Author Topic: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX  (Read 18624 times)

Offline Skyrocket

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SES has signed a contract for three more satellite launches with SpaceX.

The launches of the yet unasigned satellites will be on on SpaceX's Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets.

http://www.ses.com/4233325/news/2012/12569243
« Last Edit: 09/13/2012 03:43 pm by Chris Bergin »

Offline mr. mark

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SES statement on the contract.
http://www.ses.com/4233325/news/2012/12569243
« Last Edit: 09/13/2012 03:02 pm by mr. mark »

Offline savuporo

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Good news, and i wonder if SpaceX office has a small statue of Briz-M somewhere for offerings.

They do need to update their manifest to indicate all the current slippages though. The already booked SES-8 flight is planned for next year, and as per Bausch:
Quote
: "SES was the first leading commercial satellite operator to place a launch contract with SpaceX and we eagerly await the launch of SES-8 in 2013.

Yes, we all eagerly await.
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Online Comga

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This is what was said in the "General Discussion" thread.

So if the second SES flight is 2015 (one of the new three sats just contracted) and its alreaady on the SpaceX manifest and the total for 2015 is still at 15 total, what got dropped? Or was it on the manifest all this time?

This is curious.  A second SES flight has been on the manifest since April 2011, although it may have been the "Undisclosed customer" from February of 2011 that it replaced.  It is not clear how that flight is ignored and re-announced as new. 

As we well know, the manifest is not a good reference. Aside from listing the date where they will have "hardware at launch site" while every other announcement is for the launch date, it is not frequently maintained.  SpaceX announced months ago that there would be only (only!) seven Iridium launches, not eight, but that eighth flight persists on the manifest.

So is this three new launches or really two?
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

Offline bolun

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http://www.spacenews.com/launch/120914-ses-launch-order-adds-spacex-backlog.html

Quote
Luxembourg-based SES, which was the first major commercial satellite operator to book Falcon 9 — the SES-8 satellite is scheduled for launch in the second half of 2013 — announced Sept. 12 it had contracted for three more satellites to launch on Falcon 9 or the future Falcon Heavy rocket starting in 2015.

Quote
Bausch said SES remains confident that SpaceX will be able to launch SES-8 around July 2013. As a condition of the contract, SES said, SpaceX must have conducted a successful launch of the new Merlin 1D engine and a new 5-meter-diameter fairing that will be used for the SES flight.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said here Sept. 11 during World Satellite Business Week that SpaceX has completed the design and the first model of the new fairing, with testing to start in a month or so. Qualification tests of the Merlin 1D have already begun and are scheduled to continue to the end of this year, she said.

The qualification launch of the new ensemble is scheduled to occur by June 2013, a mission that will carry a small Canadian research satellite into polar low Earth orbit, not to the geostationary transfer orbit where SES-8 and most other telecommunications satellites are placed.

“If there are delays we will have a backup, in this case the Ariane 5,” Bausch said. “If we see a delay in Falcon 9 for SES-8, we would need to inform Arianespace six months ahead, so around November or December, saying we are moving SES-8 to Ariane. In that case we would push the Falcon launch to another satellite at a later date.”

Offline thydusk666

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“If there are delays we will have a backup, in this case the Ariane 5,” Bausch said. “If we see a delay in Falcon 9 for SES-8, we would need to inform Arianespace six months ahead, so around November or December, saying we are moving SES-8 to Ariane. In that case we would push the Falcon launch to another satellite at a later date.”

Very interesting - this is a launch contract with little or no margins for delays.
SpaceX needs to ramp up the launch rate and keep up with their manifest, otherwise delays will lead to loosing the much needed customers.

Offline beancounter

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“If there are delays we will have a backup, in this case the Ariane 5,” Bausch said. “If we see a delay in Falcon 9 for SES-8, we would need to inform Arianespace six months ahead, so around November or December, saying we are moving SES-8 to Ariane. In that case we would push the Falcon launch to another satellite at a later date.”

Very interesting - this is a launch contract with little or no margins for delays.
SpaceX needs to ramp up the launch rate and keep up with their manifest, otherwise delays will lead to loosing the much needed customers.

Also interesting:

 "Frank McKenna, president of International Launch Services (ILS) of Reston, Va. — a veteran launch service provider and a principal SpaceX competitor — said he has calculated that SpaceX is, on average, just under 50 percent less expensive than ILS, Arianespace of France and other established launch service providers.

For McKenna, the SpaceX phenomenon means that nearly $500 million has been withheld from the commercial launch industry — an industry not generally associated with thick profit margins — in the less than three years since SpaceX arrived on the scene.

For SES and others, it is $500 million in savings."

Beancounter from DownUnder

Offline IRobot

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For McKenna, the SpaceX phenomenon means that nearly $500 million has been withheld from the commercial launch industry — an industry not generally associated with thick profit margins — in the less than three years since SpaceX arrived on the scene.

