"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:47:01 -0400, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:

Ignoring the collective knowledge of the people at SpaceX, there is still
the issue of how much of Falcon 1 was new hardware versus hardware derived
from existing hardware (not a whole heck of a lot). Look at Falcon 1 as a
relatively inexpensive way to gain experience with actual flight hardware.

No, they put expensive (at least to the owner) payloads on top of
them, until no one would risk it anymore. Falcon 1 was not a private
X-vehicle.

That was possibly a mistake. But that mistake is not unique to Falcon 1.
There have been payloads lost on the first flights of other launch vehicles.
From what I understand, these first flights are often heavily discounted
because even the customers know that the odds of success aren't as good as
they would be further down the flight schedule.

I'd say from that point of view, it's been a successful program.

That's the sort of history re-writing that really annoys me. NASA,
ULA, Orbital, and Arianespace don't get away with that crap, but we're
talking about SpaceX, so they get a free pass, because they're the
good guys going after the big evil conglomerates.

This is b.s. I've consistently had lower expectations of SpaceX because
they're a startup. I'm not rewriting history in any way shape or form.

You'd rather complain from the very beginning that SpaceX is a failure
because they're not immediately as successful as ULA or Arianespace with
their multiple previous generations of launch vehicles to draw upon when
designing the next one. Note that Orbital went through *a lot* of initial
growing pains and suffered many failures before it was accepted into the
"big boy's club" that you refer to. Orbital's launch vehicles were unique
in many ways and therefore failed in unique ways. That's to be expected.

SpaceX is currently paying its dues and obviously isn't fully accepted into
the club yet. But if it keeps making progress and keeps its costs low, it
will make it into the club. If SpaceX built and flew its vehicles just like
the existing "big boys", then its costs would be just as high and they
wouldn't have a chance of selling launches given the current glut of launch
vehicles in the same class as Falcon 9. Their business plan is to undercut
the costs of the compeition, which requires them do to operate differently.
Those differences are largely proprietary, but some can be seen if you look
closely enough.

It has
allowed SpaceX to go from zero flown hardware to hardware which has proven
itself from launch to orbit insertion with a vehicle about an order of
magnitude smaller (and quite a bit cheaper) than Falcon 9.

I'm sure DARPA, NASA, and Celestis are thrilled to learn they were
guinea pigs for SpaceX learning how (not) to launch rockets.

If they claim they didn't know they were guinea pigs, they're either lying
or incompetent. The statistics of first flights of any new launch vehicle
are public knowledge. It truly doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at
that data and realize that you're taking a gamble on a first flight of any
launch vehicle, especially one which is the first launch vehicle for a
startup.

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon