For those that have never heard about Space X, it is a private company that is makes rockets. Their customers are companies or countries that want to launch satellites. The company is exciting because their philosophy is to make low cost, dependable, scaleable rockets.
The huge cost of getting objects into space has been a limiting factor for many projects for four decades now. NASA has gone backwards in costs during the Space Shuttle era, with costs higher than ever for their 30 year old design. Space X looks to break that log jam. In historical perspective it has the potential to be as big a revolution as the Ford Model T and how mass produced car made automobiles affordable to many more people.
There is no doubt that government run and funded organizations like NASA will always be hugely expensive, but if what they do were easy, companies like SpaceX would have been up there long ago. The potential for cheaper flights exists, but not as cheap and easy as companies like SpaceX would like investors to believe. Betcha the US DoD will let Malaysia go first.
Part of the problem is that many of the best and the brightest are no longer interested in government jobs. This is a big difference vs. the Apollo era.
During the past 30 years, the cost of space flight has gone up. That is absurd given the leaps in technology, and business practices. It isn’t easy, and it is easy to get side tracked. However, Space X is close. It took someone with extremely deep pockets, a vision and what seems to me like very little ego to get this far. Many folks that get involved in such projects have little money, a vision that makes little business sense, or a huge ego that it gets in the way.
Some technical types prefer to do things in the most complex, clever way. In the real world, simple is often better, and that is a big part of the Space X philosophy. Instead of designing a super efficient rocket engine, they looked for a stable design that is simple and in the end probably much more reliable.
I would like to think that just about everyone except competitors would like to see Space X succeed and succeed in a big way. Like I said, it has the potential to ignite a revolution, potentially as big as the changes brought about with the first low cost mass produced automobiles.
Low-cost, mass-produced SPACE ROCKETS! Wow! And maybe they could be blasting off from every neighborhood, town and cranny!? And Often!!! What fun! Just the endless roar of it, and the huge new petroleum sales, and the cool cool SMOKE! Dude… who COULDN’T get excited about the Everywhere Model T Space Rocket?!!
I’ve been to the solar oven thread. It’d be great, if some clever person came up with a really useful design.
As for THIS one, I’m very much for idea exchanges…even if a bit edgy. I really do think the cheap and lots-of-'em rocket idea is bad, and said why, in a sarcastic way. Yes?
I’m not much of a name-caller. Gets a tad uncivil.
Well, I dunno. The complexity of engines is due in part to the fact that attaining orbital velocity is really, really hard.
For example, SpaceShipOne, the privately funded craft that won the X Prize for reaching the boundary of space (ca 60 miles,) is simply incapable of orbit. It’s not a matter of fuel or making a bigger one—its engine is just not complex enough. See this enlightening analysis for more info.
It will be awesome if Space-X can achieve space exploration with a simpler, cheaper mechanism, and I’m enthusiastic about it—I think there is an increasing demand that will spur the private sector to innovate. Then again, if you asked me to bet, for example, how long it would take the private sector to put a man in orbit, I’d put my money on at least a century after a government space agency achieved the same thing.
Maybe if you backed your belief with fact that, to pick from your examples, there’d be a cheap rocket in every garage, maybe then we could get to why you think it’s a bad idea; quite frankly, the idea you’re proposing is so far out in left field that Bill called it for exactly what it is…trolling.
Bill…
You’re right. My post was badly done. I apologize. (Ever have a day when things go badly in one part of your life, and you then dumbly take it out on somebody who doesn’t deserve it?)
Hey. Not only can I be socially abrasive at times…but I didn’t even know what a “troll” was. Looked it up. Yep. Guilty.
Take home message to self; don’t go onto C&F forum when you’re “seeing red” in some other part of your day!!!
Sorry, guys…
