Stock fairings: Procedural or not?

[Tuareg]

My impression is that the development cost of a new payload fairing is roughly equivalent to a single launch of the rocket it's going to be used with. After all, rockets are quite cheap compared to development costs and payloads.

what? you imply that their own employee who gets fix monthly wage wouldnt design a new just somewhat bigger steel box cheaper than sending up an unnecessarily big rocket? yeah, as sal said imagination is a wonderful thing... and strange in some cases lol

if this would be the case the world would have 3 size of rockets...

[Jouni]

what? you imply that their own employee who gets fix monthly wage wouldnt design a new just somewhat bigger steel box cheaper than sending up an unnecessarily big rocket? yeah, as sal said imagination is a wonderful thing... and strange in some cases lol

if this would be the case the world would have 3 size of rockets...

Based on quick googling, the development of a bigger payload fairing for Ariane 5 was expected to cost almost €100 million and take two years. The price of one Ariane 5 launch is around €150 million.

[sal_vager]

Thing is, if you make a new fairing you now have new hardware to test and certify, this is a lot of money and time, having a selection of ready made fairing sizes is a lot cheaper, and you sell capacity on your launch vehicle based on what it can carry.

No one wants to foot the bill for design, testing and certification of new hardware for one customer who couldn't make their payload fit the fairings that the launch company offers, its not so difficult to design your satellite to a common size or to ensure it folds down properly

Edit:

Yeah, what Jouni said.

[basic.syntax]

KSP stock game hasn't had p-fairings up to now, the fixed-size cargo bays and career mode limitations on parts count / size / mass - suggest that's the way Squad wanted to go with Stock. I like the career mode challenges of trying different arrangements of parts to accomplish the contract objective, but for those who don't like it, there are new game setup options to reduce the building upgrade 'grind,' sandbox mode, and finally, any mod you can think of.

IMO, this discussion is about what parts the *stock* game should have, to give it a little help with the new drag model. Again, tho I enjoy the career mode SPH/VAB craft building challenge (a game both separate and connected to the in-space physics game) of working within limits - I might give up trying to make my payload fit inside a fixed-size cargo bay or fairing, and just "use more boosters" and/or various aero parts, to help fight the new drag model. The stock parts game, if no procedural parts are added, won't prevent us from reaching orbit with large, wildly imaginative things, just add a new drag challenge, to lifting them up there.

Are some worried that a new player who knows nothing, might come into KSP, and go away out of frustration, because the stock game's boxes for putting things into space are too small? I hope this player tries to lift the load outside of a box, learns a few things about drag and perhaps even succeeds - or looks for a mod, rather than quit and/or give KSP a negative review. And I think this situation is very similar to what new players face in career mode, with the parts count / size / mass limits in the first-tier SPH/VAB.

Discussion on which way Stock game fairings will go might be moot, b/c Maxmaps suggested in his last squadcast, that they may go procedural "out of necessity." Either way, I eagerly await what our space overlords may bring to us, in the coming months.

Edited January 27, 2015 by basic.syntax
acroynms, lol. SPH

[Tuareg]

Based on quick googling, the development of a bigger payload fairing for Ariane 5 was expected to cost almost €100 million and take two years. The price of one Ariane 5 launch is around €150 million.

yeah, this is how you sell things if you are a business and its completely different if you do it for yourself... and thanks for the link which say they DO design new fairing for new payload

[sal_vager]

A new fairing that will take two years and over €100 million to bring to market, that is very, very far from an employee on a monthly wage making a new steel box

A new larger fairing will be able to carry a larger payload, but if your satellite still exceeds the offered standard sizes then use a bigger rocket

[FishInferno]

Discussion on which way Stock game fairings will go might be moot, b/c Maxmaps suggested in his last squadcast, that they may go procedural "out of necessity." Either way, I eagerly await what our space overlords may bring to us, in the coming months.

Proc-fairings are hardy a necessity more than an unrealistic convenience. I must say, though, the people arguing for procedural fairings have made some good points, but I still think that fixed-size fairings offer a better challenge.

[Tuareg]

A new fairing that will take two years and over €100 million to bring to market, that is very, very far from an employee on a monthly wage making a new steel box

A new larger fairing will be able to carry a larger payload, but if your satellite still exceeds the offered standard sizes then use a bigger rocket

haha, and you think that design cost 100mill or that they are selling it to esa? would it still cost 100 mill if they would go to launch it? well seen u never worked in outsourcing on the other hand, they are still designing new fairing even for order... so why shouldnt we be able to do it?

