SpaceX Gives a Preview of Falcon X and XX

make no mistake, we are going to the red planet. it's just a question of whether or not governments want to be part of that voyage or not. if they're content to be eclipsed by corporations in the field of exploration, then they can keep their present course of playing silly games...

but sooner or later they're going to have to come to terms with the fact that technology moves faster than bureaucracy, and that the barriers to entry in the space race have dropped a lot in the past 25 years - and i REALLY think that the USA wants to be a leader again on the world stage. i think they want that very badly, but they've screwed themselves up so much over dealmaking that they've forgotten that spaceflight is some of the best PR a country could ask for.

Whats the ref to the Dead Sea Scrolls in the propulsion brief (real/fake?). Humor? Wierd

Skip X, go to XX. With a 100T+ launcher at a reasonable cost (say at least no more than the cost of 1 shuttle flight) we can do lot's of stuff between LEO (i.e. operational solar colectors), lunar (ISRU, radioastronomy on the far side, etc.), and beyond.

I'll remain skeptical (for the time being) but God I hope this does work. Boeing and Lockheed must be getting nervous.

I think the Merlin 2 and Falcon X are inevitable regardless if SpaceX gets the nod to do the HLV, though it's very smart of them to get out there and let the blogosphere do the viral marketing.

Also wouldn't surprise me one bit if M2 is further along than most suspect since they first started talking about it 5 years ago. IIRC there was also a recent report about their McGregor test site doing a huge expansion, perhaps a bit more than needed for the rumored Raptor vacuum test stand.

So where is the funding coming from??? You think that a 'Saturn V' class vehicle will be privately funded?? Dream on...

Folks:

Elon has got the right idea. He's not in the rocket business so much as in the railroad business!
Falcon 9 cargo and crew transportation . Ion tugs to mars is just laying the tracks to another destination. His first costumers will probably be the space agencies hauling satellites and rovers which could be launched a lot cheaper just to LEO. Fuel for the tugs will have ten times the delta v of chemical fuels reducing launch costs by the same factor. Commercial rational, eh? Provide a service. Reduce costs. Constantly improve product performance and capability.

If NASA had the same innovation and drive we wouldn't need a heavy lift vehicle now because we would have had one decades ago. The first cargo only variants of the Space Transportation System were studied before the first Shuttle ever flew.

Think about it. Where would America be if the government didn't invest in the railroad companies so that they could build their silver rails from sea to shining sea. Do a little research in how government incentives made this remarkable feat happen in less then forty years... almost two centuries ago. I know Elon has.

tinker

Well you sure can't argue with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Shall we start printing "God Hates SRMs" t-shirts?

Whats the ref to the Dead Sea Scrolls in the propulsion brief (real/fake?). Humor? Wierd

The only answer to the crowd whining about "Obama/SpaceX want to kill HSF" is to show them what HSF can really look like.

Musk is one of the only people out there that cares about the goal of going to space, and not the goal of having "space jobs" in his state.

That's why SpaceX can achieve so much with for so little money and with so few people, and that's also why so many of the "space community" revile them so much.

Go SpaceX, and everyone else can either join or stay behind.

Reading this BO sycophantic nonsense is nauseating!

Who will pay for the development of this Musk fantasy?

"That's why SpaceX can achieve so much with for so little money and with so few people, and that's also why so many of the "space community" revile them so much."

Crazy.. you just don't get it. I support SpaceX's mission because I love engineering, but what I don't like about them is all the lies that tricks the people who don't know the truth (which is most of America). I'm all for SpaceX but I wish they would give credit to Nasa where credit is due. I don't understand why they don't.

For example, the Merlin engine got its start from the Marshall-1 engine developed at MSFC awhile back. That engine got canned, along with every other Nasa project it seems. Since it was developed on taxpayer money, it was open for grabs. SpaceX took the design and started modifying it, and never told the press where the design came from! It's not even on the wikipedia page. Why can't they say this? Do you think SpaceX is going to open their design plans to the public? Do you think any innovations/patents they create will enter the public domain?

