Quote from: john smith 19 on 07/22/2015 06:24 amOn that basis It's very unlikely the price reduction will create any significant permanent increase in demand.That conclusion seems a bit of a stretch. Do you have some insight into the price elasticity of demand for launch services?
On that basis It's very unlikely the price reduction will create any significant permanent increase in demand.
However is SpaceX flys reused FH's in expendable mode it all appears to me to come together. The GEO sat market pays for the rockets initial use and subsequent handful of reuse, following this SpaceX can take advantage of the FULL capacity of the FH in exploring Mars at a significantly reduced launch cost.
When I look at the effect of payload capacity lost vs project savings (reuse index as shown in ULA's chart) and the massive oversupply of reused booster cores that would be created by SpaceX's current capacity this seems to be the most logical conclusion. Fly customer's payloads on a reused rocket enough times to make it worth their while, and then throw the whole rocket away going to Mars (or the moon if that's your thing) with the largest possible payload.
Google can find quite a few articles on the elasticity of the market, and I have heard at least one scientist say that he is desperately waiting for reduced costs because of pent up demand that is currently impossible to meet due to launch cost.
If they can get enough reuses so that the nonrecurring costs bring the price down to less than an expendable F9 than it should be enough (call it 50M). Cost per kg doesn't radically change until that final expendable flight - that's where they can break under the $1000/kg mark.
Regarding his predecessor, Daniel S. Goldin’s $1,000-per-pound-to-orbit goal: I’m not an archeologist; I’m not a forensic pathologist. I don’t know where this stuff came from, and I’m really not interested in going through an excavation or a dig around the agency to figure out who came up with what number when. That is a bumper sticker, and I haven’t found anybody who can attest that there is any technology that can achieve that.
I'd start herehttp://www.quarkweb.com/nqc/lib/speccoll/Schnitt/970215.htmlNote the first paragraph. "I was asked to devise a means of reducing the cost of space operations by about an order of magnitude. I was cautioned that concepts that show a 20 to 30% cost savings, an amount statistically less than the usual overrun, would not be taken seriously. "
If anything this situation has gotten worse One of the EELV goals was costs 50% those of the previous generation Atlas and Titan ELV's. Today they launch close to 2x an F9 but at > $300m a launch, close to 5x that of a basic F9, although Shotwell stated the price for a comm sat is much closer to what Ariane charge for a ride share at about $100m IE still 1/3
But has the number of launches gone up 3x over ULA? check for yourself and decide.
So far it's looking like nothing less than an 80% will stimulate enough growth to recover the loss of revue brought on by the loss of payload.
Well SX seem to have lowered cost to LEO substantially but the market growth does not seem to be that great.
Perhaps you should look at what the freight costs are to move a 1 kg package 200-250Km, then compare them with the roughly $10-15000 of moving that Kg to LEO.
QuotePerhaps you should look at what the freight costs are to move a 1 kg package 200-250Km, then compare them with the roughly $10-15000 of moving that Kg to LEO.And if I reduce the cost of moving that package to LEO by 10-1000x, who cares? You appear to presume that there is someone or something in LEO with a latent demand who cares and has a business case burning a hole in their pocket just waiting for that price-to-LEO to go down, at which point they start Buying In Volume. Who and what is it?
No relevance to this discussion; it is a niche market. Requirement for EELV was 25% cost reduction to fund, with a goal of 50% reduction. They achieved 50%, if only for a while. Prices returned to nominal historical norms after the honeymoon, or delusional launch forecasts, passed.
The "> $300m a launch" is largely an artifact of post-hoc conditions (but that is another discussion). As an aside, the assumption that SpaceX will achieve significantly lower costs for similar DoD missions is at best conjecture at this time (and again, another diccussion).
Change in launch service demand is not going to respond quickly to price changes; it takes years. SpaceX has arguably been a viable lower-cost alternative for a short period. Moreover, the number of SpaceX launches vs. ULA is a canard and Very Bad Metric. They have (until very recently) been serving and competing for different markets. Give it a few years and it will be time to determine and "check for yourself and decide".
