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Customize your own Atlas V

Streetwind

By Streetwind
in Science & Spaceflight

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Streetwind

Streetwind

Posted
Posted

ULA just announced the launch of a new website: https://www.rocketbuilder.com/

And it's not just a marketing gag - it's a fully functional sales tool. It literally lets you order an Atlas V rocket launch to your specification and date, from a website. Like a car configurator. With an up-front price quote included. I mean sure, you can do it for fun, but one press on the "submit" button will let you put down your name for a reservation - and then the company will contact you to hash out the details of your contract.

This in an industry that's traditionally so hush-hush about their deals that customers often have to sign NDAs about the exact price they paid, this is a pretty big step forward. And, of course, a pretty rad thing to any space geek. :) Also gives a lot more insight into how much payload exactly which configuration can lift to which particular orbit.

Can't wait to see this become a trend! :D

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kunok

kunok

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The curious thing is that they also advice savings that come from getting lower insurance cost because their reliability, and that they rarely have delays which means unprofitable time. And is not a irrelevant saving.

I think this is precisely what every expensive launcher should be advertising.

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YNM

YNM

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Posted (edited)

O/T : If KSP Forum wants to land on Phobos / Deimos a 3t spacecraft + propulsion, they can do it for (uh) "$44 M" [1] . Atlas V 401.

Also, with SEC, it can launch up to <19t of payload to LEO, Atlas V 551. Where's the DEC ???

EDIT :

[1] : Apparently this is just bogus right ? Price is $ 109 M without their reduction thing. Also, if you want them to adjust the orbit, it'll cost $ 5 M more.

Better leave this to RO / RSS then...

Edited by YNM
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YNM

YNM

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8 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

We could use crowd funding and be the first to land plushies on another body.

Unluckily, that 44 is after some reduction thing. Actual paid is on 109.

Orbit optimization takes another 5.

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_Augustus_

_Augustus_

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, YNM said:

Unluckily, that 44 is after some reduction thing. Actual paid is on 109.

Orbit optimization takes another 5.

Let's think about this, shall we? Sending Kerbal plushies to the Moon? Sounds cool in my book. Let's calculate expenses.

The largest Kickstarter ever was $20 million, for the Pebble smartwatch. $20 million certainly can't buy you an Atlas V, let alone any rocket that can send plushies to the Moon.

BUT - Pebble had a follow-up Kickstarter that was $10 million, so it's easy to assume we could have a campaign that raises $30 million. This is enough to buy a Minotaur I rocket, which has just enough payload capacity to send some plushies in a box on a lunar impact trajectory. We'd have a million bucks or so to spend on an actual payload, probably exceeding the poor little Minotaur's capacity.

Alternatively, if we used all of the proceeds from the next million KSP buyers, we could get a Minotaur IV ($50 million) and have enough money left over to send an entire small satellite to lunar orbit. Then we could dump the plushies just before orbital insertion.

Or, we could go to the Russians. A Rokot rocket costs a bit less than the Minotaur I but has around three times the payload capacity - more than enough to send Kerbals and a few CubeSats to the Moon. Or, if we haggled with international relations, we could get an even bigger Dnepr rocket from the Russians/Ukrainians for roughly the same price, which has about 1.5x the payload. 

Hmm....

 

 

Edited by _Augustus_
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kerbiloid

kerbiloid

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Posted (edited)

Even if it succesfully lands on the Moon. How to upgrade its parts on every KSP release? 

3 months after touchdown - an unexpected electricity leak and even-numbered attach nodes reversal (magnetometer gets detached and falls down).
The next release - overheating and solar panels get turned to the lunar surface (suddenly corrected due to new landing legs bug: one of them gets extended while two others close).
A year later - colliders become invalid, the probe get immaterial and falls down through the Moon surface.
An minute later: the probe sinking through the Moon reaches the depth of 1 physical range under surface, awakes Kraken, and the Moon turns into a fractal singularity orbiting around the Earth.

Here we have GameData, but how can one repair IRL KSP LEM?...

Also, imagine two different KSP gangs land two probes at once using incompartible mods. We can lose even the Earth.

Or the same with KSP-based LEO satellites. Every time they get closer 2 km to each other, their mods incompatibility makes them burst and kesslerize.

Edited by kerbiloid
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hypervelocity

hypervelocity

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Posted
10 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

Let's think about this, shall we? Sending Kerbal plushies to the Moon? Sounds cool in my book. Let's calculate expenses.

The largest Kickstarter ever was $20 million, for the Pebble smartwatch. $20 million certainly can't buy you an Atlas V, let alone any rocket that can send plushies to the Moon.

BUT - Pebble had a follow-up Kickstarter that was $10 million, so it's easy to assume we could have a campaign that raises $30 million. This is enough to buy a Minotaur I rocket, which has just enough payload capacity to send some plushies in a box on a lunar impact trajectory. We'd have a million bucks or so to spend on an actual payload, probably exceeding the poor little Minotaur's capacity.

Alternatively, if we used all of the proceeds from the next million KSP buyers, we could get a Minotaur IV ($50 million) and have enough money left over to send an entire small satellite to lunar orbit. Then we could dump the plushies just before orbital insertion.

Or, we could go to the Russians. A Rokot rocket costs a bit less than the Minotaur I but has around three times the payload capacity - more than enough to send Kerbals and a few CubeSats to the Moon. Or, if we haggled with international relations, we could get an even bigger Dnepr rocket from the Russians/Ukrainians for roughly the same price, which has about 1.5x the payload. 

Hmm....

 

 

Star Citizen raised 100+ million on crowfunding (don't know if precisely Kickstarter or another crowdfunding platform...)

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Kryten

Kryten

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Posted
11 hours ago, _Augustus_ said:

BUT - Pebble had a follow-up Kickstarter that was $10 million, so it's easy to assume we could have a campaign that raises $30 million. This is enough to buy a Minotaur I rocket, which has just enough payload capacity to send some plushies in a box on a lunar impact trajectory. We'd have a million bucks or so to spend on an actual payload, probably exceeding the poor little Minotaur's capacity.

Alternatively, if we used all of the proceeds from the next million KSP buyers, we could get a Minotaur IV ($50 million) and have enough money left over to send an entire small satellite to lunar orbit. Then we could dump the plushies just before orbital insertion.

Minotaur launches can only be purchased by the US government, because of a law intended to prevent the market being flooded with cheap ICBM conversions. Russia has no such law, hence Dnepr and Rokot being commercially available.

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Streetwind

Streetwind

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3 hours ago, hypervelocity said:

Star Citizen raised 100+ million on crowfunding (don't know if precisely Kickstarter or another crowdfunding platform...)

For their actual 30-day Kickstarter campaign, they raised a bit more than 2.1 million, and roughly that much again through a campaign on their website which ran in parallel with Kickstarter.

The ongoing "crowdfunding" of Star Citizen is more of a shop that sells ingame items for a game that doesn't really exist yet (though admittedly, small fragments have become playable recently). They call it "crowdfunding" because all of the items will be attainable through normal gameplay too, the prices are very high, and people are advised to only buy with the intent to support the development of the game. Also note that this has been going on for four years now - not just a month, which is what most traditional crowdfunding campaigns last.

So yeah, you'd have your work cut out for you if you wanted to try and match that :P

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