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Commercialization

About Those SpaceX Rumors

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 11, 2015
Filed under

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

4 responses to “About Those SpaceX Rumors”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    Even just to do a Mars flyby, Musk would have to liquidate a significant chunk of his personal fortune – and that still might not be enough when you factor in the training and testing. I’m pretty sure, too, that he’s not going to Mars any time soon.

    • Paul451 says:
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      Even just to do a Mars flyby, Musk would have to liquidate a significant chunk of his personal fortune

      Can you back this up with some numbers?

      They’d need to develop an MTI stage and a service module. But two or three FH launches and one F9/Dragon launch should be sufficient for a simple 2 man flyby. All of that seems within reach of the company’s current spending, without requiring billions in new investment.

      (It’s not their plan, obviously, they’d be delaying Raptor and MCT, reducing investment in the satellite constellation, etc, just for a stunt.)

      Keith,
      The internet rumours seem to have been sparked by an over-excited tweet from an NFS editor that SpaceX will announce something “mind-blowing” in the coming months.

      • TheBrett says:
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        Conceded. I was figuring that he probably couldn’t do it for less than a few billion dollars, which would entail liquidating about 30% of his net worth (he’s worth $13 billion). Inspiration Mars was asking for $1-2 billion for the same type of mission, which seems optimistic – crewed spaceflight programs always seem to end up costing more than expected.

        • Paul451 says:
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          crewed spaceflight programs always seem to end up costing more than expected.

          Yes. But I figure Musk will always try to monetise the intermediate steps. For example, if he needs to develop an upper-stage to throw more mass to Mars, he’ll use it to boost his GEO payload capability for comsats and big defence payloads. If he needs a service module to extend Dragon’s ECLSS/etc, he’ll start by developing it to augment Dragon’s capacity to ISS (say as a fuel/water carrier, like ATV.)

          And obviously he’s already got customers lined up for F9, FH and Dragon.