Blue Origin Thread (merged)

[PB666]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Typically with an ISP advantage of ~400 vs. ~300 any dry mass advantage goes away.  I suspect that Delta IV heavy was pretty much an afterthought of the Delta family and really doesn't have the efficiency it should.

Remember, as far as "getting into orbit dry mass", the Falcon lower stages need a lot of fuel for backburns, and that is considered "dry mass" going up.  If the center lower stage needs 4km/s delta-v just on the way down don't expect a low "dry mass" and high delta-v going up.

Nope, once the payload is off its only going, i repeat, 1855 m/s, all it has to do is get diwn to about Mach 3, and let drag do the rest. 

[wumpus]

21 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Nope, once the payload is off its only going, i repeat, 1855 m/s, all it has to do is get diwn to about Mach 3, and let drag do the rest. 

True for the Falcon9, but not so much for the Falcon Heavy (unless they are adding a *ton* more fuel to the upper stage and they can handle the TWR hit).  So while they have to down to ~1000m/s, they pretty much *have* to.  Trying to let "drag do the rest" from ~2000ish m/s is said to be how they put a hole in the barge.

About the rest of my statement (why the Delta IV Heavy is outperformed by the Falcon Heavy), somebody since has pointed out that the Delta IV Heavy is designed for going well beyond Earth, which explains the differences.

[Kryten]

1 minute ago, wumpus said:

About the rest of my statement (why the Delta IV Heavy is outperformed by the Falcon Heavy), somebody since has pointed out that the Delta IV Heavy is designed for going well beyond Earth, which explains the differences.

Explaining outperformance of Falcon Heavy relative to DIVH is much easier than that; F9H has about twice the fuel by mass at take-off.

[Streetwind]

There's also another thing you can use to fudge your payload-to-orbit numbers.

Namely, SpaceX never specifies to which LEO exactly. The community guesses it's a 200x200 km parking orbit with the inclination of the launch site. Such an orbit, as should surprise nobody, is completely useless. Launching from CCAFS, this inclination matches absolutely no destination, and has no value at all for spacecraft to inhabit. Also, the orbit is so low that anything placed there will decay within one or two days if it doesn't have its own propulsion to travel onwards with.

I don't know exactly what orbit the D4 Heavy's specs are given for, but I could probably google it up real quick... you know what, I'll just do that. Turns out Wikipedia is unexpectedly detaield in this case.

For a 200 km default inclination parking orbit, the D4 heavy has 28.8 metric tons; exactly the same as the uprated F9 "v1.3".
To geostationary transfer orbit, it's 14.2 tons, while Falcon pushes 8.3 metric tons.
To Mars transfer orbit, it's 8 metric tons, compared to 4 metric tons for the Falcon.

So, to a useless parking orbit, that mysteriously uprated Falcon can match a D4 Heavy in payload capacity if it flies expendable. For any orbit higher than that, the D4 Heavy wins out, due to its upper stage being far better suited to in-space operations. it beats the F9 by 70% to GTO, and by 100% to Mars.

Of course, these numbers aren't flattering for the D4 Heavy at all, because it is absurdly expensive. It may be the least cost effective launcher on the face of the planet; even the Shuttle had a better kg to orbit price. Ostensibly it has a pricetag of 400 million (varying some depending on what the customer needs), but it's not too farfetched to believe that it actually costs even more than that, and that ULA subsidizes it by increasing profit margins on their other launch vehicles. A good indication for this, for example, is the fact that as soon as the company was forced to save money, the Delta line of rockets got axed. Not the Atlas, with its argument-prone Russian engines and its less broad mission spectrum, but the all-American Delta series, which includes ULA's only heavy lift offering. There's a reason for that, for sure.

For Falcon 9 to offer even half of the payload of a >$400m rocket to Mars, for just $62m (plus launch campaign fees), is absolutely brutal to the market.

