There are private space companies, and there are private space companies. Take two examples:
ULA - United Launch Alliance - a merger of the rocket divisions of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that occurred to reduce competition in the US government launch market. Their launches are primarily to the US government and are based on "Cost-Plus" contracts, where ULA receives the "cost" to launch a rocket, plus a guaranteed profit margin. The "cost" is decided implicitly by ULA, through their design and staffing decisions (i.e. more complicated designs and more managers mean more money from the government). They have been receiving one billion dollars a year merely to maintain launch "readiness" without even launching any rockets. Their launch costs are the most expensive in the world.
SpaceX - a company founded by Elon Musk primarily from his own profits from selling Paypal. SpaceX developed their rockets from their own money. During the 2008 crash, SpaceX nearly went under, but was saved by a fixed cost contract to NASA to carry cargo to the International Space Station. Since then, most of their launches are for satellites for companies outside the US. They are the world's least expensive launch option, and that is without re-using their rockets. They are on track to be the world's premier launch service provider.
Which of these two companies fits the stereotype of government funded sloth?
Some people will purchase magnet motor and wind and solar powered cars, but not me. I might consider CNG if the refueling was more ubiquitous. I don't see another viable fuel source competively [SIC] priced for transportation.
If you own a house, then all you need is a dryer plug in your garage. Plug it in at night and you have your own home gas station. One day, most parking lots will have plugs, so you can charge at work. As for cost, charging a 90kWh tesla would cost 90 x 0.135 = $12.15 per charge at most. That would give you a driving range of about 280 miles. That is unambiguously cheaper than gasoline, even at today's prices.
That may be true but electric cars are expensive, have shorter range, and much longer recharge/refill times than gasoline. All of those combine to make electric vehicles very unattractive.
Have you seen the Tesla Model 3? $35000 US. Beautiful design. 215 mile range in base model. Honestly I think your talking points were written before the Model 3 was revealed. Don't worry, I'm sure your oil financed PR agency is working on new talking points. They are probably being tested on focus groups right now.
How do you believe you are going to produce the electricity required by the electric vehicles? Being electric is not some kind of magic. You have to produce this electricity somehow. A large chunk of worldwide electricty is produced using fossil fuels: Oil, gas and coal.
(a) Producing electricity from fossil fuels at large thermal generating plants and using that electricity to move a car is far more efficient than burning gasoline in a car to make a car move
(b) The electricity system is likely to be powered increasingly by renewable sources of energy in the future.
The coal industry is crashing. Peabody coal, the largest coal company in the US just went bankrupt. The reason: competition from renewables and cheaper LNG, and dropping Chinese demand. China has a huge air pollution problem caused primarily by coal generation. They are moving to renewables in a big way.
We pay very high taxes on fuel here in Europe, the taxes are many times larger than the actual fuel production cost and are usually a fixed amount, not a percentage of the fuel cost, so large changes in crude oil prices only have a very small effect on consumer fuel prices in Europe.
Yeah, but the oil companies won't be making much money when the real prices drop. The recent glut has pretty much destroyed the Canadian tar sands industry. I would say that owning companies whose primary assets are oil extraction rights is a dangerous proposition over the coming decades.
The recent price crash of oil was caused by a supply glut of 2 million barrels per day. According the the studies referenced here, if electric vehicle growth continues at the rate we have seen in recent years, electric vehicles will in and of themselves create their own oil demand glut of 2 million barrels by 2023. I wouldn't want to own oil stocks when that happens.
"Centralizing power generation (moving from millions of small gasoline engines to hundreds of big oil/coal turbine generators) allows for greater efficiency."
You tend to lose most of those efficiency gains on the distribution side of the coin.
No you don't. The electricity distribution system is highly efficient. When we transmit electricity at 1 million volts over long distances, we minimize the current through the wires. The power losses in the wires are equal to I^2 * R. By keeping current low, the losses in the wires are almost always less than 10%, and likely less than 5%. The process of stepping the voltages up and down is also highly efficient, thanks to the design of AC transformers. If the AC transformers weren't so efficient, they would explode due to the heat buildup. This only happens rarely when they break. Overall, the efficiency of the transmission system from generation to your house is almost certainly better than 90%.
