Comments on: Orbital, SpaceX win NASA contract

By: Falcon 9, standing tall | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Falcon 9, standing tall | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:00:07 +0000

[...] this. That fairing is 5.2 meters across and nearly 14 long. It’ll hold a nice size payload. Space X is one of two companies to which NASA gave a substantial chunk of cash, to carry the space agency through the post-Shuttle [...]

By: orbiter

orbiter — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:16:16 +0000

“# ioresult Says:

Do you realize that it means SpaceX gets to ship stuff into space at the price of 80 000$ per kilogram? That’s expensive!”

Orbital can lift less and costs more per kg at over $103,000 per kilogram.
Price per kg for launches are misleading for small payloads (2300 kg to ISS), it’s more prudent to consider per launch costs, it’s only helpful to compare price per kg for large payloads. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can lift more, is cheaper per launch, cheaper per kg and is debuting a full year sooner.

By: Rivers Cuomo… YES, MAN! « steve cross loves music and science

Rivers Cuomo… YES, MAN! « steve cross loves music and science — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:19:45 +0000

[...] Just a tidbit of space news for you: NASA awarded contracts to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp. through 2016 to fill the need to carry cargo to the Internation Space Station. This is the kind of thing NASA needs to keep doing- the future of space exploration lies in the combined efforts of goverment and the private sector. Link via Bad Astronomy. [...]

By: byron

byron — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:08:55 +0000

e=mc hammer

Interesting tidbit of info.

By: e=mc hammer

e=mc hammer — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 15:25:58 +0000

“It currently costs about $1 billion per shuttle mission. Rockets are very, very expensive.”

That’s using one form of accounting, the one that includes all the costs associated with the program and spreads them out on a per-mission basis.

The consumables for each Shuttle mission are about $61 Million.

By: DenverAstro

DenverAstro — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 06:14:07 +0000

As someone who has worked in the aerospace industry for te last 26 years, first for Hughes Aircraft and now Raytheon, I know that when one accepts a government space hardware contract, one has to accept all the regulations and requirements that go with those contracts. This is one of the reasons large corporations like mine have to charge SO much for these high tech products. It really is no joke. The government buries you with required paperwork and records such that for every engineer and scientist actually producing programming or hardware it requires 15 administrative people to keep them in business. And the education requirements of these companies ensure that only the best salaries have to be offered because if you dont, these graduates you need will jump over to Microsoft or some such company in a heartbeat.
These new companies are going to be no different. Eventually they are going to get bogged down too. If you don’t believe me, read a book called Skunk Works by Ben Rich and take special note of the section where because of various government regulations and security requirements, the Skunk Works went from a lean and mean little shop where high tech aircraft were built on a shoestring, creating some of the most advanced aircraft technology ever seen, to a bloated mega-division with thousands of employees constantly running over budget. The same thing has happened to all of us.
And there is something else to remember here. When our space program was getting started, we sent up a ton of practice missions from Mercury, to Gemini, to Apollo to learn all the various techniques needed to get to the moon. One of those critical techniques was docking of multiple spacecraft. Now I dont know from this post if SpaceX or Orbiltal are expected to simply supply the launch vehicles to NASA where the actual launch and other mission elements will be carried out by other more experienced personnel or are these companies being expected to do all this themselves. If it is the latter, where are they going to acquire the expertise to perform docking with the space station? This is a real question because I dont know the stipulations of their contracts. What exactly are they going to be expected to perform? Does anyone know this at this point?
In the end, I think it is really cool that our government is spreading the wealth around a bit more and I am Very happy that it looks as though we may not be totally dependent on the Russians to launch our payloads for us in the next few years. I just hope these new companies can really deliver. If they can, I would be prepared to celebrate with the best of you. However, I have a bit of inside knowledge of how bloddy difficult this kind of stuff can be and how many million things can go wrong. I will have my fingers crossed for them both.
By the way, Happy Holidays and a safe New Year to the whole BA gang!

By: reevesAstronomy

reevesAstronomy — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 05:22:46 +0000

“# ioresult Says:

Do you realize that it means SpaceX gets to ship stuff into space at the price of 80 000$ per kilogram? That’s expensive!”

It currently costs about $1 billion per shuttle mission. Rockets are very, very expensive.