SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws Lockheed jab

Re:SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws ... by JshWright on Tuesday December 25, 2012 @10:19AM (#4966141)

All three times Dragon has flown, it has ended up in the correct orbit. SpaceX also put RazakSAT in the proper orbit atop a Falcon 1. The Orbcomm failure was only due to the extremely tight restrictions placed on the mission by NASA (the mission called for relighting the second stage to raise the Orbcomm sattilite's orbit, but since they had used slightly more fuel than planned due to the engine outage, NASA didn't let them relight, it's quite likely the rocket was _technically_ capable of completing the mission).

Obviously they have a ways to go before they can be considered 'tried and true,' but comparing SpaceX to a couple college kids putting together the next Instagram-for-Cats in their basement is disingenuous, at best.

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Re:SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws ... by jstrate on Tuesday December 25, 2012 @10:46AM (#4966226)

I suppose the point I'm making is to the general sentiment I'm seeing in this thread. It will take better than a 50% success rate of putting satellites into orbit before Lockheed starts thinking about the huge disruption I keep hearing about on this website. If you were to put a billion dollar satellite into orbit who would you choose?

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Re:SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws ... by avar on Tuesday December 25, 2012 @11:01AM (#4966257)

I think calling it a 50% success rate is disingenuous. The "failure" they had was because the satellite wasn't the primary mission, it was piggy-backing on the primary mission. It didn't make its orbit because after a recoverable mishap NASA didn't want to take any chances with the orbit of the ISS.

That's not a failure of the rocket. It's just the operator of the primary mission calling the shots, and the secondary mission suffering as a result of that. That's the sort of risk you assume when you piggy-back on the primary payload when launching on any rocket.

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Re:SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws ... by DanBC on Tuesday December 25, 2012 @11:08AM (#4966273)

That satellite is a billion dollars because of the expensive existing launch options.

Having a launch option an order of magnitude less than what exists at the moment is pretty important - it means people can build and launch two satellites for the same price.

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Re:SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws ... by sek on Tuesday December 25, 2012 @12:35PM (#4966473)

True. The highest cost is development, producing a second one is far less expensive.

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Re:SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws ... by sek on Tuesday December 25, 2012 @12:32PM (#4966465)

This is also a learning process. Every rocket failure is something SpaceX then can learn from. Spending more money doesn't mean automatically more reliability in this space.

Planes are so safe today because every failure worldwide increased the regulations for all planes so this can never happen again.

They have a head start, they were able to learn from 66 starts. With every launch SpaceX does they get more reliable.

Right now probably Lockheed, in one or two years SpaceX.

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Re:SpaceX’s entry into $70 billion U.S. launch market draws ... by JshWright on Tuesday December 25, 2012 @03:24PM (#4967010)

I'm sure Lockheed is keeping a _very_ close eye on what SpaceX is doing (despite the PR statement in the article).

Incrementing the successful launcher counter from 0 to 1 is a huge step. Demonstrating the reliability they've shown with Dragon is another huge step. Lockheed is either concerned (and making plans to remain competitive at a much lower price point), or they're stupid (I'd guess it's the former...)

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