SpaceX News

AcesHigh · Post by **AcesHigh** » Fri Oct 26, 2012 8:27 pm

DeltaV wrote:Assorted recent news about SpaceX and its competition.

Elon Musk's Latest Interview
Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars
We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China—if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book.
Reaching for the stars in Mojave

Blue Origin Successfully Tests Crew Capsule Escape Rocket

thanks for the links. Excellent interview to Wired.

GIThruster · Post by **GIThruster** » Sun Oct 28, 2012 11:03 pm

Congrats to SpaceX for another successful splashdown and recovery.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 2:06 am

Yepp, another mission well done!
Of course the NASA press release had to contain a shameless plug for the SLS... That is going to be harder and harder to justify...

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Sun Nov 04, 2012 3:10 am

Another successful Grasshopper hover test (small, but still important):
http://twitter.yfrog.com/f362mloybjbosdefkdeoytqsz

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Tue Nov 06, 2012 12:02 am

New videos with sound:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-VjaBSSnqs&feature=plcp
The caption gives some more information. Grasshopper is sooo huge. What looks like it barely getting of the ground is actually a two story hopp.

Betruger · Post by **Betruger** » Tue Nov 06, 2012 9:10 am

Someone somewhere (NSF?) made a quick & dirty relative scales graphic. DC-X is dwarfed.

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Thu Nov 15, 2012 4:37 pm

Typical teething problems:
SpaceX Cargo Mission Suffered Other Anomalies

I do have to wonder, though, about counterfeit/hacked chips and software in the electronics. China is (or will be) SpaceX's main competition, after all.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:52 pm

Yeah, I guess they need better shielding and more redundancy.

krenshala · Post by **krenshala** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 5:55 pm

Additional shielding may be all that is required, at least for the electronics side of things.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:14 pm

Additional shielding may be all that is required, at least for the electronics side of things.

Yeah that is what I was thinking too.

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 4:30 pm

Turns out they don't even use rad-hard parts, rather a rad-hard architecture. Redundancy, cross-checking and voting is the standard practice, as with Shuttle.
Dragon's "Radiation-Tolerant" Design

C++ to Mars? Yuk.
"Entry interface in 4 seconds. 2 seconds. Hey! What's with the spinning circle thingy?!"

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 5:24 pm

C++ to Mars? Yuk.

So you would write the entire code in assembler?

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 6:16 pm

SpaceX article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20389148

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 6:37 pm

Another article.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/elon-m ... hyperloop/

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Mon Nov 19, 2012 6:48 pm

It is funny how everyone is ohhh sooo concerned about the failure of one first stage engine (that did not even directly affect its ability to fulfill its mission) and completely forget that the first launch of Ariane5 was total failure with loss of vehicle and payload and it still turned into a rather relyable launcher in the end.
The biggest problem for Arianespace and EADS is politics. There is no doubt that the engineers have the skills. They would probably know how to do it all cheaper and better, probably even have ideas for RLVs (like the Skylon). The problem is that with so many parties involved that all have their own interests and want to get a piece of the cake, supply lines get longer and processes get inefficient. It takes forever to make even the simplest decisions. It is very clear that Europe can not and will never be able to compete with SpaceX via process. The system does not allow for enough optimizations to lower cost. The only chance they have is to innovate by design and engineering, but even that will be difficult due to the fact that noone wants to take risks with new designs.
What I hope is that Europe will not get to a decision on Ariane 6 before SpaceX has their reusable first stage operational. I hope that once SpaceX does the first step, the stigma of "RLV cant be done" will be broken and competitors will dare to think in that direction again. At that point they will definitely have to in order to even pretend to ever be cost competitive again.