Also, SpaceX is continually asking for help from NASA and expecting NASA to pay for it. The risk crew at ksc had to spend multiple extra weeks to certify the recent test flight because the analysis provided by SpaceX was terrible. SpaceX did not pay for this extra analysis. SpaceX did not pay for the 2 sea ships to go out in the ocean either. They also routinely call various offices in NASA for help.

Musk also lies on the spot about various things, such as when asked whether they would recover the first stage he says Yes. I've talked to SpaceX people about this, there was no plans to recover it when he said this. The FS also separates at Mach 11 and has what, 9 nozzles on it? I don't think so.

The payroll alone for SpaceX is somewhere between 250 to 350 million. The launch price has to cover all that before any hardware at all is bought. I don't believe any of Musks launch price claims. I've seen it before with SeaLaunch. SeaLaunch had low costs and still bombed.

Again, I'm glad to see new engineering and I hope they succeed but the lies that they are doing it all on their own has got to stop. I also don't know why both SpaceX and NASA can each develop rockets. The people on this website make it seem like it has to be one or the other.

Okay, great presentations. It sounds very hopeful and heart felt. Unfortunately, I have seen pretty pictures of rockets and spaceships. I have even seen a fully operational Moon base and a Mars base. There are terabytes of data and information on the subject of space. The real tricks are funding and schedule, and sticking to them.

Otherwise, it is just another business plan that is more like a wish list. It is all a good place to start, but the devil is in the details.

I also don't know why both SpaceX and NASA can each develop rockets.

NASA wastes tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and opportunity time developing government-owned/operated rockets when existing commercial launchers would do just fine.

I'm flabbergasted that engineers at NASA wouldn't want to work on bleeding edge on-orbit and deep space technology? Why can't they let go of reinventing what the commercial launch handles just fine launch? Isn't that what government R&D is all about?

Or Maybe NASA engineers do want to work on cutting edge space technology yet they're encumbered by a few select Congressman who can't handle the near-term disruption in employment that such a mission change would entail to their chances at reelection? Or risk loosing campaign donations for incumbent contractors?

YoungEngineer,

Can you provide a link backing up the Marshall-1 assertion?

A quick google search does not come up with any results.

Thanks.

Excellent points! Bigelow also got it's inflatable space station technology from NASA and the Sierra Nevada Corporation got its Dream Chaser space plane technology from NASA.

Boy, NASA just keeps creating more private companies and more jobs:-)

Marcel F. Williams

Folks:

If you look at the numbers, the proposed Merlin 2 engine has similar specs and the same fuel as the Saturn Vs F1 engine. I don't suppose Spacex will reinvent the wheel with the F1s almost perfect flight record. Also the F1 was upgraded to be lighter but with 25% more thrust. It never flew.

If Spacex revitalizes technology that a wasteful government abandoned then who says NASA deserves credit? You can also blame the corporations that built the hardware in the first place for not coming up with a private space program themselves.

Spacex didn't steal the dream of space exploration, they just found it lying on the floor and gave it a good home.

Elon Musk can fly the Jolly Rogers with pride as far as I'm concerned.

tinker

Elon has a dream that would be the envy of any true space supporter, he wants to see human colonies on Mars in his lifetime. The difference between his dream of space and most of ours, is that he has a real chance of making it come true.

SpaceX didn't even exist 9 years ago and many people back then didn't feel Elon had much of a chance to even get the tiny Falcon 1 into orbit. It did turn out to be a difficult task, taking 4 tries, before it reached orbit.

SpaceX has been on a steep learning curve and was able to reach orbit first try with their much larger Falcon 9. SpaceX has picked up a $1.6 billion contract from NASA and is also effectively competing in the world launch market.

NASA has been a wonderful assistance to SpaceX and Elon has thanked them many times. Without the COTS money, SpaceX would not be as far along as they are. Hopefully our politicians will see the light and fund COTS D. I would much rather see $300 million spent on COTS D, that will go towards American jobs, than to spend that same money and more, paying for rides from the Russians.

