78stonewobble

Well, it would be kinda educational, in the sense that it shows, how much harder long interplanetary missions are in comparison to "just" going to the moons and it could be an incentive to use unmanned craft. If implemented tho, I do think it should be optional as some sort of difficulty enhancer. And yes It should definately show how long kerbs can survive on xyz ressource. Personally I also liked the idea that kerbs don't die without their "snacks", but enter hibernation... Fits well with the style.

Well, on the other hand red dwarves last quite a bit longer, potentially giving evolution plenty of time, even if it's slow... Assuming offcourse habitability of planet lasts long enough. Not betting on life on this particular one tho... However... A small habitable zone, that could last for eg. 50-100 mio. years more (A far cry from over all red dwarf lifespans)... would be a decent beginners backup site. If we can get there... A big if...

1. So... guesswork? 2. So... List prise isn't all there is to it? 3. The price is still set on the promise of as much reuse as possible. Sure, spacex can burn money on an individual launch... but they cannot do that indefinately, sooner or later the price will catch up, if reuse doesn't work out as planned. 4. The cores might have been reused before... but throwing them away before end of life, is less profit. Also again... The reuse comes at the price of less payload. The graphics on nibb31's graphic are entirely misleading in that regard. 5. So... what you're saying is... it's gonna cost more than the list price in nibb31's graphic? And apart from the guesswork... what is the final price on sending red dragon to mars? 6. "If they can manage the projected 10 launches before refurbishment...", not to mention as of yet incalculable cost and effort in maintenance other than complete refurbishment.

It also increases the risk of something going wrong... Not just lithobreaking... Just landing too far away as to render the cargo unavailable. It is much easier to land 2 things on target, than it is to land 21 things on target.

A: I have no doubt that a reuseable rocket can pay itself off, if maintenance is low enough and the launchrate and thus market is favorable. However I'm not sure that those circumstances are true... which would mean an ELV is preferable. B: I did say 4 tonnes, didn't i? Which the F9 supposedly can according to that graphic. I'd probably bet it won't be at the price listed there offcourse... C: To be fair... it also includes the increased complexity associated with a manned launch, to the moon no less, which is bound to have an effect on the cost. D: I'm guessing the numbers in the graphic atleast assumes full reuse for price vs. maximum possible performance numbers based on expendable parts... Which in my eyes ... is being a bit fudgy in regards to numbers. E: That is a good point... Excellent actually... Something I certainly hadn't thought about.

1. Let's look at the published numbers then? Mars science laboratory is 3.893 kg to mars. It was launched on an atlas v 541. Meaning 1 common booster stage, 4 solid rocket boosters and a single engine centaur upper stage. We don't know the price of this... However, the price of an atlas v 401, with no solid rocket boosters is supposedly $132.4 million, a number that includes "launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements"... With 4 SRB's it will be even more expensive. SpaceX needs a Falcon heavy to send red dragon (4 tonnes?) to mars at the supposed Falcon heavy list prise of 90 million dollars. Add to that cost, that the center booster, will probably not be reused, essentially throwing away a falcon 9 and whether falcons numbers include "launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements". The list price of the falcon 9 FT is 62 million... but the contract price for nasa for deliveries to the ISS is $ 133 million, which does include cost of the capsule. ... So does the dragon capsule alone cost 71 million? Is the 71 million price differential between a spacex list price and what nasa is paying also explaine by eg. "launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements", not included in the list price? Do we add 62 million or some other lower number to the falcon heavy launch costs, since we're throwing away a falcon 9 in the process? EDIT and PS: Lets pull some numbers out of our asses for fun and guestimate reddragon 7,5 tonnes to mars: Falcon Heavy 90 million list price + 30 million (throwing away a falcon 9) + 50 million "launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements" and a dragon capsule = 180 million spacebucks. Atlas V and 3,8 tonnes to mars: 132,4 million + 30 million for 4 SRB's = 162,4 million spacebucks. ZOMG... spacex is 10 percent more expensive than the competition... dun dun duuh. ... The numbers are one big confusion... I'm willing to admit that spacex is probably cheaper, due to having a basic sensible rocket and a good manufacturing process for it, but saying significantly cheaper or atleast exactly how much "significantly cheaper", with numbers as... I don't wanna say fudged, but as "secretive" as they are... Is also pure guesswork. And when you guess... you can come to allmost any conclusion... including highly erroneous ones. Again... you're more than welcome to show me more accurate numbers and how you arrive at them. 2. But make no mistake... on a scale that is much closer to the spaceshuttle than airliners. That your formula 1 car only needs to be rebuilt every ten races instead of every race, does not make it into a streetcar.

1. Show me the math and comparisons. The claim was 1/10th the price of the competition as the most extreme example of "significantly cheaper". 2. Funnily enough... and again... that guess... and thus the spacex prices are being used to justify the claim that spacex is significantly cheaper than the competition. So is it a guess? Or isn't it?

