Falcon Heavy vs Vulcan

[Frybert]

Vulcan realizes that Falcon is not its enemy, super rocket team-up ensues. SLS can come too (but only if agrees to buy drinks).

[fredinno]

20 hours ago, cantab said:

Comparing Falcon Heavy and Vulcan is like comparing apples with drawings of apples. FH is based on the proven Falcon 9 design including its Merlin engines - and with ten Merlins per flight SpaceX gain the advantage of learning a lot about how they operate, faults will show themselves sooner and as mentioned be less serious when they do. While the Falcon Heavy maiden flight has been repeatedly delayed, it's expected early next year.

Vulcan on the other hand is in early development. It's a new first stage. ULA haven't even decided what engine they're going to use yet, there are two candidates. Falcon Heavy is expected to fly before Vulcan's engines even get a full-scale ground test. 2019 at the earliest for a Vulcan launch. And to cap it off Vulcan is being funded quarter-to-quarter - ULA could well cancel it at any time.

True, the Vulcan design may have its advantages. But frankly it better have advantages considering it'll be lucky to fly five years after Falcon Heavy. SLS will probably fly before Vulcan as well.

Falcon Heavy is too big for...pretty much everything right now. Even ArianeSpace knows this, and their Ariane 6 is only about as big as Ariane V. The largest LEO sats are KH-11, which are nowhere near 29 T (and will almost certainly never evolve to that big), the payload for the reusable version of Falcon Heavy, and the largest GEO sateelites are expected to only get to 8T in the near future, while FH GTO (GEO is unknown) is 'only' 19 TONS. Not to mention these payload capacities will get even bigger with the Falcon 9 Full Thrust. Triple Payload is a requirement, but means Falcon Heavy will get only 4 launches a year, assuming it gets as many payloads as Ariane V, the current leader in those payloads. Competion with others will probably lower it to 3 Falcon Heavy launches a year. Not really a great launch rate.

 

 

Vulcan is tapping into the already existant 10-20T to LEO (for Vulcan-Centaur) market. Vulcan-ACES is even more conceptual, and probably will not be made, as there are not enough payloads to justify making a new stage to launch 20-30T to LEO market- Vulcan Heavy-Centaur is more likely (possibly with 26T to LEO, taking Delta IV Heavy numbers as a guideline here.) Also, Centaur already has IVF, no need to build an entirely new stage for that. 

 

Bigger is not always better.

[fredinno]

18 hours ago, FishInferno said:

Heck, after Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy are both online, we'll have the capability to send humans around the Moon.  So by 2017 SpaceX could officially surpass NASA in manned spaceflight capability.  If that doesn't make you choose Falcon Heavy I don;t know what will.

 

Granted, there are no official plans for a Dragon/FH lunar mission, but just sayin...

NASA will almost certainly never give money for that, neither will other agencies- I don't think Elon wants to waste money on a pointless circumlunar flight that has little future. Dragon is also not designed for deep space, barring the heat shield- MCT will, and is probably the most conceptual rocket/spacecraft ever taken seriously. No, MCT will probably not happen- Mars costs many billions that will probably either not materialise, or result in the bankrupting of SpaceX. It's a pipe dream, TBH.

[Frozen_Heart]

Quote

Falcon Heavy is too big for...pretty much everything right now.

Falcon Heavy's max payload is similar to Vulcans as SpaceX wants to only use it reusable.

[FishInferno]

2 hours ago, fredinno said:

Falcon Heavy is too big for...pretty much everything right now..

SpaceX plans to use FH to launch Dragons to Mars to scout out sites for the colony, so this should keep the FH active enough in addition to commercial payloads.

Also, FH will be the only rocket able to launch Bigelow Habs

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

It's a pipe dream, TBH.

Many people said the same thing about landing on the Moon.

[fredinno]

1 hour ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Falcon Heavy's max payload is similar to Vulcans as SpaceX wants to only use it reusable.

No, the stated payload is the reusable version, with all cores on land. The expendable version is about Fifty tons to LEO.

[Bill Phil]

28 minutes ago, FishInferno said:

Many people said the same thing about landing on the Moon.

And many said it about flight. And many said it about going to Mars by 1980... oh wait, they actually thought it doable.

Yes. people say things are not going to work, and then it works sometimes, but they do fail on occasion.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Bill Phil

[FishInferno]

59 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

And many said it about flight. And many said it about going to Mars by 1980... oh wait, they actually thought it doable.

Yes. people say things are not going to work, and then it works sometimes, but they do fail on occasion.

Why must we assume SpaceX won't get to Mars when we have no reason to believe so? 

[Bill Phil]

14 minutes ago, FishInferno said:

Why must we assume SpaceX won't get to Mars when we have no reason to believe so? 

But the opposite is also true.

Why must we assume they will when we have no reason to do so? Yes, Musk may want to do it. But he's not insane enough to waste that much money unless it's profitable.

I was referring to the fact that just because people say it won't work doesn't mean it will.

[Pipcard]

4 hours ago, fredinno said:

Falcon Heavy is too big for...pretty much everything right now. Even ArianeSpace knows this, and their Ariane 6 is only about as big as Ariane V. The largest LEO sats are KH-11, which are nowhere near 29 T (and will almost certainly never evolve to that big), the payload for the reusable version of Falcon Heavy, and the largest GEO sateelites are expected to only get to 8T in the near future, while FH GTO (GEO is unknown) is 'only' 19 TONS. Not to mention these payload capacities will get even bigger with the Falcon 9 Full Thrust. Triple Payload is a requirement, but means Falcon Heavy will get only 4 launches a year, assuming it gets as many payloads as Ariane V, the current leader in those payloads. Competion with others will probably lower it to 3 Falcon Heavy launches a year. Not really a great launch rate.

Musk said that for Falcon Heavy, the payload to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit "with full reusability of all three boost stages" would be "7 tonnes." The heaviest comsats weigh almost that much (TerreStar-1, the heaviest, was 6.9 tonnes). So that's probably how it's intended to be used.

Edited December 9, 2015 by Pipcard

[fredinno]

4 hours ago, Pipcard said:

Musk said that for Falcon Heavy, the payload to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit "with full reusability of all three boost stages" would be "7 tonnes." The heaviest comsats weigh almost that much (TerreStar-1, the heaviest, was 6.9 tonnes). So that's probably how it's intended to be used.

No, not according to this: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falcon9v1-1.html

I find that relatively surpriseing, that the performance would be so low, especially when things like Soyuz 2-1B have a much higher payload to GTO fraction, (3.2 T to GEO for a 7.8T to LEO rocket, compared to Falcon 9, with 13T to LEO, but only 3.5 T to GTO, according to that statement).

I guess we will never be sure until it launches.

8 hours ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Falcon Heavy's max payload is similar to Vulcans as SpaceX wants to only use it reusable.

I compensated for that.

[Pipcard]

28 minutes ago, fredinno said:

No, not according to this: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falcon9v1-1.html

I find that relatively surpriseing, that the performance would be so low, especially when things like Soyuz 2-1B have a much higher payload to GTO fraction, (3.2 T to GEO for a 7.8T to LEO rocket, compared to Falcon 9, with 13T to LEO, but only 3.5 T to GTO, according to that statement).

I guess we will never be sure until it launches.

That website lists the expendable payload. Musk is describing the payload with booster reusability.

[fredinno]

1 hour ago, Pipcard said:

2 hours ago, Pipcard said:

That website lists the expendable payload. Musk is describing the payload with booster reusability.

That website lists the expendable payload. Musk is describing the payload with booster reusability.

All the better for Musk then.