Red Dragon confirmed!!

[Nibb31]

1 hour ago, CptRichardson said:

Why would they need to research stronger chutes? They've made it abundantly clear that they're propulsively landing, have a manner and method by which they intend to do it, and have demonstrated all the required components to make it work. They don't need R&D for 'more powerful antennas', as the easy thing to do would be to use the Deep Space Network (the thing explicitly designed to make it easier for probes with weaker antennas to be designed).

The DSN still needs larger and more powerful comm systems than TRDS that is used in LEO. They are totally different systems.

Navigation and guidance are completely different too. LEO vehicles rely primarily on GPS, especially for the precision landing. Mars landers can't do precision landing because there are no beacons or navigation satellites. They typically rely on cameras to evaluate their position.

These are completely new systems that need to be developed.

Quote

As for the D2, once more, why do you think that these insane costs are going to be the case when SpaceX has demonstrated that they are more than capable of lowering them (by outright orders of magnitude).

An order of magnitude is typically an multiple of 10. They have reduced the price of an orbital launch by something like a factor of 2, not 10. That is a huge achievement, but it's not an order of magnitude. It is also mainly due to organisational efficiency gains more than actual technology. As we all know, there is a law of diminishing returns when it comes to efficiency gains. It's a logarithmic curve, not an exponential one. The first 50% is easy. Cutting 50% from the remaining 50% is more difficult. Cutting 50% again is harder still, etc...

Quote

I've already pointed out how silly it is to propose that the D2 will be a lmited production craft when there will be clear and necessary need for a much larger stable of them for future commercial activity.

If the D2 is ever to be mass-produced as an expendable Mars cargo lander, then you would be better off spending some time on designing it as a mass-produced Mars cargo lander, not modifying a reusable crew taxi that is not going to be mass-produced.

Turning a reusable LEO crew taxi into an expendable Mars lander makes sense as a one-off stunt. It makes no sense if you are going to be building many more Mars landers than crew taxis.

Quote

I've pointed out to you multiple times that the current price (PROJECTED, no less) for a FH launch is going to drop rapidly once SpaceX starts relaunching rockets (starting this month no less).

We've also pointed out multiple times that this is not necessarily true. There is much more to launch costs than the first stage hardware. By most accounts, the reusable hardware cost represents at best 20% of the total cost. All the other costs remain the same. So the best you can get is a F9 launch at $50 million instead of $60 million.

Also, reusability actually negates some of the gains that you achieve by mass production. Your production volume diminishes and your unit cost increases. The actual economics are much more complex than "free rocket". The fact that the rest of the industry is not investing R&D in reusability is because they have run their own numbers based on their own experience and flight rate predictions, and they don't believe that the business case closes.

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I've pointed out to you multiple times that that price tag is vastly excessive for the likely real price point of a D2 by simple fact that they're going to be in a much larger production stable.

We've also pointed out multiple times that D2 will have a maximum production run of 6 to 10 vehicles for NASA's commercial crew program. No other customers have been identified for them, and if they are reused, then it might be significantly less than that. 10 vehicles does not qualify as "mass production". It's actually less than Gemini or Apollo CSM production runs.

Quote

You're inanely pessimistic about a company that has actually demonstrated themselves as better than NASA at launching things, continually proclaiming them unable to do the things that they've already demonstrated IRL in action.

They are not "better than NASA". They are a launch service, that works primarily as a contractor for NASA and DoD, just like ULA. Their success rate is comparable to the rest of the industry.

Quote

If it weren't for an outside party screwing them over last year, we'd already have their first relaunch now.

Outside party? If anything, last year's "strut failure" is a pretty harsh demonstration of what happens when you cut corners in supplier certification. There are reasons (good and bad) that aerospace-certified equipment is more expensive than off-the-shelf DIY stuff. I would count that as a resounding failure of internal processes, which is the sort of thing that happens when your main focus is on cost reduction.

Quote

Your worst case scenario is at most $250 million, easily affordable and repeatable given the ever-increasing launch tempo building up a cash reserve.

Do you have any info on SpaceX's profit margins? I know a lot of analysts who would like some of your inside info.

$250 million is a lot of cash for a company to cough up on its own dime.

Quote

I make no bones about the fact that their schedule has slipped in the past, but the fact of the matter is that they've managed to either achieve everything they've set out to do so far, or outright make it obsolete in a few cases. Why do you insist on underestimating the company and swearing they'll never last even while they are beating every last one of their competitors upside the head like Jebidiah Kerman and the controls of any vehicle? How many times does it take before you realize that they're more than capable of doing it?

Nobody doubts that they are eventually capable of landing a Dragon 2 on Mars. Whether it is more than a stunt, how much time it takes them to get it to work, or whether it is the best way to land stuff on Mars remains to be proven.

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Land a rocket? Done.

Done before plenty of times by other folks.

Quote

Cut launch costs to a tenth of previous? Done, going even further down.

