When I first found out just how expensive military fighter jets were, I immediately thought, How cheaply could you build a jet that’s 80% as good? Elon Musk, ex-CEO of PayPal asked a similar question about rockets and decided to start SpaceX. From Hondas in Space:
To save money, SpaceX’s engineers pride themselves on tweaking existing technologies and looking beyond the aerospace world for inspiration. There may not be hundreds of patents in Falcon I , but the scientists don’t care. What they want is a rocket that flies. So the main engine isn’t a 21st-century design but rather a 1960s-era pintle engine, which has only one fuel injector rather than the ‘showerhead’ or flat-faced injector used in most rockets. It is old, but reliable.At SpaceX, no money-saving idea is too wacky, so long as it works. Instead of buying a new theodolite, a tool used to align the rocket, an employee bought one on eBay, saving $25,000. When doing research on the fairing, an enormous piece of metal that protects the payload, Chris Thompson, VP of production operations, discovered an old one in an industrial junkyard and had it transported back to the shop for testing.
The company has also borrowed parts and technology from other industries, heresy in such a specialized realm. Falcon I ‘s first stage is partly reusable, and will land in water. Typically, to hire a company specializing in rocket retrieval costs about $250,000. But there are commercial salvage companies accustomed to handling sensitive equipment. A bit of research located Sause Bros., a tug-and-barge company that has agreed to pull in the rocket for $60,000.
In avionics, rather than using an aerospace computer on the rocket, which could cost as much as $1 million, Falcon I will fly with the same kind of computer used in an automatic teller machine for a cost of $5,000. And rather than relying on the costly electronics that NASA and others are wedded to, Falcon I will use an ethernet bus for communication between the rocket’s different computers. ‘I didn’t want to invent anything new,’ says Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s VP of avionics and systems.