More interesting to follow is the amateurteams or for example in this case a student team.
Wednesday 20 october 2021 (european time and exact time schedule follows) launch planned for the students from
technical university Delft in the Netherlands. Though the team of students is international - majority is non-dutch in fact studying rocketry there.

Launch window for now set at between 18:00 until 2:00 AM
[url]https://dare.tudelft.nl/[/url]
Though they will be pissed they couldn't try a launch in 2020 because of covid, covid did give them some more time to bugfix the students design.

A big issue with studentteams/amateurteams is when scale goes up. A very tiny rocket is really easy - but when you make it larger then all sorts of theoretic 'assumptions' on strenghts of materials and that things 'go ok anyway' no longer apply. Their previous attempt blew up regrettably. Just as i had predicted. Hopefully better bugfixed this time.

The BILLIONAIRES. Well some here might not grasp exactly their reasons to move into space.

It has a couple of reasons why billionaires went into space.

First of all they guess they can get some politicians crazy enough to waste cash on human missions and the billions of subsidy that's there to get and contracts bla bla.

Look those billionaires are good in money math. They understand that RPI (rocket fuel) has a total nuts high price right now which means that government wastes cash on all sorts of things in space missions. The price of that fuel simply makes no sense a kilo/liter whatever quantity you want to discuss.

It's basically higher quality diesel. (edit: so why would anyone want to pay 100 dollar a liter or 400 dollar a gallon for that especially if you gonna buy in the long run hundreds of thousands of kilo's from the stuff - then such price is total idiocy. If you know you're gonna use up thousands of tons of it anyway in the long run then a price like 0.50 - 1 dollar a liter is more realistic and otherwise you hire a guy to produce the stuff for you in a small workshop - billionaires understand this perfectly fine - obviously no politician will ever understand this)

This is just 1 example of prices that are total beyond any realism in space - simply because it's tax money that pays for it in the end.

All the launches we saw past few years in USA from the billionaires it's all paid directly or indirectly by tax money.
In reality all those American billionaires who try - they got billiosn of dollars of subsidy from the US government.

Billionaires understand that if companies can grab that much cash for stuff that over half of that is for themselves.

Take a cpu there. Now of course it has to get shielded from radiation. Yet if we consider that there is military equipment requiring such cpu's too we can safely assume some company has mass produced this and t hat production price is really cheap.

Typical price for such radiation shielded cpu which is from the 1990s basically in terms of computational power and power envelope (wasting a massive 10 watts for something that's similar to a 68040 kind of) - it costs 250k dollar a cpu.

Logical that billionaires understand they can grab really a lot of cash there provided they got a rocket that can do a thing or 2 without crashing down. They are good in talkign to such companies negotiating prices down and getting the job done a lot cheaper. That's how they make cash. Talking down prices. All big moneygrabbers they are. Remember Elon Musk promising launches for 10 million dollar. Well in reality he gets 0.5 billion a launch (that's 4 astronauts that get transported to ISS) and additional billions of subsidy from the US government. Far away from that 10 million dollar - which is how he talked himself into it. Shipping humans to ISS for research can make sense, especially because it's not overexpensive. Sure, 0.5 bilion dollar might seem like a lot - and that price can go down quite a lot - yet that's "affordable" to some extend.

Missions with humans alive inside, further away than ISS from earth are total nonsense of course. Waste of cash. Dudes living in the 1960s instead of in the 21th century with good autonomeous software.

More interesting is the 'amateurteams' or in this case for example student teams therefore.

Another reason billionaires are interested in space is because of the pentagon. The DoD (department of Defense) wrote down some paperwork already years ago, basically intending to build stuff like space bombers.

Well no one knows how to design those, so anyone interested in space can hop in and have a go at it.
A billionaire always can later on decide to join forces with an existing well known aviation company there (like Bezos has done).

There is no way of knowing how much subsidies DoD is awarding in secret there to different billionaires with a big mouth just for presenting some unrealistic plan for the next space bomber. They will keep showing up 'achieving targets' in space. Even if that requires to launch some cardboard replica of a Tesla car to space (saving out weight big issue of course).

[QUOTE=diep;590925]
All the launches we saw past few years in USA from the billionaires it's all paid directly or indirectly by tax money.
In reality all those American billionaires who try - they got billiosn of dollars of subsidy from the US government.
[/QUOTE]

Can you substantiate this? What form do these subsidies take?

[QUOTE=diep;590925]More interesting to follow is the amateurteams or for example in this case a student team.
Launch window for now set at between 18:00 until 2:00 AM
[URL]https://dare.tudelft.nl/[/URL]
Though they will be pissed they couldn't try a launch in 2020 because of covid, covid did give them some more time to bugfix the students design.[/QUOTE]
We followed their attempt 6 years ago, too!
[URL]https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=412743&postcount=193[/URL]

[QUOTE=jyb;590930]Can you substantiate this? What form do these subsidies take?[/QUOTE]

That would be mainly federal subsidies yet if you google you'll find here and there also local ones.

If you google you can find some. SpaceX has gotten billions. A few years ago i saw 2 billion. Here is another nearly 1 billion: [url]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/08/tech/spacex-starlink-subsidies-fcc-scn/index.html[/url]

It gets from all federal corners.

You'll find similar things for the other billionaires though smaller sums.

