9 ms·

Firefly Space Systems

197 points by cryptoz 12y ago

unwind 12y ago
Interesting. I had to surf up Wikipedia's page on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine to learn more about that. Quite a cool design, if I understood it correctly it switches the big classical cone-shaped nozzle into a lot of small nozzles nestled against a central spike, with the surrounding air forming the other half of the (now virtual) nozzle. Weird and almost magical, what's not to like? :)
- washedup 12y ago
  Yup, pretty much. The traditional engine nozzle can only be optimized for maximum thrust at one altitude, while the aerospike maintains thrust efficiency at many altitudes, using as much as 30% less fuel at lower altitudes. Also, for the aerospike design, it doesn't have to be a series of small nozzles. The combustion gases can escape the combustion chamber via a ring. It's more difficult to cool this type of system and adds some weight, but it is an efficient alternative to the traditional engine nozzle for SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) vehicles.
  - rbanffy 12y ago
    IIRC, the VentureStar was going to use a linear aerospike. With at least one combustion chamber on each side, it seems an easier design than a ring. Their design seem to indicate they may want to pump air through the spike body to either cool it or as to use it as "bypass" volume in an inverted turbofan-like design. It's intriguing.
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      My understanding is that linear aerospikes require relatively long lines to average out the inefficiency of the ends.
- mikeash 12y ago
  What's not to like is that it's weird and almost magical. First, let me say that I really hope they succeed. I want to see more people doing cool stuff in this area. However, it seems like the opposite of SpaceX and on a similar path as the great spaceflight failures of the past few decades. Firefly is pushing the envelope with composite construction, an unconventional fuel, and an engine design that's never flown to space before. SpaceX's main innovation is that they're boring. They have boring engines and boring rocket designs and they aim for cheapness and known quantities. Even their unprecedented first-stage reusability program is mainly innovative in how boring it is. Instead of screwing around with lifting bodies or jet engines or delta wings or anything like that, they're just taking a regular first stage rocket, slapping some legs on it, filling it with extra fuel, and giving it some fancy software. I'd love to see major innovations succeed in space, but I think SpaceX has the right approach. Don't be fancy, just do stuff that obviously works, get it to the point where you can fly it regularly, and then iterate. There have been so many past attempts to revolutionize spaceflight through fancy new technologies and they've all failed miserably. I hope this one doesn't, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Well, if they work hard on that design, get a half-assed rocket somewhat working and then still fail, while of course a sad moment for them, it would be still of great benefit to humanity. SpaceX or someone else could buy their research and experience and iterate further on that. So good luck to Firefly folks, but no matter how it ends, I think their work will still be a net gain for mankind.
sand500 12y ago
If their Aerospike engine is anything like the one in Kerbal Space Program, this should be good.
jdc0589 12y ago
If they don't have a vehicle named "Serenity" at some point we are going to have a serious problem.
- jayzalowitz 12y ago
  Shiny.
- znowi 12y ago
  For those not in the know: > Firefly is an American space western drama television series [...] The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_%28TV_series%29
- x1798DE 12y ago
  I'm shocked that their lawyers even let them call their space company "Firefly". It's probably a sufficiently different field that they could win a trademark case at trial, but I'm not sure it's 100% cut-and-dry. I think naming a ship "Serenity" without securing some sort of licensing rights might be inviting trouble.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    Wouldn't that require Fox to argue that they're in the space launch business to demonstrate the potential for confusion?
  - jahewson 12y ago
    You shouldn't be. There are 185 trademarks for "Firefly" in the USPTO database [1]. Fox don't own any of them, but even if they did it would only apply to specific goods or services such as publishing fiction and merchandise, not launching rockets. That said, I doubt one could call such a company "Harry Potter's Wizardly Rockets" without receiving a lawsuit, but I suspect such claims would be based on copyright. 1. http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804%3A4yw70q.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=live&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=Firefly&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804%3A4...
erydo 12y ago
My first thought was to enumerate the red flags I see (since there have been a fair number of investor-bait non-serious "space startups"): The team comprises CEO, CFO, COO, and VP-BizDev…no engineers, at least in the leadership. To be fair, the COO does have a BS in Physics and almost got a PhD in AE. No photographs of any facilities, testing equipment, or anything short of 3D mockups. The name is based on a sci-fi TV show and the splash page is also a sci-fi quote. Looking deeper, however, it looks like they've recently hired their 25th employee (a Systems Engineer) and are building out their engineering team aggressively. Recently funded in January. So perhaps they are legitimately worth keeping an eye on.
- timsally 12y ago
  > The team comprises CEO, CFO, COO, and VP-BizDev…no engineers, at least in the leadership. Huh? The CEO has a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace engineering from Princeton and was a Principle Propulsion Engineer at SpaceX, Senior Systems Engineer at Blue Origin, and the VP of Propulsion at Virgin Galactic. Put another way, he's been a key engineer at all the major private space companies...
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  The CEO and COO are both engineers, according to their bios. CEO: "Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering" COO: "Master's Degree in Astronautics & Space Engineering"
- jccooper 12y ago
  Tom Markusic (CEO) is a real propulsion engineer. He's had a major hand in at least two liquid engines (Merlin and Newton). Which may or may not be a good thing. The overly-ambitious design of their rocket seems like it might be a symptom of having a "bored engineer" in charge. Which could produce some spectacular sci-fi-pulp-like results--but which will more likely kill the company through development hell.
imdsm 12y ago
Can't help but feel like we're on the cusp of a new age of mankind. How long will it be until space travel really takes off? I feel like we're getting closer and closer. We're a part of history, we were the children of the dawn of the digital age, pushing mankind towards the stars. A hundred years from now, people will look back and read about us and think how primitive we were to be pushing for space but how almost nobody actually went to space.
- apalmer 12y ago
  I think the key missing element is a clear commercial driver. Say we found a fuel source on mars that was so energy rich it could undercut oil... then yeah that would lead to a radical revolution in human space exploration. What we have now as far as i am aware is very little commercial incentive to really explore space, in this scenario space flight will probably advance very slowly.
