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| scottlowther at (no spam) ix.netcom.com... |
 Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2009 9:57 pm |
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On Sep 9, 12:17 am, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru... at (no spam) gmail.com>
wrote:
Quote: A simple $20billion prize for an SSTO with a payload of 100 tonnes and a
turnaround of less than 1 week would do
Far too ambitious for a first-gen SSTO. There are currently no
payloads for a market like that. Start smaller and cheaper. You get
more players that way. A $500 million prize for a one-ton payload SSTO
with a week turnaround will have small organizations falling all over
each other to be first. But jack it up to 100 tons, and only the big
players - and there are really only Boeing and Lockheed left in the US
- would even have a hope of getting anywhere. A one-ton payload SSTO
would be able to safety transport at least two to a space station, or
four orbital spacedivers, or perhaps up to ten suborbital passengers/
spacedivers.
Quote: My favorite was this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_Rocket
Seriously flawed concept, sadly. However, the engineers behind it seem
to be doing well with XCOR.
Quote: Only Asia is the home of ambition these days.
Not quite true. The US remains the home of ambition... but the
government is becoming more European by the microsecond. And massive
socialist governments are really good at quashing ambition.
Quote: So, who do you think will be the first to return to the moon?
Hard to say. Hopefully either Bigelow or Rutan (or the two together).
Quote: NASA spend $7.7billion, and SpaceX spends...?
Somewhere on the order of $200 million. |
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| scottlowther at (no spam) ix.netcom.com... |
| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 9:52 am |
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Guest
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On Sep 9, 11:27 am, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru... at (no spam) gmail.com>
wrote:
Quote: NASA spend $7.7billion, and SpaceX spends...?
Somewhere on the order of $200 million.
So one might naively assume that SpaceX is 10x as efficient as NASA?
Naively, yes. SpaceX's current launch record is not stellar, and their
*real* launcher, the Falcon 9, has yet to fly. And of course they have
so far not launched a single human. SpaceX has the advantage currently
of being non-Union and non-governmental, which means they don;t need
to carry the same vast dead weight of non-performance and
incompetance. Plus, they are a dictatorship of sorts. Elon Musk says
"gimme one of *these,*" and they go and get him one.
Hopefully in five or ten years the US will have survived Obamanomics,
and I'll be able to say much better things about the likes of SpaceX,
XCOR, Scaled and Blue Origin.
In a perfect world, in ten or so years NASA won't be in the business
of flying astronauts to space... they'll be in the business of sending
astronauts *beyond* LEO, and will simply *buy* rides to space. |
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| Dirk Bruere at NeoPax... |
| Posted: Wed Sep 09, 2009 11:27 am |
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Guest
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scottlowther at (no spam) ix.netcom.com wrote:
Quote: On Sep 9, 12:17 am, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru... at (no spam) gmail.com
wrote:
A simple $20billion prize for an SSTO with a payload of 100 tonnes and a
turnaround of less than 1 week would do
Far too ambitious for a first-gen SSTO. There are currently no
payloads for a market like that. Start smaller and cheaper. You get
more players that way. A $500 million prize for a one-ton payload SSTO
with a week turnaround will have small organizations falling all over
each other to be first. But jack it up to 100 tons, and only the big
players - and there are really only Boeing and Lockheed left in the US
- would even have a hope of getting anywhere. A one-ton payload SSTO
would be able to safety transport at least two to a space station, or
four orbital spacedivers, or perhaps up to ten suborbital passengers/
spacedivers.
My favorite was this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_Rocket
Seriously flawed concept, sadly. However, the engineers behind it seem
to be doing well with XCOR.
Only Asia is the home of ambition these days.
Not quite true. The US remains the home of ambition... but the
government is becoming more European by the microsecond. And massive
socialist governments are really good at quashing ambition.
So, who do you think will be the first to return to the moon?
Hard to say. Hopefully either Bigelow or Rutan (or the two together).
NASA spend $7.7billion, and SpaceX spends...?
Somewhere on the order of $200 million.
So one might naively assume that SpaceX is 10x as efficient as NASA?
FFF
Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff |
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