The ISS is in a 51 deg orbit (so the Russians can reach it from Kazakhstan), which is one the worst possible places to depart for the Moon from. Optimally, you want a transfer orbit coplanar with the Moon's orbit, which varies from 18-28 deg (depending of the time of year).
I've asked this question a couple other places but haven't gotten an answer yet: When you suboptimal, are we talking about a few percent, or more than that? If it's the former, while this is contrary to much of the way performance-obsessed agencies like NASA operate, suboptimal might still be good enough and simply a matter of launch more propellant.
The big problem with using the ISS to do this type of mission is that the ISS is in the wrong orbital plane to easily launch flights to the moon. While it's not impossible to fly from the ISS it will be far more costly(in terms of fuel) to do so.
I've been looking all over, but can't find a good figure of just how much more costly (in terms of fuel) it would be to get from the ISS's orbit to do a lunar flyby. Are we talking about a few percent more delta-v required, an order of magnitude, or somewhere in-between?
All I've been able to find is that it's apparently "cheaper" to get to lunar polar orbit from the ISS's inclination.
the money would be better spent offering a prize to the first company or organization that can send a ship around the moon and back....
To offer prizes that large, NASA would need explicit approval from Congress. Good luck with that, especially when such efforts potentially compete with billion-dollar projects in politically-important congressional districts. Heck, NASA's been having difficulty just getting its $1M-$2M prizes funded.
Not if you have to change inclination like anything coming from the ISS would have to do.
It depends. For example, I believe if you want to go into a lunar polar orbit, departing from the ISS's 51.6 degree inclination actually requires less propellant than if you were to depart from an equatorial orbit. If you want to go somewhere else that the ISS inclination is suboptimal for, all that means is that you need to carry up a little more propellant.
The first trains and planes tended to be just for demonstration as well: check out Trevithick's 1808 Catch Me Who Can circular railway in London. People paid to see and have a go on this novelty ride. Others took the concept on from there.
There was also the important barnstorming phase of early aviation, where much of the early cash-flow was people paying to watch pilots perform stunts, or pay to go for a short ride themselves, taking off and landing at the same field:
I don't mean to be a Luddite, but if this works out, do you know what it will do to the economy? Tens of millions of jobs are based almost exclusively on driving. Truckers, cab drivers, even pizza delivery.
On the other hand, think of the lives which could be saved:
In 2009 alone, "driver/sales workers and truck drivers" had 586 fatal on-the-job injuries, making it the job category with the single-highest fatality rate. This of course only includes driver fatalities, and doesn't include fatalities in cars their trucks might hit. For comparison, about 100 or so police officers are killed each year in confrontations with suspects.
Why was the above marked troll? It's completely spot on, and the only reason Congress has specified a HLV design which maximizes usage of the Shuttle infrastructure in Alabama/Texas/Utah is for (admittedly critical) political reasons, not engineering reasons. I mean, I guess you could say that the comments by Senator Richard Shelby (R-Al) about SpaceX and ULA are trolling, but still...
What did it do? Move the kids out of the room for this:
SpaceX was found to be improperly storing or disposing of...
-Isopropyl alcohol! -Acetone! -Acid etch corrosive waste! -Rags with chromium on them!
Eh. This is all stuff you'd find in your local grease monkey's garage. It's not that bad. In fact, we talked to they Environmental Protection Agency inspector who visited SpaceX, and he wasn't horrified by what he saw. (Sorry Elon haters).
"I would say there was nothing egregious, as in nothing was spilled on the ground," said U.S. EPA enforcement officer James Polek. "The manufacturing facility is very well organized. The hazardous waste storage are was not."
Darn.
What's more the inspection took place last year and the company already corrected the violations, Polek told the Weekly.
Yet folks are still layed off after 2 days? I guess "may not implement any reduction-in-force" doesn't mean what it say, or maybe it doesn't apply to the current nasa administrator since he is above the law?
The people who've lost their jobs are all contractors, who are not covered under the law you mention. None of the civil service employees have lost their jobs.
What I am trying to suggest is to use existing rockets as they are, unless they really need to carry that extra weight. couldn't they divide up the cargo into multiple launch vehicles and get the same effect?
It would have the same (or superior) end effect in terms of space exploration, but not the same effect in terms of amount of money delivered to particular congressional districts. Which of these do you think is more important to Congress?
