SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1208/03ccicap/spacex.html

by natep • 14 years ago

564 180 14 years ago

Has SpaceX gotten a contract to manufacture the ship according to NASA's preset specifications, or has it been hired to design and manufacture a ship that fulfills NASA's requirements?

ceejayoz6• 14 years ago

Dragon is already designed to fit their requirements, IIRC.

javanix• 14 years ago

According to http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttl... each Shuttle launch cost about $450 million.

This contract amount seems to suggest that SpaceX launches will come in significantly lower than the Shuttle - a very good sign for continued space research.

dfriedmn• 14 years ago

One of Musk's original goals was to do it 10x cheaper, and accd to his recent discussion with NPR, he's already at 1/8th of the cost(1). What an amazing accomplishment. 1. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/18/153015277/on-eve-of-launch-spa...

codex• 14 years ago

This speaks more to the colossal clusterfuck that was the overengineered, unreliable Space Shuttle program. Doing it 10x cheaper than the Russians would be a real accomplishment.

erikpukinskis• 14 years ago

I commend SpaceX for the work they've done to reduce the costs, but it's not particularly fair to compare to the Shuttle program for several reasons:

1) SpaceX employs engineers who worked on the Shuttle, thus getting all of their lessons learned for free.

2) SpaceX gets to use facilities NASA built, like launchpads and testing facilities much more cheaply than if they had to build their own facilities. They tested their heat shields at NASA Ames, for example.

3) Everything is cheaper now. Not just raw materials, but imagine the cost savings when every engineer has a (Shuttle Era) supercomputer on their desk. Testing is dramatically less expensive.

4) Everything is better now. The (NASA developed) heat shields are much higher performance than those available in the Shuttle era. The level of computer control is much more sophisticated. Better technology means you can do more with less.

In short, SpaceX has massive, massive advantages over the original Shuttle team. I would hope that they could do more, more safely, at less cost.

danielweber5• 14 years ago

Wiki says the inflation adjusted cost for the whole program was $196 Billion. At 135 flights, that's more than a Billion dollars per flight.

No wonder we've been stuck.

chucknelson• 14 years ago

Good for them - let's hope more commercial space companies appear in the next decade.

ColinWright• 14 years ago

The SpaceX announcement: http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20120803

beambot• 14 years ago

SpaceX is just one part of this program... As part of the new agreements, Sierra Nevada will receive $212.5 million, SpaceX will receive $440 million, and Boeing will receive $460 million.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/08/03/nasa-awards-11-bil...

branola• 14 years ago

Sierra Nevada will receive $212.5 million

Didn't realize beer was such an integral part of space exploration.

AgentConundrum• 14 years ago

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

austenallred• 14 years ago

I'm impressed that there's $440M left in NASA (or over $1 Billion with Sierra Nevada and Boeing included) to fund a new space shuttle, somehow I was under the false impression that there wouldn't be any more of that type of thing.

Hats off, Elon Musk. Hats. Off.

ceejayoz6• 14 years ago

It's not really funding a new space shuttle. It's essentially NASA buying seats on the human-rated version of the existing Dragon capsule.

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

True. It's not like they'll be launching a Hubble with Dragon.

JPKab• 14 years ago

It's a travesty that Boeing got more than SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada got any money at all. I can't wait to see those two bloated, horrifically managed behemoths fail miserable with the money. The only reason NASA gave them anything was to shut up the congressman Boeing and Sierra have in their pockets. Remember this, because SpaceX, with slightly less money than Boeing, will produce FAR, FAR more.

zcvosdfdgj• 14 years ago

Sierra Nevada and SpaceX have almost the same number of employees. So not sure why you think they're bloated and SpaceX isn't.

Personally I'm happy NASA spread the money around. The last thing we need is the government to simply build another Boeing or Lockheed. And by that I mean: if SpaceX has 100% of the market because of NASAs funding, I fully expect them to stop competing on price (at some point).

lutorm3• 14 years ago

Well, someone said "with the Boeing overhead, that's like them getting half the money that SpaceX got"... ;-)

samstave2• 14 years ago

Musk is the most interesting man in the valley. This is awesome! Congrats to SpaceX!