Of course, Falcon 9 will probably never fly expendable, and thus that price/performance ratio suffers significantly. The question now is, of course, if SpaceX can actually get their targeted ~30% launch vehicle price reduction via reflying first stages. If they an manage that, then the price reduction cancels out the ~30% payload reduction to orbit on reusable flights, and Falcon 9 once again assumes the same price/performance ratio that they advertise now with these expendable, full price numbers.

 

What I really want to know, though, are details on the vehicle upgrades done to achieve these posted figures. All I've managed to find out is that apparently, the Merlin 1D (sea level version) has been further uprated to 922 kN (up from 825 kN on the v1.2 "Full Thrust" F9). Or is that now a Merlin 1E? I have no idea.

Too bad SpaceX stopped talking about upgrades and went the Apple route instead. There's only ever "the new Falcon 9" towards the customer-facing end. Probably because both NASA and the Airforce get really antsy when they upgrade a certified launch vehicle repeatedly and with much tam-tam. I'm sure those certification partners will have to be informed, but SpaceX is certainly playing it as low-key as possible nowadays.

 

Edited April 30, 2016 by Streetwind

[Kryten]

If it's a new version we'll see it in the FAA paperwork. That's incidentally where the 'Falcon 9 V1.2' designation comes from, not the nonsense like 'Falcon 9 Full Thrust'. From these figures they've already increased the thrust, so what the heck do they want us to this new one? Falcon 9 Fuller Thrust?

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

How do they gat it to fly back to the launch site?

[Rakaydos]

33 minutes ago, Emperor of the Titan Squid said:

How do they gat it to fly back to the launch site?

this is how:

 

[wumpus]

2 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

this is how:

Shouldn't Falcon9 be able to launch 13.1 tons (and land at sea)?  I think the real question is how it handles cargo that at least approaches 50 tons.

[Pipcard]

9 hours ago, Elukka said:

I struggle to understand how these numbers are possible and I'm wondering if there isn't a mistake.

Maybe it is a mistake? 28800 lbs = 13063 kg; 13150 kg = 28991 lbs.

[PB666]

5 hours ago, Streetwind said:

There's also another thing you can use to fudge your payload-to-orbit numbers.

Namely, SpaceX never specifies to which LEO exactly. The community guesses it's a 200x200 km parking orbit with the inclination of the launch site. Such an orbit, as should surprise nobody, is completely useless. Launching from CCAFS, this inclination matches absolutely no destination, and has no value at all for spacecraft to inhabit. Also, the orbit is so low that anything placed there will decay within one or two days if it doesn't have its own propulsion to travel onwards with.

I don't know exactly what orbit the D4 Heavy's specs are given for, but I could probably google it up real quick... you know what, I'll just do that. Turns out Wikipedia is unexpectedly detaield in this case.

For a 200 km default inclination parking orbit, the D4 heavy has 28.8 metric tons; exactly the same as the uprated F9 "v1.3".
To geostationary transfer orbit, it's 14.2 tons, while Falcon pushes 8.3 metric tons.
To Mars transfer orbit, it's 8 metric tons, compared to 4 metric tons for the Falcon.

So, to a useless parking orbit, that mysteriously uprated Falcon can match a D4 Heavy in payload capacity if it flies expendable. For any orbit higher than that, the D4 Heavy wins out, due to its upper stage being far better suited to in-space operations. it beats the F9 by 70% to GTO, and by 100% to Mars.

Of course, these numbers aren't flattering for the D4 Heavy at all, because it is absurdly expensive. It may be the least cost effective launcher on the face of the planet; even the Shuttle had a better kg to orbit price. Ostensibly it has a pricetag of 400 million (varying some depending on what the customer needs), but it's not too farfetched to believe that it actually costs even more than that, and that ULA subsidizes it by increasing profit margins on their other launch vehicles. A good indication for this, for example, is the fact that as soon as the company was forced to save money, the Delta line of rockets got axed. Not the Atlas, with its argument-prone Russian engines and its less broad mission spectrum, but the all-American Delta series, which includes ULA's only heavy lift offering. There's a reason for that, for sure.

