Musk will be on Mars before Tesla pump out the promised numbers of the Model 3.
SpaceX 'raises' an extra 100 million bucks to get His Muskiness to Mars
SpaceX has amended an US Securities and Exchange Commission filing from August to reveal it raised cash by selling off about a hundred-million bucks more in equity and stock than previously disclosed. Elon Musk's Mars project last raised about $350m in July from selling off equity and stock. The new filing adds about $100m …
COMMENTS
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:48 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: Andrew Silver, this is article is low effort trolling.
Long way to go until it gets comparable to the village bus which is chasing the 2000 launch mark with >97% success rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family).
Compared to that record any other rocket family, launcher or safety record is in the "whipper-snapper" range.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 18:15 GMT Scroticus Canis
Re: Soyuz ... safety record... have to laugh!
Yesterdays total loss of a multi-satellite launch says its still not that good.
According to the article I saw it was a human error when a retro-thruster was fired, de-orbiting the payload, from a preliminary orbit rather than the main thruster to send it into a higher orbit.
The amusing bit is that the head of the Russian space program had declared the launch a success before it suddenly wasn't.
Well the main stage did work so you may still have a point Mr V.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 19:44 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Andrew Silver, this is article is low effort trolling.
"Long way to go until it gets comparable to the village bus which is chasing the 2000 launch mark with >97% success rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(rocket_family)."
On the other hand, how many of those "village buses" did multiple round trips? :-)
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Wednesday 29th November 2017 01:09 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Andrew Silver, this is article is low effort trolling.
"Long way to go until it gets comparable to the village bus "
On the other hand, many other russian/soviet designs haven't been as successful. *ahem*N1*ahem*
The reason the russians keep coming back to Soyuz is because whenever they try anything else, it breaks - and quite frankly the village bus might be good enough to get babushka and her family to market, but it's a bit wheezy even then and not big enough to move the local football team and their hangers-on there, let alone onwards to where they really want to go - the pitch in the next town to play the neighbouring village team.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 20:53 GMT John Smith 19
"I think it's a bit over 95% now - 2 losses in 49 flights "
Not really. Ariane 5 has managed 80 launches in a row (which is what counts) without going bang and that's fully expendable.
Atlas V (also expendable) > 60 launches.
F9 so far has managed 15 since its last bang.
Reusable should make for better reliability.
The trouble is that so far it has not.
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Wednesday 29th November 2017 13:49 GMT rh587
Re: Andrew Silver, this is article is low effort trolling.
Also, "SpaceX rockets have an unfortunate tendency to crash and burn"? Seriously...? It's perfectly fine if someone at El Reg is skeptical about SpaceX, but please stick to the facts at least.
That comment doesn't appear in the article I'm reading, though there is this comment:
"Some SpaceX rockets have an unfortunate penchant for explosion – including the infamous Falcon 9."
Don't know when F9 became "infamous". It's reliability is ~95% which puts it on a par with Ariane 5.
It appears someone at El Reg is editing live articles without addendum, which frankly is very disappointing. They did the same with a previous SpaceX hatchet job which was changed after a couple of hours (reference to "madman Elon Musk" changed to "madtech fan Elon Musk" or something along those lines) and a bunch of comments calling out the factual inaccuracies and general hyperbole were deleted/rejected.
A bit of cynicism from the Musk KoolAid is fine, but someone at Vulture Central seems to have it in for Musk...
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Andrew Silver, this is article is low effort trolling.
'I miss Lewis...'
Not here. But then I had a couple of 'run ins' with him. Not a chap that liked to be disagreed with, and an itchy finger over the 'rejected' button when you did. Lester on the other hand, god yes, frequently missed. That was the 'golden age' of El Reg.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 15:49 GMT FIA
SpaceX rockets have an unfortunate tendency to crash and burn
No, they really don't.
SpaceX has had some accidents (it is rocket science after all), however they're up to something like 16 launches this year, including 3 re-using previously flown first stage boosters.
They may over promise on delivery dates, but as the company with the most launches in a single year to imply a high failure rate is disingenuous at the least.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:45 GMT Flocke Kroes
One of the pre-conditions for heavy was completing of repairs to SLC-40. CRS-13 will launch from SLC-40 on the 4th. The most recent progress report on changes to LC-39A for Falcon Heavy pre-dates Zuma. Unless someone can find something more recent, heavy gets carted out and fuelled up this month, a static fire of all engines at once about the middle of next month and a demonstration launch at the end of the year.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 19:41 GMT Vulch
CRS-13 has been pushed back to the 8th now, Iridium is on course for the 22nd/23rd from Vandenberg so the fairings problem looks like it is being managed. Zuma is likely to take precedence as a paying customer over the Heavy though so we'll probably not see the Heavy launch this year. https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 17:25 GMT Voland's right hand
but as the company with the most launches in a single year
Err. THIS year. Not single year.
Single year record is Soyuz with > 60 in 1981 or 82 if memory serves me right.
Musk, despite his valiant efforts is nowhere near.
Credit where credit due - he has finally achieved return of first stage to earth, he has achieved reuse and several other holy grails. He is still however, nowhere near Soyuz or Ariana Space in terms of the sheer number of launches they handle. He also holds the record for this particular year.
His record for this year, however, is still at 3+ time less flights per year than the venerable village bus.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:05 GMT FIA
But go easy – getting to the Moon was no walk in the park. As Musk would likely say, reaching Mars is way harder. ®
Writing a negatively toned article then telling yourself to go easy seems.... odd....
Just to put their achievement into perspective, whilst finding the numbers for flights this year, I came across the following quote: "[Greg Autry, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California] said insurers no longer are charging a premium on SpaceX's reuse launches, which the company has performed three of in 2017."
Before March this year no-one had re-flown a first stage booster.