Donwangugi• 14 years ago

He lives in Bel Air

samstave2• 14 years ago

Thanks, I didn't know that - but I am using "the valley" loosely here to refer to the entire tech sector.

ChuckMcM3• 14 years ago

He must have meant the San Fernando Valley :-)

droithomme4• 14 years ago

"the Falcon 9-Dragon combination will be the safest spacecraft ever developed"

Oh I wish they hadn't said that, they said the same thing about the Titanic.

jlgreco5• 14 years ago

Well, they said the Titanic would be unsinkable, not less sinkable than previously developed ships.

droithomme4• 14 years ago

Actually White Star claimed it was "designed to be unsinkable", not that it was. And this was after describing a long list of safety features.

It's a very dangerous attitude, to claim a priori that your design is safer. The Titanic was so safe that it was not necessary to carry enough life boats for all the passengers. That's how safe it was. Once your focus is on the incredible confidence you have in the safety of your design, it's not on actual safety anymore, it's on making bold and confident advertising claims. It's hubris and there's a long history of what follows from it.

bengl3rt• 14 years ago

$440M is pocket change compared to what the first shuttle cost and it is a small fraction compared to what I imagine a new one might cost. If they can pull it off, though, huge kudos to them.

btilly11• 14 years ago

It is easy to use superlatives like "safest rocket ever designed". But a lot of stuff can go wrong - fast - when you're sitting on a big pile of potential explosives that under other circumstances you'd keep a safe distance from. Until they actually achieve it, you shouldn't throw the superlatives around.

I will be the first to applaud if SpaceX achieves this goal. I am certain that they want to achieve this goal. But when you look at previous launch vehicles from existing agencies that had over 100 launches, their launch failure rate vary from 1.4% (the Space Shuttle) to 14% (US Atlas) with the Russian Soyuz and European Ariane both coming in somewhere around 5%. SpaceX would have to improve on existing rocket designs by several orders of magnitude just to get to a pretty crappy safety record.

So far SpaceX has had 8 launches with 5 consecutive successes. The initial failures were clearly part of the learning process. But their current string of successes does not provide any statistical evidence that they will prove to be safer in the long run than even the worst major rocket program. Sure they plan to be safe. But safety is based on seeing what happens, not what they planned to have happen.

In this light it is worth reviewing http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roger... to see how safe people thought that the Space Shuttle would be. Initial estimates of the safety of a launch went from 1/100 to 1/100,000 with the riskier estimates coming from lower level engineers and the safer ones coming from upper management. Whenever you see numbers in the press, it is guaranteed that they represent the view from the top. We should therefore assume that they will prove to be shockingly optimistic until there is concrete data.

ceejayoz6• 14 years ago

> It is easy to use superlatives like "safest rocket ever designed". But a lot of stuff can go wrong - fast - when you're sitting on a big pile of potential explosives that under other circumstances you'd keep a safe distance from. Until they actually achieve it, you shouldn't throw the superlatives around.

This claim revolves more around the fact that the rocket can do a powered abort at any time, I think. It's purely liquid fueled, with full ability to shut off and restart the engines. They're also designing the capsule to land on rockets, meaning it won't need to aim at a runway or water - any flat area will do.

natep15• 14 years ago

It also revolves around the fact that it's a comparison to other rockets, not any mode of transport imaginable.

btilly11• 14 years ago

So what you're telling me is that they have a more sophisticated system than previous ones with sophisticated backups. When it comes to reliability sophisticated can go either way - it can be better or can just give more things than can go wrong. For instance what happens on your vertical landing if a sensor malfunction causes the software to decide that the rocket is not vertical unless it is at a 20% tilt? (Don't laugh - based on the description that Elon gave in an interview, the failure of their third launch was due to a sensor that concluded they were in high in the atmosphere while they were still on the ground. Bad things happened when it tried to initiate rocket separation on the launch pad.)

Until you have actual experience with the weird stuff that goes wrong in the field, you do not really know what is going to go wrong. And the more complicated the system is, the more true this fact is.

Incidentally I had the opportunity at one point to ask the first software developer ever hired at SpaceX whether he would trust his own software. His answer was enlightening, I wouldn't want to put my life in the hands of someone who trusted his own software, so I'm going to say no.