In this case the right way to do it was to hire lobbyists so you can suck off of the government teat.
The companies that are really sucking at the government teat are Lockheed Martin and Boeing who collectively own ULA. They supply launches under "Cost Plus" contracts. Basically the government pays the cost, as decided by the company, plus a guaranteed cost margin. This causes incentives to inflate costs through hiring too many managers and by choosing expensive complicated designs. SpaceX saves the government money by doing launches under fixed price per service contracts. The government pays a fixed price for launches; this creates incentives for SpaceX to save money. SpaceX has become the world's most affordable launcher. They are already cheaper than the Chinese and Russians, even without reusing their rockets.
Based (1) on some quick calculations on the video based on the speed of the exhaust traveling across the deck, (2) on the word of an experienced blue water sailor who looked at the sea state in the video, and (3) what Elon Musk said during a press conference, the cross winds for that landing were about 40 knots. That's intense!
I am deeply concerned about global warming. Therefore I support some increase in nuclear energy production, at least in the medium term. I think that there are new modern reactor designs that should be built, ones where a meltdown is highly unlikely and where the reactor consumes most of its worst waste for energy production.
That said, the long term source of energy has to be solar. It is the one form of renewable energy that has practically no limit in terms of scalability. The area of solar panels that would meet all of America's energy needs is surprisingly small, and the cost of production is dropping quickly. Storage will not be an issue in the future, as battery tech gets better and less expensive. Even today's lithium battery tech is good enough for many transportation applications, and the tech will only continue to improve. Modern lithium cells are not environmentally harmful. There is a lot of lithium that is easy to extract in dried lake beds in places like South America. The cells will almost certainly be recycled, and not end up in landfills, for the simple reason that the chemical components will be valuable. To add to this, lithium will not be the only solution. There are likely other storage mechanisms that will be both cheaper and more reliable for bulk storage applications.
My background is in theoretical physics, and I have considered this for quite a while. I am convinced that solar energy is the ultimate solution to supply our modern technological civilization with all the energy it needs. I believe that in a couple of decades, gasoline engines will be on the road to becoming boutique fashion items, like Harley Davidson motorcycles. Internal combustion engines will be perceived as loud, stinky anachronisms. If you want to experience this today, drive a Tesla model S for a month. You'll never think of your ICE the same way again.
In the US, seventeen gasoline cars catch fire every hour, amounting to 150000 cars catching fire per year. Here comes the new wave of electric car trolls.
These days, I have to seriously consider the possibility that you're part of a paid smear campaign by one of Musk's competitors. Because that's actually done these days. Ethical standards in marketing, never very high in the first place, have slipped that far. I suppose it's not the ethical standards of marketers that bother me so much, it's the public acceptance of such methods.
I have to agree with you. I have been watching Musk and his companies for a long time, and it seems to me that these trolling posts about Space X seemed to start appearing at a particular time, I think about two to three years ago. ULA, Space X's competitor in the US hired S-3 Group as a their propaganda and lobbying company about that time. I think what may have provoked it was that Space X was calling out ULA for using Russian rocket engines in its Atlas V rocket. They were involved in legal motions to prevent the Air Force from buying Russian engines. It seems to me that ULA likely realized that Space X was a real competitor. They likely wrote them off before as a joke because they Elon Musk kept making promises that seemed impossible. However those promises started coming true, albeit a bit later than promised. One thing that I have learned about Elon Musk is that he may make pronouncements that seem impossible, but usually they come true. He is quite brilliant and for the most part honest in what he says. He predicted that Space X would become a globally competitive launcher during a speech he made after their first successful launch, and this has come true. He predicted they would be able to land a first stage, and they succeeded last month. He predicted they would make a capsule that would land like a helicopter, and so far testing looks promising. I know the Mars idea seems unlikely at first glance, but if re-usability pans out (which seems likely because he has landed a first stage, which is the hardest part), then sending three or so astronauts on a fly-by won't be that expensive. Building a lander would be hard, but their experience with supersonic retropropulsion will help, as will their experience landing rockets. As for making fuel on Mars, I think that would require time and testing. I suspect the first flight will be a fly-by, just as it was with the Moon program. That is definitely feasible in the 10-year time frame.
