Angry Astronauts Write Letter

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.

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.

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.

Brian