I've been of the opinion for a while that Elon Musk is a national treasure.

And on the topic of politicians, I hope Washington is putting some resources into security around SpaceX, as other countries are surly to take notice. I'm sure given half a chance China would love to steal the IP and blueprints for improved space flight and undercut the USA in yet another buisness sector.

Make sure your politicians understand that this is the beginning of major new economic markets for the US!

Do you seriously believe that China hasn't already stolen the blueprints for the Falcon 9?

Why would China need to steal the plans? They can already build their own rockets and do it for less.

Guys - come on - the Falcon 9 is not cutting edge technology - there's not much new there that wasn't known in the 60's. It's more about a private company doing the same thing, in a leaner more efficient manner than what you would get from a government agency - about the last thing the someone like China would be able to grasp and apply!

Do you guys seriously believe that China is so backwards technologically that they couldn't build a simple rocket design like the Falcon 9?! Wow guys! They shot down a satellite as a test...I think they can handle simple rocket design.

Wow, you guys need to do some research.

Bill, your statement is understandable but trite.

Jimbo, yes, in the sixties they had a rocket with fire comming out the bottom, and now SpaceX has a rocket with fire comming out the bottom. Your powers of observation are stunning. As for China, they have made great economic progress by being "leaner more efficent", though much at the expense of their laborers.

StMiller, your belittling of what SpaceX has done as "simple rocket design" is ignorant and Un-American. America is at it's best when government supports it's private citizens to accomplish great thing, as NASA is doing for SpaceX. And the genious of the process is now tax payers won't have to foot the bill for the "buisness" of LEO launches and the government (NASA) can go back to doing what it does best, being research with little expectation of short term economic return or usefullness. And SpaceX will expend resources and talent into research targeting efficent and economically advantagious techniques and technology. And will probably give an American industry a big boost to boot.

SaneScience...I am not belittling what SpaceX has done. I am just suggesting that this is not an advanced or unique rocket design comparable to what China certainly has achieved with their own space program. They have sent men into space, destroyed an orbiting satellite, and begun their own advanced space program therefore for Bill and Jimbo to suggest that the Chinese would need to steal designs for a basic test rocket like Falcon 9 is silly.

True enough -- except that party affiliation hasn't mattered over the decades. For instance, I'm from Texas, and whose name is on the center in Houston? -- that of the late President Lydon B. Johnson, a staunch Democrat, if of the "Dixiecrat" variety that reigned across the South at the time.

After all, both Republicans and Democrats are humans, and their shared love of pork outweighs their [oft fictional] differences in political philosophy.

"Hey! Keep your cotton-pickin' hands off MY pork, you commie!"

wow...what did he just say? brilliant!

I could almost feel the steam and the computer vibrating from when you were furiously typing your lengthy response. I admire your passion, and more than that, the obvious depth of knowledge you bring to this discussion.

Scramjets can be used for ground-to-space propulsion? Interesting, didn't know that. I always thought of scramjets as very fast but very unstable.

a scram jet could be used as an efficient and effect "mid-stage" i believe, since they would need a rocket booster to get them going fast enough to burn air, but once at mock 1 or 2 the scramjet ignites and accelerates to Ridiculous Speed (tm) through the atmosphere. i think you would need another engine for maneuvering outside the atmosphere though, since the scramjet needs air to operate.

Ha! I think he did say all that. And while I am a life-long fan of sci-fi and visionary looks into the future, I am also an aging fan of what was once my future - and hope.

While everyone clamors about our planet's rapidly dwindling natural resourses, we still have global corporations that are always more concerned with share-holder dividends than protecting the people and our environment (and probably our future). "No future will be had unless money is made."

And I won't even start on our politicians. Bought and sold by the highest bidder. We voted for change? Yeah, well, change this.

I have had hope for mankind and our continuing advancemnt since my youth. But as I have grown older, hope has become disappointment. No one will address, or even mention in public, the root cause of our dwindling resources. There's too many damn people on the planet! Anyone old enough to remember the '70s will remember the discussions of ZPG - Zero Population Growth.

