Category Archives: Space

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

ULA Versus SpaceX

15 Comments

An interesting report by Peter Selding of a talk by one of ULA’s execs. It seems remarkably candid. Tory has really brought big changes to the company. But I don’t get this thinking:

“Don’t get me wrong: SpaceX has done some amazing stuff,” Tobey said. “The landing [in December] of that [Falcon 9] first stage at the Cape was nothing short of amazing. My wife and I were at Best Buy and watching it on my iPhone and I just got goose bumps. It was cool.

“Watching them smash it into the barge was fun, too,” he said of previous, and a subsequent, SpaceX attempts at landing the first stage.

“It’s getting tons of press. It’s extraordinarily, engineeringly cool – but it’s dumb,” Tobey said. “I mean: Really? You carried 100,000 pounds of fuel after deployment of the SES satellite [SpaceX’s March launch of the commercial SES-9 telecommunications satellite, to geostationary-transfer orbit] just to try to land on the barge.”

Let’s see. Propellant costs less than a buck a pound. So for less than a hundred grand, you get an entire stage, worth tens of millions, back intact. Doesn’t sound dumb to me.

[Update a few minutes later]

Some discussion on Twitter, including with Jeff Foust, indicating that perhaps he didn’t intend for that talk to be on the record. If so, that would account for the unusual candor.

[Update a few more minutes later]

OK, majority of upset on Twitter seems to be the analogy of having two fiances. And I can’t imagine that Eileen will be happy about that talk.

[Update a while later]

Oops.

[Afternoon update]

Tory has to clean up the mess.

[Thursday-morning update]

Aaaaaaand, he’s outta there.

Apparently, he’d only been in the job since September. He’d come there from Lockmart. Not sure if we should draw any conclusions from that.

[Update a few minutes later]

More from Peter Selding. Tobey was canned for a Kinsleyan gaffe — accidentally telling the truth in public. It’s the first time (and probably last) that I’ve ever seen anyone from ULA call the parents “dysfunctional.” But everyone in the business knows it’s true.

[Mid-morning update]

And now McCain is sticking his idiot nose in.

[Update a while later]

Here‘s Tim Fernholz’s take.

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

SpaceX’s Manifest And Schedule

27 Comments

Peter Selding has a good report on what Gwynne said earlier this week.

I don’t think sixteen more flights this year is overly ambitious. I’d sure like to see the heavy fly in November, the new announced date, but I also won’t be at all surprised to see it slip into 2017. And from what she said, I’m very encouraged about minimum refurbishment.

[Update in the afternoon]

Oh, isn’t this cute. Roscosmos thinks it can compete by cutting manufacturing costs on Angara.

Business, Media Criticism, Space, Technology and Society

More On Blue Origin

20 Comments

Eric Berger has more details from Jeff Bezos on flight-test plans. If I were to do a new edition of the book, I’d replace references to Armadillo with what we now know about Blue Origin. It’s an entirely different approach from XCOR and Virgin Galactic; “Look ma, no pilot.”

[Update a while later]

“To let space travel flourish, leave it to the cranks and crackpots.”

Yes. Let’s end Apolloism and NASA worship.

[Update a few minutes later]

I think that Loren Grush has a legitimate complaint about who was, and wasn’t invited to that tour. It’s not at all clear how Blue Origin came up with the list. Alan Boyle was obvious, because he’s in Seattle and has been covering this stuff for years, as were Eric Berger and Jeff Foust, but I think that they could have accommodated more, and more women.