"Flight proven" is the new "Certified Pre-Owned"

You appear to be repeating yourself (yet again), MookBot.

William Mook wrote:

snip echo


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

On Thursday, September 1, 2016 at 6:27:24 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at 8:48:39 AM UTC+12, Vaughn Simon wrote:
On 8/30/2016 3:01 PM, Rick Jones wrote:
It would seem that "flight proven" is now "officially" to used rockets
what "certified pre-owned" is to used cars:

I noticed that little turn of phrase, and I totally approve. You don't
see Boeing and Airbus loading freight and passengers into unproven
aircraft. Instead, they flight test new aircraft for however long it
takes to work out the inevitable kinks before delivering them to customers.

Very soon, "flight proven" rockets will be seen as less risky (and
therefore more valuable) than straight-from-the-factory hardware.


This is absolutely correct, and given the margins involved in the present market, will totally transform the fortunes of SpaceX.

Expendable

$61 million

$55 million - construction
$ 5 million - gross margin
$ 1 million - propellant & launch costs


Your numbers are bull****, but that's no surprise. Your numbers are
usually bull****.

Your analysis (such as it is) is faulty. Your 'analysis' is ALWAYS faulty.

For a Falcon 9 launch, total cost to customer is $62 million. SpaceX
gross margin on that launch (used to cover fixed costs and net profit)
is 40% or around $24 million.

Cite? Have you looked at their financials lately?

The remainder is the cost of the
rocket, fuel, and the launch campaign (vehicle processing and
stacking, launch support, etc).

Segregate out the satellite related costs don't forget. Don't forget the mandatory insurance as well.

Launch pad operational costs are
around $10 million per year.

Right, so what's the launch rate you're presuming? Think about Musk's filing with the FCC regarding 4,000 satellites to be launched very shortly. Sure, they're small satellites, but what's the implied launch rate?

OTA studies indicate that launch and
mission operations can be as much as 45% of the total costs of a
launch.

OTA studies have little to do with the ACTUAL FINANCIAL DATA from SpaceX

I assume

This is the most HONEST part of your commentary. You're putting your ASS before U and ME.. lol.

SpaceX does better and it's down around 10% or so,

Cite? You assumed it right? lol.

so call processing, launch, fuel (at $200k-$300k) at around $4 million

yawn You're confused in addition to making **** up. No wonder you're in such a lather.

or so. That leaves vehicle cost around $34 million. That puts first
stage cost around $25 million.


Flight Proven (150 uses)


This number is an order of magnitude too high.

Cite? Have you spoken with Musk and Tom Mueller where they want to be in say 18 months?

Musk has said "dozens"
(not 'hundreds'), their 3 sigma estimate is "at least 10", and when
you figure that you're not going to get all of them back (a 75%
recovery rate would be good), estimating somewhere between 15 and 24
reuses on average per core is probably close. Last professional
estimate I saw done used 15.

And there is no reason in the goddamned universe for them to say this right? To sort of mislead their competition in the hopes that Boeing and Lockheed won't get together with their congress critters and pull the knives out and kill SpaceX before their throats are cut?

You've never really been in a high stakes competitive environment at the C-level have you?

But that's all stuff done by engineers and cost accountants, not
hucksters.

You're the only one making **** up and assuming **** based on inappropriate sources and selling it as truth.



$62 million


You're going to charge a million dollars MORE for a used rocket?

Yes, after I negotiate with the insurers to charge less for a 'proven' rocket.

I
know what my reaction as a customer would be to that.

So do I. You saved us $5 million on our insurance rate, and are only taking $1 - that's decent of you.

"Thanks, but
I'll keep my million dollars and take a brand new rocket."

Okay, if you want to pay an extra $5 million dollars in insurance premiums go right ahead.

You see, the insurers need to be worked with as well, and if they can see they're going to get a bonanza in their business because Musk increases launch rates 400x - well, they've got Congress critters too - and the fight goes on!

So, you talk down your capacity, to lull your competitors into peace, and strengthen your ties with even bigger buddies than they, who benefit from your growth.


$60 million - gross margin
$ 2 million - maintenance, propellant and launch cost


This is pure bull**** AND hucksterism.

Your comments are sure.

You can't stack, fuel, and
launch for $2 million and that doesn't covered the cost of fixed
assets like the pad.