This is wrong. They have cut costs to a half.

Quote

Land from GTO? Done.

Huh ?

Quote

Relaunch? Twelve days to done.

Huh ?

Quote

FH? Being done right now.

And as for the MCT being 'vaporware', that's the latest in a pile of falsehoods, inanities, and pessimism.

Vaporware is a product that is announced to the general public but is never actually manufactured nor officially cancelled. Vaporware is often announced months or years before its purported release, with development details lacking. MCT is vaporware and will remain vaporware until hardware is built and tickets are on sale.

Although it might be Musk's (and plenty of others') childhood dream, there is simply no market or economical business case or social/political basis for the colonisation of Mars at this stage.

Quote

Musk wants to go to mars. More importantly, everyone else would rather like having a lift to LEO rating of 'yes' grade rocket for setting up proper orbital infrastructure, and we already know of at least two companies who will pay SpaceX for building it no matter what. 

Huh ?

 

Edited May 14, 2016 by Nibb31

[Nibb31]

15 hours ago, fredinno said:

Source? They still have missions manifested for 2016 and 2018..

Source? DragonLab has been manifested since 2008 for flights in 2011. 

Do you have any info on the customers who are buying these flights and what's going up on them ?

[kunok]

2 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

Cut launch costs to a tenth of previous? Done, going even further down.

That's not done at all. Seriously, where comes this affirmation? it keep coming again and again.

I run the numbers myself comparing to an arianne 5 and is like a little more than 50% of reduction to gto, and that's compared to a very very expensive but very reliable rocket. If you run the numbers to anything below gto, the reduction goes a lot lower, because is very inefficient to BLEO.

2 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

Land from GTO? Done.

It didn't land from gto, it landed a first stage in a gto directed launch which is very different thing.

2 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

Relaunch? Twelve days to done.

FH? Being done right now.

Nobody doubts that it can be done a relaunch or strap 3 first stages together (done with so many different rockets), we doubt that makes sense

 

2 hours ago, CptRichardson said:

And as for the MCT being 'vaporware', that's the latest in a pile of falsehoods, inanities, and pessimism

You know whats the word for what you have? Faith, because there is absolutely no proof for the MCT. That 's a science subforum , expect people without faith in your believes. Don't be rude because we don't support the same things than you.

[PB666]

I see modulation in this threads future. 

99%, 90% reductions, weve already discussed this, use SpaceXs numbers. 

 

[Kryten]

45 minutes ago, PB666 said:

I see modulation in this threads future. 

99%, 90% reductions, weve already discussed this, use SpaceXs numbers. 

 

It uses SpaceX's numbers for the possibilities from reuse in the far future . It has no relevance to current pricing.

[Rakaydos]

9 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

So appaently there's more information about the Red Dragon misssion, but it;'s behind a paywall.

http://m.aviationweek.com/space/nasa-outlines-mars-red-dragon-deal-spacex

From the L2 forum discussion, there's some talk about landing in an already explored area, possibly using an in-place rover to get additional information on the "L" in "EDL"

 

Also interesting quotes:
 

Quote

In return, the Hawthorne, California-based company founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk will be able to: use the Deep Space Network for tracking and communications on the “Red Dragon” mission; touch down on the surface of Mars using landing-site data collected by NASA spacecraft; apply technical advice from NASA experts to a range of mission issues; and learn how to abide by international planetary-protection protocols.

 

 

Quote

The EDL data NASA wants will be relayed back to Earth via NASA’s Mars orbiters, in real time as much as possible in case the landing ends badly. Details are still being worked out in regular meetings between company and agency engineers, but higher-bandwidth data recorded and relayed after a successful landing could include video of plume interactions with the atmosphere and the surface collected by onboard cameras and perhaps even one of the rovers.

 

 

Quote

SpaceX will decide what the payload will be, but NASA has already developed a list of instruments and other gear it would like to send to Mars, if the company can accommodate them in the 2018 window or later. Among them are Mars-weather sensors, instruments to analyze atmospheric dust, and experimental in situ resource utilization gear.

I feel like this was missed in the current argument

 

[tater]

I have seen a couple names from this forum in the L2 boards, though I'm merely a lurker there.

Nibb31, as usual, is spot on above. The cost reductions are complex, and there are also 2 costs to consider, the cost to spacex, and the cost tot he customer, which are not at all the same. My points up the thread about fanciful launch rates was that they cannot get the market to a point where it makes sense for them to do more than just undercut the competition, and pocket the difference between their lower costs and what they charge. Passing along the bulk of savings to the customer at this point would be insane.

[Rakaydos]

23 minutes ago, tater said:

I have seen a couple names from this forum in the L2 boards, though I'm merely a lurker there.

