Zuckerberg has accrued over 20 billion dollars of value. He's 27. Elon started out by starting a company "to let people pay to sell junk on eBay" and he did alright.
Indeed if I had millions/billions to invest I'd rather throw it at Elon. Not only would I have a reasonable level of expectation of seeing an ROI, however long it might take, but also I could expect to see social return. Something that truly moves the human race forward. There are tons of teams that could make Instagram, Groupon, OMGPOP or Pinterest, etc. Very few that could do SpaceX. Bet on talent. Especially rarer talent with a track record.
I don't see the point in this comment, or why it's getting so upvoted. We 1st worlders still live within market economies where people can build what they like and rise and fall at the peril of the consumer. Both of them have done this brilliantly so I ask, why so mad?
Tbh your comment just reminds me of the people on music boards who spend all their time arguing that music died after Led Zep....
I can't believe that the launch is scheduled for April 30th; in my mind, commercial spaceflight was at least another year away. Either way, if all goes well, I think this marks the beginning of yet another era, and the milestone is, quite frankly, amazing.
I'm surprised at the rate of progress too. NASA used to be able to make rapid progress like that, but I feel like - from my layman's perspective - they couldn't do that now. It would cost billions more than it cost SpaceX to start from nothing (well, not exactly, they had help from NASA, but still) and take years longer.
I'm puzzled what you mean. Commercial spaceflight has been going on for decades. Commercial human spaceflight has not, but there are no humans on this flight either.
Interesting tidbit from the announcement about this on SpaceX's website:
>In fact, Dragon has so much interior volume, that we could place an entire three-person Russian Soyuz capsule descent module inside Dragon’s pressure vessel.
They mention returning items from ISS. Does anyone know if this is the old standard method of using a parachute and dropping into the ocean for recovery?
Previous Dragon Capsule recovery (and it was only once before) was parachute to ocean landing. [1] So presumably to limit the number of things being tested on this flight to a reasonable number they won't try to return it to land.
I am very hopeful that these guys succeed, and will be impressed as hell. Elon is not kidding when he says it is 'tricky.' Although I think the speed thing is over blown (17,000 MPH, wow! except you're both going about 17,000 MPH and you're both going the same direction, so relative speed is more interesting) But you do have to navigate there, rendezvous, and dock.
If successful they will have duplicated everything in Gemini and next up will be the Mercury program (first manned missions) :-)
For now, at least. They have signaled the intention to use the launch abort rockets to make powered landings. I am not sure if they'd try to do it straight from atmospheric braking or if they want to use parachutes to slow down and then use the rockets to land.
In any case, it's very 60's sci-fi style. Quite cool.
By the way, currently it’s only possible to return up to 50kg of cargo from the ISS. After the Space Shuttle was retired, Soyuz became the only spacecraft that can actually return anything to Earth from the ISS and there is pretty much only space for three people and nothing else in that thing.
Dragon is supposed to bring back 600kg in its first test flight to the ISS, but it can bring back up to 3.000kg. That’s still not much compared to what the Space Shuttle could do (14.000kg), but it’s a lot more than what is currently possible.
So even if it takes another three years until the first manned flight, Dragon can be very useful as a cargo ship for the ISS (despite the fact that the ISS already has three cargo ships: the Russian Progress, the Japanese HTV and the European ATV – those three ships can deliver tons of cargo but they all can return nothing).
I find your comment amusing in light of my particular frustration with the near anonymity of SpaceX in relation to its accomplishments, especially in addition to the nearly universally unfavorable press it gets over at AviationWeek.com. And never mind that Orbital is not "working on the same thing" by any reasonable understanding of the phrase.
Let's get one thing out of the way up front: SpaceX launched, orbited, reentered, and retrieved a fully reusable capsule, one with an ablative heat shield that can be used hundreds, if not thousands, of times over. Disregarding the reusable aspects of the design, they're in the company of 3 nations. Include the reusability aspect and they're in the company only of the United States and the former Soviet Union. I have a degree in engineering. I have engineering friends, some of whom work in aerospace companies. Until this recent PR push, I hadn't found one of them who'd even heard of SpaceX, to say nothing of their groundbreaking and historical flight and recovery of a capsule with private funds. If that's "all the press," then I have "all the press," too. Go ahead. Ask me how it feels to be so famous!
The little press that they do get within the ossified aerospace industry has been terrible. AvWeek recently ran a piece which was focused on how SpaceX had "lost some of its luster" (not a direct quote, but close) with the slip from February to April for the Space Station rendezvous launch, as if any government-run space technology was ever delivered on time. A while ago, they found some blow-hard "space policy expert" to opine about how space was hard and how it was absolutely obvious that SpaceX was over-promising and destined to radically under-deliver. They ran another piece about how congress was unhappy with COTS. Only recently did they have to give some ground with a piece about how commercial space was "already having benefits" now that the launch is so near, and I was overjoyed with schadenfreude when they had to provide neutral coverage of the uninteresting and everyday fact that Space Station astronauts were rehearsing for SpaceX's visit to the station. There's a reason, I'm sure, that SpaceX chose Muse's Uprising as the theme song for their animation about their plans for full reusability. It fits.
Further, Orbital's offering is not even close. Orbital's vehicle is not reusable. It burns up on reentry, and therefore has no capacity to bring cargo back from ISS. And their price point is nowhere near Musk's. In case you're keeping track--and I mean the hypothetical "you", I'm not pissed at you, Metapony--that's less for more. Less than SpaceX for more money. Furthermore, the floor on Orbital's costs is the same trifecta that's always been around in aerospace: expendability, costs of disparate components, and integration costs. I'd love to see a viable competitor to SpaceX, but Orbital isn't even close.
