Author Topic: SpaceX vs Blue Origin - Whose Approach / Business Strategy is Better? Thread 1  (Read 566767 times)

Offline gospacex

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BO is much more like old space than new space.

Here's my reasoning, When NASA first decided to get quotes for commercial flights to the ISS it worked out what it would cost to develop is own solution using its usual cost plus contracting methods. It came up with a $4 bill + price tag. Musk got F9 up and running for about 1/10 th of that. Meanwhile BO has been on the go for 17 years or so. It's first rocket to orbit will probably not fly to 2020/21 and a cost of approx 6-7 billion(guesstimate of $1 bill a year in recent years and much less earlier) Old space development costs there. Orion type timescales with NASA time cost structures.

BO is not Old Space.

Old Space is "government space" or nominally private enterprises which nevertheless are primarily targeting government contracts. They "can't fail", and thus have no serious incentives to innovate.

Online meekGee

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BO is much more like old space than new space.

Here's my reasoning, When NASA first decided to get quotes for commercial flights to the ISS it worked out what it would cost to develop is own solution using its usual cost plus contracting methods. It came up with a $4 bill + price tag. Musk got F9 up and running for about 1/10 th of that. Meanwhile BO has been on the go for 17 years or so. It's first rocket to orbit will probably not fly to 2020/21 and a cost of approx 6-7 billion(guesstimate of $1 bill a year in recent years and much less earlier) Old space development costs there. Orion type timescales with NASA time cost structures.

BO is not Old Space.

Old Space is "government space" or nominally private enterprises which nevertheless are primarily targeting government contracts. They "can't fail", and thus have no serious incentives to innovate.

The problem with BO is that they have it "too easy"....

Old Space was "ready to do it as soon as someone writes us a check".  And the government did, and OS delivered, but the cost was a mindset that proved disastrous when faced with a new company like SpaceX.

In a way, BO is in a similar place. Unlimited money, no pressure.  I think it affects them in a similar way, which is highly ironic.

SpaceX is still unique in that they never had it easy, and had to balance ground breaking development with the realities of being a real launch provider. I think they are stronger and tougher because of that.

It's also indicative that with NG, BO is aiming to where SpaceX kinda was at the time, but since then SpaceX has revealed it has much larger plans - to which BO basically responded with the NA moniker.

When you ask SpaceX "how come all the delays" they can legitimately say "well we've been doing a BUNCH of things you know.  Commercial launches.  ISS launches. Development of S1 reuse. Work on S2 and fairing reuse. Work on D2 and manned launch.  CommX.  So excuse us for ITS being behind schedule, but we're kinda multi-tasking here".

What can BO say?  What else have they been doing?
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Offline corneliussulla

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BO is much more like old space than new space.

Here's my reasoning, When NASA first decided to get quotes for commercial flights to the ISS it worked out what it would cost to develop is own solution using its usual cost plus contracting methods. It came up with a $4 bill + price tag. Musk got F9 up and running for about 1/10 th of that. Meanwhile BO has been on the go for 17 years or so. It's first rocket to orbit will probably not fly to 2020/21 and a cost of approx 6-7 billion(guesstimate of $1 bill a year in recent years and much less earlier) Old space development costs there. Orion type timescales with NASA time cost structures.

bad reasoning.  They aren't spending $1 bill a year.  That is just what is available, not what spent.   BO doesn't have the number of people to support such spending rates

You aren't going to be able to support your (in my view, iincorrect) claims that Spacex is better than BO

This is a direct quote from Bezos. “My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin,” he told reporters here at the 33rd Space Symposium. “So the business model for Blue Origin is very robust.”

He has also said NG will cost about $2.5 bill to develop. Then u have the cost of new Shepard and BE3 and BE4, not hard to see my guesstimate probably not to far wrong.

Wether SX will prove to better in the long run who knows, but since both companies are of a similar age it is easy to see who has been most effective to date.

Offline Robotbeat

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SpaceX has had a bunch of successes in the first half of this year, and Blue Origin has had a long lull in visible successes.

