Red Dragon confirmed!!

[tater]

BEO with a return on investment would likely mean asteroid mining for rare earth elements. Red Dragon is cool, I love that they plan on doing it. But it's not a market, and has to be paid for the old-fashioned way. That's why the economics matters---because Mars is a hobby for SpaceX, it cannot be a business. I think there is certainly overlap in the threads, but that thread at least is more about real launches.

[John JACK]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

The downward trend of rocket launches at the time was unchanged, for the most part.

It's a graph of all launches combined, not that 12 purely commercial that @tater talks about. There is even visible drop in 1991 — because Soviet space program was no more and USA space program lost it's main purpose.

 

22 minutes ago, tater said:

there is no market at Mars.

There are several landers on Mars and several satellites near Mars. Someone put them there and got paid for going that. Isn't it a market? SpaceX sell transportation, and they will put your payload anywhere in Solar System. And if there are means to do it, someone will pay for it.
Of course, interplanetary probes cost several times more than launch. But Moon is near, and it can be studied by inexpensive machines, student project level. And coloured Dragons are means to get probes somewhere, without risks of sailing space on their own.

[tater]

9 minutes ago, John JACK said:

There are several landers on Mars and several satellites near Mars. Someone put them there and got paid for going that. Isn't it a market? SpaceX sell transportation, and they will put your payload anywhere in Solar System. And if there are means to do it, someone will pay for it.
Of course, interplanetary probes cost several times more than launch. But Moon is near, and it can be studied by inexpensive machines, student project level. And coloured Dragons are means to get probes somewhere, without risks of sailing space on their own.

NASA is indeed a customer, but now you're talking about maybe a single launch every few years.

That's it. Given that they are required to use SLS for something, it would be a hard sell to get them to use SpaceX. There have been many threads trying to explain to people outside the US how NASA works, and this post leads me to believe you should read one of them. Any major expenses are going to be spread around, not all put in the pocket of one company, that doesn't buy votes.

Student projects? Are you suggesting that universities will pay millions to send probes to the moon constantly? We are talking about ramping up launches, after all. That requires a demand.

All some of us have said is that it would be silly for SpaceX to markedly drop prices without a known, or at least well-characterized increase in demand, or they will leave money on the table.

Edited May 10, 2016 by tater

[Rakaydos]

I think the best near-term market increase for price increase is university STEM departments. Even if it's a special educational discount limited to cheap, unrefurbished (and unreliable) relaunched boosters, a satelite launched per semester pushes student investment/interest, which will pay off for spaceX when those university students graduate into the aerospace field.

[tater]

1 minute ago, Rakaydos said:

I think the best near-term market increase for price increase is university STEM departments. Even if it's a special educational discount limited to cheap, unrefurbished (and unreliable) relaunched boosters, a satelite launched per semester pushes student investment/interest, which will pay off for spaceX when those university students graduate into the aerospace field.

Universities are going to cough up 40 million bucks for experimental satellites? They'd not spend 1/100th of that. The point is a business model, not SpaceX giving away launches to kids. Heck, maybe they can do that---but it requires making money first. Bill Gates gets to do philanthropy because he made metric tons of money. That's the first step, make metric tons of money.

Mars is either a hobby, or with a really, really long term view, possibly philanthropy (spread humanity around, just because). That requires making money hand over fist back here where the money is as a first step. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

[Rakaydos]

7 minutes ago, tater said:

Universities are going to cough up 40 million bucks for experimental satellites? They'd not spend 1/100th of that. The point is a business model, not SpaceX giving away launches to kids. Heck, maybe they can do that---but it requires making money first. Bill Gates gets to do philanthropy because he made metric tons of money. That's the first step, make metric tons of money.

Mars is either a hobby, or with a really, really long term view, possibly philanthropy (spread humanity around, just because). That requires making money hand over fist back here where the money is as a first step. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

A single university isnt going to pay to put 20 tons into orbit. But each of 50 state university programs can pitch in $800,000, and split 400kg each in a big multilaunch. And thats assuming no educational discount.

[tater]

Because SpaceX makes more money by giving discounts? 

$800,000 is a lot of money for a handful of students to work on a spacecraft. Cubesats are far cheaper, and can indeed hit rides, to go at greatly reduced cost, but that's not a model for making more money.

