totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[Royalswissarmyknife]

5 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Did it reach orbit? No? Therefore, failure. An explosion is an explosion.

If the capsule didnt separate or sustained lethal damage that would have been a failure

a failure is Lack of success.  that went to plan Successfully 

Not going to try to answer the other ones Ultimate Steve did that good enough

[Ultimate Steve]

Just in case any joke detectors were not working today, my response to @sevenperforce was in jest and I'm 99% sure his post was in jest as well.

[tater]

 

[RCgothic]

1 hour ago, tater said:

 

Wow! That's seriously impressive. Officially more powerful than BE-4.

Edit: A little caveat, it wasn't expected to survive that. And yet it did.

 

And also Raptor V3 may be even cleaner than V2.

 

Still uses a throat film cooling manifold though:

 

 

Edited May 13, 2023 by RCgothic

[AckSed]

Is that a record for chamber pressure?

[RCgothic]

Raptor was already the record holder, so yes.

350bar completely blows away the 2nd placed RD-180 (267bar).

[AckSed]

And the never-flown RD-701 (294 bar).

[darthgently]

ITER fusion chamber folks may be picking the brains of the raptor team soon at this rate

[mikegarrison]

4 hours ago, darthgently said:

ITER fusion chamber folks may be picking the brains of the raptor team soon at this rate

Um ... there is nothing special about containing that kind of pressure in general. What makes it difficult in an aerospace engine is doing it with a light enough structure to fly with.

[CatastrophicFailure]

23 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

If anyone wants to disparage the Falcon 9 in this day and age, even if you stretch the facts as far as they will go, it isn't enough any more.

And people say the fanboys are a cult. <facepalm>

21 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

SLS is by definition the most unreliable rocket ever. By design it can't even succeed once as it is throwing away the reusable boosters and engines for every single launch!

ooof, someone call the fire department for that burn!

/S 

13 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Just in case any joke detectors were not working today, my response to @sevenperforce was in jest and I'm 99% sure his post was in jest as well.

It’s the internet. Someone will take the most absurd thing seriously… because some other one actually means it seriously. 

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Um ... there is nothing special about containing that kind of pressure in general. What makes it difficult in an aerospace engine is doing it with a light enough structure to fly with.

I was considering the temps as well.  But now I'm encouraging people who start replies with "Um.." so I'll stop before we get to the "Ackshully.." phase

[tater]

1 am eastern tonight

[Royalswissarmyknife]

19 hours ago, tater said:

 

Nice

[tater]

 

[Exoscientist]

On 5/12/2023 at 8:50 AM, Meecrob said:

I give up, what is the answer...?

 The first solution to the riddle comes from the assumption that from its economy of volume that SuperHeavy/Starship will be THE be-all, end-all for ALL of spaceflight. In point of fact, for EVERY form of transport going back to the horse-drawn era, the transport has always come in different sizes. 

The point is well illustrated by the example of the jumbo jets. See the highlighted sentence in the article:

 The largest jumbo jets actually make up a *tiny* proportion, less than 1%, of total air traffic. 

The same is true of car traffic. The amount of traffic carried by Greyhound buses is a tiny proportion of the traffic carried by passenger cars.

Sure, the bus companies and the jumbo jet airliners would love if the majority of passengers were on their vehicles, but THATS NOT WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT.

The airline companies know this of course. The same airline companies that operate the jumbo jets also operate the smaller aircraft. If those airline companies were to only offer the jumbo jets they would rapidly go out of business.

ArianeSpace found a similar phenomenon with the Ariane 5. It was designed to carry separate satellites to orbit. But what they frequently found is that when one satellite was ready to go, ArianeSpace had to wait around for another satellite ready to go for it to be worth launching the Ariane 5. And in point of fact most satellite companies wanted their OWN DEDICATED LAUNCHER.

That is the primary reason why ArianeSpace wanted to move to the Ariane 6, so customers could affordably have their own dedicated launchers.