This monster is going to get people killed in the name of profit.
Imagine if the above intrepid poster typified decision makers in sixteenth century. They would never have sent out explorers such as Sir Francis Drake or Ferdinand Magellan on their great voyages to map the world. Hell, if all humans were all like this poster (and those who modded him up), these great explorers would never have existed. Judging by many of the comments on this article, we are turning into a society of Statler and Waldorfs who criticize from the sidelines while offering little of substance. So grow a pair, and remember that all of us are going to die. What are you going to do with your life?
Agreed. I encourage folks to check out Rocket Jump's video Why CG Sucks (Except it Doesn't). If you don't, here's the short version: we don't notice the good digital effects because they're so good or so subtle. We usually only notice the bad stuff.
One of my favourite movies, Master and Commander, uses CG, but it is not obvious that it does. I think that is the best use of CG, when it is largely invisible and not flaunting itself in your face. Mad Max, Fury Road is another great example.
In general, I prefer Netflix's system that isn't based on ad revenue but rather subscription revenue. The ad revenue system seems to encourage broadcasters to seek the lowest common denominator in their audience. Netflix has won me over with series such as Daredevil and House of Cards. Other subscription based services also seem to produce better material, the best example likely being HBO with series such as Game of Thrones. I have little sympathy for the old broadcasters. They are dinosaurs and should pass into oblivion in my opinion.
Purely speaking from an economic standpoint, it would also make sense to do things differently.
One could also just go for the most expensive part, which are the engines and avionics, and, depending on how you manage to retrieve them, it could actually be better.
Yeah, I hear the engines and avionics are the most expensive part of a 747. Who don't we just ditch the fuselage after every flight, and keep the engines and avionics. Would that make economic sense?
This was the last launch of v1.1 of the Falcon 9. As I understand it, v1.2 (sometimes called v1.1 Full Thrust) has upgraded landing legs. In either case, I would not call this a failure. The payload was placed into orbit. The touchdown speed was in fact normal. For some reason, one landing leg didn't lock. The landing is considered an experiment anyways. Isn't it good to do experiments? Don't you learn from them?
The latest tweets from Musk indicate that on reading the data, the landing was not "hard". Apparently one of the legs failed to lock. Also it landed 1.3m from the center.
Elon Musk @elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
Definitely harder to land on a ship. Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that's also translating & rotating.
Elon Musk @elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
However, that was not what prevented it being good. Touchdown speed was ok, but a leg lockout didn't latch, so it tipped over after landing.
Most of the posts in this discussion are based on incomplete information.
It's contracted out design and production since the Apollo era.
Yes and AFAIK, this was historically done with "cost plus" contracts that had no incentive for cost reduction. Basically the companies could name their cost for a project and then be guaranteed a profit margin on top. The companies would add complex management structures and build overly complex machines in order to maximize their profit. NASA became a key tool in dispersing "pork barrel" money to various congressional districts.
The model for the contracts with SpaceX and Orbital is "fixed cost for service". This gives an incentive for the companies to reduce costs, and they have. SpaceX is currently the least expensive launcher in the world, even without re-use of their rockets. And that includes China. The incumbent players, Lockheed Martin and Boeing have helped to created a PR campaign that brands the owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk as a "corporate welfare queen" partly for relying on government contracts through SpaceX. This coming from companies that, through defence contracts, rely mostly on government money. It is quite absurd propaganda.
You might want to get a better grip on reality. Tesla Autopilot is already 80% of the way there, and the other 20% may not be available to consumers yet, but it has had millions of miles of testing...
