totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Beccab]

 

[tater]

 

 

 

[Beccab]

Strongback retract, T-4 minutes

[tater]

Time to let the American broomstick fly...

[Beccab]

Liftoff

Max Q

Stage & fairing separation
 

29 minutes ago, tater said:

Time to let the American broomstick fly...

Heard that as well, hah

Entry burn

Landing!

Edited March 9, 2022 by Beccab

[tater]

Landing confirmed no pics

 

 

[tater]

 

 

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, tater said:

 

 

Why did they convert one falcon heavy side booster to an falcon 9 but not the other? 
Yes its makes sense if they changed the side boosters somehow like integrated sideways connection structure into the body to save weight or other stuff who it would be impractical to do to an existing falcon 9. 
But why only convert one.  Have one extra side booster as an backup? Was they short of falcon 9 at some time? 

Also looks like they given up on landing the core stage from FH, 

[Beccab]

 

[tater]

 

[Beccab]

 

 

 

[Hannu2]

18 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Why did they convert one falcon heavy side booster to an falcon 9 but not the other? 
Yes its makes sense if they changed the side boosters somehow like integrated sideways connection structure into the body to save weight or other stuff who it would be impractical to do to an existing falcon 9. 
But why only convert one.  Have one extra side booster as an backup? Was they short of falcon 9 at some time?

This is guess but maybe another had some damage or technical problems and they decided to scrap it.

There is also 2 unused booster set for Falcon Heavies. There are couple of space force missions in list which seem to slip always for future. Is there some known problems with Heavy or why it has so little use? As far as I know it is cheap compared to all other heavy rockets than Falcon 9 and has clean (but of course statistically not very significant) launch record.

[Beccab]

5 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

This is guess but maybe another had some damage or technical problems and they decided to scrap it.

There is also 2 unused booster set for Falcon Heavies. There are couple of space force missions in list which seem to slip always for future. Is there some known problems with Heavy or why it has so little use? As far as I know it is cheap compared to all other heavy rockets than Falcon 9 and has clean (but of course statistically not very significant) launch record.

The delays on FH are due to payload readiness as far as we know, not the rocket. There are 5 launches planned for this year, and only two USSF missions have slipped to May

[Ultimate Steve]

6 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

. Is there some known problems with Heavy or why it has so little use? As far as I know it is cheap compared to all other heavy rockets than Falcon 9 and has clean (but of course statistically not very significant) launch record.

There just isn't much demand for a vehicle of that size in general, and what demand there is will lag behind availability significantly. With how much FH got delayed, not many people committed to it before it was real. Now that it is here and people can count on it, missions for it are springing up, but those missions take time to make. If you look at the manifest, there's like at least 5-10 flights planned through 2024 at this point.

[Hannu2]

1 minute ago, Beccab said:

The delays on FH are due to payload readiness as far as we know, not the rocket. There are 5 launches planned for this year, and only two USSF missions have slipped to May

OK. I read list in Spaceflightnow and it includes only two USSF missions. Now I found a complete list. But it still seems that communication satellite companies do not trust Falcon Heavy. There is only one such mission. Or don't they need more payload capacity?

 

[Beccab]

1 minute ago, Hannu2 said:

OK. I read list in Spaceflightnow and it includes only two USSF missions. Now I found a complete list. But it still seems that communication satellite companies do not trust Falcon Heavy. There is only one such mission. Or don't they need more payload capacity?

 

Two things mainly:

- as @Ultimate Steve said, companies only started considering FH after it started launching, which means things come slow and late

- FH had more payload contracts on it, but the performance F9 ended up getting with block 5 was much higher than initially planned; this means that most of the satellites were moved to F9 as it is cheaper, leaving FH with mainly launches from the one entity that always needs more launch capacity, which is NASA

A difference with Starship, for instance, is that there are two more ways where a huge payload is needed: Starlink and tankers for launches out of LEO. The chance of it being cheaper than F9 would be an added bonus

[magnemoe]

27 minutes ago, Hannu2 said:

This is guess but maybe another had some damage or technical problems and they decided to scrap it.

There is also 2 unused booster set for Falcon Heavies. There are couple of space force missions in list which seem to slip always for future. Is there some known problems with Heavy or why it has so little use? As far as I know it is cheap compared to all other heavy rockets than Falcon 9 and has clean (but of course statistically not very significant) launch record.

B1052 was converted to falcon 9 while B1053 is still an side booster. Now it could have been scraped as this is not an official list. 

[Beccab]

Can't find pics yet, but a new change in B7's grid fins is that they have Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) heat coating to better resist to the temperatures during reentry and now have a white colour

[Terwin]

4 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

There just isn't much demand for a vehicle of that size in general, and what demand there is will lag behind availability significantly. With how much FH got delayed, not many people committed to it before it was real. Now that it is here and people can count on it, missions for it are springing up, but those missions take time to make. If you look at the manifest, there's like at least 5-10 flights planned through 2024 at this point.

Beyond this, how many launch consumers are waiting to send ~ 100t to LEO for less than $60m on Starship compared to ~60t to LEO for $90-150m for Heavy?

