Author Topic: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life  (Read 46405 times)

Offline JamesH

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #120 on: 07/27/2015 09:43 am »
On 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?

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.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #121 on: 07/27/2015 08:22 pm »
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.
With full 1st stage reusability FH payload is 2150Kg higher than the F9 but how much more expensive?

Is that enough extra payload or would it be the case that at that payload mass you'd start looking at other rockets? what figures are SX talking about $80mn? $100m? for an FH.
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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.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline GWH

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #122 on: 07/27/2015 09:27 pm »
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.
« Last Edit: 07/27/2015 10:02 pm by GWH »

Offline joek

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #123 on: 07/28/2015 12:42 am »
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.

Virtually all of which are very old and very wrong; or which use others as case studies of Launch Services Forecasting Follies VIII; or which conclude that there is little elasticity unless maybe you have a few drinks, squint and fiddle with the assumptions (there's the rub), which seems they always relegate to a footnote to cover themselves.  If anecdotal evidence was coin, no high-tech startup (or restaraunt) would fail, and we would all be rich.

Seriously, that is not say a bright future is impossible, that latent demand does not exist, and that with suitably cheap launch demand will expand greatly.  The problem is no one has been able to identify where that demand will come from.  LEO comsats and Earth observation?  Very possibly.  Tourism?  Possibly.  Colonization (Mars or otherwise)?  Maybe, eventually.  GEO comsats?  Probably not.

Offline joek

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #124 on: 07/28/2015 12:45 am »
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.

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?

Reminds me....
Quote from: Sean O'Keefe, NASA Administrator, November 2002
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.

Offline joek

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #125 on: 07/28/2015 02:21 am »
I'd start here
http://www.quarkweb.com/nqc/lib/speccoll/Schnitt/970215.html

Note 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. "

Interesting read, thanks; marginally relevant to this discussion.  Deals primarily with design-related issues; says nothing about market demand or elasticity.

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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

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).

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But has the number of launches gone up 3x over ULA?  check for yourself and decide.

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".

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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.

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.

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Well SX seem to have lowered cost to LEO substantially but the market growth does not seem to be that great.

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.

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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.

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?

Offline john smith 19

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #126 on: 07/29/2015 04:22 pm »
For anyone who wants to understand how other transport services compare here's some statistics from the US Dept of Transportation

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_03_21.html

That's is the price to move 2000 lb over 1 mile.

Now SX are saying that an F9 in semi reusable can deliver 28991 lb (or 14.5 tons) to LEO, say 200Km or 125 miles. Using the latest available figures for each mode (2012 for air freight and rail, 2007 for truck.

To move that mass that far by domestic air freight $2455

To move that mass that far by domestic truck $300

To move that mass that far by domestic rail $71.6

To move that mass that far by SX ELV          $61 200 000

To keep this in perspective the energy cost to orbit per unit mass (as worked out by Philip Bono in the 1960's) is about that of a London/Sydney round trip, a round trip of roughly 21106 miles

That gives revenue to the operator of roughly $414 527 for a SX F9 payload.

I'm not saying what payload costs should be, or what they need to come down to for demand to greatly expand.

I am saying these are the freight costs that other modes deliver for that journey and mass and that are the level needed for US society to operate.  Note that all modes offer equal "down mass" as "up mass." You can send a payload in either direction, something which is very limited, except if you're using a Dragon.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2015 07:08 am by john smith 19 »
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline mikelepage

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #127 on: 07/30/2015 07:42 am »
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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.

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?

