Author Topic: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market  (Read 115820 times)

Offline AmigaClone

I speculate that SpaceX could offer an on-demand service if asked. They would basically need to keep one ready-to-go F9 in the queue, replacing it every time they do another Starlink launch. If/when NSSL demands a mission, bump the Starlink launch and fly the NSSL mission. Logistics would be a PITA so SpaceX would charge a monthly fee for the service whether or not a launch occurred. They might also need additional floor space at Roberts Road or Hangar X or both, to allow for queueing. Again, they would charge for it. NSSL would also need to arrange for preemptive use of the range on short notice if the next preempt-able F9 launch is too far in the future.
It's not quite that simple.

Every payload is subject to a Coupled Loads Analysis, to ensure the payload isn't shaken to bits on the ascent and it can't excite the rocket into a vibration that shakes it to bits.

If SX wasn't the original launch provider that's going to be time consuming. It typically takes 3 iterations of this process to refine a payload design that will survive the launch and won't harm the rocket. This process is AFAIK unique to rocket launch. I'm unaware of large payloads on aircraft going through anything as detailed as CLA but I'm not sure if that's because no aircraft operates through 23 Mach numbers or if no aircraft has the levels of vibration or noise a rocket imposes on the payload.

A third factor might be related to the cost per unit of mass.  I suspect that in many cases a payload being transported by air had more mass devoted to vibration-absorption materials than a similar payload being launched into orbit.

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #341 on: 11/12/2023 07:39 am »
twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/1723486650519732648

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SpaceX's Rideshare Program has now launched roughly 800 payloads in less than three years!

https://twitter.com/spaceabhi/status/1723503278867235038

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Many of those 800 once appeared on the “backlog slide” of small rocket launchers pitch decks shown to investors.

twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/1723529088722501898

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I was gonna add something about how F9 + Smallsat has launched several times more payloads than every small LV combined, but it just felt too cruel 😅

https://twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/1723531134901088711

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Was also gonna mention how I wouldn't be surprised if being able to point to SpaceX ridesharing as a ubiquitous, reliable, cheap launch option has made investors far more willing to put $ into space apps startups - possibly to the extent that dozens wouldn't exist without it.

I agree. What’s making the smallsat launch market very tough is simultaneously lowering barriers to new space apps.

Offline XRZ.YZ

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Offline RedLineTrain

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #343 on: 02/09/2024 07:36 pm »
In pertinent part...

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“The Transporter program was created a few years ago with, in my opinion, the sole purpose of trying to kill new entrants like us,” said Sandy Tirtey, director of global commercial launch services at Rocket Lab, during a panel at the SmallSat Symposium here Feb. 7. “Yet, we are still flying because we offer something unique.”

Seems like thin gruel...

Online DanClemmensen

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #344 on: 02/09/2024 07:51 pm »
In pertinent part...

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“The Transporter program was created a few years ago with, in my opinion, the sole purpose of trying to kill new entrants like us,” said Sandy Tirtey, director of global commercial launch services at Rocket Lab, during a panel at the SmallSat Symposium here Feb. 7. “Yet, we are still flying because we offer something unique.”

Seems like thin gruel...
If Sandy Tirtey or anyone else at RL can show that SpaceX is operating Transporter missions at a loss, then they have a case that the "sole purpose" may be anti-competitive, and they can go to court. If SpaceX operates these missions at a profit, then it's not the "sole purpose", it's the way a competitive market works.
« Last Edit: 02/10/2024 12:54 am by DanClemmensen »

Offline Nomadd

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #345 on: 02/10/2024 12:19 am »
 If you really want a contrast, consider the SpaceX and RL cost of launching those payloads. Most serious people are figuring under $20 million for a 2nd hand Falcon launch.
« Last Edit: 02/10/2024 12:31 am by Nomadd »
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.

Offline XRZ.YZ

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #346 on: 02/14/2024 07:29 pm »
Some comments from Rocket Lab on this topic
RL is nominally booked but also demand constraint.
Meanwhile you need to wait 2 years for SpaceX

https://twitter.com/SpaceEquities/status/1757826077227884803

https://twitter.com/SpaceEquities/status/1757826079337615727
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Offline RedLineTrain

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #347 on: 03/21/2024 08:31 pm »
Arianespace trying to come to grips with what appears to me as a winner-takes-all market.  Jeff Foust reporting from Satellite 2024.

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“Starship for sure will disrupt further the launch business and the space business in general,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace, during a panel at the Satellite 2024 conference March 20. “One scenario is that [SpaceX Chief Executive Elon] Musk could really monopolize everything.”