It's amazing that MSFC keeps on being put in charge of big-budget rocketry projects when they haven't had one of their large rocket projects succeed in decades.
> Yes, it would be nice if it had more money attached to it, but we kinda spent our cash on tax cuts for the rich and two wars under Bush.
IMHO, NASA needs to start spending its money better before it can expect to get more money from the taxpayers. Hopefully the transition to using proven commercial entities instead of attempting to build rockets in-house (which NASA hasn't successfully done in around 30 years) will help with this:
The NASA COTS program has demonstrated the power of what can be accomplished when you combine private sector responsiveness and ingenuity with the guidance, support and insight of the US government. For less than the cost of the Ares I mobile service tower, SpaceX has developed all the flight hardware for the Falcon 9 orbital rocket, Dragon spacecraft, as well as three launch sites. SpaceX has been profitable for three consecutive years (2007 through 2009) and expects to remain modestly profitable for the foreseeable future.
Will you stop with all the retarded, "My party is better than your party BS?" Both parties suck equally and you know it. You think only Republicans were trying to derail this bill? You're completely, totally, and utterly wrong.
Right. The predominant factor regarding whether or not a politician has been opposed to NASA reform has been whether or not Ares/Constellation contractors are based in their state. That said, it's somewhat more humorous when Republicans do it, as you get to see politicians who are ostensibly pro-market arguing against commercial efforts in favor of huge monolithic government programs.
> The basic problem is that commercial (practical uses) and scientific (pure investigation) exploration shouldn't be tied.
Huh? Every single NASA scientific exploration mission for quite some time has been launched on a commercial rocket. For example, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars were launched on Boeing's Delta II rockets.
The above statement is a bit like saying that scientific instruments shouldn't be shipped via FedEx, or scientists shouldn't ride commercial airlines.
More money? At one time America had 100% of the commercial rocket launcher business, and now it is less than 10% of the world market... substantially less if you believe some reports.
This is a key point. A lot of people seem to still be under the impression that the US is the dominant force in the space launch market, but in reality the US space industry has been severely crippled by things like ITAR. Nobody involved is suggesting that arms regulations be completely abolished, just that they be made into something sensible and meaningful instead of the total clusterfuck they are now.
Res Communis: Can the ITAR be fixed? If they can be fixed where would you start? Or, do they need to be eliminated?
Gold: I don't even think it needs to be fixed, at least not the actual language of the ITAR itself. This is what I find so tragic, that no real 'reforms' to the ITAR are even necessary. One of the reasons that this fact is missed so often is that some of the people who talk about 'ITAR Reform' often lack real, first hand experience with the process. It is this ignorance that in some ways has led to a general lack of progress. Going back to the 1999 Defense Authorization Act, all Congress intended was to protect against the export of 'advanced communication satellites and related technologies' in a way that would hurt national security. That's certainly a fairly limited and rationale desire. However, when the Act was implemented, Congress's language was perverted to include, not just 'advanced communication satellites', but literally all space-related systems. Now remember, nothing we at Bigelow Aerospace say should be taken as being against ITAR or export control. We are patriots, we support export control, we recognize there are certainly many systems and technologies that require extra scrutiny and perhaps should not be shipped overseas. As a matter of fact, what we hope to do is to give the government bureaucracy more time to focus on these sensitive technologies and systems by allowing them to stop wasting their time on hardware that can be purchased easily and quickly in the international market place. In many cases technologies under ITAR scrutiny are decades old. By not focusing on these, in some instances, ancient systems that have been available globally for as long as I've been alive, we can free up government export control officers to focus on technologies that really do warrant protection. So, again, no real 'reform' is necessary, at least to the Congressional direction itself. The Congressional intent was reasonable and valid. All that needs to be done is for the Department of State to follow what the Congress initially intended; limit the application of the language to that; and, act accordingly. The majority of the problems being caused would go away. Now, that won't solve everyone's problems, particularly for some of my friends in the communication satellite industry, but it would be a terrific and much needed start. Bottom-line, I believe, working within the system, that much can be accomplished without new legislation.
Res Communis: It has been implementation that has been the problem?
Gold: Absolutely. For example, if you look specifically at the provisos that are written into technical assistance agreements, if the licensing officers were instructed by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) to discern between sensitive, military technologies, and those that are widely available in the commercial marketplace, and not request monitoring and Technology Transfer Control Plans in those instances, that alone could go a long way toward resolving many of these problems. An example is the Genesis test stand. It was a round metal sheet that had several legs sticking out from the bottom. If it was flipped upside down, had a tablecloth and some
Also, their launch costs (listed on their site) to LEO are $2.3k/lb for cargo ($5.5k/lb to GTO).
