SpaceX Super Rocket?

[Red Iron Crown]

Theoretical doesn't mean successful. The Titanic wasn't a theoretical ship, even though it never successfully completed a voyage. The N1 wasn't theoretical either, they actually built the thing even if it didn't work.

I would consider SLS as still theoretical at this point, there has not been a full scale complete example built yet. It's getting ever closer, though.

[Kryten]

A money sink for his personal fortune is exactly what it is, currently.

His own money in SpaceX ran out sometime around the last couple of Falcon 1 flights. He's getting by on NASA funding, and commercial launch contracts being made in advance.

[SargeRho]

Actually no, it hasn't. The Grasshopper program is run entirely on SpaceX' own dime, and the guy himself still has a couple billions.

[Simon Ross]

Two issues;

a) You're wrong, Proton was built from the ground up as a crewed launcher for the L1 program.

You're wrong, the cost of 'man-rating' is going to be irrelevant, given a rocket of this size is going to require very high reliability, crewed or not, because of the immense financial risk involved with the gigantic institutional payloads.

Anyway, you missed the entire point of my post, which was comparing amortised and non-amortised costs. An individual Saturn V, including launch, was about $1 billion in modern money, compared to about $100 million for Proton-Proton still wins in terms of $/kg, but not by a huge margin, and it's easy to see how improvements to Saturn could have beaten it. However, if you include the total program costs, that Saturn-V jumps to a ridiculous $4 billion, whereas Proton stays almost exactly the same. Why? Because Proton has flown almost thirty times as much.

Sorry, but with respect, you are totally wrong on both counts.

a) Proton is not 'Man Rated' and never has been. The design included provision for it to be evolved into a man rated system however this never actually took place and NO Proton has EVER been used for a manned flight.

The cost of man rating is very far from irrelevant, reliability is only one of the factors involved. I would suggest the following to enable you to gain a little more knowledge on the subject http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_PR_8705_002B_

If man rating a system was really that easy and cost was 'irrelevant' don't you think NASA would simply man uprate an existing MLV ? They don't because it is not !

[Holo]

SpaceX is a private corporation, not a non-profit organization or a money sink for his personal fortune. In order to survive, it's going to have to generate revenue.

Even corporations can have non-financial goals.

[Kryten]

Sorry, but with respect, you are totally wrong on both counts.

a) Proton is not 'Man Rated' and never has been. The design included provision for it to be evolved into a man rated system however this never actually took place and NO Proton has EVER been used for a manned flight.

No crewed flight took place because the L1 system itself never reached the required level of reliability, your supposed 'man-rating' equipment or infrastructure or whatever you think it is would still have to be present.

The cost of man rating is very far from irrelevant, reliability is only one of the factors involved. I would suggest the following to enable you to gain a little more knowledge on the subject http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/displayDir.cfm?Internal_ID=N_PR_8705_002B_

It's far from the only factor, but with modern boosters it is effectively the only factor that matters. Just take a look here if you don't want to believe that. Note that 'Atlas V can accommodate commercial human spaceflight with no changes to the existing vehicles', and that the only changes necessary would be to the pad and range infrastructure. And, of course, you might also want to note that NASA is already paying ULA to make these changes, and the total cost so far has been about $8 million, which is in fact negligible (less than a tenth of the cost of an actual Atlas launch).

If man rating a system was really that easy and cost was 'irrelevant' don't you think NASA would simply man uprate an existing MLV ?

You mean like they are? See above.

Edited February 20, 2014 by Kryten

[Nothalogh]

like this one

Four Saturn Vs lashed together

Jebediah approves

[Pipcard]

I always read that one of the most important aspects of lowering the cost of each launch to space is flight rate - because if a rocket launches more frequently, the development costs as well as the fixed costs of launch infrastructure get amortized over more launches. This favors smaller launch vehicles for human spaceflight (instead of >100 tonnes) unless there were enough launches of the super-heavy rockets. On the other hand, if the launch vehicles were too small, it would probably be very inefficient and overly complex as well (imagine constructing the ISS with 1-tonne launchers!).

SpaceX apparently wants a rocket that rivals or even exceeds the SLS Block II in lifting capacity in order to enable mass colonization of Mars, but I'm not sure if the idea of tens of thousands (or even just thousands, hundreds, or tens) of colonists moving to Mars per year is even feasible or demanded in the next few decades.

Edited April 10, 2015 by Pipcard