EPTNASA and the Private Sector - Page 99
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ShoCkeyy
7815 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17190 Posts
On September 09 2016 21:00 ShoCkeyy wrote: Jimmy, can you tell me any other SpaceX rocket that has blown up within the past two years? Or prior to that? Also don't come including barge rockets, because that was strictly R&D. its all about confidence and perception. one $200+ million disaster can be overcome. not two; after both challenger and columbia disasters it was ~2.5 years before another shuttle flew. the next Falcon9 launch is September 20th. stay tuned. Elon Musk is masterful when it comes to PR. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/774150065166229504 "Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years" sounds like Elon Musk is preparing the SpaceX fan base for some launch delays. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
On September 10 2016 00:01 LegalLord wrote: Blowing up a rocket before launch is potentially the sign of a pretty shitty quality control on the part of SpaceX. When you innovate, you take on the brunt of the bad things that can happen to you. That's what pioneers do. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On September 10 2016 00:26 Incognoto wrote: When you innovate, you take on the brunt of the bad things that can happen to you. That's what pioneers do. Does the same go for when you reinvent 30-60 year old technology under the guise of being innovative? | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
On September 10 2016 00:33 LegalLord wrote: Does the same go for when you reinvent 30-60 year old technology under the guise of being innovative? I guess their approach to the problem is innovative in that no one else does what they're doing at that price. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
And that's assuming SpaceX is actually profiting on its launches. It's a private company; we don't know for sure. I have my doubts that it is. | ||
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oBlade
United States5823 Posts
On September 09 2016 04:00 cLutZ wrote: Here is the difference. Boeing exists on its own. The US government contracts are a luxury for Boeing, and the US Gov does what ti does with Boeing because it wants to leverage the decades of institutional expertise of that company to do things they don't know how to do. SpaceX is a startup that relies on speculative government contracts, doing things that the government itself (NASA) actually has greater expertise in. Then you're not actually concerned about the taxpayer. They have the exact same contract: build a 7-man capsule to launch on their own (or any man-rated) rocket with up to 6 flights. Boeing's contract is worth 60% more but the US government is supposed to have some kind of investment arrangement with SpaceX - because the company is smaller and newer? Just like if you go to a pizza shop and buy place an order for a bunch of pizzas, you become an owner! As though it wouldn't be an issue for NASA to do business with a company they have a literal stake in.  The degree to which SpaceX "relies" on the exact same contracts that other companies get is not relevant when those contracts weren't created to help SpaceX. SpaceX just happened to win them by being the best. On September 09 2016 04:00 cLutZ wrote: They are, essentially, a privately owned "Fermilab" that as about the same funding sources as the real Fermilab. We already have Fermilab, why are we funding a second Fermilab that will keep all its patents, discoveries, etc secret then sell them to us? They're discovering secrets in things that you think NASA does better? Make up your mind. | ||
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cLutZ
United States19574 Posts
However, any potential gain goes to them, while all the potential losses are on the taxpayer. Is a classic crony arrangement. | ||
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arbiter_md
Moldova1219 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22054 Posts
On September 10 2016 03:52 arbiter_md wrote: It's amazing how much hate goes on a company because of an accident. What's wrong with you all people? Have you managed to land a stage from a rocket? Or sent stuff in space? I hope they manage to find the cause of the accident quickly. They don't hate the company. They hate the man. And they refuse to accept that this is anything other then an attempt to steal money away for himself. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On September 10 2016 03:52 arbiter_md wrote: It's amazing how much hate goes on a company because of an accident. What's wrong with you all people? Have you managed to land a stage from a rocket? Or sent stuff in space? I hope they manage to find the cause of the accident quickly. I was highly critical of SpaceX well before this failure or their previous one. I simply feel that in the aftermath of this accident, more people are willing to pay attention to my criticism than they were before. It's easier to say "I question their quality control capabilities" shortly after an accident than while their recent flights are mostly successful - even when the criticisms themselves are valid. | ||
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oBlade
United States5823 Posts
On September 10 2016 03:00 cLutZ wrote: When did I say they were discovering secrets? They are just a redundant entity like a space-themed skin tag. You asked why we were funding a second Fermilab that keeps its discoveries secret. Neither NASA nor anyone else has ever built: -An orbital rocket where the first (or any) stage lands itself for reuse -An integrated pusher abort system On September 10 2016 03:00 cLutZ wrote: However, any potential gain goes to them, while all the potential losses are on the taxpayer. Is a classic crony arrangement. The gain to the taxpayer is that SpaceX delivers what NASA seeks in their contracts, right? meaning crew and cargo launches to the space station, and that this is cheaper than the Space Shuttle, than Soyuz, than Orion would be, and it's even cheaper than Boeing who you don't also want to force to pay dividends back to NASA. By "potential losses" I assume you mean "what if a rocket blows up again?" and without looking it up, I would really doubt that SpaceX isn't liable for failures. But there's not much to worry about because Dragon already exists and has been flying. Boeing, on the other hand, didn't participate in commercial resupply, and didn't even think they were going to win commercial crew because they hadn't built real hardware yet and were going to abandon CST-100 without the contract. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17190 Posts