However, that is a temporary state and we shouldn't expect it to last long. Blue Origin will have more successes in the future, and talk of Blue Origin not being able to compete with SpaceX despite having up to a billion per year in "free" funding will disappear.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Offline edkyle99

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SpaceX has had a bunch of successes in the first half of this year, and Blue Origin has had a long lull in visible successes.

However, that is a temporary state and we shouldn't expect it to last long. Blue Origin will have more successes in the future, and talk of Blue Origin not being able to compete with SpaceX despite having up to a billion per year in "free" funding will disappear.
SpaceX started trying to reach orbit in 2006 and finally succeeded in 2009.  Orbital Sciences made it in 1990.  Ariane reached orbit in 1979 (Ariane 1).  ULA's predecessors first reached orbit in 1958. 

Blue Origin has yet to perform a single orbital launch.  No matter how many billions Bezos spends, his company still has a long hard climb to get there.  BE-4 full scale test was supposed to be in 2015, then 2016, etc..   

 - Ed Kyle

Offline Robotbeat

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SpaceX has had a bunch of successes in the first half of this year, and Blue Origin has had a long lull in visible successes.

However, that is a temporary state and we shouldn't expect it to last long. Blue Origin will have more successes in the future, and talk of Blue Origin not being able to compete with SpaceX despite having up to a billion per year in "free" funding will disappear.
SpaceX started trying to reach orbit in 2006 and finally succeeded in 2009.  Orbital Sciences made it in 1990.  Ariane reached orbit in 1979 (Ariane 1).  ULA's predecessors first reached orbit in 1958. 

Blue Origin has yet to perform a single orbital launch.  No matter how many billions Bezos spends, his company still has a long hard climb to get there.  BE-4 full scale test was supposed to be in 2015, then 2016, etc..   

 - Ed Kyle
Youre not wrong, just pointing out that these things ebb and flow. Blue could start flying people to space next year and lay down New Glenn test articles.
Chris  Whoever loves correction loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

To the maximum extent practicable, the Federal Government shall plan missions to accommodate the space transportation services capabilities of United States commercial providers. US law http://goo.gl/YZYNt0

Online meekGee

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BO is much more like old space than new space.

Here's my reasoning, When NASA first decided to get quotes for commercial flights to the ISS it worked out what it would cost to develop is own solution using its usual cost plus contracting methods. It came up with a $4 bill + price tag. Musk got F9 up and running for about 1/10 th of that. Meanwhile BO has been on the go for 17 years or so. It's first rocket to orbit will probably not fly to 2020/21 and a cost of approx 6-7 billion(guesstimate of $1 bill a year in recent years and much less earlier) Old space development costs there. Orion type timescales with NASA time cost structures.

bad reasoning.  They aren't spending $1 bill a year.  That is just what is available, not what spent.   BO doesn't have the number of people to support such spending rates

You aren't going to be able to support your (in my view, iincorrect) claims that Spacex is better than BO

This is a direct quote from Bezos. “My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin,” he told reporters here at the 33rd Space Symposium. “So the business model for Blue Origin is very robust.”

He has also said NG will cost about $2.5 bill to develop. Then u have the cost of new Shepard and BE3 and BE4, not hard to see my guesstimate probably not to far wrong.

Wether SX will prove to better in the long run who knows, but since both companies are of a similar age it is easy to see who has been most effective to date.

I'm sorry - this is not a business model.

"My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin" - that's a financing model.

A business model is something like:

I intend to launch at a loss of XXX, but make YYY operating the launched payloads.
or
I intend to build expendable rockets at $XXX, and sell launch services at $YYY
or
...

What we have from Bezos for BO is: I plan to spend my money on my hobby, and something cis-lunar industry.

For a while there, with suborbital, there was a business model, but that has clearly been relegated since it's irrelevant when talking about orbital launches.
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Offline envy887

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This is a direct quote from Bezos. “My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin,” he told reporters here at the 33rd Space Symposium. “So the business model for Blue Origin is very robust.”
...

