EPTNASA and the Private Sector - Page 36
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Keep debates civil. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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tyr
France1686 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
On May 03 2014 03:44 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: http://youtu.be/ZwwS4YOTbbw not impressed. 1969 LEM > 2014 F9R | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
Man, he's really riding this Russian thing hard. Glad to see this coming from Musk. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
If you include "for its time". | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
not really. once some organization, somewhere can do even 1% of what the Apollo missions did in terms of human space travel i'll start to pay attention. for decades now lots of people have blown a lot of smoke about "escaping low earth orbit" and nothing ever happens. actions speak louder than words. during the big Apollo 20th anniversary celebration in 1989 a parade of astronauts and NASA officials promised on NBC the USA would land humans on the moon and mars. still waiting. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
The Apollo era was an amazing time for technology etc. But it was also part of the Military Industrial Complex, too bad it didn't extend into the 80's and further out(but Nixon, Vietnam, etc). Who knows we may be in the early days of a new Space Race: Japan, and the US versus China, Russia with the ESA and India being the others. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
On May 03 2014 11:23 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:I haven't seen any other company do something or even a Government entity do such R&D in such a short time, in 2-3 years. Keep in mind also this was only one 1 engine and it has yet to perform a suicide burn. Yet. There's a new Dragon model to be unveiled, we haven't seen anything from Bigelow, besides specs on the model that will be sent to the ISS, unless we are shut out, or Blue Origin or any other of the countless companies still doing R&D. in 2 years NASA went from 100 KM off the earth's surface to orbiting the moon with a manned space flight. and that was in the 1960s. and this was a handful of years after they had managed to fly into space at all. its 42+ years since a human has been more than 400 km off the earth's surface. scientific and engineering milestones are independent of the funding source. | ||
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radscorpion9
Canada2252 Posts
From Wikipedia: According to Steve Garber, the NASA History website curator, the final cost of project Apollo was between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (approximately $136 billion in 2007 dollars) Also from Wikipedia: As of May 2012, SpaceX had operated on total funding of approximately $1 billion in its first ten years of operation I think its a significant achievement considering the disparity in funding levels. Anyway to me it looks amazing. I also liked the cows  | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On May 03 2014 10:56 JimmyJRaynor wrote: not really. once some organization, somewhere can do even 1% of what the Apollo missions did in terms of human space travel i'll start to pay attention. for decades now lots of people have blown a lot of smoke about "escaping low earth orbit" and nothing ever happens. actions speak louder than words. during the big Apollo 20th anniversary celebration in 1989 a parade of astronauts and NASA officials promised on NBC the USA would land humans on the moon and mars. still waiting. For all its technical success the Apollo Program was just the first step in human space exploration. It was halted for political reasons, but even if it was continued it could have failed on a technical level. It was expensive, and by today's standards horribly dangerous. Apollo 10 through 14 all had major problems and could have easily lost their crew. In a sense nothing more happened because politicians realized that there was no obvious reward and even the dubious honour of having your flag planted on a different planet was fraught with danger with a very realistic chance of failure. And even if it had been continued the biggest problem would have been expanding the program. Throwing 3 times as much money at the problem to maybe build a base on the Moon would have bankrupted the US (or more likely killed the career of any politician foolish enough to support it). So, returning to the technology of the Apollo Program is not worth it. It's too expensive to support anything but a few PR missions. Which is where rapid and complete reusability comes in. If that can be achieved and the price of launches decreases significantly, suddenly new options are opened. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On May 03 2014 12:11 JimmyJRaynor wrote: in 2 years NASA went from 100 KM off the earth's surface to orbiting the moon with a manned space flight. and that was in the 1960s. and this was a handful of years after they had managed to fly into space at all. its 42+ years since a human has been more than 400 km off the earth's surface. scientific and engineering milestones are independent of the funding source. Energetically LEO is more than halfway to a lunar orbit so it's not that surprising. Distance is a poor measure of achievement in this case. + Show Spoiler + Ironically, if they had messed up the lunar insertion they would have left the Earth-Moon system, achieving a record that would not be broken any time soon | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16710 Posts
