Author Topic: SpaceX vs Blue Origin - Whose Approach / Business Strategy is Better? Thread 1  (Read 566819 times)

Offline AncientU

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What Ed is advocating is that everyone should go back to the 'sensible' world where all rockets were thrown away after each use... sure, that makes perfect sense to me! ::)
Certainly not!  That is not my point of view, even if you wish it were.  I am offering a surrogate for figuring out where the crossover point might be for reuse payback.  I agree that such a crossover point exists, and I'm not suggesting that SpaceX or others might not be closing or even crossing that gap soon.  I merely suggested that they haven't done it quite yet.

 - Ed Kyle

The difficulty is that using only the F9 statistics to determine an economics-only 'cross-over point' assumes other value factors equal zero (or one).  I've pointed out that there is difficult-to-quantify, but still important value to reusability as demonstrated with F9 for both FH and BFR, also for flight rate, etc.  Since the corporate goal is not 'closing the business case' -- but getting a viable transportation system to Mars going -- economic analysis is too simplistic.  Life was simpler when a launch system was designed and built 'only' for launch, but that is not the case for F9.  It, more than anything, is a proof of concept for a quite different developmental goal -- it needs to be evaluated against the goal for which it was built.

BL: It doesn't matter if/when economic 'cross-over' occurs.  As a development program, it is essentially mission accomplished, 'business case' closed.

To tie this back to Blue Origin, it doesn't matter where/when the 'cross-over' point for New Glenn is reached.  The financing is in place; the goal is 'millions of people living and working in space.'
« Last Edit: 11/15/2017 10:57 am by AncientU »
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Offline woods170

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What Ed is advocating is that everyone should go back to the 'sensible' world where all rockets were thrown away after each use... sure, that makes perfect sense to me! ::)
Certainly not!  That is not my point of view, even if you wish it were.  I am offering a surrogate for figuring out where the crossover point might be for reuse payback.  I agree that such a crossover point exists, and I'm not suggesting that SpaceX or others might not be closing or even crossing that gap soon.  I merely suggested that they haven't done it quite yet.

 - Ed Kyle

The difficulty is that using only the F9 statistics to determine an economics-only 'cross-over point' assumes other value factors equal zero (or one).  I've pointed out that there is difficult-to-quantify, but still important value to reusability as demonstrated with F9 for both FH and BFR, also for flight rate, etc.  Since the corporate goal is not 'closing the business case' -- but getting a viable transportation system to Mars going -- economic analysis is too simplistic.  Life was simpler when a launch system was designed and built 'only' for launch, but that is not the case for F9.  It, more than anything, is a proof of concept for a quite different developmental goal -- it needs to be evaluated against the goal for which it was built.

BL: It doesn't matter if/when economic 'cross-over' occurs.  As a development program, it is essentially mission accomplished, 'business case' closed.

To tie this back to Blue Origin, it doesn't matter where/when the 'cross-over' point for New Glenn is reached.  The financing is in place; the goal is 'millions of people living and working in space.'
Exactly. Ed needs to let go of the notion that rockets only exist to make money.
Because clearly that is not the ultimate goal of SpaceX or Blue Origin.

Offline AncientU

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Lowering the cost to orbit, 24-hour reusability, colony on Mars, millions of people living and working in space are visionary goals for a future that could be radically different than the one that is/was settling for the status quo in space -- rare, expensive, and 'hard' (so send us lots of money).  Fully and rapidly reusable rockets are a key to that goal -- which could also fail to materialize, even with gas-n-go rockets -- but failure to try to build these rockets guarantees that the future envisioned is impossible.  Expendable rockets, even those which have business 'cross-over' points already achieved (if any actually do*) could never begin to move us into that future.

Expendable rockets were built for a domestic business, basically covering for Shuttle's failure to provide low cost to orbit and the future that could be possible.   Those expendable rockets wouldn't have existed if Shuttle succeeded, and they will be road kill if/when the (fully and rapidly) reusable rockets are fully realized.

* Are either Atlas V or Delta IV at their respective cross-over points? Boeing/LM spent several billions developing these vehicles... How about Ariane 5?  Will Arine 6 ever 'cross-over'?  Angara?  How about Vulcan/ACES?  SLS?  Delta II, Soyuz, Proton probably have crossed over, but each is planned for retirement.
« Last Edit: 11/15/2017 06:52 pm by AncientU »
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Offline envy887

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Lowering the cost to orbit, 24-hour reusability, colony on Mars, millions of people living and working in space are visionary goals for a future that could be radically different than the one that is/was settling for the status quo in space -- rare, expensive, and 'hard' (so send us lots of money).  Fully and rapidly reusable rockets are a key to that goal -- which could also fail to materialize, even with gas-n-go rockets -- but failure to try to build these rockets guarantees that the future envisioned is impossible.  Expendable rockets, even those which have business 'cross-over' points already achieved (if any actually do*) could never begin to move us into that future.