Nibb31, as usual, is spot on above. The cost reductions are complex, and there are also 2 costs to consider, the cost to spacex, and the cost tot he customer, which are not at all the same. My points up the thread about fanciful launch rates was that they cannot get the market to a point where it makes sense for them to do more than just undercut the competition, and pocket the difference between their lower costs and what they charge. Passing along the bulk of savings to the customer at this point would be insane.

At the same time, if the difference between costs to spaceX and costs to customer is as large as some sources suggest, Nibbs refrain about spaceX "not being a private space program" might be overstating things. If they earn enough on every paid launch, after expenses, to refurbish a lower stage and replace an upper stage, every commercial launch gives SpaceX a larger fleet of private spacecraft, already paid for.

[tater]

If they launch red dragon to Mars at all, then they are a private space program, as it is not a contracted NASA launch, though there is cooperation. I think that the semantics don't really matter that much. MCT is fantasy without a way to pay for it, and the costs would exceed possible SpaceX profits (to all income streams) by huge margins.

I'm all for private space, I'm just not seeing the income stream being more than a finite number of satellite launches at something like current rates. To pocket the same amount of money, private space needs to increase the number of launches in lockstep with price reductions to customers---and again, that's for identical income. Reduce launch costs by 100X, and you need at least 100X more launches, or you've gained nothing.

[Rakaydos]

" “If SpaceX determines they can’t make the 2018 window and wants to look at the next target of opportunity, then NASA will reassess at that time where we are, and determine at that time whether we want to continue the partnership,” McAlister says. “As it stands right now, the agreement goes out through 2022, but most of the technical area is tied to this first mission.” "

 

Yea, SpaceX is going to move heaven and earth to make 2018 happen. The opportunity is too good to get "reassessed" and miss out on NASA goodies.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Pardon my clarification, if it's so...

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

 

I see modulation moderation in this threads future. 

 

Yes. This thread has, unfortunately, become a complete yap fest between the Unbelievers and the Anointed, it's the same arguments going round and round, and now tempers are beginning to flare. Whatever one's opinion, the simple fact is this is all discussion of the future, and the future has demonstrated its self rather frequently to be quite subject to change, and often surprising. For better or worse. So can we all agree to just cool it and "wait and see" until there is something to see, and get back to the forum topic? @Rakaydos posted some really interesting stuff...

1 hour ago, Rakaydos said:

could include video of plume interactions with the atmosphere and the surface collected by onboard cameras and perhaps even one of the rovers.

CAN y'all just imagine this?? Pictures of something landing on another planet, taken on another planet? That's some Pale Blue Dot level profundity right there! Anyone know how "fast" Curiosity can take pictures?

[SuperFastJellyfish]

edit:  read too quickly...and wrongly. 

Edited May 14, 2016 by SuperFastJellyfish

[StrandedonEarth]

 

9 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Pardon my clarification, if it's so...

Yes. This thread has, unfortunately, become a complete yap fest between the Unbelievers and the Anointed, it's the same arguments going round and round, and now tempers are beginning to flare. Whatever one's opinion, the simple fact is this is all discussion of the future, and the future has demonstrated its self rather frequently to be quite subject to change, and often surprising. For better or worse. So can we all agree to just cool it and "wait and see" until there is something to see, and get back to the forum topic? @Rakaydos posted some really interesting stuff...

Yes, it seems we need to agree to disagree and see what the future actually brings

9 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

CAN y'all just imagine this?? Pictures of something landing on another planet, taken on another planet? That's some Pale Blue Dot level profundity right there! Anyone know how "fast" Curiosity can take pictures?

That would be faaaaantastic! Then the movie studios would have a real idea on how it should look for their movies.

[fredinno]

On 2016-05-14 at 5:44 PM, PB666 said:

Never stopped us from doing it in KSP. How to land on  hilly slope , drop an atomic bomb, therefore notching out the slope. Land, let the other guy get out first. lol. 

Actually I went to a island small town in Japan, where they don't allow cars or trucks, almost everything is brought in on back or via golf cart like vehicles across a pedestrian causeway, when we crossed there were workers carrying items on their backs. 

Try landing 20 Red Dragons in quick succession in KSP RSS, in a 1km radius.

Have fun.

I want to see that mission.

 

On 2016-05-14 at 9:07 PM, Rakaydos said:

So appaently there's more information about the Red Dragon misssion, but it;'s behind a paywall.

http://m.aviationweek.com/space/nasa-outlines-mars-red-dragon-deal-spacex

 

 

I have the full article.

I copied and pasted it. Here.

Red Planet Retro

 

NASA expects to spend “on the order of $30 million” helping SpaceX send a modified Dragon vehicle to the surface of Mars in the 2018 planetary launch window, but the entry, descent and landing (EDL) data alone it may obtain in return would be a bargain at 10 times the price.

Officials believe an amendment to NASA’s unfunded Space Act Agreement (SAA) with the ambitious spaceflight company could someday help the agency land heavy payloads on Mars using supersonic retropropulsion. NASA already is using infrared photography to study the technique on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first-stage landings.