On September 10 2016 03:52 arbiter_md wrote: It's amazing how much hate goes on a company because of an accident. What's wrong with you all people? Have you managed to land a stage from a rocket? Or sent stuff in space? I hope they manage to find the cause of the accident quickly. its amazing how much people attempt to distort the past and avoid paying attention to outcomes. when people make promises that are not fulfilled i make note of that. Whether you're Hello Games, Artillery Games or Elon Musk. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On September 10 2016 14:41 oBlade wrote: Neither NASA nor anyone else has ever built: -An orbital rocket where the first (or any) stage lands itself for reuse -An integrated pusher abort system No one has ever built a reusable rocket or a launch abort/eject system? Both have been done. One has yet to be shown to be worth it. The other is standard practice and while SpaceX has an interesting improvement on it (ejecting from orbit), it's also yet to actually ferry people into space at all, being beaten in that regard by 50-year-old Russian technology which is decidedly low-tech. | ||
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oBlade
United States5823 Posts
On September 11 2016 01:09 LegalLord wrote: No one has ever built a reusable rocket or a launch abort/eject system? Both have been done. One has yet to be shown to be worth it. The other is standard practice and while SpaceX has an interesting improvement on it (ejecting from orbit), Nobody else has ever built a pusher abort system, meaning one that pushes the capsule from the bottom rather than pulling it away with an escape tower. I chose my words deliberately just to avoid this but it had no effect. If you think that orbiting spaceplanes with no fuel tanks are comparable to the F9 first stage that has enough thrust to put its entire self into orbit, then whatever. But adding legs and fins to an existing rocket stage to save money by reusing it is a lot different enterprise than allocating as much money as necessary to force a 70 tonne flying cargo bay with wings that carries a 25 tonne payload to be reusable. On September 11 2016 01:09 LegalLord wrote:it's also yet to actually ferry people into space at all, being beaten in that regard by 50-year-old Russian technology which is decidedly low-tech. So obviously someone with a 50 year head start will be the first one to build a spacecraft. In this sense everyone's getting 'beaten,' Boeing and NASA included. But Soyuz MS is not old technology, or a VW Beetle is also 60s technology because it's the shape of a beetle and has tires and a steering wheel. just like the old model. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On September 11 2016 03:19 oBlade wrote: Nobody else has ever built a pusher abort system, meaning one that pushes the capsule from the bottom rather than pulling it away with an escape tower. I chose my words deliberately just to avoid this but it had no effect. If you think that orbiting spaceplanes with no fuel tanks are comparable to the F9 first stage that has enough thrust to put its entire self into orbit, then whatever. But adding legs and fins to an existing rocket stage to save money by reusing it is a lot different enterprise than allocating as much money as necessary to force a 70 tonne flying cargo bay with wings that carries a 25 tonne payload to be reusable. So obviously someone with a 50 year head start will be the first one to build a spacecraft. In this sense everyone's getting 'beaten,' Boeing and NASA included. But Soyuz MS is not old technology, or a VW Beetle is also 60s technology because it's the shape of a beetle and has tires and a steering wheel. just like the old model. You chose your words carefully to make it sound like SpaceX made a major breakthrough that no one else has been able to make. In reality they improved on an existing system, or at least apparently did because it hasn't been tested with actual people inside. Much less impressive. Soyuz is an old technology. It has obviously received minor upgrades over the course of 50 years, but it is fundamentally the same craft that works as it did when it was launched. The same tiny 3-person vessel that it was five decades ago, with the same purpose - probably because history has shown that one of the best ways to ensure reliability for space travel is just to figure out how your craft tends to fail and address those errors until it becomes reliable. Not really a catch-all design that suits every purpose; just a bare-bones old design with minor upgrades. The bigger point, however, is that SpaceX has failed to show that as of yet, their technologies are actually useful innovations that justify its existence. They have recovered a rocket, but as of yet failed to show that it can be reused - or, more importantly, that it is actually useful to reuse them. History suggests that maintenance costs plus the costs of designing a craft to actually be reusable are more significant than the savings you get from actually reusing rockets, and SpaceX has yet to show that they have overcome this historical difficulty. Their manned craft have yet to even carry a single person so their capabilities cannot be judged one way or the other - many things change between testing runs and real launches. By default, missions that have actually flown and been successful, regardless of their faults, are better than unproven technology. And until SpaceX proves that it has done something particularly useful, it's merely a redundancy that offers cheap prices (which we don't know if it profits on) and average reliability. So far it's survived mostly on government support (financial and technical) and the Musk hype train, and a number of factors make me question if it will ever manage to be anything more than that. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic’s second SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane made its first flight Sept. 8 as the company takes another step to recover from a fatal 2014 crash. During the “captive carry” test flight, which took off from and landed back at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, SpaceShipTwo remained attached to its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft. The flight, lasting 3 hours and 43 minutes, tested the airflow around the vehicle and its overall performance at the low temperatures found at altitudes of about 15,000 meters, where SpaceShipTwo would be released on a typical flight. The flight was the first time this SpaceShipTwo, known as VSS Unity, left the ground. Virgin Galactic rolled out the spaceplane in a February ceremony at its Mojave facility, after which the company spent several months carrying out ground tests. While the company called the flight an “exciting milestone” for the company, it disclosed few details about the test flight itself. “With this flight in the books, our team will now analyze a mountain of flight data, learning what worked well and what could be improved for our next flight test,” the company said in a Sept. 8 statement. The statement added that Virgin Galactic may perform additional captive carry tests depending on the outcome of the data analysis, as well as vehicle inspections and other planned work, before moving on to the next phase of the flight test program, where SpaceShipTwo is released from WhiteKnightTwo and glides to a runway landing. The company will later conduct powered test flights, where SpaceShipTwo ignites its hybrid rocket motor in a series of tests of increasing duration. Source | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17190 Posts
i don't think he can do it in 10 years. | ||
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