[mpakes]

As a former engineer on the Atlas V launch vehicle program, I'm so excited to see the commercialization of spaceflight come to fruition. The latest projections I've seen have the Dragon and Falcon 9 coming in at 20% of the price of an equivalent Atlas V / Delta IV (EELV) launch. Comparative Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) costs are even lower than that. (I'd love if any SpaceX employees can comment further on any of this with more detail.)

As I've seen firsthand, the waste in typical defense contractor programs is obscene – it's so great to see someone doing something about it. Hopefully with much lower cost to orbit, we'll see a revitalization of the commercial launch market as well.

[pmorici]

It's also worth mentioning that SpaceX is possibly even significantly cheaper than their commercial competitors. If you look up the other company mentioned in the article, Orbital Science Corporation it says they have a contract with NASA for 8 launches for 1.9 Billion to do the same thing. SpaceX has a contract for 1.6 Billion for 12 launches. That's 50% more flights for 15% less cost.

[Retric]

Do you have the Mass to LEO numbers for each of those?

[mpakes]

EDIT: This is in reply to a deleted question about the impact of an inevitable commercial spacecraft failure.

Great question. In my mind, I compare this to the stigmatization of nuclear power. The combination of the public's lack of trust in science, along with the media's ceaseless quest for sensational (and often fear-based) stories has led to an overly-cautious approach to spaceflight (IMO). This has severely impacted our progress in space exploration; 43 years after the moon landing, we have no active human exploration programs outside the ISS. Embarrassing.

I'm all for improving flight safety and avoiding needless loss of life, but I also believe in taking risks to achieve important goals. Space exploration is worth the risk.

For commercial satellite launches, I see relatively little impact. Existing launch vehicles do not have a 100% success track record, and customers will cover the loss with insurance.

The biggest concern is with manned flights. I'm not really qualified to predict the outcome, but I really hope that pragmatism will prevail. As engineers, we do the best we can, but failures are inevitable. We simply do our best to learn from the failure and take those learnings back to the lab on the next iteration.