I'm trying to stay on topic... Red Dragon, and possible future Mars exploration by SpaceX as groundwork for their grandiose plans. That takes money. My thought is that they can blow their leftover EOL launchers on this, and do their experiments/hobby launches on the cheap, having gotten other customers to already have paid for the rockets a few times over.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, tater said:

NASA is indeed a customer, but now you're talking about maybe a single launch every few years.

That's it. Given that they are required to use SLS for something, it would be a hard sell to get them to use SpaceX. There have been many threads trying to explain to people outside the US how NASA works, and this post leads me to believe you should read one of them. Any major expenses are going to be spread around, not all put in the pocket of one company, that doesn't buy votes.

Student projects? Are you suggesting that universities will pay millions to send probes to the moon constantly? We are talking about ramping up launches, after all. That requires a demand.

All some of us have said is that it would be silly for SpaceX to markedly drop prices without a known, or at least well-characterized increase in demand, or they will leave money on the table.

SpaceX just signed an 83 million dollar contract to lauch a miltary satellite, its first, there will be more. 

 

Edited May 10, 2016 by PB666
iPADs sux

[John JACK]

52 minutes ago, tater said:

NASA is indeed a customer, but now you're talking about maybe a single launch every few years.

NASA is not only space agency on our planet. There are more countries that want and can make stuff to put in space than launch service providers.

Funny fact: in 2015 Turkmenistan launched it's first satellite. On a Falcon, of course. And there were things like SMAP, Earth monitoring is more than just cameras. New applications are developed constantly, and someone need to launch them.

Universities also launch tons of stuff. Mostly sounding rockets and cubesats, but several institutions combined can afford pretty big satellite.

We talk ramping launches by several per year for a start. It will reduce costs, make reuse more advantageous and —  after several years — at last increase demand. And reducing costs is always good for profit.

7 minutes ago, tater said:

Red Dragon, and possible future Mars exploration by SpaceX as groundwork for their grandiose plans. That takes money. My thought is that they can blow their leftover EOL launchers on this, and do their experiments/hobby launches on the cheap, having gotten other customers to already have paid for the rockets a few times over.

Right, just like it was obvious from the beginning, Musk has a dream, and SpaceX make money to support a dream. And we here can either marvel their achievements, or waste time trying to prove they do not.

Interplanetary used Dragons cost cheap, but provide priceless experimental data. And maybe even some bonus science.

[PB666]

16 minutes ago, tater said:

Because SpaceX makes more money by giving discounts? 

$800,000 is a lot of money for a handful of students to work on a spacecraft. Cubesats are far cheaper, and can indeed hit rides, to go at greatly reduced cost, but that's not a model for making more money.

I'm trying to stay on topic... Red Dragon, and possible future Mars exploration by SpaceX as groundwork for their grandiose plans. That takes money. My thought is that they can blow their leftover EOL launchers on this, and do their experiments/hobby launches on the cheap, having gotten other customers to already have paid for the rockets a few times over.

Its not going back on topic no matter how hard you try, we are talking abount the economy of going to mars, part of which is the reuse and reliabity issue because it determines profitability, alas and we back. The Mars mission has a window of 2018' which if they cannot make enough money by then to afford  then they have to postpone two years. Seems to me that they have about 7 months to duplicate the canaveral launch pad on boca chica if they want to keep their contracts current to 2018. 

[tater]

6 minutes ago, PB666 said:

SpaceX just signed an 83 million dollar contract to lauch a miltary satellite, its first,mtgere will be more. 

 

Absolutely. A few a year, maybe. So they might get up to more than 1 launch per month. Awesome, and fine within the current pricing. This conversation is about the fantasy of charging grossly less than current pricing, and somehow making more money...

[PB666]

1 minute ago, tater said:

Absolutely. A few a year, maybe. So they might get up to more than 1 launch per month. Awesome, and fine within the current pricing. This conversation is about the fantasy of charging grossly less than current pricing, and somehow making more money...

Like i said they need to get bc up and fulfill all their open contracts. 

[tater]

7 minutes ago, John JACK said:

NASA is not only space agency on our planet. There are more countries that want and can make stuff to put in space than launch service providers.

Funny fact: in 2015 Turkmenistan launched it's first satellite. On a Falcon, of course. And there were things like SMAP, Earth monitoring is more than just cameras. New applications are developed constantly, and someone need to launch them.

Universities also launch tons of stuff. Mostly sounding rockets and cubesats, but several institutions combined can afford pretty big satellite.