For Falcon 9 to offer even half of the payload of a >$400m rocket to Mars, for just $62m (plus launch campaign fees), is absolutely brutal to the market.

Of course, Falcon 9 will probably never fly expendable, and thus that price/performance ratio suffers significantly. The question now is, of course, if SpaceX can actually get their targeted ~30% launch vehicle price reduction via reflying first stages. If they an manage that, then the price reduction cancels out the ~30% payload reduction to orbit on reusable flights, and Falcon 9 once again assumes the same price/performance ratio that they advertise now with these expendable, full price numbers.

 

What I really want to know, though, are details on the vehicle upgrades done to achieve these posted figures. All I've managed to find out is that apparently, the Merlin 1D (sea level version) has been further uprated to 922 kN (up from 825 kN on the v1.2 "Full Thrust" F9). Or is that now a Merlin 1E? I have no idea.

Too bad SpaceX stopped talking about upgrades and went the Apple route instead. There's only ever "the new Falcon 9" towards the customer-facing end. Probably because both NASA and the Airforce get really antsy when they upgrade a certified launch vehicle repeatedly and with much tam-tam. I'm sure those certification partners will have to be informed, but SpaceX is certainly playing it as low-key as possible nowadays.

 

Not useless if the payload has its own ion drive. 

[CptRichardson]

What I'm taking away from this is that the F9 is in fact an anime character which gets to repeatedly say "AND THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM" whenever someone thinks its run out of margin for improvement.

[PB666]

56 minutes ago, CptRichardson said:

What I'm taking away from this is that the F9 is in fact an anime character which gets to repeatedly say "AND THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM" whenever someone thinks its run out of margin for improvement.

Why shouldn't it? Innovation grapples the imagination of space fans, if you keep innovating fast enough you can keep peoples attention longer, thats good for public funding for space.

[AngelLestat]

well, in time for this payload and cost discussion, Elon Musk wrote a twitter showing the update of spacex page with the numbers of each version.
 

http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

Those are the same that we knew all the time.. but taking into account these values change in previous years, surprising their high values stands..  It seems that the new merlins mods with extra thrust is enough to keep those values.  He said that crossfeed could overcome those values if is achieve it.
Price is still 90m for 8Tons to gto.

Extra words from Elon (red questions):

@elonmusk Max performance numbers are for expendable launches. Subtract 30% to 40% for reusable booster payload.

@elonmusk Does FH expendable performance include crossfeed? Crossfeed is generally off the table correct? Rather difficult to implement...

@lukealization No cross feed. It would help performance, but is not needed for these numbers.

current or future versions for F9?

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk  5 hhace 5 horasVer traducción

@mattyteare Basically current, but higher throttle setting. Good performance of recent launches allows us to reduce 3 sigma reserve margin.

@lukealization No physical changes to the engine. This thrust increase is based on delta qual tests. It is just tougher than we thought.

Edited May 1, 2016 by AngelLestat

[Frozen_Heart]

Looks like the Falcon 9 expendable payload has been reduced to 22,800, which is more in line where we expected it to be. Must have been a typo. Engines thrust has been increased again though.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Frozen_Heart

[Elukka]

Yup:

Now, previous error aside, this is a pretty high number! Things of note:

- It's more than double the 1.0's payload.

- It's still in excess of the advertised payload for 1.1 if you apply a 40% penalty for reuse.

- In an expendable configuration, it's basically gone from the medium launcher category to the heavy category. It about matches the Proton in payload.

It's really incredible how much more performance they've been able to get from this rocket over its lifetime. Also, per the new numbers the Merlin now has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 200.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Elukka

[Streetwind]

Yeah, 22 tons is far more believable, considering people have been speculating 16 to 17 tons for the current "not quite full thrust after all" variant. If it had been 28 tons, it would have meant that everyone had been considerably underestimating the rocket for the past several years.