Expendable rockets were built for a domestic business, basically covering for Shuttle's failure to provide low cost to orbit and the future that could be possible.   Those expendable rockets wouldn't have existed if Shuttle succeeded, and they will be road kill if/when the (fully and rapidly) reusable rockets are fully realized.

* Are either Atlas V or Delta IV at their respective cross-over points? Boeing/LM spent several billions developing these vehicles... How about Ariane 5?  Will Arine 6 ever 'cross-over'?  Angara?  How about Vulcan/ACES?  SLS?  Delta II, Soyuz, Proton probably have crossed over, but each is planned for retirement.

From what I've heard Atlas V has, but Delta IV will retire before it ever pays back its development cost.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Atlas V paid off because almost all of it came from the past or Russia.

Delta IV had too much that was new or derived from Shuttle, part of the wonderful hydrogen future. No Shuttle, no cost sharing, no way to afford.

The thing is that, imo, you only have to really consider two parameters: refurbishment costs and the higher manufacturing cost of the 'overbuilt' reusable system.

You can't just ignore economies of scale.

An extreme example: You have a rocket that can be reused 10x, but there's only demand for 1 launch per year.
Consequently you will manufacture a single rocket every 10 years. That rocket is going to be bloody expensive. Imagine what a car or a computer chip would cost if only one were produced every 10 years.

If the production cost of a rocket drops by x% with every doubling of the production rate, you can realize big savings from getting the production rate up from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 etc.

Bottom line: With 1 launch per year reusability will not pay off, of that I'm 100% certain. With 50 it might, because you still get to make 5-10 rockets a year, which gives you reasonable economies of scale (assuming 10-5 uses).

While 'economies of scale' is not exactly expendable rockets strength, given how we are still thinking about a 'scale' of tens in the current best case, not thousands or millions per year as happens with computer chips or cars, let's try and include it in the 'reuse tax', or the increased cost to manufacture the RLV vs the expendable vehicle. (Even if it's pretty ironic to me that this is used as the ultimate argument against RLVs: 'Are you mad? With RLVs we won't be able to preserve our 6 units per year economy of scale!')

On a more serious note:
You talk about 10 launches in 10 years, so 1 RLV manufactured in 10 years vs 10 ELV. Based on my math, a conservative RLV capable of 10 reuses with 20% refurbishment costs would not be cost effective if the expendable vehicle it substitutes costed at least 3 times less. So your reduced economies of scale (+ added cost because the RLV also needs more capability) should result in a RLV that costs 200% more to manufacture for reusability not to be viable. In other words, making 10 vehicles in 10 years vs 1 in 10 years should result in 70% savings for reuse not to make economic sense. Would that really be the case? envy887 says that 10X volumes brings you 35% savings, and that's forgetting that New Glenn and F9 are only partially reusable: manufacturing facilities would still produce second stages and engines for every mission flown, so for many parts 'economies of scale' would still apply. The overall savings would probably be even less than 35%.

In conclusion I think that even in your impossible worst case scenario of 1 flight per year, reusability would still make sense. Even if you fall for the irrational 'market won't change, there will never be much more demand for orbital flights than now, which is totally not this low because they cost 100M$ each' mantra, reuse still makes sense.

But would you really bet that when BO has a fully RLV New Armstrong and can offer missions for only a fraction of the price they could offer with an ELV (and a fraction is conservative, reality will probably be orders of magnitude cheaper, as with airplanes) nobody would take advantage of that? It's overwhelmingly probable that the '6 per year economy of scale' will be preserved, but with those six vehicles you'll be able to offer tens if not hundreds of flight at 1/10 if not less than 1/100 price. Do you really think demand would be the same at <10M$ per flight or even <1M$ per flight vs >100M$ per flight?
« Last Edit: 11/16/2017 11:58 am by AbuSimbel »
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Offline AncientU

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New Glenn has already booked seven flights starting sometime after 2020; they'll start booking more, as SpaceX did, after they successfully run the BE-4 full power, full duration, and start flying orbital.
There is demand for large, reusable rockets -- if the price is market competitive.  We'll have to see how pricing shakes out after they start flying, since these early flights probably had a risk premium/reduction.
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Offline Nathan2go

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Another interesting angle for comparing the two is their respective manned Beyond-LEO strategies.

