NASA SLS/Orion/Payloads

[DAL59]

SpaceX is a company, so it doesn't have a reason to sent robots places.  That is the one important part of NASA- doing scientific missions that a company would have no reason to do.  

SpaceX can also launch rockets for 10% the cost of NASA.  

[tater]

5 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Still, SpaceX is currently doing more than NASA, with 75% of its budget.  

SpaceX has nothing even remotely approaching 75% of NASA's budget. 

 

5 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

I don't think he is wrong about the lack of radiation danger though.  In the study that keeps popping up in the news every few months, the mice were given a Mars equivalent dose all at once instead of over the period a mission would last.  There is a huge difference between being exposed to extremely high radiation for an hour and modestly high radiation for 2 years.    

No, he's wrong. Talk to radiation safety physicians. Also, Zubrin is only discussing flags and footprint missions, and he gets cited on this in a colonization thread.

[Nightfury]

Just now, DAL59 said:

SpaceX is a company, so it doesn't have a reason to sent robots places.  That is the one important part of NASA- doing scientific missions that a company would have no reason to do.  

NASA could spend their money for the science and then launch it by e.g. SpaceX

[tater]

2 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

SpaceX is a company, so it doesn't have a reason to sent robots places.  That is the one important part of NASA- doing scientific missions that a company would have no reason to do.  

SpaceX can also launch rockets for 10% the cost of NASA.  

SpaceX only exists because of NASA. No NASA, no SpaceX.

[DAL59]

Not in 5 years from now.  Anyway, I can't see the future, so lets just wait until 2024 and see what happens.  

10 minutes ago, tater said:

SpaceX has nothing even remotely approaching 75% of NASA's budget. 

SpaceX has been evaluated at 15 billion.  NASA's budget is 19 billion.  

EDIT: Oops... its actually 21 billion!

Edited November 29, 2017 by DAL59

[Nightfury]

4 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

SpaceX can also launch rockets for 10% the cost of NASA.  

This is due to the fact that NASA has a lot more workes than SpaceX has. They don't need to pay for that much people (this is one cause why the shuttle program went so expensive too)

[DAL59]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

No, he's wrong. Talk to radiation safety physicians. Also, Zubrin is only discussing flags and footprint missions, and he gets cited on this in a colonization thread.

We have sent a radiation detector on the curiosity probe during transit and on the Martian surface.  We also have astronauts who have been exposed to the same amount of radiation.

Just now, Nightfury said:

This is due to the fact that NASA has a lot more workes than SpaceX has. They don't need to pay for that much people (this is one cause why the shuttle program went so expensive too)

Also because NASA is partially a jobs program, and unlike SpaceX, which manufactures most of its own parts, NASA is reliant on shipping parts from contractors and subcontractors around the country.

[tater]

4 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

Not in 5 years from now.  Anyway, I can't see the future, so lets just wait until 2024 and see what happens.  

SpaceX has been evaluated at 15 billion.  NASA's budget is 19 billion.  

You have not the slightest clue what you are talking about. If my only asset is my house, and my house was worth $1,000,000, do I have a budget of 1 M$/year, yes or no?

[DAL59]

1 minute ago, tater said:

You have not the slightest clue what you are talking about. If my only asset is my house, and my house was worth $1,000,000, do I have a budget of 1 M$/year, yes or no?

Oops...it actually 21 billion!

http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/technology/business/spacex-valuation-21-billion/index.html

[tater]

Answer my question, you are conflating an imaginary number with a budget.

[DAL59]

I know NASA gets that 19 every year, but its spending is not all for space, and used less efficiently than SpaceX.  They also are required to spend that amount every year.    

Edited November 29, 2017 by DAL59

[tater]

Just now, DAL59 said:

I know NASA gets that 19 every year, but its spending is not all for space, and used less efficiently than SpaceX.  They also are required to spend that amount every year.    

The magical 21 B$ number is what SpaceX might be worth if it were sold. That is not a budget. It's not even comparable to a budget.

Part of NASA's budget goes to.... SpaceX. Most all the hardware budget goes to... other companies like SpaceX. 

You seem to think that NASA should be more efficient---but that's not what NASA is for. NASA is supposed to be inefficient. Look at the Orion and SLS twitter feeds. They crow about how many hundreds small companies in 47 States contribute to one or the other project. It's intentionally inefficient, and NASA always has been. Even if NASA were to replace SLS/Orion because of commercial competition, they would have to spread it around, because they'd not give a whole contract to one company, or only the States with SpaceX facilities would vote for it.

[Green Baron]

SpaceX is a private company and so doesn't have to report the numbers. But it shouldn't be impossible to get an idea of what they turn around:

+ public funding + sold launches - 5000 employees - variable cost(r&d, construction of sites) - fixed cost(rental comes to mind) +/- other(insurances, private deposits if any). If the number at the end is green then it is a small one. Or, if we just look at the income side, then #launches*62milion + funding. If that is 5-10% of Nasa's budget then they were doing good.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Green Baron

[Bill Phil]

7 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

I don't get why Congress didn't just reboot Constellation, or at least Ares V and Orion (then fly Orion on DIVH). The Shuttle contractors could still all have gotten their jobs, but all of the tooling, development work, and the Mobile Launcher Platforms could've still been used

Constellation was... not fun. For one thing, politics was involved. But for another... there was barely any connection to Shuttle hardware. The only thing related would've been the 5 segment SRBs. But Ares V? Not even related. The core is larger, the engines are different (RS-68s, probably), and there's no side mounted payloads. Ares I? Beyond the SRB first stage (bad idea), the second stage was planned to use J-2X. Not shuttle derived. 