I'm sorry - this is not a business model.

"My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin" - that's a financing model.
...

Bezos knows perfectly well that its not a business model. His comments were slightly tongue in cheek, and his point was that he doesn't need a viable business model for Blue right now, since he is willing and able to fund it for quite some time without making any money.

Online meekGee

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This is a direct quote from Bezos. “My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin,” he told reporters here at the 33rd Space Symposium. “So the business model for Blue Origin is very robust.”
...

I'm sorry - this is not a business model.

"My business model right now for Blue Origin is, I sell about $1 billion a year of Amazon stock, and I use it to invest in Blue Origin" - that's a financing model.
...

Bezos knows perfectly well that its not a business model. His comments were slightly tongue in cheek, and his point was that he doesn't need a viable business model for Blue right now, since he is willing and able to fund it for quite some time without making any money.
Of course he knows.
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Offline DJPledger

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Looks like BO may have a better design strategy than SpaceX when it comes to designing future heavy lift vehicles. There is a rumor at http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2017/07/huntsville_oks_deal_confident.html that BO plans to dev. another deep space engine after BE-4. This engine is likely to be larger than BE-4 and Raptor and will allow BO to keep engine no. on NA booster to maybe the same as NG booster which is around the optimum no. on a booster and will likely use a dedicated US engine for the NA US. SpaceX OTOH are looking at putting a ludicrous no. of smaller engines on their planned ITS system and are trying to use a single engine design throughout the LV system. This is not optimal as you need high thrust engines on the booster to keep engine no. optimal and high ISP engines for the US. 7-9 large engines on a HLV booster are better than 20+ smaller engines as there are fewer parts to go wrong resulting in a lower risk of LOV.

NA may have a high performance Lox/LH2 upper stage which the ITS will lack allowing it to use large lower ISP engines for the booster. This is the optimal stage configuration for a LV unlike what SpaceX are trying to do.

Offline envy887

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No one has yet built a large low cost launch vehicle, so I don't know that we can say what's an "optimal" design for such a vehicle.

But any vehicle with engine-out redundancy has to protect against a single engine failure taking out multiple other engines or the whole vehicle: it does not matter if there are 7 engines or 42, this protection is required.

Also, there are strong arguments to be made that cost and quality can be better at higher production rates.

Offline DJPledger

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But any vehicle with engine-out redundancy has to protect against a single engine failure taking out multiple other engines or the whole vehicle: it does not matter if there are 7 engines or 42, this protection is required.
Single catastrophic engine failure is a lot higher with 42 engines than 7 which brings increased risk of bringing down the LV. So BO will have a leg up over SpaceX in this aspect of HLV design if BO dev. an engine powerful enough that they only need 7 of them for NA booster. SpaceX is much more funding limited than BO which is why they are going about the N-1 approach with the ITS. BO has more than ample funding to dev. a SC engine with greater thrust than the F-1 which SpaceX has not.

Online Coastal Ron

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Single catastrophic engine failure is a lot higher with 42 engines than 7 which brings increased risk of bringing down the LV.

The odds are higher that a single engine will fail, but as the CRS-1 missions showed the Falcon 9 can suffer an engine failure and still complete it's primary mission. I would expect the same capability for the ITS.

Quote
So BO will have a leg up over SpaceX in this aspect of HLV design if BO dev. an engine powerful enough that they only need 7 of them for NA booster.

I would not assume that more powerful engines have less catastrophic failure modes. They might even have worse ones that would make it MORE likely for a loss of vehicle situation.

Quote
SpaceX is much more funding limited than BO which is why they are going about the N-1 approach with the ITS. BO has more than ample funding to dev. a SC engine with greater thrust than the F-1 which SpaceX has not.

Blue Origin has different goals for their vehicles than what SpaceX has, which can also affect the design differences. As to funding, SpaceX has a pretty big head start on actual usage of rocket engines, and reuse of engines, so Blue Origin has a lot they have to catch up to.

