The current state of Space Exploration

Let it never be said I will only talk about Tesla on the interwebs. After all, you should know very well that Elon Musk also runs the first ever successful private rocket ship company. Today, April 25th, was a proud day for Mr. Musk, and he arranged with reporters to have a live conference at 1:00 PM Eastern time during which he announced the following:

1. Technological breakthrough achieved: Process in which all stages/components of a rocket may be recovered. This is estimated to cut down on the cost of sending cargo/people into space by 70% per launch
2. SpaceX is suing the United States Air Force.

How can you not love this guy?

I was never much interested in things besides math, history and music in school, but the only science class I loved was astronomy. That was probably because my teacher was ex-JPL and had amazing stories of all the satellite and shuttle launches he had been involved in. I have always read up on the history of space exploration so I have some limited background in which to digest the enormity of SpaceX's success. Let's run through a quick dossier:

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation

• Was founded in 2002
• Currently employees 3,800
• Headquartered in Hawthorne (L.A.), California
• Current cargo vehicle is the Falcon 9, 100% successful mission rate
• The Falcon 9 is named after the Millennium Falcon
• In 2010, SpaceX became the first company to launch a privately built spacecraft into orbit and return it safely to Earth.
• After only 10 years in existence, SpaceX can already deliver cargo to space for 1/6th the price of what NASA/Boeing/Lockheed could manage after being around 56 years
• SpaceX has been able to visit the ISS for a $60 million cost, the Space shuttle cost $450 million a launch, currently NASA is paying Boeing and Lockheed $360 million a launch
• This equates to the ability to launch twice the supply capacity provided by the space shuttle at about 20 percent of the cost
• SpaceX recently purchased launch pad 39a in Florida, site of all the Apollo missions (to the moon)
• Elon Musk is Iron Man
• This year, the company has a $1.6 billion deal with NASA to provide 12 unmanned cargo flights to the International Space Station
• On the Dragon capsule's first test flight in December 2010, it carried a wheel of cheese into orbit. The wheel of cheese was launched in honor of a classic skit from actor John Cleese in the British comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• Musk once tried to buy ICBM's from Russia with which to test the feasibility of his company. He later said the KGB interrogated him and he had a bad time overall.

Part One

On April 18th, SpaceX launched one of its more or less routine cargo trips to the International Space Station. It's primary mission was a success and provided equipment for an emergency space walk repair to the ISS. Its secondary mission was to test an innovative design feature previously unprecedented in the space industry. The feature is probably best illustrated by watching the following youtube clip: http://youtu.be/9ZDkItO-0a4?t=50s If you are tempted to believe the video is playing backwards, than my attempt at dramatic effect was somewhat effective. 

Space rockets, up till now, have been comprised of 2 or more stages. The first stage was always designed to disintegrate/self destruct. Oftentimes stage two would also be damaged beyond recovery when it fell back to earth. Falcon 9's have 2 stages, and both are now recoverable and reusable. In doing so, the cost of launches may decrease by over half, and multiple launches from the same pad may be possible in the same day. I know very little of the mechanics of kerosene induced thrust, but I know that to keep a rocket of that weight completely vertical upon descent and be able to land on four relatively tiny landing legs takes into consideration millions of factors and requires incredibly complex programming and adaptability. SpaceX was able to achieve this on only its 2nd try, and last week had given it only a 30 - 40% likelihood of success. The first try was 8 months ago and was granted only a 10% chance of a soft landing (failed because they weren't able to compensate for the fuel spinning and sloshing about, this caused the rocket to tumble).

