Red Dragon confirmed!!

[78stonewobble]

4 minutes ago, John JACK said:

But they do. Only difference with SpaceX is that big old companies do big complex stuff. Like making total new boosters with "time proven" winged or parachute recovery. Not a big surprise, it comes with a huge payload penalty AND huge development cost. And at modern launch rates that cost will pay off approximately never. SpaceX at first made modern cheap booster, and only after that made it reusable with minor modifications. So they had economy of mass first, and economy of reuse second. Purpose made reusable boosters were just always overengineered, all that wings, parachutes, or breaking rocket in half is not needed.

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?

[John JACK]

17 hours ago, fredinno said:

reusing a stage vs the engines, the latter of which is actually more economical cost wise in some calculations.

Engines are not most expensive part of a booster. Most expensive part is humans that work hours to assemble, check and prepare a rocket. Reusing only engines will be Shuttle all again. Take out engines, take them apart, check everything, replace some parts (at least nuts and pins), clean with surgical tools, reassemble, retest... It may be even worse than just making new. And Shuttle landed engines gently, not with ballistic entry and parachute jerks on a broken off rocket hindquarters.

Tank is light and expensive too. Decoupling and parachutes are expensive, and may weight not less than spare fuel. But most expensive is work to fit reused engines to a new rocket. That's thousands of critical connections, that could be assembled wrong or suffer from decoupling and reentry. Landed stage is already proved working fine, but reassembled rocket need to pass all the tests again, including fire tests, and it adds engines more wear too.

2 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

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.

We'll know soon enough. But for now they state that stages may be reused more that ten times and do not need major refurbishment as in "removing engines and taking them apart". It's something closer to airliners and further from Shuttle and failed purpose-made reusable boosters.

 

49 minutes ago, PB666 said:

This is particularly interesting for developing markets that cannot afford a full scale space program but say might want a specific GSO sat that beams programs to say to the communities that surround major metropolitan areas of brazil or another one to predict sea levels and weather patterns in the Solomon Islands, etc. SpaceX could branch into helping make payloads that are componentiallized to add simpler packages, in which case the dev cost on satellites go down.

That seems be right. Satellite market may be finite, but it's not even close to full capacity now. And satellites CAN be made cheaper, if launch costs and times go down. Communications or monitoring satellites are pretty much all the same now, and they still are launched in numbers every year.

[sevenperforce]

9 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

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?

That SpaceX is significantly cheaper in regards to the competition is already established. 

That SpaceX's designs for reuse will bring costs low enough to meet Elon's goals? That's anybody's guess. 

[78stonewobble]

1 minute ago, John JACK said:

We'll know soon enough. But for now they state that stages may be reused more that ten times and do not need major refurbishment as in "removing engines and taking them apart". It's something closer to airliners and further from Shuttle and failed purpose-made reusable boosters.

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.

[78stonewobble]

10 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

1. That SpaceX is significantly cheaper in regards to the competition is already established. 

2. That SpaceX's designs for reuse will bring costs low enough to meet Elon's goals? That's anybody's guess. 

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?

[sevenperforce]

1 minute ago, 78stonewobble said:

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?

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

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. 

14 minutes ago, 78stonewobble said:

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.

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. 

[tater]

Cutting costs is a goal that people theoretically want, but how does it serve the interest of SpaceX? It's like diamonds. They should be cheap, but they are held artificially high. If I found 100 metric tons of perfect diamonds in my basement, I'd be a fool to dump them on the market.

SpaceX needs to sell launches and make money, they have no incentive to reduce retail price below what customers would be happy to pay. The only alternative is a bottomless mass market... seeing many trips for a small price. I doubt such a market exists, except maybe passengers some day, assuming there was a destination, and it was perceived as very safe.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, kunok said:

The mars attempt is the good here and won't be cheap.

Source? Because all project I have seen no one started to do anything and personally almost every one looks weird to me.

Thats good right if you are a launch company expanding, you don't want you payloads launch purchaser already signed up.  

http://www.globalchange.com/future-of-satellites-broadband-communications-and-mobile-phones.htm

This is not enough for you?

