Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The State of the World Wide Rocket Industry at the start of 2018.
Behind the Black ^ | January 2, 2018 | Robert Zimmerman

Posted on 02/11/2018 8:32:50 PM PST by Voption

First, 2016 was the worst year for the Russian rocket industry in decades...Second, China has been aggressively ramping up its launch rate, and in 2016 moved clearly into the top tier of space-faring nations...Third, the United States is clearly transitioning away from a government owned and operated rocket industry to one owned and operated by the private sector. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the federal government has not launched a single rocket that it designed, built, and owns. Instead, every payload put in space by the U.S. has been put there by a private sector rocket.

(Excerpt) Read more at behindtheblack.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: data; elonmusk; falcon9; falconheavy; history; launch; rocket; spacex
The U.S. continued its transition from a government-owned and controlled rocket industry to one owned and controlled by private companies. This is highlighted by SpaceX’s 18 launches in 2017, which is historic in that it is the most launches in a single year by any private company ever in the entire history of space. Prior to the 1970s there was no private rocket industry. Every rocket built and launched was essentially designed by the U.S. government with different parts, engines, and stages contracted out to different companies. Moreover, before 1970 there were only a tiny handful of commercial launches. In the 1970s these numbers rose, and privately owned rockets began to launch these new private geosynchronous commercial satellites, but the numbers never rose so high as to match SpaceX’s total in 2017.
1 posted on 02/11/2018 8:32:50 PM PST by Voption
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Voption

2 posted on 02/11/2018 8:47:23 PM PST by deadrock
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Voption

3 posted on 02/11/2018 8:52:58 PM PST by deadrock
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: deadrock
My kids never could understand why I was rooting for Team Rocket

4 posted on 02/11/2018 8:54:33 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Voption

Read it...and cautiously ask: Is USA winning? Do we have a comfortable enough lead? Or are we still playing catch up from years of wasted time...is NASA going to re-blossom or is it just SpaceX/private companies now?


5 posted on 02/11/2018 9:06:45 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

Weren’t they the villains? Must have spiced up cartoon watching with the kids always cheering on the bad uns.


6 posted on 02/11/2018 9:11:17 PM PST by deadrock
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Voption

This is an excellent article on the state of space industialization.

Thank you for posting it. Most informative.

I found it well worth reading.


7 posted on 02/11/2018 9:19:17 PM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Voption
With Spacex's reusable rockets proving themselves, the problem is no longer rockets, it is having enough things ready to launch to fill the launch capacity Falcon Heavy and BFR provides. The only company ready for this is Bigelow, which makes inflatable space station modules.

The current International Space Station was built using 40 flights of the shuttle and other launch vehicles. A new space station 80% of the size of the ISS can be launched with two BFR launches and two of the largest Bigelow modules, costing probably 5% of the ISS.

We are not hurting in the launch department. We need to build places to go, like moon bases, bases on Mars and the Asteroid belt.

8 posted on 02/11/2018 9:20:15 PM PST by Vince Ferrer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: deadrock

Exactly.


9 posted on 02/11/2018 9:45:38 PM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Voption

SPS beamed power LCOE of $30-$50 megawatt at BFR projected cost to orbit.

https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-04/nasa-wants-flower-inspired-satellite-array-beaming-solar-power-down-earth


10 posted on 02/11/2018 10:43:42 PM PST by Ozark Tom
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

Here comes trouble...


11 posted on 02/11/2018 10:46:02 PM PST by null and void (What do the democrats stand for? Not record low black unemployment...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: GoldenState_Rose

Article is misleading, the military is still sending rockets, and it was sending rockets way before spunik.

Nasa is backwards. No other nation has a civilian rocket program. It syphons our military and it syphons private industry competitiveness.


12 posted on 02/11/2018 11:04:52 PM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucifiedc)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Vince Ferrer

I am sure we could set up solar stations in space to take in CO2 and make fuel and O2 to drop back down to Earth. There is a lot that can be done in space.


13 posted on 02/11/2018 11:06:51 PM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucifiedc)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: JudgemAll

judgemall,

Please don’t tell me that you have bought into the whole “carbon dioxide is a pollutant” BS. CO2 is a fundament and absolute requirement for plant photosynthesis which is the basis for all higher forms of life on Earth by growing vegetable matter and oxygen.