Will everything outlined here be built, only time will tell. But just think how far SpaceX would take us, if they were given the kind of billions that we intended to spend on Constellation. We have to ask ourselfs, do we want a strong commercial American space program, or do we want a jobs program that keeps us in LEO for another 3 plus decades.

Presentation links are broken.

Thanks,
Ryan

Where is your information from because I was personally involved in the design of the Falcon Merlin engine and I don't remember a single bolt that NASA touched?

It looks like a desprate attempt from Space X to create attention from Washington since another plan is already being approved. They should of announced it a long time ago if they had a plan. This is the real world of rocket science. You can't always get what you want. You get what you need. It is just like a Mike Jagger song!! I been in the business for ten years and now seeing all my friends being laid off. It is very sad. NASA budgets is a fact of life and you should be happy with what they gave you. I am at KSC, FL. Good luck to all the workers effect by the layoffs and God Speed to your future success!!

> The payroll alone for SpaceX is somewhere between 250 to 350 million. The launch price has to cover all that before any hardware at all is bought. I don't believe any of Musks launch price claims.

SpaceX has around 1000 employees. According to you, that means the average employee salary is $250K-$350K? Um, ok.

Wow - a lot of wisdom from you, YoungEngineer. Excellent post!

@jski-
The answer to your question is: you and I as taxpayers, via NASA contracts.

YoungEngineer - I find that whenever someone starts out a comment with "I support SpaceX but.." it ends up being 99% but and 1% support.

So:
1) As just pointed out, your payroll math is nonsensical.

2) If NASA is so ready to beat them at their own game, why doesn't it? NASA has some good engineers, but it is controlled by congress. SpaceX is controlled by a starry-eyes CEO.

3) What SpaceX has done so far is a lot more than "just" develop the F9 and Dragon, and bring together all the associated capabilities. So what if their pre-launch whatever analysis was not up to par?

4) Lying? Really? CEO says something (during development process, mind you) about a non-essential tiny portion of the plan and then guess what, they end up not doing it. Is this like promising $100/lb for orbit? How many NASA predictions never came through? With Shuttle, with ISS, with Ares, with Orion?

I give a lot more credibility to FXX than I do on Ares I, V, or anything else (Robots in space anyone?) that comes out of the centers these days.

SpaceX is the company that did what it said, remember?

engkatiemarie: Not trying to take sides here, but did you think that if you Googled "Marshall-1" you would find letter of thanks from Mr. Musk and SpaceX to NASA for the blueprints for the MC-1 (aka FASTRAC engine)?

The Dead Sea Scrolls was very clever.

"Black water shall elevate thy children to the heavens." By this I would think Elon is pointing out that we should be using oil or kerosene.

"Nor shalt thou burn rocks. Saith the Lord."
Ahem, the lord might be saying "No solid rocket boosters."

None of these appear to be even partially reuseable, which means that SpaceX will ultimately fail. A pity, but they can still do a lot of good before then.

I think you would get different opinions from the different NASA engineers. I can only state my own opinions. Even though I'm an NASA engineer I don't see how it is NASA's job to design rockets. We are here to implement the will of the American Taxpayers through their representatives and the president. I think we should have a few jobs as far as HSF is concerned. First we should maintain enough institutional knowledge so when new companies like Space-X run into problems or questions we can help them.

Second we should be designing the missions. Then do enough system engineering to get to the point where we can write contracts for hardware/services to the private sector. As they get more capable we should be giving them more responsibility. I would love to use commercial to lower launch costs so we can have enough money to design things to launch.

Finally we should be allowed to experiment with the best ways to raise the TRL level of ideas with more prize based contracts that better leverage the taxpayers money. I mean real prizes up to billions of dollars if needed. Say we need an HLV right now. Offer a $5 Billion dollar prize and a 10 launch at $200 million each to the first company that launches a 100Mg dummy payload to LEO.