There is always SOMETHING that can go wrong. You want the person who created your safety system to be a paranoid freak. And you have to pray that they didn't miss something. You hope and pray for the best, but until you have actual data, you don't know how it is going to turn out.

pdubs2• 14 years ago

I have to say, watching the Dragon rocket abort the launch after the engines were firing and before the rocket left the pad was one of the more impressive things I've seen.

physcab2• 14 years ago

This is a pretty important observation. I will applaud SpaceX for their efforts as well, but there is a massive difference between transporting cargo into space and human beings.

SpaceX claims their transport is cheaper but they have not claimed it is safer. If they are really aiming for the human transportation business I wonder if the true cost of their rocket ships will be much more on par with existing vehicles. I'm sure they have taken advantage of some optimizations and efficiencies in new technologies and materials. But I also believe one of the reasons the other rockets are so much more expensive is not because they are relying on old technology, but having to satisfy much more stringent government regulations regarding safety, testing, and quality control. The ATLAS V has had 100% Mission Success and that does not come cheaply.

natep15• 14 years ago

From TFA: "This is a decisive milestone in human spaceflight and sets an exciting course for the next phase of American space exploration," said SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk. "SpaceX, along with our partners at NASA, will continue to push the boundaries of space technology to develop the safest, most advanced crew vehicle ever flown."

So yes, he is claiming it is the safest, and I think he has good reason to, as your sibling comments explain.

netfire• 14 years ago

I'm curious to know how this compares to other new aircraft testing, since there are already plenty of commercial companies in that space. Admittedly, spacecraft is a a bit different from normal aircraft, but something going horribly wrong in either situation still means almost certain death.

ballooney5• 14 years ago

It's a whole nuther ballgame for commercial airliners, for example. They undergo hundreds of test flights and all manner of subsystem tests before getting certification.

Of course rockets are single use. Most rocket designs will never fly even half the number of test program flights a commercial airliner has to undergo. The cost would be (hohoho) astronomical.

A lot of the reliability estimates of spacecraft are really high speculative, and that's a very polite euphemism. I know personally a few people at Nasa involved in human spaceflight, and they say, in unguarded moments at the end of a long day, things like 'well... what the hell does 'man rated' actually mean anyway? does anyone know?'. No one does. Obviously to say 'it will be 99.9% reliable' is very odd - who is going to pay for the several thousand tests required to make a statement like that with any confidence? So yes, take all talk of safety, especially quantitatively, with a pinch of salt.

Interestingly the Skylon (reusable) Spaceplane is down to be qualified to the same standards as a commercial airliner. That might yield some data.

slurgfest2• 14 years ago

There is a very important distinction between "launch failure" and "exploded rocket." MERELY failing to launch is safe. I am normally failing to launch while sitting in my chair. If they can lick the "exploded rocket" issue by substituting it with a mere "failure to launch" then that is great.

CamperBob23• 14 years ago

As the SpaceX president put it, it's an "abort" if you get to try again, and a "failure" if you don't.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

> It is easy to use superlatives like "safest rocket ever designed"

Well... Considering its predecessor, the shuttle, was one of the least safe rockets ever designed, it's not very hard to improve upon. Use multiple engines, avoid solid rockets (at least the ones that cannot be throttled down), mount your heatshield where nothing crashes on it, keep it simple...

btilly11• 14 years ago

Considering its predecessor, the shuttle, was one of the least safe rockets ever designed...

According to http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/000940.html as of 2003, the space shuttle had the best safety record of any rocket design that had been flown to space at least 100x.

That fact would argue strongly against your claim.

gvb• 14 years ago

From TFA, SpaceX will demonstrate the launch escape system both static on the launch pad and at max dynamic pressure (worst case in-flight).

It looks like the Apollo system had good abort coverage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_abort_modes

The shuttle could not pass the tests that SpaceX will demonstrate. Post-Challenger, it was substantially improved, but still had survivability gaps and questions whether the some of the abort modes were truly survivable (especially under the more severe conditions). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Post-...

The best the astronauts could do on the launch pad was a "zip line" escape http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/american_studies/how_t... (with scary pictures: http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum30/HTML/001111.html).