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

http://spacenews.com/spacex-opening-seattle-plant-to-build-4000-broadband-satellites/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/inmarsat-plans-50mbps-global-satellite-broadband/#!

https://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/creating-the-worlds-largest-ever-satellite-constellation-0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O3b_%28satellite%29

http://www.hughes.com/technologies/broadband-satellite-systems/jupiter-system

About half of the worlds population is more suitable for satellite broadband than wired connectivity due to remoteness and the lack of both engineering and political infrastructure.

And I do believe that the British and EU are specifically building a broad band system of many satellites that will target Africa (read on BBC).

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36225971

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p033y98q

You can take a situation like Nigeria, if they launch a internet satellite, eventually it reaches the limit of communication, so they have to launch another, at GSO it has a latency of a fraction of a second. But with a lower orbiting network individuals satellites are moving in an out of communication all the time but when they are optimal latency is about 1/10th the time. So it is more intelligent to place more MEO satellites than to have 1 or 2 GSO satellites. What if you are a business that operates in multiple African companies, the only secure communication right now is satellite so that means that a Nigeria only satellite does not work. And the competitors like Hughes are very expensive and they are in no hurry to place more mega-satellites, afterall you have to sign up for service 24 months at a time and your window is 10AM to 2AM depending on the area.

So in prosperous areas of the third world there is a demand for wireless broadband communication.

 

[John JACK]

36 minutes ago, tater said:

SpaceX needs to sell launches and make money, they have no incentive to reduce retail price below what customers would be happy to pay.

100 tons of diamonds worth exactly nothing if you do not sell any of them. Lower retail prices do mean more customers and more profit. And there sure are more customers that cannot afford current fees, but will pay slightly less.

And more profit means more investment in bigger and better rockets. Isn't Falcon just a testbed to perfect landing tech for more expensive but more effective boosters? Not open-cycle kerosene but closed-cycle methane, with much more ISP and cheaper fuel. Throwing out or crashing better boosters is wasteful, and reusing them makes even more profit. And then — Mars.

[tater]

15 minutes ago, John JACK said:

100 tons of diamonds worth exactly nothing if you do not sell any of them. Lower retail prices do mean more customers and more profit. And there sure are more customers that cannot afford current fees, but will pay slightly less.

And more profit means more investment in bigger and better rockets. Isn't Falcon just a testbed to perfect landing tech for more expensive but more effective boosters? Not open-cycle kerosene but closed-cycle methane, with much more ISP and cheaper fuel. Throwing out or crashing better boosters is wasteful, and reusing them makes even more profit. And then — Mars.

No. You can make a million $ by selling 2 million things that cost $0.50 for $1. You can also make a million by selling one thing that costs $0.50 for a million plus $0.50. In order to do the former, you need 2 million people willing to buy the product, for the latter, you need only find one customer.

I counted the launches in the last few years, and if you subtract "national" payloads outside the US (China, Russia, India, etc) that will never use a commercial LV, and you also subtract launches of test vehicles of other commercial companies for their own purposes, then there are only on the order of 10-20 launches available per year for SpaceX to get. They get those launches if they charge 60M, 40M, or 10M, the only thing that varies would be their profit, the less they charge, the less they make, period. For the lower cost model to work, they need to create new demand. The lower the launch price, the higher the demand. If they drop launch costs to 1M per launch, they will need to launch 60 times more payloads. That seems stunningly unlikely.

Edited May 9, 2016 by tater

[Kryten]

PB666, do you have any idea what happened in 90s? None of this Big LEO stuff is remotely new, Teledesic was going to use 840 sats to beam broadband to everyone all the way back in 1997; they even launched a couple of test satellites. Then the dot-com bubble burst and it all vanished like morning dew. You looked at a graph of space or internet investment over time lately? How many of the companies you're gushing over do you seriously think will survive the bursting of this bubble?

[PB666]

11 minutes ago, John JACK said:

100 tons of diamonds worth exactly nothing if you do not sell any of them. Lower retail prices do mean more customers and more profit. And there sure are more customers that cannot afford current fees, but will pay slightly less.

And more profit means more investment in bigger and better rockets. Isn't Falcon just a testbed to perfect landing tech for more expensive but more effective boosters? Not open-cycle kerosene but closed-cycle methane, with much more ISP and cheaper fuel. Throwing out or crashing better boosters is wasteful, and reusing them makes even more profit. And then — Mars.