And the cost of that reuse? Refurbishment when needed? Over time... For comparison... The design lifespan for jetliners are on the order of 40.000 take-off's and landings for long haul aircraft, while short haul aircraft are often designed for more cycles... up to 111.000. Boing 747 was designed for 35.000 and the MD-80 110.000. So... no... it's much closer to the shuttle and failed purpose-made reuseable boosters than it is to airliners.

That spacex is significantly cheaper, in regards to the competition is so far based on the assumption of the benefits of reuseability. I don't know how many times a falcon FT can be reused. I don't know how the cost of refurbishment develops over time and with reuses. Can you?

Well... if you ignore the fact, that spacex is only significantly cheaper, if you assume economies of scale to be in effect, in regards to reuseability. An assumption for which there is, as of yet, no basis. I'll bet it's not cheap to have those refurbishing workers standing around, if there is too far between launches. Nor if the reuseability turns out to be more expensive than planned.

Flexibility how? The cheapness so far, seems, by far, mostly dependent on x number of launches per rocket part, so that part can earn itself back in. So apparently the reuse require economies of scale as well, which is not really surprising.

1. Well to be fair... there are no obvious numbers to calculate this from. As you can see in nibb31's picture... The prices are for fully reuseable launches, but the performance numbers, atleast in the case of the falcon heavy, are based on not reused rockets. According to that picture... one must ask, why don't they simply use a falcon 9 to send red dragon? Since according to it... it should be capable of it. 2. Like eg. mars.. Tho it still depends on someone actually wanting to pay for a manned landing on mars. Ain't no buck rogers without bucks. 3. 710 million for the Saturn V vehicle itself... That's for 140 tonnes to LEO for a vehicle, which prise is based around 1960's technology and manufacturing. Now, what does spacex'es numbers include? Launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry, other launch support requirements and whatever else people can think of? 4. That is not what I said nor claimed... I said: "I find myself wondering what we could have done with 40 years of refining the Saturn V production and usage, which might then have ended up as, basically a realization of the big dumb booster concept. Eg. the updating of the F-1A engine to the proposed F-1B supposedly reduced parts from over 5000 to under 100." "Big dumb booster" in this context defined as: "Big Dumb Booster (BDB) is a general class of launch vehicle based on the premise that it is cheaper to operate large rockets of simple design than it is to operate smaller, more complex ones regardless of the lower payload efficiency." Mentioning the F-1B, as an example of the original technology made simpler and cheaper, with a lower payload efficiency to follow... I'm positing that, if we had worked 40 years seriously on the whole Saturn V or atleast applied 40 years of technological development, it could have evolved into something akin to the Big Dumb Booster concept. PS and in general to the thread. Not at you :): Let's go by the figures in Nibb31's graphic tho: Saturn V: 140 tonnes to LEO = 710 million dollars (rocket only) or 1.221 (rocket and launch and all 2016 dollars offcourse). Falcon 9 FT: 22.8 tonnes to LEO = 62 million dollars (list price). Number of launches to deliver 140 tonnes to LEO = 6.14 Total cost of delivering 140 tonnes to LEO on Falcon FT with listprice: 380.7 million dollars. If we go by the prices nasa are getting from dragon ISS deliveries: 816.6 million dollars. If we go by the price for the DSCOVR mission: 595.6 million dollars. Falcon Heavy: 54.4 tonnes to LEO for 90 million dollars: Number of launches to deliver 140 tonnes to LEO = 2.57 Total cost of delivering 140 tonnes to LEO on Falcon Heavy with list price: 231.62 million dollars. However... the 90 million price is based around actually only delivering 36 percent of the payload in Nibb31's graphic. Number of launches needed to deliver 140 tonnes to LEO at circka 20 tonnes per launch: 7.15 Total cost of delivering 140 tonnes to LEO on Falcon Heavy with presumed reuseability: 643.38 million dollars. Yes, spacex does seem cheaper even tho the numbers are somewhat "confusingly" presented, but it's not a revolution... PPS: Personally and humbly I think we would have been closer to that revolution, if we had applied spacex's talent for innovation and energy on a decidedly non reuseable saturn v. Mass produced "big dumb booster". Again... subject to the fact that that also needs a market or be good enough to create a market.

Ah ok... Meaning the prices with recovery is quite a bit higher than expected then or atleast what I could find on wikipedia. Which isn't what I asked for ... I meant to compaire it with the saturn V and there it's only an 8 percent improvement of $ per kg to LEO. For 40 year old tech with no improvements to technology and manufacturing. Again... I'm not impressed... PS: It's not 60 million, it's between 90-135 million for the falcon heavy, as stated previously in the thread or maybe more if it's not in reuseable configuration, or how you wanna say that. The mars science laboratory was around 4 tonnes... it got launched with an atlas v, where the cost is between 164 and 223 million (last bit with all bells and whistles). So cheaper sure... but certainly not by 1/10th. PPS: I want spacex to succeed and I really like elon musk for making a go at it, but my eyes just haven't glossed over with little hearts yet and they probably won't over "we hope to/we mean to/we plan to" and well... promises...

