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SpaceX wins $440M contract with NASA to develop Space Shuttle successor
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoHas 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?
- ceejayoz 14y agoDragon is already designed to fit their requirements, IIRC.
- javanix 14y agoAccording to http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#10 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.
- aMoniker 14y agoOne of Musk's stated goals is to reduce the cost of spaceflight by a factor of one hundred.
- dfriedmn 14y agoOne 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-spacex-head-talks-about-mission http://www.npr.org/2012/05/18/153015277/on-eve-of-launch-spa...
- codex 14y agoThis 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.
- mitchty 14y agoTo be a bit fair, the shuttle was the only part of a much larger boondoggle that originally involved NASA and the DOD. Its a much better example of mission creep, after reading Richard Feynman's "personal observations on the reliability of the shuttle" after the Challenger explosion shows just how badly the shuttle was designed/pressed into service/etc...
- slurgfest 14y agoDoing it exactly as cheaply as the Russians would be a real accomplishment. Because it would allow us not to be forced to use the Russians for everything!
- erikpukinskis 14y agoI 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.
- alpine 14y agoIf I remember my history correctly, the original shuttle objectives were compromised by US intelligence interests that required the shuttle to attain certain latitudes that were good for launching intel assets? If so, the shuttle program could have been a lot cheaper?
- anovikov 14y agoIt was even worse. They required ability to fly to polar orbits, plus ability to make single-orbit missions, which meant a lot of cross-range (meaning otherwise unnecessarily heavy wings). To make things worse, nobody ever paid for these features because Air Force bailed out of Shuttle project long before first flight, but when it was too late to delete hardware needed for these now-unnecessary features. Shuttle had terribly bad luck since the beginning.
- skybrian 14y agoI'm not sure what role the word "fair" plays in this argument. Why is it unfair to learn from a predecessor's mistakes or take advantage of progress since then? What matters is actual results. But even if you want to grade on a curve, there's something to be said for appropriate use of what you have. It's easy to argue that the Space Shuttle was not a good design, even given 1970's technology, due to political constraints. I suppose you could ask, "given both political and technical constraints that NASA was operating under, was it a good design?" but I'm not sure what the goal would be of that question. Is anyone blaming individual engineers for management problems?
- danielweber 14y agoWiki 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 14y agoGood for them - let's hope more commercial space companies appear in the next decade.
- austenallred 14y agoI'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.
- ceejayoz 14y agoIt'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 14y agoTrue. It's not like they'll be launching a Hubble with Dragon.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- JPKab 14y agoIt'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.
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- ColinWright 14y agoThe SpaceX announcement: http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20120803 http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20120803
- beambot 14y agoSpaceX 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-billion-in-support-for-3-private-space-taxis http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/08/03/nasa-awards-11-bil...
- branola 14y agoSierra Nevada will receive $212.5 million Didn't realize beer was such an integral part of space exploration.
- AgentConundrum 14y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_Corporation
- samstave 14y agoMusk is the most interesting man in the valley. This is awesome! Congrats to SpaceX!
- Donwangugi 14y agoHe lives in Bel Air
- droithomme 14y 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.
- jlgreco 14y agoWell, they said the Titanic would be unsinkable, not less sinkable than previously developed ships.
- droithomme 14y agoActually 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.
- jlgreco 14y agoThe difference in this situation of course is that SpaceX is claiming that their rocket will be safe because they are adding more lifeboats (in other words, they are bragging about their planned abort systems). They are not claiming to be designing a rocket that cannot fail, but rather one that fails safe (though low failure rate is undoubtedly a high priority for them.) I do not see how such an attitude could possibly be a liability. What is preferable? Edit: I'm trying to understand your point of view. Is your issue that the are trying to make it the safest, or that they said that they are trying to make it the safest?
- droithomme 14y ago> Is your issue that the are trying to make it the safest, or that they said that they are trying to make it the safest? The article doesn't say they are trying to make it the safest and it doesn't say they said they are trying to make it the safest. The article says it will be the safest, even though it hasn't even been tested in flight.
- bengl3rt 14y 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.
- btilly 14y agoIt 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/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt 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.
- rbanffy 14y 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...
- btilly 14y agoConsidering its predecessor, the shuttle, was one of the least safe rockets ever designed... According to http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/000940.html 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.
- JoeCortopassi 14y agoEvery 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 14y agoAssuming 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-gun.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/150-kiloton-nuclear-verne-g...
- eavc 14y agoI'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 14y agoGetting 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Launch.2Flanding
- filipncs 14y agoSo 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.
- catshirt 14y agowith that money they could have built a whole 4/10ths of an instagram though
- archangel_one 14y agoNo, they could have bought 4/10 of an Instagram. Building it cost a lot less.
- catshirt 14y agoyou're right, but that doesn't sound any better
- stcredzero 14y agoSounds more fun.
- ahsteele 14y agoTo 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-astronauts-life-worth http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astrona...
- hammock 14y agoSo 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?
- natep 14y agoThey 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-dragon-dragon-capsule-international-space-station?_s=PM:US http://articles.cnn.com/2012-05-25/us/us_spacex_1_spacex-dra...
- ballooney 14y agoAs 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.
- hammock 14y agoNo 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.
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- learc83 14y agoFrom their previous contracts, unlike other contractors SpaceX is responsible for any cost overruns.
- alpine 14y agoI 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.
- natep 14y agoBy 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.
- alpine 14y agoHe 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.
- rwhitman 14y agoEventually 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.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoKind 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.
- Tloewald 14y agoAirbus 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EADS
- curtis 14y agoI 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.
- pdubs 14y agoI 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 14y agowins 440M from knight
- sbanach 14y agoIn other news a Knight Capital programmer's fat fingers cost exactly the amount of money required to build a Space Shuttle.
- FrojoS 14y agoAwesome. 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 14y agoWow, rockets, drugs, expensive escorts, and now this! Sweeeet!
- ck2 14y agoHow about we give them the TSA annual budget for a year? ($8+ billion)
- afterburner 14y 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 14y agoIf 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-celebrate-the-mars-landing/ http://blog.ancientlasers.com/come-party-with-bill-nye-to-ce...
- bborud 14y agoNote 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".
- JL2010 14y agoIs 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).
- InclinedPlane 14y agoIs 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.
- JL2010 14y agoPerhaps 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.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoI think that's being overly and unnecessarily cautious. If we wait until there's no risk then we'll end up waiting far too long. There's always going to be some risk. There's a ton of risk just in getting out of the house and driving on the road. But there's risk in sitting on your ask at home too. Also, a great many astronauts are more than willing to take these risks. If you look at the Gemini program, for example, where astronauts knowingly strapped themselves in to a capsule on top of a modified ICBM which had up until that point around a 1/3 failure rate. Personally I think that engineering even safer manned spaceflight systems is a good idea and a very worthy goal but I think if our choice was to explore the Solar System with a vehicle no safer than the Soyuz or to stay at home the choice has to be to explore, every time.