

SpaceX ISS Dragon resupply mission is today - iwwr
http://new.livestream.com/accounts/142499/events/1579124/videos/4530165

======
mkramlich
What excites me the most about SpaceX and Elon Musk is not so much the
superficial/ostensible meaning of what they're doing (private contracts to
deliver payloads to space) but the following. The fact that a foundation is
being laid for a situation where basically a single guy, a private citizen,
namely Musk with his personality and talents and passion, can one day slam his
fist down and say, "That's it. Fuck it. We're going to Mars." and then make it
happen. Putting humans on the surface of Mars. Or an asteroid, whatever. As
completely private missions, if desired. Without getting bogged down by a
flaky showboating Congress, by NASA budgets, by legacy bureaucracy, etc.
Because they're building (incrementally) a complete in-house stack for taking
people off-planet and (eventually) to other ones, and back. Yes you have to
make the money work. That's doable. But more importantly it reduces their
exposure to bureacracy, government and BDC inertia. And it's not a baby-vs-
bathwater situation. They can hire away the brains from NASA and other space
companies, where needed, where possible, so it's not like they're losing out
on all that accumulated experience and best practice. But they do get to start
from scratch and make it much easier to greenlight new "risky" projects and
Get Things Done.

Planetary Resources excites me for similar reasons. Though I don't think they
have quite the same degree of talent at the top in a single guy as with the
case of SpaceX. But still, very promising team, vision and approach.

~~~
codex
Given that a publically funded manned Mars mission would be at least $10B, a
private mission would be difficult even if the cost were reduced 10x. And
SpaceX can't even reduce orbital launch costs by 10x over today's gold
standard; according to Wikpedia, the Russians have the currently cheapest
operational LEO system on a per kilogram basis. Meanwhile, SpaceX's costs are
2x over original estimates. While the Space Shuttle was such a boondoggle that
almost anyone could reduce costs as compared to it, contemporary Russian
programs are not nearly as poorly designed and executed.

~~~
varjag
Russian programs are not contemporary: they are early 1970s projects with some
21st century trim jobs. They R&D costs and production lines were amortized
before Reagan came to power.

~~~
mikeash
That doesn't make it any less contemporary or cheap. They are operating today,
and they cost less. If your goal is to get mass to orbit for the least amount
of cash, that's all that matters.

~~~
stcredzero
There's also the march of technology to consider. 1970's technology isn't
going to be cost competitive forever, even with amortized R&D costs. When
SpaceX gets to the point of delivering complete reusability, there's going to
be a shakeup.

------
VexXtreme
To me, this is nothing short of amazing. This is the first time we are seeing
commercial entities working closely with national/international government run
space programs. This is a new era for space exploration because this is the
first time private money will start rolling into space exploration programs.

The problem with government funded programs is they are underfunded, limited
in scope and often have no competition that would push them forward. One of
the reasons why Apollo programs were so successful is because Americans and
Russians were trying to out do each others and that created a healthy
environment for amazing new tech to emerge. The problem today is that no
country really cares about space exploration anymore... at least not to the
extent they used to.

When you allow free market forces and commercial competition to do their
thing, you end up with all sorts of great things that otherwise never would've
been. Can all of you imagine where we would be right now if everything
computer related was ever researched and invented solely by governmental
research programs? Probably somewhere in the 80s/90s, tech wise. If it weren't
for Apple and Google trying to make as much money as possible in the phone
market, we'd still likely be stuck with black and white phones with mechanical
keypads. Same thing is about to happen with space programs. It's the
capitalism, competition and free markets that allow for great inventions to
emerge. Human greed CAN be a good thing.

~~~
codex
The Space Shuttle was designed and built by a private contractor (North
American Rockwell) after a competitive selection process among many private
parties; even in the SpaceX case, the funding is provided by the government to
private parties through the age-old bidding process. So I'm not sure what's so
revolutionary here, especially given an almost zero potential for space
profits absent government support. Mining the asteroids might be an
opportunity the private sector could exploit in a few decades.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The difference is extreme. In the Space Shuttle case NASA signed off on every
little detail of the design and manufacture of the vehicle and told Rockwell
to go build it, deliver it to them, and then they undertook operations with
the vehicle. This is very comparable to, say, the US military procuring and
operating a fighter jet such as the F-22.

Now let's look at SpaceX's Falcon/Dragon. SpaceX financed, designed, and
proved the Falcon-9 launch vehicle on its own. To its own specs. To its own
design. And to its own internal budget. Similarly, SpaceX began designing the
Dragon pressurized spacecraft on its own. NASA came along and offered up the
potential for a contract for resupply of the ISS, they did not specify the
design or method of construction of the launch vehicle and spacecraft to
achieve this goal, nor did they fund the complete development costs of such a
system. Instead, SpaceX stepped up and said "hey, we have something that we
think could fit your needs" (as did Orbital Sciences Corp.) and then NASA
provided some moderate funding to help with specialized development costs for
ISS resupply and then extended the opportunity for ISS resupply contracts
after a successful demonstration. This is comparable to buying a plane ticket.

SpaceX's NASA contracts are quite lucrative for them (because they can provide
a service at a lower price than the competition but it is a very highly priced
service) but even without them they are poised to reap massive profits from
bog-standard commercial launch services. They have a contract with Orbcomm to
launch 18 satellites, and contracts with MDA Corp., SES, Thaicom, NSPO,
Asiasat, SS/Loral, Argentina, Israel, and others to launch commercial
satellites over the coming years. Because SpaceX is able to set the retail
price of its launches at the current market floor (somewhere around the per kg
price of the Long March, Soyuz, or Proton) despite their underlying costs
being much lower they are able to pocket a healthy profit per launch, which
should fatten their wallets mightily even over the next few years let alone
the next decade or so.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Because SpaceX is able to set the retail price of its launches at the
current market floor (somewhere around the per kg price of the Long March,
Soyuz, or Proton) despite their underlying costs being much lower they are
able to pocket a healthy profit per launch, which should fatten their wallets
mightily even over the next few years let alone the next decade or so._

Then once they pay off investors this way, we'll start seeing even more cost
reduction.

