On 28 Oct, 00:00, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 10/27/2010 11:35 AM, Ian Parker wrote:

You have a touching faith in private enterprise. Private enterprise
can do amazing things, it set Google up. Private enterprise though :-

1) Cannot work miracles.
2) Is out to make a profit.

Virgin Galactic is not a particularly good example. It is an expensive
sub orbital ride. For the price I would want an orbital flight. Lets
face it the guys in NASA or ESA are the smartest around. If they are
told to brainstorm they will, in all probability, come up with rather
better ideas than the typical member of this group.

Explain how SpaceX is getting ready to do their second Falcon 9 launch
with a operational standard Dragon capsule on it for a complete orbital
mission and recovery, while NASA's efforts in the same direction haven't
even yielded a operational version of the first stage of the Ares I booster?

Pat

The Falcon is interesting. It is however NOT reusable. LEO payload is
4,500Kg in the normal configuration. Cost per launch is about $45M.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

The "heavy" configuration is still on the drawing board. The "heavy"
is broadly comperable with Ariane 5. Ariane at present, like the old
Shuttle, has solid fuel boosters. It might be possible in the future
to replace solid fuel with the Falcon's LOX/Kerosene.

The cost of Ariane 5 is $120M per launch, but Ariane 5 has an 18,000Kg
LEO payload. Neither, as I understand it, is human space flight
qualified, although there is the possibility that Ariane

Energia is 88,000Kg. A real heavyweight.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/energia.htm

http://www.friends-partners.org/part...vs/energia.htm

Development cost was something over a billion roubles. Launch cost -
vague but probably comparable to Ariane 5.

This potted survey shows that if you want the lowest per Kg cost at
LEO you buy Russian. It is not as simple as that, there are political
questions and the cost may not be a true cost. The real comparison is
with Ariane 5.

This shows that Falcon, while an innovation is not so radically
different from other solutions. The real eye opener is Ariane 5. This
I think is because the Europeans, the French in particular had much
more consistent objectives than NASA. This analysis rubbishes Capitol
Hill but not necessarily NASA that has to live with the objectives
set.

Certainly the quality of the scientific brains that produced this
proposal is not in question.


- Ian Parker