Depends on launch rate and logistics. and we've already learned how little you know about those.

You don't get the whole vehicle back;

Today. What about in 18 months? Hmm?

they're
only doing the first stages right now,

The operative word is 'right now' -

so you still have to buy a new
first stage every time.

yawn Today - Look if Musk is putting up 4,000 comsats in 2020 - he's going to have to reach a whole new level of performance. The FCC filing was mandatory and let SpaceX plans slip in a highly competitive environment. That's why SpaceX is backing off and reframing the news reports about the network.

And the goal isn't to gouge prices, huckster,

Blowhard.

but to cut costs so that the market expands and you get a bigger chunk
of it.

And avoid the knives of the competitors who have grown fat with high priced scarcity. Look, you say the right words, you don't really understand what that means in the context of a space business that operates outside of cost plus contracts, since you're a beneficiary of that environment. You also haven't a clue of what real competition looks like at this level.

Let's look at what actually gets saved here.

New first stage costs around $25 million. So that's around what you
save. If you assume a couple dozen reuses that gets you down to
around $40 million or so per launch if you keep the same $24 million
or so as gross margin.

And now the huckster is going to hand us the magic pixie dust.

You're the only one who assumes things to be true without any real knowledge and sells it as fact because you're gut says its right. Blowhard.

Boeing and Lockheed through ULA have floated the idea of using the X-37B technology to make a reusable upper stage.

http://qz.com/766697/spacexs-biggest...bital-economy/

Why do you think that is? Hmm.. ?

To draw SpaceX out about their plans for THEIR upper stage! They have no intention of actually building anything unless they have to, and unless they can get the US taxpayer to foot the bill to do a decades long research project on applying shuttle era technology to the idea of using an upper stage.. **** like that.

European Space Agency also floated an idea to reuse engines that fly back to the launch center along with space tugs as well. For much the same reason.

On Thursday, September 1, 2016 at 6:42:40 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
You appear to be repeating yourself (yet again), MookBot.

William Mook wrote:

snip echo


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

I deleted one post with a mathematical error and reposted the same post with the error corrected. Blowhard.

In article , says...

Jeff Findley wrote:
The "violence" of a launch is largely a myth for liquid fueled
launch vehicles.

Myth or "history"? eg pogo/whatnot.

POGO was a problem with certain combinations of engines and stages and
fixes were found which eliminated the problem. As far as I know, SpaceX
Falcon 9 does not suffer from POGO.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

On Thursday, September 1, 2016 at 11:23:27 AM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says...

Jeff Findley wrote:
The "violence" of a launch is largely a myth for liquid fueled
launch vehicles.

Myth or "history"? eg pogo/whatnot.

POGO was a problem with certain combinations of engines and stages and
fixes were found which eliminated the problem. As far as I know, SpaceX
Falcon 9 does not suffer from POGO.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

That's because they're PINTLE FED ENGINES - its in the patents - how a moving mass in the engine changes propellant flow rate to avoid oscillations. Its the reason NASA chose this design for the lunar module descent engine. Its the reason its an ideal engine for recovery and reuse.

"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...

William Mook wrote:

On Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at 8:48:39 AM UTC+12, Vaughn Simon wrote:
On 8/30/2016 3:01 PM, Rick Jones wrote:
It would seem that "flight proven" is now "officially" to used rockets
what "certified pre-owned" is to used cars:

I noticed that little turn of phrase, and I totally approve. You don't
see Boeing and Airbus loading freight and passengers into unproven
aircraft. Instead, they flight test new aircraft for however long it
takes to work out the inevitable kinks before delivering them to
customers.

Very soon, "flight proven" rockets will be seen as less risky (and
therefore more valuable) than straight-from-the-factory hardware.


This is absolutely correct, and given the margins involved in the present
market, will totally transform the fortunes of SpaceX.

Expendable

$61 million

$55 million - construction
$ 5 million - gross margin
$ 1 million - propellant & launch costs


Your numbers are bull****, but that's no surprise. Your numbers are
usually bull****.

For a Falcon 9 launch, total cost to customer is $62 million. SpaceX
gross margin on that launch (used to cover fixed costs and net profit)
is 40% or around $24 million. The remainder is the cost of the
rocket, fuel, and the launch campaign (vehicle processing and
stacking, launch support, etc). Launch pad operational costs are
around $10 million per year. OTA studies indicate that launch and
mission operations can be as much as 45% of the total costs of a
launch. I assume SpaceX does better and it's down around 10% or so,
so call processing, launch, fuel (at $200k-$300k) at around $4 million
or so. That leaves vehicle cost around $34 million. That puts first
stage cost around $25 million.


