: "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.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 09/12/2012 05:24 pmSo 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 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?
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.
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.”
“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.”
Quote from: bolun on 09/15/2012 10:51 am“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.
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."
Quote from: beancounter on 09/17/2012 08:55 amFor 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.
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."
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.
Can we keep this sort of broad speculation off this thread?
For anyone else, again, is this really three additional launches or two? That second one seems to have been on the manifest for years.
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.