I’m not sure what in there you think contradicts what I wrote. If the total cost was $396M+$850M=$1246M, then Dragon was $1246M-$390M=$856M. Of which SpaceX contributed $850M-$390M=$460M solely for Dragon.
If you’re trying to make some kind of argument about how the F9 isn’t really a privately funded rocket because whatever… I don’t care. I didn’t say anything about that originally and it frankly doesn’t matter. The cost differences comes from how SpaceX is run and how the incentive system works. Cost plus is the traditional approach and makes for expensive programs for obvious reasons. Fixed price contracts don’t have the same problem and incentivizes companies to reduce internal costs.
I’m not saying that F9 isn’t a very good piece of technology. I’m just tired of Elon Musk having Trump-level nonsense about his business go unchallenged. That F1 and F9 were purely privately financed investments at a rediculous price shouldn’t be believed.
When the commentators were talking about, “we’ll see the boosters coming back to earth any minute now,” I was expecting to see the things floating down by parachute. Then I watched them land just like Buck Fucking Rogers.
Was talking to some people back in North Carolina a few months ago telling them I lived in CB much of the year and mentioned watching rocket launches but even better, watching the rockets return and land back to earth right near where they took off and landing on their tail like a 1950’s Scifi movie. Most were shocked that that was being done.
I’m assuming people here commenting on the coolness of the rocket returning had not seen nor even been aware they had been doing this for about a year and a half. Today’s was, of course way better because it had 2. And the choreography.
Re Musk being nerdy, cool… the barge/drone landing ship the rockets return to is named… “Of Course I Still Love you.” Also, the volume control on Tesla sound systems… tops out at… 11.
I guess the main difference here (performance wise) vs. the Saturn V is that it’s not quite as powerful and it can be reused which saves a lot of money. I know the technology is more modern too.
NASA was so focused on beating Soviets to the moon I’m sure they never thought about reusing stuff, that would have been a distraction to their goal .
If I pay the local kid to mow my lawn for a few years and he is charging less than the going market rate…well, I don’t feel like I payed for him to go to college if that is what he did with his EARNED money.
The fact that Space X provided a service at a good rate AND managed to provide the service AND do R and D at the same time…that is IMO not subsidized or government funded R and D. That a company that is on the ball business and technology wise.
I like how Musk referred to other launch service providers as a being like a rug bazzar…they don’t have fixed prices…they charge you what they think they can get away with…while SpaceX believes in everyday low prices.
They even have their launch costs on their website. One wonders if you can order a launch and use Paypal to pay for it.
Since the boosters performed some burns to steer themselves to the landing site and were turned off and then on again, I assume they are not fueled by solids as the shuttle boosters were. My question- how much effort is there between flights for the boosters? It seems to me that there are many thousands of parts on these things, many of which were subjected to extreme loads and/or vibrations and/or intense heat. I just wonder what percent of the cost of building a new booster is saved by retooling after every flight.
What if the boy didn’t have a lawnmower, and he used your contract to finance the purchase of a lawnmower so that he could mow your lawn?
Now, you didn’t buy him the lawnmower. I’m not saying that you did. But he couldn’t have bought the lawnmower without you taking a risk on him, so it isn’t like you were just like any subsequent customer, either.
Are you now trying to prove my point? Some contractors go out and build a house and then try to sell it. Other contractors want you to sign on the dotted line before building the house. Other contractors are somewhere in the middle.
SpaceX is sort of like the Bluth Company (minus the light treason), in which they need customers to sign up for a lot of houses before they start construction, and then hope that people think that the Bluth Company was so financially strong that they built a whole housing development without help from anyone. (Except in this case, the Bluth Company HAD a model home before trying to attract customers, but SpaceX did not have a demo before getting people to buy in.)
the rocket has 27 liquid fuel engines , 9 per module. The space shuttle 3 main engines were reused after every flight so it’s not a new concept to reuse rocket engines.
also the 2 shuttle solid fuel boosters were reused , they came back via parachute and landed in the ocean.
Do you consider any of those subsidizing the company or its R and D efforts with a capital S?