  - rglover 12y ago
    I'd argue that commercial incentive is the biggest limiting factor of the human race. Yes, it costs money to do things but I'm really surprised that we don't aggressively pursue space travel just on the basis of knowing why we're here. There's more than enough wealth on the planet to do it, but we're too concentrated on politics/hoarding. There's this strange fixation with the ground (I usually attribute this to fear masquerading as a budget) and what's happening here, but I feel like there's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking. The kind of stuff that would eliminate the need for commercial incentive that we can't necessarily see now.
    - warfangle 12y ago
      > just on the basis of knowing why we're here. But we're here to convert heathens so they don't burn in hell. Why would we want to ever leave this puddle that, so obviously, was made just for us? /tongue-in-cheek
      - rglover 12y ago
esw 12y ago
It looks like they've completely ripped off the Tesla Motors logo.
- josefresco 12y ago
  It's not a complete rip-off, but does have a similar shape: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/68/Tesla_Motors_logo.svg/346px-Tesla_Motors_logo.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/68/Tesla_Mo...
  - esw 12y ago
    I was actually referring to the font, but now that you mention it, the graphic is very similar too.
    - josefresco 12y ago
      You're right, when you combine the two the criticism is valid.
el_zorro 12y ago
I'm very skeptical of the market they're targeting. SpaceX used to cover that same payload capacity with the Falcon 1 [0] rocket, but discontinued it since no one bought any. Maybe things have changed in the past few years, but I seriously doubt it. The aerospike engine is interesting since none have been used commercially before, but if there isn't a market it might as well run on fairy dust. Still, I wish them the best. We need more innovation in the space sector, and I would love to see those engines become more commonplace. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1
- rplnt 12y ago
  But Falcon 1 was not reusable, making it (I guess) more expensive. Maybe there is market, it just wasn't the right price for that market.
  - api 12y ago
    Is this going for reusability? Don't see any mention of that. Maybe I'm blind.
    - rplnt 12y ago
      It was in the title here on HN. Or at least I think I saw it there. Can someone confirm whether it was there or I'm just seeing things?
    - InclinedPlane 12y ago
      It's in the video.
- ajarmst 12y ago
  Came here to make a similar comment. This isn't really a competitor to SpaceX, as they're target a market that SpaceX abandoned. Frankly, while I'm a supporter of everything space, I'm a little underwhelmed by a plan throw sub-500 kilo packages to LEO. That's hardly the next step, and I think is a market that can be more efficiently served by secondary payloads on bigger platforms. Even if the "lets clutter LEO with everybody's hobby projects" market matures, a joint launch of several small payloads on a larger platform will likely prove more efficient, reliable and versatile. And, frankly, the name seems to be some pretty obvious pandering to sci-fi fanboys. I'd be more impressed by a focus on solid engineering and business planning instead of baiting kickstarter.
antubbs 12y ago
I don't think it is accurate to suggest that this company is competing with SpaceX. It is accurate that SpaceX is trying to provide lower-cost launch capability and it is accurate that SpaceX is trying to make parts of its launch vehicles and spacecraft reusable. With that said, the addressable markets for the two companies are vastly different. Firefly is targeting the <1000kg payload market, with the hypothetical initial launch vehicle targeting <400kg. The Falcon 9 is designed for an order of magnitude more payload, with upcoming vehicles targeting an even greater capability. So, at this stage there may be a small amount of talent competition (at ~25 employees) and hypothetically it could provide competition for secondary payload capabilities in the future if things work out.
- jccooper 12y ago
  Or they could scale up once they prove their ability to fly... just like SpaceX did with the Falcon 1. Which, granted, had more payload capacity that the Firefly Alpha is designed for. But they could follow a similar plan. There may be some money in the small launch market. But physics is not kind to small rockets.
  - thisjepisje 12y ago
    Not sure if I understand you correctly, but: >But physics is not kind to small rockets. Why start with a small rocket, then?
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      Engineering is not kind to large rockets
    - jccooper 12y ago
      Because limited funding is not kind to large rockets.
  - antubbs 12y ago
    I'm not sure it makes sense to assume that all launch companies want to scale up and build vastly bigger rockets. SpaceX did it to go after the CRS launches, and now onto larger commercial/military payloads. Their endgame was never lightweight launch class. Firefly is making it their business plan to go after a lucrative business, and one that is likely to grow dramatically in the coming years. They're competing with the capabilities currently offered to secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles or as primary payloads on e.g. Orbital's solid fuel vehicles. Orbital/ATK is the real competitor here, not SpaceX.
rglover 12y ago
The world is going to change drastically in the next 10-20 years. Side discussion related to the article: what to focus on? Will web development still be a thing (I'm doubtful)? If so, what does web development look like in 2024? 2034? It seems like a lot of engineering energy will go into the design and manufacturing of the systems that will manage human life in space. Really curious. What do you see?
- chatmasta 12y ago
  The web is still an early platform, and there are still thousands of opportunities to make significant profits with relatively little startup cost. I think the web is a great place to make your first big chunk of money, and then in 10-20 years you can invest it in more capital-intensive, "world-changing" startups. Or maybe that's just what Elon Musk did. ;)
- randallsquared 12y ago
  It would be really nice if we were about to get the future as seen from 1965 (space-wise), but I think that's still unlikely. Even if there are as many as TEN "low cost" orbital rocket companies doing launches by 2024[1], I'm skeptical that the US will have the legal and organizational flexibility to allow the level of launches that would make this non-niche. The main obstacles to the growth of space travel are not technical or economic, but governmental. I suppose one odd result of 9/11, though, was showing everyone that the thousands of plane flights every day already have essentially the same potential issues as allowing unlimited orbital rocket launches. [1] ...and right now there's, uh, one, doing a few launches per year, I think.
  - vdaniuk 12y ago
    Two words only: asteroid mining. This will change the economic parameters of space travel.
- nawitus 12y ago