It's also worth noting that this is their launch price, not their cost. They actually expect to make a decent profit at this price, and Elon has stated that he plans on lowering the price further as he gets into mass production and successful reuse of rocket components.
And I'm really high-balling the costs here. Each Merlin-2 engine is quoted as costing about $50 million each, and the Falcon XX has somewhere between a dozen and 20 of these Merlin-2 engines (I don't see the specific figures right now on the design, but I know the 150 tons of lift is accurate). Tankage and configuration costs put it in the realm of between $1 billion and $5 billion to launch, or about the cost of a single Space Shuttle flight, give or take some fudge room and interpretation of how much it costs to launch a Shuttle.
FYI, the Falcon XX would only have 6 Merlin 2 engines, placing the engine costs around $300M. Musk also seems quite insistent on recovering and reusing the engines, which would presumably lower the per-flight costs considerably.
What's being discussed is not a "colony" in any normal sense of the word. It's a base. "Colony" implies a large degree of self sufficiency, which requires the most massive engineering engineering effort in the history of humankind to even get started.
I do wonder about the distinctions between a "colony," "base," and a "settlement."
Not in this case. By all accounts, Elon Musk didn't originally want to get into the rocket business. He wanted to be in the Mars colonization business, but quickly discovered that rockets were too damned expensive, so he decided to make his own.
For Musk, the marketing is a tool for achieving is vision, not the other way around.
It's actually quite interesting to read about Elon Musk's efforts to try to launch Mars Oasis and the "Life to Mars" foundation back in 2001, a year before he realized how screwed up the launch market was and decided to start SpaceX:
Someone is putting his money where my mouth has been. Describing permanent settlement of Mars as "a positive, constructive, inspirational goal" capable of uniting humanity at a critical time," dot-com entrepreneur Elon Musk has pledged a substantial portion of his personal fortune to realizing that goal, beginning with a proposed $20 million technology-demonstration Mars lander to be launched perhaps in 2005. Calling his "victory condition" seeing NASA's top priority change to establishing a permanent human presence on Mars, he said in an interview last week that "the path by which I hope to get there is to get the public enthusiastic about the possibility, then translate that into legislative pressure so that Congress hands us a Mars mandate." Musk's plans are invigorating, finally matching for Mars the initiative and boldness recently displayed in Low Earth Orbit by Dennis Tito's flight and the recent MirCorp announcement of a private "MiniMir" orbiting facility. I hope his entrepreneurial directness will bring a new effectiveness to the Mars effort. I hope also that he can avoid being brought down by the Byzantine politics of space: on the Hill, in the scientific community and in the space movement....
Musk's "Mars Oasis" project is a small robotic lander intended primarily as a mini-greenhouse, growing samples of food crops in an enclosed chamber filled with treated Martian regolith (soil), to test the feasibility of humans living off the land. Other experiments may include test units for the production of oxygen and rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere, and radiation sensors. In a radical departure from the missions scheduled by NASA, each experiment would focus on developing data critical to human habitation, rather than on pure planetary science....
He refused to engage in political posturing or NASA-bashing, saying that "I don't have a palpable ideology for private or governmental missions." He described his relations with NASA as "good, I would say. I have not had any bad relations whatsoever. I don't see them as the bad guy. NASA's in the position it's in not through any desire of its own. The public is asking NASA often to have a perfect track record and a perfect safety record," yielding excessive caution and institutional gridlock. "By driving this private space mission forward," he continued, "I hope for changes for NASA, for it to receive a clear and pressing mandate for a human base [on Mars]. I want to reinvigorate NASA."
However, there is one key thing that SpaceX needs as they develop as a company. First, and foremost, SpaceX needs to get its LEO business to become lucrative and profitable. If that company can develop enough profit to start breaking away from NASA prize money and other political tie-ins, then they will be set.
Not sure if you already knew about this, but back in June SpaceX announced a huge launch contract with Iridium, which is the largest commercial launch contract in history (worth up to $492M). Of course, more contracts like that would be better, but change happens a step at a time.