SpaceX has chosen to lay a specific plan on the table, effectively becoming a thought leader.  Perhaps the openness is needed to start building support for the audacious idea of Mars colonization.  To make the jump from com-sat scale to exploration scale payloads, SpaceX will build a whole new rocket, but will use the same new rocket for both markets.  Heavy BLEO flights always used LEO propellant refilling, based on methalox.

Blue Origin is secretive, and perhaps undecided, but with a preference for cis-lunar destinations.  As late arrivals in the marketplace, they have less need to announce their plans beyond the initial com-sat capabilities.  It is fair to assume they will also move towards full re-use. 

One possibility is that Blue's New Armstrong exploration class rocket is really a 3-core variant of New Glenn (NG-Heavy?).  Compared to a larger single-core implementation of the same gross mass, the 3-core system is actually better for sending a re-usable 2nd stage to escape velocity without LEO refilling (there is a performance benefit because the side-boosters separate at lower velocity).  One could imagine a reusable hydralox 2nd stage, using 7 of their BE-3 engines, which would reach Lagrangia without refilling, or refill at L2 before landing on the Moon and returning directly to Earth.

The factory for building the 9m diameter SpaceX BFR is larger and therefore more expensive than the factory that builds the 7m NG, but it is better suited to larger payloads.  The business built around the 3 core NG-heavy is likely more cost effective when most launches are com-sat class, which can use a single core.
« Last Edit: 11/17/2017 02:03 pm by Nathan2go »

Offline Oli

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The thing is that, imo, you only have to really consider two parameters: refurbishment costs and the higher manufacturing cost of the 'overbuilt' reusable system.

You can't just ignore economies of scale.

An extreme example: You have a rocket that can be reused 10x, but there's only demand for 1 launch per year.
Consequently you will manufacture a single rocket every 10 years. That rocket is going to be bloody expensive. Imagine what a car or a computer chip would cost if only one were produced every 10 years.

If the production cost of a rocket drops by x% with every doubling of the production rate, you can realize big savings from getting the production rate up from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 etc.

Bottom line: With 1 launch per year reusability will not pay off, of that I'm 100% certain. With 50 it might, because you still get to make 5-10 rockets a year, which gives you reasonable economies of scale (assuming 10-5 uses).

I have to apologize. The above describes an experience curve which is invariant to scale, so if both expendable and reusable rockets have the same curve, doubling the flight rate will reduce the cost of both by an equal percentage.
The flight rate is thus irrelevant to the cost ratio, i.e. to the question of whether reusable vehicles are less/more costly. One has to introduce fixed costs to make the cost ratio dependent on the flight rate.

And you people should read my posts better ;).
« Last Edit: 11/17/2017 04:57 pm by Oli »

Online meekGee

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The thing is that, imo, you only have to really consider two parameters: refurbishment costs and the higher manufacturing cost of the 'overbuilt' reusable system.

You can't just ignore economies of scale.

An extreme example: You have a rocket that can be reused 10x, but there's only demand for 1 launch per year.
Consequently you will manufacture a single rocket every 10 years. That rocket is going to be bloody expensive. Imagine what a car or a computer chip would cost if only one were produced every 10 years.

If the production cost of a rocket drops by x% with every doubling of the production rate, you can realize big savings from getting the production rate up from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 etc.

Bottom line: With 1 launch per year reusability will not pay off, of that I'm 100% certain. With 50 it might, because you still get to make 5-10 rockets a year, which gives you reasonable economies of scale (assuming 10-5 uses).

I have to apologize. The above describes an experience curve which is invariant to scale, so if both expendable and reusable rockets have the same curve, doubling the flight rate will reduce the cost of both by an equal percentage.
sThe flight rate is thus irrelevant to the cost ratio, i.e. to the question of whether reusable vehicles are less/more costly. One has to introduce fixed costs to make the cost ratio dependent on the flight rate.

And you people should read my posts better ;).

The price per rocket will decrease with quantity, but it's a very slow function..  Logarithmic almost.  Increase production by an order of magnitude, get some decrease, etc.  iPhones are cheap because they are made by the tens of millions.

OTOH, with reusable rockets, fly 10 times, and you can amortize the fixed costs by 10x.  That's a MUCH larger reduction.

Hence the unequal ratios
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Offline Nilof

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Fixed costs are mostly per year of operating the factory and keeping employees on payroll, not per rocket built.

If you are paying for a factory that can build ten rockets per year, 10x reuse for a constant ten flights a year won't really change much. What that level of reusability does give you is the option to keep the same factory and potentially fly 100 times a year, which is a huge improvement.