Now the one company that has inspires enough confidence that the people who'll pay if it goes bang don't charge a premium.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:37 GMT AndyS
Re: Universities actually teach how to be an 'entrepreneur'?
Yes. And it physically hurts when, as an engineering student, you have to sit through those lectures, trying not to let the buzzword bingo drill small holes through your skull to let your brain leak out. Surrounded by enthusiastic 1st year social "science" students, who are getting awarded twice the number of credits for exactly the same course.
For some reason, though, the University of Glasgow though that was a good idea 15 years ago. Maybe buzzwords still sounded exciting back then?
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 19:56 GMT John Brown (no body)
"As Musk would likely say, reaching Mars is way harder.
It is downhill"
Only insomuch as you have to climb this side of the hill first so as to be able to coast down the other side afterwards. And FWIW, over all it's up hill to Mars since the "hill" from Earth is about three times higher than the "descent" to Mars. It's the equivalent of climbing a 1000' cliff from sea level to then go on a gentle downhill slope to your destination at 660' above sea level.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:13 GMT Palpy
I guess, yeah, His Muskiness is kinda --
-- "optimistic" and "enthusiastic" about some things.
But I gotta love a guy that has his company release a Youtube of their own failures. A sense of humor makes life better.
Then again, he makes the quickest production electric car available to the public. The Models S P85D broke Consumer Report's rating system, scoring 103 out of 100. And his rockets work, mostly, and put cool stuff into orbit.
Maybe succeeding at some spectacular things makes a guy kind of optimistic and enthusiastic. Good on 'im.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:51 GMT Palpy
Re: Consumer Reports scale --
-- A quick Google does not reveal t he details of the scoring system. A deeper one probably would. Here's what CR wrote:
"In rating it, however, we faced a quandary: The Tesla initially scored 103 in the Consumer Reports‘ Ratings system, which by definition doesn’t go past 100. The car set a new benchmark, so we had to make changes to our scoring to account for it. Those changes didn’t affect the scores of other cars."
FWIW.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 22:58 GMT Robert Heffernan
Re: I guess, yeah, His Muskiness is kinda --
"And the Model X made it into consumer reports' list of '10 least reliable cars'."
Looking at that list, honestly I would prefer the Model X to any of the other cars trouble in that list.
Paint and trim can be easily fixed and does not cause a physical safety issue that could possibly kill you.
The climate system is an annoyance, but you could just roll down the window if you need some air. Admittedly it's a PITA if you live in the arctic tundra and the heater doesn't work but again, it's not going to explode sending shards of drive shaft or transmission into the cabin.
Body Hardware is very broad. Things like Side Mirrors, hinges, etc, again all annoyances but still not enough to cause a life threatening situation.
Disclaimer: I used to work for an Automotive transmission manufacturer and personally machined many types of components designated as Critical Safety Items, meaning components that if they failed could possibly result in loss-of-life.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 16:34 GMT GettinSadda
Sheesh!
"SpaceX rockets have an unfortunate tendency to crash and burn"?
Really?
Lets's see..
Russian Proton-M has launched 102 with 9 failures and 1 partial failure - for a reliability rate of 90.2%
European Ariane 5 has launched 95 with 2 failures and 2 partial failures - for a reliability of 97.8%
Falcon 9 Full-Trust has launches 24 with 1 pre-launch failure (so 25 rockets) - for a reliability of 96%
Falcon 9 all versions have launched 44 with 1 failure, 1 partial failure and 1 pre-launch failure, so 93.3%
Looks like pretty standard sort of ball-park for the big players!
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 20:02 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Sheesh!
"Looks like pretty standard sort of ball-park for the big players!"
Maybe the author was alluding to the number which "crashed and burned" in the early landing attempts, some of which were "landed" at sea just see if they could make it stop at sea level, with nothing solid to actually land on, A fair number did "crash and burn" during those early stages and probably more will, but those crashes are after the successful launch and deployment of the payload.
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Tuesday 28th November 2017 17:57 GMT Jellied Eel
Gerroff mah rock!
I still have the Mars 'finger' image as my desktop. The more images that come back from Mars, the less certain I am of it becoming a possible tourist destination.
But although I'm not a fan of Musk's green stuff.. Someone needs to get us off this rock. Even if it's to ruthlessly exploit other planets/planetoids. People moan about resource depletion and running out of space.. Yet we've barely exploited one small part of our Solar System. Having 'won' the space race, the US seems to have given up on manned spaceflight in favour of navel gazing and bombing small defenceless countries. I'm sure NASA would love to do it, but they're not getting the money. So if Musk or Bezos want to have a go, let them.
Anyway.. As any KSP owner knows, getting to Mars is easy*. Surviving & thriving there, or getting back is a tad trickier. Which is also a NASA issue, ie their stubborn insistence on getting crews back safely. So other Mars proposals have suggested lobbing useful components at Mars, and once there's a suitable pile of bits, send colonists to assemble it. So basic staples of SF or colony sim games, but needs the money & vision to turn that into reality.
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Wednesday 29th November 2017 15:11 GMT Milton
"unfortunate penchant for explosion"
"Some SpaceX rockets have an unfortunate penchant for explosion – including the infamous Falcon 9."
42 successful missions for the Falcon 9 family, and two failures: one during climb, one which blew up before launch.
For space launches, only two failures out of 44 is pretty good.
But whatever the grown-up facts of the matter, we have have the childish "penchant for explosion" and "infamous Falcon 9", don't we?
So much to like about El Reg, except these (thankfully quite rare) moments of editorially juvenile silliness—oh, and about half the supposedly funny but, in truth, adolescent-humour headline writing.
A tip for the Reg: I don't think your readership are all late-developing spotty nerds any more. They grew up about 20 years ago. You might give it a try?