While the SRBs were burning, the shuttle could not abort at all. This is the ascent period when the Challenger was lost.

After the SRBs detached, there were several options to abort, all of them assuming the shuttle was mostly functional. For the first four shuttle launches, the shuttle had ejection seats so the astronauts (two, anyway :-O) could escape a crippled shuttle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes

InclinedPlane7• 14 years ago

Here's why it's likely the manned Dragon capsule will be one of the safest manned spacecraft in history.

First, the Falcon 9 so far has a 100% success rate. The rocket engines are designed to be able to handle having a stainless steel nut pass through the fuel lines without shutting down. More so the vehicle is designed to be able to withstand an engine exploding, even at launch, without damaging the other engines and without preventing the launcher from reaching orbit. And the vehicle has already demonstrated the ability to safely abort on the pad after all the engines have been started.

Second, the launch escape system for the Dragon will be far more capable than anything that's been developed before. Instead of using a separate, heavy solid fueled tractor rocket like Apollo or Soyuz an integrated liquid fueled rocket system will be used. This will provide full escape coverage from the launch pad all the way to orbit, which no manned launcher in history has had. Additionally, the escape rocket will have a high level of redundancy.

Third, the advanced thermal protective system, simple capsule design, and robust drogue and parachute system make atmospheric reentry a lot less risky than, say, the space shuttle or even Soyuz capsules.

Fourth, before a human ever gets in a SpaceX capsule the launch escape system will already have been demonstrated on unmanned launches. By then the confidence in the system should be enormously high.

It's always possible to miscalculate or ignore risk, but SpaceX is doing a tremendous job to increase the reliability of their launcher and to make their manned capsule fundamentally safe by design.

Cushman• 14 years ago

> More so the vehicle is designed to be able to withstand an engine exploding, even at launch, without damaging the other engines and without preventing the launcher from reaching orbit.

That is absolutely incredible. Gives new meaning to the phrase "over-engineered" (and not in a bad way).

Do you know off the top of your head what's the failure rate for a generic launch? How much is it saying that the Falcon is at 100% so far?

neurotech13• 14 years ago

> Here's why it's likely the manned Dragon capsule will be one of the safest manned spacecraft in history.

Lets not forget that the two shuttle accidents were as much about a human factors failure, as a systems failure. Make no mistake about it, If a company like SpaceX ever got complacent about safety, it is game over. They will not get a second chance. Remember McDonald-Douglas, and how many DC-10 accidents, that basically forced the company out of the airliner business.

The Launch Escape System on a Soyuz capsule has been used once, in 1983 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_T-10-1

nhangen• 14 years ago

You speak as though you are not a fan of SpaceX. Care to explain why?

btilly11• 14 years ago

I actually am a fan of SpaceX.

But I am not a fan of using as yet unproven superlatives. They will have a failure rate. They will have a fatality rate. The only question is what that rate will be. And right now we have no useful data on that.

adastra• 14 years ago

Ignore the launch statistics. Only one thing matters: SpaceX is hiring the top grads of the top aerospace engineering schools, and no one else even comes close. There's a Michigan professor who said every year he keeps track of his top "rock star" students to see where they end up, and the last couple of years almost all of them have gone to work at SpaceX. We're talking the top 1% of aerospace engineers of the top schools for aerospace: MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Purdue, Michigan, etc. etc. Elon is getting them all. That is why he will succeed, and you can take it to the bank.

mbpp• 14 years ago

Why does the safety of manned space flights get so much attention? Last time I checked the AIDS or malaria weren't cured. Perhaps those interested in fatality rates should divert their attention to Africa and give SpaceX more breathing space. It's not like there's going to be a shortage of astronauts.

Elon Musk: There must be some ability to experiment to advance the state of the art. In the early days of aviation there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate. We don't want that — the public would not be accepting — but by the same token we can't have a situation where no deaths are ever allowed, because that would put innovation in a coffin too. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-mo...

JoeCortopassi2• 14 years ago

Every time I see something like a rocket or space shuttle launch, I can't help but wonder how much of the weight and cost could be saved using alternative methods. Even helium/hydrogen filled balloons could get them a good chunk of the way there. I know that would be horribly impractical for something the size of the shuttle and it's rocket boosters/fuel tanks, but if a balloon rig can get them to 120,000 ft they have gotten 15% of the way there (and overcome initial inertia) for pennys, and could probably shed a lot of weight that it normally uses to overcome those first 20 miles or so. Plus, at 120,000ft, gravity has already dropped from something like 9.8 newtons (sea level) to 9.68 (120,000ft). This might not seem like much, but it a good chunk of the way to the 9newtons that the Space Shuttle normally orbits at, and has to allow them to shed even more weight.

I'm obviously not an astro-physicist, physicist, or even that smart of a guy. I just can't help but think there are more efficient ways to get past 100,000ft without brute forcing the problem with rockets

comicjk• 14 years ago

Assuming the balloon itself has zero mass, every cubic meter of hydrogen in your balloon can lift a maximum 30 grams of payload. For the 2000 ton space shuttle, that's sixty million cubic meters - a spherical balloon half a kilometer in diameter. There's a reason we don't launch rockets with balloons.

There are practical non-rocket ideas, though, such as the Verne Gun: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/150-kiloton-nuclear-verne-g...

eavc• 14 years ago

I've seen this idea on Reddit before, and it was explained that the issue of getting to orbit has nothing to do with altitude and everything to do with velocity.

You can be a great deal farther away from the Earth than orbital altitudes, but if you're not actually orbiting, you're going to fall directly toward the surface.

jonmrodriguez• 14 years ago

Getting upward isn't the problem. It's acquiring the massive horizontal speed required to orbit that is more energy expensive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Launch.2Flanding

alpine12• 14 years ago

The higher you are, the greater your tangential velocity to the ground. Launching a rocket from the top of Mount Everest vs a beach on the Dead Sea is cheaper in terms of energy required to attain a given altitude.

derekp7• 14 years ago

The job of the rockets isn't to gain height (that is a side effect), unless you are working with a sub-orbital design. The job is to accelerate the payload to around Mach 25 or so. The reason this is challenging is that you not only have to accelerate the payload, you also have to accelerate the fuel, fuel tanks, engines, and other associated hardware too. Which is why the promising techs mostly revolve around using less fuel (such as rail launch for the initial oomph), or something like scram jet for the first stage (they part of the fuel and reaction mass comes from the atmosphere for the first few Mach). Or something that has very small fuel amounts, and only caries reaction mass (nuclear with H2O as the reaction mass).

alpine12• 14 years ago

Actually, the job of the rocket is to to increase the potential energy of the payload, so using a He balloon to put some distance between the rocket/payload package and the ground is an entirely sensible proposition.

learc832• 14 years ago

However, air density is lower the higher you go--allowing for easier acceleration.

jessriedel2• 14 years ago

I did the back-of-the envelope calculation a while ago, and if I recall, 5-10% of the energy used goes toward altitude, with the rest going towards horizontal velocity (modulo a bit of air resistance).

natep15• 14 years ago

I don't know if balloons are practical, but that's the general idea of the Pegasus rocket, although it never achieved the cost savings they were hoping for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_%28rocket%29

ballooney5• 14 years ago

This is not the disruption you're looking for. Every launch you're throwing away the entire machine. People keep coming up with the pithy 'imagine how expensive a transatlantic ticket would be if ditched the 747 into the sea at the end of every flight' but it's precisely true. Fuel costs hardly anything, the cost is of these fantastically advanced but single use machines.

So, make them properly reusable (not just rebuildable, not just reusable only say 5 times, able to turn around and fly again within a week) and you will change everything.

To my knowledge there's only sat launcher in the world that's working towards this, (the Skylon Space Plane) but that's probably 10 years and a few billion dollars away.

I don't know how reusable SpaceX's grasshopper efforts will be (as I intimated above there's reusable and then there's reusable). But I watch with fascination!

btilly11• 14 years ago

There are companies trying to do that as well. For instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship describes one where an airship that is part blimp, part fixed wing follows a trajectory where first it is lifted by being lighter than air, then it gets lift from moving fast through thin air, then it gets lift from being near orbital velocity.

Theoretically they should be able to get things in orbit very cheaply compared to rockets. So far those technologies have not worked in practice.

danielweber5• 14 years ago

If we're working on the laws of physics, things like that win.

