On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 10:50:02 -0500, "Jeff Findley"
wrote:


"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
hdakotatelephone...
Brian Thorn wrote:
Knowing SpaceX, the first one will go kablooey during first stage and
then Musk will proclaim it a success because they just wanted to clear
the tower without the SpaceX decals peeling off the nosecone. And
SpaceX fanboys will chastise the rest of us for disagreeing.

I'm keen to see how exactly it works on the first test also, and frankly
don't think it has a better than 50-50 chance of getting into orbit.
One big difference between this and Falcon-1 is that it's going to be
nowhere near as cheap to lose three Falcon-9's on test launches as it was
the earlier rocket, and if it does have trouble being made workable, you
can see the company going bankrupt before they can get it operational.
Looking at their launch manifest, you can tell that without the NASA COTS
contract it's very doubtful that Falcon-9 would have ever existed, as
there is no great demand for it outside of ISS resupply.

At first glance, there definitely appears to be a glut of launch providers.
The EELV's in the US, in particular, have had much less demand than
expected, resulting in more government "support" to keep them both going.

That might be chicken vs. egg situation, though. The EELV program was
designed to field *one* launcher, not two. Even though they are now
operated by one firm (ULA) they are still operating *two* large,
Ariane V-class launch vehicles, with at least twice the overhead and
infrastructure of Ariane or SeaLaunch. Even with strong government
support (U.S. DoD/NRO/NASA dwarfs ESA government "support" for Ariane)
this is still hideously expensive. And hideously expensive means EELV
is uncompetitive in the world market (even so, Atlas V still gets a
customer now and then). What would EELV's prospects be today if only
one EELV were in service?

Brian