SpaceX success rate goes up: RazakSAT launched

[sketerpot]

As of yesterday, only the last of the four test launches of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket had been successful. This time they launched a commercial payload, an imaging satellite for the Malaysian government, and the launch went off without a hitch.

RazakSAT carries a high resolution camera that can take images from space for different applications to benefit not only Malaysia, but countries along the equatorial region.

The orbital location will enable an increased frequency of image observation, and the images can be applied to precision farming, landscape mapping, forest biomass, marine spatial planning, disaster mitigation, urban and road network planning.

Dr Ongkili said that while other satellites operate on polar orbit (Sun Synchronous Orbit), the RazakSAT® operates at NEqO and will cover 70 percent of the oceans, where weather phenomena such as La Nina originate.

"This will allow scientists to study and monitor various critical factors that will contribute significantly to science," he said.

Several countries in Asia, the African continent and Latin America have expressed interest in utilising the images captured by RazakSAT, he said.

I'd like to emphasize the magnitude of what SpaceX have done. They developed their own space program with modern materials and engineering techniques, without reusing older space-qualified designs (in order to cut down on costs), their whole operation is designed to be able to operate on small budgets with small launch crews, and now they've got a rocket design that can repeatably launch small payloads into orbit. A higher-performance version, the Falcon 1e, is expected to be able to launch unmanned probes to the moon for about $9 million. They're re-using most of the technology (engines, avionics, etc.) on their larger Falcon 9 and the heavy-lifter rocket the Falcon 9 Heavy (which is essentially a Falcon 9 with a couple of extra first-stage rockets attached as boosters). The first flight of the Falcon 9 is scheduled for later this year, with the initial application being space station resupply for NASA. To do this, they'll put cargo in their Dragon cargo/crew capsule and have it dock with the ISS. It also has a variant configuration called DragonLab which allows it to be used for science experiments in space, like a cut-rate version of sending up an experiment on a Shuttle flight.

I'm pretty excited that SpaceX has shown that their initial success with Falcon 1 wasn't just a one-off fluke. Now they've got customers lining up, and they've been expanding their operations steadily.

[erik_t]

Cute little low-overhead mom and pop style operations do not survive becoming mainstream without substantially changing their corporate culture. Musk is not the first man to think of trying to reduce costs in an operation, although he might be the first snake oil salesman to have his own rocket booster.

Never mind that Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc are apparently unremarkable while SpaceX is OMG AWESOME. If you insist on the number of qualifiers given above, Orbital Sciences Corp designed and built the Pegasus booster without any legacy systems; it was first launched in in 1990 and has an 87% success rate over 40 launches. If the quasilibertarian Slashdork crowd gave half the shit to Orbital that they do to SpaceX, they'd have rubbed their phalli to nothingness a decade ago.

It's a pile of marketing, as in, "Watch out Norm, don't step in the marketing!"

[Starglider]

Cute little low-overhead mom and pop style operations do not survive becoming mainstream without substantially changing their corporate culture. Musk is not the first man to think of trying to reduce costs in an operation, although he might be the first snake oil salesman to have his own rocket booster.

That may well be true, but simply calling SpaceX 'snake oil' without any specific criticisms is not going to convince anyone. Cost and schedule projections are notoriously optimistic even at Boeing, LM etc, so you can hardly fault them on the delays and cost overruns they've had so far.

Never mind that Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc are apparently unremarkable

Developing the original US space launch capability was an incredible achievement, but what is particularly notable about recent booster iterations? SpaceX's order-of-magnitude cost reductions would be remarkable, if they can genuinely deliver them, because they are game-changing in a way that say Atlas V is not.

If you insist on the number of qualifiers given above, Orbital Sciences Corp designed and built the Pegasus booster without any legacy systems; it was first launched in in 1990 and has an 87% success rate over 40 launches. If the quasilibertarian Slashdork crowd gave half the shit to Orbital that they do to SpaceX, they'd have rubbed their phalli to nothingness a decade ago.

As I recall, Pegasus did get a lot of praise when it was new. However OS weren't able to scale it up or mass-produce it enough to significantly cut production costs - I don't recall them ever proposing to. I'm sure people will become disenchanted with SpaceX in short order if they don't deliver on their development plan, but they do at least have a semi-credible plan for scaling up and continuing to lower the per-kg launch cost.

[PeZook]

It remains to be seen if they can:

1) Scale up their boosters to match monsters like the Delta IV Heavy or the STS (112 tonnes to LEO FTW!) and still retain the low launch costs, and

2) Get their boosters to be reliable enough to launch manned vehicles, while still being cheap.

The second point would be especially game changing, and I know they're planning on achieving this.

[Sky Captain]

Is there any info available how much did it cost SpaceX to develop a Falcon 1 rocket and how do their R&D costs compare to similar rockets developed by government funding?