No CO2, no people. It is that simple.


14 posted on 02/11/2018 11:18:36 PM PST by WMarshal ("IN AMERICA WE DON’T WORSHIP GOVERNMENT — WE WORSHIP GOD." POTUS tweet 2017)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: JudgemAll

So is USA’s lead in space race comfortable? Or are other countries close to their own version of SpaceX?

I am not trying to put down astronauts and visionaries from other countries and space should be shared but:

Even the International Space Station (which Trump is thinking of spurring on towards privatization) - seems like the United Nations to me: a “global” institution we pay for and sustain but then gives rise to anti-American forces designed to undermine us and diminish our leadership in the end...

I just think “America First” needs to be back en vogue even in space.


15 posted on 02/11/2018 11:28:30 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: JudgemAll
We can make near defect-free fiber optic cables in zero G. Put up a Bigelow module outfitted as a fiber optic cable factory.

It has been theorized that aerogels can be transparent if manufactured in zero G. That would be another good use for a factory in space.

We've been experimenting in space for fifty years now, and should have volumes of research on what materials can be made in orbit, and at what costs can be competitive.

16 posted on 02/11/2018 11:44:18 PM PST by Vince Ferrer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: GoldenState_Rose

I agree. Subsidizing another non profit priesthood of space expecting its entitled dues is a socialist disaster

Sadly I fear Trump loves the very Fed Reserve about to destroy him.

Now and then these Presidents suddenly realize its power and want to do away with it but it always is too late ...


17 posted on 02/12/2018 9:15:39 AM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucifiedc)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: WMarshal

No, my statement was not meant to relate to reducing CO2 on Earth, but more making it a valuable commodity thanks to space.

Right now it is treated as a poison, as you say, but I think it is because it is valuable that it is beng attacked.

It would be bad indeed if some JamesBond villain siphoned all the CO2 out in space in a frozen sphere behind the moon and starved us of life and materials...


18 posted on 02/12/2018 9:19:14 AM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucifiedc)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Vince Ferrer; BenLurkin

Thanks .
...the problem is no longer rockets, it is having enough things ready to launch to fill the launch capacity Falcon Heavy and BFR provides. The only company ready for this is Bigelow, which makes inflatable space station modules.
Well put. My only quibbles with that -- BFR doesn't exist yet, and Bigelow has shown it can't build so much as an ISS module that works right. I'm rooting for SpaceX and Bigelow (the other day, I'm surprised the neighbors didn't hear me rooting when the FH went up like a boss, and stuck the block 3 and block 4 booster landings at the same time), but the most likely outcome IMHO is that the Falcon 9 with its Merlin 1D engines will be spun off by SpaceX as Elon pursues his colonization pipe dream via the BFR.

The FH was at least five years late; Musk wants to use the BFR to shuttle humans across the Pacific on suborbital flights, which means a bunch of red tape not only in the US, but across the water; the BFR won't fly for ten years, if ever. The Raptor engines should be coming online to replace the Merlin 1Ds in a one-stick version of the Falcon Heavy, but that's off the drawing board, and eventually replace the Merlins in the F9.

The FH launch looks like the first of three such launches (two customers are waiting for it, but only one of the core boosters has been built, and that blew up) at which time the FH will be discontinued. The two space tourists waiting for their ride around the Moon are going on the BFR, sez Musk, and while I can appreciate the level of privacy and secrecy SpaceX manages to pull off, I don't see a BFR test stand burn coming for at least a few years yet.

If he'd stick to taking over the commercial launch business -- which is just a boring business, instead of the hucksterism that is the Mars colonization -- and partner with Bigelow to build a lunar surface hotel (with casino, indoor high altitude trampoline, low-grav sex, international cuisine, and cookin', and not just a cheap clip joint for pickin' up tarts, that is right out, I deny that completely), he'd also take complete ownership of the space tourism business. It is the only way to build his BFR into something that pays its own way.


19 posted on 02/12/2018 11:42:48 AM PST by SunkenCiv (www.tapatalk.com/groups/godsgravesglyphs/, forum.darwincentral.org, www.gopbriefingroom.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson