Quote from: AncientU on 03/08/2015 11:33 amQuote from: Vultur on 03/07/2015 01:46 amAlso, the barrier to entry. Early airplanes were pretty simple and made out of cheap materials.Actually -- not trolling here -- aren't rockets pretty simple and made out of cheap materials, too?Combining decades of experience with today's modeling, fab technology, and materials science, anyone with a spare Billion or so could make them.Yeah, but the wright brothers started out in a bicycle shop IIRC. I don't think it's really comparable.
Quote from: Vultur on 03/07/2015 01:46 amAlso, the barrier to entry. Early airplanes were pretty simple and made out of cheap materials.Actually -- not trolling here -- aren't rockets pretty simple and made out of cheap materials, too?Combining decades of experience with today's modeling, fab technology, and materials science, anyone with a spare Billion or so could make them.
Also, the barrier to entry. Early airplanes were pretty simple and made out of cheap materials.
Low price isn't all you need to corner the market.. you also need volume.
It isn't just reducing the price to get something into orbit, it is a matter of seriously reducing the price of what goes into orbit as well. The 35%, 50% and even 75% reductions you speak of are in effect only 10, 15, and 20% reductions in the costs of traditional commercial satellites. However, if you coupled the 35%, 50% and 75% reductions in launch costs with radical new manufacturing options and teams of people experienced with these options that reduced the cost of the spacecraft being launched to $10,000 to $20,000 a kilo from $50,000 to $100,000 which these constellations will do, then you will have a sea change in demand. The link from another thread that suggests that even private aircraft might benefit from mobile satellite data with OneWeb, the possibility of specialized ground monitoring applications, specialized micro gravity research affordable at cube sat prices, asset or logistics tracking applications. All of this though is predicated on the idea that lower launch costs spur people to make larger numbers of payloads that cost less to make.
1) The big market is the communications satellite market in GEO. Reusability for that will not be seriously addressed by SX until the BFR.2) ...
Still not sure what the question on this thread is but I'll make a few points.
1) The big market is the communications satellite market in GEO. Reusability for that will not be seriously addressed by SX until the BFR.
2) Satellite mfgs already know how to build cheaper satellites. It involves building with higher margins (make the structures heavier) and reducing redundancy, going from 3 string redundancy to single string (single point failure kills the string and the satellite). This only works if you can either a)Launch two satellites for the price of one (not necessarily on the same LV) and keep one on orbit in standby or b)Have a launch provider who can take your satellite from ground storage to working on orbit in a very short space of time, during which either other satellites on your constellation (if you have a constellation) take up the load) or you live without the capability.Depending on the task "short" might have to be less than a week to a few hours.So if you can't cut the price in half you're going to have to cut the capacity of the satellites you launch. :(
I wonder how many people have started saving up for the half million dollar transfer to a martian life.
Most threads here aren't questions. They are topics for discussion.The topic for this thread is that a launch currently costs around $60 million, but the lower-bound on the cost of the launch is the prop cost of $200,000 to $300,000. The fact that there's a huge difference between the current cost and the lower bound is interesting.
It brings up all kinds of questions, such as "How close can we get to the lower bound?",
"When can we get there?",
and "What needs to happen to get there?".
Looking backward, GEO is the bigger market. Looking forward, there's good reason to think the market for launches to lower orbits is likely to grow much, much more.