Instead of linear growth proportional to the rocket production rate, you get quadratic growth proportional to the rocket production rate times the reuse rate. If you want to put a million people into space by launching 10 000 times per year, making 50 rockets per year and reusing them 200 times, is a lot more realistic than building factories to make 10 000 rockets per year. At small launch rates quadratic growth gives no advantage over linear growth, but at launch rates that are required to fully support an off-planet civilization, it's necessary.

What is ultimately needed to colonize space is a high flight rate. Reuse is extremely helpful for that. You don't pursue reuse to stick to the status quo, you do it to enable a hundredfold growth of operations. If you can't find customers for your higher flight rate, you become your own customer by making your own constellations. Or, if you have pockets as deep as Bezos, you keep guarenteeing that this capability will continue to exist as you wait for other entities to plan around it.
« Last Edit: 11/20/2017 02:27 am by Nilof »
For a variable Isp spacecraft running at constant power and constant acceleration, the mass ratio is linear in delta-v.   Δv = ve0(MR-1). Or equivalently: Δv = vef PMF. Also, this is energy-optimal for a fixed delta-v and mass ratio.

Offline Lar

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And you people should read my posts better ;).

If most people understood you, and one person didn't? It's that person. If many people don't understand you? It's you. (old technical writing principle)...
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Online Coastal Ron

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The thing is that, imo, you only have to really consider two parameters: refurbishment costs and the higher manufacturing cost of the 'overbuilt' reusable system.

You can't just ignore economies of scale.

An extreme example: You have a rocket that can be reused 10x, but there's only demand for 1 launch per year.
Consequently you will manufacture a single rocket every 10 years. That rocket is going to be bloody expensive.

No, it won't. Not if you use the same workforce and manufacturing capabilities that you are already using for other products.

Quote
Imagine what a car or a computer chip would cost if only one were produced every 10 years.

Wrong analogies.

We know that SpaceX WON'T being flying only once per year, since they already have a healthy backlog of customer orders, AND they plan to start launching their own massive satellite constellation - some of which will likely go to space on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

So SpaceX will likely have continuous demand for building Falcon 9 1st stages, and they will ALWAYS have demand for 2nd stages as long as Falcon 9/H are in use - and 2nd stages use the same production line as the 1st stages.

I've coordinated a lot of product transitions in my time, and I don't see a big problem with this one. 2nd stage production will keep the manufacturing line ready for any 1st stages that need to be built.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Online meekGee

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Fixed costs are mostly per year of operating the factory and keeping employees on payroll, not per rocket built.

If you are paying for a factory that can build ten rockets per year, 10x reuse for a constant ten flights a year won't really change much. What that level of reusability does give you is the option to keep the same factory and potentially fly 100 times a year, which is a huge improvement.

Instead of linear growth proportional to the rocket production rate, you get quadratic growth proportional to the rocket production rate times the reuse rate. If you want to put a million people into space by launching 10 000 times per year, making 50 rockets per year and reusing them 200 times, is a lot more realistic than building factories to make 10 000 rockets per year. At small launch rates quadratic growth gives no advantage over linear growth, but at launch rates that are required to fully support an off-planet civilization, it's necessary.

What is ultimately needed to colonize space is a high flight rate. Reuse is extremely helpful for that. You don't pursue reuse to stick to the status quo, you do it to enable a hundredfold growth of operations. If you can't find customers for your higher flight rate, you become your own customer by making your own constellations. Or, if you have pockets as deep as Bezos, you keep guarenteeing that this capability will continue to exist as you wait for other entities to plan around it.

The factory cost argument is only true in the extreme example where the factory is under-utilized, and in reality, if any of these players are doing that bad, they're not in the game any more.

In reality, even a factory for reusable rockets will be well-utilized.  It's just the you'll need only one factory to support hundreds of flights, not several.

I am amazed that people still think that you can compete with a reusable rockets by making cheap expendable ones.
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Offline AncientU

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Fixed costs are mostly per year of operating the factory and keeping employees on payroll, not per rocket built.

If you are paying for a factory that can build ten rockets per year, 10x reuse for a constant ten flights a year won't really change much. What that level of reusability does give you is the option to keep the same factory and potentially fly 100 times a year, which is a huge improvement.

Instead of linear growth proportional to the rocket production rate, you get quadratic growth proportional to the rocket production rate times the reuse rate. If you want to put a million people into space by launching 10 000 times per year, making 50 rockets per year and reusing them 200 times, is a lot more realistic than building factories to make 10 000 rockets per year. At small launch rates quadratic growth gives no advantage over linear growth, but at launch rates that are required to fully support an off-planet civilization, it's necessary.