[Alshain]

A new fairing that will take two years and over €100 million to bring to market, that is very, very far from an employee on a monthly wage making a new steel box

Unfortunately in KSP we can't redesign that steel box. It is a fixed size. So, if I need the octagonal strut to be 2mm shorter. Too bad.

[tater]

PF is not unrealistic, they could make arbitrary fairings, assuming they work, they choose not to for economic reasons. Perhaps a stock PF implementation could have fairing cost X up to 1.5X the base diameter, then have the cost skyrocket as the diameter exceeds this. Say they are "free" at 1.5X, and cost 5-10,000 per 0.1m above that.

That would make a de facto "stock" at 1.875m, 3.75, and 5.625 fairing, with others costing more.

[sal_vager]

There's something else about that new fairing as well, it's being proposed to allow the rocket to carry a pair of large satellites instead of one large and one small, so it's intended to meet a projected need in the future.

It is not being proposed to allow for one customers payload, as that would be preposterously cost inefficient, so it still doesn't come anywhere close to proving that new fairings can just be made when needed.

A lot of time, money and effort has to go into designing, testing and certifying any new space hardware, even payload fairings, it's not something that is taken lightly or done on a moments notice to satisfy the needs of a customer with an oversized payload.

Current and future customers will still have to ensure their payload can fit within the offered fairing sizes, or they won't go to space today

You can argue as much as you like Tuareg, it won't change things.

[Tuareg]

There's something else about that new fairing as well, it's being proposed to allow the rocket to carry a pair of large satellites instead of one large and one small, so it's intended to meet a projected need in the future.

It is not being proposed to allow for one customers payload, as that would be preposterously cost inefficient, so it still doesn't come anywhere close to proving that new fairings can just be made when needed.

A lot of time, money and effort has to go into designing, testing and certifying any new space hardware, even payload fairings, it's not something that is taken lightly or done on a moments notice to satisfy the needs of a customer with an oversized payload.

Current and future customers will still have to ensure their payload can fit within the offered fairing sizes, or they won't go to space today

You can argue as much as you like Tuareg, it won't change things.

just like u can argue it wont change things that there are many many different rockets with many many different fairings in service and that the ABILITY to design new ones at any time. there are no 3 fixed sizes for every missions...

[sal_vager]

Lol you're not getting it at all, there's lots of launchers and there are purpose built fairings for all of them, a customer has to design their payload to fit within the fairing options provided by the company they wish to use, if their payload is too large for the fairings of one rocket they have to either redesign their payload or go with another launcher.

No one makes payload fairings to order on a per-customer bases, it just doesn't happen, it's prohibitively expensive in time, money and effort, new fairings are only considered to meet evolving market needs, not for individual customers.

Knowing the above, it's clear that procedural fairings are not realistic when compared to real life rockets, procedural fairings would be a case of fairings being made to order on a per-customer basis.

KSP is likely to go with procedural fairings for gameplay reasons, but to consider this realistic is deeply incorrect

[tater]

FWIW, ULA says they will make custom fairings, but no one has taken them up on it.

[Tuareg]

if their payload is too large for the fairings of one rocket they have to either redesign their payload or go with another launcher.

but this is not true, we just shown cases say it different. why are u hanging on your imaginations when clearly there are examples saying the opposite? you can have a new fairings designed just pay for it. and it doesnt cost 100mill, they SELL it for 100mill which is a huge difference. just one example is the delta 2 with its 3 different fairings. they were designed BECAUSE of the payloads didnt fit into the old one... and if there would be a payload couldnt fit into it (however they probably try to fit in to those as many as they can) they have the ABILITY to design a new again and again. they will not attach their 10 cm oversized payload to a delta IV, they will create a delta 2 xyz... as they have already done it.

also we are not playing a space agency selling launches for TV satellites, were are designing our own rockets our own payloads like if we would be nasa. sure they are standardising things because thats easier, but there is the chance to make it different. and payload and fairings is one of those will have to be changed the most. again the delta family... every other parts are the same on them but the fairings... one has more boosters to fit the probably higher weight it can carry but it has the same boosters. dont even mention delta 3 which is a delta 2 with an extremely special fairing...

