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SpaceX to fly to International Space Station in November

253 points by gibsonf1 15y ago

iwwr 15y ago
So they'll get around $133mil per delivery trip, comparable to the Soyuz Progress (which is around $150mil). More info here http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php
- ugh 15y ago
  Those $150m are for bringing up the same payload to the ISS as Dragon can, right? In 2007 Nasa signed a $719m contract with Roscosmos for 15 seats and 5.6 tons of cargo. 5.6 tons are three Progress flights (2.350kg per mission) and one Dragon flight (6.000kg per mission). We don’t really know what part of those $719m is for cargo but $150m seems about right to me. Those $150m would pay for three and not just one Progress flight. It’s quite amazing, really. The Dragon spacecraft is much more awesome than Progress. It can get more than double the payload to the ISS. More importantly, though, Dragon can bring half of that back to earth. There is no spacecraft that can currently do that. The Space Shuttle could but not anymore and Soyuz is pretty much only good for bringing back people and not cargo. And it’s still comparable in cost or cheaper than Progress (which is a truly mature and tested spacecraft)? That’s quite astonishing.
  - pieter 15y ago
    Next to the fact that NASA would rather give money to a US company, which will invest part of it to develop cheaper and more capable rockets, than to Russia, these SpaceX costs are likely to be significantly cheaper than Soyuz. In 2007, NASA got a deal for $719 million for 5.6 tons and 15 seats. Seats on Soyuz now cost ~$60 million a piece, or $900 million just for 15 seats. The price for cargo then probably also increased.
    - ugh 15y ago
      And competition also means that the Russians can’t mark up their flights quite as much. Currently they are the only ones doing it, Nasa depends on them. That’s obviously not a nice situation to be in.
dfischer 15y ago
This is so awesome. Things are moving forward!
pieter 15y ago
Extensive update including many pictures is here: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php http://www.spacex.com/updates.php
nhoss2 15y ago
I am really hoping everything goes well in this mission; we are so close to being able to send astronauts into space through commercial companies. Space X is doing things cheaper and faster than any government has. These commercial companies are going to revolutionize spaceflight. While they are doing all of this they need to develop their heavy lift rocket as fast as possible with the goal of landing a man on mars within 10 years. Elon Musk himself said a few days ago that we need to go to mars and it is possible for them to do this "as early as 2018". The reason for the quick timeline is because funding and political slaughter for space programs is more likely to happen as time goes on and as new presidents come in or some new economic trouble happens. Following the success of the ISS, going to Mars should be an international endavour. It needs to be a goal not for one country, but the whole human race to become a multi-planetary species and go to Mars.
- Joakal 15y ago
  The international endeavour won't happen for a while due to government regulations dating back to Cold War [0]. An open space community decided to split into two space groups, USA and Non-USA [1]. [0] http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/jca8h/itar_is_a_terrible_thorn_in_our_side_lets_have_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/jca8h/itar_is_a_t... [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/ji9e1/review_of_the_open_itar_meeting_that_occurred_on/ http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/ji9e1/review_of_t...
- demallien 15y ago
  You know, SpaceX has made such a huge difference to launch costs, that it is imaginable that the US could do a solo Mars mission. To give a real-world example (well, sort of): Juno was recently launched aboard an Atlas V, which launches for roughly the same price as the Falcon Heavy will in a year or so's time. Juno gets placed into an orbit that will take it out beyond Mars' orbit, before returning to the Earth for a gravity-assist flyby. The flyby is necessary to double the payload that they could otherwise send to Jupiter. Falcon Heavy can left 3 times the payload of an Atlas V, so Juno could have increased in size, and avoided the 2 and a half years it will take to execute the Earth flyby manoeuvre, all for the same price. Alternatively, a spacecraft 3 times the weight of Juno (which weighed in at 8000 pounds / 3500Kg) could be sent direct to Mars. What could you do with all of that? Well, the Mars Direct mission requires about 140 000kg, to be assembled in orbit. That's about 14 Falcon Heavy launches, which has a total price tag of about US$1.4 billion. Of course, on top of that there are in-orbit assembly costs, and the costs of the actual Mars-bound hardware, - which would roughly double the price tag to US$3 billion. Without Falcon Heavy, that mission cost is doubled to US$ 6 billion. I wonder what Juno would have looked like if it had three times the payload to play with...
alanh 15y ago
Interesting that I never seem to hear anyone complain about privatizing spaceflight. (Caveat: Our rockets, etc., were always built by defense/aerospace contractors, AFAIK.) Halliburton, Blackwater, etc., are bad privatizations, but SpaceX is good. That said, SpaceX is doing exciting things more affordably than we did them before, so it’s hardly puzzling.
- faboo 15y ago
  It is an interesting (and also important) line. Generally, it is services that fall under the category of "public good" that are provided by government (in a capitalist nation anyway). These are things that, by their nature, a) must be afforded to everyone for them to be effective, and/or b) for which there is no (or little) commercial incentive to produce. ... You know, I was going to write a lengthy explanation of what that means for your examples, but I'm late for work, and it's on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good But suffice to say, there's no natural monopoly in space flight, and they're getting paid (by both the private and public sector) for their services, so space flight isn't a public good (anymore at least).
- maaku 15y ago
