LIVE: SpaceX - Falcon I (Mk.II) NET March 20 (Attempt 2)

[bad_astra]

aero313 - 27/4/2007  2:20 PM

I've just recently come from the Responsive Space conference in L.A.  Anyone who has ever actually launched anything was ridiculing the SpaceX ad.  The popular nickname for Gwynne was "Queen of Spin".  This is NOT their intended audience.  The sad truth is that Congressional Staffers eat this stuff up and are frankly too, er, uninformed to know any better.  From that standpoint, this was probably a very effective ad campaign.

Your government and tax dollars at work...

Your personal agenda at work.

[guidanceisgo]

When you combine the Aviation week ad they just created, along with the SPACE NEWS ad after the first failure proclaiming that they have tested nearly all the critical systems, I find it ridiculous for anyone to say that spacex doesn't have a spin machine.  I too hear about spacex from their prospective customers and the credibility slips when they do this kind of thing.  They should just take credit for what they have achieved, which is incrementally impressive.

[Jeff Bingham]

aero313 - 28/4/2007  8:58 AM

God knows where the attack on Congressional staffers came from.

Personal first-hand experience.  This is completely unrelated to SpaceX.  Let's just say that the more I see how our gov't really operates, the more disillusioned I get.

Well, I think you related it to SpaceX by suggesting they were targeting a specific group with their ad and you made a sweeping characterization of that group that is different from the experience of others. As I'm sure you know, sweeping general statements about almost anything get challenged around here a lot, which is one of the special charms of the place, hehe.

Anyway, I'll just say my own "personal first-hand experience," over a period of thirty-four years, has been different than yours. Of course, there are a wide variety of staffers at any given time--committee "professional" staff, personal staff, leadership staff, constituent services staff, field staff, etc., and admittedly staff of a Member who has no constituent or committee interest or jurisdiction in space issues are definitely not likely to be well-informed about the issues you might be interested in talking with them about.  And some of them can forget that they weren't the ones elected, and can get a tad arrogant and downright snooty. (been there; done that, hehe). But I just don't like to see them lumped together and denigrated as a "type," which may be--in no small part--because over twenty of those thirty-four-plus years have been spent AS a congressional staffer.

[aero313]

51D Mascot - 28/4/2007  12:00 PM

Well, I think you related it to SpaceX by suggesting they were targeting a specific group with their ad and you made a sweeping characterization of that group that is different from the experience of others. As I'm sure you know, sweeping general statements about almost anything get challenged around here a lot, which is one of the special charms of the place, hehe.

Fair enough.  SpaceX is by no means the first or only company to do this.  After living in the DC area for several decades, I'm still amazed at the full page ads for specific weapon systems by LockMart, Boeing, et al that show up opposite the Federal Page in the Washington Post.

Anyway, I'll just say my own "personal first-hand experience," over a period of thirty-four years, has been different than yours. Of course, there are a wide variety of staffers at any given time--committee "professional" staff, personal staff, leadership staff, constituent services staff, field staff, etc., and admittedly staff of a Member who has no constituent or committee interest or jurisdiction in space issues are definitely not likely to be well-informed about the issues you might be interested in talking with them about.  And some of them can forget that they weren't the ones elected, and can get a tad arrogant and downright snooty. (been there; done that, hehe). But I just don't like to see them lumped together and denigrated as a "type," which may be--in no small part--because over twenty of those thirty-four-plus years have been spent AS a congressional staffer.

Also true, and I apologize for the sweeping generalization.  My experience has been primarily with the personal staff and I continue to be amazed by the lack of knowledge on the topics being voted on.  The staffer for one SAC member being briefed did not know what "prompt global stike" was.  There have been others...

Comga - 27/4/2007  3:01 PM  The ad sits only a few pages away from an article which posits that launch insurance costs will stymie commercial space, both manned and unmanned.  this sounds like a bigger problem than even yaw-pitch instabilities.

Saw that too. Insurance works on actuarial's, and when the losses rise, so do the policies and riders. Losses are clearly pushed way over minimums.

The real hit is on the manned side. while on the unmanned its more a case of pushing things off into the future more - we've seen this several times before.

[quark]

guidanceisgo - 28/4/2007  8:57 AM

When you combine the Aviation week ad they just created, along with the SPACE NEWS ad after the first failure proclaiming that they have tested nearly all the critical systems, I find it ridiculous for anyone to say that spacex doesn't have a spin machine.  I too hear about spacex from their prospective customers and the credibility slips when they do this kind of thing.  They should just take credit for what they have achieved, which is incrementally impressive.

The entire SpaceX phenomenon is nothing but spin.  What exactly are their impressive achievements?  After 5 years of trying, they have yet to accomplish what the rest of the industry (across the world) does regularly, day in day out---get a spacecraft into orbit.  Their record is abismal.  They've trashed at least 3 complete rockets, still without success.  They've repeated every rookie mistake in the book.

