SpaceX - News Items

I'm really a big fan of Elon and SpaceX but they are still a long time away from launching ~10 F9s a year (not to mention 10 FHs on top of that).

The decision to use this or other booster is not taken on a whim. I suspect many potential customers were not willing to commit their time and money to an unproven technology. With each successful flight their ranks will grow though.

On the other hand, all it takes is but one failure to destroy that confidence.

Customers still use Atlas, Ariane, or any of current crop of launchers etc, and they have all had failures.

It takes customers and hardware to perform that. Right now, it doesn't look like there's enough of either of them to do that, but it also looks like things are moving in the right direction.

SpaceX Wins NASA Contract to Complete Development of Successor to the Space Shuttle

First Astronaut Mission Expected in Three Years

WASHINGTON D.C. - NASA has awarded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) $75 million to develop a revolutionary launch escape system that will enable the company’s Dragon spacecraft to carry astronauts. The Congressionally mandated award is part of the agency's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative that started in 2009 to help private companies mature concepts and technologies for human spaceflight.

"This award will accelerate our efforts to develop the next-generation rockets and spacecraft for human transportation," said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer. "With NASA’s support, SpaceX will be ready to fly its first manned mission in 2014."

Musk said the flight-proven Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft represent the safest and fastest path to American crew transportation capability. With their historic successful flight on December 8th, 2010, many Falcon 9 and Dragon components that are needed to transport humans to low-Earth orbit have already been demonstrated in flight. Both vehicles were designed from the outset to fly people.

The announcement comes at a time when the United States has a critical need for American commercial human spaceflight. After the Space Shuttle retires in a few months, NASA will be totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) at a cost of more than $753 million a year -- about $63 million per seat.

Musk said Dragon – designed to carry seven astronauts at a time to the space station at a cost of $20 million a seat – offers a far better deal for the U.S. taxpayer. While considerable flight testing remains, the critical-path technology Dragon needs for carrying humans to orbit is the launch escape system.

New Launch Abort System

SpaceX's integrated escape system will be superior to traditional solid rocket tractor escape towers used by other vehicles in the past. Due to their extreme weight, tractor systems must be jettisoned within minutes of liftoff, but the SpaceX innovative design builds the escape engines into the side walls of Dragon, eliminating the danger of releasing a heavy solid rocket escape tower after launch.

The SpaceX design also provides crew with emergency escape capability throughout the entire flight, whereas the Space Shuttle has no escape system and even the Apollo moon program allowed escape only during the first few minutes of flight. The result is that astronauts flying on Dragon will be considerably safer.

Furthermore, the integrated escape system returns with the spacecraft, allowing for easy reuse and radical reductions in the cost of space transport. Over time, the same escape thrusters will also provide the capability for Dragon to land almost anywhere on Earth or another planet with pinpoint accuracy, overcoming the limitation of a winged architecture that works only in Earth's atmosphere.

Under the award, SpaceX will modify Dragon to accommodate crew, with specific hardware milestones that will provide NASA with regular, demonstrated progress including:

* Static fire testing of the launch escape system engines
* Initial design of abort engine and crew accommodations
* Prototype evaluations by NASA crew for seats, control panels and cabin

The December 8th, 2010, demonstration flight of Falcon 9 and Dragon was the first flight under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which was initiated to develop commercial cargo services to the International Space Station. After the Space Shuttle retires, SpaceX will fly at least 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the International Space Station as part of the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract for NASA.

Of course it takes customers and hardware to do that, but when you take a look at their launch manifest it doesn't exactly look like they are short on the first category (sure it isn't yet 10/year, but that is expected).

My concern is that their schedules could slip because they either can't keep up with the required production rates and/or with other kind of operations like launch preparations.

I hear ya! The comment was more related to customers having things ready to fly. No point in having huge stockpiles of rocket engines and tanks laying around, taking up space (that could be used for other stuff).