We talk ramping launches by several per year for a start. It will reduce costs, make reuse more advantageous and —  after several years — at last increase demand. And reducing costs is always good for profit.

Right, just like it was obvious from the beginning, Musk has a dream, and SpaceX make money to support a dream. And we here can either marvel their achievements, or waste time trying to prove they do not.

Interplanetary used Dragons cost cheap, but provide priceless experimental data. And maybe even some bonus science.

Again, you are missing the distinction between lowered cost, and similar prices (more profit for SpaceX), and trying to grossly lower the cost/kg. The latter is universally desirable---assuming there is demand such that the company keeps making at least the same kind of money. 100X cheaper launch requires 100X as many launches to break even.

[PB666]

Just now, tater said:

Again, you are missing the distinction between lowered cost, and similar prices (more profit for SpaceX), and trying to grossly lower the cost/kg. The latter is universally desirable---assuming there is demand such that the company keeps making at least the same kind of money. 100X cheaper launch requires 100X as many launches to break even.

Nope its the cost of goods sold, if recycling saves 35 % and the charged 30% less then they pocket an addition 5%. That will work until competition catches up, sonthey really need to get themselves in schedule and give their customers other reasons for using their launch system instead of ULA, russian or chinese. 

I dont know who keeps throwing around 99%, A fifth of the mass of the falcon9 is in the nonexpendible second stage, that has 1/10th of the engine mass, in addition the cap and fairings are still not being return, so you are not talking now about anything close to 99 or 90 or even 80% cost reduction, lets just strike these economics out, and avoid creating a paper tiger argument. As it is if SX cannot get a recycle on the fairings they are going to have to double down on carbon fiber fabriation facilities. Butbif they can they will have a huge advantage over the competition. 

[tater]

I think I'm saying the same thing. SpaceX has no incentive to unilaterally lower their prices as long as they are already below their competitors, and a good value (once reliability is better demonstrated, for example). As long as they save money with reuse, and don't pass that all along, they make more money.

People keep talking as if a slightly lower cost structure is going to generate vastly more launches, and I just don't see any evidence for that idea. So they drop to 40M, and competitors work to get their costs in that regime... then SpaceX drops it further because with reuse, they could have dropped prices before, and didn't. Eventually launches are considerably cheaper. Great. But that helps no one in the LV business unless the demand increases commensurately.

I'm a semi-fanboy of SpaceX, BTW, I just don't drink the cherry Kool Aid.

[PB666]

31 minutes ago, tater said:

I think I'm saying the same thing. SpaceX has no incentive to unilaterally lower their prices as long as they are already below their competitors, and a good value (once reliability is better demonstrated, for example). As long as they save money with reuse, and don't pass that all along, they make more money.

People keep talking as if a slightly lower cost structure is going to generate vastly more launches, and I just don't see any evidence for that idea. So they drop to 40M, and competitors work to get their costs in that regime... then SpaceX drops it further because with reuse, they could have dropped prices before, and didn't. Eventually launches are considerably cheaper. Great. But that helps no one in the LV business unless the demand increases commensurately.

I'm a semi-fanboy of SpaceX, BTW, I just don't drink the cherry Kool Aid.

Guyana Kool-Aide, name after the James jones, jonestown massecre, 1978. guyana ex-uk

[tater]

Yes, I remember it from the news at the time  

[78stonewobble]

16 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

1/10 is target price with reuse. This is the guess, the part which has not yet been demonstrated.

1. But you can absolutely be "significantly cheaper" without being 90% cheaper. Right now SpaceX is undercutting its competition by 20-40%. Not necessarily on a per-kg basis, but on a launch service basis. 

2. To be fair, JohnJACK was talking about the process, not the reuse numbers. The expected process of inspection, refueling, and reflying is much closer to airliner processes than to the rebuild-after-every-flight process of the Shuttle.

But even if you go with reuse numbers, no one said it had to be a subtractive comparison. On a percentage basis, nine reuses before an engine rebuild is much closer to airline performance than zero reuses before an engine rebuild. 

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.

Edited May 10, 2016 by 78stonewobble

[78stonewobble]

 

13 hours ago, fredinno said:

A: F9 v1.0, a cheap ELV, is 0.87% the cost of a 1st stage only reusable RLV, F9FT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_v1.0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_full_thrust

30% cost savings from reuse- 13% cost increase from larger LV= 17% total real savings

http://spacenews.com/spacexs-reusable-falcon-9-what-are-the-real-cost-savings-for-customers/

B. F9 cannot send 6T to Mars transfer.

C:Actually, the quoted Saturn V cost of 1.22 Billion is EVERYTHING to launch.