Starship would seem to be ill-suited for launching smallsats given its massive size. “I think Starship will open new business, like exploration, human spaceflight and commercial space stations,” he said. “I don’t think Starship can launch small satellites or will be used to launch small satellites.”
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The debate about Starship parallels existing discussions, and angst, about the role SpaceX’s Transporter line of Falcon 9 rideshare missions have played in the smallsat market. Those missions have attracted strong interest from smallsat developers, with some missions sold out up to two years in advance.
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Other launch vehicle companies, though, have argued that Transporter missions are so attractive to customers because SpaceX charges prices that, to them, seem unrealistically low. “You have to complete with an unreasonable level of pricing,” said Fragnito, noting that he was now focused on launching larger satellites. “We don’t compete with Transporter missions.”

https://spacenews.com/starship-could-have-a-big-impact-on-small-launch-vehicles/

Offline Asteroza

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #348 on: 03/21/2024 09:37 pm »
Starship coming online revitalizing the small sat market due to F9 reduction/retirement pulling the rug out from under the rideshare market that has become so dependent on Transporter-style launches would be very ironic.


Makes any small-to-medium launcher doing a first flight within 3 years or so look coincidentally prescient...


But that has to balance out against Starship lift being so cheap a sat could purchase an OTV tug service with ludicrous deltaV to get where they want and still be cheaper as long as they get dropped off at vaguely polar SSO orbit. Single lift constellations could become a thing.

Offline DigitalMan

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #349 on: 03/21/2024 09:38 pm »
Starship would be a great platform for tugs. Meet up refuel and transfer payloads see you next time. 

There are a bunch of folks building tugs.

Offline imprezive

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #350 on: 03/22/2024 03:16 am »
Starship coming online revitalizing the small sat market due to F9 reduction/retirement pulling the rug out from under the rideshare market that has become so dependent on Transporter-style launches would be very ironic.


Makes any small-to-medium launcher doing a first flight within 3 years or so look coincidentally prescient...


But that has to balance out against Starship lift being so cheap a sat could purchase an OTV tug service with ludicrous deltaV to get where they want and still be cheaper as long as they get dropped off at vaguely polar SSO orbit. Single lift constellations could become a thing.

What makes you think that SpaceX would just abandon a chunk of its customer base because Starship came online?

Offline deltaV

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #351 on: 03/22/2024 03:27 am »
Quote from: Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace
I don’t think Starship can launch small satellites or will be used to launch small satellites.

Even Falcon 9 may be bigger than ideal for launching ride-share flights - SpaceX transporter flights have often used RTLS mode, not the (presumably) lower cost per kilogram ASDS mode. Fragnito may be right that Starship will be too big to be competitive at launching small satellites (via rideshare or otherwise). Unfortunately for the Vega program Starship is unlikely to be the only fully reusable vehicle. Stoke Space's Nova may become the second fully reusable vehicle and at 3 tonnes to LEO with full reuse is well sized for small satellites including ride-shares. Some of the many partially reusable vehicles now under development such as Electron, Neutron, Terran R, and New Glenn may eventually evolve to be fully reusable. So if Fragnito's implicit argument is that Starship's large size will let Vega stay competitive without upping their game that's a bad idea long term.

(This post isn't a great fit for this thread but I'm not sure what other thread to move it to.)
« Last Edit: 03/22/2024 03:48 am by deltaV »

Online DanClemmensen

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #352 on: 03/22/2024 03:46 am »
Starship coming online revitalizing the small sat market due to F9 reduction/retirement pulling the rug out from under the rideshare market that has become so dependent on Transporter-style launches would be very ironic.


Makes any small-to-medium launcher doing a first flight within 3 years or so look coincidentally prescient...


But that has to balance out against Starship lift being so cheap a sat could purchase an OTV tug service with ludicrous deltaV to get where they want and still be cheaper as long as they get dropped off at vaguely polar SSO orbit. Single lift constellations could become a thing.
This makes no sense. SpaceX claims that their cost of a Starship launch will be lower than their cost of an F9 launch. This means that if they can make money on a particular payload with F9, they will make more money on that same payload using Starship.  If that F9 payload is a 10 tonne transporter-1 and it out-competes small launchers on F9, then it will out-compete them even more on Starship even if they don't share that Starship with any other payload.

Even worse: at a high enough launch cadence, a Starship launch may be cheaper than a small launcher launch, so a customer with a 200 kg satellite will just use a dedicated Starship flight.