Expanding that work to Mars with onboard cameras, sensors—and perhaps even imagery collected from below by one of the two NASA rovers operating on the planet—would be extremely useful to engineers at the space agency who are trying to figure out how to land 20-ton payloads there.

“If we had a complete stand-alone technology demonstration mission, it would be an order of magnitude larger than this [in cost],” says Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA headquarters.

 

Concept art of the unmanned Red Dragon capsule entering Mars’s atmosphere. Credit: SpaceX

 

In return, the Hawthorne, California-based company founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk will be able to: use the Deep Space Network for tracking and communications on the “Red Dragon” mission; touch down on the surface of Mars using landing-site data collected by NASA spacecraft; apply technical advice from NASA experts to a range of mission issues; and learn how to abide by international planetary-protection protocols.

The publicly funded technical data set could help SpaceX develop a commercial payload delivery service to Mars, charging customers to land robots and other payloads there just as it now charges them to orbit satellites and deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Six pages of the nine-page SAA amendment signed by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell on April 25 and by McAlister the following day are devoted to intellectual property rights and postmission data handling, including publication.

“This is the private sector’s mission,” says McAlister. “We are here to help them, and we think that is in our guidance in the Space Act. We are supposed to help commercial space to the fullest extent possible.”

In addition to deep-space communications and planetary protection, the SAA amendment covering the Red Dragon mission lists navigation and trajectory design; aerodynamic and aerothermal database development and “general interplanetary mission and hardware consultation and advice” as “representative areas” of NASA support for SpaceX. But it is the two-way EDL data exchange that heads NASA’s technology priority list for the endeavor.

“In all cases we have concluded that no matter what our architecture is, we are going to need to use supersonic retropropulsion,” says Jim Reuter, deputy associate administrator in the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). “Parachutes will not get us there at the landing masses that we have—20-plus tons. So this is a technology demonstration of what we consider to be one of the most critical technologies for us to get humans to Mars.”

 

Engineers want to know how Red Dragon’s propulsive-landing engine plumes interact with Mars’s surface. Credit: SpaceX Concept

 

Although SpaceX has not revealed many details about its Red Dragon mission, imagery posted on the company website suggests it plans to use the same landing technique on Mars that it is developing to extend the reusability of its Crew Dragon capsule. It would employ a variant of the “SuperDraco” engines in development for launch abort and dry-land touchdowns to settle the six-ton capsule on the surface of Mars (see illustration).

Described to Aviation Week by SpaceX CEO Musk as being “a tricky thing to develop,” the SuperDraco engines remain one of the most significant technical challenges of the Crew Dragon development underway to deliver astronauts to the ISS. Fueled by a hypergolic combination of nitrogen tetroxide and monomethyl hydrazine, the engines deliver 33,000-lb. thrust from each of four two-engine “jet packs.”

They operate at a chamber pressure of around 1,000 psi and are fed from the propellant tanks located around the base of the vehicle. Designed for deep throttling, high power and quick reactions, the SuperDraco is configured with a fuel-centered injector designed to provide fast shut-off capability by sealing off the propellants from the combustion chamber.

NASA used retropropulsion in its “Sky Crane” EDL system to place the 1-ton Curiosity rover on the floor of Mars’s Gale Crater, the upper limit of the mass that could be landed with that technique. After the rover touched down, the Sky Crane flew away to avoid disturbing the terrain at the landing site.

That will not be possible with Red Dragon, which will keep its rockets firing all the way to the surface. NASA hopes the private vehicle will be able to provide data on the effects of terminal retropulsion on the Martian surface as well as on supersonic retropulsion in the Martian atmosphere.

 

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“The primary difference between the Falcon 9 data and what we will get at Mars is the atmosphere and how the plume will expand and behave,” says Michelle Munk, who is overseeing the infrared analysis of Falcon 9 landings as STMD principal technologist. “The configuration is perhaps a little closer to a future Mars vehicle, and the ground surface interaction is really very interesting to us, because we will likely have a configuration where the plumes will interact very much with the Mars surface. That is obviously not something we are getting in the Falcon 9 data.”

---

Intelligence. Analysis. Insight. This story is a selection from the May 16, 2016 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology. New content posted daily online. Subscribe now or browse the current issue

---

Musk has said he will outline specific plans for the Red Dragon mission at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, in September. But his company’s agreement with NASA covers a launch only in the April-May 2018 planetary window.

“If SpaceX determines they can’t make the 2018 window and wants to look at the next target of opportunity, then NASA will reassess at that time where we are, and determine at that time whether we want to continue the partnership,” McAlister says. “As it stands right now, the agreement goes out through 2022, but most of the technical area is tied to this first mission.”

The EDL data NASA wants will be relayed back to Earth via NASA’s Mars orbiters, in real time as much as possible in case the landing ends badly. Details are still being worked out in regular meetings between company and agency engineers, but higher-bandwidth data recorded and relayed after a successful landing could include video of plume interactions with the atmosphere and the surface collected by onboard cameras and perhaps even one of the rovers.