Accounting for everything, except fixed costs like R+D.

D: The F9H cost increases if you use the 53T number, by 30%, as the current numbers almost certainly assume reuse.

E: BTW, the tiny payload fairing means that the actual F9H will carry FAR less than its 53T number to LEO- and a lack of a H2 stage make BLEO performance far worse.

Want to see what I mean?

http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/atlas-5.htm

4m payload fairing Atlas V rockets are all limited to ~9T to LEO due to the small payload fairing.

 

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.

Edited May 10, 2016 by 78stonewobble

[PB666]

56 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

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.

Center booster is not fuel cross fed, it will be reused, they may land the three engine as 1 piece. 

[sevenperforce]

6 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

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.

Each SRB adds about $10 million to the ELV price, supposedly. The five-meter fairing used for MSL is also a touch pricier than the four-meter fairing. So we have $172.4 million as our total estimated vehicle price. I'm going to round up to $175 million to account for the increased cost of support on a Martian launch; I think that's conservative.

6 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

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?

The contract price for ISS deliveries is part of a long-term contractual arrangement and includes priority provisions for NASA. For example, SpaceX can carry multiple payloads in one ISS-delivery launch, but they have to give NASA priority and must scrap the secondary payload if NASA says to. Such a contractual price is not indicative of the price for a one-off mission like a Mars payload.

And no, we don't add $62 million to the FH launch cost; the $90 million pricetag is the cost of all three boosters, plus the second stage, plus launch services and launch support. $90 million is the price for a Falcon Heavy launch regardless of whether they can recover the boosters.

However, that's the price for a completely new launch vehicle. SpaceX will be reusing cores for the Red Dragon mission. A reused launch comes with a discount -- probably 30-40% for F9Ft. Let's say 30% to be conservative, and let's say that the center core is new, so only the side boosters (which will be recoverable for the Red Dragon mission) are reused. That's 18 of the 28 engines being re-launched (rather than 9 out of 10 engines as in a Falcon 9FT) so we will reduce that discount to 21%. The FH launch price can thus be estimated at $71.1 million, less than 41% of the Atlas V 541.

"What about the capsule?" you say. Uh...what about it? The capsule is the payload for the launch vehicle. The 3.9 tonnes of Mars Science Laboratory wasn't the downmass to Mars; that was the launch mass of the entire transfer spacecraft: cruise stage, cruise propulsion system, battery and solar array, heat shield, EDL, and the Curiosity rover. The price of the spacecraft was not part of the Atlas V ELV.

The dry mass of a Dragon V2 is nearly double the MSL mass, at 6.4 tonnes. Add 1400 kg of propellant and the claimed 4 tonne payload to Mars, and you have a launch payload mass of 11.8 tonnes. So on a price-per-kg basis, the Falcon Heavy's payload to Mars is 13% the price of an Atlas V payload to Mars.

I'd say that's transformative.

Oh, but wait...according to this source, NASA paid $215.1 million for launch services associated with MSL. So actually, that's 10.9% on a per-kg basis.

7 hours ago, 78stonewobble said:

Quote

To be fair, JohnJACK was talking about the process, not the reuse numbers. The expected process of inspection, refueling, and reflying is much closer to airliner processes than to the rebuild-after-every-flight process of the Shuttle.

But even if you go with reuse numbers, no one said it had to be a subtractive comparison. On a percentage basis, nine reuses before an engine rebuild is much closer to airline performance than zero reuses before an engine rebuild.

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.

Again, it depends on how you look at it. 100% of SSME flights required a rebuild. Let us suppose that only 10% of Merlin flights require a rebuild, and 0.1% of airline engine flights require a rebuild. 10% is a lot close to 0.1% than it is to 100%, wouldn't you agree? Looking at it on a percentage basis means that as long as you have more than two flights between rebuilds, you're closer to the 0% point (infinite reusability) than the SSMEs.

How accurate is that 0.1% number, anyway? The airline industry uses a metric called Time Between Overhaul, or TBO. This represents the runtime (usually given in standardized hours) before an engine needs to be removed, disassembled, and overhauled. For high-performance jet turbofan engines, the TBO is around 3,000 hours. Let's take an eight-hour transatlantic flight as an example. That means 375 flights between engine overhauls, or 0.27% of flights requiring a rebuild. Again, 10% is a lot closer to 0.27% than it is to 100%.

