On May 22, 11:21*am, Anonymous wrote:
http://www.space.com/15809-spacex-pr...ch-commercial-
spaceflight.html

SpaceX has succeeded in orbiting Dragon and will most likely succeed in
docking with ISS. If that happens customer will line up on droves, NASA
among them.

My guess is that the corrupt U.S. Senators will now be ordered to order
NASA to purchase the CST-100, which will cost billions to develop if
Boeing gets its way. Mark my words!

I'm not sanguine about large numbers of engines such as on the Falcon
9 on a rocket intended to make space flight routine.
As I have discussed before, there is nothing especially innovative
about the SpaceX designs. The engines they're using are of no better
efficiency than the ones used on the original Atlas from the 60's. The
lightweight stages come from techniques known from the 70's. SpaceX
has said they don't want to patent their designs because that would
give for example the Chinese greater ease in copying them. However, I
wonder if the real reason is that they are just using techniques
already known for decades.
What is innovative is that they used good business practice in
privately developing their vehicles which led them to have reduced
development costs by up to 90%(!) In the space industry, that is
innovative. But of course in the business world there is nothing
innovative about that either.
So any of the large aerospace companies in the world could duplicate
the SpaceX low development costs except they would be better off just
using the much better efficiency (Russian) engines now existing,
resulting in needing fewer engines plus they wouldn't have the
development costs of building entirely new engines.
In other words, any of the world's aerospace companies could
duplicate the SpaceX launch vehicles but at even *lower* launch prices
by following good business practices you would normally use for a
*privately financed* venture.


Bob Clark