The Falcon Heavy gives further evidence of this. The per kilogram cost of the FH is less than the F9. If per kilogram cost was the key thing, then the Falcon Heavy would packed with separate satellites and would be launching as often as the F9. But in point of fact, FH launches have been few and far between, and have only been used when there are satellites that can’t be launched on the smaller launchers, including the F9. As before, the satellite companies want their own dedicated launchers.

SpaceX might claim their per kilogram cost will make them preferred but the example of the bus companies and the airlines make that argument extremely dubious. Their own Falcon Heavy also argues against it. 

Also, I don’t agree their per kilogram cost will in fact be that much cheaper than the other New Space companies. For those other companies know SpaceX was able to cut development cost by 90% by the commercial space approach, i.e., getting private financing rather than government financing. 

Then consider: when pricing their launch vehicles the largest proportion of that price is not coming from the production cost, but in fact due to the amount added on to recoup the development cost over time. 

SpaceX has spent $10 billion developing the SuperHeavy/Starship with more billions yet to be spent on the development. This is in the range of 100 times higher than the development cost for the companies with smaller launchers. Then the amount to be added on to the price due to development cost, which again makes up the largest bulk of the customer price, will be radically smaller. 

Note that SpaceX won’t be superior in price reduction due to reusability either since all the New Space companies also are focusing on reusability.

  Robert Clark

 

Edited May 14, 2023 by Exoscientist

[CastleKSide]

5 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

SpaceX might claim their per kilogram cost will make them preferred but the example of the bus companies and the airlines make that argument extremely dubious. Their own Falcon Heavy also argues against it. 

This is a very interesting point and not something I had directly considered before. 

I will say tho I never considered Starship to truly be a 1 to 1 replacement of Falcon 9 and I don't see SpaceX considering it as such either.

Large single vehicles work best in a high demand environment, on a scale we simply have not seen with space at this point. I'm thinking ocean cargo shipping rather than greyhound or even jumbo jets.  SpaceX is betting on the future having that kind of demand environment, or at least the possibility of that. Time will tell if the bet is rewarded.

[mikegarrison]

A few years ago Musk was claiming that a Starship launch would be cheaper than a Falcon 9 launch on an absolute basis, not just a per-payload-kg basis. I was dubious about that at the time and still am, but if it were true, then it really wouldn't matter whether Starship was able to fill its payload bay on every launch. They could just shut down the Falcon 9 program (except maybe for Dragon?) and switch everything to Starship.

However, as I just said, I am dubious about that.

[StrandedonEarth]

SpaceX has the advantage of being its own best customer. Just fill the remaining capacity on light payloads with starlinks.

[sevenperforce]

On 5/12/2023 at 9:55 PM, Royalswissarmyknife said:

If the capsule didnt separate or sustained lethal damage that would have been a failure

a failure is Lack of success.  that went to plan Successfully 

Not going to try to answer the other ones Ultimate Steve did that good enough

I should have put a /s tag on my post 

[CBase]

7 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

And in point of fact most satellite companies wanted their OWN DEDICATED LAUNCHER.

Actually I don't think they really care about if it is a dedicated launcher or shared ride. Just like I don't care how big a plane is. Customers balance constraints and costs. If ride sharing fixes you on a unfavorable schedule or adds a risk to get the own schedule shifted it must save lot of costs to compensate. That is the true reason why I prefer direct flights, but for half the price I do accept sometimes bad flight times.

59 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Just fill the remaining capacity on light payloads with starlinks.

Works only in limited conditions. Orbital changes are not cheap. But ride sharing requires similar target orbits to work out. That is main selling point of small sat launchers.

I do think there will be a big new market for SS/SH launches, but only after less expensive (heavier) sat plattforms are available or business case for bigger volume is established.

[StrandedonEarth]

I'm impressed with how long Ziggy has been going strong...

https://www.gocomics.com/ziggy/2023/05/14

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, StrandedonEarth said:

SpaceX has the advantage of being its own best customer. Just fill the remaining capacity on light payloads with starlinks.