So... 92 percent of the price of a saturn V in 2016 dollars per kg to LEO, with that being dependent on the saturn V being produced by 1960's methods.... Yeah, I'm not exactly impressed, other than the shuttle apparently gave certain companies monopolies for 4 decades. I find that impressive.

That would seem the most logical. Tho to me it still seems that the biggest savings have come so far from sensible basic hardware and efficient production of it, much more than reuse. Well, once they actually regularly make launches at what ever possible launch rate we will see.

I don't think it will be that much saved... a third the price, if you're optimistic to only a little over 10 percent cheaper? Most of us here are hoping for getting some grand usage out of all those rockets. Grand meaning, as allways, probably expensive... I find myself wondering what we could have done with 40 years of refining the Saturn V production and usage, which might then have ended up as, basically a realization of the big dumb booster concept. Eg. the updating of the F-1A engine to the proposed F-1B supposedly reduced parts from over 5000 to under 100.

It will have to use a non reused/reuseable falcon heavy right? I'm just curious about how it compares to the Saturn V costwise.

Personally I think it's worth full price...

1. I never said it was... but breaking mods is a negative factor with every update. To the people who use them and the people who make them. As I said... it's a good thing that the game is still getting improved and expanded, but that automatically entails the abovementioned negativity. It shouldn't come as a surprise... 2. That has mostly been my experience as well... but it has made it impossible to update or maybe even continue games for some. I'd be somewhat negative over that too... even if it made for a better game in the end. ... Possibly some truth to the critique of version 1.0 having been called too soon... Had ksp still had the beta description... I think people would have been more lenient. Whether something is "done"/finished... is a binary answer to me atleast... it's either yes or no... it's not a "mostly" ... ... Atleast that's my mental approach to things like that...

I consider not navigating by the background textures and using the navball cheating, so I'm in the why not mechjeb category.

There's generally too much hyperbole on teh interwebs. It is a good thing that a game company actually keeps developing it's game. Fixing bugs, upgrading engines, increasing performance and so on. It is a bad thing that a game company breaks backward compatibility with savegames and/or mods. Overall I'd say these 2, even if cancelling eachother out somewhat, still equals to a good thing... but the combination will receive critique and negativity and I think it's silly not to expect it. Or in other words... That while game suddenly runs x percent faster is awesome, it does not instantly make the rage over a x hours of gametime investment turned invalid good... That will take a bit of time... Hopefully once KSP really is finished... It will be the better for it...

Just my personal oppinion on that last section. With a complete stock game... The difficulty between the "beginning" and the "end" of a game, as you describe it there... Is a pretty darn tall cliff wall... I think the game deserves the tools to make that wall a more smoothe hill. To let more players do more AND experience more in the game. And I think it deserves it in stock. ... Yes, I know that some people are able to successfully grand tour the whole game in 1 ship in stock with starting parts and taping over the navball and navigate after the background texture stars, but I don't think KSP, of all games, should be designed around these extraordinary players. The playerbase has an average and it has outliers in both directions. The game should try to cater to as many players as possible... that means both sides of that average. I think the challenges section proves, that it is possible... to make this game as arbitrarily hard on yourself... as people want it to be, by choosing not to use xyz... I think the game deserves more choice at the lower end... where people can choose to use xyz... and get to the end game. ... That's why I think some tools should be in the stock game... Then we can haggle back and forth ... PS: I think I half wanted to make the point... that it's easier to choose to not use something that's allready there... than it is to choose something which isn't there... Unless you go the mod route. In which case you have to be lucky that there is a mod for it and the mod is up to date, don't mess up other mods and so forth and so forth. I love mods, because they give people lots of choice in making ksp into what they want... but they aren't allways as easy as we would like them to be.

I don't think anyone knowledgeable said it would be easy. The difficulty of doing it, whatever that may be... must be weighed against the necessity of it, whatever that may be.

I hadn't seen that before... Looks interesting allthought it's a little hard to know... well what it does Don't know if it's what the OP's looking for tho

Well, you wouldn't be forced to use mechjeb or the analogue in stock... but I think something similar deserves to be there, because it can be a great teacher by showing you how to accomplish something in the game, right there in the game... by seeing how, where and when it maneuvers. I think that all the text guides, youtube videos and even tutorials can only do so much... A built in option that can show a new player how to do something... Can do that 1 thing an experienced player just hates doing (docking or landing or taking off or flying in a straight line for 5 minutes) or the option to automate parts of your giant spaceprogram if the player so chooses. PS: A 2nd reason is offcourse the precision you mention... Precise maneuvering can be so finicky with the manuevernodes as they are. PPS: I don't need it in stock either. I could allways go get it as a mod... but I think it or something similar deserves to be part of the stock options for a new player or even the experienced ones. I mean I didn't need improved water either... I don't use it... but other people do...