  >Will web development still be a thing (I'm doubtful)? If so, what does web development look like in 2024? 2034? Even today, the 'web' is simply a general-purpose software platform (or atleast should be thought of one). It might be helpful to rephrase your question as "will general-purpose software development be as important/exciting/profitable (etc). in 10 to 20 years?". I think there are two major, related and in some respects "opposing" trends. One is using software to make hardware obsolete (virtual reality, augmented reality, telecommuting and converting physical solutions to non-physical solutions). On the hardware front, production of physical products is becoming more and more algorithmic and software-defined. There are also opportunities to decrease manufacturing costs by orders of magnitude (mainly nanotechnology). If we get there, then the utility of simulating reality becomes less and less interesting, if we can just do what we want in reality for sufficiently cheaply.
jccooper 12y ago
Good luck to 'em. But I don't know that I would have picked several never-flown techniques as the basis for my least-cost rocket. I count at least four: aerospike nozzle, methane fuel, autogenous pressurization (whatever they mean by that), and all-composite structure. That would seem to be a path to spending lots of time and money on research. To be fair, composites and aerospikes are well-tested, and methane has some good qualities and no obvious problems as a rocket fuel. (I don't know what they intend for pressurization; perhaps they want to boil both fuel and oxidizer to create pressure? Seem like a non-standard technique anyway.) And it's not like you can buy rocket hardware OTS, so everything you do is a development project. But none has flown on a real vehicle. Picking one would be ambitious. Four just seems like compounded risk. Scaled Composites has had plenty of trouble with their seemingly-simple hybrid engine. You may think a technology is researched enough or simple enough to use without much danger, but rocketry is an extreme environment and can hold lots of surprises at scale and in the margins. SpaceX, on the other hand, has only done one really revolutionary thing: cost discipline. Mostly through simplicity. Which is a pretty important contribution to the world of rocketry. Much more important than any particular nozzle or engine improvement. The Firefly Alpha should be a nifty rocket if they can get it flying without spending too much money--but the history of rocket development doesn't suggest that'll be easy.
- ozi 12y ago
  No inert pressurant is needed for Methane; the fuel itself is used to provide the working pressure for the engine.
- api 12y ago
  Methane is simpler in some ways -- no helium, for example. The big question marks here are composites and aerospike. Aerospikes have been tested but have not (as far as I know) flown. Composites haven't flown at this scale as far as I know. So yeah they have their work cut out for them! BTW: SpaceX has done some revolutionary things around reusability, but I mostly agree -- other than their reusability efforts everything else they've done is good old fashioned rocket science + cost control.
- chucknelson 12y ago
  > autogenous pressurization (whatever they mean by that) From their Vehicle page: "Firely's engines are actually self-pressurized (AKA autogenously pressurized), so that the fuel itself is used to provide the working pressure for the engine. This simplifies the design and saves weight."
cwt 12y ago
They need to change their highlight color. It is impossible to read text that is highlighted.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tanglesome 12y ago
Nice idea and good luck to them, but all we really have is a video and a notion.
Gravityloss 12y ago
Note that this is a 400 kg class launch vehicle, so much smaller than a 10 tonne level Falcon 9. Even smaller than a Falcon 1. Beal Aerospace also tried to bring pressure fed composite launchers in the nineties, though he used hydrogen peroxide and kerosene: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace While methane has the advantage of self-pressurization, it is also about half the density of kerosene, meaning there will be double the volume for the same mass, and the pressure vessel will be double the mass. Pressure vessel mass is proportional to volume and pressure. That's why Beal used very dense fuels, even when they have less exhaust velocity. The heavy tank is a worse problem for sea-level launched rockets that need high engine pressures to reach passable engine exhaust velocities. The rocket equation shows that exhaust velocity is important to reach high rocket velocities: delta v = v_exhaust * ln(m_full / m_empty) In a pressure fed rocket the engine pressure is the tank pressure (minus some pressure loss in the injector). If you air launched, it might be a bit easier, since ambient pressure is only a quarter of sea level at 10 km. Airlaunch LLC tried to use these synergistic technologies some years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirLaunch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirLaunch Basically in the atmosphere you exhaust at ambient pressure (or not very far from it). If your chamber pressure is low, then you can't expand much before you're at ambient at sea level. Thus the nozzle can't produce much thrust for the propellant flow. The upshot is that low pressure rockets suck at low altitudes. But for relatively small rockets it might work well: apparently because of some minimum-gauge issues, they need to have pretty thick walls anyway so going to pressure fed is not such a huge overhead. Also equipment like turbopumps does not scale well at the low end. (I haven't studies this in detail though.) Armadillo Aerospace has tested oxygen-methane self pressurized rockets years ago and they are simple and work well. They can also be controlled precisely. NASA bought one from them and flies it occasionally. I think it is a blow down pressurized version though (helium is filled directly to the main propellant tank head spaces for pressurization): http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/ http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/ So auto-pressurization is nothing fancy, in fact it can be seen as a simpler version of blowdown pressurization, which is simpler than regulated pressurization. If I had to create an orbital launcher with minimum capital, this is a reasonable design, though I'm skeptical about the aerospike. To convince me, they need to first fly some sounding rockets. There's been many rocket startups in the recent decades, with little flying hardware, and even that has been no guarantee of going further.
motoboi 12y ago
The choose a bad name, as the /r/firefly is already taken ;)
api 12y ago
My first major was aerospace, then I switched. Starting to wonder if I made a mistake. I was told back then (late 90s) that there were no jobs doing anything non-military, and that the only thing I could possibly do if I wanted to work on anything cutting-edge was to work on weapons systems.
jordan0day 12y ago
So what is the market for small satellites? Is it just the companies that have existing (big) satellites needing to replace them? And now with miniaturization, it's possible to replace them with smaller, cheaper-to-launch versions? Or is this meant to provide alternatives for other sectors? If I wanted to build a new cell phone network, would it be potentially cheaper to launch a bunch of small satellites than build out the ground infrastructure (towers)? Even though a satellite in LEO is significantly farther away than the average cellphone tower, would it work because line-of-sight is improved?
- ep103 12y ago