I admire both, and we have to remember that we are not comparing apples-to-apples. Both founders and companies have different goals for their launch vehicles, even though they appear to be using the same general approach. And we have to hope there is more than one way to solve the challenges they both face...
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline Lar

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DJPLedger: Didn't you try to make this "ludicrous number of engines" critique elsewhere? It might be valid, might not be, but doesn't seem like a business critique, more of a technical one.
« Last Edit: 07/31/2017 09:32 pm by Lar »
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"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline TrevorMonty

The article said " another deep space engine after BE-4"  not booster engine. So more likely US engine which could be BE4U or larger BE3 or even smaller engine.

Offline envy887

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But any vehicle with engine-out redundancy has to protect against a single engine failure taking out multiple other engines or the whole vehicle: it does not matter if there are 7 engines or 42, this protection is required.
Single catastrophic engine failure is a lot higher with 42 engines than 7 which brings increased risk of bringing down the LV. ...

It's a bit more complicated than that. There are a great range of engine failures, from those that only cause negligible under-performance to those that completely shred the engine and everything around it. SpaceX builds each Merlin into an armored cell in the octaweb, so that even the catastrophic failure of a high pressure component has a very low probability of damaging any other engines (demonstrated on CRS-1).

So the probability of a catastrophic engine failure having any effect on other hardware is the product of the number of engines, the probability of an engine failure, AND the probability of containment failure.

However, the effect of even a catastrophic failure that escapes containment can vary greatly.

In some cases, it could damage only one nearby engine and cause that other engine to under-perform or shutdown. In this case, having many engines is a significant advantage: New Glenn will not be able to survive 2 engines out for most of it's flight, while a 42-engine vehicle could still launch with 3 or 4 engines out.

In very rare cases, the engine failure could cause the loss of enough other engines to cause a full booster shutdown, or eve cause a full booster RUD. This probability is higher with more engines and higher pressure engines, but for very low probabilities of containment failure, the improved performance with a more likely single engine-out makes up for this risk.

Also, having many engines allows redundancy at landing - a relatively minor concern at the moment, but much more so when the booster is worth hundreds of millions and can fly dozens more flights.

Offline hkultala

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Blue is better than SpaceX because it has more money behind it...

I don't know that to be true.  SpaceX's book of business sustains quite a lot of development activities.

What "book of business"?

Assuming sales margin of F9 launch is 20 millions, and they launch 25 commerial satelites a year, this gives only 500 million/year for fixed costs including R&D.

And if in addition to this they have 5 NASA lauches with 30 million sales margin, this makes 150 millions more, total of 650 million/year.

This is not very much for developing new rockets and world's most advances rocket engines
 
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And its investors are even more deep-pocketed than Bezos.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2017/07/27/jeff-bezos-overtakes-bill-gates-to-become-worlds-richest-man/

Who are more deep-pocketed than Jeff Bezos?
« Last Edit: 08/01/2017 08:35 pm by hkultala »

Offline RedLineTrain

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What "book of business"?

Last I heard, the SpaceX "book of business" includes about $10 billion in revenue.  And given this is the rocket business, SpaceX gets progress payments.

Quote
Who are more deep-pocketed than Jeff Bezos?

Alphabet, which has more cash on hand than Bezos has in total assets.

Offline RedLineTrain

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"Book of business" is a term of art describing the grouping of relationships served by a company. Often used in relationship management and legal firms, as to degrees of certain kinds/classes of clients.

I mean it strictly in the accounting term of art way.  Replace with "backlog," if you prefer.

Offline hkultala

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Who are more deep-pocketed than Jeff Bezos?

Alphabet, which has more cash on hand than Bezos has in total assets.

... but zillion other projects to fund. They are only funding the internet satellite project of spacex.

and, Elon is allowing NOBODY to invest so much into spaceX that he loses his >50% stake of it, until there is a colony on Mars. He has made it quite clear.

The whole purpose of SpaceX is mars colonization, and giving up his majority stake would endanger that.
« Last Edit: 08/01/2017 09:04 pm by hkultala »

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