

SpaceX to fly to International Space Station in November - gibsonf1
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_SPACEX_SPACE_STATION_?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-08-15-18-55-31

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nhoss2
I am really hoping everything goes well in this mission; we are so close to
being able to send astronauts into space through commercial companies. Space X
is doing things cheaper and faster than any government has. These commercial
companies are going to revolutionize spaceflight.

While they are doing all of this they need to develop their heavy lift rocket
as fast as possible with the goal of landing a man on mars within 10 years.
Elon Musk himself said a few days ago that we need to go to mars and it is
possible for them to do this "as early as 2018". The reason for the quick
timeline is because funding and political slaughter for space programs is more
likely to happen as time goes on and as new presidents come in or some new
economic trouble happens.

Following the success of the ISS, going to Mars should be an international
endavour. It needs to be a goal not for one country, but the whole human race
to become a multi-planetary species and go to Mars.

~~~
demallien
You know, SpaceX has made such a huge difference to launch costs, that it is
imaginable that the US could do a solo Mars mission. To give a real-world
example (well, sort of):

Juno was recently launched aboard an Atlas V, which launches for roughly the
same price as the Falcon Heavy will in a year or so's time. Juno gets placed
into an orbit that will take it out beyond Mars' orbit, before returning to
the Earth for a gravity-assist flyby. The flyby is necessary to double the
payload that they could otherwise send to Jupiter.

Falcon Heavy can left 3 times the payload of an Atlas V, so Juno could have
increased in size, and avoided the 2 and a half years it will take to execute
the Earth flyby manoeuvre, all for the same price. Alternatively, a spacecraft
3 times the weight of Juno (which weighed in at 8000 pounds / 3500Kg) could be
sent direct to Mars.

What could you do with all of that? Well, the Mars Direct mission requires
about 140 000kg, to be assembled in orbit. That's about 14 Falcon Heavy
launches, which has a total price tag of about US$1.4 billion. Of course, on
top of that there are in-orbit assembly costs, and the costs of the actual
Mars-bound hardware, - which would roughly double the price tag to US$3
billion. Without Falcon Heavy, that mission cost is doubled to US$ 6 billion.

I wonder what Juno would have looked like if it had three times the payload to
play with...

~~~
maaku
What numbers are you using? Falcon Heavy could launch 140 000kg in 3 launches,
costing 240-375$MM (estimated).

~~~
vela
That's the super-heavy, which they have proposed as a competitor to a shuttle-
derived (super-expensive) super-heavy.

The Falcon Heavy can throw ~ 53 t into a low-Earth orbit, and its list price
is 80–125 M$ (<http://www.spacex.com/falcon_heavy.php>).

~~~
maaku
...which are exactly the numbers I used. 3 x (53,000kg/80-125M$) =
159,000kg/240-375M$.

~~~
vela
Oops, sorry, I read too quickly and thought you meant 140 t to LEO per launch,
and three launches for the full mission. (I also had NASA's DRM 5 in my head,
which requires three deliveries of roughly that size per mission, rather than
Mars Direct which requires two.)

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Maro
If I'd be looking for a job, I'd definitely want to apply to the company
privatizing space flight and technologies. They have tons of openings, too.

<http://www.spacex.com/careers.php>

~~~
relix
Too bad they only hire US citizens due to governmental export regulations.

~~~
hebejebelus
Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware of that. Guess I need to become a US
citizen, then...

On a sidenote, why is that the case? Sure, SpaceX is a US-based company, but
why does that mean that they can't hire non-US citizens with visas etc? What
export regulations are they - and come to think of it, what are they
exporting?

~~~
vela
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR,
<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ITAR>).

Many space technologies are listed as munitions in the US, and revealing
information about those technologies to foreigners counts as export. There are
exceptions, and you can get export licenses (companies routinely do), but
hiring non-Americans would be a pain—American employees wouldn't be able to
share much information with them!

p.s. Under ITAR, all you need is a green card. I don't know if that's good
enough for SpaceX—they might be under other restrictions than ITAR, too.

~~~
ptio
SpaceX can hire Permanent Residents (Green Card) too.

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pieter
Extensive update including many pictures is here:
<http://www.spacex.com/updates.php>

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iwwr
So they'll get around $133mil per delivery trip, comparable to the Soyuz
Progress (which is around $150mil).

More info here <http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php>

~~~
ugh
Those $150m are for bringing up the same payload to the ISS as Dragon can,
right? In 2007 Nasa signed a $719m contract with Roscosmos for 15 seats and
5.6 tons of cargo. 5.6 tons are three Progress flights (2.350kg per mission)
and one Dragon flight (6.000kg per mission). We don’t really know what part of
those $719m is for cargo but $150m seems about right to me. Those $150m would
pay for three and not just one Progress flight.

It’s quite amazing, really. The Dragon spacecraft is much more awesome than
Progress. It can get more than double the payload to the ISS. More
importantly, though, Dragon can bring half of that back to earth. There is no
spacecraft that can currently do that. The Space Shuttle could but not anymore
and Soyuz is pretty much only good for bringing back people and not cargo.