“That is a possibility,” says Munk. “That will be worked into the mission design, exactly what the landing point is. I think with the short time line to the actual entry, descent and landing, we are planning to assist SpaceX with the Mars surface data that we have and what we can gather between now and EDL. So it most likely will be a site that has been heavily surveyed in the past.”

For the Red Dragon mission, SpaceX will use its planned Falcon Heavy vehicle, with three Falcon 9 core stages carrying a total of 27 Merlin engines to deliver 5.1 million lb. thrust at sea level. The heavy-lift variant is designed to be able to deliver 13.6 metric tons (29,980 lb.) to the surface of Mars, according to the company website.

SpaceX will decide what the payload will be, but NASA has already developed a list of instruments and other gear it would like to send to Mars, if the company can accommodate them in the 2018 window or later. Among them are Mars-weather sensors, instruments to analyze atmospheric dust, and experimental in situ resource utilization gear.

Regardless of how the Red Dragon collaboration works out, McAlister says it is a harbinger of the way NASA wants to conduct spaceflight operations in the future. SpaceX is one of four companies with “nonreimbursable” SAAs awarded in December 2014. The “Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities” (CCSC) effort was designed to make private-sector hardware and skills available to NASA exploration programs. 

“That is inherently beneficial to the nation,” says McAlister. “It is inherently beneficial to NASA. The goal of the CCSC agreements was to help accelerate these private-sector activities so that in the future NASA could just buy services.” 

Quote

SpaceX will decide what the payload will be, but NASA has already developed a list of instruments and other gear it would like to send to Mars, if the company can accommodate them in the 2018 window or later. Among them are Mars-weather sensors, instruments to analyze atmospheric dust, and experimental in situ resource utilization gear.

It would probably be launching in 2022 or 2020 if they decide to include any experiments on it.

On 2016-05-14 at 0:53 AM, CptRichardson said:

Why would they need to research stronger chutes? They've made it abundantly clear that they're propulsively landing, have a manner and method by which they intend to do it, and have demonstrated all the required components to make it work. They don't need R&D for 'more powerful antennas', as the easy thing to do would be to use the Deep Space Network (the thing explicitly designed to make it easier for probes with weaker antennas to be designed).

As for the D2, once more, why do you think that these insane costs are going to be the case when SpaceX has demonstrated that they are more than capable of lowering them (by outright orders of magnitude). I've already pointed out how silly it is to propose that the D2 will be a limited production craft when there will be clear and necessary need for a much larger stable of them for future commercial activity. I've pointed out to you multiple times that the current price (PROJECTED, no less) for a FH launch is going to drop rapidly once SpaceX starts relaunching rockets (starting this month no less). I've pointed out to you multiple times that that price tag is vastly excessive for the likely real price point of a D2 by simple fact that they're going to be in a much larger production stable.

 

You're inanely pessimistic about a company that has actually demonstrated themselves as better than NASA at launching things, continually proclaiming them unable to do the things that they've already demonstrated IRL in action. If it weren't for an outside party screwing them over last year, we'd already have their first relaunch now. Your worst case scenario is at most $250 million, easily affordable and repeatable given the ever-increasing launch tempo building up a cash reserve. I make no bones about the fact that their schedule has slipped in the past, but the fact of the matter is that they've managed to either achieve everything they've set out to do so far, or outright make it obsolete in a few cases. Why do you insist on underestimating the company and swearing they'll never last even while they are beating every last one of their competitors upside the head like Jebidiah Kerman and the controls of any vehicle? How many times does it take before you realize that they're more than capable of doing it?

 

Land a rocket? Done.

Land on a barge? Done.

Cut launch costs to a tenth of previous? Done, going even further down.

Land from GTO? Done.

Relaunch? Twelve days to done.

FH? Being done right now.

And as for the MCT being 'vaporware', that's the latest in a pile of falsehoods, inanities, and pessimism. Musk wants to go to mars. More importantly, everyone else would rather like having a lift to LEO rating of 'yes' grade rocket for setting up proper orbital infrastructure, and we already know of at least two companies who will pay SpaceX for building it no matter what. 

 

Just, stop. SpaceX will do it. They might be a year or two late, but they have a consistent track record of 'Yes, yes we will'.

Quote

Why would they need to research stronger chutes? They've made it abundantly clear that they're propulsively landing, have a manner and method by which they intend to do it, and have demonstrated all the required components to make it work. They don't need R&D for 'more powerful antennas', as the easy thing to do would be to use the Deep Space Network (the thing explicitly designed to make it easier for probes with weaker antennas to be designed).