  Really? Have you been living under a rock? EVERYONE is complaining about privatizing spaceflight. Congressmen, 24-hour news hosts, op-ed writers... there is (sadly) a concerted effort out there to kill this privatization effort.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  Mercenaries have been associated with some bad things in the past - including the past of the United States - and so they are generally not seen as a good thing. Private transportation systems are not really equivalent. Moreover, privatization in and of itself is very often an excuse to throw money to cronies - certainly the case with Blackwater in particular; a mercenary costs hundreds of thousands a year to replace $30K or so in support costs for a regular military person. Just calling something "privatization" is usually enough for knee-jerk libertarians to assume it's saving you money - when it's just another item in the ol' kleptocracy toolkit. Privatization as a concept also takes a hit from the bone-stupid idea of privatizing Social Security - which is just another way of passing risk on to the little guy while making sure our friends in the financial industry get to buy bigger yachts. Privatization in the space industry really does save money - but much, much more importantly, it's the logical next step in making sure space technology gets viable. Long past time to get the free market involved there.
Maro 15y ago
If I'd be looking for a job, I'd definitely want to apply to the company privatizing space flight and technologies. They have tons of openings, too. http://www.spacex.com/careers.php http://www.spacex.com/careers.php
- relix 15y ago
  Too bad they only hire US citizens due to governmental export regulations.
  - hebejebelus 15y ago
    Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware of that. Guess I need to become a US citizen, then... On a sidenote, why is that the case? Sure, SpaceX is a US-based company, but why does that mean that they can't hire non-US citizens with visas etc? What export regulations are they - and come to think of it, what are they exporting?
    - jonnycowboy 15y ago
      Exporting is loosely-defined here. It means that they can't show export-controlled data (ie: some parts of rocket / missile technology) to foreign nationals. Just showing the document inside a US company to a non-US person is classified as "exporting".
    - arethuza 15y ago
      Almost certainly ITAR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_R...
    - maaku 15y ago
      ITAR... it is a ridiculous, crazy law that has killed the US satellite industry. Hopefully it will be repealed soon.
    - vela 15y ago
      International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ITAR https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ITAR). Many space technologies are listed as munitions in the US, and revealing information about those technologies to foreigners counts as export. There are exceptions, and you can get export licenses (companies routinely do), but hiring non-Americans would be a pain—American employees wouldn't be able to share much information with them! p.s. Under ITAR, all you need is a green card. I don't know if that's good enough for SpaceX—they might be under other restrictions than ITAR, too.
clistctrl 15y ago
I wonder how far away Blue Origin is in terms of making the same progress SpaceX seems to be making. Oh man, its like a good o' fashion space race!
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  There are plenty of scrappy competitors out there, but they're generally a bit farther behind than SpaceX. SpaceX chose to use the most straightforward rocket design conceivable and develop it as cost effectively as possible. So far that strategy is working very well. Other companies have chosen to pursue other designs, generally more reusable in nature. They also don't have the cash that SpaceX does, slowing their progress a bit. In a few years we may start to see their work come to light.
jeffool 15y ago
I know this isn't exactly relevant, but I don't get to say this enough: someone needs to get cracking on this whole "tertaforming Mars and Venus" thing. Maybe that's where some of NASA's focus can be in the future as private enterprise picks up space travel.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  We already know how to build colonies, even if we haven't done it on another planet. Turning a subway or megamall design into a Martian colony is an engineering problem. Terraforming is a fundamental science problem. We're still a long way from cracking it.
  - lambda 15y ago
    It's more than just an engineering problem. It's also an economics problem. What is going to pay for that settlement? Are there enough mineral resources on Mars to justify the cost? Or will it be paid at taxpayer expense, for no significant benefit over unmanned missions or brief manned missions to Mars? So yes, it is easier to build a settlement than to terraform, but I don't think you could justify the cost to build a self-sufficient settlement. Heck, if we start running out of land to settle on on Earth, there's always the sea to settle, which requires many of the same engineering considerations to settle but at much lower cost to get us there and do trade with the rest of the planet. I suspect we'll be seeing either underwater or raft-based settlements long before we see settlements on Mars.
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      A lot of people would like to live on Mars, given the chance. Meanwhile, people are growing richer and technology is advancing. It's fairly likely that at some point there will be a point where people can pay their own way to creating a Martian colony.
      - jsnell 15y ago
        A lot of people might like the idea of living on Mars when there is absolutely no risk of that actually happening. But really there is not much point in living on Mars for extended periods of time, there's very little that humans could do that machines couldn't do as well and a lot cheaper. Combine that pointlessness with what would in practice be an an isolated, risky and uncomfortable life, and I suspect that the pool shrinks down dramatically.
pbreit 15y ago
Great recent "Bloomberg Risk Taker" profile on Elon: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184/ http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184/
bane 15y ago
Mars is a great goal. But to finance a serious colonization effort would require us to really start an Asteroid mining operation... bonus you get tons of raw spaceship materials already up and out of our gravity well
- jeffool 15y ago
  If/when asteroid mining becomes profitable, that's when the private industry takes off, and the entire thing takes care of itself.

