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If SpaceX can fly out their 2015 manifest, that will be impressive. This is the year the Falcon Heavy is supposed to launch. Their first manned flight has apparently been postponed; it's been "2-3 years" away for 2 years now.[1]

I notice they've stopped putting dates on their manifest for future flights.[2][3] SpaceX is doing a great job, but they're behind their own schedule. They're two flights behind on ISS resupply, and launched less in 2014 than they'd planned. They may be having scaling problems with their organization. They have a a product and customers, but can't meet demand. This may get better once they get their own spaceport in Texas finished.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130802104411/http://www.spacex... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20141030024140/http://www.spacex... [3] httpd://www.spacex.com/missions

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> Their first manned flight has apparently been postponed; it's been "2-3 years" away for 2 years now.

That's not entirely on them. With manned spaceflight, they're on NASA time.

There's been a combination of SpaceX developmental delays and the US government budget for commercial space getting cut every year, which causes the contracts to get stretched out.

Can SpaceX, at least from a technology and legal standpoint, launch a manned flight without NASA involvement? If so, is it that it just makes no commercial sense? Or is the idea that the flight is far more likely to succeed with NASA's expertise?

Without NASA there is no customer for manned spaceflight.

Hardly.

The context here is NASA moving slowly and the possibility of SpaceX launching without their involvement. Can you think of a single customer for that? Try to get Russian permission to got to the Russian side of the station without NASA involvement or just hang out in the Dragon until you get tired of using diapers?

If SpaceX can get a manned flight up then I think the customers and use-cases will appear.

Even if it is just a company catering to customers who want to go to space for an orbit or two without actually docking with anything.

Such as visiting a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable space station? They have a demo in orbit, an ISS module in the pipeline, and a manifested launch of a bigger unit on the SpaceX manifest. I thought this was pretty well known, guess I was wrong!

I am well aware of Bogelow. When do you think they will have their first human occupied station? I will bet you any sum that it is after NASA astronauts take a ride on SpaceX. Yes other customers for human spaceflight will exist, but right now it's just NASA.

Would it be a chance to send up Lance Bass?

Legal? If they get permission from the international wotsit that is responsible for the ISS, then yes. Technology? Well if they get permission, they will get access to the required knowledge about docking and procedures and stuff. The ISS isn't nearly as secretive as the cold war era space race, and there are as of yet no commercial interests in there.

It's possible that Elon counts in Mars years.

That would actually explain a lot of his comments.

Aggressive scheduling is a tactic. Because no matter what the schedule, human nature dictates that things are likely to slip.

Spin it all you want but a failure to meet schedules isn't really acceptable. You either failed to deliver or failed to manage your project estimation process.

There are weather related reasons too.

Sounds an awful lot as a managerspeak. Estimations are hard - and in general, it's hard to make predictions, especially for the future, and here we're talking about estimations of a future moment.

You say that, but there aren't a lot of options in the space business, and even SpaceX with delays is better than other available options. They are slowly improving deliveries as they learn to understand a product and business model that no human beings have ever offered. To say they should do all this and never miss a delivery date is to misunderstand the economics of the space flight industry.

That said, it will be an exciting time when SpaceX launches are so common and regular as to seem boring.

It's hard to know where to place the blame for delays, though. They have to deal with multiple government bureaucracies, bumping, launch windows, and weather. Even if SpaceX executed perfectly every time there would still be schedule slip.

How do you schedule a rocket launch when someone else owns the 50-year-old range radar equipment that keeps executing HCF?

Literally laughed at "Halt and Catch Fire" acronym.

> How do you schedule a rocket launch when someone else owns the 50-year-old range radar equipment that keeps executing HCF?

Recognize that even if you don't own the radar equipment, it is impacting your ability to deliver value, so spend the necessary funds to get them to replace the radar equipment with something that doesn't have that problem.

> Recognize that even if you don't own the radar equipment, it is impacting your ability to deliver value, so spend the necessary funds to get them to replace the radar equipment with something that doesn't have that problem.

And then convince the Air Force to certify and let you use your new radar for their payloads.

> And then convince the Air Force to certify and let you use your new radar for their payloads.

Well, yeah, which takes more money. I wasn't intending, upthread, to suggest that the route was easy...

> Well, yeah, which takes more money.

There may not be any amount of money that'll make the Air Force certify a civilian radar for the purpose.

Unless you spent the money in getting your candidates into senate etc.

The Senate doesn't vote for the military's acquisition process.

The Congress, including the Senate, absolutely does vote on the laws that set the parameters with which the military's acquisition process (among other military policies and processes) must conform.

And that would keep things on schedule? Have you looked at the US governance system recently? Nothing is on schedule there except the clamour for reelection.

Senate was just a filler for `important political position that gets to decide stuff'. Sorry, I'm not too familiar with the intricacies of the American machine.

No mere customer will get the Air Force to replace their ancient and crumbling radars, or, moreover, deal with all the various resource contention issues at the Cape. SpaceX is instead in the process of dealing with the problem in a tractable way: by building their own damn spaceport.

<super meta> Bummed to see this getting as downvoted as it. Although it may be construed as "managerspeak", it is contributing to the conversation as is evidenced by the several well thought out replies. Perhaps a reminder is warranted: downvote!=disagree. At least that's my understanding (and hope). </super meta>

I don't think it was mere disagreement. He said deals were not acceptable which is false. And then tried to paint the picture as failure which is far from the truth.

The reality is that aggressive scheduling is a reasonable tactic, even knowing that deadlines will almost certainly slip.

Well, clearly it is entirely acceptable.

Only in life-threatening situations, like idk, rescue missions or critical supply missions. In all other cases: delay is preferable over a botched launch.

Everything has a cost, project estimation included. Maybe the cost/benefit is such that putting effort into more accurate estimation isn't worth it.

Sure, go ahead and do better than him then.

A few launches got delayed because of the customer.

Its an interesting question about how much they can do without NASA backing up their clearance requests with the FAA. Some of the early SpaceShip One clearances were a real nightmare for Scaled Composites, I don't know if it was just a lack of rulemaking or general government ineptitude.

At some point though SpaceX will have the space port and the rocket and the gear to just tell the FAA that they are going up on such and such a date with the following orbital parameters. Plus you have to notify folks that care so that they won't wonder if a missile just launched out of Texas (not that the orbital track would put Russia or China in its path but still)

>it's been "2-3 years" away for 2 years now.

Technically that's still in spec. Example:

Date: Message

2010: We are 2-3 years away from launch.

2011: We are 2-3 years away from launch.

2012:

2013: We launch.

How will the spaceport in Texas help?

The spaceport is being built specifically to accommodate SpaceX rockets. The idea is to have the rocket automatically fueled when it gets docked, use robotics to stand things up, and add a bit more automation to the overall process. There are a few articles about it online, but I just found this one from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-11/elon-musks-f...

It's not the be-all and end-all of space stations, but it's better than something that was built decades ago for a previous generation of vehicle.

I don't believe launches from the Cape have enough fuel to boost back to Boca Chica though, do they?

Correct, also they are not allowed to overfly land.

No. Cape launches would land back at the Cape.

All that automation you're talking about is at least a decade out.

The most important aspect of the new launch site is that it is simply another site they can launch from. SpaceX has the rockets, they just need a couple weeks between launches at the moment to get the launch pad squared away and prepped for the next launch. By adding a second site[1], they have double their throughput.

[1] Technically it's the third site, but Vandy is limited in what it can launch, as you can only launch into very high inclination orbits from there.

That's all speculation on the part of the reporter, and a lot of it is oddly ungrounded. SpaceX has already built its own spacecraft prep facilities and launch pads at its two existing sites (Canaveral and Vandenberg), which already are largely automated (you don't want humans anywhere near a fueled rocket!) So it's not like they needed their own site for any of that.

The one part of that speculation that is sourced -- different range safety systems once the rocket is in flight -- does deal with facilities that SpaceX shares with the Air Force and other launch systems (ULA Atlas launches at both sites, at least). But handling of the rockets on the ground is already completely under SpaceX control, and done entirely with their own purpose-built equipment.

The location near Brownsville is amazingly similar to Canaveral. Tidal flats, ocean to the east, barrier island, similar latitude, hurricanes.

They had to delay launches because of resource contention on shared resources at CCAFS.

They control scheduling and occupancy. That is an issue with a shared launch pad but not with one you own and can schedule.

They don't share the pad. They share the range (which consists of multiple pads and various support services (radar, etc)).

You still can't schedule multiple simultaneous launches

Would have made sense to build it closer to the equator? As from my orbits class the more you get closer to the equator, the bigger is your launches time-window to hit the target orbit. Texas sounds unreasonable, does anybody knows/sees other good reasons?

They are almost as far south as they can be and still be in the United States, which is where the company is based.

As rkuykendall-com mentioned, its as far south in the US as you can get without overflying other land, and they've gotta stay in the US to prevent ITAR violations.

[+] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_R...

Why not Hawaii then? Would the rocket overfly the Americas at an appropriate height?

Shipping rockets is enormously risky and expensive.

I agree with it being expensive. I don't see how it would be risky, you wouldn't fuel the rockets before you shipped them, that would be bonkers.

Rockets have the structural integrity of a pop can.

And yet pop cans travel halfway around the world daily... I don't see the issue. As I said, it could be expensive, but there's no risk or danger in it.

People transport extremely fragile things by sea all the time. You may have to be mindful of weather, but it is do-able with the will and money.

> And yet pop cans travel halfway around the world daily

Empty pop cans? Several stories tall?

How many pop cans are damaged or destroyed in shipping?

Any rate at all is higher than is tolerable for rockets costing many orders of magnitude more.

> I don't see the issue

REALLY?!?!

Your pop can is not filled up with tons of explosive materials and didn't cost millions of dollars.

The worse thing that can happen if your pop can is damaged is you get a flat soda or a leaky can.

Russia ships Soyuz to Kuru for Arian. Apparently, it is worth the cost and there has been no failures.

When they were starting out with Falcon 1 launch attempts, they were using Kwajalein Atoll. They had tons of problems with corrosion from sea-water in the air though. I imagine that might be a concern in Hawaii as well, depending on which islands were available.

They'll still be near sea-water in Texas of course, but perhaps the wind tends to blow west to east, with the jetstream? I'm not sure.

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