But in space launch, the laws of engineering have tended to be more important. A very reliable reusable rocket is probably going to be a better investment of the marginal dollar than any kind of air launch.

(Unless you are going all the way to things like Stratolaunch, which is riding SpaceX's rocket reliability. The mothership ought to be quite reusable, but building the biggest wing ever in history is going to be a tall engineering order. It remains to be seen which way wins out in the end.)

Florin_Andrei• 14 years ago

The ARCA team, one of the competitors in the Google Lunar X Prize, had the same idea. I'm not sure if they're following the same design now, or whether they changed it.

http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/teams/arca

JoeCortopassi2• 14 years ago

My comment sparks a legitimate discussion, is on topic, and I get downvoted? My apologies for not knowing the finer points of why orbiting vehicles need to gain velocity instead of altitude...

filipncs• 14 years ago

So where does this leave Blue Origin?

There's been almost no news since last year, and they weren't included in this round of funding.

catshirt2• 14 years ago

with that money they could have built a whole 4/10ths of an instagram though

archangel_one• 14 years ago

No, they could have bought 4/10 of an Instagram. Building it cost a lot less.

catshirt2• 14 years ago

you're right, but that doesn't sound any better

ahsteele• 14 years ago

To set an infinite value on the life of an astronaut is to set both the goals of the space exploration effort and the needs of the rest of humanity at naught.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astrona...

hammock2• 14 years ago

So SpaceX is now officially a government contractor. This may be the beginning of the end for them. Can we name any govt contractor with a $400MM contract that has stayed true to its entrepreneurial principles and not fallen into the rent-seeking abyss?

natep15• 14 years ago

They already have a contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the ISS, and the first mission was a success. I'm not worried.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-05-25/us/us_spacex_1_spacex-dra...

ballooney5• 14 years ago

As others point out, they've been funded by the US taxpayer, mostly via Nasa and a bit by the DoD, almost entirely (before this announcement it was about 80% US taxpayer, not sure what that would be now, but more) so far. There are not many other places you can go if you want to get that kind of money.

Maybe they should release an app that puts some filters on your photographs.

hammock2• 14 years ago

No one's ruled out the idea that they may be the exception to the rule. Nevertheless we can't name any other contractor that has done what you say they are doing, for very long without sliding into rent-seeking.

learc832• 14 years ago

From their previous contracts, unlike other contractors SpaceX is responsible for any cost overruns.

stcredzero5• 14 years ago

From what I understand, they also did a phenomenally good job of making the uploading slick.

alpine12• 14 years ago

I would hate to see SpaceX become an acquisition of NASA, or a nationalised company of the US Federal Government. Stranger things have happened, of course, but if Musk wants to retire to Mars, he had best be concerned with this.

natep15• 14 years ago

By what mechanism, exactly do you think this will happen? He has no plans to sell. He'd like to go to Mars himself, but not if he doesn't think the mission of SpaceX would continue without him. So...that leaves it becoming 'a nationalised company of the US Federal Government"....aka, the gov't takes it over by force? How likely do you really think that is? It only took over Ford because they were bankrupt, so all he needs to worry about is not going bankrupt, which I'm sure he's thought of already.

alpine12• 14 years ago

He has no plans to sell

It is a brave man that gets in to bed with the government thinking he can withstand the intolerable pressure they can bring, if they decide, to bend his will.

Nationalisation...

How likely do you really think that is?

Surely, it is for the oracles to strike a claim on future events, but when you consider gold confiscation in the 1930s, oil nationalisation in the 1950s, the absurd nationalisations of the 1970s, and the crony-saving bail outs of the 'Too Big to Fails' in recent years, it is obvious, I would think, that politicians are happy to corrupt the free market when it benefits their short term interests.

joshuahedlund• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure I've read (though I could be wrong) that SpaceX is already profitable from contracts to launch commercial satellites, even without NASA's budget dollars.

alpine12• 14 years ago

That's wonderful - the more private contracts they win the better - and the brighter all private space initiatives will hopefully be. Unfortunately, accepting several million dollars from the US government leaves SpaceX (and other Musk ventures) vulnerable to government meddling. When the government starts to meddle in your business, they are the ones that decide where to stop. You cede control of your company's destiny often when you accept the first cheque.

rwhitman• 14 years ago

Eventually one of these private space companies will have a highly public, challenger-type disaster. I wonder if a startup like SpaceX could survive something like that.

