Are we back to the 2012 era of "SpaceX can do no wrong" with regards to pyramid scheme style funding arrangements? I was hoping that once reality started to show that it's not quite so simple, that we would be able to move past that...
NASA and the Private Sector - Page 123
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13774 Posts
Are we back to the 2012 era of "SpaceX can do no wrong" with regards to pyramid scheme style funding arrangements? I was hoping that once reality started to show that it's not quite so simple, that we would be able to move past that... | ||
pmh
1344 Posts
As it is looking now space exploration is going to be privatized and not something that everyone in the world will benefit from. Probably the only possible way to draw private investors. In the future companys and people on earth will be able to legally own space objects like for example astroids,lunar and mars surface area,drilling rights,orbital rights and what not, protected and enforced by law on earth. There are already talks about this This potential ownership I think will be essential for private space exploration and is one of the biggest incentives for investment. Noone cares about this now because there seems little to gain in space but this will definitely change in the coming centurys. This ownership will probably be dealt with long before the actual exploration of deep space. If ownership will be handed out on a first come first serve basis then space x could potentially get a quiet big portfolio. A portfolio that wont be worth much in this century but one which will be increasingly profitable the further we are in the future. If we don't die out on earth,the economy in space will eventually be worth more then 1000 times the economy on earth. Just imagine space x owning some sort of percentage of that. The potential in the very long run truly is unlimited but it will also take a very long time to realize that potential. I guess eventually space x will dwarve any other company on earth,if things will keep going well for them for the next 200-300 years. Which indeed is a very long timeframe for any enterprise during which many many things can go wrong. Still the potential is there,it has far more very long term growth potential then any other sector. It looks like musk and other companys are 100 years to early with all this,at the minimum. But better be to early then be to late. | ||
hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
The holy grail is some kind of propulsive system. Something like the Dragon spacecraft. Basically, if NASA wants to land anything substantially larger than Curiosity in the next 10 years, they probably need to pay SpaceX to get them there. This is a great talk for anyone who wants to learn about landing stuff on Mars. | ||
{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
Elon Musk's latest venture, The Boring Company, has finally released details about its plans. Shocking nobody who has heard of Musk's prior ventures like SpaceX and Tesla, the company thinks big. This time, Musk wants to use tunnels and electric sleds to revolutionize traffic. The company's manifesto starts off by identifying a problem—"soul-destroying traffic"—and gives a false choice in terms of a solution: flying cars or tunnels. (Never mind boring traffic solutions such as bike lanes, gas taxes, taxes on solo driving, or giving workers more flexible hours. It's far more exciting to deal with super-powered electric sleds and underground tunnels.) Instead, The Boring Company says traffic "must expand into three dimensions." The company, which so far publicly includes Musk and SpaceX engineer Steve Davis, says that there "is no practical limit to how many layers of tunnels can be built, so any level of traffic can be addressed." Also, tunnels are silent from the surface, and they don't "divide communities with lanes and barriers." It's hard to say what TBC is referencing with that last point—gentrification? the highway projects of Robert Moses?—as the company does not get into the social nature of its tunnels elsewhere. However, TBC does get into details of how it wants to improve tunnels. Musk's companies tend to excel in finding fields where technical innovation has gone slack, and the manifesto notes that "the construction industry is one of the only sectors in our economy that has not improved its productivity in the last 50 years." While productivity is difficult to gauge in the construction industry—the nature of building projects can differ wildly from one another—the general data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics offers credence to The Boring Company's claims. Source Regardless of any offhand comments President Trump may have made suggesting his administration wants NASA to fast-track a manned mission to Mars — "We want to try and do that during my first term or, at worst, during my second term," he said during a conversation with astronauts last month — technological and fiscal realities suggest that NASA won't be fielding such a mission any time in the foreseeable future. But if SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has his way, SpaceX could conceivably launch a robotic mission to Mars in 2020 followed by a crewed mission as soon as 2024, before a theoretical second Trump term expires. And that is much sooner than NASA's goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s. While