They have no new technology, no new processes and a track record that puts them at the very bottom of the industry.

When will someone be objective?

[STS Tony]

But should SpaceX do anything other than laugh off these comments from competitors? I assume they'd have every right to laugh at ULA for messing up the Delta IV Heavy schedule because workers messed up the pad?

Their success will be deemed by the contracts they win and last time of checking shows they've been supported by their companies they are looking to provide launch services for.

I don't think pimping themselves to 500 or so readers of SpaceNews, which is utter crap by the way, pay for press releases, is going to make a difference, so you could get them on that, but is this launch had not been within the success requirements they set out, then we'd be hearing of contracts being pulled faster than Sea Launch.

And isn't their lead engineer a former Lockheed guy?

[stockman]

well we are now 3 weeks and counting from Elon's "estimate" of updating the world withing 2 weeks. Not complaining,,, simply pointing out a fact.

[aero313]

STS Tony - 29/4/2007  12:41 AM
I don't think pimping themselves to 500 or so readers of SpaceNews, which is utter crap by the way, pay for press releases, is going to make a difference, so you could get them on that, but is this launch had not been within the success requirements they set out, then we'd be hearing of contracts being pulled faster than Sea Launch.

First, I'm sure they DID carefully craft the success criteria for this launch to maximize the chances that they'd get paid.  That's just common sense and Orbital does that all the time.  On the other hand, to say the vehicle is fully qualified and fully operational is a stretch.  Of course, NASA declared the shuttle "operational" after the first four missions, so again, SpaceX isn't alone here.  "Mission accomplished", or something like that.

As for cancellation of contracts, why?  The TacSat 1 contract was valued at only $3.4M and assuming a typical launch service payment profile, I'm sure most of that was paid to SpaceX several years ago.  The satellite provider can't afford to buy another vehicle, they likely won't get their money back, so they might as well sit tight.  The Air Force "$100 million" contract is an IDIQ contract which means that it's worthless until a mission actually gets exercised.  There's no obligation on the part of the AF to do anything, and so far they haven't.  The contract will just time out ten years after signing.  Bigelow has already jumped to the Russians and Atlas V.  There's no incentive for him to do anything with his SpaceX contract and so long as there's a chance they'll eventually make it to orbit, so he's perfectly happy to let it sit.  The Malaysians want a low inclination launch.  The Russian rockets can't get there and the alternatives are significantly more money, so again, as long as there's a chance for SpaceX to be succesful, the can just sit tight.  I suspect the Malaysians have also paid a significant fraction of their contract cost to SpaceX already.  SpaceDev is vaporware so far and the mysterious gov't customer for the first F9 also likely got a fire sale price to launch a low-value payload.  Jury is still out on COTS.  As others have noted, the first few milestones are paper.  If SpaceX starts completing hardware milestones successfully THEN they'll have demonstrated something significant.

[Chris-A]

SpaceX has updated the Falcon I page and the user’s guide is uploaded.
They now have enhanced version, Falcon 1e flying in 2009.

[jabe]

Good catch!!  I hate when they add things to the bottom of a web page
A question on the stats though..since i think (may be way off base here) that the 1e is "just" an extension to the falcon 1 (as per page 10 of http://www.spacex.com/Falcon%201%20Payload%20Users%20Guide.pdf) why the $1.5 million dollar price difference?  Can't see why 18 feet (wish they'd use metric   ) of extra aluminum would cost so much?  The only difference  I see is the Merlin 1C for the 1e has a ~10% higher thrust!! Burn time is the same for the 1e and 1 so did they just use the same engine and just "crank up" the engine since they seem to have more fuel?
any have any other thoughts on changes??
cheers
jb

[mr.columbus]

jabe - 5/5/2007  4:25 PM

Good catch!!  I hate when they add things to the bottom of a web page
A question on the stats though..since i think (may be way off base here) that the 1e is "just" an extension to the falcon 1 (as per page 10 of http://www.spacex.com/Falcon%201%20Payload%20Users%20Guide.pdf) why the $1.5 million dollar price difference?  Can't see why 18 feet (wish they'd use metric   ) of extra aluminum would cost so much?  The only difference  I see is the Merlin 1C for the 1e has a ~10% higher thrust!! Burn time is the same for the 1e and 1 so did they just use the same engine and just "crank up" the engine since they seem to have more fuel?
any have any other thoughts on changes??
cheers
jb

Their prices don't make much sense. For Falcon 9 they are now quoting 35 millions for 10t to LEO and 35 millions for up to 3.5t to GTO, HOWEVER 55 million for 5t to GTO but launched on the same version of Falcon 9 (20 million difference just for a structural changes to the fairing...?) - on the other hand they have also updated the prices for the Falcon 9 Heavy and now quote 90 million for 28t to LEO, but only 55 million for a 5-5.5t to GTO again on a Falcon 9 Heavy... that does not make much sense to me...except if they would do double launches