Based on what market? On what basis is "nothing less than an 80%" sufficient? I could as easily posit 1% or 99% is sufficient or necessary to stimulate growth depending on market.
You expect everyone to treat launch costs as a commodity and respond as rapidly? It is not. Market response will take years. This is not exactly like buying petrol at the lowest price corner station.
And if I reduce the cost of moving that package to LEO by 10-1000x, who cares? You appear to presume that there is someone or something in LEO with a latent demand who cares and has a business case burning a hole in their pocket just waiting for that price-to-LEO to go down, at which point they start Buying In Volume. Who and what is it?
If we presume a propellant depot created and supported by reusable Falcon technology, this potentially* shifts the cost down by another 50% to 10% of previous Mars launches.
As always I welcome any other items that could be split out as separate identifiable costs.
You are simply subsidizing the lower price of the last flight with a higher price for earlier flights. Why not reduce the price for all flights? What is magical about $1000/kg for that last flight--or any $X/kg for any flight for that matter?
However, other than early, automated, exploratory work, and setting up communications infrastructure. I don't think anyone suggests using Falcon technology for providing the backbone of human exploration/settlement of Mars.
Quote from: john smith 19 on 07/03/2015 12:48 pmAs always I welcome any other items that could be split out as separate identifiable costs.In your spreadsheet you don't take into the additional payload capacity available in an expendable flight when calculating costs reused/expendable. I modified your spreadsheet a little to allow for a 0.7 payload factor on reusable, (payload reusable/0.7=payload expendable) this changes the break-even point from the 2 you have shown to 3.
This twitter post from ULA (see attachment) comparing reuse methods and break-even point had me thinking a lot on this subject, and the very marginal savings through reuse.
This really struck me as hard to believe, and a little depressing as a amazing people. Even at higher reuse numbers the cost difference is still quite low due to cost savings needing to be sufficiently higher than payload lost.But in reviewing the assumptions made by ULA it looks like they have a critical omission, and that is the additional (or recovered) payload capacity available on the final flight. In fact that capacity, this final flight of a reused core can make a dramatic difference, and therefore justification for booster fly-back vs. SMART reuse.
If I use John Smith's spreadsheet to look at average $/lb with the final flight flying 130% capacity at the reused price vs full expendable @130% or full RLV at 100% capacity it changes the breakeven point from 3 to 2. At 6 flights a full RLV is 75% the cost of a full ELV. Last flight ELV brings the average $/lb down to 70% of a full ELV.
If you take a more pessimistic view and price the F9R at a fixed $43.47M a flight (70%) cost - or the same margin as payload lost you still achieve 82% savings over the total cost $/lb of two flights.
This could be done, ideally the final expendable flight of a F9 would be the mean between expendable first flight and average reuse cost. If reusable cost is $40M, expendable first use $60M then sell the final flight for $50M (because of the higher payload capacity). That $10M extra can of course be averaged out as price reduction on each previous flight. However I am speculating that SpaceX won't choose that path because of their Mars ambitions.
Quote from: nadreck on 07/26/2015 04:21 pmHowever, other than early, automated, exploratory work, and setting up communications infrastructure. I don't think anyone suggests using Falcon technology for providing the backbone of human exploration/settlement of Mars.Certainly not for full colonization, they will need to do all that listed above and it won't make sense to use the BFR/MCT - this initial exploratory work should be completed by then to maintain an aggressive schedule. So the Dragon 2 (should) be capable of landing significant payloads on Mars to start this, but it will require the full expendable capacity of the Falcon Heavy to do so. That's a pretty expensive scenario for SpaceX if it's 3 brand new cores every time. With the expected flight rates in the next 10 years I can only imagine enough FH's being produced and reused to justify (e.g. significant reuses of a given core) a handful of expendable missions.
And since right now there is no one else (exception being Bigelow) who requires the full capacity of a FH, my reasoning is that SX must intend the final flight of the FH to be for their use.