Make no mistake, the battle is not between "government" vehicles and private industry. There are no "government" vehicles: Every vehicle gets built by private contractors. The battle is actually between the established aerospace industry, built around expendables and cost-plus contracting, and SpaceX, an innovative and disruptive aerospace company based around competition, reusables, and fixed-price contracts, with Orbital taking up the rear with the worst aspects of both models.
I know. I come across as a strident cheerleader. I hope that has less to do with any inherent fanboyism in my makeup than it does with my absolute perplexity at and frustration with the bare fact that SpaceX has done unprecedented, amazing, historic things, and hardly anyone knows about them at all.
[+] [-] mukaiji|14 years ago|reply
Impact. Matters.
[+] [-] flyt|14 years ago|reply
Give Mark some time before rushing to judge.
[+] [-] mkramlich|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] te_chris|14 years ago|reply
Tbh your comment just reminds me of the people on music boards who spend all their time arguing that music died after Led Zep....
[+] [-] mburns|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starpilot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eps|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] schraeds|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] waiwai933|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeCapone|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lutorm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burgerbrain|14 years ago|reply
>In fact, Dragon has so much interior volume, that we could place an entire three-person Russian Soyuz capsule descent module inside Dragon’s pressure vessel.
That is just awesome.
[+] [-] lutorm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bprater|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
I am very hopeful that these guys succeed, and will be impressed as hell. Elon is not kidding when he says it is 'tricky.' Although I think the speed thing is over blown (17,000 MPH, wow! except you're both going about 17,000 MPH and you're both going the same direction, so relative speed is more interesting) But you do have to navigate there, rendezvous, and dock.
If successful they will have duplicated everything in Gemini and next up will be the Mercury program (first manned missions) :-)
[1] http://news.discovery.com/space/spacexs-dragon-capsule-retur...
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
In any case, it's very 60's sci-fi style. Quite cool.
[+] [-] hej|14 years ago|reply
Dragon is supposed to bring back 600kg in its first test flight to the ISS, but it can bring back up to 3.000kg. That’s still not much compared to what the Space Shuttle could do (14.000kg), but it’s a lot more than what is currently possible.
So even if it takes another three years until the first manned flight, Dragon can be very useful as a cargo ship for the ISS (despite the fact that the ISS already has three cargo ships: the Russian Progress, the Japanese HTV and the European ATV – those three ships can deliver tons of cargo but they all can return nothing).
[+] [-] Metapony|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkn|14 years ago|reply
Let's get one thing out of the way up front: SpaceX launched, orbited, reentered, and retrieved a fully reusable capsule, one with an ablative heat shield that can be used hundreds, if not thousands, of times over. Disregarding the reusable aspects of the design, they're in the company of 3 nations. Include the reusability aspect and they're in the company only of the United States and the former Soviet Union. I have a degree in engineering. I have engineering friends, some of whom work in aerospace companies. Until this recent PR push, I hadn't found one of them who'd even heard of SpaceX, to say nothing of their groundbreaking and historical flight and recovery of a capsule with private funds. If that's "all the press," then I have "all the press," too. Go ahead. Ask me how it feels to be so famous!
The little press that they do get within the ossified aerospace industry has been terrible. AvWeek recently ran a piece which was focused on how SpaceX had "lost some of its luster" (not a direct quote, but close) with the slip from February to April for the Space Station rendezvous launch, as if any government-run space technology was ever delivered on time. A while ago, they found some blow-hard "space policy expert" to opine about how space was hard and how it was absolutely obvious that SpaceX was over-promising and destined to radically under-deliver. They ran another piece about how congress was unhappy with COTS. Only recently did they have to give some ground with a piece about how commercial space was "already having benefits" now that the launch is so near, and I was overjoyed with schadenfreude when they had to provide neutral coverage of the uninteresting and everyday fact that Space Station astronauts were rehearsing for SpaceX's visit to the station. There's a reason, I'm sure, that SpaceX chose Muse's Uprising as the theme song for their animation about their plans for full reusability. It fits.
Further, Orbital's offering is not even close. Orbital's vehicle is not reusable. It burns up on reentry, and therefore has no capacity to bring cargo back from ISS. And their price point is nowhere near Musk's. In case you're keeping track--and I mean the hypothetical "you", I'm not pissed at you, Metapony--that's less for more. Less than SpaceX for more money. Furthermore, the floor on Orbital's costs is the same trifecta that's always been around in aerospace: expendability, costs of disparate components, and integration costs. I'd love to see a viable competitor to SpaceX, but Orbital isn't even close.
Make no mistake, the battle is not between "government" vehicles and private industry. There are no "government" vehicles: Every vehicle gets built by private contractors. The battle is actually between the established aerospace industry, built around expendables and cost-plus contracting, and SpaceX, an innovative and disruptive aerospace company based around competition, reusables, and fixed-price contracts, with Orbital taking up the rear with the worst aspects of both models.
I know. I come across as a strident cheerleader. I hope that has less to do with any inherent fanboyism in my makeup than it does with my absolute perplexity at and frustration with the bare fact that SpaceX has done unprecedented, amazing, historic things, and hardly anyone knows about them at all.
[+] [-] gammarator|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurus_rocket#Launch_failures [2] http://www.spacenews.com/launch/120316-delay-pegasus-launch-...