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Skylon

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Was at a grocery store today and the manager (?) was helping me find something. He noticed my BFR shirt (it was launch day, and I don't have a sportsball team so...), and told me a story. His brother had been a Brig. General at Cape Canaveral (45th Space Wing?). He was visiting when the first F9 booster landed. He said that his brother was invited to come out and check out the booster on the pad, and he was with his brother, so they all got to go out there after it landed and was safed.

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1 hour ago, Nightside said:

???

Without getting into details, I think it boils down to he doesn't like Musk, therefore he doesn't like anything he does, and then goes on a rant about the politics involved.  I told him I don't really have an opinion about Musk, and that I'm really just into SpaceX for the hardware.  He seems to respect that without fighting me on anything.

1 hour ago, tater said:

(it was launch day, and I don't have a sportsball team so...),

The last two times I wore my Ready For Heavy shirt on launch day, it scrubbed.  Maybe I should stop...

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Just now, catloaf said:

Have they tried to reuse a raptor engine yet?

Only one Raptor has flown so far so they haven't yet reused a flight-proven engine, but Raptor SN20 (the one that was used on Starship SN4) was test-fired multiple times without being removed for refurbishment. So I guess you could say they've reused an engine. In the long run they want a Raptor to be usable for 1000 flights before requiring major refurbishment.

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Even if they're off by two orders of magnitude it will be a game changer.

If they're off by one order of magnitude, they'll upend the space launch market, basically taking all the customers they can serve. The competition will scramble for scraps.

If they do manage to hit the $2M mark, every other launch provider should just Alt-F4.

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49 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Only one Raptor has flown so far so they haven't yet reused a flight-proven engine, but Raptor SN20 (the one that was used on Starship SN4) was test-fired multiple times without being removed for refurbishment. So I guess you could say they've reused an engine. In the long run they want a Raptor to be usable for 1000 flights before requiring major refurbishment.

We don't have details at that going on at their engine test facility as in how far they are in static fire testing. Yes launch and landing is more stressful but still the burn itself is the main stress on engine. 

As for the 2 million, I kind of doubt it, perhaps from Texas then they have everything in house and a multiple launches a day but even then its very low now 5-10 million is not bad either. 

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I think the amount was mostly the propellant cost. Mostly LOX, then CH4. Plus some overhead and amortized vehicle cost. That of course is cost, not what they might charge.

Old ITS, they were talking about each vehicle costing hundreds of millions (Starship as one vehicle, Super Heavy as the other). I think now they're aiming at 10s of millions.

At some point before it was clear SS was moving to stainless steel, Musk had said something to the effect that he saw a path to BFR being cheaper than Falcon 9. IN the context, it was not perfectly clear if he meant marginal launch cost, dev cost, or actual vehicle cost. I'm beginning to think it was the last one.

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5 hours ago, catloaf said:

Have they tried to reuse a raptor engine yet?

...someone should get to SpaceX about this "reuse" thing:P

Edited by Meecrob
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10 hours ago, cubinator said:

Which is still at least several million cheaper than a Falcon 9. 

I've heard that the marginal internal cost of a reused falcon 9 flight is approaching $15m.

So an order of magnitude more than $2m would be more expensive than Falcon 9, at least in absolute terms. Still a lower cost per kg.

Possible SN8 sighting:

And some better views of SN5's new hat:

 

Edited by RCgothic
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12 hours ago, RCgothic said:

I've heard that the marginal internal cost of a reused falcon 9 flight is approaching $15m.

So an order of magnitude more than $2m would be more expensive than Falcon 9, at least in absolute terms. Still a lower cost per kg.

Possible SN8 sighting:

 

 

The 15 millions could be two things: $15m sounds a bit high for recovery and refurbish costs so it will include either the launch cost and or capital costs as the rocket only last so many launches. 
But yes 15 millions makes sense here 

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