[FlamingCobra]

I thought you guys might want to read this:

The key to space settlement is inexpensive, reliable launch from Earth to orbit. The least expensive, and IMHO most exciting, vehicle today is the SpaceX Falcon. The Falcon 9 has flown a couple of times and is priced at about $5,000/kg, which is well below other launch vehicles. The Falcon Heavy is in development and promises to lower costs even more, to as little as $1,500/kg. The Falcon 9 and Heavy are expendable launchers, meaning the vehicle does not survive the launch and a new vehicle must be built for the next payload. If it were possible to use these vehicles over and over, without too much refurbishment between launches, costs could be dramatically lowered.

I just listened to a talk by Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX. He says that analysis and simulation suggest that they can fly the Falcon 9 first stage back to the launch pad and, with a heat shield and aerodynamic exterior, get the upper stage back as well. He also says that it will be difficult and they may fail, but they intend to try. He estimates the reduction in cost at about 100x. That means SpaceX thinks they can get costs down to around $60/kg.

They could easily be wrong, but if they are even in the ballpark this is revolutionary -- and the 1,500 employees at SpaceX are going to try.

Wow.

Is there something you can do to help? If you are a US voter, yes. Contact your congressional representatives and ask them to insist that the air force buy launch services with a free and open competition.

Background: The air force launches many satellites into orbit. They are proposing a sole source, non-competitive contract with a consortium of Lockheed and Boeing to buy all of their launches through 2018. If this contract goes through, SpaceX, or any other company, would not be allowed to bid. This is in spite of the fact that SpaceX is cheaper and the Falcon vehicles are built entirely in the U.S. whereas one of the vehicles in the sole source contract, the Atlas V, has a Russian-built main engine! In other words, the air force is insisting on buying Russian engines rather than American products!

For a web version, see http://alspacesettlement.blogspot.com/2011/10/will-revolution-be-televised.html

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[Grizzly]

Derailing the thread at post 1, but...

In other words, the air force is insisting on buying Russian engines rather than American products!

Hasn't it become standard practice these days of the US armed forces to buy equipment that are not produced or were not designed in America? The SCAR ,the HK416, and the M240 and M249 spring to mind. It seems to be working fine for them, so I don't see how russian designed engines are bad.

[FlamingCobra]

Derailing the thread at post 1, but...

In other words, the air force is insisting on buying Russian engines rather than American products!

Hasn't it become standard practice these days of the US armed forces to buy equipment that are not produced or were not designed in America? The SCAR ,the HK416, and the M240 and M249 spring to mind. It seems to be working fine for them, so I don't see how russian designed engines are bad.

[Davros]

you really want the airforce to risk a very expensive satellite on something untested

[Dragon]

$60/kg sounds surprisingly within reach, but I'm afraid that this calculation is a bit too optimistic.
Allowing other companies to take part in the competition sounds like a good idea though.

[NGTM-1R]

Hasn't it become standard practice these days of the US armed forces to buy equipment that are not produced or were not designed in America? The SCAR ,the HK416, and the M240 and M249 spring to mind. It seems to be working fine for them, so I don't see how russian designed engines are bad.

Russia is not known for its skill in rocketry. It's been over a decade and the Progress rockets that are supposed to resupply the ISS still don't work right.

[Goober5000]

Russia is not known for its skill in rocketry. It's been over a decade and the Progress rockets that are supposed to resupply the ISS still don't work right.

That was a manufacturing error, not a design flaw.  The Soyuz/Progress has had hundreds of successful launches.

Also, the RD-180 is cheap, flight-proven, and mature, so why not use it?  It saves on development costs.  It's even human-rated, if the Atlas V is ever used to launch people.  The military is only required to use 51% American-made products.

All that said, United Space Alliance is for all intents and purposes a monopoly that has resulted in very little innovation in rocketry in the past 20 years.  I am very much in favor of SpaceX and I really hope they continue to succeed with the Falcon rocket family.  And I fully support an open bidding process.

