As for the 9H... bet that "Falcon 27" will be serious fun to watch take off
You bet!
Well, if they really go on to develop a F1 class engine, more power to them! They sure know how to make big and strong engines. From the looks of it so far, they are quite relyable too. So why not?
Sure could be fun!
Kudos to Elon and SpaceX. He made a huge financial gamble that seems to be paying off. Hope he can turn a profit soon: Tesla's Elon Musk says he's broke
Actually, from all I know SpaceX has been profitable for quite a while. I heard a number around 2.5 billion, if I did not read that wrong.
Also, he is short on cash, not broke. Most of his money is bound in his companies and from what I understand a messy divorce has caused his shares to be frozen. So he can not sell them to get more money. Anyway, with SpaceX doing really well right now, he should be fine
While I hear you loud and clear if you are talking about any typical large aerospace corporation regarding new project development, Kelly Johnson's "Skunk Works" is not dead. I had the pleasure of working with them a couple of years ago.
Our little company was all nuts over getting every certification in the books, ISO 900x, IPC soldering, Cert this, Cert that, tight release procedures, everything documented. We scored a contract with the Skunk Works and they came in with parts marked with masking tape and removed from varous ... ah ... let's say prototypes tested to beyond their capability, with which we were supposed to build a project. Gee, isn't the accepted standard to use red, yellow, orange, and green tags with incident numbers and full traceability? I was aghast at the informality, until I realized that is the Skunk Works way of doing things. They are still delightfully informal, allowing the engineers to concentrate on getting the design flying, then releasing the "mundane" mainstream corporate engineers on it afterwards to clean up the mess.
I expect there is a lot of the same going on a SpaceX, the Delta Clipper was built that way (and flew fine until NASA took it over), and you will find Skunk Works mentality at Scaled Composites building the Space Ship One and Two.
That's great news that Skunkworks is still working the way it was designed to. Last I heard they had lost that informality and aggressive go-to stance. Glad to hear it's not missing.
I too have read things over the last few years where Musk has been mooting a larger engine design. That's the component I'm most interested in seeing...
A few years ago our then CEO, a fellow who hails from South Africa, was one of a number of people from that country honored in an article in a newspaper there as having gone abroad to do Great Things. Musk was probably also mentioned prominently.
But what the writer really wanted to know was, how come these brilliant South Africans couldn't have done their brilliant things in South Africa.
Honestly, this is a great country, still the land of opportunity.
Tom Ligon wrote:I expect there is a lot of the same going on a SpaceX, the Delta Clipper was built that way (and flew fine until NASA took it over), and you will find Skunk Works mentality at Scaled Composites building the Space Ship One and Two.
And you will find it at EMC2.
Falcon 9 flew without a lot of trouble. Spaceships One and Two (or should I say, Enterprise) are flying. Sure there were some problems down the road, but no decade-stalling showstoppers.
Looks promising enough for Polywell.
Skipjack wrote:
One source I read says they've sunk $400 M into the project so far.
500 including Dragon, according to Elon. That is extremely cheap!!
And that's including all R&D, support structures (pads, control equipment, etc.) and manpower involved.
Imagine, NASA used to do that kind of money per launch.
It will be interesting to see if Spacex can really revolutionize spaceflight. To me, "revolution" would mean reducing the cost per pound to orbit from ~$10,000 to $1000. I can't see how the Falcons could do this unless first stages really are reusable (they haven't demonstrated this yet) and unless they boost the flight rate dramatically, up to about 1 per week. That would be around 50 launches per year. Over the past decade or so the entire world has averaged only 60 or 70 orbital launches per year. So, Musk would have to seize the entire orbital market to make a real difference. Possible, but how likely?
mrflora wrote:It will be interesting to see if Spacex can really revolutionize spaceflight. To me, "revolution" would mean reducing the cost per pound to orbit from ~$10,000 to $1000. I can't see how the Falcons could do this unless first stages really are reusable (they haven't demonstrated this yet) and unless they boost the flight rate dramatically, up to about 1 per week. That would be around 50 launches per year. Over the past decade or so the entire world has averaged only 60 or 70 orbital launches per year. So, Musk would have to seize the entire orbital market to make a real difference. Possible, but how likely?
Regards,
M.R.F.
If the price is right.....
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
If you build it, they will come...
I think that the lower the prices are, the more people will be able to afford putting payloads into orbit. So all of a sudden, there will be new clients popping up as prices go down. I am certain of this.
Also, once SpaceX does it, there will be more competition and competition lowers the prices even more.
Armadillo aerospace is going a step past the informality of the skunk works. They are just building stuff. And they are profitable. They are, however, a few years from going to orbit.
What is the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