ChuckMcM3• 14 years ago

Kind of depends on ratios apparently. Not to pick on Airbus but they have had planes drop out of the sky over the ocean, plow into the ground at an air show, and run out of gas mid flight. But they have survived. Most of their planes have worked fine.

If SpaceX has 500 successful launches and one blows up and kills everyone on board, it will be sad, but it wont kill them, it might not even hurt their stock if they couldn't have avoided it.

That is a long way of saying the answer is that they probably won't have an issue if they have done a good job on the engineering and find out quickly the root cause of the accident.

Tloewald5• 14 years ago

Airbus was some kind of convoluted giant joint venture between Europe's governments and largest aerospace concerns, with a Lot of national prestige (and defense connections) wrapped up in it so it was kind of too big to fail and not a very good example in this context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS

curtis• 14 years ago

I think loss of a crew early in the program might indeed do a private space company in. Assuming the engineering of the launch abort system is any good, though, I think it's a lot more likely that the first "disaster" will be an incident where the launcher is destroyed but the crew survives. It's possible that a situation like that might actually increase the public's confidence in the company.

pdubs2• 14 years ago

I believe the Musk has stated that scenarios like this are one of the reasons that he plans to continue putting a portion of his personal fortune into the company, so it can ride out the (inevitable) hard times.

shtylman• 14 years ago

wins 440M from knight

sbanach• 14 years ago

In other news a Knight Capital programmer's fat fingers cost exactly the amount of money required to build a Space Shuttle.

FrojoS2• 14 years ago

Awesome. So essentially, SpaceX will go ahead and add an escape and life support system to dragon. Plus, they will use the escape thruster for ground touchdown as well!

chris123• 14 years ago

Wow, rockets, drugs, expensive escorts, and now this! Sweeeet!

ck2• 14 years ago

How about we give them the TSA annual budget for a year? ($8+ billion)

afterburner• 14 years ago

$440M? Hey, that's exactly the amount Knight Capital Group lost due to unchecked trading algos run amok... number 1 and 2 stories on HN.

rms• 14 years ago

If you're reading this and are in LA, you might want to come to this party Saturday night (August 4th). http://blog.ancientlasers.com/come-party-with-bill-nye-to-ce...

bborud• 14 years ago

Note that it says "millions" and not "billions". If this was a research project to figure out how to bomb the shit out of people more efficiently, it would have said "billions".

JL20103• 14 years ago

Is manned flight necessary anymore?

I feel that a lot of design overhead is put into making a shuttle or space station safe and livable for humans. Why not focus on the main mission: to conduct research experiments.

I know there is the romantic idea of human space travel, but if it's not ready yet, why not invest more in autonomous systems and more advanced robotics for the sake of conducting the actual mission and sparing the lives of some truly brilliant and extraordinary people (potential astronauts).

InclinedPlane7• 14 years ago

Is anything necessary? It's easy to define away the necessity of anything, even living. The point of manned space exploration is ultimately about colonization. The point is for people to go, to do, to live. And you can't get that with robots no matter how hard you try.

We can no doubt learn the secrets of the Universe through robots, and we very much should do so. But there is more to the Universe than just studying it. We should touch it. Play in it. Live in it.

JL20103• 14 years ago

Perhaps I should've re-worded my previous comment because I did not mean to suggest that we abandon manned missions forever or that we try to experience space vicariously through robots.

I'll elaborate. There is tremendous risk involved in sending people to space, I'm sure those who sign up for it understand and accept that, but it's a tragedy when it goes wrong given the caliber of people who end up dying. The overhead in designing for human needs (oxygen, water, food, waste facilities, etc) seems like a waste of time and engineering effort until we can better guarantee their safety. Of course I think the time will come when it becomes as safe and accessible as a trip on a 747, but I think an effort in purely autonomous systems that parallels the efforts being done on manned space technology should be considered to serve as a supplemental aid to further space research - a lot of which, I'm sure, would end up contributing to that dream of reaching the stars.

SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor

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