ABL Space Systems Thread

[steve9728]

Looks there's someone we missed

But bad news is

 

Space is Hard, really HARD

Edited January 11, 2023 by steve9728

[DDE]

Just now, steve9728 said:

Space is Hard, really HARD

Alaska seems a little bit cursed as of late.

[Beccab]

 

2 smallsat launchers failures in 2 days

[steve9728]

It looks good in the test run. And in terms of probabilities, it's definitely unlikely that all nine engines on the rocket would have failed at the same time. I guess there might be problem with the somewhere fuel supply part of the rocket.

Spoiler

Although I'm not a superstitious person, the use of the first movement of 'Winter' as the bgm to this video doesn't bode well for me: it depicts a snowstorm with a cold winter.

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by steve9728

[steve9728]

 

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[darthgently]

Waking the dead thread, to put it to bed for the Big Sleep.

 

Synopsis: ABL pivots to missiles leaving Firefly as the survivor of this wave of 1-ton payload launchers (Relativity went to larger payload market)

 

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/citing-decreasing-launch-opportunities-abl-space-will-pivot-to-missile-defense/
 

[tater]

Smallsat launch was killed dead as soon as F9 started transporter missions—that and just cost per kg.

[darthgently]

9 hours ago, tater said:

Smallsat launch was killed dead as soon as F9 started transporter missions—that and just cost per kg.

Yes, Firefly needs to stay flexible

[kerbiloid]

F9 is American, while Chinese milsats are for Chinese rockets.

[tater]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

F9 is American, while Chinese milsats are for Chinese rockets.

Yes.

The commercial launch market is only worth a few billion a year in total (ignoring national launches that necessarily fly on national LVs—US, Russia, China, EU.

As SpaceX drops the cost/kg towards their nominal internal cost very close to ~$1000/kg the business case is worse and worse for newcomers unless they can come out of the gate at that sort of internal marginal cost.

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, tater said:

As SpaceX drops the cost/kg towards their nominal internal cost very close to ~$1000/kg the business case is worse and worse for newcomers unless they can come out of the gate at that sort of internal marginal cost.

The space returns to its original governmental nature. Hard to make business from vacuum.

[tater]

6 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The space returns to its original governmental nature. Hard to make business from vacuum.

It's a weaksauce business compared to actually good markets to pursue. Starlink is set to make a profit this year (per Shotwell), and she thinks that Starship will actually become SpaceX's primary revenue stream in the near future. Not exactly sure how—except that sans competition, any cost savings SpaceX manages simply goes in their pocket, since they have no reason to leave money on the table until there is real competition. Say NG starts flying, and can launch at better than F9 retail cost/kg which is ~$2500 right now ($62M for an F9, 23.8t to LEO). SpaceX F9 internal cost is closer to $1050/kg ($25M/23.8t). To get to the same place NG would need to recover the fairings, or have a few million dollars lower cost for refurb plus stage 2 (to cover the lost fairings). That's still an internal cost of ~$45M a flight for the same price per kilo. Hard to see it competing with F9, much less Starship. Assuming they ever recover stage 2 of SS, then the cost is operations plus props—single digit millions per flight, for 100+ tonnes to LEO. Even at $10M/flight, that's an internal cost of $100/kg... insane.

SpaceX already has NASA as their largest non-Starlink customer. Chump change compared to Tesla for Musk.

I think the only way for them to make more business is space is for some new industry to develop up there... no idea what it could be, but we have not seen it yet, whatever it is.

[darthgently]

Future Miyake grade super solar flares could dwarf the Carrington event by 2 orders of magnitude given the strongest inferred in tree ring records.

Miyake grade solar flares appear to occur every 400 to 2400 years or so.

Throw in the risk of large earth crossing asteroids, glaciation, and human idiocy and I am more and more appreciating Musk’s insistence of not having all of our eggs in one basket.

 If SpaceX continues to apply its profits to interplanetary diaspora then they will create the space market in their wake making it far easier and less risky financially than we can now imagine for those who follow.  But clearly the more players willing to run point on the risk the better.   Blue Origin seems willing in principle

I’d like to see SpaceX‘s competition at the tip of the spear be represented by more than the PRC, personally

Edited November 16 by darthgently

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Starlink is set to make a profit this year (per Shotwell), and she thinks that Starship will actually become SpaceX's primary revenue stream in the near future.

Yes, but how many more Starlinks are required?

It's a single shrapnel shot, and even it exists only due to the Pentagon desire of having a worldwide comcomcom network, and related funding.

Other sats also aren't required in thousands, and their lifespan is decades.

It's just a happy-hours moment, when the progress of electronics allowed to create enough robust satellite fleets, and yet not let them be tiny and make the heavy rockets overpowered.

The problem is not in rockets, the problem is in payload. The electronics has killed the sci-fi crewed flight dreams, the further electronics progress will kill the need in heavy rockets.

The only two options are the hypothetical lunar rare-earth (rare-moon?) deposits, and a global military heavy orbital infrastructure, which in turns looks too expensive and fragile to be ever built.