253 points by gibsonf1 15y ago

iwwr 15y ago

So they'll get around $133mil per delivery trip, comparable to the Soyuz Progress (which is around $150mil). More info here http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php http://www.spacex.com/dragon.php

ugh 15y ago
Those $150m are for bringing up the same payload to the ISS as Dragon can, right? In 2007 Nasa signed a $719m contract with Roscosmos for 15 seats and 5.6 tons of cargo. 5.6 tons are three Progress flights (2.350kg per mission) and one Dragon flight (6.000kg per mission). We don’t really know what part of those $719m is for cargo but $150m seems about right to me. Those $150m would pay for three and not just one Progress flight. It’s quite amazing, really. The Dragon spacecraft is much more awesome than Progress. It can get more than double the payload to the ISS. More importantly, though, Dragon can bring half of that back to earth. There is no spacecraft that can currently do that. The Space Shuttle could but not anymore and Soyuz is pretty much only good for bringing back people and not cargo. And it’s still comparable in cost or cheaper than Progress (which is a truly mature and tested spacecraft)? That’s quite astonishing.
- pieter 15y ago
  Next to the fact that NASA would rather give money to a US company, which will invest part of it to develop cheaper and more capable rockets, than to Russia, these SpaceX costs are likely to be significantly cheaper than Soyuz. In 2007, NASA got a deal for $719 million for 5.6 tons and 15 seats. Seats on Soyuz now cost ~$60 million a piece, or $900 million just for 15 seats. The price for cargo then probably also increased.
  - ugh 15y ago
    And competition also means that the Russians can’t mark up their flights quite as much. Currently they are the only ones doing it, Nasa depends on them. That’s obviously not a nice situation to be in.

dfischer 15y ago

This is so awesome. Things are moving forward!

pieter 15y ago

Extensive update including many pictures is here: http://www.spacex.com/updates.php http://www.spacex.com/updates.php

nhoss2 15y ago

I am really hoping everything goes well in this mission; we are so close to being able to send astronauts into space through commercial companies. Space X is doing things cheaper and faster than any government has. These commercial companies are going to revolutionize spaceflight. While they are doing all of this they need to develop their heavy lift rocket as fast as possible with the goal of landing a man on mars within 10 years. Elon Musk himself said a few days ago that we need to go to mars and it is possible for them to do this "as early as 2018". The reason for the quick timeline is because funding and political slaughter for space programs is more likely to happen as time goes on and as new presidents come in or some new economic trouble happens. Following the success of the ISS, going to Mars should be an international endavour. It needs to be a goal not for one country, but the whole human race to become a multi-planetary species and go to Mars.