Not true. If you have a large constellation, you can get redundancy without having a spare for every bird. If one fails, other nearby satellites take up the slack.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 03/12/2015 01:23 amMost threads here aren't questions. They are topics for discussion.The topic for this thread is that a launch currently costs around $60 million, but the lower-bound on the cost of the launch is the prop cost of $200,000 to $300,000. The fact that there's a huge difference between the current cost and the lower bound is interesting. How fortunate you are on hand to interpret the OP's meaning. That will make this much easier.QuoteIt brings up all kinds of questions, such as "How close can we get to the lower bound?", That would depend on how well SX can managed to mfg an upper stage for a few $100K. I'll leave others who are much more familiar with production engineering to discuss how plausible that is. Quote"When can we get there?", While the upper stage is disposable and costs 10s of $m I'd say "never."Quoteand "What needs to happen to get there?".Recover the upper stage or make it for less than a few $100k. Of course at that point you'll have a 1st stage for about $400-600K as well. QuoteLooking backward, GEO is the bigger market. Looking forward, there's good reason to think the market for launches to lower orbits is likely to grow much, much more.Historically there's good reason to think most of those constellations won't get off the ground and the rest will go bankrupt and be sold for cents on the dollar. IIRC Iridium spent $5Bn on satellite launches for 77 satellites.And then they went bankrupt and their assets were bought for something like 20-30 cents on the $. Google will be a captive customer and make no change to the greater market. They will presumably want (and get) the same sort of special treatment from SX they get from Intel due to their volume, QuoteNot true. If you have a large constellation, you can get redundancy without having a spare for every bird. If one fails, other nearby satellites take up the slack.You seem to have missed the point. "b)Have a launch provider who can take your satellite from ground storage to working on orbit in a very short space of time, during which either other satellites on your constellation (if you have a constellation) take up the load) or you live without the capability."Extra emphasis added.If other satellites in the constellation can carry out the failed satellites functions continuously you would appear to have launched an excess satellite for no reason, which is expensive and pointless.Why would you do that? One way or another if it's there in the first place when it fails it's going to need replacing. There is no magic to making satellites cheaper. It's not a problem provided you have sufficiently fast acting contingency plans, either by positioning on orbit spares (also single string) or have a system that supports launch on an appropriate timescale. Trouble is that timescale is likely to be much shorter than any current launch provider can deliver. But you've launched 2 satellites so to stand still your launch costs have to halve, other wise you run with less than 2x the number of working satellites needed spread across the necessary orbits and hope you have one close enough to change orbit to replace the failed ones coverage without much loss of service to the customers. With a few spares you'll need lots of propellant (so do they have full capacity ?) to do the plane changes. More spares means more launches but with "full bandwidth" capacity satellites. This lowers the amount you have to lower the launch costs by the fraction of "excess" satellites you launch. How much by is the big question. Historically AFAIK the 1st generation constellation services company that's done best has been OrbComm, who offered the least IE store-and-forward non real time SMS.Google seems to be talking intra-satellite real time broadband internet routing, which implies things like VoIP. Which is more like the Iridium end of the market.The software for this will be very demanding and the hardware will be much more complex than most (all ?) existing commm sat onboard hardware. Iridium has not exactly been a license to print money. Current operators of course do it by simply having multiple hardware strings and ground or on board computer controlled "cross strapping" to bypass failed units.
Quote from: john smith 19 on 03/12/2015 12:52 pmQuote from: ChrisWilson68 on 03/12/2015 01:23 amMost threads here aren't questions. They are topics for discussion.The topic for this thread is that a launch currently costs around $60 million, but the lower-bound on the cost of the launch is the prop cost of $200,000 to $300,000. The fact that there's a huge difference between the current cost and the lower bound is interesting. How fortunate you are on hand to interpret the OP's meaning. That will make this much easier.QuoteIt brings up all kinds of questions, such as "How close can we get to the lower bound?", That would depend on how well SX can managed to mfg an upper stage for a few $100K. I'll leave others who are much more familiar with production engineering to discuss how plausible that is. Quote"When can we get there?", While the upper stage is disposable and costs 10s of $m I'd say "never."Quoteand "What needs to happen to get there?".Recover the upper stage or make it for less than a few $100k. Of course at that point you'll have a 1st stage for about $400-600K as well. QuoteLooking backward, GEO is the bigger market. Looking forward, there's good reason to think the market for launches to lower orbits is likely to grow much, much more.Historically there's good reason to think most of those constellations won't get off the ground and the rest will go bankrupt and be sold for cents on the dollar. IIRC Iridium spent $5Bn on satellite launches for 77 satellites.And then they went bankrupt and their assets were bought for something like 20-30 cents on the $. Google will be a captive customer and make no change to the greater market. They will presumably want (and get) the same sort of special treatment from SX they get from Intel due to their volume, QuoteNot true. If you have a large constellation, you can get redundancy without having a spare for every bird. If one fails, other nearby satellites take up the slack.You seem to have