No I think falcon is a salable commodity, Seriously they can put up

 

3 minutes ago, tater said:

No. You can make a million $ by selling 2 million things that cost $0.50 for $1. You can also make a million by selling one thing that costs $0.50 for a million plus $0.50. In oder to do the former, you need 2 million people willing to buy the product, for the latter, you need only find one customer.

I counted the launches in the last few years, and if you subtract "national" payloads outside the US (China, Russia, India, etc) that will never use a commercial LV, and you also subtract launches of test vehicles of other commercial companies for their own purposes, then there are only on the order of 10-20 launches available per year for SpaceX to get. They get those launches if they charge 60M, 40M, or 10M, the only thing that varies would be their profit, the less they charge, the less they make, period. For the lower cost model to work, they need to create new demand. The lower the launch price, the higher the demand. If they drop launch costs to 1M per launch, they will need to launch 60 times more payloads. That seems stunningly unlikely.

BTW before you asked that question did you ask the question what is the trend in space craft launching over time? I can give you a hint in late 1950 it was 1, sputnik. How about the minimum cost per kg to get into space, is it going up or down (IN 1980 dollars).

Why are we talking about methane, while the energy density is higher, its not that much higher than a aliphatic compound. Even isopentane is a better choice than methane. Methane is a good choice if you are making fuel offworld.

SpaceX's biggest problem in my opinion is that once they make a henry ford innovation of their production, the competition will not be far behind them, you can assume that the Western Pacific economies are going to sit on their hands, and they are less concerned about western copyrights than they are being a major competitor all the high tech market. SpaceX could beat out the European and United launch industries, but that's not where the future competition is going to come from. While we might not have the exact numbers of performance and engineering of the Falcon9, I'd be willing to bet the Chinese are already redesigning their launch platforms based on those plans. If I was Japan, I would be trying to get a SpaceX space port built in Okinawa because its no longer about having a program, it will be about having a competitive program on site. Does anyone remember the Jeep, it started out as a Ford during the war, then became part of AMC, then Chrysler, now its part of Fiat. The company that now manufacturers the Jeep is from a nation that we used the Jeep for fighting against during WWII. Things change, you have to up your game all the time or you will be pwned.

What if spaceX puts a spaceport in India? Can't see them putting one in China, but Ecuador, Okinawa, . . . . .

Lets talk about emmerging nations, Morroco, Nigeria, South Africa, Congo, Qatar, UAE, Saudi arabia, Turkey, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Philipines  all of these have nearby security risk, some of them have security risks that have satellites, but almost none of them have launch facilities.

[sevenperforce]

25 minutes ago, tater said:

No. You can make a million $ by selling 2 million things that cost $0.50 for $1. You can also make a million by selling one thing that costs $0.50 for a million plus $0.50. In order to do the former, you need 2 million people willing to buy the product, for the latter, you need only find one customer.

I counted the launches in the last few years, and if you subtract "national" payloads outside the US (China, Russia, India, etc) that will never use a commercial LV, and you also subtract launches of test vehicles of other commercial companies for their own purposes, then there are only on the order of 10-20 launches available per year for SpaceX to get. They get those launches if they charge 60M, 40M, or 10M, the only thing that varies would be their profit, the less they charge, the less they make, period. For the lower cost model to work, they need to create new demand. The lower the launch price, the higher the demand. If they drop launch costs to 1M per launch, they will need to launch 60 times more payloads. That seems stunningly unlikely.

Indeed. 

But if they can sell reused launches at a 30% markdown while increasing their profits, then maybe they end up doing twice as many launches the next year. And three times as many launches the year after that. And as prices continue to drop, demand goes up, and they get better at reuse, and prices drop further. So what if other companies start aping them? Lower cost, higher demand, more customers, repeat. 

[Kryten]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

Indeed. 

But if they can sell reused launches at a 30% markdown while increasing their profits, then maybe they end up doing twice as many launches the next year. And three times as many launches the year after that. And as prices continue to drop, demand goes up, and they get better at reuse, and prices drop further.

Demand for space launches has never worked like that, because space launches aren't an end product that anybody wants.