Joakal 15y ago
The international endeavour won't happen for a while due to government regulations dating back to Cold War [0]. An open space community decided to split into two space groups, USA and Non-USA [1]. [0] http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/jca8h/itar_is_a_terrible_thorn_in_our_side_lets_have_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/jca8h/itar_is_a_t... [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/ji9e1/review_of_the_open_itar_meeting_that_occurred_on/ http://www.reddit.com/r/tothemoon/comments/ji9e1/review_of_t...
demallien 15y ago
You know, SpaceX has made such a huge difference to launch costs, that it is imaginable that the US could do a solo Mars mission. To give a real-world example (well, sort of): Juno was recently launched aboard an Atlas V, which launches for roughly the same price as the Falcon Heavy will in a year or so's time. Juno gets placed into an orbit that will take it out beyond Mars' orbit, before returning to the Earth for a gravity-assist flyby. The flyby is necessary to double the payload that they could otherwise send to Jupiter. Falcon Heavy can left 3 times the payload of an Atlas V, so Juno could have increased in size, and avoided the 2 and a half years it will take to execute the Earth flyby manoeuvre, all for the same price. Alternatively, a spacecraft 3 times the weight of Juno (which weighed in at 8000 pounds / 3500Kg) could be sent direct to Mars. What could you do with all of that? Well, the Mars Direct mission requires about 140 000kg, to be assembled in orbit. That's about 14 Falcon Heavy launches, which has a total price tag of about US$1.4 billion. Of course, on top of that there are in-orbit assembly costs, and the costs of the actual Mars-bound hardware, - which would roughly double the price tag to US$3 billion. Without Falcon Heavy, that mission cost is doubled to US$ 6 billion. I wonder what Juno would have looked like if it had three times the payload to play with...

alanh 15y ago

Interesting that I never seem to hear anyone complain about privatizing spaceflight. (Caveat: Our rockets, etc., were always built by defense/aerospace contractors, AFAIK.) Halliburton, Blackwater, etc., are bad privatizations, but SpaceX is good. That said, SpaceX is doing exciting things more affordably than we did them before, so it’s hardly puzzling.

faboo 15y ago
It is an interesting (and also important) line. Generally, it is services that fall under the category of "public good" that are provided by government (in a capitalist nation anyway). These are things that, by their nature, a) must be afforded to everyone for them to be effective, and/or b) for which there is no (or little) commercial incentive to produce. ... You know, I was going to write a lengthy explanation of what that means for your examples, but I'm late for work, and it's on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good But suffice to say, there's no natural monopoly in space flight, and they're getting paid (by both the private and public sector) for their services, so space flight isn't a public good (anymore at least).
maaku 15y ago
Really? Have you been living under a rock? EVERYONE is complaining about privatizing spaceflight. Congressmen, 24-hour news hosts, op-ed writers... there is (sadly) a concerted effort out there to kill this privatization effort.
Vivtek 15y ago
Mercenaries have been associated with some bad things in the past - including the past of the United States - and so they are generally not seen as a good thing. Private transportation systems are not really equivalent. Moreover, privatization in and of itself is very often an excuse to throw money to cronies - certainly the case with Blackwater in particular; a mercenary costs hundreds of thousands a year to replace $30K or so in support costs for a regular military person. Just calling something "privatization" is usually enough for knee-jerk libertarians to assume it's saving you money - when it's just another item in the ol' kleptocracy toolkit. Privatization as a concept also takes a hit from the bone-stupid idea of privatizing Social Security - which is just another way of passing risk on to the little guy while making sure our friends in the financial industry get to buy bigger yachts. Privatization in the space industry really does save money - but much, much more importantly, it's the logical next step in making sure space technology gets viable. Long past time to get the free market involved there.