And it’s still comparable in cost or cheaper than Progress (which is a truly
mature and tested spacecraft)? That’s quite astonishing.

~~~
pieter
Next to the fact that NASA would rather give money to a US company, which will
invest part of it to develop cheaper and more capable rockets, than to Russia,
these SpaceX costs are likely to be significantly cheaper than Soyuz.

In 2007, NASA got a deal for $719 million for 5.6 tons and 15 seats. Seats on
Soyuz now cost ~$60 million a piece, or $900 million just for 15 seats. The
price for cargo then probably also increased.

~~~
ugh
And competition also means that the Russians can’t mark up their flights quite
as much. Currently they are the only ones doing it, Nasa depends on them.
That’s obviously not a nice situation to be in.

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alanh
Interesting that I never seem to hear anyone complain about privatizing
spaceflight. (Caveat: Our rockets, etc., were always built by
defense/aerospace contractors, AFAIK.) Halliburton, Blackwater, etc., are bad
privatizations, but SpaceX is good.

That said, SpaceX is doing exciting things more affordably than we did them
before, so it’s hardly puzzling.

~~~
Vivtek
Mercenaries have been associated with some bad things in the past - including
the past of the United States - and so they are generally not seen as a good
thing.

Private transportation systems are not really equivalent.

Moreover, privatization in and of itself is very often an excuse to throw
money to cronies - certainly the case with Blackwater in particular; a
mercenary costs hundreds of thousands a year to replace $30K or so in support
costs for a regular military person. Just calling something "privatization" is
usually enough for knee-jerk libertarians to assume it's saving you money -
when it's just another item in the ol' kleptocracy toolkit.

Privatization as a concept also takes a hit from the bone-stupid idea of
privatizing Social Security - which is just another way of passing risk on to
the little guy while making sure our friends in the financial industry get to
buy bigger yachts.

Privatization in the space industry really _does_ save money - but much, much
more importantly, it's the logical next step in making sure space technology
gets viable. Long past time to get the free market involved there.

~~~
jff
I'm interested to hear where you get $30K in support costs for a regular
service member. Very rough calculations indicate at least $100,000 per person
based _solely_ on the "military personnel" (payroll, perhaps food etc.?), of
$154 billion. That's not even touching the $283 billion in operations and
maintenance.

~~~
Vivtek
I'm just going on take-home pay, tacitly assuming that the infrastructure
required to support a person is roughly equivalent. And honestly, Blackwater's
infrastructure also probably cost more, but I was just looking at salary.
Mercenaries are expensive.

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dfischer
This is so awesome. Things are moving forward!

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jeffool
I know this isn't exactly relevant, but I don't get to say this enough:
someone needs to get cracking on this whole "tertaforming Mars and Venus"
thing. Maybe that's where some of NASA's focus can be in the future as private
enterprise picks up space travel.

~~~
mkr-hn
We already know how to build colonies, even if we haven't done it on another
planet. Turning a subway or megamall design into a Martian colony is an
engineering problem. Terraforming is a fundamental science problem. We're
still a long way from cracking it.

~~~
lambda
It's more than just an engineering problem. It's also an economics problem.
What is going to pay for that settlement? Are there enough mineral resources
on Mars to justify the cost? Or will it be paid at taxpayer expense, for no
significant benefit over unmanned missions or brief manned missions to Mars?

So yes, it is easier to build a settlement than to terraform, but I don't
think you could justify the cost to build a self-sufficient settlement. Heck,
if we start running out of land to settle on on Earth, there's always the sea
to settle, which requires many of the same engineering considerations to
settle but at much lower cost to get us there and do trade with the rest of
the planet. I suspect we'll be seeing either underwater or raft-based
settlements long before we see settlements on Mars.

~~~
InclinedPlane
A lot of people would like to live on Mars, given the chance. Meanwhile,
people are growing richer and technology is advancing. It's fairly likely that
at some point there will be a point where people can pay their own way to
creating a Martian colony.

~~~
jsnell
A lot of people might like the idea of living on Mars when there is absolutely
no risk of that actually happening. But really there is not much point in
living on Mars for extended periods of time, there's very little that humans
could do that machines couldn't do as well and a lot cheaper. Combine that
pointlessness with what would in practice be an an isolated, risky and
uncomfortable life, and I suspect that the pool shrinks down dramatically.

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bane
Mars is a great goal. But to finance a serious colonization effort would
require us to really start an Asteroid mining operation...

 _bonus_ you get tons of raw spaceship materials already up and out of our
gravity well

~~~
jeffool
If/when asteroid mining becomes profitable, that's when the private industry
takes off, and the entire thing takes care of itself.

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pbreit
Great recent "Bloomberg Risk Taker" profile on Elon:
<http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184/>

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clistctrl
I wonder how far away Blue Origin is in terms of making the same progress
SpaceX seems to be making. Oh man, its like a good o' fashion space race!

~~~
InclinedPlane
There are plenty of scrappy competitors out there, but they're generally a bit
farther behind than SpaceX. SpaceX chose to use the most straightforward
rocket design conceivable and develop it as cost effectively as possible. So
far that strategy is working very well. Other companies have chosen to pursue
other designs, generally more reusable in nature. They also don't have the
cash that SpaceX does, slowing their progress a bit. In a few years we may
start to see their work come to light.

