Withnail wrote:I just hope Space X doesn't crash next or Six $ will have a nervous breakdown.
Newsflash - Americans are launching these things that are crashing.
You don't get to blame Russia.
First of all, Sir Richard is British. Secondly, it's not funny I don't want to joke about this, one pilot died and another in critical. It's sad, and I hate to say it but I always felt like Virgin Galactic was sketchy, that was just my hunch.
Thirdly -- if they knew they had a crap engine, then that is negligence. There needs to be more oversight. VG was getting ready to start launching American paying passengers off on that rocket engine that apparently does not work. That may turn out to be Branson's fault, or not, we will find out.
As for a hypothetical spacex payload failure -- I'd feel bad for poor Elon Musk, he's the one that would have a nervous breakdown. He's very prickly and doesn't take well to failure or criticism -- and that's a good thing -- it's what makes him work so damn hard.
But he's a physicist and engineer, whereas a Branson is a dreamer and may have covered some problems up. A Musk will get in there and make it work, if there's a problem. See the difference?
That's what you need in this business. Someone that takes personal responsibility. The buck stops here. And taking personal pride in craftsmanship, and being obsessive on every last detail and getting it perfect.
We'll see what happens with spacex. They've made 100 engines so far and have successfully launched 80 of those engines. If I recall there was one flight that an engine had an auto shutdown, but the other engines continued on and completed the flight as they were designed to.
Latest spacex news, by the way.. I was reading a WSJ article saying NASA rated Boeing-Lockheed's bid superior to spacex, and they got twice as much money. But the reality is that both contracts were accepted, it's just that Boeing-Lockheed's bid cost twice as much and that's another two billion dollars.
But anyhow, NASA rates Boeing-Lockheed as being "more responsive to government inquiries and government direction." The report gave Boeing-Lockheed "excellent" ratings in every category, and gave SpaceX "very good."
I also noticed in the report that NASA isn't happy that Elon Musk has designed his own radiation protection system, and also he wants to design his own docking port, and he also wants to design his own space suits. (ya gotta love that guy! control freak! insists on making his own eva suits!)
It'll work out, Withnail. Boeing-Lockheed knows how to make rockets we're just going to have to pay them $4 billion to do it and will take them five years because they switched over to Russian engines. But they'll get it done, and we taxpayers will pay for it through the nose, but it'll get done and it will work.
And we'll also have the exciting Spacex Dragon as well, it's best of both worlds, one foot in good ole reliable gumbint-contract-milking Boeing-Lockheed and another foot taking a chance on the best one of the startups, SpaceX.
My criticisms of spacex:
* Their grasshopper reusable landing rocket stages is probably overly ambitious and will take a lot longer to get done than they think. Others have tried that before. And SpaceX will have more test crashes with that. If they get a completely reusable system done, though, then that's revolutionary.
* As far as I can tell, it doesn't look like they will have any parachutes on their capsule. They're going to do propulsion landings. Now, that looks very cool and is very cool but -- put chutes on it too. Nobody wants to be the first astronaut that pushes the button and the rockets don't fire and then instead of landing on a dime you crash into the earth like a meteor. So put chutes on it, too. Maybe I'm wrong and it will have parachutes too, I'm not 100% sure.
* Lastly, maybe spacex could ramp up if we threw billions at them, but at is it we do need another supplier. SpaceX can't do it all. And the NASA report may be right about their schedule reliability. Also, spacex is looking to launch for the air force too and then they've got all their satellite clients from other nations and companies.
So they are busy, and we do need more than one. After the first contracts, then probably NASA will pick the winner and stick with it -- Boeing-Lockheed's capsule, or Spacex's. I would hope that politics and all of ULA's lobbyists don't win out in the end and the dragon capusle gets killed even if maybe it's better but they just don't have ULA's lobbyists or pay bribes, like that one air force big wig that was given a VP job at ULA *after* he gave them the big contract.
Poor elon musk, he's got to fight everyone, government too, it's like Hank Reardon out of Atlas Shrugged.