Googling for local subsidies here another 4.9 billion in total for Elon Musk.

[url]https://www.rt.com/usa/264065-musk-tesla-government-subsidies/[/url]

This was 2015 and is about local subsidies.

For the development of crew dragon, spacex has received many billions over the year. At quora you'll see someone mention a few numbers until 2016 which already lists a few billions.

Yet all this is peanuts compared to the 'launch services' Musk gets paid for. Which is about a 2-3 billion dollar a year roughly just for SpaceX. Under which nearly 0.5 billion for each launch of crew dragon.

So developing crew dragon and launching it has been at zero risk for SpaceX as all has been paid for it.

Online googling is a bad source to find all subsidies of course as the subsidies seem to work on a project base. For a project X then spaceX receives subsidies. So one would need to track down all projects first before finding all the different subsidies. Finding those would be total fulltime work and i bet the military subsidies you won't find online.

Some years ago a guy on quora posted a few he managed to find by google.

[url]https://www.quora.com/Is-SpaceX-funded-by-the-government?share=1[/url]

Also lists a 4.x billion to Boeing who partnered up with Bezos' Blue Origin by now.

[QUOTE=Nick;590940]We followed their attempt 6 years ago, too!
[URL]https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=412743&postcount=193[/URL][/QUOTE]

In 2018 an attempt with stratos 3 - it exploded regrettably in the air.

Launch preparations for attempt number 2 of Stratos 4 are on their way as one can follow on facebook in pictures:
[url]https://www.facebook.com/events/913020652965796/?ref=newsfeed[/url]

[QUOTE=diep;590974]<snip>
Yet all this is peanuts compared to the 'launch services' Musk gets paid for. Which is about a 2-3 billion dollar a year roughly just for SpaceX. Under which nearly 0.5 billion for each launch of crew dragon.[/QUOTE]Payments for services are not "subsidies."

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;590979]Payments for services are not "subsidies."[/QUOTE]

0.5 billion to bring 4 guys to ISS?

Couple of gallons of RPI in a rocket. The same rocket gets used to bring food to ISS, which costs a fraction of that.

You and i can build such rocket if we wanted. Just no one would pay for it. Musk would arrange getting 10 billion dollar in subsidies and then so called 'launch' the rocket 'for free' to ISS to bring food. In short you cannot see the billions of subsidies as independant from launch costs.

Bezos+Boeing when the 'starliner' type hardware has been certified will of course not charge less. They all maximize those prices in space travel.

Let's hope EU doesn't intend to 'expand' its manned space. Once the accountants arrive here to increase profit of the companies for such missions then Musk will sound cheap.

[QUOTE=diep;590980]0.5 billion to bring 4 guys to ISS?

Couple of gallons of RPI in a rocket. The same rocket gets used to bring food to ISS, which costs a fraction of that.

You and i can build such rocket if we wanted.[/QUOTE]Speak for yourself.

Before [i]I[/i] apply for funding to set up [i]my[/i] production facility, could you please explain to me how the guidance and flight control systems work, and how to build them?

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;590989]Speak for yourself.

Before [i]I[/i] apply for funding to set up [i]my[/i] production facility, could you please explain to me how the guidance and flight control systems work, and how to build them?[/QUOTE]

Actually - i received some source code from a NASA guy some years ago on calculating a missile trajectory.

You do realize you speak here to a guy whose main job it is to develop robotics and navigational applications with a background in game tree search?

In 1998 the MiT team visited me here. Don Dailey especially - he had taken a PHD student with him and we visited the deltaworks - great guy. We also did do some games Diep versus cilkchess here at home. Too bad he died so young. A month later I remember how world champs 1999 the MiT team applied for a subsidy (grant or whatever you want to call it) to the US government asking for cash and funding of their Cilkchess chessprogram for the world champs 1999 in Paderborn (Germany) where Leierson wrote down that missile software, especially guidance, is exactly the same like how chessprograms function. He did get the subsidy.

Wait a minute - i remember i wrote some guidance software somewhere start this century. If i'm not mistaken that also involved GPS (something you wouldn't want to use too much in rockets but it DOES get used) and path finding trajectories.

Did you?

p.s. i also design the hardware. As we speak i'm busy fixing a TLS server - after that it's back to the CAD software. Busy releasing a 3d printer! But please do not be surprised if that launches succesfully that with that cash i go talk to setup some drone projects for different armies (for which obviously external funding would be required as well).

You have no idea how subsidies work do you?

edit2: and why do i say 'drones' getting set up instead of 'software gets set up for drones' - as designing the hardware is total peanuts compared to the software... ...very simple - no one pays for the software. They all only pay for hardware that looks cool. And there is plenty of room for new drones and rockets and missiles and what have you there as they all want to make many billions of dollars+euro's on each product so the for the average marine on his boots not much gets done in comparision as he may not cost 1 billion euro. So there is overwhelming room if you are not as greedy as the billionaires who want to become worlds richest person and therefore build stuff that makes politicians look good yet which is simply too expensive.

[QUOTE=diep;590994]Actually - i received some source code
<snip>
Wait a minute - i remember i wrote some guidance software
<snip>
Did you?
<snip>[/QUOTE][QUOTE=diep;590980]You and i can build such rocket if we wanted.[/QUOTE]Make up your mind.