The $/lb calculation is very crude. It just takes the final price and divides it by the stated F9SR payload.Strictly speaking it should take into account all launches and their payload. OTOH you seem to assume that SX would get the use of the launcher back for free. As a customers I think I'd want some kind of "cash back" arrangement on that. I'm not sure what you mean by "break even" in this context. Strictly that would be the "contribution" that covers all your fixed costs, including the original development costs. That's a very hard thing to judge.
Not seen this. Can you elaborate or post a link?
But remember, ULA don't have a long term mission goal (IE Mars colonization).
Full RLV? The F9SR model assumes 1st stage reuse only, as per SX statements that upper stage reuse is off the table.
I'm not sure where you're getting that idea from. Could you explain a bit more?
There FH has some uses. 1)Launching big unitary payloads to LEO. Tanks for a depot come to mind but the form factor is pretty poor, unless someone gets very creative in the fairing department. Bigelow is the other potential candidate.2)Launching big payloads on polar orbits. An FH could take a big payload hit for that and still (I'm guessing) come out ahead of say an Atlas 551. But who has need of a big indivisible payload needing a polar orbit?3) Multiple launches to GTO or LEO. Now having an upper stage restartable engine should make ride sharing easier but (as Arianespace found out) getting even two customers on the same launcher at the same time has been a royal PITA, and would probably take making the core expendable to do it, leaving just the 2 outside boosters (that can function as F9 1st stages) as recoverable. It's a paradox. If SX want to do Mars flights on FH without it coming entirely out of company funds then they need to recover FH stages (or 2 F9SR stages for the boosters). But the payload hit is big. IIRC recovering all FH 1st stages cuts the payload to GTO to about 7 tonnes, about 2.5 tonnes better than F9, but is that much more worth that big a price hike?Note my game has not really covered FH as the story is so hazy it didn't seem ready for it.
You need to see this from the customer PoV. They sacrifice a chunk of payload so SX can recover the stage but are expected to pay full expendable cost.Meanwhile SX retain a chunk of the hardware they can use to generate more revenue.
BTW I'm still looking to get a better idea of the "range costs" figure. So far I've been using $500k (but like all the Blue bordered numbers it's changeable). I read it somewhere in passing on the SX threads but as a general range cost is it plausible?
The 45th Space Wing made seven commercial (Boeing and Lockheed Martin, or United Launch Alliance) launches during FYs 2006 and 2007. Total 45th Space Wing billed costs to the commercial firms for the seven launches was $4.53 million for FY 2006 and $4.63 million for FY 2007. However, our analysis of available 45th Space Wing data indicated that the increase in Wing-reimbursable fees would be about 32 percent above past fee levels.
Attached is the modified "reuse business case" spreadsheet to account for the last flight of a rocket being expendable.Originally the system performance of the rocket simply being: P=Pe/Pr (Performance Expendable divided by Performance Reusable) For SpaceX 70% payload reusable gives a P of 1.43To account for the full capability of the last flight being expendable P is now a variable based on total # of flights, or P=Pe/(Pr*(n-1)+Pe)/nWith this in the calculator we now see a substantial change in the economics of reuse at low re-flight rates and dwindling gains in the long term.
Perhaps I'm joining this too late, or not reading your spreadsheet carefully enough, but its straight assumption of percentages, rather than dealing with cost figures themselves, makes it hard to understand and frankly, of dubious use to me. Again, sorry if I've missed something.
It occurs to me that the price for F9R launches in reusable mode will certainly be less than the cost of the F9 in expendable mode. That seems obvious as an objective, at least.But when a stage has been reused several times, it's construction (its amortization at least) will be pretty well paid down, and there after it works at essentially cost of refurbishment, operations support and consumables.Now - at the end of its life, it may be capable of being used in an expendable launch, and so offer customers higher performance at reusable cost. Don't know what the price for such a use would be.But it might be a nice way for NASA, for instance, to reduce cost of high performance missions - make final use of a gently reused vehicle in expendable mode.Just an idea of how some bargains might be had in the future.