[tater]

20 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It's a single shrapnel shot, and even it exists only due to the Pentagon desire of having a worldwide comcomcom network, and related funding.

Abject nonsense.

Spaceforce has bought their own constellation from them, starshield.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, tater said:

It's a weaksauce business compared to actually good markets to pursue. Starlink is set to make a profit this year (per Shotwell), and she thinks that Starship will actually become SpaceX's primary revenue stream in the near future. Not exactly sure how—except that sans competition, any cost savings SpaceX manages simply goes in their pocket, since they have no reason to leave money on the table until there is real competition. Say NG starts flying, and can launch at better than F9 retail cost/kg which is ~$2500 right now ($62M for an F9, 23.8t to LEO). SpaceX F9 internal cost is closer to $1050/kg ($25M/23.8t). To get to the same place NG would need to recover the fairings, or have a few million dollars lower cost for refurb plus stage 2 (to cover the lost fairings). That's still an internal cost of ~$45M a flight for the same price per kilo. Hard to see it competing with F9, much less Starship. Assuming they ever recover stage 2 of SS, then the cost is operations plus props—single digit millions per flight, for 100+ tonnes to LEO. Even at $10M/flight, that's an internal cost of $100/kg... insane.

SpaceX already has NASA as their largest non-Starlink customer. Chump change compared to Tesla for Musk.

I think the only way for them to make more business is space is for some new industry to develop up there... no idea what it could be, but we have not seen it yet, whatever it is.

Starlink has the benefit of being early and strong so it become the standard for satellite internet. Ships, planes even remote cell phone towers. You often has coverage requirements for an licence including major roads even if very remote. So you put up an tower with solar cells, an generator and starlink antenna.   

Now I don't get why Tesla is so valuable? Yes its decent cars but all car companies have EV now and I say the car part is far harder than the EV part. 
I assume its the self driving race. 

Sure space industry is an growth one but its slow for the tech companies. And the winner would be the ones patenting it not the launchers 
 

[tater]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now I don't get why Tesla is so valuable? Yes its decent cars but all car companies have EV now and I say the car part is far harder than the EV part. 
I assume its the self driving race. 

The hard part is scale. For EVs right now, it's Tesla, the rest are not making money—you can't lose thousands per car, and make it up in volume. Optimus has a lot of potential as well. They will continue to increase in value. My point relative to the launch market is that there's a cap on the current launch market. The demand for launch times the cost of a launch. As retail cost drops, the total value of the launch market drops—the unknown is how much lower cost can drive increased demand. Most here presumably think cheap launch creates out science fiction future—but those new concepts for what to do with cheap launch are not a thing yet. The launch business is not going to be useful for most starups I think. As I said above, they have to come in to the market at a price that undercuts the lowest cost to LEO, and indeed the lowest the current leader, SpaceX, could drop prices if they needed to. We know an F9 launch is under $25M, but not by how much. That means any medium-lift that comes out and charges below current F9 retail could find SpaceX just dropping their price just below the newcomer. To win that spiral the newcomer needs an internal cost to LEO that is lower than F9.

[kerbiloid]

14 hours ago, tater said:

Abject nonsense.

Spaceforce has bought their own constellation from them, starshield.

Lol +1! We are reading the Stralink non-military nature in real time in the news .

reading

[tater]

The military has not paid the gajillion bucks SpaceX has risked on Starlink, they have. The military uses electricity, too. They buy it like everyone else. Or phone service. Or beef. They're not bankrolling that stuff.

The only money spent on Starlink by the Pentagon is whatever they are paying for their Starshield sats, or buying subscriptions to Starlink service like everyone else.

[darthgently]

17 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Starlink has the benefit of being early and strong so it become the standard for satellite internet. Ships, planes even remote cell phone towers. You often has coverage requirements for an licence including major roads even if very remote. So you put up an tower with solar cells, an generator and starlink antenna.   

Now I don't get why Tesla is so valuable? Yes its decent cars but all car companies have EV now and I say the car part is far harder than the EV part. 
I assume its the self driving race. 

Sure space industry is a  growth one but it’s slow for the tech companies. And the winner would be the ones patenting it not the launchers 
 

I gather Tesla and maybe BYD are the only EV companies making a profit on EVs. 

[magnemoe]

23 minutes ago, darthgently said:

I gather Tesla and maybe BYD are the only EV companies making a profit on EVs. 

Probably, but just being profitable don't explains the huge evaluation, even if they made EV cool. Now self driving might be huge in lots of ways but a bit off topic

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Probably, but just being profitable don't explains the huge evaluation, even if they made EV cool. Now self driving might be huge in lots of ways but a bit off topic

I beg to differ, profitability is the biggest factor in valuation, followed by viable evidence of pending profitability.  How else would valuation rationally work?

[AckSed]

I believe that valuation of a company is not wholly rational. It is both a prediction - "This company is worth this much because it will produce this much." - and a gamble: "If you buy shares, you will gain a return on investment." It may be based on data, even good data, but there's always something that is overlooked in any prediction.