Canon PowerShot S100
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At SpaceX yesterday. Octaweb engine mount assembly in in the blue rig in the distance.
And three cheers for their holiday party this evening!
And some recent thoughts on colonizing mars.
6 responses to “SpaceX Splash – one of the enormous landing legs for the Falcon 9 with a flown Dragon capsule overhead”
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😎 Just need to dig a silo (call it a well)… you folks need a new wing anyway….
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Insanely amazing – almost impossible to believe this is still a private company. Space X = NASA privatized…a fascinating and historical transition/trend. Far better this sector than Iraqi goon squads working for the likes of Blackwater/Xe/"Academi. The deal making and capital mustering behind SpaceX are Herculean accomplishments on par with the team’s technical successes.
"As of May 2012, SpaceX had operated on total funding of approximately $1 billion in its first ten years of operation. Of this, private equity provided about $200M, with Musk investing approximately $100M and other investors having put in about $100M (Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, …).[31] The remainder has come from progress payments on long-term launch contracts and development contracts. As of April 2012, NASA had put in about $400–500M of this amount, with most of that as progress payments on launch contracts.[32] By May 2012, SpaceX had contracts for 40 launch missions, and each of those contracts provide down payments at contract signing, plus many are paying progress payments as launch vehicle components are built in advance of mission launch, driven in part by US accounting rules for recognizing long-term revenue." – wikipedia
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Wouldn’t you want a flown one? I guess you’d have to wait until they execute on re-useability for that. With any luck they will fly a good number of the F9V1.1 before upgrading to the next big thing. I hope they fly many.
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Why yes, that would be more in keeping with my flown collection. The Falcon 1 was not recoverable, so I could wait for done of the Falcon 9 1.1 boosters and Dragon capsule, but I would be missing the second stage… and I suspect the price would be a lot higher (given the Falcon 9 versus Falcon 1 size and complexity differences, and the fact that the flown Falcon 9 1.1 hardware can be flown again, and so it would not be scrap).
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenbove] – Yea, kind breathtaking. And I would classify that data on "funding" a bit differently. The $200M is funding of the company (investment of capital), and the $800M are customer pre-payments. NASA, for example, is paying SpaceX for launch services, and saving money in the process. Compare to space shuttle, which averaged $1 billion per flight, or looking to the future of commercial crew, NASA can fly seven astronauts in a Dragon capsule, and their alternative, Soyuz, charges $518 million for the same service.
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