Quote from: Robotbeat on 07/28/2022 02:09 pmWhy did no one else do it? ULA’s freedom of action is constrained due to their corporate parents, Boeing in particular.It is difficult for a publicly traded company like Boeing to justify large long term investments if the payback is several years away, especially if it is a new concept that hasn’t been demonstrated yet.It took years, hundreds of millions (at least),and a bunch of spectacular explosions for SpaceX to bring reuse to workhorse status. It’s not TERRIBLY a surprising that no one else had already done so, although as you say, it’s not magic and could’ve been done 50 years ago.Traditional publicly traded defense contractors are very constrained. It takes some vision and ability to put up a lot of money without second guessing by everyone’s cousin on the public market.It was the large aerospace companies like MD and Boeing who did exactly this with air travel. They saw the need to expand the ability of air travel and they built airplanes like the DC 3, DC 10, 707 and 747 to transform the market. These guys especially should have been able to see that what they did for air travel, they could do for space travel. They are the ones who proved the case with one medium, it should have been crystal clear what was required for the other medium. The amount of studies produced shows that they knew what was required, they just decided not to. EDIT: If ULA and it's compatriots stared at what needed to be done for a large percentage of a century and took no action, it is no surprise that a new upstart got fed up and stole their business from under them.
Why did no one else do it? ULA’s freedom of action is constrained due to their corporate parents, Boeing in particular.It is difficult for a publicly traded company like Boeing to justify large long term investments if the payback is several years away, especially if it is a new concept that hasn’t been demonstrated yet.It took years, hundreds of millions (at least),and a bunch of spectacular explosions for SpaceX to bring reuse to workhorse status. It’s not TERRIBLY a surprising that no one else had already done so, although as you say, it’s not magic and could’ve been done 50 years ago.Traditional publicly traded defense contractors are very constrained. It takes some vision and ability to put up a lot of money without second guessing by everyone’s cousin on the public market.
Well also, the spreadsheet was made a few years ago now, when SpaceX’s dominance wasn’t so complete and Falcon 9 hadn’t reached (and arguably exceeded) the reliability of Atlas V and had failures in recent memory. So there was reason to think the USG would pick the (at the time) more reliable ULA Atlas V.But this is kind of an argument in reuse’s favor. Reliability is ultimately about flight history, and if you manage to get a good flight rate (which reusability can help with), you’ll usually get good reliability. And with rapid reuse and a high flightrate, you’ll quickly far exceed the flight history of expendable rockets.If you think of really high reliability numbers, like 99.9%, that implies getting a flightrate on the order of 1000 every 10 years or less, which is really not very feasible with expendable rockets, at least with US labor rates. And 99.99% and 99.999% can only happen with the extremely low cost launch of fully and highly reusable rockets. And being fully reusable also makes inspection after flight possible as well as shakedown flights on new rockets to catch manufacturing defects.And it goes the other way. What’s the use of a highly reusable rocket that can fly 1000 times if the reliability is only 95%, so it fails after just 20 launches? So reuse both enables and requires high reliability. Which is problematic for expendable rockets as they can claim neither reliability nor low cost. The only option left is basically as munitions: if you need to launch dozens of flights in an hour or so to replenish a constellation in a war or something.
Here’s a new post from Tory with a chart I don’t recall seeing before (but I may have missed it):twitter.com/petey_nebby/status/1543342951601938437Quote Happy to hear that its taken this long to get 2 flight BE4’s and would love to see pictures! Bottom line is we need more options to get yo space but also please stop dropping rockets in the ocean as its not theory anymorehttps://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1543345280761962497Quote It hasn’t been theoretical for a couple of decades. It’s about what mission set the rocket is optimized for.Low energy commercial orbits are tolerant of large propellant reserves for return flights. High energy orbits drive a different architecture, which is why we’ll use SMART
Happy to hear that its taken this long to get 2 flight BE4’s and would love to see pictures! Bottom line is we need more options to get yo space but also please stop dropping rockets in the ocean as its not theory anymore
It hasn’t been theoretical for a couple of decades. It’s about what mission set the rocket is optimized for.Low energy commercial orbits are tolerant of large propellant reserves for return flights. High energy orbits drive a different architecture, which is why we’ll use SMART
My "How hard is going to space" Infographic stimulated lots of questions, so I've written this @Medium post to give a bit more. For your orbital mechanics reading pleasure...How Hard Is Going To Space?
Quote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 07/03/2022 06:50 amHere’s a new post from Tory with a chart I don’t recall seeing before (but I may have missed it):Quote Happy to hear that its taken this long to get 2 flight BE4’s and would love to see pictures! Bottom line is we need more options to get yo space but also please stop dropping rockets in the ocean as its not theory anymoreQuote It hasn’t been theoretical for a couple of decades. It’s about what mission set the rocket is optimized for.Low energy commercial orbits are tolerant of large propellant reserves for return flights. High energy orbits drive a different architecture, which is why we’ll use SMARTQuoteMy "How hard is going to space" Infographic stimulated lots of questions, so I've written this @Medium post to give a bit more. For your orbital mechanics reading pleasure...How Hard Is Going To Space?