I could be mistaken, but while Boeing and Lockheed certainly get a number of cost-plus development contracts, I believe the DOD's contracts with ULA are all fixed-cost. That's a big part of why ULA tends to be drastically cheaper than, say, Shuttle or Ares costs.
I like nuclear thermal as much as the next/.er, but is there really any point in thermal rockets beyond attaining orbit? Personally, I'd rather see the money go into a space-borne power reactor and rely on VASIMR or other electric engines for the transit. As SpaceX and Musk should know, a modular system is a lot more flexible, and we know a lot more about how to design and build power reactors than nuclear thermal rockets. More to the point, you'd need a gas-core reactor to match the specific impulse of current VASIMR prototypes, and gas-core reactors are ENTIRELY theoretical.
I was pretty surprised at this as well, particularly since Tom Markusic (SpaceX's rocket development facility director and the guy who did the presentation) has a fairly extensive research background in electric propulsion and plasma thrusters:
I applaud the Obama administration for recognizing the awesomeness and redirecting funds from NASA Ares to Space-X.
Quick clarification: The White House hasn't proposed redirecting funds from Ares to SpaceX -- instead, they want to open up the US human spaceflight market to competing commercial vendors, which includes not just SpaceX, but also the United Launch Alliance. Many aren't familiar with the name, but the ULA builds the Atlas and Delta rockets which have launched most national security and NASA science missions for many years now. SpaceX has stated that they actually expect ULA to get more of the commercial crew market than them, at least initially.
Of course, even this is facing a great deal of friction in Congress. As one of the linked articles in the summary states, the current NASA bill in the House of Representatives has the entire commercial spaceflight program struggling with just $150M over 3 years, while the government-designed/operated heavy-lift and crew capsule program gets $13B over that same timeframe.
Slashdot Mirror
But now I want to see the first photo of a cat. Ideally one with a caption.
Here you go, from 1905, the "What Delaying My Dinner?" cat:
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/12/01/funny-pictures-oldest-ever-lolcat-found/
The ISS is in a 51 deg orbit (so the Russians can reach it from Kazakhstan), which is one the worst possible places to depart for the Moon from. Optimally, you want a transfer orbit coplanar with the Moon's orbit, which varies from 18-28 deg (depending of the time of year).
I've asked this question a couple other places but haven't gotten an answer yet: When you suboptimal, are we talking about a few percent, or more than that? If it's the former, while this is contrary to much of the way performance-obsessed agencies like NASA operate, suboptimal might still be good enough and simply a matter of launch more propellant.
The big problem with using the ISS to do this type of mission is that the ISS is in the wrong orbital plane to easily launch flights to the moon. While it's not impossible to fly from the ISS it will be far more costly(in terms of fuel) to do so.
I've been looking all over, but can't find a good figure of just how much more costly (in terms of fuel) it would be to get from the ISS's orbit to do a lunar flyby. Are we talking about a few percent more delta-v required, an order of magnitude, or somewhere in-between?
All I've been able to find is that it's apparently "cheaper" to get to lunar polar orbit from the ISS's inclination.
the money would be better spent offering a prize to the first company or organization that can send a ship around the moon and back....
To offer prizes that large, NASA would need explicit approval from Congress. Good luck with that, especially when such efforts potentially compete with billion-dollar projects in politically-important congressional districts. Heck, NASA's been having difficulty just getting its $1M-$2M prizes funded.
Not if you have to change inclination like anything coming from the ISS would have to do.
It depends. For example, I believe if you want to go into a lunar polar orbit, departing from the ISS's 51.6 degree inclination actually requires less propellant than if you were to depart from an equatorial orbit. If you want to go somewhere else that the ISS inclination is suboptimal for, all that means is that you need to carry up a little more propellant.
The first trains and planes tended to be just for demonstration as well: check out Trevithick's 1808 Catch Me Who Can circular railway in London. People paid to see and have a go on this novelty ride. Others took the concept on from there.
There was also the important barnstorming phase of early aviation, where much of the early cash-flow was people paying to watch pilots perform stunts, or pay to go for a short ride themselves, taking off and landing at the same field:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnstorming#Initial_growth
I don't mean to be a Luddite, but if this works out, do you know what it will do to the economy? Tens of millions of jobs are based almost exclusively on driving. Truckers, cab drivers, even pizza delivery.