For SES and others, it is $500 million in savings."
It's like saying Henry Ford reduced the market size of the auto industry...
If access to space becomes cheap, the industry will grow. Of course that means people like Mr Mckenna have to work harder to remain competitive.

Online MP99

For McKenna, the SpaceX phenomenon means that nearly $500 million has been withheld from the commercial launch industry — an industry not generally associated with thick profit margins — in the less than three years since SpaceX arrived on the scene.

For SES and others, it is $500 million in savings."

It's like saying Henry Ford reduced the market size of the auto industry...
If access to space becomes cheap, the industry will grow. Of course that means people like Mr Mckenna have to work harder to remain competitive.

Ignoring the NASA flights, how many launches on SpaceX's manifest would not have flown on another provider if SpaceX weren't there?

Unless and until SpaceX expands the market, existing buyers will simply get their launches cheaper, so reducing the total size of the launch market.

By the Model T analogy, the successful launches so far have not really come off a mature production line, I believe that's what v1.1 is for. Eight flights in 2013 (ref Gwynne Shotwell recently) will be a big ramp up for them.

ISTM it will still take some time for additional demand to be stimulated.

cheers, Martin
« Last Edit: 09/17/2012 09:47 am by MP99 »

Offline kevin-rf

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One can argue that the two planned Asian Broadcast/Satmex dual launches are only happening because SpaceX along with Boeing lowered the cost of access to space. It is doubtful that these two operators would have been able to afford the four satellites otherwise.
« Last Edit: 09/17/2012 12:12 pm by kevin-rf »
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Offline Danderman

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #10 on: 09/17/2012 03:02 pm »
This is creating an interesting situation, will SpaceX destroy the competition, or will the competition reduce prices to compete?

Or will SpaceX fail to launch on time, allowing its competition to claim that they can launch on time, leaving them with a large niche market, satellites that must be launched on schedule.

Offline IRobot

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #11 on: 09/17/2012 03:10 pm »
This is creating an interesting situation, will SpaceX destroy the competition, or will the competition reduce prices to compete?

Or will SpaceX fail to launch on time, allowing its competition to claim that they can launch on time, leaving them with a large niche market, satellites that must be launched on schedule.


I think that even if the competition lowers prices, SpaceX might be able to reduce them further if any of the stages becomes reusable.

Also SpaceX factory was done from day zero thinking of a steady output of rockets, so after some initial backlog, it will be easy to adjust production output.

So in the end we might end up with SpaceX having a quota larger than Ariane and on the other side, some government backed launchers. Governments might lower the price below cost just to keep the capacity to launch.

There is another possibility: SpaceX has 1-3 launch failures and loose large satellite launches for Ariane.

Offline dcporter

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #12 on: 09/17/2012 03:13 pm »
Can we keep this sort of broad speculation off this thread?

Online Comga

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #13 on: 09/18/2012 03:47 am »
Can we keep this sort of broad speculation off this thread?
Agreed
Those who do not understand the "creative destruction" of capitalism can go look it up elsewhere or join an economics forum.

Those who want to guess how many launches SpaceX will do next year can wait for tigerade to open up the guessing poll.

For anyone else, again, is this really three additional launches or two? That second one seems to have been on the manifest for years.
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

Offline friendly3

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #14 on: 09/19/2012 12:31 am »
For anyone else, again, is this really three additional launches or two? That second one seems to have been on the manifest for years.

The article is clear: three additional F9 launches or maybe one FH.

Offline tigerade

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #15 on: 09/19/2012 01:40 am »
For those curious on SES-8, here is the profile of the satellite to be launched by Falcon 9:

http://www.ses.com/4629034/ses-8

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #16 on: 12/25/2012 02:51 am »
Where is the rocket that would launch for SES? Where is it in the workflow?
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Offline spectre9

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #17 on: 12/25/2012 10:38 am »
Those are the things nobody is being told Robotbeat.

Even those companies which are supposed to be customers are kept in the dark with payloads that will never launch.

I'm starting to get a bad taste from it myself.

SpaceX market themselves as more than a NASA contractor. They have others to look after and need to start doing so.

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #18 on: 12/25/2012 07:08 pm »
Those are the things nobody is being told Robotbeat.

Even those companies which are supposed to be customers are kept in the dark with payloads that will never launch.

I'm starting to get a bad taste from it myself.

SpaceX market themselves as more than a NASA contractor. They have others to look after and need to start doing so.
Starting to? You've had a bad taste in your mouth for a while...
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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 spectre9

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Re: SES signs contract for three satellite launches with SpaceX
« Reply #19 on: 12/25/2012 09:58 pm »
Price means nothing without launching.

Stealing Falcon 9 payloads is now the biggest launch market as twisted as that is  ::)

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