Let's also take into account that restarts and shutdowns produce high stress on an engine. The SSMEs could not be restarted in flight and had to be refurbished after each test firing, and most airline engines only start and shutdown once per flight. The Merlin 1D, on the other hand, is usually test-fired twice before each launch, and the central engine fires up to four times per flight (for RTLS profiles). The CRS-8 booster will do ten test-fires before reuse, but let's say that eventually we'll be looking at closer to four test-fires before reuse. That means ten restart/shutdown cycles per flight. If they can manage the projected 10 launches before refurbishment, then we're looking at 100 cycles before refurbishment, or 1% of all cycles requiring a rebuild. 1% is within an order of magnitude of 0.27% and quite far from 100%.

6 hours ago, PB666 said:

Center booster is not fuel cross fed, it will be reused, they may land the three engine as 1 piece. 

The central booster will probably not be reused on the Red Dragon shot, and they definitely will not land the FH core as a single piece. Rather than using crossfeed, the center booster will throttle down rapidly after launch to maintain closer to constant acceleration on the vehicle as a whole; this will leave it with a large fuel reserve at separation, but not so much that it has trouble maintaining acceleration.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

The central booster will probably not be reused on the Red Dragon shot, and they definitely will not land the FH core as a single piece. Rather than using crossfeed, the center booster will throttle down rapidly after launch to maintain closer to constant acceleration on the vehicle as a whole; this will leave it with a large fuel reserve at separation, but not so much that it has trouble maintaining acceleration.

It can only throttle down to 40% based on a maximum thrust >7204 kN which we don't exactly know what it is, at most it can conserve about 50% of its fuel. If we use the current paradign, which is to shut down to 90% at 800 kmh, then that means they can only throttle down to 60%. After booster seperation that only leaves 30% of the fuel left, which seems like a lot but the booster spent more quickly, they lost about 8% of their burn time which means it only comes off with 22% more fuel to burn and a much heavier payload to lift, it does not translate into a higher dV at MECO than the JCSAT-14 launch they did the other night. It can be re-landed in the same way CMS-7 was landed.

[fredinno]

17 hours ago, John JACK said:

19 hours ago, tater said:

And next is almost infinite market for science — telescopes, Moon exploration, maybe asteroids and interplanetary probes.

Space Agencies are the only market for Science. And that's not an "infinite market"- they have small, finite budgets.

17 hours ago, PB666 said:

Fredinno, take a hint, break up your responses your quoting is corrupted because you are putting to many responses into one quote.

Quote

I hate this forum software.

17 hours ago, John JACK said:

 

And Red Dragon (yay for on-topic again!) is an example of just that, expanding markets further than LEO.

Red Dragon is a tech demonstrator and a stunt flight.

That's not a "expanding market."

That'd be like if NASA made a new Mars Probe, and you said that there was now a "new era" in Mars Space Exploration.

17 hours ago, PB666 said:

I think that answered itself. Sure the Russian program is credible, but not suitable for all payloads. The eyes of Putin are upon you . . . . .

Quote

It's good for the commercial payloads that are the focus of this thread.

17 hours ago, PB666 said:

Actually no I wouldn't, doesn't seem very wise that Iceland or Ireland would have a launch site unless they contracted for polar orbits, same with Canada.

Quote

Why don't the Saudis have one then?

It's not that high in demand.

17 hours ago, PB666 said:

Quote

 

Brownsville is 24 degrees from the equator. Ecuador is on the equator.

It's the closest to the equator other than Guiana, and a Brazil launch complex.

But really though, Sea Launch has shown that Sea Launch doesn't work because it can only be used for commerical launches. Why would SpaceX bother building on a failed project?

17 hours ago, John JACK said:

18 hours ago, fredinno said:

 

By not spending 400K$/kg to shave off several last kilos of mass. Lower reliability, right. No need for triple redundancy and shielded electronics everywhere — if it fails, we'll just launch next. But mostly, by lowering materials and construction cost. Use thicker plates instead of isogrid, dural and titanium instead of carbon, monoprop RSC instead of ion. Satellite will be bigger, but launch per kg is affordable, no need to jam it into smallest booster possible.
And what standardisation could be there with 12 launches market?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_702

Not really standardized, as much as bus standardization.