On the other hand, think of the lives which could be saved:
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/
In 2009 alone, "driver/sales workers and truck drivers" had 586 fatal on-the-job injuries, making it the job category with the single-highest fatality rate. This of course only includes driver fatalities, and doesn't include fatalities in cars their trucks might hit. For comparison, about 100 or so police officers are killed each year in confrontations with suspects.
Why was the above marked troll? It's completely spot on, and the only reason Congress has specified a HLV design which maximizes usage of the Shuttle infrastructure in Alabama/Texas/Utah is for (admittedly critical) political reasons, not engineering reasons. I mean, I guess you could say that the comments by Senator Richard Shelby (R-Al) about SpaceX and ULA are trolling, but still...
Didn't SpaceX get fined for cutting too many corners? Yep, you don't need many people if you don't intend to do the whole job.
Nice try, but not quite:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/environment/elon-musk-environment-fines/
What did it do? Move the kids out of the room for this:
SpaceX was found to be improperly storing or disposing of ...
-Isopropyl alcohol!
-Acetone!
-Acid etch corrosive waste!
-Rags with chromium on them!
Eh. This is all stuff you'd find in your local grease monkey's garage. It's not that bad. In fact, we talked to they Environmental Protection Agency inspector who visited SpaceX, and he wasn't horrified by what he saw. (Sorry Elon haters).
"I would say there was nothing egregious, as in nothing was spilled on the ground," said U.S. EPA enforcement officer James Polek. "The manufacturing facility is very well organized. The hazardous waste storage are was not."
Darn.
What's more the inspection took place last year and the company already corrected the violations, Polek told the Weekly.
Yet folks are still layed off after 2 days? I guess "may not implement any reduction-in-force" doesn't mean what it say, or maybe it doesn't apply to the current nasa administrator since he is above the law?
The people who've lost their jobs are all contractors, who are not covered under the law you mention. None of the civil service employees have lost their jobs.
Has Space -X actually put anything in orbit? No. Are they working on it? Yes.
This is completely false. SpaceX has launched three separate payloads into orbit so far:
* RatSat
* RazakSat
* Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit
What I am trying to suggest is to use existing rockets as they are, unless they really need to carry that extra weight. couldn't they divide up the cargo into multiple launch vehicles and get the same effect?
It would have the same (or superior) end effect in terms of space exploration, but not the same effect in terms of amount of money delivered to particular congressional districts. Which of these do you think is more important to Congress?
-X30
-X33
-X34
-X38
-Advanced Solid Rocket Motor
-Shuttle C
-National Launch System
-Space Launch Initiative
-Constellation
Coincidentally, almost all of those were managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Space_Flight_Center#1990s
It's amazing that MSFC keeps on being put in charge of big-budget rocketry projects when they haven't had one of their large rocket projects succeed in decades.
> Yes, it would be nice if it had more money attached to it, but we kinda spent our cash on tax cuts for the rich and two wars under Bush.
IMHO, NASA needs to start spending its money better before it can expect to get more money from the taxpayers. Hopefully the transition to using proven commercial entities instead of attempting to build rockets in-house (which NASA hasn't successfully done in around 30 years) will help with this:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30992
The NASA COTS program has demonstrated the power of what can be accomplished when you combine private sector responsiveness and ingenuity with the guidance, support and insight of the US government. For less than the cost of the Ares I mobile service tower, SpaceX has developed all the flight hardware for the Falcon 9 orbital rocket, Dragon spacecraft, as well as three launch sites. SpaceX has been profitable for three consecutive years (2007 through 2009) and expects to remain modestly profitable for the foreseeable future.
Will you stop with all the retarded, "My party is better than your party BS?" Both parties suck equally and you know it. You think only Republicans were trying to derail this bill? You're completely, totally, and utterly wrong.
Right. The predominant factor regarding whether or not a politician has been opposed to NASA reform has been whether or not Ares/Constellation contractors are based in their state. That said, it's somewhat more humorous when Republicans do it, as you get to see politicians who are ostensibly pro-market arguing against commercial efforts in favor of huge monolithic government programs.
> The basic problem is that commercial (practical uses) and scientific (pure investigation) exploration shouldn't be tied.
Huh? Every single NASA scientific exploration mission for quite some time has been launched on a commercial rocket. For example, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars were launched on Boeing's Delta II rockets.
The above statement is a bit like saying that scientific instruments shouldn't be shipped via FedEx, or scientists shouldn't ride commercial airlines.
