I sympathize with your frustration, because it is such an a**-backwards business plan. (if accurate) If they have any interest in bringing Skylon to reality, REL needs to LEAD this consortium, not hope that someone else will do it. They need to become the prime contractor.
I've never seen any evidence at all of any potential customer with the financial resources to matter having any interest in such a "pre-agreement".
And, even if they did by some miracle get those pre-agreements in place, that doesn't automatically mean they'd get development funding because the pre-agreements only address market risk, not development risk. If I go around and get 100 people to agree to buy my anti-gravity device if it works, that doesn't mean I'll get funding because there's still the substantial risk that I can't actually make an anti-gravity device to fulful the terms of the pre-agreements.
The original value proposition of Skylon was versus the old state-of-the-art: expensive, expendable launch vehicles. Now, the state of the art is changing. As both Blue Origin and SpaceX move closer to inexpensive, reusable launch vehicles,
it erodes the value proposition of Skylon in comparison. It's one thing to say they want to spend $16 billion to produce a system that reduces launch costs from $250 million per launch to $5 million per launch. It's a harder sell if the reduction is from $60 million to $5 million. And even harder when the reduction is from $40 million, then $20 million, and so on.
On the other hand, having other competitors moving toward a low-cost launch system could prove and expand the market, giving investors confidence to invest in REL, particularly if Europe is afraid of the new low-cost launchers and wants its own alternative.So, which is the bigger effect? My opinion is that the changes in the market from Blue Origin and SpaceX will have much more of a negative effect on REL than a positive effect.
The original value proposition of Skylon was versus the old state-of-the-art: expensive, expendable launch vehicles. Now, the state of the art is changing. As both Blue Origin and SpaceX move closer to inexpensive, reusable launch vehicles, it erodes the value proposition of Skylon in comparison. It's one thing to say they want to spend $16 billion to produce a system that reduces launch costs from $250 million per launch to $5 million per launch. It's a harder sell if the reduction is from $60 million to $5 million. And even harder when the reduction is from $40 million, then $20 million, and so on.On the other hand, having other competitors moving toward a low-cost launch system could prove and expand the market, giving investors confidence to invest in REL, particularly if Europe is afraid of the new low-cost launchers and wants its own alternative.So, which is the bigger effect? My opinion is that the changes in the market from Blue Origin and SpaceX will have much more of a negative effect on REL than a positive effect.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 08/04/2016 08:32 pmI've never seen any evidence at all of any potential customer with the financial resources to matter having any interest in such a "pre-agreement".Nice qualification of you disagreement. In fact it's basically how Steve Jobs bankrolled the Apple II and roughly how most Boeings and Airbuses have had their finance raised for them.
What actually makes it difficult is the fact the organisation that would actively deal with the customers is not the final recipient of the money, and indeed that body would not exist in its final form (how could it, as those pledges would be a key part of bringing it into existence). :(
QuoteAnd, even if they did by some miracle get those pre-agreements in place, that doesn't automatically mean they'd get development funding because the pre-agreements only address market risk, not development risk. If I go around and get 100 people to agree to buy my anti-gravity device if it works, that doesn't mean I'll get funding because there's still the substantial risk that I can't actually make an anti-gravity device to fulful the terms of the pre-agreements.As I and others have noted smart VC's have never invested in ideas, but in the teams behind them. Your antigravity team would appear to be someone with no knowledge of physics, no working theory to make it happen and no prototype to show you even have the skills to make it if you wanted to.So yes I can see you'd have a lot of trouble raising a cent.
I'd suggest that's a lot more from day one that quite a few Silicon Valley startups have brought to the table. Mostly a belief that somehow they can make it work before the money runs out.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 08/04/2016 08:42 pmThe original value proposition of Skylon was versus the old state-of-the-art: expensive, expendable launch vehicles. Now, the state of the art is changing. As both Blue Origin and SpaceX move closer to inexpensive, reusable launch vehicles, That's a reusable sub-orbital in Blue's case and a semi reusable vehicle in SX's case. The distinctions have serious implications on economics.
Quoteit erodes the value proposition of Skylon in comparison. It's one thing to say they want to spend $16 billion to produce a system that reduces launch costs from $250 million per launch to $5 million per launch. It's a harder sell if the reduction is from $60 million to $5 million. And even harder when the reduction is from $40 million, then $20 million, and so on.If that was all Skylon offers you'd be right, but that ignores it's life expectancy, which will be demonstrated, not guesse,
it's launch reliability (and the only known semi reusable vehicle that's actually flown had a reliability of about 1 in 36, with root cause failures in the expendable or refurbished-to-the-point-of-being-rebuilt parts of the design)
QuoteOn the other hand, having other competitors moving toward a low-cost launch system could prove and expand the market, giving investors confidence to invest in REL, particularly if Europe is afraid of the new low-cost launchers and wants its own alternative.So, which is the bigger effect? My opinion is that the changes in the market from Blue Origin and SpaceX will have much more of a negative effect on REL than a positive effect.We keep hearing about a how F9SR will change the market but none have launched so far
and the market has to expand radically to offset the revue loss from the lower prices. My instinct is those prices are simply not low enough to actually bring many people flocking to SX with ideas that they've just been waiting to launch. So SX has a net revenue loss. Wheather or not it loses profit as well is another matter.