missed the point. "b)Have a launch provider who can take your satellite from ground storage to working on orbit in a very short space of time, during which either other satellites on your constellation (if you have a constellation) take up the load) or you live without the capability."Extra emphasis added.If other satellites in the constellation can carry out the failed satellites functions continuously you would appear to have launched an excess satellite for no reason, which is expensive and pointless.Why would you do that? One way or another if it's there in the first place when it fails it's going to need replacing. There is no magic to making satellites cheaper. It's not a problem provided you have sufficiently fast acting contingency plans, either by positioning on orbit spares (also single string) or have a system that supports launch on an appropriate timescale. Trouble is that timescale is likely to be much shorter than any current launch provider can deliver. But you've launched 2 satellites so to stand still your launch costs have to halve, other wise you run with less than 2x the number of working satellites needed spread across the necessary orbits and hope you have one close enough to change orbit to replace the failed ones coverage without much loss of service to the customers. With a few spares you'll need lots of propellant (so do they have full capacity ?) to do the plane changes. More spares means more launches but with "full bandwidth" capacity satellites. This lowers the amount you have to lower the launch costs by the fraction of "excess" satellites you launch. How much by is the big question. Historically AFAIK the 1st generation constellation services company that's done best has been OrbComm, who offered the least IE store-and-forward non real time SMS.Google seems to be talking intra-satellite real time broadband internet routing, which implies things like VoIP. Which is more like the Iridium end of the market.The software for this will be very demanding and the hardware will be much more complex than most (all ?) existing commm sat onboard hardware. Iridium has not exactly been a license to print money. Current operators of course do it by simply having multiple hardware strings and ground or on board computer controlled "cross strapping" to bypass failed units.That's a great crystal ball you have there. A lot has changed in the last 10 years since Iridium. Launch prices much lower (and going lower all the time), satellite costs much lower, technology to form a grid network in space, much more advanced. I really don't think you can compare a 7000 satellite constellation put up by the guy who owns the launch company, with a 70 satellite constellation put up by launch provider 10 years ago.
JS, tens of millions of $ for the second stage?
That's a great crystal ball you have there.
A lot has changed in the last 10 years since Iridium. Launch prices much lower (and going lower all the time), satellite costs much lower, technology to form a grid network in space, much more advanced.
I really don't think you can compare a 7000 satellite constellation put up by the guy who owns the launch company, with a 70 satellite constellation put up by launch provider 10 years ago.
Actually, this was the exact problem Iridium had, wasn't it? . . . their constellation worked great, it just didn't do it any better than much cheaper terrestrial solutions that were developed at the same time. No one would pay the subscription price necessary for them to pay back the credit+interest on that 5 billion.
But again, we come back to economics. Elon says the only way to make his idea for a constellation work is if the constellation performs much of the backbone packet routing currently performed by long distance fiber optic cables. I tend to agree- if they plan to offer a subscription for end users to access a certain # of bps they will most likely fail- how could they ever keep up with a faster ground based solution? If they instead sell the massive bps directly to providers, by convincing them that eliminating the 100s of routers the packet currently has to go through to get across a continent, I think they stand to make a LOT of money. Like, we're talking revenue with 11 zeros on the end of it.
SpaceX is vertically integrated. This means they invested a lot in fixed costs, son that the marginal costs, per rocket, can be low.When we talk "cost", do we include cost of fabrication line, amortized over several years worth of production?
I think the marginal cost cost, per rocket, is surprisingly low, and upper stages will be a couple of millions or less, especially when the production line is mostly doing upper stages.
All of that, plus the demand side bears no resemblance to what it used to be.
Quote from: Dudely on 03/12/2015 02:02 pmActually, this was the exact problem Iridium had, wasn't it? . . . their constellation worked great, it just didn't do it any better than much cheaper terrestrial solutions that were developed at the same time. No one would pay the subscription price necessary for them to pay back the credit+interest on that 5 billion. ExactlyQuoteBut again, we come back to economics. Elon says the only way to make his idea for a constellation work is if the constellation performs much of the backbone packet routing currently performed by long distance fiber optic cables. I tend to agree- if they plan to offer a subscription for end users to access a certain # of bps they will most likely fail- how could they ever keep up with a faster ground based solution? If they instead sell the massive bps directly to providers, by convincing them that eliminating the 100s of routers the packet currently has to go through to get across a continent, I think they stand to make a LOT of money. Like, we're talking revenue with 11 zeros on the end of it.That reduces the number of ground stations and raises their technology level. Handy given complexity of this problem.
A satellite constellation could, in theory, provide a link between San Francisco and New York without having to provide coverage for any of the physical area in between, and could charge the same rate ISPs currently charge for the low latency pipes that already exist between those two places. (In theory, you could make it even better than direct fiber since the speed of light is 40% slower in fiber optics compared to vacuum, or air).