SpaceX takes the industrial maturity exam
On the night of last Monday, SpaceX was about to launch a telecommunications satellite, Intelsat 35e. Due to the fact that the launch was canceled twice, the satellite flew off only on July 5. But if everything went according to plan, then in one month SpaceX would have spent as many as four starts. On 3 June, the cargo ship Dragon launched to the ISS, on June 23 the telecommunications satellite BulgariaSat-1 set off to geostationary orbit, and after only two days ten Iridiums of the new generation were launched into the polar orbit. SpaceX is now taking an industrial maturity exam - in order to become a significant player in the launch services market, you must not only offer a bargain price, but also launch rockets often.
Start Intelsat 35e, SpaceX photo
How many launches per year will SpaceX do if it keeps the current pace? The simplest tool for obtaining this information is the moving average . Knowing the launch dates, you can get the intervals in days between them. From the intervals between several starts, take the arithmetic average and divide, for simplicity, 365 days by the resulting value. Thus, we will find out how many launches per year SpaceX can make if it continues to run Falcon 9 with the same frequency.
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This graph shows two simple moving averages with a period of 4 and 9. The magnitude of the periods was chosen not quite by accident - 4 will give us a visual result of “Stakhanov's June”, and 9 will give us a more general smoothed picture, given that in 2017 the launch on July 5 was tenth in a row.
The failures on the graph are the result of emergency 19 and 29 starts, after which there was a big break.
In the first graph, the points go evenly, because the X-axis is the starting number in order. What if you put graphics on a timeline?
On this scale, the increase in the number of launches is seen even more clearly, because in the left part of the graph the launch points are rarely located. And what if to remove breaks in flights after accidents? Replace large intervals with the value of the moving average with a period of 4 at the time of the previous start. That is, there was no accident, and the next launch took place in about the same number of days as before.
Without the distortions that caused the accidents, it is clear that SpaceX reached the level of 10 launches per year in 2015, and in 2016 they were chosen for 15 launches per year.
According to the results of the first half of 2017, the moving average with a period of 9 predicts 19 launches per year, and, if a new accident does not occur, this plan is quite realistic.
Making and launching launch vehicles is difficult. It is difficult to make and launch many launch vehicles in a square. And we know from the sad history of the shuttle ( one , two , three ) that underestimating the cost and complexity of maintaining a reusable space system not only gave way to reduce the cost of delivering a kilogram to orbit, but was also a factor in the Challenger disaster. And what about this Mask?
This spring, there was news that SpaceX's fired employee Jason Blasdell filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that he was fired for reporting to managers about non-compliance with instructions when testing equipment. Indeed, in a situation where it is necessary to work faster and produce more and more, there is a high risk of starting to ignore the established procedures, test according to an abbreviated program, and forge documents on testing. But Jason lost the court, and SpaceX's point of view won, that Blasdell was not a particularly good worker and, seeing that his colleagues worked many times more efficiently, thought that they were forging documents.
Evil tongues joke that robots in the Mask factories have names, for example, Sanchez. And these jokes, alas, are not unfounded - in The Guardian published an article about the problems with working conditions at the Tesla plant - overwork, increased injuries and low wages. There were no such detailed reports about SpaceX, but in May 2017 it became known that SpaceX paid out $ 4 million extrajudicially to about four thousand employees who filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that they were not paid enough. In this story, the most won, however, lawyers, having received $ 1.3 million, despite the fact that the workers themselves went from 500 to 2000 dollars per person. The same material states that SpaceX interns are paid two times less than Facebook. There they also refer to an anonymous employee who reports that SpaceX has excellent work and wonderful people, but a low salary.
In principle, the line “I worked at SpaceX” looks great in a resume, and a very positive image of the company is probably considered by managers as one of the factors that save on salaries. The question is how to pass between Scylla of extra expenses and Charybdis of risks from excessive economy. To date, there is not enough data to say whether SpaceX’s current path will lead to something bad or will eventually be perceived as Mask and his managers as capitalist talent.
Start Intelsat 35e, SpaceX photo
Entertaining statistics
How many launches per year will SpaceX do if it keeps the current pace? The simplest tool for obtaining this information is the moving average . Knowing the launch dates, you can get the intervals in days between them. From the intervals between several starts, take the arithmetic average and divide, for simplicity, 365 days by the resulting value. Thus, we will find out how many launches per year SpaceX can make if it continues to run Falcon 9 with the same frequency.
')
This graph shows two simple moving averages with a period of 4 and 9. The magnitude of the periods was chosen not quite by accident - 4 will give us a visual result of “Stakhanov's June”, and 9 will give us a more general smoothed picture, given that in 2017 the launch on July 5 was tenth in a row.
The failures on the graph are the result of emergency 19 and 29 starts, after which there was a big break.
In the first graph, the points go evenly, because the X-axis is the starting number in order. What if you put graphics on a timeline?
On this scale, the increase in the number of launches is seen even more clearly, because in the left part of the graph the launch points are rarely located. And what if to remove breaks in flights after accidents? Replace large intervals with the value of the moving average with a period of 4 at the time of the previous start. That is, there was no accident, and the next launch took place in about the same number of days as before.
Without the distortions that caused the accidents, it is clear that SpaceX reached the level of 10 launches per year in 2015, and in 2016 they were chosen for 15 launches per year.
According to the results of the first half of 2017, the moving average with a period of 9 predicts 19 launches per year, and, if a new accident does not occur, this plan is quite realistic.
Production pressure
Making and launching launch vehicles is difficult. It is difficult to make and launch many launch vehicles in a square. And we know from the sad history of the shuttle ( one , two , three ) that underestimating the cost and complexity of maintaining a reusable space system not only gave way to reduce the cost of delivering a kilogram to orbit, but was also a factor in the Challenger disaster. And what about this Mask?
This spring, there was news that SpaceX's fired employee Jason Blasdell filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that he was fired for reporting to managers about non-compliance with instructions when testing equipment. Indeed, in a situation where it is necessary to work faster and produce more and more, there is a high risk of starting to ignore the established procedures, test according to an abbreviated program, and forge documents on testing. But Jason lost the court, and SpaceX's point of view won, that Blasdell was not a particularly good worker and, seeing that his colleagues worked many times more efficiently, thought that they were forging documents.
Evil tongues joke that robots in the Mask factories have names, for example, Sanchez. And these jokes, alas, are not unfounded - in The Guardian published an article about the problems with working conditions at the Tesla plant - overwork, increased injuries and low wages. There were no such detailed reports about SpaceX, but in May 2017 it became known that SpaceX paid out $ 4 million extrajudicially to about four thousand employees who filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that they were not paid enough. In this story, the most won, however, lawyers, having received $ 1.3 million, despite the fact that the workers themselves went from 500 to 2000 dollars per person. The same material states that SpaceX interns are paid two times less than Facebook. There they also refer to an anonymous employee who reports that SpaceX has excellent work and wonderful people, but a low salary.
In principle, the line “I worked at SpaceX” looks great in a resume, and a very positive image of the company is probably considered by managers as one of the factors that save on salaries. The question is how to pass between Scylla of extra expenses and Charybdis of risks from excessive economy. To date, there is not enough data to say whether SpaceX’s current path will lead to something bad or will eventually be perceived as Mask and his managers as capitalist talent.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/373597/
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