Sorry but $60m is better than $120m and $30 is better still but IMHO it's simply not that much better to double (or more than double ideally) the market. It's still a shedload of money (and that's not for a comm sat launch, just to LEO) for a ticket to ride with (hopefully) a reliability record that will be one day as be demonstrated to be as good as Ariane or Atlas and a launch date at the suppliers (any suppliers) convenience, not mine.
It's quite easy to run the numbers on the economics of the ELV business and very tough to beat them.
A fully reusable F9 might have done it. For whatever reason it didn't happen.
I don't see F9SR being anywhere near the breakthrough in price you seem to think it is. :(
It doesn't actually matter to my point. My point is that if SpaceX and Blue Origin only ever get the price point to $60 million, that still hurts the value proposition of Skylon. If they get it to $40 million, that hurts the value proposition even more. $20 million even more. At $5 million (Shotwell has told satellite operators to plan for that price point in the future), it entirely goes away.
Quote from: Lars-J on 08/04/2016 07:42 pmI sympathize with your frustration, because it is such an a**-backwards business plan. (if accurate) If they have any interest in bringing Skylon to reality, REL needs to LEAD this consortium, not hope that someone else will do it. They need to become the prime contractor. Because Aerojet, Rocketdyne, GE, Rolls-Royce, and Pratt and Whitney have shown that engine manufacturers always have to be the "prime contractor" and take the LEAD in designing and building the vehicles their engines power...
Which has exactly nothing to do with my point.
Or, people with money just don't think Skylon is a good bet.
Again, you're not addressing my point at all. My point is a simple one: getting pre-development purchase agreements only addresses market risk, not development risk. Whether or not there is development risk for Skylon is not relevant to that point. The point is just that pre-development purchase agreements aren't sufficient.
No Silicon Valley start-up has ever gone to a VC and presented a business plan that requires $16 billion in funding before the first revenue comes in and we find out if it works or not.
I specifically asked that we avoid derailing this thread again arguing about whether SpaceX is capable of buidling a reusable second stage or not.
Are you really trying to convince anyone that Skylon is somehow likely to have better reliability than a Blue Origin or SpaceX vehicle because somehow you think the Blue Origin and SpaceX vehicles are more like that Space Shuttle than Skylon is?
For Skylon numbers to work out, the market would have to expand enormously at the $5 million price point. I don't see how it's defensible to posit that there's so little elasticity in the market until $5 million but then suddenly at that price point there's an enormous elasticity. Markets just don't tend to work that way.
There's no reason to think Skylon will have higher reliability than Blue Origin or SpaceX. By the time Skylon flies, both of those others will have many years of experience getting those reliability rates very high.
And there's no reason that Blue Origin and SpaceX can't have some rockets sitting in the hangar ready to go at short notice, just like Skylon.
Running numbers is easy, but knowing what the market is is hard. Skylon counts on a huge increase in launch rate.
Maybe it will happen, maybe not, but if it does, SpaceX and Blue Origin will be all over that.
It didn't yet happen.
It doesn't actually matter to my point. My point is that if SpaceX and Blue Origin only ever get the price point to $60 million, that still hurts the value proposition of Skylon. If they get it to $40 million, that hurts the value proposition even more. $20 million even more.
At $5 million (Shotwell has told satellite operators to plan for that price point in the future), it entirely goes away.
Thank God for China, rescuing this thread from whining about SpaceX:Looks like they're developing their own version of Skylon.And good for them, as Europe is too timid to fully fund such a huge sum for the full-up space plane and Reaction Engines refuses to come up with a more practical, gradual plan to develop a reusable orbital vehicle.http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/china-national-space-administration/china-develop-hybrid-spaceplane-cheaper-space-travel/
Won't that just replace whining about SpaceX with whining about Chinese spacecraft looking too much like 'existing' designs? Until they're first to actually launch one of these, that is.
Thank God for China, rescuing this thread from whining about SpaceX:Looks like they're developing their own version of Skylon.
It will rely on an indigenous turbine, ramjet, and rocket engines to power the spaceplane in various phases of flight.
"Knock-off artists champs"... For a nation with such a rich early history of civilization, have these people ever had an original idea in the last 100 years?
Quote from: Rocket Science on 08/08/2016 01:38 pm"Knock-off artists champs"... For a nation with such a rich early history of civilization, have these people ever had an original idea in the last 100 years? Sorry, that's deeply unfair. Really original ideas are exceedingly rare today. If they make it when Europe isn't, who should blame them.To bring the thread back to SpaceX. Whenever SpaceX has done something new, someone comes and claims it is not original. Someone has done that before.
On a general note they are not a nation of innovators but a communist system that demands conformity... Mass production yes, innovation not so much...
Sounds like a multi-engine approach, rather than a single hybrid engine.If they can make the design close with the mass penalty of three sets of engines, I will be very surprised.