  Last time I checked (5 years ago), small satellites were a _booming_ industry, but also a very amateur / research oriented one. While a professional military or communications organization may launch a number of small satellites, they tend to go through the same process as when they're building a large one. As such, most of the small sat world is focused on amateurs launching small satellites of their own design, student organizations and startups launching 1U type boxes, and research efforts for which a tiny box is sufficient. As for your second question, a few points: 1) yes, it is massively cheaper to give your nation cell coverage via satellite as opposed to via tower. There have been a number of success stories in Africa where a local government / business managed to put together the funds to buy a communications satellite, and overnight, the entire country has cell phones. 2) No, you wouldn't do this via a small sat, you'd need a real deal communications satellite to achieve this. One of the key features of small sats is that they are small enough that if you beg and plead enough to the powers that be, you might find room on a launch vehicle to launch your tiny satellite in some spare room. If this service can open that up to people who don't have governmental / educational connections, all the better. 3) There is research on creating swarms of small satellites that can communicate and act like one giant one. That's pretty cool. I worked with these guys http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/blog/?page_id=260 http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/blog/?page_id=260 for a time, and they were working on setting up satellites that were so small, they couldn't even fit a real antenna on them, but figuring out basically a radio based encoding pattern so that you could pull their signal out from beneath the noise floor anyway. That all said, the industry is dominated that way because of the difficulty of launching a satellite to begin with. If you can make it easier to launch sats of any type, then people will start building those too. Build it, and they will come.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
programmer_dude 12y ago
Why not use the ISRO PSLV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle for doing this? It is a proven launch vehicle and would in the end be cheaper than anything that can be built in the US.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  If Firefly can get their weight down by use of better materials and a more efficient engine then they could get a significantly lower cost to orbit. That's a big if, but I say it's worth the attempt.
  - twic 12y ago
    Their own press release [1] says that "this efficient, brand new vehicle is capable of carrying 400kg into low earth orbit [...] for [...] around $8 or 9 million". Wikipedia [2] says that the PSLV can lift 3250 kg into low earth orbit, for $15 million. The Firefly Alpha costs 20,000 USD/kg. The PSLV costs 4615 USD/kg. It's four times more expensive. How much would they have to bring the weight down to be as cheap as the PSLV? [1] http://www.fireflyspace.com/news/*/categories/firefly%20alpha http://www.fireflyspace.com/news/*/categories/firefly%20alph... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle
    - seanflyon 12y ago
      Assuming 3% of mass is payload (wild guess) then a 9% drop in weight would quadruple payload matching the price of the PSLV.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  I don't think the PSLV actually falls in their market. It has a payload almost 10x what the Firefly alpha would offer, and it has a $15 million price tag. Frankly, if the Firefly alpha is offered at anything other than single digit millions of dollars per launch it will not be commercially viable. I think the company is aware of that and that has driven the design of the rocket. The Firefly alpha is an enormously simple rocket, and is theoretically designed for ease of manufacture. It also uses incredibly inexpensive fuels which are easy to store.
restlessdesign 12y ago
It’s great that this may help lower costs for putting smaller/personal satellites up, but I also worry that this will only exacerbate our current space debris problem =[
jdfellow 12y ago
Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64 --- Firefly. Just had to.
dojomouse 12y ago
I hope the roadmap for these guys includes controlled descent and landing for the rockets - otherwise they haven't got a snowballs chance against SpaceX. The aerospike dependence on aerodynamics implies it will be much less effective when running in reverse for the landing phase - better have a way around this. When you look at the breakdown of fuel cost vs vehicle cost, it's obvious that reusable rockets will win so resoundingly that everything else will probably fall by the wayside.
- Solarsail 12y ago
  I'm not so sure the economics works so well for reusables. Flying a reuseable LV requires (as far as anybody's managed, we'll see with SpaceX) far more work than just fuel & go. Typically you'd need a lot of maintenance work and repairs between each flight, not to mention the added complexity to the vehicle required for recovery. That's largely why the Shuttle wound up pushing a billion per launch, instead of the $10 million initially targeted, or the $110 million marginal cost of a launch.
  - dojomouse 12y ago
    It depends heavily on the level of refurbishment required between flights; agreed. I don't think there's enough examples to say "typically". The shuttle didn't come close to targets, but SpaceX seem to be progressing pretty well. At the very least, a new orbital launch venture which is existentially dependent on SpaceX failing to achieve something that they're very well on track to achieving seems pretty commercially risky... and that's in the already highly commercially risky domain of space launch in general :-)
dshankar 12y ago
I sincerely hope these folks get customers & funding to pursue this as it will only help grow the nascent industry. I'm perplexed by the economics, however. A Falcon 9 v1.1 can do 13K kilos to LEO for $56MM. A Firefly Alpha can do 400 kilos to LEO for $9MM. That's $5,000/kilo to LEO for SpaceX and $22,000/kilo for Firefly. Also worth noting SpaceX tried for a small launcher first (Falcon 1) but moved on to larger payloads due to the lack of a market for small payload launches.
- ericd 12y ago
  That seems to match intuition - that there are large fixed costs involved in making a rocket of any size that can reach LEO, and that scaling up the payload wouldn't necessarily increase the R&D and other fixed costs proportionally. Then again, with increased size potentially comes nonlinearly increasing complexity requirements - multiple stages, more exotic fuels/engines, more parts to coordinate, etc. But I'm guessing LEO with these sorts of payload sizes isn't demanding enough to cause the complexity to overwhelm the fixed costs.
- e12e 12y ago
  Does anyone know how these things compare with the trusty old Russian Proton rocket (family). The only thing I can find, is that the proton can supposedly do 20000 kg to LEO, but I don't know at what cost. I'm guessing the problem is that they don't scale far enough down? [edit: Also it looks like the Russian Luna probes/satellites from the 50s and 60s had a payload of around 360(?) kg -- but perhaps whatever lanuch vehicle/method was used hasn't been brought up to date?]
pinkskip 12y ago
More power to Firefly and more power to private space exploration!
clebio 12y ago
Their logo looks awkwardly similar to that of the fictional insurgent group in the game Last of Us: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130825005729/thelastofus/images/f/f7/Firefly_logo.png http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130825005729/thelastofu...