On May 03 2014 13:52 hypercube wrote: Energetically LEO is more than halfway to a lunar orbit so it's not that surprising. Distance is a poor measure of achievement in this case. + Show Spoiler + Ironically, if they had messed up the lunar insertion they would have left the Earth-Moon system, achieving a record that would not be broken any time soon i wonder if i can raise 10 billion dollars in start up capital just running around in my back yard jumping up and down. because, you know, distance is a poor measure of achievement. somehow i doubt it. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On May 03 2014 22:16 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i wonder if i can raise 10 billion dollars in start up capital just running around in my back yard jumping up and down. because, you know, distance is a poor measure of achievement. somehow i doubt it. You couldn't raise 10 billion even if you could build a rocket that could 'jump' to the moon, or even one that could leave the solar system with 500kgs of useful payload. Not if each 'jump' set you back 1 billion. There's nothing out there that's worth that kind of money, as far as we know it. That's the main issue of human spaceflight - not going from 300.000km to 100.000.000 km or 5AUs or some other arbitrary distance. I'm not trying to disparage the Apollo Program, it was a huge achievement and showed that there were no obvious technical barriers to the eventual human colonization of space. But at the point it was cancelled it was very far from reaching that because the model was not scalable to 10 times its size due to cost. Maybe with the right politics it would have been done eventually and we would have permanent bases on the Moon, Mars and exploring the solar system by now. But the Apollo Program never cracked the problem of economics, and as far as I'm aware it was never really expected to. At this point getting 10.000kg of useful cargo to LEO for $15 million is actually a bigger achievement than sending two people around Mars and back for 1 billion. (An actual mission concept promoted by Dennis Tito). Tito's plan has no long term payoffs. It's a demonstration of capability that already exists but isn't used, because frankly no one wants to pay 1 billion for an 18 month trip to see Mars up close, with a significant chance of dying in the process. And even if they did it would be a one off. Completely and rapidly reusable and therefore cheap rockets could make wide scale access to space possible. SpaceX isn't trying to solve a problem the Apollo Program already solved. They are trying to solve one they never even tackled. Granted, they are at the start of the road. They plan to land a first stage this year and refly it sometime next year. Even then it will be a couple of years before they can prove significant savings. But once they do that they will have achieved the most significant breakthrough in space exploration in the last 40 years. It will enable mission concepts that were impossible until then. It's completely fair to take a wait and see approach. But one should at least recognize the scale of their ambition: a world where spaceflight is so cheap where many great ideas from large space habitats to asteroid mining and Mars colonies are possible. That tiny 1 km hop by the F9R is one of the first steps in that long road. As is their water landing on their last mission. And SpaceX is already showing more commitment and more progress on that vision than major governments like the US or the Soviet Union ever did. | ||
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Millitron
United States2611 Posts
This isn't an economics issue to me, its a trying-not-to-die issue. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21687 Posts
On May 04 2014 01:26 hypercube wrote: You couldn't raise 10 billion even if you could build a rocket that could 'jump' to the moon, or even one that could leave the solar system with 500kgs of useful payload. Not if each 'jump' set you back 1 billion. There's nothing out there that's worth that kind of money, as far as we know it. That's the main issue of human spaceflight - not going from 300.000km to 100.000.000 km or 5AUs or some other arbitrary distance. I'm not trying to disparage the Apollo Program, it was a huge achievement and showed that there were no obvious technical barriers to the eventual human colonization of space. But at the point it was cancelled it was very far from reaching that because the model was not scalable to 10 times its size due to cost. Maybe with the right politics it would have been done eventually and we would have permanent bases on the Moon, Mars and exploring the solar system by now. But the Apollo Program never cracked the problem of economics, and as far as I'm aware it was never really expected to. At this point getting 10.000kg of useful cargo to LEO for $15 million is actually a bigger achievement than sending two people around Mars and back for 1 billion. (An actual mission concept promoted by Dennis Tito). Tito's plan has no long term payoffs. It's a demonstration of capability that already exists but isn't used, because frankly no one wants to pay 1 billion for an 18 month trip to see Mars up close, with a significant chance of dying in the process. And even if they did it would be a one off. Completely and rapidly reusable and therefore cheap rockets could make wide scale access to space possible. SpaceX isn't trying to solve a problem the Apollo Program already solved. They are trying to solve one they never even tackled. Granted, they are at the start of the road. They plan to land a first stage this year and refly it sometime next year. Even then it will be a couple of years before they can prove significant savings. But once they do that they will have achieved the most significant breakthrough in space exploration in the last 40 years. It will enable mission concepts that were impossible until then. It's completely fair to take a wait and see approach. But one should at least recognize the scale of their ambition: a world where spaceflight is so cheap where many great ideas from large space habitats to asteroid mining and Mars colonies are possible. That tiny 1 km hop by the F9R is one of the first steps in that long road. As is their water landing on their last mission. And SpaceX is already showing more commitment and more progress on that vision than major governments like the US or the Soviet Union ever did. This is indeed exactly why im excited about what SpaceX is doing. Space Flight is atm prohibitively expensive and they are working to reduce those costs which will allow more wide spread space travel in time. On May 04 2014 05:21 Millitron wrote: There's one huge problem with saying one-offs aren't worth it. We can't stay on Earth forever, and we have no idea how long we even have left. Who knows when a nuclear war, an asteroid, or a pandemic will snuff us out. We've had all our eggs in one basket far too long, considering the fate of all humanity hangs in the balance. This isn't an economics issue to me, its a trying-not-to-die issue. Of course space travel is essential to the continued survival of the human race but the reality of life is that putting 5 people on Mars for 100 billion doesn't accomplish anything. We need a way for humans to more and less freely move around the solar system before colonies start to make sense. Once its economic to mine the Moon or Mars or Europa ect it will be done. The journey to get there involved reducing the costs. And yes one-offs are not worth it. putting a few people on the Moon will not ensure the survival of mankind. They are more likely to die getting there then the Earth is of being destroyed before we discover a "cheap" way of leaving regularly. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On May 04 2014 05:21 Millitron wrote: There's one huge problem with saying one-offs aren't worth it. We can't stay on Earth forever, and we have no idea how long we even have left. Who knows when a nuclear war, an asteroid, or a pandemic will snuff us out. We've had all our eggs in one basket far too long, considering the fate of all humanity hangs in the balance. This isn't an economics issue to me, its a trying-not-to-die issue. Unfortunately, one-off in this context just means sending 3-6 people, planting a random flag, collecting some samples and returning. We could have an argument about whether we need a government funded initiative to create a self-sustaining civilization off our planet, to ensure the survival of the species in case of a disaster here on Earth. But if there was such an initiative the first step would still be the development of a cheap reusable rocket, not lobbing hundreds of expandable vehicles at Mars every year at hundreds of millions a pop. Cheap doesn't have to mean less spending on space. It could mean doing more with the same amount of spending, or significantly more with increased spending. | ||
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Millitron
United States2611 Posts
On May 04 2014 06:56 hypercube wrote: Unfortunately, one-off in this context just means sending 3-6 people, planting a random flag, collecting some samples and returning. We could have an argument about whether we need a government funded initiative to create a self-sustaining civilization off our planet, to ensure the survival of the species in case of a disaster here on Earth. But if there was such an initiative the first step would still be the development of a cheap reusable rocket, not lobbing hundreds of expandable vehicles at Mars every year at hundreds of millions a pop. Cheap doesn't have to mean less spending on space. It could mean doing more with the same amount of spending, or significantly more with increased spending. But someone's got to prove the trip can be made at all. Someone's got to design the long-term habitation facilities. Someone's got to figure out food production. These problems represent a huge capital investment that would have to be overcome before any corporation would consider it worth it to go for whatever monetary goal you can come up with. It's a pretty steep entry fee for a for-profit organization, but one that's not out to make money could blaze a trail and figure out the costliest problems for them. Just like the beginnings of space flight. You wouldn't see any commercial satellites now if the government had never wrote those huge checks. | ||
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
On May 04 2014 07:32 Millitron wrote: But someone's got to prove the trip can be made at all. Someone's got to design the long-term habitation facilities. Someone's got to figure out food production. These problems represent a huge capital investment that would have to be overcome before any corporation would consider it worth it to go for whatever monetary goal you can come up with. Which is why I said market and philantropy. SpaceX isn't a purely profit driven organization, the long term goal is to develop cheap transportation to Mars not to maximize profit or shareholder value. In any case there's nothing stopping large governments from following suit. But experience showed that neither the American electorate nor the Politburo of the Soviet Union was really interested in enough to finance the project long term. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21687 Posts
On May 04 2014 07:32 Millitron wrote: But someone's got to prove the trip can be made at all. Someone's got to design the long-term habitation facilities. Someone's got to figure out food production. These problems represent a huge capital investment that would have to be overcome before any corporation would consider it worth it to go for whatever monetary goal you can come up with. It's a pretty steep entry fee for a for-profit organization, but one that's not out to make money could blaze a trail and figure out the costliest problems for them. Just like the beginnings of space flight. You wouldn't see any commercial satellites now if the government had never wrote those huge checks. Except we already know a lot of those things thanks to for example the space station. We can get to Mars no problem (it just takes a while). We knew we can survive in space, we have the know how to build a colony on Mars it is just that the cost of doing so even for a tiny population is astronomical and the return is non-existent without a cheap way of going back and forth. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
Two weeks after launching a Falcon 9 rocket with supplies bound for the International Space Station, SpaceX engineers are racing to prepare another launcher for liftoff from Cape Canaveral as soon as May 10 with six asset tracking satellites for Orbcomm. The schedule is tight, but technicians are aiming to have the spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket ready for launch from Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad May 10 at 9:39 a.m. EDT (1339 GMT). The launch window extends for 54 minutes. Launch on May 10 would occur 22 days after the Falcon 9's previous flight, setting a record turnaround time for SpaceX, which previous conducted two launches 34 days apart in December and January. Maintaining quick turnarounds will be critical for SpaceX to achieve its goal of 10 launches this year. Several of the company's upcoming payloads have outpaced their launch vehicles after SpaceX encountered delays in launching an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket last year and the space station resupply flight, which took off April 18. The six second-generation Orbcomm satellites arrived at Cape Canaveral last week, ready for final preflight checks and fueling with hydrazine maneuvering propellant inside SpaceX's processing hangar near the launch pad. The spacecraft were manufactured by Sierra Nevada Corp. in Louisville, Colo. SpaceX plans a static fire test of the Falcon 9 rocket on the launch pad next week, in which the rocket's nine Merlin 1D main engines will ignite for a few seconds at the end of a practice Source | ||
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