There is a reason why we have anti-trust laws. If such advantages grow to be too strong, they can be legally broken up.

[tater]

20 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

 The first solution to the riddle comes from the assumption that from its economy of volume that SuperHeavy/Starship will be THE be-all, end-all for ALL of spaceflight. In point of fact, for EVERY form of transport going back to the horse-drawn era, the transport has always come in different sizes. 

The point is well illustrated by the example of the jumbo jets. See the highlighted sentence in the article:

 The largest jumbo jets actually make up a *tiny* proportion, less than 1%, of total air traffic. 

The same is true of car traffic. The amount of traffic carried by Greyhound buses is a tiny proportion of the traffic carried by passenger cars.

Sure, the bus companies and the jumbo jet airliners would love if the majority of passengers were on their vehicles, but THATS NOT WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT.

This argument is not analogous at all. All those examples are large, expensive vehicles vs smaller, less expensive vehicles doing different tasks.

Customers want value for money. That's it. It doesn't matter how big the vehicle is if their cost is lower. If costs are sufficiently lower, it also creates new markets.

20 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

The airline companies know this of course. The same airline companies that operate the jumbo jets also operate the smaller aircraft. If those airline companies were to only offer the jumbo jets they would rapidly go out of business.

Again, analogy fail. Larger vehicles cost more to operate per mile, but cost less per seat mile under the right conditions. Also, the customers are heading to 1000s of different destinations. Hub to hub is more like surface to LEO. The star topology of hub to final destination is like the upper stage or propulsive component of a given payload. Earth to GTO is hub to hub, GTO to GEO is the payload job (puddle-jumper).

 

20 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

ArianeSpace found a similar phenomenon with the Ariane 5. It was designed to carry separate satellites to orbit. But what they frequently found is that when one satellite was ready to go, ArianeSpace had to wait around for another satellite ready to go for it to be worth launching the Ariane 5. And in point of fact most satellite companies wanted their OWN DEDICATED LAUNCHER.

That is the primary reason why ArianeSpace wanted to move to the Ariane 6, so customers could affordably have their own dedicated launchers.

Epic fail, still not competitive any more (whenever it manages to actually fly). Also, customers don't care about "dedicated launches" they care about flying when they want to fly, at the right price. If Arianespace quoted them €100M for a GTO launch in exactly 6 months from today, expecting to fly 2 and make €200M—but guaranteed they would launch 6 months from now even without securing the second payload... the customer would not care.

 

20 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

The Falcon Heavy gives further evidence of this. The per kilogram cost of the FH is less than the F9. If per kilogram cost was the key thing, then the Falcon Heavy would packed with separate satellites and would be launching as often as the F9. But in point of fact, FH launches have been few and far between, and have only been used when there are satellites that can’t be launched on the smaller launchers, including the F9. As before, the satellite companies want their own dedicated launchers.

Again, they don't want dedicated launches, they want to launch on their own schedule, and the best cost. They would likely trade schedule flexibility for cost at some level. It's like booking a vacation. If the kids have 2 months off in summer, you have a range of dates to pick, and can select for cost vs the ideal date. Sure, you might really prefer July for some destination, but if the flights are 30% cheaper in June... June it is. For some other destination you might pay 50% more to go when you want to—you want to see some festival or something, date matters.

 

20 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

SpaceX might claim their per kilogram cost will make them preferred but the example of the bus companies and the airlines make that argument extremely dubious. Their own Falcon Heavy also argues against it. 

Also, I don’t agree their per kilogram cost will in fact be that much cheaper than the other New Space companies. For those other companies know SpaceX was able to cut development cost by 90% by the commercial space approach, i.e., getting private financing rather than government financing. 

Then consider: when pricing their launch vehicles the largest proportion of that price is not coming from the production cost, but in fact due to the amount added on to recoup the development cost over time.