experts agree that such an ambitious mission in such a short timeframe is unlikely, Musk and SpaceX have defied consensus before. Given the somewhat unlikely rapport that's developed between the Tesla and SpaceX founder and President Trump — Musk made two trips to Trump Tower preinauguration, where both Mars and public-private partnerships were reportedly discussed — the idea that SpaceX might be the first to put human footprints on Mars seems less remote than it did a year ago. So why is Elon Musk so eager to colonize the Red Planet? After all, at 95 percent carbon dioxide, its atmosphere is inhospitable to life, and its harsh climate nearly uninhabitable for humans. Getting there is also a dangerous months-long spaceflight gambit. Nonetheless, Musk has said it's essential to become an interplanetary species lest humans face eventual extinction on Earth, and he believes his company can lead the way off our planet. Musk's ultimate vision is a Martian city of thousands if not millions of people — one that will require thousands of round-trips and 40 to 100 years to realize. But he's determined to make this vision a reality, first by sending a Dragon 2 capsule to Mars in 2020 — to test out landing procedures, scout locations for future landings and try out technologies needed to land larger, heavier equipment on the Martian surface — and then again every 27 months as SpaceX transports tons of equipment to the Martian surface. But this vision also presents a unique set of challenges. Before SpaceX can land its first manned mission on the Red Planet, engineers need to develop the company's planned Interplanetary Transport System, a two-part vehicle combining the most powerful rocket ever built, and a massive spacecraft designed to carry at least 100 people to Mars per flight. After hauling the spaceship into Earth orbit, the ITS rocket will return to Earth, where it or another rocket will then carry a fuel tanker into orbit to rendezvous with and fuel up the orbiting spaceship (which will initially launch with very little fuel on board so it can carry more people and cargo). Once fueled, the spaceship will light its own thrusters — nine of the Raptor engines SpaceX successfully test-fired for the first time in September — and blast off toward Mars. Musk expects the ITS spaceship to make the trip in just 80 days, far shy of the six to nine months it currently takes spacecraft to travel to Mars. After making a retro-rocket-assisted soft landing on the Martian surface, this crew would begin constructing habitats and a propellant plant that would allow for the refueling of spacecraft to launch back to Earth, closing the transportation loop and allowing for regular transit to and from the Martian surface aboard the reusable spacecraft. Source | ||
{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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zatic
Zurich15205 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force expects a replacement for the Delta 4 Heavy rocket will be ready by 2023, with one of several vehicles under development able to take its place, Gen. Jay Raymond, head of Air Force Space Command, told a House committee May 19. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee, Raymond said that the Air Force expects to have uninterrupted access to heavy launch for national security missions. Several companies have heavy-lift vehicles in development, including SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn, that could replace the Delta 4 Heavy built by United Launch Alliance. The Air Force has purchased launches on seven more Delta 4 Heavy rockets, Raymond said, though one launch will be a NASA mission. The final launch is scheduled for 2023. “We’re comfortable that we will have a new capability online that will be able to support the requirements going forward,” Raymond said. The Air Force also has three more Delta 4 Medium rockets left, with the last launch scheduled for 2019. National Reconnaissance Office Director Betty Sapp told members of Congress that heavy launch is “essential to my mission” of launching spy satellites and other intelligence assets. There is still time, Sapp said, to see how replacements develop before the U.S. needs to make a definitive decision on retiring the Delta 4. Source | ||
LegalLord
United Kingdom13774 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
Boeing and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are collaborating to design, build and test a technology demonstration vehicle for the Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program. Boeing will develop an autonomous, reusable spaceplane capable of carrying and deploying a small expendable upper stage to launch small (3,000 pound/1,361 kg) satellites into low Earth orbit. Boeing and DARPA will jointly invest in the development. Once the spaceplane - called Phantom Express - reaches the edge of space, it would deploy the second stage and return to Earth. It would then land on a runway to be prepared for its next flight by applying operation and maintenance principles similar to modern aircraft. "Phantom Express is designed to disrupt and transform the satellite launch process as we know it today, creating a new, on-demand space-launch capability that can be achieved more affordably and with less risk," said Darryl Davis, president, Boeing Phantom Works. The Aerojet Rocketdyne AR-22 engine, a version of the legacy Space Shuttle main engine, would power the spaceplane. It is designed to be reusable and operates using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel. Phantom Express would offer an advanced airframe design as well as third-generation thermal protection to create a vehicle capable of flying at high flight velocity, while carrying a smaller, more affordable expendable upper stage to achieve the mission objectives. In the test phase of the program, Boeing and DARPA plan to conduct a demonstration of 10 flights over 10 days. Source | ||
