SpaceX armchair quarterbacking

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:40:17 +0000 (UTC),
(Eric Chomko) wrote:

Who's to say that the customer, USAF, won't want to at this point get
involved in mirco-managing the time table over the next six months?

I would have thought that they would be happy at the current time to
let SpaceX do their own thing.

And, who's to say that they shouldn't given the current lack of
success?

The recent launch failure does not indicate that the next launch will
also fail. Quite correctly these problems need to be addressed and
resolved, but there is every indication that SpaceX currently plan to
do this through their own desire.

Welcome to the game of government contracting, and SpaceX becomes nothing
more than another government contractor.

That is where the money currently is, but it is easy to see that their
main desire is in commercial space. So maybe one day the government
will be small potato compared to whatever commercial use they think up
next.

Blast your loved ones remains into space is already getting quite
popular it seems. Indeed they will put anything you want into space if
you can pay the fee.

There is profit to be found there.

: The latter wouldn't be private industry.

: It could be. When a team is more than the sum of its parts, when
: labor is not a commodity, private industry is certainly capable
: of paying people to remain available for future work even if there
: is no presently valuable work for them to perform.

But at nowhere near the level of government.

Due to the costs involved. You may notice that SpaceX has already
dropped the price to like 1/10th. The lower the cost the more people
can put things up there.

The end goal is of course people.

You can already work out how many people SpaceX can launch into orbit
in the future with their current prices. Now imagine what would happen
if their prices dropped to 1/10th of their current price, or less,
through mass factory production.

Then a lot more people can buy a ticket. Add orbital hotels, burger
bars, pubs, etc, when then commercial space would live. "London,
Paris, New York, and LEO".

And that brings us back to
the space industry and being able to be in private industry given
setbacks. Based upon results what we have IS what we have. So, all the
private industry space buffs can say what they want, but based upon
results NASA and the USAF is no different than they except that the former
has had several more successes.

It was their first launch. It can be seen to be quite successful
considering all the progress that has already been made. Obviously
they still have some way to go, but a governmental takeover I doubt
would be the right way to go.

Cardman
http://www.cardman.org
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk

In article , frédéric haessig says...

"Geoffrey" a écrit dans le message de news:
.com...

No, it's not. Most of the early boosters did suborbital tests first.
Saturn 1 did about four suborbitals before they tried an orbital, for
example.

Did any rocket devellopped since the 70s do so? Especially any commercial
one?

Ariane didn't, even for Ariane I ( which was sucessfull - the failures were
on the 2nd and 5th flight ).

Neither Sealaunch, nor Delta III or Delta IV, nor Atlas V did, AFAIK.

Similarly, the new version of Russian rockets don't, and I don't think GSLV
and PSLV did. I'm less sure about the japanese and chinese rockets.


Delta III/IV and Atlas V are expressions of corporate ego on even-numbered
days, attempts to feign continuity with earlier vehicles on odd days, and
neither of those allows one to admit a suborbital test or three might be
called for.

Sealaunch uses the Zenit booster, whose first two flights were suborbital
by design. All of the other new Russian rockets are ex-ICBMs, with lots
of suborbital flights under their belt, except the Angara which hasn't
flown at all. The PSLV's first flight was suborbital, though not by
design.

The Japanese H-II was orbital from the start. Same for the M-V as such,
but earlier M-series rockets had a suborbital heritage. Likewise the J-1.

The only operational Chinese launchers have been derived from the DF-5
ICBM, again plenty of suborbital flights there. The new Kaituozhe has
flown twice and not reached orbit either time; the Chinese aren't saying
much about what it was intended to do.


People who aren't investing massive ammounts of ego into government
megaprojects, and even some who are, seem to prefer shooting a bit lower
than Earth orbit for their first test flight. We'll see how SpaceX does
with their approach, but it's not the way I would go.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *


--
NewsGuy.Com 30Gb $9.95 Carry Forward and On Demand Bandwidth

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:40:17 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Who's to say that the customer, USAF, won't want to at this point get
involved in mirco-managing the time table over the next six months?

SpaceX is to say. The Air Force isn't paying their bills.

And, who's to say that they shouldn't given the current lack of success?

SpaceX should say, since they're paying the bills.

: If you don't, they will move on to other things, from which they
: can not easily be called back in six months. So, when you have
: important stuff for Team X to do in six months, there won't be a
: Team X. You'll have to hire new people, and even if each one of
: them is as talented as a former Team X member, the new people
: won't *be* a team. And it will take six non-productive months
: before the new Team Y can replace the old Team X.

Welcome to the game of government contracting, and SpaceX becomes nothing
more than another government contractor.

SpaceX is not a government vehicle-development contractor. They are a
launch provider.

Jim Kingdon wrote:

The flaw in this plan is that this Falcon I team have been busy on
other projects. This mostly explains this five month delay until the
next launch when this team has to be reassembled and work started.

That has to be among the stupidest ways to run a project I've ever
heard.

Seems to be more or less par for the course when a system goes from
development to being operational

If the Falcon I was operational, you'd have a point.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Blast your loved ones remains into space is already getting quite
popular it seems. Indeed they will put anything you want into space if
you can pay the fee.

It does seem like this market has proved viable (at least the ashes of
loved ones part). Whether it will be large (either in terms of
kilograms, or number of customers) is a different question.

As with a lot of things in the space industry, this depends not only
on whether the demand is out there, but whether anyone is trying to
develop that market. How many people have bought this service to
date? Some steady but relatively small number. How many people
would, if it were pick your favorite choice from flying more often,
marketing more widely, cheaper per gram, etc, etc? That's harder to
say.