Okay. Sorry. It's getting late and I'm getting old. I am as ecstatic as I can get at my age that a private company has finally (been allowed) to achieve low eart orbit. I have nothing but admiration for Elon Musk. By the way, when will I be able to afford a Tesla?

It's past my bed time now. I'll go back to sipping my Jack Daniels, and re-reading the dreams of my youth: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, et al. I am combfortably resigned to never reaching space myself. But where's my damn flying car?

Our views may be a bit at variance on a point or two you make, but I do have to say this is one of the very best comments I've seen on this subject. Not that I haven't read a great many other excellent comments, but as another respondent here notes, you do infuse your observations with tremendous passion that clearly runs right down into the marrow of your bones.

A huge thumbs up!

Lighten up Francis!

A few thoughts on scramjets and space. Scramjets need air. There is no air in space.

Yes a little sarcasm but this topic of using scramjets to help getting into space has come up now and then and "falls short" on a couple key factors.

First, the goal of space flight is to get out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible. At orbital speeds the atmosphere will quickly burn you to ashes. Once out of the slim atmospheric altitude range the scramjet operates in, it is a hinderance. Scramjets also have a significant minimum speed requirement, about mach 4ish with todays designes.

Scramjets need a "constant dynamic pressure path", meaning their speed, altitude, and engine configuration needs to stay in synch. Upshot is we can barely make a scramjet that operates at a constant elevation encountering natural presure variations.

The added expense, complexity, and number of systems that can fail by having two thrust systems, each with their own types of fuel, just isn't going to make scramjet assisted space flight economical for the foreseeable future.

Oh, me next! It also turns out that, even if you can solve all the stability and dynamics problems, at scramjet speed the Earth curves away really fast. You effectively need to be in a dive to stop yourself from going suborbital, which in turn brings you into denser air, which snuffs out your scramjet and, um, blows your craft apart. It essentially limits the top airbreathing speed to Mach 8-10, after which you need a rocket. Which is good, because the darn things don't work past that speed anyways.

Why does this embarass NASA? They helped fund the development. It should embarass Boeing and Lockheed, whose launch vehicles cost 10 times as much and have been a prime limiting factor in the number and frequency of missions we can launch any more. And I'm not talking about the human spaceflight program. That's a different can of worms. The Falcon 9 can help save science exploration, in general, particularly with the loss of the Delta II.

boeing and lockheed are too busy swimming in cash from all their bloated government contracts to be embarassed.

they will both sit fat and happy as long as their lobbyists still have access to congress. so what if someone can do something cheaper? they have the best legislation money can buy on their side.

Billy, spaceGal and Abe both make valid points. The cost problems really can't be placed at NASA's door, but at two other doors: those of Congress -- also known as "The Great Hall of the Pork" -- and private contractors with passes to go shopping in said hall. After all, huge costs are what we get when the departure point in the so-called "thinking" is "Why use a ten-dollar wrench of a thousand-buck one will do???"

Or, put more simply, "campaign contributions."

Well, embarassed might be a pretty good description for parts of NASA, the ones that say, built *one* Ares mobil launch tower for $500 million dollars. More money than the expenditures by SpaceX to date. That includes all the flight hardware for the *five* Falcon 1 and *three* Falcon 9 (2 in stages of producton) orbital rockets, the Dragon spacecraft and Draco thruster systems, as well as *THREE* whole launch sites.

SpaceX has also had positive cash flow (profit?) since 2007.

Coming from an independent minded voter, I find it funny you call out the republican but not the democrat...wow, couldn't someone just say, well, Jasmine, your one-sided comment is expected coming out of the mouth of a DEMOCRAT.

Grow up...people on both sides have issues.

Yes you are right. People on both sides have issues. The only problem is Republicans, I assume like yourself, have an excellent track record of contradicting their own beliefs. At least have a logical reason to why Shelby dislikes this alternative approach Shelby so ridiculously put it as replicating what NASA accomplished in 64 when it's practically parallel to the Ares I-X launch. Shelby and the rest of them that think this way are hypocritical idiots. Don't praise one program and denounce another when they are practically the same. Stop doing that and maybe I don't have to comment about the ridiculous obvious.

Oh yeah and by the way........I'm an INDEPENDENT. Take note.