Gee, actual details and facts, not just WAG numbers.


Flight Proven (150 uses)


This number is an order of magnitude too high. Musk has said "dozens"
(not 'hundreds'), their 3 sigma estimate is "at least 10", and when
you figure that you're not going to get all of them back (a 75%
recovery rate would be good), estimating somewhere between 15 and 24
reuses on average per core is probably close. Last professional
estimate I saw done used 15.

I'll be really curious how they get to this number? Close analysis or what?
I mean in theory you want to make sure 15 isn't really any more likely to
blow up than 14.
So what makes 16 impossible?
I do agree, 150 I think is a bit. Let's see if we can get 2-3 flights under
our belts first. Hell, no shuttle got close to 100 flights. Granted it had a
lot other issues, but it's really the only vehicle we have ANY experience
with. I think the Falcon 9 is far more robust, but it'll take time for the
actual engineers to gain confidence. So yeah, I'll go with 15 over 150 at
this time.


But that's all stuff done by engineers and cost accountants, not
hucksters.


$62 million


You're going to charge a million dollars MORE for a used rocket? I
know what my reaction as a customer would be to that. "Thanks, but
I'll keep my million dollars and take a brand new rocket."


$60 million - gross margin
$ 2 million - maintenance, propellant and launch cost


This is pure bull**** AND hucksterism. You can't stack, fuel, and
launch for $2 million and that doesn't covered the cost of fixed
assets like the pad. You don't get the whole vehicle back; they're
only doing the first stages right now, so you still have to buy a new
first stage every time. And the goal isn't to gouge prices, huckster,
but to cut costs so that the market expands and you get a bigger chunk
of it. Let's look at what actually gets saved here.


One thing to keep in mind is I suspect is that as they ramp up flights, NASA
(LC-39) and Air Force (LC-40 at CCAFS and LC-4 at VAFB) may decide to start
charging more.

New first stage costs around $25 million. So that's around what you
save. If you assume a couple dozen reuses that gets you down to
around $40 million or so per launch if you keep the same $24 million
or so as gross margin.

And now the huckster is going to hand us the magic pixie dust.



They can expand their fleet by a rocket with each rocket they sell. In
six months they can have a fleet of eight rockets, two at each launch
center, and fly one rocket a day if need be.

And here is where we go from an inaccurate, but ok post to lala land.



And presumably the used stages just magically teleport back from the
landing barge to be instantaneously fueled and fully stacked on the
launch pad, because that's the only way you're going to get a launch a
day out of 8 rockets.


Ideally they can then take their profit and acquire a satellite builder
down on their luck, in part for 'free' launches, which basically cover the
out of pocket costs and transfer large chunks of ownership in the
satellite provider to SpaceX;


Why the **** would they do something like that? Pure hucksterism.


SpaceX then announces a plan to ring the world with wireless hotspots in
space, and


http://spacenews.com/spacex-opening-...nd-satellites/

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/El...ernet_999.html


I'll just note that they skipped your whole step of "acquiring a
satellite builder down on their luck".

MookHucksterism Munched



--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Thursday, September 1, 2016 at 12:24:11 PM UTC+12, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
...

William Mook wrote:

On Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at 8:48:39 AM UTC+12, Vaughn Simon wrote:
On 8/30/2016 3:01 PM, Rick Jones wrote:
It would seem that "flight proven" is now "officially" to used rockets
what "certified pre-owned" is to used cars:

I noticed that little turn of phrase, and I totally approve. You don't
see Boeing and Airbus loading freight and passengers into unproven
aircraft. Instead, they flight test new aircraft for however long it
takes to work out the inevitable kinks before delivering them to
customers.

Very soon, "flight proven" rockets will be seen as less risky (and
therefore more valuable) than straight-from-the-factory hardware.


This is absolutely correct, and given the margins involved in the present
market, will totally transform the fortunes of SpaceX.

Expendable

$61 million

$55 million - construction
$ 5 million - gross margin
$ 1 million - propellant & launch costs


Your numbers are bull****, but that's no surprise. Your numbers are
usually bull****.