Here’s a new post from Tory with a chart I don’t recall seeing before (but I may have missed it):Quote Happy to hear that its taken this long to get 2 flight BE4’s and would love to see pictures! Bottom line is we need more options to get yo space but also please stop dropping rockets in the ocean as its not theory anymoreQuote It hasn’t been theoretical for a couple of decades. It’s about what mission set the rocket is optimized for.Low energy commercial orbits are tolerant of large propellant reserves for return flights. High energy orbits drive a different architecture, which is why we’ll use SMART
The tweet does not mention the market sizes (launches per year) for each category.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 02:40 pmThe tweet does not mention the market sizes (launches per year) for each category. Did you read the article linked in the tweet? Because, yeah, it does.
There are a limited number of launch providers who are capable of successfully reaching all eight orbits to support the full breadth of the United States’ requirements to access space. United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) ability to reach all eight orbits, with a 100% mission success rate, is one of the main factors that sets us apart from other launch providers.
Quote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 02:52 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 02:40 pmThe tweet does not mention the market sizes (launches per year) for each category. Did you read the article linked in the tweet? Because, yeah, it does.Thanks. What I said was that the TWEET did not mention it. I have now read the article: https://medium.com/@ToryBrunoULA/how-hard-is-going-to-space-20637c846ea3Yes, the article mentions it at the very end, with a graphic. it says that less than two launches per year fall into these three categories combined. The tweet is therefore even more deceptive by implication: implying that ULA's business is viable because it can do these missions. The article is under Bruno's byline. It saysQuoteThere are a limited number of launch providers who are capable of successfully reaching all eight orbits to support the full breadth of the United States’ requirements to access space. United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) ability to reach all eight orbits, with a 100% mission success rate, is one of the main factors that sets us apart from other launch providers.But the only other provider that can do this is SpaceX, so ULA will compete with SpaceX for these two launches/yr. ULA may be a great company, Tory Bruno may be a great executive, and Vulcan may soon be a great rocket with a great market, but I do not think that this tweet and this article are strong support for this.I urge everyone to look at the last two graphics in the article again. (I won't put them in this post because I worry about copyright). The "current launch rate" graphic averages the statistics over the period 2017-2021. This is difficult to see because it is in tiny grey print. I only looked for it when I noticed that the total (not just ULA) launches to LEO is shown as "20.6/yr". Calling this "current" is also deceptive, given the results from 2021 and especially 2022.
So ULA sees itself as a provider of boutique, “difficult”, high energy direct injection launches. The article documents the tiny , govt only demand for these launch profiles. None of that is incorrect.Looks to me like ULA is comfortable with the business of launching a handful of expensive expendables each year. The customer may be happy with that as well
If I understand it correctly, they justify SMART instead of booster reuse because the architecture ULA to enable Vulcan to do all these missions means the first stage flies high and fast, which makes booster recovery too expensive.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 04:43 pmIf I understand it correctly, they justify SMART instead of booster reuse because the architecture ULA to enable Vulcan to do all these missions means the first stage flies high and fast, which makes booster recovery too expensive.They also claim that the entire rocket is less than half the cost of a mission and that that the booster's cost is dominated by the cost of the engines. If so, that means that saving the booster versus saving just the engines might only save a couple of percent of the total cost of a mission, and that isn't worth the expense of development and the sacrifice to performance.
Quote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:09 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 04:43 pmIf I understand it correctly, they justify SMART instead of booster reuse because the architecture ULA to enable Vulcan to do all these missions means the first stage flies high and fast, which makes booster recovery too expensive.They also claim that the entire rocket is less than half the cost of a mission and that that the booster's cost is dominated by the cost of the engines. If so, that means that saving the booster versus saving just the engines might only save a couple of percent of the total cost of a mission, and that isn't worth the expense of development and the sacrifice to performance.The whole idea that rocket tanks are just cheap hardware is a strangely persistent one even among aerospace folks.Can anyone remind me how expensive the Shuttle external tank was? Same idea…
Inflation adjusted, the Shuttle External tanks cost about $100 million apiece. Even though Vulcan is smaller, those tanks are still going to cost a pretty penny, probably tens of millions of dollars especially when you include integration with the engine pod (which would be more involved than the Shuttle ET connection), let alone engine pod recovery and refurb costs.
Rockets are not Legos. They cost more than the sum of their parts. Integration costs are significant, and saving those costs is a big reason why whole booster recovery is going to end up saving a lot more costs overall, particularly with downrange landing.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 07/29/2022 06:23 pmQuote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:09 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 04:43 pmIf I understand it correctly, they justify SMART instead of booster reuse because the architecture ULA to enable Vulcan to do all these missions means the first stage flies high and fast, which makes booster recovery too expensive.They also claim that the entire rocket is less than half the cost of a mission and that that the booster's cost is dominated by the cost of the engines. If so, that means that saving the booster versus saving just the engines might only save a couple of percent of the total cost of a mission, and that isn't worth the expense of development and the sacrifice to performance.The whole idea that rocket tanks are just cheap hardware is a strangely persistent one even among aerospace folks.Can anyone remind me how expensive the Shuttle external tank was? Same idea…If I recall correctly, well under 10% of the cost of a mission.