Maro 15y ago

If I'd be looking for a job, I'd definitely want to apply to the company privatizing space flight and technologies. They have tons of openings, too. http://www.spacex.com/careers.php http://www.spacex.com/careers.php

relix 15y ago
Too bad they only hire US citizens due to governmental export regulations.
- hebejebelus 15y ago
  Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware of that. Guess I need to become a US citizen, then... On a sidenote, why is that the case? Sure, SpaceX is a US-based company, but why does that mean that they can't hire non-US citizens with visas etc? What export regulations are they - and come to think of it, what are they exporting?
  - jonnycowboy 15y ago
    Exporting is loosely-defined here. It means that they can't show export-controlled data (ie: some parts of rocket / missile technology) to foreign nationals. Just showing the document inside a US company to a non-US person is classified as "exporting".
  - arethuza 15y ago
    Almost certainly ITAR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_R...
  - maaku 15y ago
    ITAR... it is a ridiculous, crazy law that has killed the US satellite industry. Hopefully it will be repealed soon.
  - vela 15y ago
    International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ITAR https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ITAR). Many space technologies are listed as munitions in the US, and revealing information about those technologies to foreigners counts as export. There are exceptions, and you can get export licenses (companies routinely do), but hiring non-Americans would be a pain—American employees wouldn't be able to share much information with them! p.s. Under ITAR, all you need is a green card. I don't know if that's good enough for SpaceX—they might be under other restrictions than ITAR, too.

clistctrl 15y ago

I wonder how far away Blue Origin is in terms of making the same progress SpaceX seems to be making. Oh man, its like a good o' fashion space race!

InclinedPlane 15y ago
There are plenty of scrappy competitors out there, but they're generally a bit farther behind than SpaceX. SpaceX chose to use the most straightforward rocket design conceivable and develop it as cost effectively as possible. So far that strategy is working very well. Other companies have chosen to pursue other designs, generally more reusable in nature. They also don't have the cash that SpaceX does, slowing their progress a bit. In a few years we may start to see their work come to light.

jeffool 15y ago

I know this isn't exactly relevant, but I don't get to say this enough: someone needs to get cracking on this whole "tertaforming Mars and Venus" thing. Maybe that's where some of NASA's focus can be in the future as private enterprise picks up space travel.

mkr-hn 15y ago
We already know how to build colonies, even if we haven't done it on another planet. Turning a subway or megamall design into a Martian colony is an engineering problem. Terraforming is a fundamental science problem. We're still a long way from cracking it.
- lambda 15y ago
  It's more than just an engineering problem. It's also an economics problem. What is going to pay for that settlement? Are there enough mineral resources on Mars to justify the cost? Or will it be paid at taxpayer expense, for no significant benefit over unmanned missions or brief manned missions to Mars? So yes, it is easier to build a settlement than to terraform, but I don't think you could justify the cost to build a self-sufficient settlement. Heck, if we start running out of land to settle on on Earth, there's always the sea to settle, which requires many of the same engineering considerations to settle but at much lower cost to get us there and do trade with the rest of the planet. I suspect we'll be seeing either underwater or raft-based settlements long before we see settlements on Mars.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    A lot of people would like to live on Mars, given the chance. Meanwhile, people are growing richer and technology is advancing. It's fairly likely that at some point there will be a point where people can pay their own way to creating a Martian colony.
    - jsnell 15y ago
      A lot of people might like the idea of living on Mars when there is absolutely no risk of that actually happening. But really there is not much point in living on Mars for extended periods of time, there's very little that humans could do that machines couldn't do as well and a lot cheaper. Combine that pointlessness with what would in practice be an an isolated, risky and uncomfortable life, and I suspect that the pool shrinks down dramatically.

pbreit 15y ago

Great recent "Bloomberg Risk Taker" profile on Elon: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184/ http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73460184/

bane 15y ago

Mars is a great goal. But to finance a serious colonization effort would require us to really start an Asteroid mining operation... bonus you get tons of raw spaceship materials already up and out of our gravity well

jeffool 15y ago
If/when asteroid mining becomes profitable, that's when the private industry takes off, and the entire thing takes care of itself.