They need stronger chutes, because without chutes, Dragon would have nowhere near the amount of fuel needed to do a Mars landing (about 400m/s delta v)

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/33f75a/just_how_much_deltav_will_the_dragon_2_capsule/

The need more powerful antennas-or do slight modifications on the ones NASA uses to work on Dragon V2, which needs R+D- they can use the DSN,but you need to first get the information off Mars to get to an orbiter. The more experiments, the bigger the antenna needed.

 

Quote

As for the D2, once more, why do you think that these insane costs are going to be the case when SpaceX has demonstrated that they are more than capable of lowering them (by outright orders of magnitude). I've already pointed out how silly it is to propose that the D2 will be a limited production craft when there will be clear and necessary need for a much larger stable of them for future commercial activity. I've pointed out to you multiple times that the current price (PROJECTED, no less) for a FH launch is going to drop rapidly once SpaceX starts relaunching rockets (starting this month no less). I've pointed out to you multiple times that that price tag is vastly excessive for the likely real price point of a D2 by simple fact that they're going to be in a much larger production stable.

Tell me one contract SpaceX has for Dragon or Dragon 2 NOT related to NASA. (or DragonLab, which I've discussed before and is apparently dead).

Lol you think Falcon Heavy is going to have prices fall after launches? Why? You do realize companies generally ark down prices to far below the initial procurement price, right? That price goes down over time (more with reuse), but since that price decrease generally happens over a reltively short period of time, I would be very surprised if the listed price actually went down after the 1st launch.

Same thing happens with Cellphones- people who buy the first ones produced always pay the most.

 

Stop drinking SpaceX koolaid. Please.

Quote

You're inanely pessimistic about a company that has actually demonstrated themselves as better than NASA at launching things, continually proclaiming them unable to do the things that they've already demonstrated IRL in action. If it weren't for an outside party screwing them over last year, we'd already have their first relaunch now. Your worst case scenario is at most $250 million, easily affordable and repeatable given the ever-increasing launch tempo building up a cash reserve. I make no bones about the fact that their schedule has slipped in the past, but the fact of the matter is that they've managed to either achieve everything they've set out to do so far, or outright make it obsolete in a few cases. Why do you insist on underestimating the company and swearing they'll never last even while they are beating every last one of their competitors upside the head like Jebidiah Kerman and the controls of any vehicle? How many times does it take before you realize that they're more than capable of doing it?

Better than NASA at launching things?

 NASA is a government agency, and will have pork straddled to it, while SpaceX is a private company was made with streamlining costs as its primary goal.

My "worst case scenario", no, that's the best case scenario. It's only "worst case" because you handwaved all other costs associated with a planetary mission, esp. R+D. Is Dragon intended for 6 months interplanetary transit? There you go.

 

SpaceX has not done everything they set out to do, and many of those things were not superseded.

Here are a few, off the top of my head:

2nd stage reuse? Abandoned.

Falcon 1e? Elon decided to give up on the smallsat market, even though it was on the verge of a boom.

Falcon 9 Air? Gave up.

There were valid reasons for not doing these things, but it shows they don't do everything they set out to do eventually.

 

Also, I never said SpaceX would never last. I simply stated Red Dragon would cost $500 Million, and be mostly a stunt flight.

Read my comments before ranting.

Quote

 

Cut launch costs to a tenth of previous? Done, going even further down.

 

I'll let Nibb31 Address this one

Quote

Relaunch? Twelve days to done.

Source?

Quote

Land from GTO? Done.

They haven't actually landed anything that has gone to GTO, nor anything from a high speed reentry that is most reminiscent of a Red Dragon landing.

Quote

And as for the MCT being 'vaporware', that's the latest in a pile of falsehoods, inanities, and pessimism. Musk wants to go to mars. More importantly, everyone else would rather like having a lift to LEO rating of 'yes' grade rocket for setting up proper orbital infrastructure, and we already know of at least two companies who will pay SpaceX for building it no matter what. 

 

Just, stop. SpaceX will do it. They might be a year or two late, but they have a consistent track record of 'Yes, yes we will'.

http://www.wired.com/2012/08/is-a-privately-funded-manned-mission-to-mars-possible/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

A minimal mars mission (Mars Direct, which was chided by NASA for being too optimistic, leading to Mars Semi-Direct, which added a launch) is supposed to be $5 Billion dollars.

Keep in mind, this is Zubrin talking, which is very similar to Elon that he's an immense optimist and you always have to take his dates and costs with a grain of salt (esp. since AeroSpace dates almost always move to the right, and costs always are higher than anticipated- look at how long it's taking for a 'minimal modification' F9H to be made....)

I would take the $30 Billion dollar number if I were you.

 

However, in any case, it doesn't matter. Elon wants a huge Mars mission, that can be scaled up to colony development, shown by the 100T to Mars Injection MCT, which is incredibly OP for Mars Direct.

That needs FAR more new equipment than the SHuttle-station derived Mars Direct, raising development costs through the roof.

Then you wonder why we're skeptical.