I wonder if the payload penalty estimate going from "about 30%" to "30 to 40%" is just a consequence of the uprated performance. If the F9 first stage can accelerate faster, it's probably ending up faster and further downrange when decoupling. So it needs to reserve more fuel to get back home. Still, should be a net positive for the rocket as a whole. And the second stage can of course make use of the uprated thrust without such worries.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Streetwind

[HebaruSan]

9 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

well, in time for this payload and cost discussion, Elon Musk wrote a twitter showing the update of spacex page with the numbers of each version.

Spooky. Elon lurks here?

[Elukka]

This isn't exactly the only place where it's been discussed.

[Elthy]

Would be fun if Elon would be around here and noone knows

But i think he might have better stuff to do in his spare time...

[wumpus]

Looking at those numbers:

Wasn't Falcon 9 non-recoverable previously considered canceled and replaced with the Falcon Heavy?  If it is suddenly back on the table, I would assume either we are looking at marketing-inflated numbers or that Falcon Heavy can't be recover (all three stages) and deliver 22.8 tons to LEO.  I'm curious what the numbers for full recovery and 2/3 recovery are for Falcon Heavy (and suspect that is why they still include the non-recoverable masses).

13 hours ago, PB666 said:

Why shouldn't it? Innovation grapples the imagination of space fans, if you keep innovating fast enough you can keep peoples attention longer, thats good for public funding for space.

In the thread about "what do you think of Space X" there was a claim that "Space X is a commercial rocket launcher, not a space program".  This sort of innovation is exactly what a space program needs and does little to help (an likely hurts) a commercial launcher.  If you satellite costs >$100Million bucks, you'd much rather see the reliability rates steadily go up instead of having the reset button be hit every time Space X wants to shave a few million off the price of a launch/add a few tons to the capability.

[Streetwind]

21 minutes ago, Elthy said:

Would be fun if Elon would be around here and noone knows

But i think he might have better stuff to do in his spare time...

What spare time?

He's a person who plans his family life by scheduling an amount of hours he feels comfortable with not working. He's a person who can cram a hamburger into himself in the time it takes you to ask a question, and then wistfully remark how he wishes he didn't have to waste so much time on nutrient intake before actually answering you. He's a person who borrows a physics textbook, reads it once to memorize it all, and then forgets to return it because he was already coming up with something that needs immediate doing while still reading.

I'm sure that if he has any downtime at all, it is because he has scheduled himself some in recognition of the fact that it boosts his productivity elsewhere. And he'll have very carefully selected what to spend that downtime with. ...Come to think of it, answering questions on Twitter might actually be a form of it.

Edited May 1, 2016 by Streetwind

[tater]

Isn't F9 non-recoverable the plan for EOL Falcons? It;s been reused X times, so the swan song is an expendable launch?

Edited May 1, 2016 by tater

[wumpus]

37 minutes ago, tater said:

Isn't F9 non-recoverable the plan for EOL Falcons? It;s been reused X times, so the swan song is an expendable launch?

Depends how long their life is.  The original plan worked out so that they would have a lifetime of 10 launches, and expend 1 engine (the upper stage) each launch.  I have no idea if you can convert a lower stage to an upper stage (there shouldn't be much in the way of differences, but I'd suspect that the turbo-pumps would have slight differences in the angles of the turbines, meaning that you pretty much can forget about it.

I'd be really impressed if recovery gets anywhere close to 90%.

[PB666]

50 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Looking at those numbers:

Wasn't Falcon 9 non-recoverable previously considered canceled and replaced with the Falcon Heavy?  If it is suddenly back on the table, I would assume either we are looking at marketing-inflated numbers or that Falcon Heavy can't be recover (all three stages) and deliver 22.8 tons to LEO.  I'm curious what the numbers for full recovery and 2/3 recovery are for Falcon Heavy (and suspect that is why they still include the non-recoverable masses).