197 points by cryptoz 12y ago

Interesting. I had to surf up Wikipedia's page on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospike_engine to learn more about that. Quite a cool design, if I understood it correctly it switches the big classical cone-shaped nozzle into a lot of small nozzles nestled against a central spike, with the surrounding air forming the other half of the (now virtual) nozzle. Weird and almost magical, what's not to like? :)

washedup 12y ago
Yup, pretty much. The traditional engine nozzle can only be optimized for maximum thrust at one altitude, while the aerospike maintains thrust efficiency at many altitudes, using as much as 30% less fuel at lower altitudes. Also, for the aerospike design, it doesn't have to be a series of small nozzles. The combustion gases can escape the combustion chamber via a ring. It's more difficult to cool this type of system and adds some weight, but it is an efficient alternative to the traditional engine nozzle for SSTO (single-stage-to-orbit) vehicles.
- rbanffy 12y ago
  IIRC, the VentureStar was going to use a linear aerospike. With at least one combustion chamber on each side, it seems an easier design than a ring. Their design seem to indicate they may want to pump air through the spike body to either cool it or as to use it as "bypass" volume in an inverted turbofan-like design. It's intriguing.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    My understanding is that linear aerospikes require relatively long lines to average out the inefficiency of the ends.
mikeash 12y ago
What's not to like is that it's weird and almost magical. First, let me say that I really hope they succeed. I want to see more people doing cool stuff in this area. However, it seems like the opposite of SpaceX and on a similar path as the great spaceflight failures of the past few decades. Firefly is pushing the envelope with composite construction, an unconventional fuel, and an engine design that's never flown to space before. SpaceX's main innovation is that they're boring. They have boring engines and boring rocket designs and they aim for cheapness and known quantities. Even their unprecedented first-stage reusability program is mainly innovative in how boring it is. Instead of screwing around with lifting bodies or jet engines or delta wings or anything like that, they're just taking a regular first stage rocket, slapping some legs on it, filling it with extra fuel, and giving it some fancy software. I'd love to see major innovations succeed in space, but I think SpaceX has the right approach. Don't be fancy, just do stuff that obviously works, get it to the point where you can fly it regularly, and then iterate. There have been so many past attempts to revolutionize spaceflight through fancy new technologies and they've all failed miserably. I hope this one doesn't, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Well, if they work hard on that design, get a half-assed rocket somewhat working and then still fail, while of course a sad moment for them, it would be still of great benefit to humanity. SpaceX or someone else could buy their research and experience and iterate further on that. So good luck to Firefly folks, but no matter how it ends, I think their work will still be a net gain for mankind.

sand500 12y ago

If their Aerospike engine is anything like the one in Kerbal Space Program, this should be good.

jdc0589 12y ago

If they don't have a vehicle named "Serenity" at some point we are going to have a serious problem.

jayzalowitz 12y ago
Shiny.
znowi 12y ago
For those not in the know: > Firefly is an American space western drama television series [...] The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_%28TV_series%29
x1798DE 12y ago
I'm shocked that their lawyers even let them call their space company "Firefly". It's probably a sufficiently different field that they could win a trademark case at trial, but I'm not sure it's 100% cut-and-dry. I think naming a ship "Serenity" without securing some sort of licensing rights might be inviting trouble.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  Wouldn't that require Fox to argue that they're in the space launch business to demonstrate the potential for confusion?
- jahewson 12y ago
  You shouldn't be. There are 185 trademarks for "Firefly" in the USPTO database [1]. Fox don't own any of them, but even if they did it would only apply to specific goods or services such as publishing fiction and merchandise, not launching rockets. That said, I doubt one could call such a company "Harry Potter's Wizardly Rockets" without receiving a lawsuit, but I suspect such claims would be based on copyright. 1. http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804%3A4yw70q.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=live&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=Firefly&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804%3A4...

erydo 12y ago

My first thought was to enumerate the red flags I see (since there have been a fair number of investor-bait non-serious "space startups"): The team comprises CEO, CFO, COO, and VP-BizDev…no engineers, at least in the leadership. To be fair, the COO does have a BS in Physics and almost got a PhD in AE. No photographs of any facilities, testing equipment, or anything short of 3D mockups. The name is based on a sci-fi TV show and the splash page is also a sci-fi quote. Looking deeper, however, it looks like they've recently hired their 25th employee (a Systems Engineer) and are building out their engineering team aggressively. Recently funded in January. So perhaps they are legitimately worth keeping an eye on.

timsally 12y ago
> The team comprises CEO, CFO, COO, and VP-BizDev…no engineers, at least in the leadership. Huh? The CEO has a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace engineering from Princeton and was a Principle Propulsion Engineer at SpaceX, Senior Systems Engineer at Blue Origin, and the VP of Propulsion at Virgin Galactic. Put another way, he's been a key engineer at all the major private space companies...
ceejayoz 12y ago
The CEO and COO are both engineers, according to their bios. CEO: "Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering" COO: "Master's Degree in Astronautics & Space Engineering"
jccooper 12y ago
Tom Markusic (CEO) is a real propulsion engineer. He's had a major hand in at least two liquid engines (Merlin and Newton). Which may or may not be a good thing. The overly-ambitious design of their rocket seems like it might be a symptom of having a "bored engineer" in charge. Which could produce some spectacular sci-fi-pulp-like results--but which will more likely kill the company through development hell.

imdsm 12y ago

Can't help but feel like we're on the cusp of a new age of mankind. How long will it be until space travel really takes off? I feel like we're getting closer and closer. We're a part of history, we were the children of the dawn of the digital age, pushing mankind towards the stars. A hundred years from now, people will look back and read about us and think how primitive we were to be pushing for space but how almost nobody actually went to space.