[PB666]

3 minutes ago, Kryten said:

PB666, do you have any idea what happened in 90s? None of this Big LEO stuff is remotely new, Teledesic was going to use 840 sats to beam broadband to everyone all the way back in 1997; they even launched a couple of test satellites. Then the dot-com bubble burst and it all vanished like morning dew. You looked at a graph of space or internet investment over time lately? How many of the companies you're gushing over do you seriously think will survive the bursting of this bubble?

Sure but after the dot com bubble burst a few mega companies emerged, like facebook, like amazon.com, google. There was almost no commerical civilian aircraft produced during the great depression then WWII came along and within a decade and half  you had the 707, the Jumbo Jet. Don't lend to the belief that a few goggled-eyed play happy gamers ended up begging on the street that the entire tech industry collapsed. Every boom has a bust, During 1980s the oil industry went bust, since 2008 Houston has had the fastest growth economy in the Western hemisphere, from 2009 to 2012 the oil stocks outperform the other areas of the stock market, including the lucrative developing country stocks.  Boom/Bust cycles are the name of the game, tech always drives toward increasing complexity, performance and lower cost per functional unit.

If you told folks at the heart of the great depression that in 20 to 30 years people would be whizzing close to the speed of sound at 40,000 feet in airplanes with engines basically co-opted from a last ditch axis effort to defeat the allies at the end of a war that comes after the war to end all wars, who would believe your prediction?

[Kryten]

You didn't answer my question, and it doesn't look like you really considered it. How many of the companies you're depending on for your giant space launch demand boom do you seriously think will survive the next tech bubble burst?

[John JACK]

35 minutes ago, tater said:

You can make a million $ by selling 2 million things that cost $0.50 for $1. You can also make a million by selling one thing that costs $0.50 for a million plus $0.50. In order to do the former, you need 2 million people willing to buy the product, for the latter, you need only find one customer.

But what next? If you sold something to 2 million people, you can make more (for $0.20) and sell it to 200 million people, making big profit. But if you sold it for a million to one customer — good luck finding another such fool.

Diamonds are a very good example. It's not an useless precious trincket, they make tools of it. You need to sell your 100 tons gradually, keeping price just a bit lower than others. Lower — because you want buyers to buy your diamonds, not other's. Just a bit — because obvious. That way you will get maximum profit in minimum time. Average market price will drop, but you will still have money. And demand for diamond tools will just go up.

4 minutes ago, Kryten said:

giant space launch demand boom

Why giant space launch boom and not slow and steady space launch rise? People DO need more stuff in space, most of them just can't afford it or do not see enough profit. Lower launch prices 10 and there will be like 20% more demand. First company to do it will have all the profit.

[sevenperforce]

26 minutes ago, Kryten said:

Demand for space launches has never worked like that, because space launches aren't an end product that anybody wants.

Getting stuff into space is an end product which a lot of folks want. 

Slash launch prices by 50% and suddenly it makes sense to invest in a startup satellite service provider whose business model depends on several redundant comsats because now you can afford it. With lower-cost and more flexible launches, providers no longer have to overengineer their sats nearly so far, so those costs come down more. Lower costs make smaller companies competitive against the big giants, prices drop across the services market, and demand goes higher still. 

[tater]

50% is not a mass market, and launch costs don't drop towards fuel/refurb costs until you are more than an order of magnitude cheaper.

There are a finite number of launches available, and while lower costs can set the bar lower in terms of investment in payloads, the company needs to not just make the same amount, they presumably need to grow. 

We have comsats. We have earth observation sats. Could we have some more? Sure. Will we start needing thousands of launches per year instead of 10s? Not bloody likely.

[Kryten]

 

1 minute ago, sevenperforce said:

Slash launch prices by 50% and suddenly it makes sense to invest in a startup satellite service provider whose business model depends on several redundant comsats because now you can afford it. With lower-cost and more flexible launches, providers no longer have to overengineer their sats nearly so far, so those costs come down more. Lower costs make smaller companies competitive against the big giants, prices drop across the services market, and demand goes higher still. 

It would not, because launch has never been a major factor in the overall price of communications satellites. Consider this; SkyPerfect JSAT are currently putting together the contracts for their next big mobile broadband sat, JCSAT 17. It will probably launch on a Falcon 9, with launch price probably somewhere below $65 million. They just signed a contract with Harris corp for $37 million for the antenna. Just the antenna. Take into account the money for upgraded ground stations, sat bus and transponders, and your launch cost is buried in the noise.