Lower reliability isn't possible until space repair takes off.

I doubt the material cost of a satellite is enough to justify moving away from isogrid.

But the monoprop instead of ION is a good idea.

I can see what you mean- though I feel reusable space tugs and repair are a far bigger driver for that than cheaper launches.

17 hours ago, John JACK said:

18 hours ago, fredinno said:

 

It was done the wrong way. We are talking about reusing rocket parts, not assembling new at factory.

That wasn't what we were discussing, you were arguing that attaching engines again was too complex.

[fredinno]

17 hours ago, John JACK said:

It's a graph of all launches combined, not that 12 purely commercial that @tater talks about. There is even visible drop in 1991 — because Soviet space program was no more and USA space program lost it's main purpose.

 

There are several landers on Mars and several satellites near Mars. Someone put them there and got paid for going that. Isn't it a market? SpaceX sell transportation, and they will put your payload anywhere in Solar System. And if there are means to do it, someone will pay for it.
Of course, interplanetary probes cost several times more than launch. But Moon is near, and it can be studied by inexpensive machines, student project level. And coloured Dragons are means to get probes somewhere, without risks of sailing space on their own.

There was also a satellite Market crash in the late 90s- early 00s.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/thorh13.html

Quote

Delta 3's tough start had cost business, and the collapsing commercial satellite market had caused more to vanish.  But there was another factor in play.  Boeing had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Sea Launch, an international commercial launch venture, even before Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas.  Sea Launch Zenit could out-lift Delta 3 by a sizable margin - and its first two launches had succeeded. 

In 2000, Boeing also purchased Hughes Space & Communications, the satellite builder.  Satellite profit margins were sizeable.   Launch services profit margins were slim to none, especially with emerging competition from Russia.  Unlike McDonnell Douglas, Boeing had little incentive to continue to support Delta 3 in a shrinking commercial satellite launch market.

17 hours ago, tater said:

NASA is indeed a customer, but now you're talking about maybe a single launch every few years.

It's actually once or twice a year (at most), and for ULA primarily- F9 can capture the Earth Observations and TDRS market (though that's less valuable), but not the time-sensitive planetary launch that brings the big bucks (and rockets)- SpaceX is way to busy to guarantee a launch slot when NASA needs it.

Also, SpaceX will likely do dual launch for NASA earth payloads, they're generally pretty small, and undersized for a RTLS landing F9R.

16 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

I think the best near-term market increase for price increase is university STEM departments. Even if it's a special educational discount limited to cheap, unrefurbished (and unreliable) relaunched boosters, a satelite launched per semester pushes student investment/interest, which will pay off for spaceX when those university students graduate into the aerospace field.

That's really only in the smallsat/cubesat market. 

If we were arguing about the economics of the booming F1-grade market, I'd agree, but F9- market is stagnant right now.

16 hours ago, tater said:

Because SpaceX makes more money by giving discounts? 

$800,000 is a lot of money for a handful of students to work on a spacecraft. Cubesats are far cheaper, and can indeed hit rides, to go at greatly reduced cost, but that's not a model for making more money.

I'm trying to stay on topic... Red Dragon, and possible future Mars exploration by SpaceX as groundwork for their grandiose plans. That takes money. My thought is that they can blow their leftover EOL launchers on this, and do their experiments/hobby launches on the cheap, having gotten other customers to already have paid for the rockets a few times over.

The government gives discounts.

16 hours ago, PB666 said:

SpaceX just signed an 83 million dollar contract to lauch a miltary satellite, its first, there will be more. 

 

That's not a new market, or even a increase in market (maybe a 5% increase in 5-10 years, composed of an extra backup GPS or comsat).

That's taking from ULA.

Not to mention, the DOD is moving more towards commercial uses, most specifically commercial spysats and whether sats (earth observation) and later potentially also comsats.

That's bad for ULA, but also bad for SpaceX, because they've gotten a market that will be on the decline in the future, unless WWIII happens.

That probably means more total sats launched, though, due to lower cost. How much is up to debate.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, fredinno said:

It's actually once or twice a year (at most), and for ULA primarily- F9 can capture the Earth Observations and TDRS market (though that's less valuable), but not the time-sensitive planetary launch that brings the big bucks (and rockets)- SpaceX is way to busy to guarantee a launch slot when NASA needs it.

You're not replying to the context of my statement. I was explicitly addressing BEO missions only.