What is ultimately needed to colonize space is a high flight rate. Reuse is extremely helpful for that. You don't pursue reuse to stick to the status quo, you do it to enable a hundredfold growth of operations. If you can't find customers for your higher flight rate, you become your own customer by making your own constellations. Or, if you have pockets as deep as Bezos, you keep guarenteeing that this capability will continue to exist as you wait for other entities to plan around it.

The factory cost argument is only true in the extreme example where the factory is under-utilized, and in reality, if any of these players are doing that bad, they're not in the game any more.

In reality, even a factory for reusable rockets will be well-utilized.  It's just the you'll need only one factory to support hundreds of flights, not several.

I am amazed that people still think that you can compete with a reusable rockets by making cheap expendable ones.

Probably true, or nearly so, if one is viewing the market from a historical perspective. 
'Why throw a billion dollars at reuse when an expendable Falcon 7 would be cheaper (per copy)?'

But... change happens.
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Offline Darkseraph

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There is a third business strategy to consider that could ameliorate the issues of high vertical integration/low flight rates. Outsource as much of the production of your RLV as possible. Many of the parts of an RLV could be sourced externally or bought off the shelf, avoiding the expense of maintaining huge facilities or standing armies. This would be helpful in variable or low production rates. Basically, the Orbital Sciences strategy.

Although no company has directly tried it for RLVs, new entrants to the launch market are mostly developing small mass produced RLVs. It's worth considering that SpaceX had its demo ITS LOX tank made by Janicki Industries and that DC-X used existing RL10s, avoiding the gargantuan expense of developing new engines.
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Offline e of pi

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There is a third business strategy to consider that could ameliorate the issues of high vertical integration/low flight rates. Outsource as much of the production of your RLV as possible. Many of the parts of an RLV could be sourced externally or bought off the shelf, avoiding the expense of maintaining huge facilities or standing armies. This would be helpful in variable or low production rates. Basically, the Orbital Sciences strategy.

Although no company has directly tried it for RLVs, new entrants to the launch market are mostly developing small mass produced RLVs. It's worth considering that SpaceX had its demo ITS LOX tank made by Janicki Industries and that DC-X used existing RL10s, avoiding the gargantuan expense of developing new engines.
That was very much the Kistler strategy for the K-1: buy the engines, outsource the tanks and integration, operate the result. Heavy initial cost, but in theory avoiding the expense of maintaining in-house manufacturing capability and specific LV manufacturing expertise, as opposed to LV operations/upkeep expertise. The money didn't reach the critical level of getting the initial builds, though--either in the 90s, or on either NASA contract they managed to swing (they were the original second COTS competitor, instead of Orbital).

Offline Norm38

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I read a discussion here about the two companies recovery ships and which approach was better.
But this seems an area where cooperation and/or third parties could benefit all.
I doubt either wants to maintain a naval fleet of ships, barges and tugs. If we get to the point where stages are landing in ocean on a weekly basis, that's where I see a general recovery service operating.
Thoughts on that?

Offline Zed_Noir

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I read a discussion here about the two companies recovery ships and which approach was better.
But this seems an area where cooperation and/or third parties could benefit all.
I doubt either wants to maintain a naval fleet of ships, barges and tugs. If we get to the point where stages are landing in ocean on a weekly basis, that's where I see a general recovery service operating.
Thoughts on that?

If you can convince both Musk & Bezos that they are not losing face. Then maybe a separate service to operate the recovery assets might be possible.

However the idea to have one maritime recovery service is not practical currently. SpaceX have small coastal recovery units that are not very fast. While Blue will be using converted VLCC (aka supertanker) or AOE  (aka Fleet Replenishment ship) as Oceanic recovery units that can go at least 20 knots in speed.

Also both Musk and Bezos have heavily vertical integrated companies. Inserting a third party to the mix might not be as efficient and smooth running.

Offline mme

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I read a discussion here about the two companies recovery ships and which approach was better.
But this seems an area where cooperation and/or third parties could benefit all.
I doubt either wants to maintain a naval fleet of ships, barges and tugs. If we get to the point where stages are landing in ocean on a weekly basis, that's where I see a general recovery service operating.
Thoughts on that?
Sounds like asking for trouble to me. Who gets priority when there are resource conflicts? What if the other guy's rocket destroys the recovery ship you need tomorrow (and for the rest of the year)? What about IP?
Space is not Highlander.  There can, and will, be more than one.

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