SpaceX Upgrades

(MattWriter) wrote in message ...
I'll have to ask Musk this at the next conference where I bump into him. He's
clearly a rocket history buff, but I wonder if he knows that his engines,
Merlin and Kestrel, in addition to being types of falcon, are names of
important Rolls-Royce aircraft engines from WWII (the Kestrel was the
predecessor to the more famous Merlin.)


Especially since this is such as massive improvement. Why didn't they
have the right engine in in the first place.

Damon Hill wrote in message . 134...

I'm giving them better than a 50% chance of success on the
first try, at least for getting a payload delivered. Waiting
on how successful they'll be in recovering the first stage in
(re)usable condition. Curious to see what salt water does
to the engine.


The SpaceX web site mentions that the company shaved weight
from the first stage by upgrading to a titanium thrust frame.
(It weighs only 70-ish pounds but can handle 150,000 pounds
of force.) The thrust frame now costs substantially more than
the old design, but SpaceX hopes to make up the difference by
recovering and reusing this part, along with others, a few
times.

It'll take about five successful launches to get comfortable
with them.


If they get to five. The problem is that SpaceX only has
four launches scheduled (three Falcon I and one Falcon V)
right now. But a couple of successes would probably garner
new business.

- Ed Kyle

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message ...
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Damon Hill wrote:

Careful; shouldn't count your Falcons before they've hatched, and
flown the nest. Though I'd like to see some serious competition in
this business.

Oh, without a doubt caution is called for; we've seen lots
of launch startups go bust. But I was speaking hypothetically.

This is true. However, we haven't seen quite so many
launch startups who got a rocket on the pad go bust.
So there is room for hope.

I think the last one was Amroc, who got a vehicle onto
a Vandenberg pad (in 1989 I think it was) only to see
it fail (it caught on fire) without ever leaving said
pad.

- Ed Kyle

Damon Hill wrote in message . 134...
Andi Kleen wrote in
:

Damon Hill writes:

Careful; shouldn't count your Falcons before they've hatched, and
flown the nest. Though I'd like to see some serious competition in
this business.

Any guesses: will the first falcon I make orbit or not?

They seem to be confident because it already carries some
DOD communication satellite. Probably a cheap one though.

I'm giving them better than a 50% chance of success on the
first try, at least for getting a payload delivered. Waiting
on how successful they'll be in recovering the first stage in
(re)usable condition. Curious to see what salt water does
to the engine.

Are the engines going to be directly exposed, or have they developed
an inflatable boattail for protection? Anyone know?

The satelite they are flying is, IIRC, a Navy payload built (partly?)
by student engineers at one of the Naval colleges. Sort of a learning
exercise, so if it augers/explodes/reenters it is not much loss.

Good luck to the SpaceX team!

Josh

It'll take about five successful launches to get comfortable
with them.

--Damon

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message ...
wrote:
EELV costs are rising fast - so fast that the Air Force now expects to
pay $138 million for a Medium and up to $254 million for a Heavy, at
least according to:

"http://www.flatoday.com/news/space/stories/2004b/spacestoryN1010OVERRUN.htm"

Looks like Mr. Musk will have a *lot* of upward wiggle room on his
pricing.

And as SpaceX takes market share, the costs of the EELV rockets will continue
to increase. Worse for them, DOD may decide that with working Falcons
it doesn't need both of the EELVs.

Are you being sarcastic? There's significant economy of scale with rocket launches.


Karl Hallowell

Karl Hallowell wrote:

And as SpaceX takes market share, the costs of the EELV rockets will continue
to increase. Worse for them, DOD may decide that with working Falcons
it doesn't need both of the EELVs.


Are you being sarcastic? There's significant economy of scale with rocket launches.

Umm, I know. Falcon != EELV, and as the market for the latter goes down,
their cost goes up.

Paul

ed kyle wrote:
Damon Hill wrote in message . 134...


I'm giving them better than a 50% chance of success on the
first try, at least for getting a payload delivered. Waiting
on how successful they'll be in recovering the first stage in
(re)usable condition. Curious to see what salt water does
to the engine.



The SpaceX web site mentions that the company shaved weight
from the first stage by upgrading to a titanium thrust frame.
(It weighs only 70-ish pounds but can handle 150,000 pounds
of force.) The thrust frame now costs substantially more than
the old design, but SpaceX hopes to make up the difference by
recovering and reusing this part, along with others, a few
times.

And titanium (or, at least, properly chosen titanium alloy)
has the property of being highly resistant to salt water
corrosion.

I bet the main reason they want to recover the stage is to
collect engineering data.

Since the engine has an ablative nozzle, I doubt it's
reusable as a whole.

Paul

In article , ed kyle
wrote:

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote in message
...
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Damon Hill wrote:

Careful; shouldn't count your Falcons before they've hatched, and
flown the nest. Though I'd like to see some serious competition in
this business.

Oh, without a doubt caution is called for; we've seen lots
of launch startups go bust. But I was speaking hypothetically.

This is true. However, we haven't seen quite so many
launch startups who got a rocket on the pad go bust.
So there is room for hope.

I think the last one was Amroc, who got a vehicle onto
a Vandenberg pad (in 1989 I think it was) only to see
it fail (it caught on fire) without ever leaving said
pad.

EER's Conestoga, October 23, 1995, actually got off the pad and was
flying well for 46 seconds before breaking up.

--
David M. Palmer (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)

(ed kyle) wrote in message . com...
If they get to five. The problem is that SpaceX only has
four launches scheduled (three Falcon I and one Falcon V)
right now. But a couple of successes would probably garner
new business.

Well, they've claimed several times that they have a bunch of
customers who are very interested, but want to see the Falcon fly
first. That certainly sounds plausible to me - how many non-EELV
launches did Atlas V or Delta IV have sold before their first flight?
And those were developed by companies that had proved launch vehicle
development track records, and had at least one and probably more
roughly comparable backups if their development ran into snags.

Falcon, on the other hand, is American (for export-sensitive
satellites), really cheap (Pegasus costs what, three times as much?),
and there's no proven track record. If it works, it'll open up a lot
of market space, but people are going to be hesitant to put a lot of
effort into designing for it until it does work.

-jake

(ed kyle) wrote in message

I think the last one was Amroc, who got a vehicle onto
a Vandenberg pad (in 1989 I think it was) only to see
it fail (it caught on fire) without ever leaving said
pad.

Yes, Amroc made it to the pad. And SSI's Conestoga made it off the
pad, twice, but still failed. As far as I know, this is the extent of
the track record of commercial orbital vehicles.

However I get the impression that Elon Musk has more money, more
business sense, a better design, and the benefit of having Amroc's and
SSI's mistakes to learn from. I am hopeful.

Cheers,

Nathan.