apalmer 12y ago
I think the key missing element is a clear commercial driver. Say we found a fuel source on mars that was so energy rich it could undercut oil... then yeah that would lead to a radical revolution in human space exploration. What we have now as far as i am aware is very little commercial incentive to really explore space, in this scenario space flight will probably advance very slowly.
- rglover 12y ago
  I'd argue that commercial incentive is the biggest limiting factor of the human race. Yes, it costs money to do things but I'm really surprised that we don't aggressively pursue space travel just on the basis of knowing why we're here. There's more than enough wealth on the planet to do it, but we're too concentrated on politics/hoarding. There's this strange fixation with the ground (I usually attribute this to fear masquerading as a budget) and what's happening here, but I feel like there's a lot more out there if we seriously start looking. The kind of stuff that would eliminate the need for commercial incentive that we can't necessarily see now.
  - warfangle 12y ago
    > just on the basis of knowing why we're here. But we're here to convert heathens so they don't burn in hell. Why would we want to ever leave this puddle that, so obviously, was made just for us? /tongue-in-cheek
    - rglover 12y ago

esw 12y ago

It looks like they've completely ripped off the Tesla Motors logo.

josefresco 12y ago
It's not a complete rip-off, but does have a similar shape: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/68/Tesla_Motors_logo.svg/346px-Tesla_Motors_logo.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/68/Tesla_Mo...
- esw 12y ago
  I was actually referring to the font, but now that you mention it, the graphic is very similar too.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    You're right, when you combine the two the criticism is valid.

el_zorro 12y ago

I'm very skeptical of the market they're targeting. SpaceX used to cover that same payload capacity with the Falcon 1 [0] rocket, but discontinued it since no one bought any. Maybe things have changed in the past few years, but I seriously doubt it. The aerospike engine is interesting since none have been used commercially before, but if there isn't a market it might as well run on fairy dust. Still, I wish them the best. We need more innovation in the space sector, and I would love to see those engines become more commonplace. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1

rplnt 12y ago
But Falcon 1 was not reusable, making it (I guess) more expensive. Maybe there is market, it just wasn't the right price for that market.
- api 12y ago
  Is this going for reusability? Don't see any mention of that. Maybe I'm blind.
  - rplnt 12y ago
    It was in the title here on HN. Or at least I think I saw it there. Can someone confirm whether it was there or I'm just seeing things?
  - InclinedPlane 12y ago
    It's in the video.
ajarmst 12y ago
Came here to make a similar comment. This isn't really a competitor to SpaceX, as they're target a market that SpaceX abandoned. Frankly, while I'm a supporter of everything space, I'm a little underwhelmed by a plan throw sub-500 kilo packages to LEO. That's hardly the next step, and I think is a market that can be more efficiently served by secondary payloads on bigger platforms. Even if the "lets clutter LEO with everybody's hobby projects" market matures, a joint launch of several small payloads on a larger platform will likely prove more efficient, reliable and versatile. And, frankly, the name seems to be some pretty obvious pandering to sci-fi fanboys. I'd be more impressed by a focus on solid engineering and business planning instead of baiting kickstarter.

antubbs 12y ago

I don't think it is accurate to suggest that this company is competing with SpaceX. It is accurate that SpaceX is trying to provide lower-cost launch capability and it is accurate that SpaceX is trying to make parts of its launch vehicles and spacecraft reusable. With that said, the addressable markets for the two companies are vastly different. Firefly is targeting the <1000kg payload market, with the hypothetical initial launch vehicle targeting <400kg. The Falcon 9 is designed for an order of magnitude more payload, with upcoming vehicles targeting an even greater capability. So, at this stage there may be a small amount of talent competition (at ~25 employees) and hypothetically it could provide competition for secondary payload capabilities in the future if things work out.

jccooper 12y ago
Or they could scale up once they prove their ability to fly... just like SpaceX did with the Falcon 1. Which, granted, had more payload capacity that the Firefly Alpha is designed for. But they could follow a similar plan. There may be some money in the small launch market. But physics is not kind to small rockets.
- thisjepisje 12y ago
  Not sure if I understand you correctly, but: >But physics is not kind to small rockets. Why start with a small rocket, then?
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    Engineering is not kind to large rockets
  - jccooper 12y ago
    Because limited funding is not kind to large rockets.
- antubbs 12y ago
  I'm not sure it makes sense to assume that all launch companies want to scale up and build vastly bigger rockets. SpaceX did it to go after the CRS launches, and now onto larger commercial/military payloads. Their endgame was never lightweight launch class. Firefly is making it their business plan to go after a lucrative business, and one that is likely to grow dramatically in the coming years. They're competing with the capabilities currently offered to secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles or as primary payloads on e.g. Orbital's solid fuel vehicles. Orbital/ATK is the real competitor here, not SpaceX.

rglover 12y ago

The world is going to change drastically in the next 10-20 years. Side discussion related to the article: what to focus on? Will web development still be a thing (I'm doubtful)? If so, what does web development look like in 2024? 2034? It seems like a lot of engineering energy will go into the design and manufacturing of the systems that will manage human life in space. Really curious. What do you see?

chatmasta 12y ago
The web is still an early platform, and there are still thousands of opportunities to make significant profits with relatively little startup cost. I think the web is a great place to make your first big chunk of money, and then in 10-20 years you can invest it in more capital-intensive, "world-changing" startups. Or maybe that's just what Elon Musk did. ;)
randallsquared 12y ago
It would be really nice if we were about to get the future as seen from 1965 (space-wise), but I think that's still unlikely. Even if there are as many as TEN "low cost" orbital rocket companies doing launches by 2024[1], I'm skeptical that the US will have the legal and organizational flexibility to allow the level of launches that would make this non-niche. The main obstacles to the growth of space travel are not technical or economic, but governmental. I suppose one odd result of 9/11, though, was showing everyone that the thousands of plane flights every day already have essentially the same potential issues as allowing unlimited orbital rocket launches. [1] ...and right now there's, uh, one, doing a few launches per year, I think.
- vdaniuk 12y ago
  Two words only: asteroid mining. This will change the economic parameters of space travel.
nawitus 12y ago
>Will web development still be a thing (I'm doubtful)? If so, what does web development look like in 2024? 2034? Even today, the 'web' is simply a general-purpose software platform (or atleast should be thought of one). It might be helpful to rephrase your question as "will general-purpose software development be as important/exciting/profitable (etc). in 10 to 20 years?". I think there are two major, related and in some respects "opposing" trends. One is using software to make hardware obsolete (virtual reality, augmented reality, telecommuting and converting physical solutions to non-physical solutions). On the hardware front, production of physical products is becoming more and more algorithmic and software-defined. There are also opportunities to decrease manufacturing costs by orders of magnitude (mainly nanotechnology). If we get there, then the utility of simulating reality becomes less and less interesting, if we can just do what we want in reality for sufficiently cheaply.