[sevenperforce]

6 minutes ago, Kryten said:

It would not, because launch has never been a major factor in the overall price of communications satellites. Consider this; SkyPerfect JSAT are currently putting together the contracts for their next big mobile broadband sat, JCSAT 17. It will probably launch on a Falcon 9, with launch price probably somewhere below $65 million. They just signed a contract with Harris corp for $37 million for the antenna. Just the antenna. Take into account the money for upgraded ground stations, sat bus and transponders, and your launch cost is buried in the noise.

The way I heard it, the limiting factors were a combination of launch availability, launch price, and launch capability constraints. Particularly for smaller companies. The actual launch price itself may not be the majority of the investment, but launching itself represents such a large bottleneck in the whole process that it drives up costs all around it. Cheaper launch costs means that cheaper sats can be launched without as much fear of failure, and constellations in particular become far, far more economical.

[Kryten]

If launch availability was a bottleneck SeaLaunch wouldn't have gone bust. Even after they have, there's still a lot of easy growth potential in that area of the launch market simply from ULA and Mitsubish's spare capability. It might be true if you're looking into the small LEO sat field, but for big GSO sats it's nonsense.

[kunok]

Show me an actual project, AKA real satellites in LEO or MEO, in your list is a proyect of 2010 with still didn't happened

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

So in prosperous areas of the third world there is a demand for wireless broadband communication.

I support this affirmation, but I also say that it will be always cheaper with communication towers, or the blimp communication relays, than with satellites, is the same idea than in the 90's as kryten says here:

 

1 hour ago, Kryten said:

PB666, do you have any idea what happened in 90s? None of this Big LEO stuff is remotely new, Teledesic was going to use 840 sats to beam broadband to everyone all the way back in 1997; they even launched a couple of test satellites. Then the dot-com bubble burst and it all vanished like morning dew. You looked at a graph of space or internet investment over time lately? How many of the companies you're gushing over do you seriously think will survive the bursting of this bubble?

I even doubt if spaceX itself is not a bubble, or the other elon business. It totally looks to me that the real price of the launches are bigger than what they charge to the consumers (except nasa), like in tesla, in hope of a future reduction based in a incredible augment of the launch market.

32 minutes ago, Kryten said:

It would not, because launch has never been a major factor in the overall price of communications satellites. Consider this; SkyPerfect JSAT are currently putting together the contracts for their next big mobile broadband sat, JCSAT 17. It will probably launch on a Falcon 9, with launch price probably somewhere below $65 million. They just signed a contract with Harris corp for $37 million for the antenna. Just the antenna. Take into account the money for upgraded ground stations, sat bus and transponders, and your launch cost is buried in the noise.

Thanks for the data, people keep talking like the launch is the final good or like is the biggest cost of the system.

[tater]

Even the LEO constellation ideas end up with finite sats. What is the minimum cost of a useful LEO commercial sat? They have to be pretty cheap to be so disposable that they create a market for many hundreds of launches per year to replace the downed sats. What are the fixed costs for a given launch cadence? Can the extant crew launch weekly? Daily?

Thought experiment:

Boosters are free. Launch cost is labor and fuel, plus second stage cost. What is the minimal cost figure possible?

The booster use and fuel plus labor have to be at least 0.5M. Assuming that 1/10th the cost of F9 is the 2d stage (likely low, but we're spitballing), then they'd want to charge ~4-6M for that part alone, plus the 0.5M for the booster (and some markup on that). They cannot possibly sell a launch cheaper than maybe 5-6M$. So instead of making 10s of millions per launch, they;re making a couple, or maybe 3M. So to keep the lights on, they need 10X as many launches. You need to show that sort of demand for it to make sense. What will they launch?

[PB666]

26 minutes ago, Kryten said:

If launch availability was a bottleneck SeaLaunch wouldn't have gone bust. Even after they have, there's still a lot of easy growth potential in that area of the launch market simply from ULA and Mitsubish's spare capability. It might be true if you're looking into the small LEO sat field, but for big GSO sats it's nonsense.

All spacex has to do is dig out a dock berth about three barges wide off south of the brownsville ship channel and they can have a barges line up with rockets on them. They are going to have to do somthink like that anyway if they are going tongive recycling a gonat their new facility.