Of course not...

I just can't find ANY reference to Marshall-1 by googling or on NTRS.

I hadn't heard of it so I wanted to learn.

Now I realize it's just the FASTRAC...

the senate compromise becomes law and its now the year 2025

fuel depot seems to work and is economical,we are on side mount block III that shares upper stages with EELV systems.

a study is ordered!

should we use EELV CBC's on the side mount stack?
competition/contract/antitrust/bidding laws would have us put out a bid,

could the Space X boosters be shared with the side mount ET?( Space X CBC's)

could the proposed DOD EELV flyback boosters be used?
could the ideas above work with a inline government rocket?
what a beautiful beast this would be! truly, everyone in congress would be joyous with the rapture of the ultimate compromise, a shuttle derived/space X hybrid!

They will have to act soon however as the dead scrolls are very clear, nor shalt thou burn coal,do this sayeth the lord god , and your space ports shall recedith under the waves of they seas forcing thou to launch your ungainly beasts into the fermanent from Colorado.

So is it pronounced "Falcon Ecks" and "Falcon Ecks Ecks" or "Falcon Ten" and "Falcon Twenty"?

You guys are missing the biggest problem with SpaceX's plan. Their design sounds great but their time table is 100% unacceptable. "Test launch by 2025" this is 15 years. Just in time to say hello to the Chinese. We went to the moon in less that ten years we can do it again.

Jason -

If you re-read the AvWeek article, I think it is clear that what Musk is referring to is having the Mars upper stage for crew with nuclear propulsion ready by 2025 if NASA gets started now and focuses on it. I think that is probably about right and probably best case for Mars.

I don't see any time table for when FX and FXX come on line. It took them 6 years between starting the company and the first orbital launch for F1, and F9 launching in 2010.

Since the ability to scale up and an orderly growth path for revenue was built into the company's designs and plans, I would expect that you would see the FX test launch sometime between
2015 and 2018. FXX launching in 2018 - 21, human rated at Mars reliability levels by 2021-25.

If this is the case, you can start doing some flexible path BEO missions in about 5 years. I believe that with a more cost effective and commercially provided heavy lift capability, lunar precursors and in situ development become good candidate mission for NASA. I believe that the lunar base will wind up being done by a commercial consortium.

Since SpaceX is an enterprise and not a program, they can make decisions about long lead develop without blessing from Congress, and can reinvest revenues from current vehicles to develop future vehicles. Capitalism 101. Also, the price model and marketing for their systems is designed to ensure a level of volume, which is (besides design decisions) where you get cost efficiencies - you keep the lines running evenly and achieve economies of scale.

This is only a guess on my part, but I think it is 'ecks' for 'Extended' or 'Exploration'. 'Ecks' is often used as the suffix or prefix for advanced vehicles.

A lot of posts are commenting on the costs, and it's a valid point. But keep in mind we have, today, people who are spending $200,000 to fly up about 100 miles, float around for 10 minutes and glide back down to the same 'port' that they left from. You might find 'investors' a lot more willing to go to mars as the ultimate trip. Retirement homes in Martian Lava tubes anyone?
Long range: There are some ethical questions concerning Terra-forming. Governments would have a hard time politically attempting such a engineering feet. If some 'corporation' settled mars before any government did, wouldn't they have a little more say on what would go on there. If Spacex settled Mars, wouldn't it be effectively theirs?

A brave new 'world' may be right upon our doorstep.
Is this our future? Multinational Earth and all the other planets ran by corporations?

Folk:

I don't care who colonizes Mars of the Moon first... as long as the job gets done !

It's a given that the first folks to get to either place with plans to stay are going to have a big advantage and, regardless of international law, a lot of control.

But... the job must get done:

- To protect the Earth from getting whacked by stray asteroids.

- To bring life to other destinations in the solar system. Not just human life but as many different plants and animals we can shanghai and keep alive.

