“Ever heard about phrase “standing on shoulders of giants”?”

Yep, sloganeering is still sloganeering, same as when I was in school. There’s a difference between standing on a giant, and rifling through his pockets on the way up, and harvesting a vital organ or two on the way up. But you don’t know that difference, because by your own admission you are not privy to the events under discussion.
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““Except I started from literal scratch”
No, you don’t. I can say without checking that you are lying.”

Then you spoke too soon. We used no proprietary or classified data or other held properties, nor did we breach any non-disclosure agreements or non-compete clauses. This is because there was no budget for lawyers, and everyone knew it, and everyone could figure out what the resulting rules were.
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“… because you seem to think no one before you used or invented fuel, chambers, turbopumps or injectors. Did you invented rocket equation too? No? You filthy thief.”

Wow, I can’t believe you decided to post this in public. You don’t even know just how much you don’t know. Tsiolkovskiy was an academic, literally and figuratively. Whether or not he could legally obtain property rights to ideas and expect future compensation, even out to the time in question, he didn’t… he published openly (as much as was physically possible for him), in the tradition of the gentleman scientists who came before him. And after him- the same holds for Goddard, who received both university and government funding, and thus could not claim ownership and demand additional and future compensations. Most of the Germans, incredibly, fell into this category to at least some degree. And US research includes both proprietary/classified and academic, open works- even to the extent that published, open data likely helped the Soviets at the peak of the Cold War.

This is not true for SpaceX. When sued, the company initially tried to countersue, as well as assembling a lobbying effort. When that failed to intimidate, SpaceX settled, paying millions of dollars.

Let that sink in, MaDeR. SpaceX got caught, and called out for it; they had to pay millions. You want details? Oh, wait, you can’t- one of the terms they successfully negotiated was no admission of guilt, and no disclosure of the details of the settlement. Neither of these alone is conclusive, but when combined with the payout, the overall terms are a tacit admission of guilt in my book. Particularly after you’ve heard Elon Musk lie about competing rockets… to a technical audience that knew better.

Follow the money, MaDeR. SpaceX, again, got caught, and was forced to pay. I didn’t have to follow the money, because unlike you I was aware of the circumstances and events. In fact, it’s almost as if you’ve never published at all, and have never generated and defended any intellectual properties.
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“I find hilarious that after denying it, you instantly reconfirm his accusation of SpaceX hate in next sentences.”

If standing up to shady business practices is what you call hate, then I’m happy to disappoint you. It puts me in league with Tsiolkovskiy, who also demanded recognition (but not money) in the face of his intellectual competitors.
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“You forgot five exclamations and unreadable font.”

So, that’s the way you’ve decided to go. Shall I now point out all the grammar/spelling errors in just your one post?

“And the presumption continues! ”
I find hilarious that after denying it, you instantly reconfirm his accusation of SpaceX hate in next sentences.

“Except I started from literal scratch”
No, you don’t. I can say without checking that you are lying.

“chambers, turbopumps and injectors,”
And this is “literal scrath”… because you seem to think no one before you used or invented fuel, chambers, turbopumps or injectors. Did you invented rocket equation too? No? You filthy thief.

“_THEFT_OF_INTELLECTUAL_PROPERTY_”
You forgot five exclamations and unreadable font. Sources, please. I heard about few lawsuits involving SpaceX, but no one was about “theft of intellectual property”.

“These studies were based on different assumptions. They were based on the huge standing army of the very, very maintenance intensive shuttle. A simpler, less demanding design like the one by SpaceX will require less maintenance and therefore cost less and will not need that high a flightrate. Also, who says that the flightrate wont increase with prices going down? From all we know, it will.”

No, these studies were based on production volumes and their scaling laws, and not Shuttle-specific, either. Introducing reusability before hitting your economies of scale is shooting yourself in the foot. A little part of me wonders if Falcon reusability is the ghost of Mike Griffin haunting us- it’s a way to differentiate yourself from those “traditional” rockets based on missiles.

As for voodoo flight rates, the Shuttle tried that. Experience has been that major increases in the customer base may occur in the long term. In the short term, the benefit is pressure on competitors, but that does NOT translate to significantly more launches. Product cycles and management inertia (e.g., financing and expansion costs, eggs-in-one-basket aversion among managers, insurers, and shareholders) simply don’t respond elastically.

In addition, many of the forms of expansion do not take the form of more launches, but heavier ones, as economies of scale apply to mission design. To a first approximation, it’s far easier to add transponders and solar cells to a comsat than to run a business juggling more birds. Thrusters, batteries, sep/deployment mechanisms and the antennas on them scale favorably with size, not quantity. Push comes to shove, you put more birds on a larger rocket, a la SPELTRA and SYLDA- it’s commuting in the GTO lane, a la SpaceShip Two going from three seats to eight. This is a real chicken-and-egg problem for access to space.

Overall, the prospects of Falcon launches going from Ariane 5 levels to Zenit 2 (the spy satellite, not the launcher) are slim, without a Soviet Union around to create demand.
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“As I said, they certainly had designs by others that they were inspired by as well. There is nothing wrong with taking off the shelf designs and combining them into a new engine.”

There is when (the former) TRW (, now Northrop Grumman) sues you for _THEFT_OF_INTELLECTUAL_PROPERTY_, Elmar.
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“As I said (but you failed to read), the car industry does that ALL the time.”

I read it just fine the first time… and understood, being a former car nut, economics student, and parts scrounger. Pretty presumptuous of you to tell me what I read and didn’t read. Oh, and I’m also familiar with the Lotus Elise. Apparently, Elon Musk learned his lesson, and actually paid Lotus this time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Elise#Special_editions

“I think your dislike for SpaceX is quite clear from your comments. I dont quite know why that is, but I believe that you either work for some oldspace company, or NASA and are annoyed with SpaceX showing you how it is done.”

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

And the presumption continues! I was designing an alt.space vehicle at the same time as SpaceX. Except I started from literal scratch- a new fuel spec, both more powerful and potentially cheaper if scaleup went well. I then went past chambers, turbopumps and injectors, to new tankage developments and production processes. SpaceX, however, still trumps all that by spending more money, sooner, and amassing an order log before competitors can truly capitalize, scaring off outside investors. Oh, and this is all before siccing high-priced lawyers and lobbyists on the former TRW when they cry foul.

So, that’s how it’s done? I am annoyed with SpaceX plagiarism and muscle as a design engineer, American, and human being. I know quite well that the Wright Brothers’ company went broke, as second-mover businessmen outhustled the technical base gained by the two brothers. Maybe that’s really how it’s done in America.

No, they don’t need reusability. Both US and European studies have corroborated: reusability does not save money until launch rates reach several dozen (not one dozen) per year. Before that flight rate, reusability actually costs money.

These studies were based on different assumptions. They were based on the huge standing army of the very, very maintenance intensive shuttle. A simpler, less demanding design like the one by SpaceX will require less maintenance and therefore cost less and will not need that high a flightrate. Also, who says that the flightrate wont increase with prices going down? From all we know, it will.

You really have no idea just how extensive the plagiarism went, do you? Or how forward-thinking the LCRE and FASTRAC were, do you?

As I said, they certainly had designs by others that they were inspired by as well. There is nothing wrong with taking off the shelf designs and combining them into a new engine.
As I said (but you failed to read), the car industry does that ALL the time.

I think your dislike for SpaceX is quite clear from your comments. I dont quite know why that is, but I believe that you either work for some oldspace company, or NASA and are annoyed with SpaceX showing you how it is done.

I couldn’t ignore the sexism in those books, but nice reference all the same.