Watching the press conference today revealed the following:

• 70% of every rocket cost is the booster stage that up till now has burned up in atmosphere
• Only 3/1000^ths of the entire rocket launch is fuel ($200,000 of a 60 million dollar launch)
• Musk said this will be able to re-launch in the very same day!!!!
• Costs to put cargo in space will approach only $1,000/pound
• Falcon 9 stage 1 could potentially land within a meter of its target

Unfortunately, although this rocket 'soft-landed' vertically, it was not recovered. This was tested over the ocean and the Stage 1 component remained vertical for 8 seconds. With this proof of concept, it is likely SpaceX asks and receives authorization to attempt to land another stage 1 on its own launch pad before the end of the year.

Interestingly and scarily enough, a Russian vessel was within eyesight of where Falcon set down in the Ocean. This potentially raises some questions, as I am sure you can imagine.

Part Two

(Conference can be found here: http://press.org/news-multimedia/videos/spacex-press-conference)

Why is SpaceX and Elon suing the United States Air Force? This section will definitely be less thrilling than the rest of my post, but it evidences Musk's integrity and willingness to put it all on the line and break the status quo. Keep in mind there are two distinct space markets under consideration here: Nasa runs the missions to ISS, and potentially the moon again and eventually Mars. The United States Air Force (USAF) launches military satellites.

What this really comes down to is that everybody else fails at making cost effective space vessels and that Nasa/USAF space endeavors are probably partially controlled by the same political and corporate fascists that run America. Since the Space Shuttle program and its costly $450 million launches were shut down in 2011, all heavy launches have been contracted to the United Launch Association. ULA is a Joint Venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin but uses Russian rocket engines. Furthermore, all manned missions to ISS are currently performed by the Russian Soyuz rockets. With the current state of affairs, having American astronauts on the ISS with Russian counterparts all the while dependent on Russian launches is a bit of a concern. Furthermore, the Russian political figure in charge of the Russian side of ULA is already on our sanction list as result of the Ukraine debacle: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/25/russian-official-under-us-sanction-plays-key-role-in-pentagon-space-program/

More to the point, SpaceX is suing the USAF as they were not allowed to compete in a 36 mission contract bid. Furthermore, they were lied to or at least misled by the USAF when they sought this bid in 2011 and 2012. They were told to demonstrate 3 successful launches which they accomplished and then exceeded. A day after Musk made progress towards his contract goal during testimony with the Senate, USAF gave the 36 mission, multi-billion dollar contract to United Launch Association without entering it for competition which is likely illegal.

What does this mean? Elon has said it best:

"If our space rocket is good enough for Nasa and supporting a 100 billion dollar space station, it should be good enough for USAF"

"To put this into perspective, had SpaceX been awarded the missions ULA received under its recent non-competed 36 core block buy, we would have saved the taxpayer $11.6 billion"

"Despite—or perhaps because of—decades of accumulated experience and hundreds of billions of dollars in cost-plus contacts, the legacy US aerospace establishment is hopelessly out of touch with what the floor of launch prices should actually be."

Elon has pulled no punches, and as far as I can tell he pretty much with a simple half hour press conference  forced the USAF to be backed deep into a corner and there is probably no escape. Our good (sic) senator John McCain wrote two relevant USAF officials within hours of the conference and demanded to re-open the contract so that SpaceX may compete: http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=c6782e97-ca58-47c4-991f-4587c8da1e9d

In conclusion, I believe we are looking at the most capable inventor and businessman in history. Musk should encourage the entire world to push the envelope and not be afraid to stand up for American jobs and working toward eroding our dependency on other nations for solving problems we could tackle ourselves: I will end with some final eye-opening quotes from Musk:

"The Falcon 9/Dragon system that we're launching today, what can it do? If the degree of safety required was equivalent to that of the shuttle, we could actually launch astronauts on the next flight."

"Technically, if somebody were to stow aboard the cargo version of Dragon, they'd actually be fine. I mean, hopefully."

"We're happy to take people the Moon. If somebody wants to go to the Moon, we can definitely do it."

"We [SpaceX] will probably restore the US to being the premier space capable nation in the world"

"Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10%, that's pretty lame"

"I would like to die on Mars, just not at the point of impact"