

SpaceX Awarded Two EELV-Class Missions from the United States Air Force - cbarnsdale
http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20121205

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erikpukinskis
This is a big win for SpaceX, as USAF was considering signing a deal keeping
ULA as their exclusive launch partner through 2018. Musk lobbied against it,
and won.

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arjunnarayan
This is insanity. The SpaceX launch manifest is just crazy:
<http://www.spacex.com/launch_manifest.php>

How on Earth are they going to go from a single launch in 2012 for the Falcon
9 to SEVEN launches in 2013, 10 in 2014 and 14 in 2015? And on the side they
have their first Falcon Heavy launch in 2015. Now add more launches into the
mix with this new contract...

Elon Musk is really living right on the edge in terms of potential production
problems. He already has a track record of delaying, delivering late and
overpromising with Tesla. I simply don't see why he doesn't take it just a
little more slowly, and actually delivering on his promises.

On the other hand, if he pulls it off, then the utility maximizing strategy
for humanity just might be to make money and give all my capital to Elon Musk
to put it to more productive use...

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tsotha
>How on Earth are they going to go from a single launch in 2012 for the Falcon
9 to SEVEN launches in 2013, 10 in 2014 and 14 in 2015?

Mass production. That was the point of building nine small, identical rocket
engines instead of, say, three larger ones. Ideally SpaceX is going to have an
assembly line producing over a hundred copies of the same engine every year.

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anovikov
Not quite EEVL-Class missions in a sense that they don't launch Class 1
payloads - like DSP, AEHF, SBIRS, GPS, spysats... These are in the same class
as Minotaur launches, mostly tacsats/targets/experimental/high-risk payloads.
They are not trusting SpaceX with $2 billion payloads... yet.

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photorized
Congrats, this is another milestone.