It seems that Slashdot has been infested with willfully ignorant ball-less trolls. This is supposed to be a site for nerds. There is no greater nerd than Elon Musk. He is infused in sci-fi. He builds rockets...he designed much of the first SpaceX rocket (Falcon-1) himself. He builds arguably the best car in the world, and certainly the most technologically advanced (the Model S). It has the most advanced auto-driving features of any production car in the world. He literally bet the entire fortune he made from the sale of Paypal (200 million dollars) on Tesla and SpaceX after the 2008 market crash; most so called capitalists in our elite would never take such risks. Any libertarians amongst the readership here should worship Musk. He is more the Ayn Randian superhero than anyone I can think of. And if they return that Musk has taken some government help (like money for building the Dragon capsule to ferry cargo to the Space station for NASA or a $7500 subsidy for clean energy vehicle purchases), I would ask them what they think of defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin who receive 75% or more of their income from government contracts, or oil companies who have literally had wars fought in their name by governments. If those so-called libertarians don't denounce such things, then they are the worst type of corporate troll hypocrites.
Still, there are obstacles. SpaceX still needs to demonstrate the ability to consistently produce and launch rockets many times a year after the June accident caused an unexpected, six-month setback, something it will do with several flights planned for the weeks ahead.
Just because it's relatively cheap to use Space X, if I have a 50-50 ( better or worse) chance that my $100 million satellite that took several years to design and build is going to get blown up, I'll pass.
One could make the argument, especially during the earlier launches, that using a rocket that has been tested three or four times already might give more reliability, and not less. Time will tell.
By mode of thought, I mean describing human behaviour with blind mathematical models and then acting on the prediction of those models as if they were absolutely true. These mathematical models are quite literally the reason we built enough atomic bombs to destroy civilization 20 times over. Decision makers, who are not usually highly educated, hear that the technocrats below them built mathematical models that say we should build many atomic bombs. And so they trust the mathematics without understanding its limitations, and build the bombs. Watch the documentary. It is quite interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
There are private space companies, and there are private space companies. Take two examples:
ULA - United Launch Alliance - a merger of the rocket divisions of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that occurred to reduce competition in the US government launch market. Their launches are primarily to the US government and are based on "Cost-Plus" contracts, where ULA receives the "cost" to launch a rocket, plus a guaranteed profit margin. The "cost" is decided implicitly by ULA, through their design and staffing decisions (i.e. more complicated designs and more managers mean more money from the government). They have been receiving one billion dollars a year merely to maintain launch "readiness" without even launching any rockets. Their launch costs are the most expensive in the world.
SpaceX - a company founded by Elon Musk primarily from his own profits from selling Paypal. SpaceX developed their rockets from their own money. During the 2008 crash, SpaceX nearly went under, but was saved by a fixed cost contract to NASA to carry cargo to the International Space Station. Since then, most of their launches are for satellites for companies outside the US. They are the world's least expensive launch option, and that is without re-using their rockets. They are on track to be the world's premier launch service provider.
Which of these two companies fits the stereotype of government funded sloth?
Some people will purchase magnet motor and wind and solar powered cars, but not me. I might consider CNG if the refueling was more ubiquitous. I don't see another viable fuel source competively [SIC] priced for transportation.
If you own a house, then all you need is a dryer plug in your garage. Plug it in at night and you have your own home gas station. One day, most parking lots will have plugs, so you can charge at work. As for cost, charging a 90kWh tesla would cost 90 x 0.135 = $12.15 per charge at most. That would give you a driving range of about 280 miles. That is unambiguously cheaper than gasoline, even at today's prices.
That may be true but electric cars are expensive, have shorter range, and much longer recharge/refill times than gasoline. All of those combine to make electric vehicles very unattractive.
Have you seen the Tesla Model 3? $35000 US. Beautiful design. 215 mile range in base model. Honestly I think your talking points were written before the Model 3 was revealed. Don't worry, I'm sure your oil financed PR agency is working on new talking points. They are probably being tested on focus groups right now.
How do you believe you are going to produce the electricity required by the electric vehicles? Being electric is not some kind of magic. You have to produce this electricity somehow. A large chunk of worldwide electricty is produced using fossil fuels: Oil, gas and coal.
