The Great and Wonderous NASA had directed them to continue down the path of high pressure cryogenic impellers using fuel rich staged combustion engines (viz., the SSME).
Now this was pretty high tech cool stuff with impressive Isp but uh...it's damned expensive to build and run. Especially when you mate it up with a massive structure like the Shuttle just to put 7 people in space.
SpaceX merely commercialized an existing NASA program: the Low Cost Pintle Engine. This program had been technically successful but was canceled to continue feeding the Shuttle cash monster. SpaceX was founded to see the vision through to its conclusion: low cost routine access to space.
This is a standard start-up strategy, well known in the Venture Capital industry. In fact, it's the model.
SpaceX is no Solyndra. It's founded on solid engineering and their flight to the ISS proves that. If this guy is so damn clever, tell me when Lockheed plans to get off their dead butts and do something similar. They competed in the COTS program but got shut out or dropped out early, don't remember or care which. They're more interested in churning a few more ECO's with the USAF so they can turn a 100 million program into a 1 billion program, all of course with an 8% fixed margin. Good Ol' Cost Plus.
Musk is a product of his ethnic and social environment, but he takes incredible risks with his own money and succeeds by relentless work. He now has won the game with the authority to proceed on the 1.6 billion ISS resupply contract.
Regardless of his twinky social outlook, his great business attitude should be respected.
PS: building and launching a rocket is no trivial task. Been there, done that. NO ONE who has never done it should sneer at it.
Where do you see the U.S. space program in 10 years?
Which brings me to my question: I thought SpaceX was entirely PRIVATELY funded, or is that incorrect?
If you put my hand over a burning flame, I'd swear I read that somewhere --- I just don't remember where.
Rockets are easy - good nukes are harder... :)
“Musk is a product of his ethnic and social environment”
Boer?
A lot of liberals make terrific business leaders, especially for young and growing companies. As long as they stay out of government and earn their money, I'm happy.
Great post, BTW.
You should see the failures of the SSMEs. When a turbopump goes out of control, it could hit 400,000RPMS within a second. Computers weren’t yet fast enough so they went through quite a lot of iterations for turbopumps.
I wish I could find the report I read that identified the problems and fixed them.
Oh yeah, the reason they needed cryogenic fuels for the SSMEs was the power output. You get more power out of H+LOX VS Kerosene and LOX although they provided enough power for the first stage Apollo rockets..
Absolutely right on the money there!!!