Hyping your next-gen product(that is both much better and much cheaper) does bad things to your current sales, even more so when the new product is expected to be available in a time-frame similar to the lead-time for both the current product and your ability to make use of it.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

This last few posts shows the problem SX will face once SS is up and running: lack of customers. 

 

Thank God for NASA and the Moon.  Because I don't think anyone (outside of SX) will start speculatively building a payload for a speculated launch vehicle in time to take advantage of said vehicle's capacity once it comes on line...

Which means you got a cart, but nuttin to put in it

[tater]

6 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

This last few posts shows the problem SX will face once SS is up and running: lack of customers. 

 

Thank God for NASA and the Moon.  Because I don't think anyone (outside of SX) will start speculatively building a payload for a speculated launch vehicle in time to take advantage of said vehicle's capacity once it comes on line...

Which means you got a cart, but nuttin to put in it

As has been said in different threads, the launch market will never be more than chump change unless there is a sea change in what people want to put into space. Also, SpaceX is not in this to make money as a primary goal, they want to colonize Mars. Yeah, that's kooky, but it's reality. If they get costs down, and create a new market—then maybe they make some real money.

The total world launch market is <$20B, and I have seen analysis that suggests the realistic market for a company like SpaceX tops out well below $10B (national payloads go on national LVs, etc). Tesla revenue was ~$58B last year as a reality check. Add a zero and you're in Amazon territory.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, tater said:

As has been said in different threads, the launch market will never be more than chump change unless there is a sea change in what people want to put into space. Also, SpaceX is not in this to make money as a primary goal, they want to colonize Mars. Yeah, that's kooky, but it's reality. If they get costs down, and create a new market—then maybe they make some real money.

The total world launch market is <$20B, and I have seen analysis that suggests the realistic market for a company like SpaceX tops out well below $10B (national payloads go on national LVs, etc). Tesla revenue was ~$58B last year as a reality check. Add a zero and you're in Amazon territory.

Absolutely: what's been needed for a long time was a sea change.  I'm just glad to be here to witness it.  

I'd assert that there already has been one, given SX's launch cadence... but it's not quite as dramatic as I'd imagined.  As I started to write this, I looked up the difference between launches in 2000 (85) vs 2020 (114) - which is what?  A 30% increase?  (I figured it would be more dramatic).  But then, 2021 (146)... and that's a 70% increase over two decades ago.

Looking at that - I think you're right, again.  We (humanity) need to see something like SS not only work, but exceed expectations.  It, or something like it, being able to land on the Moon (or Mars), do work and bring stuff back here in some kind of economical way is going to be the game changer.  We've got LEO down... we need the rest of the Solar System to become accessible to more than the occasional robotic probe.

 

We always need a Fulton: Biography of Robert Fulton, Inventor of the Steamboat (thoughtco.com)

(He didn't invent the Steamship, he built the first commercially successful one)

Edited March 10, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[tater]

Part of the change requires sustained launch cost reduction measured in orders of magnitude per kg.

Falcon 9 has literally no competition, so such cost drops require SpaceX to leave money on the table. Maybe with SS they will.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 minutes ago, tater said:

Falcon 9 has literally no competition, so such cost drops require SpaceX to leave money on the table

That's interesting from a classic economics standpoint.  If they're 'leaving money on the table' - why?  Low prices often drive up demand; do you think that's what they're doing? *

On a different note; satellite internet services certainly stand to be a money maker, given humanity's insatiable need for connectivity... but I don't think it is yet a profit center.  It's also something that once saturated likely doesn't have much competition.  So in that sense, Starlink is likely a brilliant hedge against sunk costs moving forward to keep developing SS.

 

 

 

*Presumably they're making a profit, and clearly gaining in market-share... but if demand is there, just offering slightly lower prices along with their reliability makes them plenty of money (which is what I suspect will happen once Musk is no longer driving the show; you get the idealist/innovator out of the way - and the investors just care about profits).

[tater]

1 minute ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

That's interesting from a classic economics standpoint.  If they're 'leaving money on the table' - why?  Low prices often drive up demand; do you think that's what they're doing? *

On a different note; satellite internet services certainly stand to be a money maker, given humanity's insatiable need for connectivity... but I don't think it is yet a profit center.  It's also something that once saturated likely doesn't have much competition.  So in that sense, Starlink is likely a brilliant hedge against sunk costs moving forward to keep developing SS.

 

 

 

*Presumably they're making a profit, and clearly gaining in market-share... but if demand is there, just offering slightly lower prices along with their reliability makes them plenty of money (which is what I suspect will happen once Musk is no longer driving the show; you get the idealist/innovator out of the way - and the investors just care about profits).

F9 launches are cheaper than other providers—but not 100 or 1000X cheaper. Maybe half price? They have no real reason to drop what they charge, as the market will have to catch up with cheap payloads. F9 is still stuck with small payloads, too. I think Starship could possibly change that given the large volume as well as mass. I think it needs to be a sort of state change to see payloads evolve... interesting times.