a fraction of the actual price.
Otherwise none of these space ventures seem important in space exploration.
Yeah, money is clearly not a factor for space exploration.
They are just rich guys with a fantasy for space. Giving wealthy people a thrill ride is not space exploration.
Really? Rich guy are the only one interested in SpaceX news because of space tourism?
Elok
They should rename one of the barges to "Death and gravity" (GSV culture ship).
This will mean they don't have so much cost per launch, so they can either pass those savings on to their customer (customer wins), don't pass those savings on to their customer (SpaceX profits), or pass SOME savings on to the customer (so both parties benefit).
And possibly exploit a long tail of not-so-reliable re-re-re-furbished rockets for cheap non-essential payloads. Right now they're "too expensive to fail", but as long as they can offer at least 80% reliability to orbit for half the cost (30% second stage, 3% fuel, 17% refurb instead of 70% new) it'll still be cheaper in the long run. Unless you're doing something really exotic I can't imagine machining two satellites to the same specifications could be that much more expensive than one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Somehow I just assume that non-virgin Falcon9 first-stage will never be man-rated. Sure it's a great Idea for lifting routine cargo, maybe even at some discount. I also suspect that special cargoes will be willing to pay a premium for a virgin first stage.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Yup... there's no ladder on the first stage!
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
For some reason I can't load GP's comment.
Limit the amount of people on earth, dumb them down where the follow the next Donald to the next war and, etc, etc?
This seems to be the general strategy being employed. The ultra rich are already building luxury bunkers/Vaults. They know it's just a matter of time before they'll need to crawl into the vault to ride things out as all of us plebes kill each other.
Hopefully when that happens, it won't be nuclear and we'll be smart enough to let them crawl into their vaults before we promptly seal them permanently with concrete. Then we can come up with a better system that would bring the rest of the world up to the West's standard of living, end poverty, and usher in a world-wide golden age.
We have the resources and technology to do it, but the current system wants people like us doing meaningless make-work, warming a chair 8 hours per day, and wondering if we'll be able to pay next month's bills instead of building up Africa and Southeast Asia. I can assure you my job is truly meaningless. It adds nothing to the world. The rich get richer by stealing from us with shell games, leaving us to fight over the table scraps we've been allowed. I don't know what you do for a living, but if you're doing something meaningful you are probably contributing 10x your pay in wealth, but we simply live in a society where that means your job creates wealth for 9 meaningless jobs. (Jobs like mine that could be done in 4 hours one day out of the week if customers weren't so impatient and could wait a week for changes, other jobs for people whose sole job is to make sure welfare doesn't go to "those people," not to mention the jobs that only exist to make sure we're keeping a chair warm for enough hours per week/year.)
I guess my point is, the people who truly run things have figured out that 90% of us don't need to be working for them to get their shinies and luxuries, and the only problem is a matter of culling the rest of us before we catch on and do something crazy like demand a basic minimum income and a worldwide infrastructure project. I haven't run any numbers so the actual %age might be lower or higher.
If we/they actually did that (mine the asteroids ect.), then eventually we'd shift from a scarcity based economy to an abundance based economy (or at least shift much fast than we are presently). That would cause all kind of disruptive influences, and it's really hard to tell which would be beneficial and which would be detrimental. Just look at the present labor situation, the abundance of cheap foreign labor isn't helping those who are ill-suited to anything but manual labor among us.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
There's no reason why a proven rocket can't become more reliable than a new one, so that people would pay a premium to ride the reused one. It remains to be seen, of course.
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is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting. -- T.H. Whit