People can haggle about SpaceX and the funding details…but the general story is SpaceX is doing a gangbuster job of doing amazing things on a shoestring budget, better timelines, and sooner or later delivering…which is more than can be said for more than a bunch of NASA/everybody elses projects.
The Government took a fair (but not excessive) amount of risk to be with SpaceX on the ground floor, when SpaceX wasn’t prepared to launch anything more than an Estes model rocket. Yet in the mythology, Elon did it all himself one morning just before creating light and a flamethrower. Even Elon and Gwynne have both at various times said very nice things about NASA being crucial to getting them to where they are today. (Note they don’t say the same about the Air Force! :))
If you set aside SLS, which is not an EELV class vehicle, this idea that SpaceX delivers better timelines (while noting your caveat of “sooner or later delivering”) is really more fiction about SpaceX. They are consistently late, never early. Ever.
But considering that they have missions at roughly half the cost of an Atlas, they still have an excellent value proposition.
Almost no retooling required. Musk has said he plans to eventually turn these boosters around in hours. He’s already test-fired one of the cored on the ground successfully with no refurbishment whatsoever. Just refueled it agan and lit it off for a full simulated burn without any problems.
BFR is intended to fly like a commercial plane - fly to orbit, return, refuel, and go again. Repeatedly. Without any more inspection/repair than a 747 would get after an ocean crossing.
The Shuttle conditioned us to think that reusability meant months of refurbishment and millions of dollars. That was a fault of its design, and not an intrinsic feature of space travel. Musk has shown that his engines can withstand the rigors of a launch without damage. We still don’t know what their lifespan truly is, because none of them have been used long enough for us to gather really good statistics.
But so far, the reliability of those engines is outstanding. 18 of the engines on Falcon heavy had already been used in previous launch/return flights, and all 18 functioned flawlessly along with the 9 new ones on the center core. And Musk has said that preliminary inspections indicate those two landed cores could be flown again immediately.
Musk is so confident of the fast turnaround and high reliability of the concept that SpaceX is freezing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy designs at block 5 and they are turning their major design effort towards BFR, which will eventually replace their entire rocket lineup. That cannot work unless BFR is fully reusable and can be turned around within hours or at most a few days. SpaceX’s internal data must show that to be feasible.
Because alongside developing Falcon 1 snd 9, they were also building Dragon, grasshopper, test facilities, launch facilities, drone ships, head offices, branch offices, new rocket engines for Dragon (the SuperDraco engines), doing initial design on future rockets, etc. Plus they have to pay for all the non-R&D costs out of their own pocket - you still need salespeople, accountants, lawyers, front office managers, yada yada. Like every other company, R&D are not the whole budget.
Shuttle ahead of schedule? Hubble? SLS? Orion? James Webb? Those hydrogen slush tanks? (that billions were spend on with nothing to show for it) China Clipper? and on and on?
Better timelines doesn’t necessarily mean within the predicted timeline. But way cheaper is certainly better than expensive…late as all get out…and often not even working.
It took almost as long for NASA to fix the shuttles one flaw (twice) than it did for SpaceX to engineer stuff from the beginning.
How come the space shuttle’s design resulted in months of refurbishment? What is SpaceX doing differently?
I understand that “What did NASA do wrong with the space shuttle?” is a broad question so if others want to join in on comparing the SpaceX to the NASA way of doing things, that might be interesting. Or perhaps that would be intruding too much on this thread.
What was the rationale for the evolution from the Falcon 1, 9 Heavy and the BFR? Going straight for the BFR wasn’t possible?
If they charge much less than alternatives, aren’t they leaving money on the table which they could use for their aims? Even if they wanted to charge comparatively little to those who have less ability to pay, they could segment their market.
It’s difficult to be innovative or competent when you live in fear. Also, NASA programs, like US defense programs, seem to mix the worst aspects of the private sector with the worst aspects of the public sector.
What are the other PR-boosting things they could do short of putting a man on Mars?
I wonder in what ways it’s inspiring people, not just in terms of talking about it but in terms of career choice and skill learning.
I have often thought that folks like NASA (or contractors doing cutting edge stuff) should be able have about 10 percent of any given test/project fail on a regular basis.
If you ain’t failing every now and then…you ain’t cutting edge.