More money? At one time America had 100% of the commercial rocket launcher business, and now it is less than 10% of the world market... substantially less if you believe some reports.
This is a key point. A lot of people seem to still be under the impression that the US is the dominant force in the space launch market, but in reality the US space industry has been severely crippled by things like ITAR. Nobody involved is suggesting that arms regulations be completely abolished, just that they be made into something sensible and meaningful instead of the total clusterfuck they are now.
An example of how silly ITAR regulations are, from Mike Gold of Bigelow Aerospace:
Res Communis: Can the ITAR be fixed? If they can be fixed where would you start? Or, do they need to be eliminated?
Gold: I don't even think it needs to be fixed, at least not the actual language of the ITAR itself. This is what I find so tragic, that no real 'reforms' to the ITAR are even necessary. One of the reasons that this fact is missed so often is that some of the people who talk about 'ITAR Reform' often lack real, first hand experience with the process. It is this ignorance that in some ways has led to a general lack of progress. Going back to the 1999 Defense Authorization Act, all Congress intended was to protect against the export of 'advanced communication satellites and related technologies' in a way that would hurt national security. That's certainly a fairly limited and rationale desire. However, when the Act was implemented, Congress's language was perverted to include, not just 'advanced communication satellites', but literally all space-related systems. Now remember, nothing we at Bigelow Aerospace say should be taken as being against ITAR or export control. We are patriots, we support export control, we recognize there are certainly many systems and technologies that require extra scrutiny and perhaps should not be shipped overseas. As a matter of fact, what we hope to do is to give the government bureaucracy more time to focus on these sensitive technologies and systems by allowing them to stop wasting their time on hardware that can be purchased easily and quickly in the international market place. In many cases technologies under ITAR scrutiny are decades old. By not focusing on these, in some instances, ancient systems that have been available globally for as long as I've been alive, we can free up government export control officers to focus on technologies that really do warrant protection. So, again, no real 'reform' is necessary, at least to the Congressional direction itself. The Congressional intent was reasonable and valid. All that needs to be done is for the Department of State to follow what the Congress initially intended; limit the application of the language to that; and, act accordingly. The majority of the problems being caused would go away. Now, that won't solve everyone's problems, particularly for some of my friends in the communication satellite industry, but it would be a terrific and much needed start. Bottom-line, I believe, working within the system, that much can be accomplished without new legislation.
Res Communis: It has been implementation that has been the problem?
Gold: Absolutely. For example, if you look specifically at the provisos that are written into technical assistance agreements, if the licensing officers were instructed by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) to discern between sensitive, military technologies, and those that are widely available in the commercial marketplace, and not request monitoring and Technology Transfer Control Plans in those instances, that alone could go a long way toward resolving many of these problems. An example is the Genesis test stand. It was a round metal sheet that had several legs sticking out from the bottom. If it was flipped upside down, had a tablecloth and some
Also, their launch costs (listed on their site) to LEO are $2.3k/lb for cargo ($5.5k/lb to GTO).
It's also worth noting that this is their launch price, not their cost. They actually expect to make a decent profit at this price, and Elon has stated that he plans on lowering the price further as he gets into mass production and successful reuse of rocket components.
And I'm really high-balling the costs here. Each Merlin-2 engine is quoted as costing about $50 million each, and the Falcon XX has somewhere between a dozen and 20 of these Merlin-2 engines (I don't see the specific figures right now on the design, but I know the 150 tons of lift is accurate). Tankage and configuration costs put it in the realm of between $1 billion and $5 billion to launch, or about the cost of a single Space Shuttle flight, give or take some fudge room and interpretation of how much it costs to launch a Shuttle.
FYI, the Falcon XX would only have 6 Merlin 2 engines, placing the engine costs around $300M. Musk also seems quite insistent on recovering and reusing the engines, which would presumably lower the per-flight costs considerably.
What's being discussed is not a "colony" in any normal sense of the word. It's a base. "Colony" implies a large degree of self sufficiency, which requires the most massive engineering engineering effort in the history of humankind to even get started.
I do wonder about the distinctions between a "colony," "base," and a "settlement."
Not in this case. By all accounts, Elon Musk didn't originally want to get into the rocket business. He wanted to be in the Mars colonization business, but quickly discovered that rockets were too damned expensive, so he decided to make his own.
For Musk, the marketing is a tool for achieving is vision, not the other way around.