Their pricing has nothing to do with cost. It has to do with the cost of their competitors. They have zero reason to cut costs much below their competitors. If ULA charges $300M, and they charge $290M they get the launch, AND they make more money since their actual cost is much lower with the reused vehicle. Based on a small markup over cost, they might be able to quote $50M and make money—but why leave $240M on the table?

PS—the primary excess mass to LEO will always be PROPELLANT.

 

20 hours ago, Exoscientist said:

SpaceX has spent $10 billion developing the SuperHeavy/Starship with more billions yet to be spent on the development. This is in the range of 100 times higher than the development cost for the companies with smaller launchers. Then the amount to be added on to the price due to development cost, which again makes up the largest bulk of the customer price, will be radically smaller. 

Note that SpaceX won’t be superior in price reduction due to reusability either since all the New Space companies also are focusing on reusability.

Wrong for a couple reasons.

1. They are not making SS to win the launch market. The launch market will not make anyone more money even when there are actual competitors to drive F9 costs to where they would be if BO was flying. We know an F9 costs something under $30M to SpaceX. With knock-down, drag-out competition, ~20t to space starts looking like $30-$40M, less than half typical costs now. That just makes the small launch market LESS valuable. Bu it's still too expensive to generate new markets in that case IMO. Concern about "customers" is nonsense. If the launch market is ever to become actually valuable, costs need to drop to the point it creates entirely new markets—and those need to be larger than the reduction in launch cost. Ie: a 10X drop in cost/kg needs a 10X increase in customers just to break even—a larger increase if the goal is to make more money.

2. There is precisely 1 competitor right now for this, and they have yet to even hop—Stoke. NG is a nonstarter vs SS as it is partially reusable. If BO gets some "Jarvis" reusable upper stage, then the game's afoot for SpaceX/BO competition. Minus that NG is a F9 competitor, with a race to the bottom on cost defined by propellant costs, operational costs, and the cost of an expended upper stage. BO would need to get the larger NG upper stage to a substantially lower cost than F9 stage 2 to compete on price. Their only win would be larger fairing size. And if SS flies... moot. As for Stoke? They are gonna be fun to watch.

 

EDIT: To be clear, I have no idea if SS will actually function as planned, and if it will reduce cost/kg by orders of magnitude. If it is truly reusable, then it changes all the math, and none of the "it's too big" arguments matter at all, it holds maybe a million bucks worth of propellants, something approaching that is the lower limit for launch cost in such a reality. It must achieve that first, obviously. As a partially expended vehicle it's still gonna be grossly cheaper than similar, expendable vehicles, however, but the utility is lower in terms of creating some new market from nothing.

 

12 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

There is a reason why we have anti-trust laws. If such advantages grow to be too strong, they can be legally broken up.

Odd that when launches were far more expensive for decades this somehow never applied to Defense Contractor™ selling launches to the USAF of a Defense Contractor™ launch vehicle to loft a cargo of Defense Contractor Subsidiary™ Sat.

Edited May 15, 2023 by tater

[tater]

I feel like this needs to be said from time to time, but the global launch market available to commercial launch is chump change.

The global airline business is apparently worth ~$800B+ annually. Roughly 100-200X the available launch market at current launch prices. If airline fares were to become cheaper for some reason—more efficient aircraft, lower labor costs because of AI, etc, this would likely cause an increase in revenue growth (else the airlines would not spend on changing their fleet, etc—they would do the math first). There is no reason to believe launch cost reduction would grossly change the size of the market.

Edited May 14, 2023 by tater

[Shpaget]

On 5/13/2023 at 2:10 PM, darthgently said:

ITER fusion chamber folks may be picking the brains of the raptor team soon at this rate

 

On 5/13/2023 at 6:21 PM, mikegarrison said:

Um ... there is nothing special about containing that kind of pressure in general. What makes it difficult in an aerospace engine is doing it with a light enough structure to fly with.

ITERs tokamak is quite a bit larger which is quite a factor when it comes to pressure vessels.