The Tale of Falcon 1

The Tale of Falcon 1 ( a cautionary one)

Excerpts:

• Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) in 2002. Its stated business objective was the development of launch services for a fraction of the cost of the then-available commercial launch providers – to the greatest extent practicable, they would create reusable pieces of its launch system, thereby greatly lowering the cost of space access.
•  a point repeatedly voiced by critics of the heralded vision of “New Space” replacing “government” space – a company like SpaceX is not actually commercial in the traditional free market sense, but simply another government-funded contractor using a different procurement model
• In July 2009, six years after Falcon 1 development had begun, SpaceX achieved its first (and so far, only) commercial space success with the launch and orbit of the Malaysian RazakSAT imaging satellite on a Falcon 1 launch.
• Falcon 1 launch is no longer available for purchase [ comment :  WHY NOT] For a company to spend six years and start up money developing a needed launch system, only to abandon it just as success and profit is at hand, is difficult to sort through. 
• Meanwhile, customers in need of low-cost options for launching small payloads are out of luck. 
• Now, SpaceX holds court to advance their founder’s Mars fantasies and plans for a Falcon “heavy” launch vehicle – designed and marketed as sending very large payloads into space, at unbelievably low prices. (As an aside, I thought that a New Space article of faith is that heavy lift is a boondoggle and that fuel depots are the way to go beyond LEO.)

Comment:

It looks like Musk may have screwed some people in order to further his Mars dream.  This article is critical of Musk, and quite skeptical of his Mars dream.  But Musk's accomplishments thus far can't be overlooked, nor dismissed.  It may be a bit of a risk to put all of the nation's space eggs in the SpaceX basket, though.

Secondly, the aside part discusses fuel depots as a boondoggle.  I would agree if all you are doing is to launch fuel from the Earth.  If you find fuel out there, then put it in a fuel depot, then you've got something.  That mitigates the high cost of launch from the deep gravity well of Earth.