{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13774 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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Yurie
11526 Posts
On June 01 2017 20:50 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/870242779942748160 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKTWxyRZqDE&feature=youtu.be&t=3h30m29s s mounted on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for blastoff at 5:55:51 p.m. EDT (2155:51 GMT) Thursday from launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Video is for 3h:30 and talks about Mars journey and a bit about SpaceX I guess. Then moves on to Blackbird, Australian space and what will happen in 10 years. (Does not link to right time for me when I click in the forum.) | ||
{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13774 Posts
spaceflightnow.com | ||
LegalLord
United Kingdom13774 Posts
SpaceX Techs Pressured To Fake Rocket-Part Tests, Jury Told By Bonnie Eslinger Law360, Los Angeles (May 24, 2017, 10:37 PM EDT) -- A SpaceX employee testified Wednesday in his California wrongful firing trial that he told a human resources official that managers were pressuring workers to falsify test documents, and he wanted to talk to CEO Elon Musk directly “because managers were blocking my feedback on this.” Jason Blasdell worked as a SpaceX technician from November 2010 until April 2014, testing avionics components of the Falcon 9 rocket, and received positive performance reviews, according to his suit. That changed after he told company officials, including CEO Elon Musk, that technicians were being pressured to deviate from test procedures, falsify the results and sign off on the improper testing, according to his complaint. On the second day of his Los Angeles trial, Blasdell testified that about six months before his firing he spoke to Human Resources Manager Carla Suarez and told her that he was having difficulties with his supervisors. “I told her that in the avionics test lab that managers had been pressuring us, pressuring me, to falsify test documents. And that management is trying to point to me as being the problem instead of acknowledging and discussing actual falsification of documents as being the real problem,” Blasdell told jurors. “I told Carla because of that. it was important that I speak to Elon Musk personally because managers were blocking my feedback on this.” Blasdell added that by this time he had already moved up the chain of command with his testing concerns, including meeting with company President Gwynne Shotwell. The former SpaceX worker’s attorney, Carney Shegerian of Shegerian & Associates Inc., asked the plaintiff if he felt that by falsifying test results he was violating the law. “Absolutely,” Blasdell said. His supervisors would chastise him, Blasdell testified, saying other technicians weren’t having problems completing and signing off on the tests. “It wasn’t because I was incapable or lacked knowledge or experience in performing the test. It was, I was adhering to company rules as difficult as it was,” Blasdell said. “I knew I’d get negative attention for it. I tried to convey to them, I’m not the problem. We have a bigger problem.” The worker said he was particularly concerned because SpaceX had begun working on rockets under a NASA contract and company employees had been told to carefully document their testing. During opening statements, Shegerian called SpaceX a “very ambitious company” that was growing quickly, cutting corners and having “significant issues in terms of documenting testing procedures” on its rocket parts. Although the parts were failing the tests for various reasons, “the defendant would require, by pushing and cajoling, 'just pass anyway,’” Shegerian said of SpaceX. When Blasdell — who Shegerian said had been extensively trained in aviation electronics as a Marine — became concerned about SpaceX’s testing procedures, he did what the company’s ethics code required and brought his observations to his higher-ups, according to Shegerian. Company officials responded by labeling him “disruptive,” “a chronic complainer,” “troubled” and insubordinate, jurors were told. Jurors were shown an email in which a manager told Blasdell that it “took a lot of balls to go out on a limb like you did,” but asked him to keep their discussion confidential, “since it could result in my termination.” When Blasdell sat down with Shotwell to explained to her how the test results failed the company president told him not to tell Musk. “Her exact words were, ‘Don't tell Elon, do not tell Elon. If he finds out about this, we will all get fired’,” Shegerian said. Source | ||
{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States40989 Posts
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