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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by HiroProtagonist (talk | contribs) at 19:37, 27 July 2011 (→‎Iron Man 2: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Pictures

Today I went to visit the place and made some pics. I would say some could be used to illustrate this page, or the Falcon or Dragon ones. Pics are Creative Commons attribution, so I'd be honored to provide them. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasonurb/sets/72157625359251768/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brunosan (talk • contribs) 05:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making them available under a free license. I've uploaded several of the best to Wikimedia Commons, so they can be shared across all Wikimedia projects (Wikipedias in other languages, Wiktionary, etc.), and added two File:SpaceX Dragon.jpg and File:Entrance to SpaceX headquarters.jpg to this article.
The rest I've uploaded are:
Thanks again.
--Jatkins (talk - contribs) 21:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Messagebox Question

The messagebox at the top of this article mentions "This article contains information regarding a LSP that is..." but LSP wasn't an abbreviation I was familiar with and wasn't defined in the article. Might hyperlink the abbreviation to the Wikipedia page: Launch Service Provider — DanDawson (talk) 02:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

SpaceX in a Post-Constellation world for NASA

Now that NASA has announced a new (post-Constellation) direction for their plans to get humans into Earth-orbit,(Private Spaceflight Goes Public, Alan Boyle, MSNBC Cosmic Log, 2010-02-01; many other sources will be published this week) and the Obama Administration is backing the new policy in the just-released budget proposal, what is SpaceX saying about how this may change things for SpaceX? (which should, subsequently, be reflected in this Wikipedia article.) N2e (talk) 16:52, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In Wikipedia we cannot venture into speculation, so we'll to wait for new developments to be reported. Cheers, --BatteryIncluded (talk) 21:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely correct. I worded my question poorly. I have edited the question, above. I want to know what SpaceX is saying about this change in government policy, and how that will/may affect their plans. Only then, and only when we have verifiable sources, should we edit this article to reflect that development. N2e (talk) 21:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Surrey

In the article you say that Space-X purchased a share of Surrey. But since then it seems to me that this share has been sold by Space-X when EADS Astrium purchased surrey ? Hektor (talk) 16:14, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've tagged it for update. Do you have a source for the sale? N2e (talk) 22:30, 31 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ EADS Astrium signs an agreement to acquire Surrey Satellite Technology Limited from the University of Surrey, press release, 7 April 2008.

So, I'm gonna pull the "dated" tag. It seems that SpaceX sill owns a minority share (I can't find any coverage of them selling, so... <shrug>).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:18, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 Development funding: private vs. government. How much of each?

The following notes appeared from Clark Lindsey at RLV and Space Transport News after the successful first launch of the Falcon 9 on 4 Jun 2010:

Total SpaceX expenditures?

- The $350M-$400M mentioned the other day was for Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets.
- Dragon, facilities, pad, etc add up to about another $100M-$150M.
- So total SpaceX expenditures till now adds up to around half a billion dollars.
- Includes money from NASA, private investment, deposits from customers, etc.

What is the breakdown of the funding in terms of private funding (e.g., Elon Musk's initial and subsequent funding, private investment, non-governmental deposits from customers) vs. government-provided funding? (e.g., "money from NASA")

Is this primarily a privately-funded development effort, or not? I think deposits on purchases of raw materials for manufacture of future vehicles for future spaceflights is not really development funding, or R&D. Any deposits from a customer is much more a partial payment for future (yet to be manufactured) goods, what is normally considered work-in-process. Anyone have a breakdown from the accountants that has been made public?

More importantly, does anyone know of any verifiable, reliable secondary sources that we might use to cite such a breakdown for development funding within the article? N2e (talk) 04:45, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Context

Wikipedia needs context for this article relating to 'Private Industry in Space Flight', most probably in a separate article. It's a very discussed matter, the "NASA vs Private money" and sources should be a lot. --195.74.255.52 (talk) 11:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We already have private spaceflight, commercialization of space, alt.space, and NewSpace :-). --Jatkins (talk - contribs) 20:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Falcon 9 section: Cost per pound in Falcon 5?