- To provide the technological feasibility of combating climate change here on Earth from above. Space based energy and industrialization of space taking the load off Earth and even direct intervention from space... whatever it takes.

I've said it before. We, Earth, become a space-faring civilization or we die ! And we'll take every plant and animal down to the microbial level with us.

Tell me I'm wrong.

tinker

@neuronexmachina replied to comment from YoungEngineer | August 6, 2010 5:26 PM | Reply

"SpaceX has around 1000 employees. According to you, that means the average employee salary is $250K-$350K? Um, ok."

@ Crazy Eddie Blogger | August 6, 2010 6:07 PM | Reply

"1) As just pointed out, your payroll math is nonsensical."

Neuron and Crazy, sorry, but apparently Young Engineer is better at payroll math than the two of you. First of all, since the SpaceX presentation says they have 1180 employees and counting - your estimate of "around 1000" is more than a little low. Second of all, do you honestly think the cost of an employee is limited to their salary? You obviously know nothing about budgets or hiring. In a very lean organization, the cost of "employing an employee" is about 2 times their salary. So to make this easy for you, if employee X makes $100,000, then it costs Corporation Y $200,000 to employ that employee. That factors in health care benefits (very expensive), pensions, 401K plans, office space, computers, phones, desk, chair, supplies, sick time, vacation, training etc. The employee's salary is not the total cost of employing the employee.

So, since SpaceX seems to be growing very rapidly, lets call 1180 an even 1200 employees since those charts were posted. Now, also being EXTREMELY conservative for California, let's say the average salary of a SpaceX employee is $75,000. (Now granted in LA, that is a very, very low number since Engineers straight out of college with a bachelor's degree were making around $55,000 in LA around 15 years ago, but no mind.

So, 1200 x 75,000 x 2 = $180 Million

This was using very conservative numbers.

In typical corporations it cost about 2.5 times a persons salary to employee them, and in some corporations it takes 3 to even 3.5 times their salary. At 3 times it become $270M

Also, if it were any other aerospace corporation in LA, I would have put the average salary a lot higher, which Young Engineer probably did. By the way, the annual mean wage for Aerospace Engineers in California in 2009 was $107,700 and in Los Angeles it is over $112K. The 10% lowest salaried aeros in LA avearge over $73,000 and those would mostly be new hires out of college. These numbers are according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172011.htm

Even if they (SpaceX) figured out a way to get the cost factor down to 1.5 x the salary (which would mean really really bad benefits/health care/retirement etc fro the employees, with really long hours and one of the highest costs of living in the nation), that number would still be $135M.

My point in all of this? Young Engineer was a lot closer to being right than either of you. If I knew their actual average salary, I could give a better spread, but lets just say somewhere between a ridiculously conservative $135M and a less conservative $270M. Average for LA would put you in the $335-$470M range.

OK. So we have seen the eye candy. So what is the business model for heavy lift and super heavy lift rockets? Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 both have business models based on the satellite launch market neither of which are in full operation. Thus far only one of the commercial contracts using a Falcon 1 has been executed. The first involving Falcon 1e with Orbcomm satellites won't begin until 2011. The 1st COTS Demo flight, which was suppose to be flown over 2 years ago, is slated to be launched later this year.

I am a fan of SpaceX, but to date the company has had only 1 successful commercial satellite launch and they have successfully demonstrated the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. Based on these successes, SpaceX has raised a considerable amount of capital. However, the company has yet to turn a profit and has yet to fulfill any major contract. Any new space technology companies needs to demonstrate that it can produce a consistent revenue. When SpaceX can begin regular satellite launches with Falcon 1e and Falcon 9 series and demonstrating its ability to honor its contracts and promises, people will begin to breathe a little easier.

Thus, completing the development phase of F1e and F9 and starting regular production to honor its current contracts should be SpaceX primary focus at this point.

So... what with main claim of YoungEngineer, that SpaceX borrowed NASA engine design without acknowledgment? It is any truth in this or this is yet another anonymous accusation on Internetz (shocking, I know)?