You both need to play nice. The problem isn't democrats or republicans but the generic group called "politicians".

Until we decide that the average member of the lying, effete, elitist, butt-snorkeling, narcissistic sufferers of borderline personality disorder called the "american political class", needs to have their wings trimmed by being regularly voted from office; we will always have to listen to idiotic statements by like the ones made here by either republicans or democrats.

The two parties are part of the same sick beast.

Agreed. However, as a conservative, I look at the federal budget pie chart and I see this teeny sliver that is NASA and the mega-chunks that are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and of course, the eternal DOD foriegn wars budget, and I wonder how much more science we could do if we had those monkeys off our backs. Don't worry too much about the Republican party, the elites on our side of the house are scared of the grass roots, too. We will reform the party and get back to our principals.

Plenty of room for agreement - J.

"We will reform the party and get back to our principals."

->Hmm... by "principals" do you mean, "In commercial law, a principal is a person-legal or natural-who authorizes an agent to act to create one or more legal relationships with a third party;" or "Under criminal law, a principal is any actor who is primarily responsible for a criminal offense. Such an actor is distinguished from others who may also be subject to criminal liability as accomplices, accessories or conspirators?" Either one makes your statement ironic. I suppose you mean "principles," which leads me to believe that you are the perfect epitome of your party. Cheers.

Not a conservative, but agree with you on the "eternal DOD foreign wars budget" point!

J Evans brings my point home. I am glad to think others finally "see" what I do. DOD is out of control.

D, think about that a minute, and I think you may change your mind.

I'm from Texas, which is a strong Republican state, with the Governor, both Senators, and (in my district) a Representative, all Republican. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is the most moderate -- or least immoderate, if you prefer -- of the lot, though even she isn't within hailing distance of centrist.

Governor Perry, whom I generally *don't* support, downright shocked me (until I thought about it) is leading the charge to convince the state legislature to appropriate $5 billion for alternative energy, with a heavy emphasis on wind. He clearly figured it out that despite Texas position as a leader in oil and natural gas, there's much political capital to be gained by supporting people like T. Boone Pickins -- who made his fortune in oil yet is a big supporter of wind energy himself.

All four screamed bloody murder about the federal stimulus package ("Socialism!!!") but quieted right down once OUR check was cut. At least none of them were as nakedly self-serving as some politicians who actually tried to take CREDIT for winning funds for the state when in FACT those sniveling self-servers had fought long and hard against them and had voted against them. There's another name for the latter type of politicos, one everybody knows: "liars."

Well said. I agree wholeheartedly.

DaveInDen --

Have you ever got THAT right! Both my Senators and my Representative are all three STAUNCHLY Republican and normally very much private-sector, free-enterprise boosters. But they sure don't like canceling Aries-Constellation.

I often wonder how they square that in their own minds. Well, I guess I probably already know the answer, at least in the case of the Representative and one Senator: they've opposed the Democrats in Congress and the President on every single thing that has come before them since the day President Obama took office, even more so than when they lost control of Congress the last two years of President Bush's term. As for the other Senator, well, maybe she's not as moderate as I had thought (and hoped).

I did e-mail each asking for an explanation of the contradiction, but all I got back was a form e-mail in each case, the usual blah-blah-blah stuff that, as Harry Belafonte sang in his hit "Jamaica Farewell" decades ago, "It was clear as mud, but it covered the ground/The confusion made me head go 'round"!

LOL --

Yeah, 'cause heaven knows that the Chinese and Russian governments aren't putting a penny into any of this foolish research and development, or launching any of thsoe foolish rockets with manned payloads or intellegence satellites, or even thinking about the idea of using space for espionage and/or actual warfare.... nope, they aren't doing that at all, it's all privately run and funded and they have NO motives that we should be worried about....right? And of course, you can see all of the opposition to keep the private companies out of space here, as evidenced by this cooperative effort.

Three villages are evidently minus three fools.

