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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

>>Frankly, I'm thrilled to have Boeing keeping Elon honest, and vice versa. This is the system working here.

He isn't though. He's just posturing for PR purposes.

I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program? How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?[1]

As far as I'm concerned, this is the same thing as traditional car companies "vowing" to beat Tesla: it's just PR, backed by perhaps showing off concept cars in car shows.

[1]I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.

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    How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?

Seriously? Well not counting their ICBM program.

S-1C Program (Saturn V Rocket First Stage): 12 successful launches, 0 failures.

IUS Program (Booster for interplanetary probes from Space Shuttle): 24 launches, 3 failures (2 Boeing's fault, 1 the space shuttle exploded).

Delta II: 153 Launches, 2 Failures.

Delta III: 3 Launches, 2 Failures.

Delta IV: 33 Launches, 1 Failure.

    I mean, do we have any evidence that Boeing has a serious Mars program?

No. The new ULA Vulkan launch system doesn't have it's first test flight scheduled until 2019.

    What about re-usable?

Boeing (or really ULA) is developing the Vulkan Rocket. Which is partially recoverable, not fully. [1] The first launch of this vehicle is 2019. The entry level offering is quoted at ~$100mil per rocket (vs ~$164mil for a Delta IV) [2]. While a Falcon9 is $62mil [3].

I see why ULA lost their contract, Musk cut their knee caps off.

[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/recove...

[2] https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/04/13/ula-unveils-its-future...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

>>Seriously? Well not counting their ICBM program.

I meant launches that are specifically aiming for Mars.

Musk revealed his roadmap to Mars. Why haven't we heard about Boeing's?

Musk announced he is planning a roadmap to Mars. Boeing did the same.

SpaceX still doesn't have a launch vehicle in production capable of getting humans to Mars, unlike Boeing.

Boeing's SLS rocket (which is, at its best, 1/4th the power of SpaceX's ITS) depends on NASA to spend ~$60 billion before it could get half a dozen people to Mars in the late 2030s. Updates to the Delta IV heavy could've gotten there sooner and for ~$10 billion, but Boeing is not able/willing to spend its own money to do it; it wants to use government money to get there, and the government wasn't interested in their existing hardware. It's a shame, really. [0]

From [0]: "Senator Orrin Hatch made sure the new rocket used solid boosters, manufactured in his state. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby insisted that Marshall Space Flight Center design and test the rocket. Florida Senator Bill Nelson brought home billions of dollars to Kennedy Space Center to “modernize” its launch facilities."

Yuck.

ITS, on the other hand, is claimed to cost ~$10 billion, and begin putting people on Mars (in lots larger than half a dozen, mind you) sometime in the 2020s. Yeah, it's ambitious. They've missed other ambitious deadlines.

I personally feel, subjectively of course, that SpaceX is more ambitious and "hungry" to go to Mars than Boeing is. But that's just my gut feeling, and I have no data to back that feeling up.

[0]: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/how-i-learned-to-stop...

Orrin Hatch is still alive and meddling with things? Ugh.

>How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?

You do know you're talking about Boeing here, right? They had somewhere around 300 launches with close to perfect success rate.

>How many launches have they done so far, and what were the results?

I can't tell if you actually want answers but boeing has a fairly successful satellite deployment piece of the company.

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