...The whole idea that rocket tanks are just cheap hardware is a strangely persistent one even among aerospace folks....Inflation adjusted, the Shuttle External tanks cost about $100 million apiece. Even though Vulcan is smaller, those tanks are still going to cost a pretty penny, probably tens of millions of dollars especially when you include integration with the engine pod (which would be more involved than the Shuttle ET connection), let alone engine pod recovery and refurb costs.
Quote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:44 pmQuote from: Robotbeat on 07/29/2022 06:23 pmQuote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:09 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 04:43 pmIf I understand it correctly, they justify SMART instead of booster reuse because the architecture ULA to enable Vulcan to do all these missions means the first stage flies high and fast, which makes booster recovery too expensive.They also claim that the entire rocket is less than half the cost of a mission and that that the booster's cost is dominated by the cost of the engines. If so, that means that saving the booster versus saving just the engines might only save a couple of percent of the total cost of a mission, and that isn't worth the expense of development and the sacrifice to performance.The whole idea that rocket tanks are just cheap hardware is a strangely persistent one even among aerospace folks.Can anyone remind me how expensive the Shuttle external tank was? Same idea…If I recall correctly, well under 10% of the cost of a mission.About $52 million out of a $361 million 1993 mission cost (not counting civil servant travel time and space network usage) at 8 flights per year, in 1993 dollars. $107 million in today’s money.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 07/29/2022 06:23 pm...The whole idea that rocket tanks are just cheap hardware is a strangely persistent one even among aerospace folks....Inflation adjusted, the Shuttle External tanks cost about $100 million apiece. Even though Vulcan is smaller, those tanks are still going to cost a pretty penny, probably tens of millions of dollars especially when you include integration with the engine pod (which would be more involved than the Shuttle ET connection), let alone engine pod recovery and refurb costs.I guess it might come from the "confusion" of material cost vs total manufacturing cost. I think some kind of a metric part cost/material cost could be useful.Yes, ET cost $100M, but the material for it was just about $500k (26,500 kg * $30/kg for Al-Li). So one can think of it as both "cheap" and "insanely expensive".
Quote from: Robotbeat on 07/29/2022 07:31 pmQuote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:44 pmQuote from: Robotbeat on 07/29/2022 06:23 pmQuote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:09 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 04:43 pmIf I understand it correctly, they justify SMART instead of booster reuse because the architecture ULA to enable Vulcan to do all these missions means the first stage flies high and fast, which makes booster recovery too expensive.They also claim that the entire rocket is less than half the cost of a mission and that that the booster's cost is dominated by the cost of the engines. If so, that means that saving the booster versus saving just the engines might only save a couple of percent of the total cost of a mission, and that isn't worth the expense of development and the sacrifice to performance.The whole idea that rocket tanks are just cheap hardware is a strangely persistent one even among aerospace folks.Can anyone remind me how expensive the Shuttle external tank was? Same idea…If I recall correctly, well under 10% of the cost of a mission.About $52 million out of a $361 million 1993 mission cost (not counting civil servant travel time and space network usage) at 8 flights per year, in 1993 dollars. $107 million in today’s money.The funny part is that the same folks, when looking at F9 reuse, claimed that it's not going to save that much anyway since missions costs >> rocket costs.
Quote from: meekGee on 07/29/2022 09:23 pmQuote from: Robotbeat on 07/29/2022 07:31 pmQuote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:44 pmQuote from: Robotbeat on 07/29/2022 06:23 pmQuote from: Lee Jay on 07/29/2022 06:09 pmQuote from: DanClemmensen on 07/29/2022 04:43 pmIf I understand it correctly, they justify SMART instead of booster reuse because the architecture ULA to enable Vulcan to do all these missions means the first stage flies high and fast, which makes booster recovery too expensive.They also claim that the entire rocket is less than half the cost of a mission and that that the booster's cost is dominated by the cost of the engines. If so, that means that saving the booster versus saving just the engines might only save a couple of percent of the total cost of a mission, and that isn't worth the expense of development and the sacrifice to performance.The whole idea that rocket tanks are just cheap hardware is a strangely persistent one even among aerospace folks.Can anyone remind me how expensive the Shuttle external tank was? Same idea…If I recall correctly, well under 10% of the cost of a mission.About $52 million out of a $361 million 1993 mission cost (not counting civil servant travel time and space network usage) at 8 flights per year, in 1993 dollars. $107 million in today’s money.The funny part is that the same folks, when looking at F9 reuse, claimed that it's not going to save that much anyway since missions costs >> rocket costs.And there's pretty good evidence that that's true. F9 missions are far more costly than they were claimed to be in the beginning (in some cases more than 4x higher)
and they've been steadily going up, even as reuse increases. Is that because reuse doesn't save much money or because SpaceX is trying to extract as much money as they can from their customers? No one outside of the company knows the answer to that, but the truth is probably a combination.