Flying Orion on DIVH would necessitate man-rating DIVH... Better to just start anew. Maybe sacrifice lander size and launch Orion on Ares V (Ares IV?)

[DDE]

11 hours ago, tater said:

SpaceX only exists because of NASA. No NASA, no SpaceX.

Eeeeexcuse me!

[KSK]

15 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Oops...it actually 21 billion!

http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/technology/business/spacex-valuation-21-billion/index.html

As I understand it, that 21 billion is largely what one lot of over-excited people think they could make if they were they able to sell SpaceX to a bunch of even more over-excited people. More charitably, it's what said over-excited people fondly hope that SpaceX could be worth at some point in the future. How much relevance that has to current SpaceX finances and future SpaceX prospects is extremely debatable to my mind.

From the article you cited:

"SpaceX is among an exclusive group of private U.S.-based companies that have multi-billion dollar valuations. Currently, only about a half a dozen companies in the world have hit the $20 billion mark, according to a list compiled by CBInsights, a startup analytics firm. They include the world's highest-valued private firm, Uber, which is estimated to be worth nearly $70 billion."

 I don't know which firms have hit that $20 billion valuation,  but half a dozen is not very many at all when you consider the number of large, profitable (much more so than SpaceX) global companies out there. Then when you see that Uber - a company that appears to specialize in bad PR and losing money hand-over-fist - is apparently worth nearly $70 billion?? That really should tell you all you need to know about these valuations.

Edited November 30, 2017 by KSK

[Green Baron]

You are correct with your view @KSK, i think. Another example for good-will value is Tesla whose shares all in all value more than those of the Ford motor company. Irl Tesla is worth less than nothing. A good-will, that what share holders are willing to pay initially, is nothing but a bet on future expectations.

But the initial claim was that SpaceX's yearly budget (the money they can spend) is 75% of Nasa's, which is a slight overestimation ... :-)

Also it was said that SpaceX is doing more than Nasa. But Nasa runs several interplanetary projects, research satellites, does r&d in several dependencies and helps startup-companies like SpaceX to get into the boots. For now SpaceX is an aspiring launch provider, about to catch up with the classic ones that are around for several decades.

Edited November 30, 2017 by Green Baron

[wumpus]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

Eeeeexcuse me!

How many Spacex flights have they bought?  I thought that was lost in the noise of commercial flights.

ULA exists to supply the Department of Defense flights (like NRO), but Spacex would like to at least nibble at that pork.

While it would be foolish to not admit Spacex was facing bankruptcy had not the CRS saved them, here is the recent missions: (http://www.spacex.com/missions)

Koreasat, Echostar 105 (EU), Irridium, Air Force, NSO (Taiwan), NASA (resupply), Intelsat
Iridium, Bulgariasat-1, NASA (resupply), Inmarsat, NRO (US govt), SES (commercial communications)
 

While they certainly needed NASA incubation, the could presumably exist without NASA (+DoD.  I think DoD spends more than NASA).  I suspect it would still be pretty much be the end of the BFR.

Edited November 30, 2017 by wumpus

[DDE]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

How many Spacex flights have they bought?  I thought that was lost in the noise of commercial flights.

Actually, NRO has none, but whatever-that-name-Office from USAF has arranged for an X-37 flight.

[wumpus]

51 minutes ago, DDE said:

Actually, NRO has none, but whatever-that-name-Office from USAF has arranged for an X-37 flight.

It looks like they sent something up for NRO 11 flights ago by what I posted, which was typed while looking at their [spacex's] website.

[KSK]

4 hours ago, wumpus said:

How many Spacex flights have they bought?  I thought that was lost in the noise of commercial flights.

ULA exists to supply the Department of Defense flights (like NRO), but Spacex would like to at least nibble at that pork.

While it would be foolish to not admit Spacex was facing bankruptcy had not the CRS saved them, here is the recent missions: (http://www.spacex.com/missions)

Koreasat, Echostar 105 (EU), Irridium, Air Force, NSO (Taiwan), NASA (resupply), Intelsat
Iridium, Bulgariasat-1, NASA (resupply), Inmarsat, NRO (US govt), SES (commercial communications)
 

While they certainly needed NASA incubation, the could presumably exist without NASA (+DoD.  I think DoD spends more than NASA).  I suspect it would still be pretty much be the end of the BFR.

About half and half by now I think. CRS has been a big deal for SpaceX. Hang on. Yeah, according to Wikipedia, I'm counting about 25 commercial launches out of 44 combined for the various Falcon 9 versions, although I've possibly got a few of those in the wrong pigeonhole.

I have no idea whether this bears any resemblance to reality but my gut feeling is that SpaceX could have been a thing without NASA but they would have found it an awful lot harder to get going, or required some very forward-looking investors to help them get Falcon 9 off the ground. 

[insert_name]

2 minutes ago, KSK said:

 some very forward-looking investors

good one

[DAL59]

22 hours ago, tater said:

NASA is supposed to be inefficient.

Which is my point

[tater]

1 minute ago, DAL59 said:

Which is my point

SpaceX would not even exist without NASA. Part of being inefficient was spreading the pork around to some new space companies. 

Your point was somehow that SpaceX has 75% the the budget of NASA, and had somehow done more. Wrong on both counts. SpaceX has flown to orbit, and landed some boosters (awesome!), but they haven't landed anything on Mars (unlike NASA), and they haven't flown to all the planets in the solar system, either.

Your point was that if SpaceX uses a craft NASA basically commissioned (D2) around the Moon, then NASA is "hardly a space agency anymore. "

Your point was that NASA failed to do in 16 years what they did in less time with the same budget---and they don't have anything like the same budget in inflation-corrected dollars.

 

 

[DAL59]

Many of SpaceX's payloads are non-Nasa though.