27 thoughts on “Discovery, We Hardly Knew Ye”

    1. Nice to see some people take it to the author in the comments.

      People are right to be skeptical though, Musk’s companies have taken significant advantage of government aide.

        2. Hopefully, the loans Tesla received will turn out to be a better investment than Fisker or some of the other dozen companies we have been hearing about lately.

          1. It’s about the product. If he gets the sedan made at a good price point he will succeed. If not, as long as it doesn’t affect SpaceX, I don’t care much.

      2. “People are right to be skeptical though, Musk’s companies have taken significant advantage of government aide.”

        Since there are no private launch sites, SpaceX seemed astute in getting to use government launch sites.
        It’s seems the rather painless route Musk took to be able to launch rockets, was one biggest government “assistance” he has received.
        The public might expect government run launch sites to be as accommodating, but that does mean they are.
        The idea that government bureaucrats, and the politicians can be
        objective, is about silly as expecting the MSM to be objective.

        The problem with your government is that it has increasing required
        business to get permission from the government to do just about anything.
        I have no problem with business leaders who know that space is all about politics. And proceed to navigate thru this unholy morass, in such a manner that all parties feel they are your pals.

        1. Elon wasn’t always a winner in the range game. His original launch site at Vandenberg was SLC-3W, an old Atlas site. At some point during refurb, he was given the boot so that his ‘hobby rocket’ wasn’t near SLC-3E, where Atlas V integrates and launches.

          Great points though about SpaceX’s prospects if Republicans win. I prefer my space to be non-partisan, but accept that’s impossible.

        2. Certainly SpaceX would have an impossible time avoiding government oversight or aide but Tesla is a different story. Tesla might have needed funds but they didn’t need to get them through friendly politicians. Not that I really fault Musk, a business should use all of the legal tools available to be successful.

          Also, with COTS and CCDEV there is a performance based framework to justify the services the government is buying from SpaceX.

        3. Given the liability aspects of the Outer Space Treaty, there are reasonable reasons why there aren’t any private launch sites just yet. However, that may change. There was a news article last week that SpaceX is looking at developing a private space launch facility near Brownsville, TX. I talked to a couple of SpaceX representatives yesterday at the Space Symposium and they said the goal is to have 12 commercial launches a year. My guess is that this facility is intended to launch GEO birds. The Brownsville site is about 3 degrees closer to the equator than the Cape, giving an advantage (mostly on the energy required to lower the inclination). Looking at Google Maps, a launch due east from Brownsville would likely split the gap between southern Florida and Cuba.

          Just for fun, I looked up the distance between Brownsville and Cape Coral, FL (on the Gulf coast). It’s about 960 miles. Given SpaceX’s ambition to eventually recover stages, I wonder if it’d be easier to fly the first stage to Florida for recovery as opposed to overcoming all that momentum to return to the launch site. If so, that might also be an advantage of the Texas launch site.

          1. there are reasonable reasons why there aren’t any private launch sites just yet

            That would be news to Jeff Bezos.

          2. That would be news to Jeff Bezos.

            I guess I wasn’t clear but I was talking about launch sites intended to reach orbit. The debris from Bezo’s launch failure only fell on his own property. Liability is much less an issue when you’re flying straight up.

  3. As I said on that thread:

    The word we’re looking for is “fascism” and unfortunately it seems to have become the dominant political/economic system worldwide. Or “pay to play”, as it’s more commonly termed in the U.S.

    Mussolini is laughing in his grave.

    Elon had better be careful, because if Obama loses in November, I suspect that there will be a number of Republicans in Congress who will seek to punish SpaceX. That would be an unmitigated disaster for America’s future in space.

  4. The author of that hit piece against Musk in PJ Media promises, “I can assure you, there will be more at PJ Media about Musk in the future, and his living large off the US Taxpayer juxtaposed with his political closeness to Obama.”. Why does Bill Whittle support this sort of thing? It’s disgusting.

  5. To be fair there are actual commercial space ventures that do not rely on government subsidies. Stratolauncher and Virgin Galactic are not demanding their Solyndra style backsheesh. I also trust that this mysterious venture that many think is going to be an asteroid mining operation will not have its hand out for government checks.

    1. Regardless of how many times you repeat this ignorance, SpaceX is not getting “subsidies,” or “Solyndra-style” anything. They are providing the government a needed service for a fee.

      1. It’s not that the idea that you can sell stuff to the govt and still be a private commercial entity is a foreign idea. It’s that you can be a private commercial entity at all.

        This country has gone insane. We really aught to consider dividing on the Mississippi river. They can have either coast. We’ll even consider alimony.

      2. Actually, SpaceX has done no such thing, unless by “service” one means that it is building a space ship on the government dime.

        On the other hand, hopefully by the end of the month, that will change. One thing that distinguishes Musk from the board of Solyndra is that he actually cares about what he is doing.

        1. Have you ever worked on any government procurement, Mark? It sure sounds like you don’t have a clue. When the government signs a contract with a company to develop something, the contract usually stipulates various payments at different milestones. Since R&D can take years, they don’t wait until final delivery before making the first payment. That’s just the way it’s done across government. When the government wants something developed, they pay for it. If it’s off-the-shelf, that’s different.

          The big difference is that the legacy companies like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin (AKA Overruns-R-Us), ATK and the others generally work on a cost-plus contract. That means that whatever expense they run up during R&D gets paid by the government plus a profit. Overrun by a billion dollars? No sweat, it just gets passed on the the taxpayers.

          SpaceX and the other new generation commercial space companies aren’t on cost-plus contracts. They’re being paid a fixed price at different contract milestones and then fee for service. If they have an overrun, they have to eat it. Last year, NASA analyzed SpaceX’s accounting to determine the cost to develop the Falcon 9 booster. By their own admission, it would’ve cost NASA at least 10 times as much following the traditional cost-plus method, and given NASA’s dismal track record at program management, their estimate is most likely low. It would’ve cost them even more.

          There’s also another aspect of the Dragon that no one else will be able to do and that’s return stuff from orbit. All of the existing space cargo vehicles (Progress, ESA’s ATM and the Japanese one) burn up on reentry. Dragon is designed to deliver 6 metric tons of cargo to the ISS and return up to 3 tons to the surface. Since the end of the Shuttle, the only things that can be returned are whatever you can squeeze into a Soyuz reentry module along with the crew, which isn’t much at all.

      3. SpaceX , and the whole commercial industry through COTS IS being subsidized. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the way the milestone payments were set up meets every reasonable definition of the word “subsidy”.

    2. For SpaceX, it looks like the only subsidy they get is the use of launch sites and the government maintaining those sites. I don’t know anything about those arrangements, maybe someone does and will explain it a little.

      1. From what I’ve read, it seems SpaceX has taken old launch pads that were built for previous programs and modified them to serve their rockets. The SpaceX launch pad at Vandenberg AFB is SLC-4e, an old Titan pad. The Air Force was going to pay $3 million to remove the old Titan launch tower but when SpaceX signed the 5 year lease, they agreed to pay to remove the tower. Likewise, their pad at the Cape is SLC-40, a former Titan 3 and 4 pad.

        The pads were abandoned and really had no value. SpaceX is paying to lease and modify those pads so that doesn’t seem a subsidizy to me.

    3. I also trust that this mysterious venture that many think is going to be an asteroid mining operation will not have its hand out for government checks.

      Really? Are you finally acknowledging that NASA is not the only organization that can send payloads beyond LEO?

      1. No answer from Mark?

        Funny how quickly the loudmouth shuts up when asked a simple question. 🙂

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