Check out this trolling: the final sentence of the article says "AXE astronauts may even beat their SpaceX counterparts to microgravity" (in an XCOR Lynx rocketplane). As in Axe body spray. Uh huh.
This is trolling because
a) that's a suborbital spaceplane (which the mention, but don't emphasize), which is obviously a much lower bar
b) the Lynx Mk I hasn't even started flight tests yet, as far as I can tell from their press releases
c) really, if they want to talk about suborbital space tourism (which is what the Lynx is), isn't Virgin Galactic the market leader here? probably?
d) you really think that if SpaceX wants to do crewed orbits by 2015, they won't be booking time on a Vomit Comet long before then (and thus logging microgravity time)? seriously?
Yeah, that seems to be the case. Manned flight is a massive step forward though. It's not just a matter of making sure everything they have today works well enough if people are on board, they still have critical systems that they still have to develop first! They still need to finish, then test and certify those second generation draco thrusters that would be used as the launch-abort system for instance.
The craziest part is that I think they can actually do it.
It says in this article that they've already scheduled a launch abort test, which presumably involves a Dragon capsule with the SuperDraco escape thrusters. So things are going really fast.
How do you figure? Were they willing to tolerate some risk, they could have done it successfully two years ago. The only thing standing in their way are the engineering challenges needed to reduce the risk to levels that they consider acceptable, and they seem to have a firm handle on what that entails and how to achieve it.
I think it goes to show the incredible depth of engineering in the U.S. to go from start in 2002 to humans in 2015, 13 years, with all new tools, designs, engineering and manufacture with so few people and such little monetary investment. It's astonishing...
They're creating plenty, no doubt, but Musk talks admiringly of Apollo and how valuable the experimentation and open designs of that era have been for SpaceX. It allowed them to focus on a much smaller design space.
Unfortunately, I can't find a good source for it (I remember reading an interview with Musk where he talked about it). I think everyone recognizes that they are standing on the shoulders of giants and says so frequently.
Interestingly, the Soyuz and Apollo programs, although their missions were similar, differed significantly in engineering culture. I heard a story about the Soyuz-NASA collaboration that lead up to the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo%E2%80%93Soyuz_Test_Proje...): NASA engineers met with Soyuz engineers and asked for engineering specifications, but the Soyuz engineers couldn't give them (or maybe they just weren't very detailed) because most things were in people's heads rather than documented. The Russians were iterative and practical, and had very robust systems, but they were not nearly as formal as the NASA blokes.
In the end, I wonder if that lack of careful documentation on Soyuz' part diminished its long-term helpfulness? Or did they later record their designs more carefully? I would be curious to know. Apollo documents are apparently available for aspiring rocket builders. Hurray for openness in publicly funded research.
Let's hope they land humans on the Moon and Mars in the next 13 years. Elon has much more capital now than back in 2002. They are the most likely company to settle space.
SpaceX has the lowest costs of any launch provider, and within about 2 years they will have the greatest capabilities in launch vehicles with the addition of the Falcon Heavy. That combination has already allowed them to gain an impressive amount of launch contracts, fulfilling those contracts successfully ought to cement them as the most favored launch provider in the world. And the combination of low internal costs and high volume will likely translate into a profit windfall of the sort that we are more accustomed to seeing from dot coms. Based on every indication they will use that windfall to finance R&D on even more audacious plans such as super heavy lift rockets and the colonization of Mars.
> The idea is for NASA’s commercial partners to demonstrate the safety and operability of the new craft on their own employees before the agency risks its astronauts.
The keywords here seem to be 'risks ITS astronauts'. With all the money they (rightly) have spend on human safety in an outer space environment they now assume somebody else will do it for them? This confuses me to no end.
So it's like getting test drivers for space vehicles now. Oh my, times sure have changed...
Their current work is under contract to NASA; they're one of three private companies developing spacecraft for possible future use in ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station. (The other two are Boeing and the Sierra Nevada corporation, a defense contractor.)
Other possible markets would include space tourism and research trips to private space stations, along the lines of what Bigelow Aerospace is trying to develop.
As to governments other than the US, SpaceX could probably sell launch services, but it would be a lot harder for them to sell the rockets (or, probably, spacecraft) to foreign governments. A lot of that technology comes under fairly tight arms trading regulations (for good reason; any launch vehicle can be transformed into an ICBM by reprogramming the guidance system).
Yeah, no. Elon Musk should instead focus on fixing the Peaks that will make the Almighty Industrial Revolution look like a blip on the easel of the history of history. Space travel, cars and the Internet has no future beyond the next 10~ years. Possibly shorter if the financial paradigm falls sooner.
* Peak oil, gas, coal, phosphorous, rare earth metals, uranium, copper, iron und su weiter.
No, because even if we got more of those (and fossil fuels, the most crucial component of our "prosperous" Western societies aren't available from the skies) we wouldn't solve the most conspicuous problem: growth. Billions will die in this century, world pop will plummet to ~ 0.5 billion and the Internet, cars and all such trivialities will vanish.
The first step? Stopping the senseless notion we will ever get off this rock and implement a "reduce, reuse, recycle and do without" paradigm akin to world war 2 rationing, will be the first step.
Batteries can't be an alternative because:
1) They need fossil fuels and finite minerals/metals to be manufactured and transported
2) The EROEI is way less
The earth had plenty of room and resources before we "decided" (we didn't, we're humans, like yeast we try to consume everything in our path until the overshoot is apparent and we collapse) that 7-9 billion people and American 1000 gallon a year per capita lifestyles were viable. Haha, what folly.
Club of Rome tried to warn, but since we wanted growth, collapse is what "we" "deserve". Thanks former generations for not heeding the rational advice.
This is trolling because
a) that's a suborbital spaceplane (which the mention, but don't emphasize), which is obviously a much lower bar
b) the Lynx Mk I hasn't even started flight tests yet, as far as I can tell from their press releases
c) really, if they want to talk about suborbital space tourism (which is what the Lynx is), isn't Virgin Galactic the market leader here? probably?
d) you really think that if SpaceX wants to do crewed orbits by 2015, they won't be booking time on a Vomit Comet long before then (and thus logging microgravity time)? seriously?