This is a big win for SpaceX, as USAF was considering signing a deal keeping ULA as their exclusive launch partner through 2018. Musk lobbied against it, and won.
How on Earth are they going to go from a single launch in 2012 for the Falcon 9 to SEVEN launches in 2013, 10 in 2014 and 14 in 2015? And on the side they have their first Falcon Heavy launch in 2015. Now add more launches into the mix with this new contract...
Elon Musk is really living right on the edge in terms of potential production problems. He already has a track record of delaying, delivering late and overpromising with Tesla. I simply don't see why he doesn't take it just a little more slowly, and actually delivering on his promises.
On the other hand, if he pulls it off, then the utility maximizing strategy for humanity just might be to make money and give all my capital to Elon Musk to put it to more productive use...
>How on Earth are they going to go from a single launch in 2012 for the Falcon 9 to SEVEN launches in 2013, 10 in 2014 and 14 in 2015?
Mass production. That was the point of building nine small, identical rocket engines instead of, say, three larger ones. Ideally SpaceX is going to have an assembly line producing over a hundred copies of the same engine every year.
Not quite EEVL-Class missions in a sense that they don't launch Class 1 payloads - like DSP, AEHF, SBIRS, GPS, spysats... These are in the same class as Minotaur launches, mostly tacsats/targets/experimental/high-risk payloads. They are not trusting SpaceX with $2 billion payloads... yet.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 20.4 ms ] threadHow on Earth are they going to go from a single launch in 2012 for the Falcon 9 to SEVEN launches in 2013, 10 in 2014 and 14 in 2015? And on the side they have their first Falcon Heavy launch in 2015. Now add more launches into the mix with this new contract...
Elon Musk is really living right on the edge in terms of potential production problems. He already has a track record of delaying, delivering late and overpromising with Tesla. I simply don't see why he doesn't take it just a little more slowly, and actually delivering on his promises.
On the other hand, if he pulls it off, then the utility maximizing strategy for humanity just might be to make money and give all my capital to Elon Musk to put it to more productive use...
The first one is the hardest.
They launched twice.
> He already has a track record of delaying, delivering late and overpromising with Tesla.
http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2012/06/29/to-elon-musk-an...
Mass production. That was the point of building nine small, identical rocket engines instead of, say, three larger ones. Ideally SpaceX is going to have an assembly line producing over a hundred copies of the same engine every year.