Re: commercial uses of the Dtick and the Heavy Lifter

On 4 Oct 2005 07:21:19 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle"
<edkyle99@xxxxxxxxxxx> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

>> >NASA couldn't do it, but the agency could probably
>> >"commercialize" the system by handing it off to a
>> >commercial operator. Sure, its development would
>> >have been subsidized, and it would be easy to argue
>> >that its operation was at least partially subsidized
>> >(NASA would have to charge a fee for use of launch
>> >facilities), but show me a commercial GTO launch
>> >vehicle that isn't or hasn't been subsidized (front
>> >or back door) in some way.
>>
>> If Falcon IX flies, we'll be able to.
>
>I'm not so sure about that. SpaceX currently
>has a $40 million military launch contract
>backlog. The military payloads that we know
>about are non-essential studentsats - a way to
>provide a back door subsidy. The Falcon 9
>payload is "top secret", non-standard, and
>one-off, so we have no way of knowing if it
>is essential or not.

Essential to what? Ensuring that the vehicle is funded?

Elon has always planned to build vehicles in that class, and larger.
The customer may have moved that development up in priority, but I
wouldn't view it as a subsidization.
.

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