AndyW-1157133,

I think as Gene Cernan pointed out recently it's hard to "dumb down" Orion. Orion was already dumb. It's gone so far over weight budget that it's no longer able to land on land, something the Russians have been doing routinely since the 1960's. No, instead, Orion comes down the old-fashioned American way, in the ocean. A fleet of ships must be on standby every time it splashes down, trying to narrow down its point of impact and drive up its costs by tens of millions of dollars. How quaint. Orion either needs to be cancelled or redesigned as Orion 2.0 with wings or parafoil so that it flies in. Otherwise, to paraphrase Dick Shelby, we're just doing what NASA did in 1964. Again. How freaking humiliating it would be to watch NASA's astronauts waving from their Orion capsules as they bob in the ocean. Just lovely.

"I think as Gene Cernan pointed out recently it's hard to "dumb down" Orion. Orion was already dumb. It's gone so far over weight budget that it's no longer able to land on land..."

It's not that Orion went over weight, as it is that its launcher has under-performed, since its original design.

The original plan was that the second stage would use a Space Shuttle Main engine, but it proved impractical to make the SSME into an air-startable, upper stage engine. Going to the lower-performance J2-X that can, meant making up for it by going to a 5-segment SRB...and then cutting back on Orion's size and weight...

BTW, SpaceX is looking at eventual land recovery for Dragon, too:

http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=21153

This is not a fair statement. While it is true that Orion put on a few pounds in the development process, as the Apollo spacecraft did in the development stage, it is unfair and irresponsible to blame the collapse of the Constellation program on Orion. When the Apollo spacecraft put on weight, the design of the launcher (the Saturn vehicles) had growth margin to accomodate the change. The Constellation launchers had no such margin. They were at their maximum capacity when Michael Griffin first sketched them on a napkin, and went downhill from there. The collapse of Constellation was due to former NASA administrator Mike Griffin's boneheaded insistence upon developing "The Stick" launcher for Orion; Insistence that never wavered even as the costs went through the roof, the schedule slipped into the distant and murky future, and the daunting engineering challenges mounted. Griffin's dogged refusal to consider alternatives (directlauncher.com) doomed NASA to have nothing capable of launching humans into orbit when the Shuttles retired.

Lets review the facts. In 2004, NASA was tasked by then President Bush and Congress to develop a new spacecraft and the launch capability for it derived from the existing Shuttle stack. Mike Griffin them proceeded to force NASA to develop two entirely new launchers which only in the most tortured logic could be describe as related to the shuttle systems. In their current terminal form, the only thing adopted from the Shuttle stack by the Ares I and the Ares V is the orange paint from the Shuttle's external tank.

It is easy to guess what Bush and Congress had in mind when they said "shuttle derived". They wanted a simple, cheap evolution of the Shuttle stack that reused as much of the many $billions that the taxpayers have already invested in the Shuttle systems as possible. This evolved Shuttle stack would have looked much like the Jupiter family of lifters (again, see directlauncher.com ... if you don't know yet about this effort by NASA's own engineers to save NASA, then you've not been paying enough attention to NASA's growing crisis to justify indignant outbursts). Such an evolution of the Shuttle stack, had it been started in 2004, would likely have been flying for a couple years by now.

What Bush and Congress most clearly did NOT have in mind (though whether Bush had anything in mind - ever - is debatable) was TWO separate launcher development efforts that reused none of the current operational hardware, infrastructure, and production capabilities. Scrapping tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars worth of paid-for tech, infrastructure and capabilities was NOT in the plans! NASA and America had neither the time nor the budget for two grandiose and entirely new rocket development projects.

In short, Orion would be flying RIGHT NOW, even if its weight had doubled, had Griffin not been fixated on his pet rockets and instead gone with the Jupiter launchers suggested by NASA's own engineers. The Jupiter launchers had the design margin to easily manage lofting an Orion that is twice, or even three times, the original design weight.

NASA is facing disaster once again for the exact same reason that it has done so in the past: Bad and headstrong management that ignores the advice of NASA's engineers. This destroyed two shuttle orbiters and killed 14 brave astronauts. This time, NASA's bad management killed NASA's own ability to get astronauts into space. Mike Griffin ignored his own engineers' advice. Do you think Elon Musk ignores his engineers' advice?