~~~
tsotha
Even before then. The launch business is lucrative enough the Russians and the
Chinese and the Europeans aren't going to sit on their collective thumbs and
let SpaceX undercut them for very long.

There's nothing revolutionary about the Falcon series in the sense that there
are special gizmos hidden from potential competitors. If necessary the other
players on the market will simply copy them.

~~~
InclinedPlane
_"There's nothing revolutionary about the Falcon series in the sense that
there are special gizmos hidden from potential competitors."_

This is a common misunderstanding of launch vehicle design. There has long
been the idea that "spaceflight is hard", that launch vehicles are inherently
expensive, that the only way to progress is through revolutionary, bleeding-
edge designs (aerospike engines, SSTO, composite fuel tanks, SCRAMJETs, what-
have-you) or "special gizmos" that provide some sort of edge. This turns out
to be exactly opposite from reality. The important thing is to have a clean,
elegant, robust design which is streamlined for manufacturing. And that's what
SpaceX has done. At its heart the Falcon 9 is basically a 6 decade old rocket
design. Two stages, LOX/Kerosene. In some ways the Saturn-IB (first launched
in 1966) was more advanced because it used a LOX/LH2 2nd stage. But SpaceX has
concentrated on streamlining production and on making the rocket very robust
(through greater damage tolerance in the engines, the ability to do on-pad
aborts, etc.)

And it's this concentration on manufacturing and on robustness that has led to
SpaceX's low costs. This isn't something that you can simply bolt-on to an
existing rocket design (such as Soyuz, Proton, Long March, etc.) It's a
property of the organization, and of the entire rocket design as a whole. And
it's also not something that is easy to copy because as much as anything it's
about corporate culture and institutional policies and talent.

I'd like to see more companies follow in SpaceX's footsteps but this is
something that I think it's unlikely the established rocket makers will be
able to do (because it would mean fundamentally reinventing themselves from
the bottom up), but I do think it's possible that new companies will come on
the scene that are able to match that level of pragmatism and efficiency.

~~~
tsotha
Established rocket makers can do this. They've never had the incentive before,
at least in the US, because the more you cut costs in a cost plus contract the
less money you make. But they certainly have the engineering chops, and they
can spin off a subsidiary if the organizational pressures are too unwieldy.

The problem is they're in the same position AOL was in when people started to
get high speed internet. There's no way they can make a cheaper rocket without
gutting their own high-margin government business, so they'll pretend as long
as they can.

------
tsotha
If by "today" you mean "tomorrow".

I really hope this goes well. The Falcon 9 is still a pretty new rocket, and
the Dragon is still a pretty new capsule. Give me five more good launches and
I'll be able to watch without holding my breath.

~~~
softbuilder
> Give me five more good launches and I'll be able to watch without holding my
> breath.

Until they put people in them. And then the breath-holding starts all over.

------
chaud
Launch of this first commercial resupply mission (SpaceX CRS-1) to the complex
is set for 8:35PM EDT Sunday, October 7 from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

------
ChuckMcM
Hmm, the site says we're still 23 hrs from launch so perhaps they meant
"tomorrow" in the headline. Aka "Sunday"

------
chucknelson
FYI - A bit strange, but the actual pre-launch news conference doesn't start
until 37:15 into the video on the page this story links to.

------
reichert
Sometimes I wonder if the reason Musk has worked so hard/had so much success
with spacex is just because he wants to return to his home planet.

~~~
jonsen
What an alien comment.