In the thread about "what do you think of Space X" there was a claim that "Space X is a commercial rocket launcher, not a space program".  This sort of innovation is exactly what a space program needs and does little to help (an likely hurts) a commercial launcher.  If you satellite costs >$100Million bucks, you'd much rather see the reliability rates steadily go up instead of having the reset button be hit every time Space X wants to shave a few million off the price of a launch/add a few tons to the capability.

Ah, but no. What do we want  a way to go to space cheap. Not me of course, Im perfectly happy letting other people live out my fantasy and sending me pics. When we ask NASA they sent a school teacher, well actually, no too soon on that anyway. NASA will send you to space if you give the russians 40 million. So launch guy over here is saying, look here now, im going to launch big brother, after that reland on the barge. Wee-hee. Big brother cant do that. My next trick is to send a manned -like capsule to mars, payed for by civilian and military contracts whereby i save money landing on barges. Everyone is going to flock onto my rockets cause i can do it cheaper, have my own base, soon, Im betting that the move in the demand curve is going to land me lots of contracts. So basically the smoke from the barge landing hasn't settled and hes announcing his Mars intention. Look at all the goggled-eyed dreamers here, they put their manned journey before the landing trial, before carefully reading the whole article.  Of course its a publicity play, hes harry selfridge and we are the media.

As a skeptic I have  been waitng for the company to bomb, look at ULA, but while evolution disfavors new mutations 9/10ths of the time a tenth of the time it favors them. So you have to recognize a successful struggle and then predict based on emperical observation, not theory. Any new variation in a model creates black swans and so now the boundaries of plausibilty needed to be expanded in anticipation of new emperical data. The mars landing 2018 is plausible, building a manned capsule is plausible, he'll need help. We have to think also from the NASA/ESA/RSA perspective, what good is Orion if the govs cut funding a week before manned  launch, if they broaden their umbrella then ultimate success has a better chance. right now, fraid to say, russia and eurozone is not making a heck of alot of great technology-wise decisions. The way im looking at it, the international team is like a jury, you need alternates cause this trial is going to last a long time. 

SpaceX is a company, notice the name Space, X is undefined. For Nasa and military they are a launch company, for the next customer they could be a joy ride, for space-programless country they could be a moon landing. Have rockets, will travel. 

17 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Depends how long their life is.  The original plan worked out so that they would have a lifetime of 10 launches, and expend 1 engine (the upper stage) each launch.  I have no idea if you can convert a lower stage to an upper stage (there shouldn't be much in the way of differences, but I'd suspect that the turbo-pumps would have slight differences in the angles of the turbines, meaning that you pretty much can forget about it.

I'd be really impressed if recovery gets anywhere close to 90%.

Merlin 1D vacuum, it must have a better throttle capability, the lower stages only operate between 70 -100%. Im completely guessing, wiki gives no detailed difference beteween 1D+ and 1D vacuum. They are going to recover all, there is a salvage value. They might be able to recycle low stress parts. 

My logic here fir the lower stages is that you can cut all engines to 70%, cut the center engine for another 8%, or pairs of side engines for 16%. For the vacuum stage you can either pulse fire at 70% or have a better throttle capability. 

[Elukka]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

Looking at those numbers:

Wasn't Falcon 9 non-recoverable previously considered canceled and replaced with the Falcon Heavy?  If it is suddenly back on the table, I would assume either we are looking at marketing-inflated numbers or that Falcon Heavy can't be recover (all three stages) and deliver 22.8 tons to LEO.  I'm curious what the numbers for full recovery and 2/3 recovery are for Falcon Heavy (and suspect that is why they still include the non-recoverable masses).

From what I figure they're simply the numbers the launchers would have if launched in expendable configuration, i.e. numbers that can be compared to other launch vehicles. I don't get how any of your conclusions follow. I would not expect that they would lie about these numbers either.