For a Falcon 9 launch, total cost to customer is $62 million. SpaceX
gross margin on that launch (used to cover fixed costs and net profit)
is 40% or around $24 million. The remainder is the cost of the
rocket, fuel, and the launch campaign (vehicle processing and
stacking, launch support, etc). Launch pad operational costs are
around $10 million per year. OTA studies indicate that launch and
mission operations can be as much as 45% of the total costs of a
launch. I assume SpaceX does better and it's down around 10% or so,
so call processing, launch, fuel (at $200k-$300k) at around $4 million
or so. That leaves vehicle cost around $34 million. That puts first
stage cost around $25 million.


Gee, actual details and facts, not just WAG numbers.

Except he says they're assumed numbers based on OAG data having nothing to do with SpaceX current hardware - mine weren't WAG as you wrongly assert. If you have better numbers, cite your sources.

The propellant and launch costs are given here;

http://www.spacex.com/reusability-ke...ulti-planetary

“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.� --Elon Musk

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket currently carries a list price of about $54 million. However, the cost of fuel for each flight is only around $200,000—about 0.4% of the total. The majority of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which flies only once. Compare that to a commercial airliner. Each new plane costs about the same as Falcon 9, but can fly multiple times per day, and conduct tens of thousands of flights over its lifetime. Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of reaching Earth orbit by a hundredfold.



Flight Proven (150 uses)


This number is an order of magnitude too high.

It an order of magnitude lower than Musk himself has set as his goal. I'm looking at the implications of reaching the root mean square of the difference between 1 and 'thousands'

Musk has said "dozens"
(not 'hundreds'), their 3 sigma estimate is "at least 10", and when
you figure that you're not going to get all of them back (a 75%
recovery rate would be good), estimating somewhere between 15 and 24
reuses on average per core is probably close. Last professional
estimate I saw done used 15.

I'll be really curious how they get to this number?

Its a WAG as you said wrongly of me before. Musk has made it clear to his design team, he wants to follow the commercial aircraft model. This elicits very bad behaviour from his competitors who cannot allow the government or anyone else to think the artificial scarcity they've created in aerospace cannot be maintained.

Close analysis or what?

Multiple times per day thousands of reuses.

I mean in theory you want to make sure 15 isn't really any more likely to
blow up than 14.
So what makes 16 impossible?

Its spin that his PR group set out to counter the negative PR belched from his competitors. You can see it most clearly in the FCC filing. He *had* to file that FCC filing if he wanted to put up a wireless global hotspot on schedule. It got all the congress critters out in force questioning SpaceX sanity, basically they're out murdering his reputation before they pull a dirty trick to murder his company and then say see - he was a madman. So, he backed away at the level of publicity.

Remember, space is not a business today. Its politics. Its tax money at work. In short, SpaceX needs to make space travel a business and that means breaking some pretty damn big rice bowls. This is harder than the engineering, but he can do it. There are people who own Boeing stock, people on the board even, that think Boeing sinking a helluva lot of money into space launch at this juncture, is a waste of resources and makes them uncompetitive. This goes back to before Challenger. There are folks on the government side that wanted to kill Boeing space division. Musk knows this. He gets the insurance people on board, and works a deal with Boeing, he will be alright. But, he's got to get there from here - so, he's got to spin things differently.

I do agree, 150 I think is a bit.

Reasonable near term goal?

Let's see if we can get 2-3 flights under
our belts first.

True.

Hell, no shuttle got close to 100 flights.

It had other issues.

Granted it had a
lot other issues,

Agreed.

but it's really the only vehicle we have ANY experience
with.

A bad experience is not a measure of a good experience.

I think the Falcon 9 is far more robust, but it'll take time for the
actual engineers to gain confidence.

The engineers are being told to take risk. That's why there are a few failures. By allowing failure you learn from them and eliminate failure fastest. This would never have happened in a government programme. The programme managers would be fired and the next ones would spend inordinate resources to avoid losing their job for largely political reasons.

So yeah, I'll go with 15 over 150 at
this time.

Because you're stupid?


But that's all stuff done by engineers and cost accountants, not
hucksters.


$62 million


You're going to charge a million dollars MORE for a used rocket?

None of these numbers include insurance. You can do a lot by talking to insurers and working with them with the vision of increasing the number of launches overall.