(a) Producing electricity from fossil fuels at large thermal generating plants and using that electricity to move a car is far more efficient than burning gasoline in a car to make a car move
(b) The electricity system is likely to be powered increasingly by renewable sources of energy in the future.
The coal industry is crashing. Peabody coal, the largest coal company in the US just went bankrupt. The reason: competition from renewables and cheaper LNG, and dropping Chinese demand. China has a huge air pollution problem caused primarily by coal generation. They are moving to renewables in a big way.
We pay very high taxes on fuel here in Europe, the taxes are many times larger than the actual fuel production cost and are usually a fixed amount, not a percentage of the fuel cost, so large changes in crude oil prices only have a very small effect on consumer fuel prices in Europe.
Yeah, but the oil companies won't be making much money when the real prices drop. The recent glut has pretty much destroyed the Canadian tar sands industry. I would say that owning companies whose primary assets are oil extraction rights is a dangerous proposition over the coming decades.
The recent price crash of oil was caused by a supply glut of 2 million barrels per day. According the the studies referenced here, if electric vehicle growth continues at the rate we have seen in recent years, electric vehicles will in and of themselves create their own oil demand glut of 2 million barrels by 2023. I wouldn't want to own oil stocks when that happens.
"Centralizing power generation (moving from millions of small gasoline engines to hundreds of big oil/coal turbine generators) allows for greater efficiency."
You tend to lose most of those efficiency gains on the distribution side of the coin.
No you don't. The electricity distribution system is highly efficient. When we transmit electricity at 1 million volts over long distances, we minimize the current through the wires. The power losses in the wires are equal to I^2 * R. By keeping current low, the losses in the wires are almost always less than 10%, and likely less than 5%. The process of stepping the voltages up and down is also highly efficient, thanks to the design of AC transformers. If the AC transformers weren't so efficient, they would explode due to the heat buildup. This only happens rarely when they break. Overall, the efficiency of the transmission system from generation to your house is almost certainly better than 90%.
In this case the right way to do it was to hire lobbyists so you can suck off of the government teat.
The companies that are really sucking at the government teat are Lockheed Martin and Boeing who collectively own ULA. They supply launches under "Cost Plus" contracts. Basically the government pays the cost, as decided by the company, plus a guaranteed cost margin. This causes incentives to inflate costs through hiring too many managers and by choosing expensive complicated designs. SpaceX saves the government money by doing launches under fixed price per service contracts. The government pays a fixed price for launches; this creates incentives for SpaceX to save money. SpaceX has become the world's most affordable launcher. They are already cheaper than the Chinese and Russians, even without reusing their rockets.
And in rough seas
Based (1) on some quick calculations on the video based on the speed of the exhaust traveling across the deck, (2) on the word of an experienced blue water sailor who looked at the sea state in the video, and (3) what Elon Musk said during a press conference, the cross winds for that landing were about 40 knots. That's intense!
I am deeply concerned about global warming. Therefore I support some increase in nuclear energy production, at least in the medium term. I think that there are new modern reactor designs that should be built, ones where a meltdown is highly unlikely and where the reactor consumes most of its worst waste for energy production.
That said, the long term source of energy has to be solar. It is the one form of renewable energy that has practically no limit in terms of scalability. The area of solar panels that would meet all of America's energy needs is surprisingly small, and the cost of production is dropping quickly. Storage will not be an issue in the future, as battery tech gets better and less expensive. Even today's lithium battery tech is good enough for many transportation applications, and the tech will only continue to improve. Modern lithium cells are not environmentally harmful. There is a lot of lithium that is easy to extract in dried lake beds in places like South America. The cells will almost certainly be recycled, and not end up in landfills, for the simple reason that the chemical components will be valuable. To add to this, lithium will not be the only solution. There are likely other storage mechanisms that will be both cheaper and more reliable for bulk storage applications.