[Jim]

jabe - 5/5/2007  4:25 PM

Good catch!!  I hate when they add things to the bottom of a web page
A question on the stats though..since i think (may be way off base here) that the 1e is "just" an extension to the falcon 1 (as per page 10 of http://www.spacex.com/Falcon%201%20Payload%20Users%20Guide.pdf) why the $1.5 million dollar price difference?  Can't see why 18 feet (wish they'd use metric   ) of extra aluminum would cost so much?  The only difference  I see is the Merlin 1C for the 1e has a ~10% higher thrust!! Burn time is the same for the 1e and 1 so did they just use the same engine and just "crank up" the engine since they seem to have more fuel?
any have any other thoughts on changes??
cheers
jb

integration costs.  All the analyses are different

[jabe]

Jim - 5/5/2007  4:05 PM
integration costs.  All the analyses are different

Being someone who knows NOTHING on integration costs I would have thought that integration costs would be the same for both..  so I'll trust you on that one

[edkyle99]

jabe - 5/5/2007  3:25 PM

Good catch!!  I hate when they add things to the bottom of a web page
A question on the stats though..since i think (may be way off base here) that the 1e is "just" an extension to the falcon 1 (as per page 10 of http://www.spacex.com/Falcon%201%20Payload%20Users%20Guide.pdf) why the $1.5 million dollar price difference?  Can't see why 18 feet (wish they'd use metric   ) of extra aluminum would cost so much?  The only difference  I see is the Merlin 1C for the 1e has a ~10% higher thrust!! Burn time is the same for the 1e and 1 so did they just use the same engine and just "crank up" the engine since they seem to have more fuel?
any have any other thoughts on changes??
cheers
jb

Falcon 1e will be powered by Merlin 1C, a regeneratively cooled engine that will cost more than the existing Merlin.  That is probably the main difference.  Well, that and the fact that Falcon 1e will haul about 40% more payload mass, which means that SpaceX will be able to charge higher prices.  The improved performance means that Falcon 1e will have moved out past the Pegasus XL class entirely.  It will now be in the Minotaur category, payload mass-wise.

 - Ed Kyle

[jabe]

edkyle99 - 5/5/2007  8:18 PM
Falcon 1e will be powered by Merlin 1C, a regeneratively cooled engine that will cost more than the existing Merlin.  That is probably the main difference.

The Merlin 1c is used for both Falcon 1 and 1e

edkyle99 - 5/5/2007  8:18 PM
 Well, that and the fact that Falcon 1e will haul about 40% more payload mass, which means that SpaceX will be able to charge higher prices.  The improved performance means that Falcon 1e will have moved out past the Pegasus XL class entirely.  It will now be in the Minotaur category, payload mass-wise.
 - Ed Kyle

I agree there but i thought he wanted to keep the costs down..but nothing wrong with have a margin for profit
I hope they have an update about the rocket launch "success" soon.. I'm itching to be a closet rocket engineer and decide if their analysis is right or not

cheers
jb

[edkyle99]

jabe - 6/5/2007  6:51 AM

edkyle99 - 5/5/2007  8:18 PM
Falcon 1e will be powered by Merlin 1C, a regeneratively cooled engine that will cost more than the existing Merlin.  That is probably the main difference.

The Merlin 1c is used for both Falcon 1 and 1e

Not to date.  The pricing says that "a standard Falcon 1 mission is $7M".  The current "standard" Falcon 1 uses a basic Merlin with an ablative nozzle.   Some "standard" Falcon 1's may end up flying with Merlin 1C engines, but that model will stop flying after 2009, according the the user's guide.  I suspect that all of the $7 million Falcons have already been contracted.

 - Ed Kyle

[braddock]

edkyle99 - 6/5/2007  12:41 PM

jabe - 6/5/2007  6:51 AM
The Merlin 1c is used for both Falcon 1 and 1e

Not to date.  The pricing says that "a standard Falcon 1 mission is $7M".  The current "standard" Falcon 1 uses a basic Merlin with an ablative nozzle.

A Flight Global article last month said Merlin 1C for next Falcon 1 flight this year:
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/04/17/213315/spacex-looks-at-saturn-v-class.html

That is the first and only place I've seen that said so far, but I believe it given that SpaceX is manufacturing and testing so many 1C's for the Falcon 9.

[jabe]

the pdf file mentions 1c for both 1 and 1e version...  I didn't think the C has flown yet and it looks like the maiden flight is the next one..time will tell
I just love the relative transparentness of Spacex.  Others may argue otherwise but i do like how they have kept the general public informed.. great tidbits for my High school physics class...

[stockman]

Thats all great stuff and its good they keep some of the web updated. But WHERES THE BEEF??  its now 4 weeks since last update and even longer since the last launch and still no major update on the flight as promised. I too am itching to see some results.