I
know what my reaction as a customer would be to that. "Thanks, but
I'll keep my million dollars and take a brand new rocket."

You know nothing of the sort, since you know nothing of all the costs involved and have never been involved in negotiations such as these. You charge a nominally higher fee for hardware, but offer savings in other areas, like insurance, It lets you point out the RISKS associated with an untried product and puts the responsibilities on the insurers who confirm your analysis and sets the stage to cause future clients to question why they should be flying on an expendable.

Put it this way, if you charge less there's a natural tendency to think you're getting less. So, when the inevitable loss happens, people tend to think they got less to start with, and in future when it really counts, you go with the high priced spread. This isn't logical and makes little sense given the realities, but it does make sense from a marketing perspective. You MUST charge more, even if a small amount, and negotiate with your insurers to be exclusive and ride the bullet train to 100s of launches per year rather than dozens.


$60 million - gross margin
$ 2 million - maintenance, propellant and launch cost


This is pure bull**** AND hucksterism. You can't stack, fuel, and
launch for $2 million and that doesn't covered the cost of fixed
assets like the pad.

The propellant we know is less than $200,000 - obviously there are $1,800,000 of other costs - including 'launch cost' which includes things associated with launch, like fixed assets.

You don't get the whole vehicle back; they're
only doing the first stages right now,

SpaceX goal is to make humanity a multi-planet species. They will get the whole vehicle back and reuse it on a daily basis thousands of times over its life. I'm merely saying that by the time they launch their 4000 satellite network, they will have both stages to the point where they can launch them daily, and recover all stages at the launch center and reuse them 150 times before they lose one to an accident, likely during recovery operations.

so you still have to buy a new
first stage every time.

Until you don't.

And the goal isn't to gouge prices,

You must charge enough so the client believes they are getting good value for money. Charging the absolute minimum makes the seller seem less trustworthy, and when the inevitable accident happens, that hurts business. So, you charge a fair value and give the rationale for it. In this case, you charge more because its proven - letting you tell the story about the hardware and why a flight proven rocket is better than an unproven rocket. Overall there is a savings, on the insurance, which you've arranged with the insurer to underwrite exclusively - and arrange to cover some of the cost of loss out of your enlarged profit (which is shown in the 'launch cost' column.

huckster,

You know more about being a huckster than I ever will.

but to cut costs so that the market expands and you get a bigger chunk
of it. Let's look at what actually gets saved here.


One thing to keep in mind is I suspect is that as they ramp up flights, NASA
(LC-39) and Air Force (LC-40 at CCAFS and LC-4 at VAFB) may decide to start
charging more.

Why is that?

New first stage costs around $25 million. So that's around what you
save. If you assume a couple dozen reuses that gets you down to
around $40 million or so per launch if you keep the same $24 million
or so as gross margin.

And now the huckster is going to hand us the magic pixie dust.



They can expand their fleet by a rocket with each rocket they sell. In
six months they can have a fleet of eight rockets, two at each launch
center, and fly one rocket a day if need be.

And here is where we go from an inaccurate, but ok post to lala land.

You didn't read the technical addendum to SpaceX FCC filing did you?

Look, you build a rocket for $50 million - and recover ALL of it and refurbish it and refuel it for half your cost plus margin. Your next launch is FREE! But its better than that! $2 million out of pocket cost for each launch over 150 flights is $300 million. Dividing $60 million margin into 300 million is FIVE FLIGHTS. That's it. You fly five flights and your next 150 flights are FREE.

You've got four launch centres and eight rockets, and you fly four flights a day - after you've flown 40 payloads at 'the usual' or 'the commercial' price - you've got $300 million x 8 = $2.4 billion cash in the kitty to fly your fleet of 8 proven vehicles through their useful lives.

SpaceX has a 70 flight backlog. He figures he will learn enough on the next 30 to earn the big money on the subsequent 40.

THAT'S WHY HE FILED THE FCC PLAN WHEN HE DID! You will see radical improvements on nearly every flight. As soon as he flies off these 30 flights, the vehicle, the launch operations, and the logistics will be well nigh perfect. The next 40 will be the money shots! Then, he will put up 4,000 satellites and capture the lions share of the telecom market. This will capture more money EACH YEAR than has been spent by NASA over the LAST FIFTY YEARS..