[NGTM-1R]

That was a manufacturing error, not a design flaw.  The Soyuz/Progress has had hundreds of successful launches.

99% success is not good enough when we're dealing with something that could theoretically wipe out our last remaining foothold in low orbit. More to the point, you treat manufacturing and design as extremely different branches in a system that's too small to separate them very far, and you also don't seem to have much of a conception of the automated Progress' history of malfunction. The automated supply launches had a string of failures along these lines in the late '90s, and the Russian space program has had repeated issues with their automation efforts (they're having another one right now, I believe).

[Goober5000]

Actually, the Soyuz success rate is 98 percent, as was the shuttle's.  But that's extremely good considering how much effort has to go into each and every spacecraft, and the amount of things that have to work right to get the thing to launch, dock, and deorbit successfully.

Furthermore, the strategic mistake that could "theoretically wipe out our last remaining foothold in low orbit" is not the fault of the Russians, but of the US.  As part of government-mandated cost-cutting measures, NASA cancelled the Orbital Space Plane and the ISS lifeboat,  and now we've gone and cancelled the shuttle before its replacement is ready.  That's asinine.  Between the shuttle and the Soyuz NASA had 99.9996% manned space launch reliability, and with only the Soyuz it's now 98%.

Mind you, as mentioned above, 98% is still pretty good.

[Grizzly]

Mind you, as mentioned above, 98% is still pretty good.

Really? the difference between 98% and 99.9996% sounds pretty big to me... As in, 1 out of 50 mission fails versus 1 out of a extremely big number mission fails.

[Goober5000]

98% is still good because it's a reliability rate of 98 out of 100 missions.

And you misunderstand 99.9996% -- go back and reread what I wrote.  That's not the probability of success for the Soyuz or shuttle; it's the probability that Soyuz and shuttle will not BOTH fail at the same time.

[NGTM-1R]

Furthermore, the strategic mistake that could "theoretically wipe out our last remaining foothold in low orbit" is not the fault of the Russians, but of the US.

You've lost the plot. Congratulations.

Here's the issue. The shuttle, if it failed, never did so in a fashion that would place the ISS in danger. As long as the station remains intact, in orbit, then it can be resupplied and remanned with another launch (and the people aboard can use their own Soyuz lifeboat to get off it). Even in the absence of the shuttle it's unable to threaten the station anymore.

Progress' failures have consistently occurred in such a way as to place the ISS in danger, with the automation going crazy or shutting down in proximity to the station. It really doesn't matter what the US does or does not have; the Russian system is the only one that's ever placed the station in danger of destruction.

[Goober5000]

Failure modes on the Progress (and indeed, on any spacecraft approaching the ISS) are designed to be benign, with approach trajectories designed to take the spacecraft away from the station if control or communication is lost.  That's precisely what happened in 2010 with Progress M-06M, which aborted its initial approach but successfully docked two days later.  If the Progress fails too close to the station, the crew can take over manually.

In fact, the most famous Progress failure, the one that depressurized the Spektr module on Mir, happened when the ship was placed under manual control.  So that would be categorized as pilot error.

Incidentally, why are you arguing on the forum when you could be FREDding missions for SA?

[Grizzly]

Failure modes on the Progress (and indeed, on any spacecraft approaching the ISS) are designed to be benign, with approach trajectories designed to take the spacecraft away from the station if control or communication is lost.  That's precisely what happened in 2010 with Progress M-06M, which aborted its initial approach but successfully docked two days later.  If the Progress fails too close to the station, the crew can take over manually.

In fact, the most famous Progress failure, the one that depressurized the Spektr module on Mir, happened when the ship was placed under manual control.  So that would be categorized as pilot error.

Incidentally, why are you arguing on the forum when you could be FREDding missions for SA?

* -Joshua- looks at the SA badge on Goober's profile...

[NGTM-1R]

Y'know I never did say I actually would certainly have time and inclination to do so.

Why aren't you? 

[Goober5000]

I am.  And in fact, I did.  I spent yesterday doing much more FREDding than I did posting.  And as a result, we have one more mission finalized.