Quote from: Jim on 03/13/2017 04:42 pmWrong again. Cost reduction due to reuse is unproven and therefore stating that a design that doesn't incorporate it is a drawback fails logic.At this point, saying "cost reduction due to reuse is unproven" is akin to saying, in December, that Trump had not won the election since the electoral college had not yet met. It's technically a true statement but almost sure to be overturned in the next few months. After all, SpaceX has recovered several boosters, had plenty of time to inspect them, has test fired them, run them through structural testing, and after all that stated they expect to refurbish them for a few (2-3) million dollars each. It seems unlikely that their cost estimates are off by an order of magnitude, and they should verify, within weeks, that there are no technical flaws that prevent reuse. So a rational person should guess that cost reduction from reuse is extremely likely, and expect that within a few months it will be proven.The second part, saying "stating that a design that doesn't incorporate [reuse] is a drawback fails logic" is also true. What it should say, IMO, is that a strategy that cannot compete in a world of $50M launches is a drawback. After all, the customer does not care about reuse, only cost to them. There are potentially many ways to compete is such a world. Reuse is one. A low cost launcher might be another. A third is to concentrate on high-end, boutique launches, where customers will pay extra for extra service. The concern is that if Vulcan does not incorporate reuse, it may be too expensive to compete for commodity launches, and there may not be enough high-end launches to sustain the program (plus others may evolve to compete for these). These I think are legitimate worries.
Wrong again. Cost reduction due to reuse is unproven and therefore stating that a design that doesn't incorporate it is a drawback fails logic.
At this point, saying "cost reduction due to reuse is unproven" is akin to saying, in December, that Trump had not won the election since the electoral college had not yet met. It's technically a true statement but almost sure to be overturned in the next few months. After all, SpaceX has recovered several boosters, had plenty of time to inspect them, has test fired them, run them through structural testing, and after all that stated they expect to refurbish them for a few (2-3) million dollars each. It seems unlikely that their cost estimates are off by an order of magnitude, and they should verify, within weeks, that there are no technical flaws that prevent reuse. So a rational person should guess that cost reduction from reuse is extremely likely, and expect that within a few months it will be proven.
Quote from: LouScheffer on 03/19/2017 01:18 pmAt this point, saying "cost reduction due to reuse is unproven" is akin to saying, in December, that Trump had not won the election since the electoral college had not yet met. It's technically a true statement but almost sure to be overturned in the next few months. After all, SpaceX has recovered several boosters, had plenty of time to inspect them, has test fired them, run them through structural testing, and after all that stated they expect to refurbish them for a few (2-3) million dollars each. It seems unlikely that their cost estimates are off by an order of magnitude, and they should verify, within weeks, that there are no technical flaws that prevent reuse. So a rational person should guess that cost reduction from reuse is extremely likely, and expect that within a few months it will be proven.Wrong, they do not know if they will have shuttle orbiter issue and need to take more time to refurbish than build a stage. They took 4 months on the first one. We don't even know how much of the vehicle will be new hardware.
A rational person would not be suck[ed] into the hype.
Quote from: Jim on 03/19/2017 10:38 pmQuote from: LouScheffer on 03/19/2017 01:18 pmAt this point, saying "cost reduction due to reuse is unproven" is akin to saying, in December, that Trump had not won the election since the electoral college had not yet met. It's technically a true statement but almost sure to be overturned in the next few months. After all, SpaceX has recovered several boosters, had plenty of time to inspect them, has test fired them, run them through structural testing, and after all that stated they expect to refurbish them for a few (2-3) million dollars each. It seems unlikely that their cost estimates are off by an order of magnitude, and they should verify, within weeks, that there are no technical flaws that prevent reuse. So a rational person should guess that cost reduction from reuse is extremely likely, and expect that within a few months it will be proven.Wrong, they do not know if they will have shuttle orbiter issue and need to take more time to refurbish than build a stage. They took 4 months on the first one. We don't even know how much of the vehicle will be new hardware.WE don't know how much of the vehicle will be new hardware, but THEY know in detail, and said it's a few million dollars to refurbish. They could be wrong, but wrong by an order of magnitude?Also, where would that money be spent? To spend $30M, the cost of a new booster, in labor costs, you would need 450 highly paid workers ($200K/year loaded) over the 4 months they spent. That's a tenth of the company. And what would they all be doing? Plus 4 months was for the first one - surely later trials will take less effort, as they learn what they are doing.New hardware costs is a reasonable question, but they are not replacing the tanks, they are not replacing the engines (that would be more than a few million right there), so what might they replace that's expensive? Legs are one possibility, as are grid fins, but what else? Even if both of these need replacing, they are surely cheaper than a new booster.In fact I think the shuttle experience shows that the Falcon will surely save money by refurbishing. The shuttle, by most accounts, was just about breakeven. But this included three subsystems that were expensive to refurbish - the solid boosters were basically re-assembled, the engines torn down and rebuilt, and the tiles took an enormous amount of complex labor to analyze and fix. None of these seem applicable to Falcon, so it seems likely it will be cheaper to re-use than build.QuoteA rational person would not be suck[ed] into the hype.Certainly true. A rational person should ignore the hype, and instead analyze the task at hand, and make their best guess as to the costs involved. This is re-creating from outside the spreadsheet SpaceX surely has internally - $X for engines needing replacing, $Y for reapplying ablatives, $Z for new legs and grid fins, etc. And while different rational people will get different estimates for these tasks, I can't see how to make the sum of these costs exceed the $30M cost of a new booster. If you have reasons to believe otherwise I'd love to hear them.
Excuse me. Is this not supposed to be a ULA thread? What's with all the SpaceX felgercarb here?
Wrong, they do not know if they will have shuttle orbiter issue and need to take more time to refurbish than build a stage. They took 4 months on the first one. We don't even know how much of the vehicle will be new hardware.A rational person would not be suck into the hype.
Quote from: LouScheffer on 03/19/2017 01:18 pmAt this point, saying "cost reduction due to reuse is unproven" is akin to saying, in December, that Trump had not won the election since the electoral college had not yet met. It's technically a true statement but almost sure to be overturned in the next few months. After all, SpaceX has recovered several boosters, had plenty of time to inspect them, has test fired them, run them through structural testing, and after all that stated they expect to refurbish them for a few (2-3) million dollars each. It seems unlikely that their cost estimates are off by an order of magnitude, and they should verify, within weeks, that there are no technical flaws that prevent reuse. So a rational person should guess that cost reduction from reuse is extremely likely, and expect that within a few months it will be proven.Wrong, they do not know if they will have shuttle orbiter issue and need to take more time to refurbish than build a stage. They took 4 months on the first one. We don't even know how much of the vehicle will be new hardware.A rational person would not be suck into the hype.
They are 100+ successful missions in a row and launch on time. Just like most other products/services it is not always about price. I can see ACES and distributed launch opening up some new markets. When working they will be able to do missions no other LV can.
And SES-10 has gone up and come back.ULA's case for Vulcan is getting cloudier, particularly the "parachute engines back" bit -- They're about six years "behind the curve" now and getting worse...
They are 100+ successful missions in a row and launch on time. Just like most other products/services it is not always about price.
I can see ACES and distributed launch opening up some new markets.
When working they will be able to do missions no other LV can.
To lift the heaviest payloads that Vulcan will lift - the EELV payloads that the Government wants to launch - Falcon will have to be expended entirely, including the engines, so the SES 10 example, remarkable though it might be, does not apply.