jccooper 12y ago

Good luck to 'em. But I don't know that I would have picked several never-flown techniques as the basis for my least-cost rocket. I count at least four: aerospike nozzle, methane fuel, autogenous pressurization (whatever they mean by that), and all-composite structure. That would seem to be a path to spending lots of time and money on research. To be fair, composites and aerospikes are well-tested, and methane has some good qualities and no obvious problems as a rocket fuel. (I don't know what they intend for pressurization; perhaps they want to boil both fuel and oxidizer to create pressure? Seem like a non-standard technique anyway.) And it's not like you can buy rocket hardware OTS, so everything you do is a development project. But none has flown on a real vehicle. Picking one would be ambitious. Four just seems like compounded risk. Scaled Composites has had plenty of trouble with their seemingly-simple hybrid engine. You may think a technology is researched enough or simple enough to use without much danger, but rocketry is an extreme environment and can hold lots of surprises at scale and in the margins. SpaceX, on the other hand, has only done one really revolutionary thing: cost discipline. Mostly through simplicity. Which is a pretty important contribution to the world of rocketry. Much more important than any particular nozzle or engine improvement. The Firefly Alpha should be a nifty rocket if they can get it flying without spending too much money--but the history of rocket development doesn't suggest that'll be easy.

ozi 12y ago
No inert pressurant is needed for Methane; the fuel itself is used to provide the working pressure for the engine.
api 12y ago
Methane is simpler in some ways -- no helium, for example. The big question marks here are composites and aerospike. Aerospikes have been tested but have not (as far as I know) flown. Composites haven't flown at this scale as far as I know. So yeah they have their work cut out for them! BTW: SpaceX has done some revolutionary things around reusability, but I mostly agree -- other than their reusability efforts everything else they've done is good old fashioned rocket science + cost control.
chucknelson 12y ago
> autogenous pressurization (whatever they mean by that) From their Vehicle page: "Firely's engines are actually self-pressurized (AKA autogenously pressurized), so that the fuel itself is used to provide the working pressure for the engine. This simplifies the design and saves weight."

cwt 12y ago

They need to change their highlight color. It is impossible to read text that is highlighted.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tanglesome 12y ago

Nice idea and good luck to them, but all we really have is a video and a notion.

Gravityloss 12y ago

Note that this is a 400 kg class launch vehicle, so much smaller than a 10 tonne level Falcon 9. Even smaller than a Falcon 1. Beal Aerospace also tried to bring pressure fed composite launchers in the nineties, though he used hydrogen peroxide and kerosene: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beal_Aerospace While methane has the advantage of self-pressurization, it is also about half the density of kerosene, meaning there will be double the volume for the same mass, and the pressure vessel will be double the mass. Pressure vessel mass is proportional to volume and pressure. That's why Beal used very dense fuels, even when they have less exhaust velocity. The heavy tank is a worse problem for sea-level launched rockets that need high engine pressures to reach passable engine exhaust velocities. The rocket equation shows that exhaust velocity is important to reach high rocket velocities: delta v = v_exhaust * ln(m_full / m_empty) In a pressure fed rocket the engine pressure is the tank pressure (minus some pressure loss in the injector). If you air launched, it might be a bit easier, since ambient pressure is only a quarter of sea level at 10 km. Airlaunch LLC tried to use these synergistic technologies some years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirLaunch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirLaunch Basically in the atmosphere you exhaust at ambient pressure (or not very far from it). If your chamber pressure is low, then you can't expand much before you're at ambient at sea level. Thus the nozzle can't produce much thrust for the propellant flow. The upshot is that low pressure rockets suck at low altitudes. But for relatively small rockets it might work well: apparently because of some minimum-gauge issues, they need to have pretty thick walls anyway so going to pressure fed is not such a huge overhead. Also equipment like turbopumps does not scale well at the low end. (I haven't studies this in detail though.) Armadillo Aerospace has tested oxygen-methane self pressurized rockets years ago and they are simple and work well. They can also be controlled precisely. NASA bought one from them and flies it occasionally. I think it is a blow down pressurized version though (helium is filled directly to the main propellant tank head spaces for pressurization): http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/ http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/ So auto-pressurization is nothing fancy, in fact it can be seen as a simpler version of blowdown pressurization, which is simpler than regulated pressurization. If I had to create an orbital launcher with minimum capital, this is a reasonable design, though I'm skeptical about the aerospike. To convince me, they need to first fly some sounding rockets. There's been many rocket startups in the recent decades, with little flying hardware, and even that has been no guarantee of going further.

motoboi 12y ago

The choose a bad name, as the /r/firefly is already taken ;)

api 12y ago

My first major was aerospace, then I switched. Starting to wonder if I made a mistake. I was told back then (late 90s) that there were no jobs doing anything non-military, and that the only thing I could possibly do if I wanted to work on anything cutting-edge was to work on weapons systems.

jordan0day 12y ago

So what is the market for small satellites? Is it just the companies that have existing (big) satellites needing to replace them? And now with miniaturization, it's possible to replace them with smaller, cheaper-to-launch versions? Or is this meant to provide alternatives for other sectors? If I wanted to build a new cell phone network, would it be potentially cheaper to launch a bunch of small satellites than build out the ground infrastructure (towers)? Even though a satellite in LEO is significantly farther away than the average cellphone tower, would it work because line-of-sight is improved?