 

Also, MCT is something we don't even know the design to. Right now, it's on the same level of vaporware as:

Quote

 

Just, stop. SpaceX will do it. They might be a year or two late, but they have a consistent track record of 'Yes, yes we will'.

 

On 2016-05-14 at 1:58 AM, Nibb31 said:

Cut launch costs to a tenth of previous? Done, going even further down.

BTW, Source?

On 2016-05-15 at 5:55 PM, StrandedonEarth said:

 

Yes, it seems we need to agree to disagree and see what the future actually brings

That would be faaaaantastic! Then the movie studios would have a real idea on how it should look for their movies.

Didn't they plan on that for InSight? I'm not sure, so

[fredinno]

On 2016-05-14 at 3:35 AM, kunok said:

I run the numbers myself comparing to an arianne 5 and is like a little more than 50% of reduction to gto, and that's compared to a very very expensive but very reliable rocket. If you run the numbers to anything below gto, the reduction goes a lot lower, because is very inefficient to BLEO.

Which is why Elon seriously needs a 1x SuperDraco or STAR upper stage as standard for GTO. It's done by most companies using a non H2 2nd stage for a reason. It's a lot cheaper per kg to than not to.

On 2016-05-14 at 8:14 AM, Rakaydos said:

" “If SpaceX determines they can’t make the 2018 window and wants to look at the next target of opportunity, then NASA will reassess at that time where we are, and determine at that time whether we want to continue the partnership,” McAlister says. “As it stands right now, the agreement goes out through 2022, but most of the technical area is tied to this first mission.” "

 

Yea, SpaceX is going to move heaven and earth to make 2018 happen. The opportunity is too good to get "reassessed" and miss out on NASA goodies.

I honestly think it's going to 2020 if NASA doesn't fund any experiments, and 2022 or 2024-5 if NASA decides to put experiments on it (likely requiring solar panels to be added to deploy from the hatch of Red Dragon).

On 2016-05-14 at 2:21 AM, Nibb31 said:

Source? DragonLab has been manifested since 2008 for flights in 2011. 

Do you have any info on the customers who are buying these flights and what's going up on them ?

No. I guess you're right.

On 2016-05-14 at 8:12 AM, tater said:

If they launch red dragon to Mars at all, then they are a private space program, as it is not a contracted NASA launch,

On 2016-05-14 at 7:55 AM, Rakaydos said:

At the same time, if the difference between costs to spaceX and costs to customer is as large as some sources suggest, Nibbs refrain about spaceX "not being a private space program" might be overstating things. If they earn enough on every paid launch, after expenses, to refurbish a lower stage and replace an upper stage, every commercial launch gives SpaceX a larger fleet of private spacecraft, already paid for.

They aren't really a private Space program. Do you see them putting scientific experiments on Red Dragon without NASA sponsorship?

I haven't heard of a space probe from NASA or Rocosmos without scientific experiments since the space race.

Do you see them building private space stations?

A "private" space program is extremely unlikely, because it means that the company will have to pour money into unprofitable endeavors.

Even if the information is being sold off to a government space agency (like some are planning to do) it's not really a "private space program"- more a contractor, who sells and caters to others, just like any other contractor.

[tater]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

They aren't really a private Space program. Do you see them putting scientific experiments on Red Dragon without NASA sponsorship?

I haven't heard of a space probe from NASA or Rocosmos without scientific experiments since the space race.

Do you see them building private space stations?

A "private" space program is extremely unlikely, because it means that the company will have to pour money into unprofitable endeavors.

Even if the information is being sold off to a government space agency (like some are planning to do) it's not really a "private space program"- more a contractor, who sells and caters to others, just like any other contractor.

They they launch anything at all, for any reason whatsoever without a customer paying for it---they are a private space program. 

Send an empty capsule to Mars? Private space program. There is no requirement to achieve X "science" per flight to count as such. They are doing "rocket science," not planetary in that case (engineering, really, but that's the first thing NASA did, too). Their interstage camera, or flying a go pro to Mars would be vastly superior to any instruments NASA imaged Mars with for decades. 

Blue Origin? Private space program. 

Both outfits are hybrids, they have customers, but they also do things because they want to do them. There is no formal definition of "space program," so you can't argue that they aren't one, really.

 

Edited May 16, 2016 by tater

[fredinno]

1 minute ago, tater said:

They they launch anything at all, for any reason whatsoever without a customer paying for it---they are a private space program. 

Send an empty capsule to Mars? Private space program. There is no requirement to achieve X "science" per flight to count as such. They are doing "rocket science," not planetary in that case (engineering, really, but that's the first thing NASA did, too). Their interstage camera, or flying a go pro to Mars would be vastly superior to any instruments NASA imaged Mars with for decades. 

Blue Origin? Private space program. 

Both outfits are hybrids, they have customers, but they also do things because they want to do them. There is no formal definition of "space program," so you can't argue that they aren't one, really.

