The future of manned space

[Mr. Analog]

I like how this turned out

[Thorin]

That SpaceX space taxi looks kinda unusable in its current state.  Like, how does that escape the atmosphere?

[Thorin]

Ah, got it.  It sits on a big rocket, the Falcon 9, which pushes it up to orbit.

Elon Musk went on about how we can't just keep throwing rockets away otherwise people will never be able to easily get into space.  They're working on getting the Falcon 9 rocket and boosters to come back to Earth under controlled descent.  And they're realistic enough to say that they expect the first few to blow up ("fail").

[Lazybones]

I wonder if the Russians will just lock off the Russian segments of the ISS or something..

[Mr. Analog]

So far the Russians are going to participate in ISS until 2020, the Russians had planned to build a new station "OPSEK" using the ISS as a base of operations as an eventual path to Mars but this is all up in the air (or rather not) until issues surrounding funding is sorted out. The Russian Federal Space Agency has been hard up for cash for some time, almost ending the mission in 2009. The politics around it are kind of fuzzy but the treaties signed are very clear on what they can and can't do up there (i.e. nothing to put any mission at risk, including blocking access to required areas, etc) so hopefully nobody has to paint a line between the modules

Meanwhile the US is currently funded to 2024 and after that who knows (possibly another 4 years)

The ISS currently holds the record for longest continuous habitation of humans in space (14 years, with a planned 20 years)

[Darren Dirt]

I like how this turned out

But I doubt Jeff "Mr. Amazon" Bezos is happy



Fight! Fight! Fight!

[Mr. Analog]

TBH I think he is because once the decision was made to split the effort between both SpaceX and Boeing he made his announcement, this really means there is room for competition in manned space flight. I think if NASA had gone 100% Boeing he might be more hesitant.

Having NASA select both options is good for manned space in this hemisphere (the rockin'est hemisphere around)

[Darren Dirt]

what makes Elon succeed at what he does

http://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-learn-enough-about-rockets-to-run-SpaceX/answer/Jim-Cantrell
Jim was key to SpaceX "at the beginning" so his perspective is especially fascinating.


I had no idea just how MUCH cheaper space flight cnow is looking to be vs earlier NASA days.

[Darren Dirt]

"...his true strength lies in his ability to reinvent a much better wheel. That is why SpaceX is by far the cheapest ride into space available today. Not even the Chinese can beat his price.

For, in the begining, when pricing rockets from everyone out there, from the Russians to Rocketdyne, he intuitively saw that the prices were out of whack with costs. So he estimated the weights of all the raw materials necessary to build a rocket then sought their costs which came to about 2% of the price. The businessman/engineer understood this vast inefficiency and knew he could do much better and did. 

Looking into it further, he affirmed his assumption that the layers of middle management encouraged by cost plus contracting was the culprit. Again, he was right. 

Therefore, cost plus contracting encouraged a corporate structure that brought middle management bloat into the aerospace industry resulting in extremely profitable pricing for them while gouging the American tapayer.

Thankfully, Mr. Musk is nailing the lid on the cost plus contracting model of business which will save us, billions, if not trillions of dollars.
"

^ From a comment @ http://www.quora.com/How-did-Elon-Musk-learn-enough-about-rockets-to-run-SpaceX/answer/Jim-Cantrell/comment/5750132


Also someone in the discussion linked to this from way back in 2012... before all the successes
http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-interview-1212

[Darren Dirt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrsfB13V-eU

Space travel is actually gonna suck. Says Cracked. Therefore true.