Elon Musk May Finance His Own Mars Mission

[PEB]

Elon apparently not willing to wait till 2030 and wants to test his SuperDraco rockets module. He wants to test the draco rockets by placing his dragon module on Mars.

The capsule is capable of carrying passengers in the near future. He wants to prove that the capsule can land on Mars. Some people believe he is shooting for 2027 towards landing astronauts. His current module cannot carry crew and supplies to Mars alone.

At this point he needs Government money and technology to carry passengers.

He needs to convince NASA towards this end and given his launches cost nearly 1/5 the price he has NASA attention.

He is basically the energizer bunny of the technology sector. He does get things done but what he's proposing could cause problems for NASA.

In other news Russia stepping up their energy to catch up to Elon SpaceX. They just launched an impressive new generation of rocket.

It still cost more per launch but Putin really only now putting pressure on his engineers.

Russian new luanch base are launching a new rocket.


http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...-spacex-and-nasa-announce-a-new-space-project

 

[TheRuthlessOne]

Awesome

I hope he does it

 

[John Wang]

Huge if true. Elon Musk is my facking hero

 

[PEB]

In other news a coalition of Lockheed and Boeing have given up on competing for the low end after SpaceX successful barge landing. They admit they are not getting onto a price war with SpaceX.

Currently it costs 185 million per launch by Lockheed and Boeing it's 60 million per launch by SpaceX. They say they cannot compete at these prices.

 

[Guestx]

Pretty awesome. I hope he is successful. And I hope like hell we actually get men on Mars within a reasonable amount of time. That's long overdue.

How does this cause problems for NASA, though?

 

[Guestx]

In other news a coalition of Lockheed and Boeing have given up on competing for the low end after SpaceX successful barge landing. They admit they are not getting onto a price war with SpaceX.

Currently it costs 185 million per launch by Lockheed and Boeing it's 60 million per launch by SpaceX. They say they cannot compete at these prices.

How is it that SpaceX can do it so much more cheaply?

 

[Hondata]

I'd chip in 50 bucks

 

[Bald1]

How is it that SpaceX can do it so much more cheaply?

They don't pay $30000 for a hammer like govt organizations.

 

[highkicknomore]

My friend works for SpaceX. Making bank. They watched the barge landing live in their factory.

 

[PEB]

How is it that SpaceX can do it so much more cheaply?

He does not buy almost anything from 3rd parties like others. He builds his own rocket engines and recovers stages of rockets for reuse. Lockheed and Boeing buy their rocket engines from Russian suppliers.

The costs of these engines are going up by a lot. Lockheed and Boeing are developing their own rocket engines but are pretty far behind SpaceX.

SpaceX ability to recover and reuse rockets as well as sourcing much of the rocket parts internally gives them cost advantages.

 

[PEB]

My friend works for SpaceX. Making bank. They watched the barge landing live in their factory.

I hear the intensity of the work environment is insane. They have been brought up as mostly young engineers but are convinced they can do anything.

 

[Guestx]

He does not buy almost anything from 3rd parties like others. He builds his own rocket engines and recovers stages of rockets for reuse. Lockheed and Boeing buy their rocket engines from Russian suppliers.

The costs of these engines are going up by a lot. Lockheed and Boeing are developing their own rocket engines but are pretty far behind SpaceX.

SpaceX ability to recover and reuse rockets as well as sourcing much of the rocket parts internally gives them cost advantages.

Interesting. Makes sense.

Thanks for the info.

 

[highkicknomore]

I hear the intensity of the work environment is insane. They have been brought up as mostly young engineers but are convinced they can do anything.

My friend was recruited by his former supervisor at a previous job. It's his 2nd month. He works crazy 12 hour shifts 5 days a week. Works on Saturdays too but varies how many hours. He's perfect for the job though - he's meticulous and doesn't mind working overtime.

 

[Irenaeus]

How is it that SpaceX can do it so much more cheaply?

In addition to what was answered before, there are also several other factors keeping the costs down.

1) Production isn't only done almost exclusively within the company, it's also mostly done at the same place, reducing needs of infrastructure by quite a bit. Where they do buy parts, they often buy off-the-shelves materials and the like, and is willing to eat a little extra mass for a big reduction in expenses.

2) SpaceX has a very high degree of standardisation when it comes to what parts are used in their designs, (such as e.g. using essentially the same engine for the first and the second stage), resulting in savings because of the economy of scale.

3) They have a completely excellent staff which is incredibly motivated and works insane hours, yet they pay them relatively little. This is due to the number of highly qualified people who are willing to take less-paid positions to be able to be a part of a company that is currently a driving force in the buisness. It also looks good on the resume. Some of this motivation among employees is exactly due to the company's lofty, and possibly uneconomic and unrealistic goals of Mars colonization. It's either a company with a strong mars cult inside of it, or basically a mars cult masqerading as a company.

4) There are speculations that they aren't actually earning much of a profit on their launches, and that their buisness model is based on undercutting the competitors to expand their market share, while depending on fresh investments to stay solvent. Much like the typical surging social media company, really. I'm not sure if I buy this, but I think it's reasonable to assume their profit after expenses is lower than their competitors.

5) To be perfectly fair, they do have a higher number of rapid unscheduled dissasemblies than the incredibly expensive ULA. And that's a pretty big deal.

Lastly, they are pretty agressively trying to reduce the prices even further, with their reusable first stage program. The landings are promising, and if they turn out to be able to refurbish the used stage relatively inexpensively, we might see them selling launches for as little as 40-45 million a piece within a few years. Plus, when they get the Falcon Heavy going, that will even further reduce the price of cargo per lbs if it goes for as little as 90 (as currently advertised).

I'm excited. A more economic and accessible way to orbit is paramount to the future of space exploration.

 

[MadSquabbles500]

When someone says they will terraform Mars, I be interestedd.

Or if someone invents FTL travel. Who cares if he can travel to Mars and back in like two years.

 

[Irenaeus]

It should prehaps be stated that the proposed 2018 mission to Mars is in fact the test mission for the Dragon 2 capsule. As in "if we're going to test a new spacecraft, why not just try to see if we can get it to Mars on the first try?". I think that's a pretty cool attitude, especially since good Mars transfer windows only appear every two years or so.

In other news Russia stepping up their energy to catch up to Elon SpaceX. They just launched an impressive new generation of rocket.

Can you tell me more about this? I thought it was just a Soyuz.

 

[Toastytoy]

Serious question, how do they make money by launching rockets into space?

 

[genecop]

The current profit comes from launching satellites. Telecom and other companies pay big dollars for satellites..

 

[SSgt Dickweed]

"YOU BLEW MY COVAHHHH!!"

-Kenny Florian

 

[vcmmafan]

This dude Is the real life Tony Stark