It's actually quite interesting to read about Elon Musk's efforts to try to launch Mars Oasis and the "Life to Mars" foundation back in 2001, a year before he realized how screwed up the launch market was and decided to start SpaceX:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=3698
Someone is putting his money where my mouth has been. Describing permanent settlement of Mars as "a positive, constructive, inspirational goal" capable of uniting humanity at a critical time," dot-com entrepreneur Elon Musk has pledged a substantial portion of his personal fortune to realizing that goal, beginning with a proposed $20 million technology-demonstration Mars lander to be launched perhaps in 2005. Calling his "victory condition" seeing NASA's top priority change to establishing a permanent human presence on Mars, he said in an interview last week that "the path by which I hope to get there is to get the public enthusiastic about the possibility, then translate that into legislative pressure so that Congress hands us a Mars mandate." Musk's plans are invigorating, finally matching for Mars the initiative and boldness recently displayed in Low Earth Orbit by Dennis Tito's flight and the recent MirCorp announcement of a private "MiniMir" orbiting facility. I hope his entrepreneurial directness will bring a new effectiveness to the Mars effort. I hope also that he can avoid being brought down by the Byzantine politics of space: on the Hill, in the scientific community and in the space movement. ...
Musk's "Mars Oasis" project is a small robotic lander intended primarily as a mini-greenhouse, growing samples of food crops in an enclosed chamber filled with treated Martian regolith (soil), to test the feasibility of humans living off the land. Other experiments may include test units for the production of oxygen and rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere, and radiation sensors. In a radical departure from the missions scheduled by NASA, each experiment would focus on developing data critical to human habitation, rather than on pure planetary science. ...
He refused to engage in political posturing or NASA-bashing, saying that "I don't have a palpable ideology for private or governmental missions." He described his relations with NASA as "good, I would say. I have not had any bad relations whatsoever. I don't see them as the bad guy. NASA's in the position it's in not through any desire of its own. The public is asking NASA often to have a perfect track record and a perfect safety record," yielding excessive caution and institutional gridlock. "By driving this private space mission forward," he continued, "I hope for changes for NASA, for it to receive a clear and pressing mandate for a human base [on Mars]. I want to reinvigorate NASA."
However, there is one key thing that SpaceX needs as they develop as a company. First, and foremost, SpaceX needs to get its LEO business to become lucrative and profitable. If that company can develop enough profit to start breaking away from NASA prize money and other political tie-ins, then they will be set.
Not sure if you already knew about this, but back in June SpaceX announced a huge launch contract with Iridium, which is the largest commercial launch contract in history (worth up to $492M). Of course, more contracts like that would be better, but change happens a step at a time.
I could be mistaken, but while Boeing and Lockheed certainly get a number of cost-plus development contracts, I believe the DOD's contracts with ULA are all fixed-cost. That's a big part of why ULA tends to be drastically cheaper than, say, Shuttle or Ares costs.
I like nuclear thermal as much as the next /.er, but is there really any point in thermal rockets beyond attaining orbit? Personally, I'd rather see the money go into a space-borne power reactor and rely on VASIMR or other electric engines for the transit. As SpaceX and Musk should know, a modular system is a lot more flexible, and we know a lot more about how to design and build power reactors than nuclear thermal rockets. More to the point, you'd need a gas-core reactor to match the specific impulse of current VASIMR prototypes, and gas-core reactors are ENTIRELY theoretical.
I was pretty surprised at this as well, particularly since Tom Markusic (SpaceX's rocket development facility director and the guy who did the presentation) has a fairly extensive research background in electric propulsion and plasma thrusters:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=tom+markusic
I applaud the Obama administration for recognizing the awesomeness and redirecting funds from NASA Ares to Space-X.
Quick clarification: The White House hasn't proposed redirecting funds from Ares to SpaceX -- instead, they want to open up the US human spaceflight market to competing commercial vendors, which includes not just SpaceX, but also the United Launch Alliance. Many aren't familiar with the name, but the ULA builds the Atlas and Delta rockets which have launched most national security and NASA science missions for many years now. SpaceX has stated that they actually expect ULA to get more of the commercial crew market than them, at least initially.
Of course, even this is facing a great deal of friction in Congress. As one of the linked articles in the summary states, the current NASA bill in the House of Representatives has the entire commercial spaceflight program struggling with just $150M over 3 years, while the government-designed/operated heavy-lift and crew capsule program gets $13B over that same timeframe.