There is a reference to the projected cost per pound of cargo in the Falcon 5, but earlier it was stated that the Falcon 5 had been abandoned, so this is confusing. Would someone (who knows more than I) fix this? I might just delete the sentence; the ones before and after flow well enough. But that would leave out the cost per pound (actual? projected?) of the Falcon 1. Plus, I just don't know enough to mess with it. --Everything Else Is Taken (talk) 13:34, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Falcon 5 was canceled quite a while back. I think even the Falcon 9 and Falcon 1 pricing is somewhat outdated. The price for a LEO mission on Falcon 9 with 80% or more of the capacity to the consumer orbit is $51.5 million and the payload for a Cape Canaveral launch is 10,450 kg, so: $51.5 million / (10,450 kg * 0.8) = $6,160.29/kg or $2,794.26054 kg/lb. That's a very rough estimate and I'm not an expert, but it gives you an idea of the price per kilogram. For Falcon 1e, the yet to be launched upgrade of Falcon 1, which is the only Falcon 1 price given: $10.9 million / 1,010 kilograms = $10,792.08/kg or $4,895.17/lb. --Jatkins (talk - contribs) 20:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Recent news media articles

Here are two interesting, fairly thorough, SpaceX/Musk sources (August 2010):

Several facts about Falcon 1, Falcon 9, SpaceX, Dragon, including the origin of the names for Falcon and Dragon, could be sourced from these articles as well. Cheers. N2e (talk) 04:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merge of Falcon X and Falcon XX articles into SpaceX

Deletion nominations were recently made for both the Falcon X and Falcon XX articles. The result of both nominations was a consensus to merge the appropriate content into this article, SpaceX. The archived results of the AfD discussions is at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Falcon X and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Falcon XX.

As of 2010-09-16, the Falcon X content has been merged, and Falcon X redirects here. The Falcon XX material has yet to be merged, but I expect it will be in the next week or two. Cheers. N2e (talk) 14:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The merge has been completed, and merge headers have been added to the bottom of the header section at the top of this Talk page with all the appropriate reference information. Thanks go to User:StuffOfInterest for handling most of the merge work. N2e (talk) 21:22, 21 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While I understand the need to merge these articles, they should have been merged into a parent article on the Falcon series rather than SpaceX. This article is getting unwieldy. The sections on the other Falcons are too long as well especially since each has it's own dedicated article. Any comments on creating Falcon (rocket family), merging the X and XX sections there, most of the detail in this article on the Falcon 1, 5 and 9 and leaving behind a paragraph or two in a single Falcon section? These sections are just going to get bigger and more difficult to maintain.--RadioFan (talk) 11:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Falcon XX heavy ?? Useles speculation and rocket fetishism. How about Falcon XXX with 1000Mt LEO and antimatter upper stage? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.248.202.81 (talk) 15:10, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Falcon 9 Heavy

There is a prominent column of information in the Launcher versions table for the Falcon 9 Heavy launcher. However, I can find no information in the body of the article that specifically explicates the nature and characteristics of this particular version. I can find a few (more vague) mentions of "heavy" rocket development thinking going back to 2004. I believe this will need to be cleaned up. N2e (talk) 05:30, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Heavy is a falcon 9 with two extra first stages strapped to either side, much like the architecture of the Delta IV Heavy. No flights planned as yet. It's different to the X and XX mentioned above, and this should possibly be better explained in the article.--Yeti Hunter (talk) 16:15, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The reference is right there at the bottom of the table ([1]), along with the refs for the F1 and F9. It is in the same state as the Atlas V Heavy: they have designed the current core stages for the Heavy configuration loads, but are awaiting a customer to actually fly it. --IanOsgood (talk) 16:34, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Ian for finding the citation, adding text to the article, and updating a lot of the specs in the table. I think it is important to source the tables a bit more specifically so, in keeping with Wikipedia core policy of verifiability, readers can easily verify the claims, and the table data doesn't change over time without the source changing. N2e (talk) 18:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

list of articles

This list of articles has been tagged for 5 months with concerns about it being incorporated into the article as footnotes. Any issue with removing the section ? The article is already pretty well footnoted so this section is essentially a link farm.--RadioFan (talk) 11:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

LockMart Institute attack

Somebody (most likely with the initials L.M.) paid the Lexington Institute to put out a hit piece on SpaceX

http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/110505-lexington-institute-takes-spacex.html

Are the charges well founded enough to include here? Hcobb (talk) 15:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And SpaceX response: http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2011/05/24/spacex-responds-to-forbes-contributor-loren-thompson/ Hcobb (talk) 01:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thompson's comments so political in nature and based on such faulty logic that it's not worth mentioning here. I would hope that someone writing about the aerospace industry would know which administration that initiated the push towards commercializing LEO. Thompson's report was political and the response was equally political. I dont think it has much place here.--RadioFan (talk) 02:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Iron Man 2

The scenes with Hammer's Factory were filmed at in this company's headquarters in Hawthorn. Is this something could be added?--HiroProtagonist 19:37, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

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