My background is in theoretical physics, and I have considered this for quite a while. I am convinced that solar energy is the ultimate solution to supply our modern technological civilization with all the energy it needs. I believe that in a couple of decades, gasoline engines will be on the road to becoming boutique fashion items, like Harley Davidson motorcycles. Internal combustion engines will be perceived as loud, stinky anachronisms. If you want to experience this today, drive a Tesla model S for a month. You'll never think of your ICE the same way again.
In the US, seventeen gasoline cars catch fire every hour, amounting to 150000 cars catching fire per year. Here comes the new wave of electric car trolls.
Once again, I note the biggest error of the book 1984: It failed to anticipate the role the private sector would come to play in loss of privacy.
Not really. What has actually happened is that the most powerful actors in the private sector have merged with and taken over the state.
These days, I have to seriously consider the possibility that you're part of a paid smear campaign by one of Musk's competitors. Because that's actually done these days. Ethical standards in marketing, never very high in the first place, have slipped that far. I suppose it's not the ethical standards of marketers that bother me so much, it's the public acceptance of such methods.
I have to agree with you. I have been watching Musk and his companies for a long time, and it seems to me that these trolling posts about Space X seemed to start appearing at a particular time, I think about two to three years ago. ULA, Space X's competitor in the US hired S-3 Group as a their propaganda and lobbying company about that time. I think what may have provoked it was that Space X was calling out ULA for using Russian rocket engines in its Atlas V rocket. They were involved in legal motions to prevent the Air Force from buying Russian engines. It seems to me that ULA likely realized that Space X was a real competitor. They likely wrote them off before as a joke because they Elon Musk kept making promises that seemed impossible. However those promises started coming true, albeit a bit later than promised. One thing that I have learned about Elon Musk is that he may make pronouncements that seem impossible, but usually they come true. He is quite brilliant and for the most part honest in what he says. He predicted that Space X would become a globally competitive launcher during a speech he made after their first successful launch, and this has come true. He predicted they would be able to land a first stage, and they succeeded last month. He predicted they would make a capsule that would land like a helicopter, and so far testing looks promising. I know the Mars idea seems unlikely at first glance, but if re-usability pans out (which seems likely because he has landed a first stage, which is the hardest part), then sending three or so astronauts on a fly-by won't be that expensive. Building a lander would be hard, but their experience with supersonic retropropulsion will help, as will their experience landing rockets. As for making fuel on Mars, I think that would require time and testing. I suspect the first flight will be a fly-by, just as it was with the Moon program. That is definitely feasible in the 10-year time frame.
This monster is going to get people killed in the name of profit.
Imagine if the above intrepid poster typified decision makers in sixteenth century. They would never have sent out explorers such as Sir Francis Drake or Ferdinand Magellan on their great voyages to map the world. Hell, if all humans were all like this poster (and those who modded him up), these great explorers would never have existed. Judging by many of the comments on this article, we are turning into a society of Statler and Waldorfs who criticize from the sidelines while offering little of substance. So grow a pair, and remember that all of us are going to die. What are you going to do with your life?
Agreed. I encourage folks to check out Rocket Jump's video Why CG Sucks (Except it Doesn't). If you don't, here's the short version: we don't notice the good digital effects because they're so good or so subtle. We usually only notice the bad stuff.
One of my favourite movies, Master and Commander, uses CG, but it is not obvious that it does. I think that is the best use of CG, when it is largely invisible and not flaunting itself in your face. Mad Max, Fury Road is another great example.
In general, I prefer Netflix's system that isn't based on ad revenue but rather subscription revenue. The ad revenue system seems to encourage broadcasters to seek the lowest common denominator in their audience. Netflix has won me over with series such as Daredevil and House of Cards. Other subscription based services also seem to produce better material, the best example likely being HBO with series such as Game of Thrones. I have little sympathy for the old broadcasters. They are dinosaurs and should pass into oblivion in my opinion.
Purely speaking from an economic standpoint, it would also make sense to do things differently. One could also just go for the most expensive part, which are the engines and avionics, and, depending on how you manage to retrieve them, it could actually be better.
Yeah, I hear the engines and avionics are the most expensive part of a 747. Who don't we just ditch the fuselage after every flight, and keep the engines and avionics. Would that make economic sense?