 

OK, but Blue Origin is still doing its stuff for money- it's engines and New Shepard are supposed to be Orbital LVs and Suborbital tourism respectively, which are actual markets.

[tater]

Just now, fredinno said:

OK, but Blue Origin is still doing its stuff for money- it's engines and New Shepard are supposed to be Orbital LVs and Suborbital tourism respectively, which are actual markets.

So what? NASA gets money, too, it's just out of people;s pockets. Heck, BO is launching from its own facility, I don;t see how that's not a space program, albeit a tiny one. Once SpaceX gets the TX launch facility done, they will be more capable than most countries with space programs, particularly once D2 is flying.

[PB666]

10 minutes ago, tater said:

So what? NASA gets money, too, it's just out of people;s pockets. Heck, BO is launching from its own facility, I don;t see how that's not a space program, albeit a tiny one. Once SpaceX gets the TX launch facility done, they will be more capable than most countries with space programs, particularly once D2 is flying.

They are behind schedule, they ran into a problem due to the underlying softness and compressibility of the backwater they are building into, it is by thier estimate will be 2018 before they can complete a launch sitre.

Quote

In early 2016, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell indicated that construction had been delayed by poor soil stability at the site, and that "two years of dirt work" would be required before it can build the launch facility. Construction costs will, as a result, be higher.^[45] SpaceX in now not planning to complete construction until 2017, and the first launch from Boca Chica is not expected until 2018.^[3][4] - wikipedia- Spacex south texas launch facility

 

 

[tater]

The work on the landing site in CA has been progressing well, OTOH, though that's at Vandenberg AFB.

[fredinno]

On 5/16/2016 at 4:04 PM, tater said:

So what? NASA gets money, too, it's just out of people;s pockets. Heck, BO is launching from its own facility, I don;t see how that's not a space program, albeit a tiny one. Once SpaceX gets the TX launch facility done, they will be more capable than most countries with space programs, particularly once D2 is flying.

BO is doing their research program in the anticipation of cash in the future from selling their products (especially now that BE-4 and BE-3 are slated for the next gen OrbitalATK EELV and Vulcan). NASA, is not doing it for money. That's the difference.

And SpaceX is already more capable than most nations with space programs- most of them don't have a orbital rocket at all!

On 5/16/2016 at 4:21 PM, PB666 said:

They are behind schedule, they ran into a problem due to the underlying softness and compressibility of the backwater they are building into, it is by thier estimate will be 2018 before they can complete a launch sitre.

Quote

Well, that was a REAL surprise.

On 5/17/2016 at 5:42 PM, tater said:

The work on the landing site in CA has been progressing well, OTOH, though that's at Vandenberg AFB.

Not surprising, it's pretty much composed of a few giant asphalt circles, on an already drained and flat area of land. Not that complex or difficult.

[PB666]

6 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Well, that was a REAL surprise.

Sarcasm aside. But the problem is that is Rio grand overflow, and there are alot of docs in that water due to untreated human waste in the river. This eventually ends up fluffing up the silty sands that make up the pan of the overflow flat. The irony is they have alot more undeveloped property that is more problematic so they best get started compacting the soil, now.  

[tater]

So to be called a Space Program you have to use other people's money? SpaceX qualifies there. Or you cannot do it with a profit motive? I think if you look into the history of NASA, and how some of LBJ's buddies made out, NASA might not qualify  .

I think it's enough to launch vehicles for your own purposes to be called a Space Program, though this is pretty much a semantic argument. 

[sevenperforce]

I'm inclined to argue that what Blue Origin is doing cannot really be classified as a space program. They are testing a launch system for commercial flights. Now, if one of their New Shepard test launches is used to launch a suborbital probe for NASA to test inflatable re-entry shields, that would be more like a space program.

But it is ultimately semantic. 

[tater]

42 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I'm inclined to argue that what Blue Origin is doing cannot really be classified as a space program. They are testing a launch system for commercial flights. Now, if one of their New Shepard test launches is used to launch a suborbital probe for NASA to test inflatable re-entry shields, that would be more like a space program.

But it is ultimately semantic. 

So a space program must do "science?" Because all the first US space program launches were entirely learning how to launch rockets. So NACA was not a Space program. If "science" is required... then most manned spaceflight does't count.

My definitions for your perusal:

If you launch spacecraft* with other people's money taken at gunpoint (this is the implicit transaction under all taxation schemes), you are a "national space program." NASA, ESA, etc.

If you build spacecraft for other people to launch, you are a "contractor."

If you launch spacecraft for your own purposes without the requirement that all your funding come at gunpoint, you are a "private space program." If you launch crew for money for a national space program, you are still a private space program, just like Delta is an airline, but not an airforce, even though the USAF flies passengers (troops) in "airliners" that they own. If Delta bombed places for money, they'd be a private airforce.

(*note the "spacecraft" here. The craft must reach space, so model rockets... not a space program until they hit 100km)