Dave, much of that 1960's-era technology was classified, and as such, was not available to the private sector for commercial development. I think there were darned good reasons for it to be classified -- as I understand it, some of it is to this day -- but whether it was/is justified or not, private companies didn't have it, and they were unable to start with stuff out in the open already -- 1940's and earlier. Costs alone would have been prohibitive for a company. Even the fabled Skunk Works (rightly fabled, BTW) were careful just what they took on, and that was WITH considerable government funding.

I imagine, and certainly hope, that NASA will be jump-starting developments in the private sector, so the timeline for the private sector to move from this first successful orbital launch (well, largely successful) to manned LEO spaceflight and then beyond will be greatly abbreviated, compared to how long it took in our government efforts.

Another less-discussed aspect regards any Pentagon contribution to speeding things along. If the private sector can boost spy, weather, and communications satellites (for instance) into orbit at a fraction the cost, it would seem the Pentagon might be taking a long, hard look at shifting some -- not all, and not the most sensitive and critical, but some -- of that over to private companies. After all, there's nothing necessarily all that secret about a run-of-the-mill weather satellite.

In any case, I personally hope LEO becomes the realm of the private sector, to considerable degree, so NASA has the money to increase efforts further out, wherever they settle on -- the Moon, the asteroid belt, the Moons of Mars, or Mars itself in the realm of manned spaceflight, and to launch more robotic missions, a realm that sure has seen its fair share of failures, but which also has seen some spectacularly successful missions.

leave over, there is nothing wrong with a little optimistic futurist thinking. he isn't espousing consiracy theories or announcing the coming apocalypse, just following some current scientific development to thier logical ends.

keeping your feet on the ground may be practical, but having your head in the clouds from time to time is far more enjoyable.

Yes. Having our heads above the clouds should be our goal.

Much preferable to having our heads in the sand - or (if you're a politician) up your ###.

The Redstone and Atlas rockets were originally military rockets used by NASA. NASA is an enormous government agency, if it hadn't been able to put something in orbit with the budget it had back in the hey day of the Space Race it wouldn't have been worth the money the Space Act was printed on.

What's actually heartening is that instead having von Braun developing rockets, the free market (something Republicans like to pretend they favor) is taking control of what for too many decades has been the sole operation of government bureaucracy.

JohnCarter,

Check your numbers. Redstone and Atlas didn't put anywhere near the payload in LEO that a Falcon 9 will. The more comparable booster would be the Titan IIIC, and frankly, the development costs were not even in the same ballpark, if you adjust for inflation.

The Falcon 9 is also comparable to the Ares I. A little less than $9 billion has been spent so far on the Ares I. It's been 8 years for SpaceX from zero to Falcon 9, 5 years for NASA from organization standing ready to not quite ready to cut metal. 3 more years and another $5 billion for Ares I would put it at roughly the same point in development, except that Falcon 9 has engine-out capability and Ares doesn't. The time frames are comparable, the amounts of money are nowhere in the ballpark, for Atlas, Redstone, Titan or Ares. That's not NASA's fault; it's the fault of Congress, Boeing, LockMart, and ATK (aka Morton Thiokol). The American taxpayer gets bent over every time USA or ULA turns a screw, and when they leave they take our wallets.

The US government spent the 2010 dollar equivalent of $300Billion That's a B, developing ICBMs back then. They blew up a lot of rockets doing it.

The Redstone and Atlas have nowhere near the same throw weight capacity as the Falcon 9.

Plus this rocket will be open for private business, something that the Redstone and Atlas were never available for. So ordinary people get to purchase space on the Falcon's. You've never been able to do that before.

This is about American can-do enterpreneurialism vs big government socialist cost plus programs.

It all comes down to one word: lobbying. Republicans are not pro-capitalist any more than Democrats or independents; if anything they prefer big government programs, like Lockheed/Boeing pork barrel projects.

Totally legit criticism. We're cleaning our own house right now. Soon, you'll see a party thats all about free market pricipals.

All about free markets perhaps, but apparently not about spelling.

They're politicians, they'll say anything to diss the other side, that's what they do.

God help Jesus Christ if he ever came back. They'd crucify him again.

Politicians believe what they are paid to believe. They will be completely behind private industry going into space, just as soon as they figure out how to get their piece of the pie.