You sound like a ULA shill.
This was the last launch of v1.1 of the Falcon 9. As I understand it, v1.2 (sometimes called v1.1 Full Thrust) has upgraded landing legs. In either case, I would not call this a failure. The payload was placed into orbit. The touchdown speed was in fact normal. For some reason, one landing leg didn't lock. The landing is considered an experiment anyways. Isn't it good to do experiments? Don't you learn from them?
The latest tweets from Musk indicate that on reading the data, the landing was not "hard". Apparently one of the legs failed to lock. Also it landed 1.3m from the center.
Elon Musk @elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
Definitely harder to land on a ship. Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that's also translating & rotating.
Elon Musk @elonmusk 6h6 hours ago
However, that was not what prevented it being good. Touchdown speed was ok, but a leg lockout didn't latch, so it tipped over after landing.
Most of the posts in this discussion are based on incomplete information.
It's contracted out design and production since the Apollo era.
Yes and AFAIK, this was historically done with "cost plus" contracts that had no incentive for cost reduction. Basically the companies could name their cost for a project and then be guaranteed a profit margin on top. The companies would add complex management structures and build overly complex machines in order to maximize their profit. NASA became a key tool in dispersing "pork barrel" money to various congressional districts.
The model for the contracts with SpaceX and Orbital is "fixed cost for service". This gives an incentive for the companies to reduce costs, and they have. SpaceX is currently the least expensive launcher in the world, even without re-use of their rockets. And that includes China. The incumbent players, Lockheed Martin and Boeing have helped to created a PR campaign that brands the owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk as a "corporate welfare queen" partly for relying on government contracts through SpaceX. This coming from companies that, through defence contracts, rely mostly on government money. It is quite absurd propaganda.
Exhibit (a). A troll. Can't really call him a corporate whore hypocrite troll because he didn't say much of anything. But I suspect he is.
You might want to get a better grip on reality. Tesla Autopilot is already 80% of the way there, and the other 20% may not be available to consumers yet, but it has had millions of miles of testing...
It seems that Slashdot has been infested with willfully ignorant ball-less trolls. This is supposed to be a site for nerds. There is no greater nerd than Elon Musk. He is infused in sci-fi. He builds rockets...he designed much of the first SpaceX rocket (Falcon-1) himself. He builds arguably the best car in the world, and certainly the most technologically advanced (the Model S). It has the most advanced auto-driving features of any production car in the world. He literally bet the entire fortune he made from the sale of Paypal (200 million dollars) on Tesla and SpaceX after the 2008 market crash; most so called capitalists in our elite would never take such risks. Any libertarians amongst the readership here should worship Musk. He is more the Ayn Randian superhero than anyone I can think of. And if they return that Musk has taken some government help (like money for building the Dragon capsule to ferry cargo to the Space station for NASA or a $7500 subsidy for clean energy vehicle purchases), I would ask them what they think of defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin who receive 75% or more of their income from government contracts, or oil companies who have literally had wars fought in their name by governments. If those so-called libertarians don't denounce such things, then they are the worst type of corporate troll hypocrites.
Still, there are obstacles. SpaceX still needs to demonstrate the ability to consistently produce and launch rockets many times a year after the June accident caused an unexpected, six-month setback, something it will do with several flights planned for the weeks ahead.
Just because it's relatively cheap to use Space X, if I have a 50-50 ( better or worse) chance that my $100 million satellite that took several years to design and build is going to get blown up, I'll pass.
One could make the argument, especially during the earlier launches, that using a rocket that has been tested three or four times already might give more reliability, and not less. Time will tell.
By mode of thought, I mean describing human behaviour with blind mathematical models and then acting on the prediction of those models as if they were absolutely true. These mathematical models are quite literally the reason we built enough atomic bombs to destroy civilization 20 times over. Decision makers, who are not usually highly educated, hear that the technocrats below them built mathematical models that say we should build many atomic bombs. And so they trust the mathematics without understanding its limitations, and build the bombs. Watch the documentary. It is quite interesting.