Lots of people presume this, and have argued their business cases better than I can.  Honestly, are you trolling? If you could do a complete space mission for under $10 million, are you saying you couldn't imagine anything you would want to do?  My university regularly (multiple times a year) spends those kinds of amounts on individual departments.  I even know one or two people who personally invest that much in certain projects.  If I knew that the projects I have in mind could be done for so little $$ I would be working my a$$ off to get the money in place, and I'd give myself a decent chance of success too.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #128 on: 07/30/2015 07:49 am »
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.
IIRC those "delusional launch forecasts" included the expectation that a number of LEO comms networks were going to be launched.  Let's see how many of this generations launches this time.
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  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).
Fair point. I guess it'll be a question of how much the USAF require SX to do things like ULA or how much the F9 design differs from the EELV's to the point that a lot of the stuff you need to do simply does not exist. I was astonished that until Atlas V had to be "human rated" for CST100 and DC that it had a single hydraulic circuit for TVC, making the slightest hydraulic failure in flight a flight critical potential LOM event.
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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".
They are the US competitor. Perhaps a better benchmark would be Ariane 5, which does very little military work.
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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.
We know that when launch costs were lowered 50 % (and it was launch costs that EELV was aimed at lowering, not development costs) that did not stimulate demand and Shotwell talked of $6m launch prices on an F9 sized vehicle at the NATO presentation (back when the F9 RLV was still believed possible).
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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.
Or maybe the sticker price is not what is paid when you say you want a comm sat to GTO?
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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?
That is the question, isn't it?

I'll note a few points.
JPL's rule of thumb is payload cost = 2x launch cost and operations costs are 3x launch costs.
IOW while in theory lowering launch costs has no effect on the others, in practice it changes the planning for all mission phases.

It's a cliche but LEO is "halfway to anywhere." In fact stage lift or depots are built on exactly that idea. A dedicated flight on the biggest ELV available of an empty set of tanks would put a very big set of tanks indeed into orbit, but they need refilling, and it has to be cheap. So LEO is that staging post for GEO, L1, Escape to other planets, the asteroids etc.

The big one is the ability to allow people who aren't (essentially) either civil servants or millionaires with 18 months free time the chance to go to LEO. Some will say "why bother," but exactly the same can be said of going up Everest, yet trips up Everest are a successful business.

Beyond that you need to start drilling down in to micro g R&D applications.

Some of these could be enabled by a semi expendable LV but some demand a) full reusability and b) Regularity.

One of the things that killed drug research on the Shuttle was not the problem of designing the hardware, it was the unreliability of the scheduling, as paying customers got dumped for more "urgent" NASA priority payloads.

And while blowing up in flight (and the ensuing stand down and MIB) is an expected part of spaceflight that will always mean that only the most determined will fly a payload, as they absolutely have to.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline GWH

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #129 on: 07/30/2015 04:20 pm »
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.

Justification of reuse on fuel depots is highly dependent on low refurbishment & fixed costs (flight rate).  It is the one scenario where $/kg is the single most important metric, where as for commercial satellites the dominating factor is cost/payload to given orbit. (E.g. a larger rocket can bring its cost to orbit down significantly through reuse vs a fully expendable not realizing its full payload capacity).

As 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.


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?

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.

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.

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. 

« Last Edit: 07/30/2015 08:28 pm by GWH »

Offline john smith 19

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #130 on: 08/01/2015 09:35 am »
As 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.
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.

As you can see once you  get away from the simple "you buy a launch. If it works you're payload is in orbit, otherwise come back when the insurance claim is settled and we'll have another go" model thinks can get complicated fast.  :(

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.
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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.
Not seen this. Can you elaborate or post a link?
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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. 
But remember, ULA don't have a long term mission goal (IE Mars colonization).
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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.
Full RLV? The F9SR model assumes 1st stage reuse only, as per SX statements that upper stage reuse is off the table.
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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.
I'm not sure where you're getting that idea from. Could you explain a bit more?
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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.
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.

No other transport mode works this way. It's basically the cost plus contract system, which is why people talk of mult $Bn aircraft, because the production run carries the whole DDT&E cost and is fixed.
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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.

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.
Sounds plausible. We'll have to see what happens with this space internet backbone plan that's been floated.
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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.
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.

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?