ep103 12y ago
Last time I checked (5 years ago), small satellites were a _booming_ industry, but also a very amateur / research oriented one. While a professional military or communications organization may launch a number of small satellites, they tend to go through the same process as when they're building a large one. As such, most of the small sat world is focused on amateurs launching small satellites of their own design, student organizations and startups launching 1U type boxes, and research efforts for which a tiny box is sufficient. As for your second question, a few points: 1) yes, it is massively cheaper to give your nation cell coverage via satellite as opposed to via tower. There have been a number of success stories in Africa where a local government / business managed to put together the funds to buy a communications satellite, and overnight, the entire country has cell phones. 2) No, you wouldn't do this via a small sat, you'd need a real deal communications satellite to achieve this. One of the key features of small sats is that they are small enough that if you beg and plead enough to the powers that be, you might find room on a launch vehicle to launch your tiny satellite in some spare room. If this service can open that up to people who don't have governmental / educational connections, all the better. 3) There is research on creating swarms of small satellites that can communicate and act like one giant one. That's pretty cool. I worked with these guys http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/blog/?page_id=260 http://www.spacecraftresearch.com/blog/?page_id=260 for a time, and they were working on setting up satellites that were so small, they couldn't even fit a real antenna on them, but figuring out basically a radio based encoding pattern so that you could pull their signal out from beneath the noise floor anyway. That all said, the industry is dominated that way because of the difficulty of launching a satellite to begin with. If you can make it easier to launch sats of any type, then people will start building those too. Build it, and they will come.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

programmer_dude 12y ago

Why not use the ISRO PSLV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle for doing this? It is a proven launch vehicle and would in the end be cheaper than anything that can be built in the US.

seanflyon 12y ago
If Firefly can get their weight down by use of better materials and a more efficient engine then they could get a significantly lower cost to orbit. That's a big if, but I say it's worth the attempt.
- twic 12y ago
  Their own press release [1] says that "this efficient, brand new vehicle is capable of carrying 400kg into low earth orbit [...] for [...] around $8 or 9 million". Wikipedia [2] says that the PSLV can lift 3250 kg into low earth orbit, for $15 million. The Firefly Alpha costs 20,000 USD/kg. The PSLV costs 4615 USD/kg. It's four times more expensive. How much would they have to bring the weight down to be as cheap as the PSLV? [1] http://www.fireflyspace.com/news/*/categories/firefly%20alpha http://www.fireflyspace.com/news/*/categories/firefly%20alph... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Satellite_Launch_Vehicle
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    Assuming 3% of mass is payload (wild guess) then a 9% drop in weight would quadruple payload matching the price of the PSLV.
InclinedPlane 12y ago
I don't think the PSLV actually falls in their market. It has a payload almost 10x what the Firefly alpha would offer, and it has a $15 million price tag. Frankly, if the Firefly alpha is offered at anything other than single digit millions of dollars per launch it will not be commercially viable. I think the company is aware of that and that has driven the design of the rocket. The Firefly alpha is an enormously simple rocket, and is theoretically designed for ease of manufacture. It also uses incredibly inexpensive fuels which are easy to store.

restlessdesign 12y ago

It’s great that this may help lower costs for putting smaller/personal satellites up, but I also worry that this will only exacerbate our current space debris problem =[

jdfellow 12y ago

Midbulk transport, standard radion-accelerator core, classcode 03-K64 --- Firefly. Just had to.

dojomouse 12y ago

I hope the roadmap for these guys includes controlled descent and landing for the rockets - otherwise they haven't got a snowballs chance against SpaceX. The aerospike dependence on aerodynamics implies it will be much less effective when running in reverse for the landing phase - better have a way around this. When you look at the breakdown of fuel cost vs vehicle cost, it's obvious that reusable rockets will win so resoundingly that everything else will probably fall by the wayside.

Solarsail 12y ago
I'm not so sure the economics works so well for reusables. Flying a reuseable LV requires (as far as anybody's managed, we'll see with SpaceX) far more work than just fuel & go. Typically you'd need a lot of maintenance work and repairs between each flight, not to mention the added complexity to the vehicle required for recovery. That's largely why the Shuttle wound up pushing a billion per launch, instead of the $10 million initially targeted, or the $110 million marginal cost of a launch.
- dojomouse 12y ago
  It depends heavily on the level of refurbishment required between flights; agreed. I don't think there's enough examples to say "typically". The shuttle didn't come close to targets, but SpaceX seem to be progressing pretty well. At the very least, a new orbital launch venture which is existentially dependent on SpaceX failing to achieve something that they're very well on track to achieving seems pretty commercially risky... and that's in the already highly commercially risky domain of space launch in general :-)

dshankar 12y ago

I sincerely hope these folks get customers & funding to pursue this as it will only help grow the nascent industry. I'm perplexed by the economics, however. A Falcon 9 v1.1 can do 13K kilos to LEO for $56MM. A Firefly Alpha can do 400 kilos to LEO for $9MM. That's $5,000/kilo to LEO for SpaceX and $22,000/kilo for Firefly. Also worth noting SpaceX tried for a small launcher first (Falcon 1) but moved on to larger payloads due to the lack of a market for small payload launches.

ericd 12y ago
That seems to match intuition - that there are large fixed costs involved in making a rocket of any size that can reach LEO, and that scaling up the payload wouldn't necessarily increase the R&D and other fixed costs proportionally. Then again, with increased size potentially comes nonlinearly increasing complexity requirements - multiple stages, more exotic fuels/engines, more parts to coordinate, etc. But I'm guessing LEO with these sorts of payload sizes isn't demanding enough to cause the complexity to overwhelm the fixed costs.
e12e 12y ago
Does anyone know how these things compare with the trusty old Russian Proton rocket (family). The only thing I can find, is that the proton can supposedly do 20000 kg to LEO, but I don't know at what cost. I'm guessing the problem is that they don't scale far enough down? [edit: Also it looks like the Russian Luna probes/satellites from the 50s and 60s had a payload of around 360(?) kg -- but perhaps whatever lanuch vehicle/method was used hasn't been brought up to date?]

pinkskip 12y ago

More power to Firefly and more power to private space exploration!

clebio 12y ago

Their logo looks awkwardly similar to that of the fictional insurgent group in the game Last of Us: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130825005729/thelastofus/images/f/f7/Firefly_logo.png http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130825005729/thelastofu...