Think about it. You've just dropped the cost of space travel to 1% of the cost it is today, and you've just captured enough revenue from your FIRST OFF WORLD ASSET, to increase spending on space travel 50x -Hell, what is 5,000x what we're doing today? What is this guy after? Does he want to colonise Mars or something? Oh yeah, that's precisely what he does! And he knows how to do it! lol.



And presumably the used stages just magically teleport back from the
landing barge to be instantaneously fueled and fully stacked on the
launch pad, because that's the only way you're going to get a launch a
day out of 8 rockets.

A launch every other day.


Ideally they can then take their profit and acquire a satellite builder
down on their luck, in part for 'free' launches, which basically cover the
out of pocket costs and transfer large chunks of ownership in the
satellite provider to SpaceX;


Why the **** would they do something like that? Pure hucksterism.

Let's see, SpaceX hired the technical crew from TRW when they were being acquired by Grumman. SpaceX settled with Grumman and took their building in Hawthorne and sold it to investors for $47 million and took a long term lease on the building.

SpaceX then announces a plan to ring the world with wireless hotspots in
space, and


http://spacenews.com/spacex-opening-...nd-satellites/

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/El...ernet_999.html


I'll just note that they skipped your whole step of "acquiring a
satellite builder down on their luck".

You have no idea how they plan to build 4000 satellites do you?


MookHucksterism Munched



--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

Both of you fellows are so out of touch with reality, it hurts to read the idiotic things you say.

On Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at 10:06:02 PM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article , says...

It would seem that "flight proven" is now "officially" to used rockets
what "certified pre-owned" is to used cars:

http://www.marke****ch.com/story/spa...ets-2016-08-30

Doesn't get into terms though.

In the passenger aircraft industry, they just call them aircraft. No
one in their right mind would ever fly on an aircraft that wasn't test
flown before carrying passengers.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

The psychology of artificial scarcity is promoted by those who benefit from that scarcity. Von Braun wanted to recover the first stage from the outset.

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/wernher...-ferry-rocket/

That wasn't permitted. After the moon landing, Von Braun wanted to focus on a flyback booster as the first step to a fully reusable Saturn V, focusing on wet stages for the upper stages to land on the moon as moon bases, and eventually go to Mars.

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/foru...ic,2174.0.html

http://spacejournal.ohio.edu/issue16...s/nansen5b.gif

The NASA management moved him from Huntsville where he was real progress with his ideas, to Washington, where he was ignored.

When he retired, he contacted Disney who wanted to do a retrospective a before and after space age series. A series of specials talking about what was predicted, and what actually happened, and projecting even further into the future into the 21st century. It was vonBraun's hope that this would reignite enthusiasm for space travel and push us on to Mars.

He was diagnosed with fast acting pancreatic cancer a few days after inking a deal with Disney. How unfortunate.

http://www.voxnews.com/index.php/us-...cancer-weapons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSEnurBApdM

George HW Bush, who was CIA director at the time of vonBraun's death, said his goal as President, was to keep space spending under 1% of the total budget. (It's at 0.8% now) To spend more in his opinion was wasteful. The main goal is to not overly excite the American public to over spend in this area, which is easy to do. Bush should know, Reagan did that during his presidency, until of course, he was shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BIXSQbSSV0

Disney and von Braun saw how easy it was, and could do so again following von Braun's retirement. Perhaps containing was the motivation for Bush's assassination of JFK?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6j7QF0CBUo

Some think so.

Musk's position is to turn space into a business and set the stage to reduce NASA's role to strategic direction and research - and drop space spending to half what it is today.

In article ,
says...

On Thursday, September 1, 2016 at 6:42:40 AM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
You appear to be repeating yourself (yet again), MookBot.

William Mook wrote:

snip echo


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

I deleted one post with a mathematical error and reposted the same post with the error corrected. Blowhard.

You can't delete posts from Usenet News you dolt. You've been told
repeatedly why this is the case. You can try to cancel a post, but many
(most?) newservers will already have propagated the post to other
servers by then. And many (most?) servers simply ignore the cancel
request anyway.

So your math error will be preserved in perpetuity.

Jeff
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perhaps the solution to make many flights with a reusable booster is simple and affordable.

as easy as launching all payloads with a launch boost escape system.

that way if a booster has a bad day, the payload will be safe and can be retrieved and reused.

launch boost escape will add some costs but save money when a booster fails