Range coasts were one of the reasons cited by Orbital for the development of Pegasus, but somehow that just does not seem big enough to justify going with an air launch ELV, although I can see that not being on a waiting list that could run into years when you've already got the payload ready would be a pretty good incentive.

So does anyone know if this is even the right order of magnitude?
« Last Edit: 08/01/2015 09:41 am by john smith 19 »
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline GWH

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #131 on: 08/01/2015 04:33 pm »
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.

The one thing I added to your spreadsheet is to expand it to look at the savings of reusing rockets compared to flying them expendable at full capacity as a total figure over the life of a reused rocket ('n' flights) compared to 'n' flights fully expendable.  By "break even" I only the point at which a reusable rocket is less $/lb than the more capable expendable.

Right now (as far as I know) SpaceX sells their rockets at a fixed rate to the customer and if their is leftover capacity in the capabilities then SpaceX gets to try and play catch with the booster. 

Looking down the road this model will need to be revised and COULD be based off some kind of $/lb flat rate (multiplied by a risk factor for barge landings) to fit within a set price bracket.  Such as 1st flight expendable, Barge landing reuse, RTLS reuse, and finally last flight of a reused rocket expendable (if they choose to sell these).  So once they settle on costs of refurbishment etc and customers have accepted reused rockets it would be a given that any 1st flight of a F9 that allows for reuse would be sold at a reduced rate.

I would assume that SpaceX can get the rocket back for free, because its their rocket and their customers just rent it.  As long as the pricing reflects some fair pricing within the above price brackets what say would they have in the matter?
The only exception would be a repeat customer who takes an interest in the ownership of the rocket for their own purposes.  But here they would need to have some justification for needing that reserved, expendable capacity at the last flight for some reason.

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Not seen this. Can you elaborate or post a link?

Reuse business case thread, George Sowers of ULA posts a spread sheet comparing the two reuse methods and their ability to lower $/lb: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0
I'll try to spend some time with this spreadsheet to look at this last flight expendable scenario and how it changes the ULA findings.

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But remember, ULA don't have a long term mission goal (IE Mars colonization).
Exactly what I'm trying to get at, even if reuse only saves SpaceX money on this mission then reusable rockets can be considered a success :)

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Full RLV? The F9SR model assumes 1st stage reuse only, as per SX statements that upper stage reuse is off the table.

Poor wording choice on my part, what I mean by full RLV is a total 'n' number of flights at reused booster pricing and capacity (70%) vs. total 'n' flights at reuse pricing and the last flight expending the booster (full capacity).

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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.
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I'm not sure where you're getting that idea from. Could you explain a bit more?

I edited your spreadsheet to provide a fixed price of reusable F9's at $43.7 (70% cost to reflect 70% payload), brand new expendable would still cost $62.1.  In this case one would have to assume that flight rate isn't sufficient to lower fixed costs per flight (e.g. fixed costs are dominant and $/lb expendable = $/lb reusable) .
In your spreadsheet if you put in '2' for the lifetime number of launches per booster this is about the same price.  That price would be fair to a customer as well, since $/lb is static.
But now since the last flight has the full capacity the total $/lb comes down.  Under this hypothetical scenario of low flight rates the largest cost savings come from only using a booster twice.  Further uses increase the total $/lb. 
Why do I think this should be pointed out?  Because it shows that even with low flight rates booster flyback can reduce flight costs very quickly, simply because the lost payload capacity for reusablility isn't really lost, just set aside.


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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.

That's the thing, SpaceX shows the FH at $90M for a 7t GTO payload.  I assume that's for full reuse.  If they fly expendable they can now deliver 3 sats at that payload but need to figure out deployment, ride sharing etc etc.
Whichever way you go it looks to be very close to the same price as the A5.
Not the massive reduction in launch costs we all have been hoping for (until that last expendable flight).
« Last Edit: 08/01/2015 04:36 pm by GWH »

Offline llanitedave

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #132 on: 08/01/2015 07:37 pm »

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.