[cpast]

but this is not true, we just shown cases say it different. why are u hanging on your imaginations when clearly there are examples saying the opposite? you can have a new fairings designed just pay for it. and it doesnt cost 100mill, they SELL it for 100mill which is a huge difference. just one example is the delta 2 with its 3 different fairings. they were designed BECAUSE of the payloads didnt fit into the old one... and if there would be a payload couldnt fit into it (however they probably try to fit in to those as many as they can) they have the ABILITY to design a new again and again. they will not attach their 10 cm oversized payload to a delta IV, they will create a delta 2 xyz... as they have already done it.

also we are not playing a space agency selling launches for TV satellites, were are designing our own rockets our own payloads like if we would be nasa. sure they are standardising things because thats easier, but there is the chance to make it different. and payload and fairings is one of those will have to be changed the most. again the delta family... every other parts are the same on them but the fairings... one has more boosters to fit the probably higher weight it can carry but it has the same boosters. dont even mention delta 3 which is a delta 2 with an extremely special fairing...

Reread the article. This is pretty much the *opposite* of a one-off fairing. It's the launch provider deciding, as part of a tweak to their offerings, to offer larger fairings. The *development* is what's costing 100,000,000 euros, but it's not designed for any individual payload; it's designed to offer this for future payloads. The development isn't being funded by customers, it's being funded by ESA (who have a pretty close relationship with Arianespace). The construction isn't the expensive part; the expensive part is that it costs quite a lot of money to develop and test rocket-grade parts, and quite a lot of money to set up the manufacturing process to make fairings of that size with necessary tolerances. The marginal cost of a fairing will be well under a hundred million euros, but that's because the development has already been done for that exact fairing design, so you don't need to re-pay the price.

Yes, you could design a custom fairing for a hundred million euros. However, no one is suggesting procedural fairings be the single most expensive thing on your KSP rocket; if you're going with "it's done one-off in real life," you should realize that it's not, and if it were it would in fact *be* the single most expensive part of the launch.

To people talking about pricing for them being too wide: While that does help discourage over-wide fairings, and makes sense for gameplay, if you're talking real costs the most expensive part by far is the development, not the fabrication.

Your second paragraph is the sort of thing that's actually a decent argument for procedural fairings. Real space agencies tend to launch very similar missions many, many times; most space launches are boring "Someone wants a satellite and will pay to launch it" missions, and crew-carrying designs change very rarely. In KSP, if your rockets are less standardized, it makes more sense to be able to custom-do fairings.

Edited January 27, 2015 by cpast

[Tuareg]

Reread the article. This is pretty much the *opposite* of a one-off fairing. It's the launch provider deciding, as part of a tweak to their offerings, to offer larger fairings. The *development* is what's costing 100,000,000 euros, but it's not designed for any individual payload; it's designed to offer this for future payloads. The development isn't being funded by customers, it's being funded by ESA (who have a pretty close relationship with Arianespace). The construction isn't the expensive part; the expensive part is that it costs quite a lot of money to develop and test rocket-grade parts, and quite a lot of money to set up the manufacturing process to make fairings of that size with necessary tolerances. The marginal cost of a fairing will be well under a hundred million euros, but that's because the development has already been done for that exact fairing design, so you don't need to re-pay the price.

Yes, you could design a custom fairing for a hundred million euros. However, no one is suggesting procedural fairings be the single most expensive thing on your KSP rocket; if you're going with "it's done one-off in real life," you should realize that it's not, and if it were it would in fact *be* the single most expensive part of the launch.

To people talking about pricing for them being too wide: While that does help discourage over-wide fairings, and makes sense for gameplay, if you're talking real costs the most expensive part by far is the development, not the fabrication.

Your second paragraph is the sort of thing that's actually a decent argument for procedural fairings.

you should re-read it. esa member states (governments) will pay for the modification. they are selling it badly overpriced, like everything in the world today. do you know how much the production cost to make a smartphone? i'll tell you, about 10 eu. i guess you know their market price. the differences are exactly the same for everything. design, production etc are cheap, marketing cost billions... and ariane is just one company selling their products to esa and it absolutely doesnt matter how close relationship they are in...

[Pseudo Gold]

Although I can see why people like procedural fairings (no limits), I still prefer non-procedural. It gives you a challenge to make something with in the constraints and see what you can come up with.

[tater]

Real launch providers set standards to make their job easier, more predictable, and more cost effective. Current real rocket companies have a few fairing options per launch vehicle. Call it 4, for argument (2 diameters, and 2 heights for each). So KSP would need 15 nose fairing parts in that case (3 bases, and 12 fairings).

That is a lot of parts.

