
NASA Chooses Musk’s SpaceX to Negotiate Launch Pad Lease - brianmartinek
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-13/nasa-chooses-musk-s-spacex-to-negotiate-launch-pad-lease.html
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danielvf
From what my friends on the edge of the space industry tell me, the Blue
Origin and ULA bids and protests on this pad are nothing more than a series of
attempts to throw up roadblocks for SpaceX.

For background, the pad in question is one of two Apollo/Shuttle pads. These
two pads were designed for bigger rockets than any currently flying in the
world. NASA is keeping the other pad not up for bid for it's far future SLS
system.

ULA is Lockheed/Boeing. ULA currently does all US military launches (outside
of the small stuff Orbital Sciences puts up). Neither ULA nor Blue Origin have
current or publicly known future vehicles that would need this huge pad.

The theory is that by going to congress to force NASA to make this a shared
pad, SpaceX's competitors hope to make the pad all but unusable by SpaceX. If
the pad must be shared, all improvements must be run by all of the other's
that are "sharing" the pad. Launch times and schedules must also be run by
competitors. In addition, everything installed by SpaceX would need to be
potentially uninstalled, if a competitor requested the pad for some reason.

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mmanfrin
It's odd they'd caption their picture of Musk calling him 'Chairman of Tesla'
\-- when he is (more importantly) a founder, but even more importantly the
owner of SpaceX, the company at topic,

~~~
matsur
Calling Musk a founder of Tesla is stretching the word a bit... "Tesla Motors
was incorporated in July, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who
financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Elon Musk led the
Series A round of investment in February, 2004, joining Tesla's Board of
Directors as its Chairman."[0]

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#History_and_financ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#History_and_financing)

~~~
neurotech1
I thought Elon Musk was working on a electric car project as "founder" and the
initial team of Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning were separate. The two
teams combined to form the Tesla we all know.

~~~
mikeyouse
That's mostly correct, in fact there was a lawsuit to determine who could call
themselves Tesla's "Founders" and the outcome was that Eberhard, Musk,
Tarpenning, JB Straubel, and Ian Wright all agreed to be Co-Founders. [1]

TeslaRumors has a much more descriptive version of events that summarizes how
it all came about:

 _So in 2003, JB Straub phoned Musk and invited him to meet so that they could
discuss space and electric car related interests._

[...]

 _During their lunch meeting, Straubel mentioned a company called AC
propulsion that had developed a prototype electric sports car using a
gasoline-powered kit car._

[...]

 _When Musk visited AC Propulsion, he not only was demo’d the car, he also got
to drive it. He was impressed. He tried to for months to convince AC
Propulsion to commercialize the electric vehicle and even asked them to make
one for him, but they had no interest in doing so. Instead, Tom Gage, the
president of AC Propulsion introduced Musk and Straubel to another team that
shared the same interest so that they together they could increase their
potential for success in commercializing an electric vehicle. The other team
included Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning and Ian Wright._

[...]

 _Fortunately, one day Wright 's neighbor, Martin Eberhard, started to chat
about having just incorporated a electric car manufacturing company. Wright
thought the idea was far-fetched but did the neighborly thing and offered to
take a look at Eberhard’s business plan._

[...]

 _They joined forces that year and formed Tesla Motors Inc. Straubel became
CTO, Eberhard became CEO, Marc Tarpenning became CFO, and Elon Musk became the
Chairman and the Head of Product Design. Ian Wright became Tesla Motors’ first
employee as VP of Vehicle Development. Musk provided the majority of funds for
the startup with $7.5 million of his own personal cash in the first round of
capital investment as well as contributing to subsequent rounds._ [2]

1 -
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10357665-54.html](http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10357665-54.html)

2 -
[http://teslarumors.com/HowTeslaBegan](http://teslarumors.com/HowTeslaBegan)

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hkbarton
Will SpaceX use this launch pad send people to space?

~~~
Crito
The pad is much more than they need for the Falcon 9, which is what they plan
on crew rating in the near future. From what I understand, the pad is overkill
even for the Falcon Heavy. Using it for the Falcon Heavy could still be
possible though, and that could potentially include manned launches. I suspect
SpaceX is _really_ interested in the pad for the planned MCT.

~~~
pjscott
In case anyone else was wondering, MCT is short for

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Colonial_Transporter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Colonial_Transporter)

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angersock
I've got a friend who works over at Blue Origin...damned fine bunch of
engineers, and I'm hoping that when they finally decide to make news it'll be
something fantastic.

Bezos is serious business.

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31reasons
Bit off topic but the photo in the article looks like a moment from the Iron
Man movie :)

~~~
pbreit
The photo is not from the movie but Spacex's facilities were used to shoot
scenes from Ison Man 2 and Elon has a small cameo. And it's been reported that
Tony Stark is loosely based on Elon.

~~~
steelaz
According to wikipedia, Tony Stark made his first appearance in comic books in
1963, 8 years before Elon Musk was born.

~~~
mkingston
"And it's been reported that [the movie version of] Tony Stark is loosely
based on Elon."

You could maybe search both sides of the statement:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Awards_and_recognitio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#Awards_and_recognition)

~~~
pbreit
Right, yes, the movie version "was inspired by".

[http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/23/business/la-fi-mo-
el...](http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/23/business/la-fi-mo-elon-musk-
tony-stark-20120523)

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ateevchopra
This is really great. There are so many fields where companies can
revolutionise the world but who would have thought about making a space
company that would one day stand along NASA ... Possibilities are endless.

~~~
wavefunction
Privatized space transit and logistics have been the strategies pursued for at
least a decade by the US Congress and NASA, so I'm not surprised by this.

The idea is that NASA will focus on hard and expensive "future" space science
now that trans-atmospheric transit is commoditized.

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winslow
Why can't both companies use it as a launch pad? Something to do with
equipment/setup for a particular vehicle being unique?

~~~
ghshephard
They absolutely can, and Space X has already said they are willing to make it
available to other commercial users. This is just who gets the rights to
negotiate the lease rights to it. Presumably Space X will sublease/contract
launchpad rights to other companies from there.

