Responding to Nathan's comments:

>First of all, what do you mean by "Viewgraph Engineering"? The Falcon's engines
>have gone through full-duration, full-throttle burns, meeting their target
>thrust and weights; the avionics and Flight Termination Systems are built,
>tested, and installed, and 80% of the structure of the first two vehicles has
>been built and assembled. That is not "Viewgraph Engineering".

I read the same website that you did before starting this thread. Robert
Trueax would shoot off a rocket motor for the news media when he was promoting
his low cost launcher. Beale had a nice big pressure fed rocket engine that
he'd fire up for the television crews before his firm folded. I've got a
liquid rocket motor up on the bookshelf of my office (an old Apollo CM RCS).
It was designed for hypergolics but I could probably get it to light up with
something less nasty. They static test hybrid rockets were I work every
month or two. The hybrid's design is pretty cute, based upon a wax propellant
which got a short writeup in Av Week (my old Ph.D. thesis advisor is running
the project). I also have an unloaded solid rocket motor in the garage. It's
safer to fly than the Apollo RCS and can theoretically hit Mach 2. Getting a
rocket to light up is baloney (even I can do it). What really counts is
hardware that can reach orbit!

>Second, SpaceX has never once claimed that the Falcon will be priced at
>$1,000/kg. They've claimed that it will be priced at $6,000,000 for 568 kg,
>which is indeed around $10,000/kg. Which is a very good price for a small
>launch vehicle, as I'm sure you're well aware.

Who cares what they claim?! Again the Scout rocket was out there decades
ago but failed commercially because there was no business. The Super Strypi
is now the rocket of choice for small payloads to LEO but as far as I know,
Sandia is having a hard time finding buyers. We considered using a Super
Strypi for a flight test experiment but could not sell the concept to higher
management. The Strypi is for all intents and purposes a Scout rocket.
They're both really simple designs based upon Castor solid rocket motors.
Both Strypi and Scout are about as cheap and low tech as you can get for a
small payload launcher to LEO.

>Note that the Falcon is only their first vehicle. They have a second vehicle
>in develpment (which uses a cluster of Falcon first stages)....

Also Falcon will probably be Musk's last vehicle. Now after all of this
negative talk, I should emphasize that I'm very sympathetic towards what
Musk is trying to do. Musk has made it clear that he wants to see people
on Mars which is also my professional objective. Musk has correctly observed
that the political process has failed and is trying to "pickup the
ball" through the free market. His Falcon design is NOT an optimal low cost
to LEO small payload ELV design because it uses a liquid fueled motor. His
design is appropiate if he wants something scalable that can ultimately be
scaled up to an RLV. However he's never going to get off first base. If
he is lucky and has enough money, he'll build his rocket by financing it
himself and maybe even attract a customer or two by subsidizing the price
and falsely claiming that his launcher is profitable. However he won't be
able to recover his development costs and the whole thing will ultimately
get chucked into the trash bin after he runs out of money and/or loses
interest.

Unfortunately it is probably too late for Musk to pull his finger out but
there is a path that he could follow that might produce a useful result.
Kistler Aerospace created a pretty good launch system along with hardware
that is half built. Unfortunately Kistler has run out of money and gone
Chapter 11. If Musk formed a partnership with Kistler, he could fish
Kistler's launch system out of the toilet and get off a test flight. Musk
and Kistler could then go to NASA and point out that building the OSP as a
small lifting body is a stupid idea and that NASA should be using
SpaceX/Kistler hardware instead at 10 cents on the dollar to service the ISS.
If NASA agreed, SpaceX/Kistler would have a locked-in market and a scaleable
product that would not die instantly through infant mortality. Unfortunately as
it stands with the Falcon, Musk is just pissing his money away.

Gary