The only way this would be a realistic customer PoV is if their plan is to stuff a payload fairing to the gills with mass to make sure whatever launch vehicle they're using is maxed out.  But that's not what they're doing.

They have a payload, it has a known mass.  They are shopping for a launch vehicle.  It does not matter to them if the vehicle they choose has spare capacity or not, as long as they get their launch at a reasonable price.  And it doesn't matter to them if the stage is being recovered or not, as long as the price they're asked to pay is competitive or better than what they would be charged on competing vehicles.  As far as the payload is concerned, the launch vehicle is a black box.  It cares nothing about its history, cost, or potential for future use, as long as it's getting a reliable, good deal to orbit.
"I've just abducted an alien -- now what?"

Offline joek

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #133 on: 08/01/2015 08:03 pm »
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?

$500K/launch for range fees is probably on the low end, but impossible to tell as fees are negotiated and depend on customer use.  SpaceX was reported to have said "10% of Falcon 1", which would put in in the $500K range, but that might have been for Kwajalein.[1]

All-up fees are likely considerably higher ($1-2M), unless something has changed recently.  From Reimbursable Fees at the Major Range and Test Facility Bases, DoD IG D-2008-128, Sep-2008.
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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.

As to Orbital's decision... IIRC circa 1994 range costs were ~$1.7M/launch (sorry cannot find reference).[2]  Also, range fees are essentially invariant with respect to LV.  An LV intended to be cheap and launch frequently will thus pay a proportionally larger share in range fees.   


[1] When Physics, Economics, and Reality Collide: The Challenge of Cheap Orbital Access, Jurist et. al., Jun-2005.

[2] Note that $1.7M would correlate to the above 2008 IG reported values if the "32 percent above past fee levels" is included.  Although in CY$, range fees would have decreased over that period.

Offline GWH

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #134 on: 08/02/2015 06:52 pm »
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 1.43

To 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)/n

With 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.

Offline WmThomas

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #135 on: 08/05/2015 02:32 am »
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 1.43

To 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)/n

With 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.

Offline GWH

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #136 on: 08/05/2015 05:49 am »
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.

The spreadsheet was created by George Sowers of ULA and is based on straight percentages only as a method of trying to compare apples to apples (reuse penalties vs reuse savings) - I only modified it to take into account expending the last core at full payload capacity and how that affects #'s. 
See the thread linked in a post above for an explanation of everything.
The one item that the spreadsheet has is the effect of reduced production and implications on manufacturing cost per core.

That being said I too have been wanting to see some real cost figures and have been playing around with it a little to add those in, as well as the Falcon Heavy.
« Last Edit: 08/05/2015 05:52 am by GWH »

Offline macpacheco

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Re: F9R - price for expendable use at end-of-life
« Reply #137 on: 10/08/2015 12:41 am »
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.
Once re used first stages are being routinely reflown, even for 2 or 3 times, SpaceX will have proper methods to ensure the stage is still good for another flight.

Individual M1Ds can be swapped, so can other components. If the main structure/skin has some problem that warrants serious concern, they could remove all engines and use those to replace individual engines of other stages that might have individual iffy engines.

To better understand this you should look into how commercial jetliners are maintained.

Until SpaceX can achieve a lot of re flights without swapping of parts, it will be a gradual process, with significant checks to ensure reflights are just as safe as flying for the first time.

Realize that the first flight of a rocket could prove out to be riskier than the first few reflights.

Its very likely NASA and DoD will reject using reflown stages for a long time. They have a naturally conservative stance and they aren't concerned about saving money. The first reflight for govt usage is likely to be a special CRS mission with just cheap consumables, no special parts like the docking adapter lost on the failed CRS-7. It might turnout to also be the first re-flight of a Dragon for a CRS mission too.
« Last Edit: 10/08/2015 12:42 am by macpacheco »
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