It still doesn't address the player deciding what his own standards might be. So in that case, perhaps the first 4 fairings built in PF for each base diameter would become "standard," and the only fairings they are allowed in the future for that diameter base. Choose wisely.

What if there was an emergent technology that could not be folded, but was so awesome, virtually all new sats would include it, but fairing all had to be 1m bigger than they are now? WOuld that tech be abandoned, or would ULA/SpaceX/etc make bigger fairings?

I'm not a partisan for PF, I just see limiting fairings to effectively just 1 as a bad idea.

[cpast]

you should re-read it. esa member states (governments) will pay for the modification. they are selling it badly overpriced, like everything in the world today. do you know how much the production cost to make a smartphone? i'll tell you, about 10 eu. i guess you know their market price. the differences are exactly the same for everything. design, production etc are cheap, marketing cost billions... and ariane is just one company selling their products to esa and it absolutely doesnt matter how close relationship they are in...

But ESA isn't buying a modification. They are, however, in charge of Ariane design (it's not an Arianespace product, it's an ESA vehicle made by Airbus that Arianespace sells launches on). Arianespace's job is to buy Ariane launchers and sell and operate launches. ESA is not a customer for this modification; they're doing it because Ariane is their responsibility (it's an ESA project to design a European launch system).

As for "my smartphone costs 10 euros" - Do you understand the difference between development costs and marginal costs? The *marginal* cost of a fairing is nowhere near a hundred million euros. Fairings are also not sold for that price. No customer is paying a hundred million for individual fairings. ESA's hundred million is buying them a total of *zero* fairings. What it does is pay for development costs, allowing Arianespace to just charge customers for the marginal cost.

Look. No one claims fairing design is expensive because new designs have much higher marginal costs. The issue is *development* cost, which is huge. That's why it costs 100,000,000 euros to develop these larger fairings. That price is completely disconnected from the price a customer pays for the fairings, because by the time the customer's buying them, the price is already spent, so Arianespace doesn't have to charge a ton (and so they can reasonably compete on price). The reason new designs are so rare is precisely because development costs are so high; those tend to be paid by governments or outside funding, while marginal costs are paid by customers. If you don't understand the difference between the two types of cost, you don't understand how the economics of rocketry work.

[tater]

Assume finite numbers of fairings. Fine. How many per base part diameter? 2? That's 9 parts. 3? That's 12 parts. 5? 18 parts. Delta IV has 4 as a reality check.

[BudgetHedgehog]

a customer has to design their payload to fit within the fairing options provided by the company they wish to use, if their payload is too large for the fairings of one rocket they have to either redesign their payload or go with another launcher.

I would just like to point this out - if a real life customer's payload is like 30cm too wide or whatever, it's possible to put it on a hinge and fold it up so the package is smaller. No stock hinges means we can't do this so having to use a next size up fairings and whole rocket seems a bit drastic for something that is easily solved in real life (and in KSP with Infernal Robotics).

I say procedural ones are necessary because there's no way to make a payload fit that a real life company would use. Either procedural ones or fixed sized ones and a way to fold and contract things.

My 2 cents.

[Tuareg]

"The issue is *development* cost, which is huge."

yes. they have the materials set, the structure set, they just have to modify the look of it on paper and all the rest is production. there is nothing cost HUGE on it. its marketing. and ESA pays for it (well, not the agency itself, but as i've said the governments funding ESA) arianespace is a company, a multinational company and they are selling these changes to those governments through ESA. business is a complex thing. far more complex than engineering.

[Pthigrivi]

Assume finite numbers of fairings. Fine. How many per base part diameter? 2? That's 9 parts. 3? That's 12 parts. 5? 18 parts. Delta IV has 4 as a reality check.

I think you could have bases in 1.25, 2.5 and 3.75 inline, expanded, and interstage, each of which expand vertically. Thats 9 total. That doesn't sound insane to me.

[tater]

Typical wide landers forced by other KSP limitations are then not a thing. Say 4 x 200 tanks held with radial decouplers to a central tank. That's 3.75m without the 2 decouplers and 2 gear, so 4m, anyway. So your first such lander requires the very end of the tech tree, and a monster rocket.

You could design the stock expanded fairings to be wide enough to accommodate "normal" designs, which is in effect forcing a standard on people for those carried craft designs. It honestly won't affect me, as I put landers in interstages, and station parts barely bulge past their nominal diameter, anyway. I'm just fine with procedural.

Edited January 27, 2015 by tater