Space Systems/Loral partners with SpaceX

Wow. My company has signed an agreement to launch a satellite on a Falcon 9 sometime in 2012. I'm impressed. Loral is an extremely conservative company. They wouldn't launch on an "unproven" launch vehicle unless they were REALLY sure the the launch vehicle can do the job.

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20100315

Just for the record, this has been covered here on the space fellowship in the news
http://spacefellowship.com/news/art1910 ... ssion.html

Your statement about Loral being very conservative just provides further evidence how much recognition SpaceX has already earned among other "space companies"

My guess is that they think there are enough launches on the manifest to make an educated guess some time during late 2011 whether it is feasible to go ahead in 2012 or not.

I'm trying to find out which satellite will be be going on the Falcon 9 in 2012. On a certain level, though Loral is "conservative", they do at times look at new business avenues. Years ago Loral signed an agreement with Kistler Rocket Company for 10 launches. This was back in 1997.

http://www.rocketplanekistler.com/newsi ... 12897.html

Unfortunately, unlike SpaceX, Kistler was more hype than real hardware. Is the Kistler K-1 rocket still around?

What do you mean "still around" I'm sure the design still exists, but I know of no hardware ever being built.

They actually had Draper Labs doing controls work, which would have been super expensive. They're very much old space, having been formed into a company for Apollo GNC.

it's probably the next intelsat if i had to guess which one they'll do - that's the same time that the first Omega-3 sat is supposed to go up, maybe they'll put it on falcon 9, two "risks" in one bird. though falcon 9 is a much bigger one than the new bus design, which is only new in the sense that birds are a "new" invention of nature as compared to dinosaurs.

For years, Kistler claimed that the K-1 rocket was 75% complete. It said so on their website. Though, like you Ben, I never saw any photos of actual hardware just pretty CAD models.


Really? I didn't know that. After Rocketplane Ltd bought out Kistler Aerospace I heard nothing more about the K-1.

The website is still up and it has pictures of hardware: http://www.rocketplanekistler.com/photogallery/main.html

I've seen those photos before. But that hardly looks like the launch vehicle was 75% complete.

what went wrong with the K-1 program? nothing about the technology suggested that they were trying something brand new. It was all tried and proven tech.

Lack of financing.

Yeah, Ian Garcia, who did the GN&C for Masten Space's LLC stuff, worked at Draper before MSS, and was at least tangentially involved with K-1. So at least something good came out of it in the end.