There is a possibility that a competitor may become operational and make some money before Starship reaches high cadence, but  I'm just not seeing it. Starship is already flying test flights.

Offline thespacecow

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #353 on: 03/22/2024 05:26 am »
SpaceX already bid on the TROPICS launch contract using Starship, so clearly Starship can be used to launch smallsats.

Also they wouldn't retire Falcon 9 until Starship launch cadence is on par or exceed Falcon 9, by then dedicated Starship smallsat rideshare launches should be an easy proposition.

But more importantly I suspect with Starship we will see the come back of rideshare on Starlink launches. They stopped doing this for Falcon 9, probably because they needed every kg of performance for Starlink themselves, also the way rideshare is stacked makes it difficult to drop them in a different orbit. With Starship there should be ample spare performance, especially given currently it looks like it's volume constrained when launching Starlink. And since Starlink uses a dedicated dispenser, they can drop off Starlink satellites first, then go to the deployment orbit of the rideshares.

Offline Asteroza

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #354 on: 03/22/2024 05:32 am »
What makes you think that SpaceX would just abandon a chunk of its customer base because Starship came online?

This makes no sense. SpaceX claims that their cost of a Starship launch will be lower than their cost of an F9 launch. This means that if they can make money on a particular payload with F9, they will make more money on that same payload using Starship.  If that F9 payload is a 10 tonne transporter-1 and it out-competes small launchers on F9, then it will out-compete them even more on Starship even if they don't share that Starship with any other payload.

Even worse: at a high enough launch cadence, a Starship launch may be cheaper than a small launcher launch, so a customer with a 200 kg satellite will just use a dedicated Starship flight.

There is a possibility that a competitor may become operational and make some money before Starship reaches high cadence, but  I'm just not seeing it. Starship is already flying test flights.

It's the rideshare payload cat herding problem. It's tough enough getting everyone together and doing the coupled load analysis.

Now one could say if a single Starship launch actually is sold as cheaply or cheaper than Falcon 9, simply fitting a transporter stack in Starship would be the immediate solution. Same rideshare mass throughput per transporter launch. Maybe adjust the stack size or launch rate a bit to burn through the 2 year backlog.

But we know cat herding is a pain. When your largest payload by volume and mass is consistently Starlink, and the remainder are big ticket payloads with payments to match and comparatively simple payload processing flows, why make the extra effort to accommodate small fry? SpaceX could simply force the market by saying you must be this tall to ride, else you go sit at the kiddie table.

Which could trigger a dramatic mass shift in the rideshare market, pushing rideshares out of the payload range of smallsat launchers. Why stay at 3U when you can go 27U or 81U, and burn the extra U on propulsion/power without even changing your payload?

The other potential seismic shift is SpaceX designing a payload adapter/container to dampen loads such that coupled load analysis of smallsat rideshares is no longer necessary. But that would kill the smallsat launcher market since time to launch drops to literally next Starship launch.

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #355 on: 03/22/2024 11:37 am »
What makes you think that SpaceX would just abandon a chunk of its customer base because Starship came online?

This makes no sense. SpaceX claims that their cost of a Starship launch will be lower than their cost of an F9 launch. This means that if they can make money on a particular payload with F9, they will make more money on that same payload using Starship.  If that F9 payload is a 10 tonne transporter-1 and it out-competes small launchers on F9, then it will out-compete them even more on Starship even if they don't share that Starship with any other payload.

Even worse: at a high enough launch cadence, a Starship launch may be cheaper than a small launcher launch, so a customer with a 200 kg satellite will just use a dedicated Starship flight.

There is a possibility that a competitor may become operational and make some money before Starship reaches high cadence, but  I'm just not seeing it. Starship is already flying test flights.

It's the rideshare payload cat herding problem. It's tough enough getting everyone together and doing the coupled load analysis.

Now one could say if a single Starship launch actually is sold as cheaply or cheaper than Falcon 9, simply fitting a transporter stack in Starship would be the immediate solution. Same rideshare mass throughput per transporter launch. Maybe adjust the stack size or launch rate a bit to burn through the 2 year backlog.

But we know cat herding is a pain. When your largest payload by volume and mass is consistently Starlink, and the remainder are big ticket payloads with payments to match and comparatively simple payload processing flows, why make the extra effort to accommodate small fry? SpaceX could simply force the market by saying you must be this tall to ride, else you go sit at the kiddie table.

Which could trigger a dramatic mass shift in the rideshare market, pushing rideshares out of the payload range of smallsat launchers. Why stay at 3U when you can go 27U or 81U, and burn the extra U on propulsion/power without even changing your payload?

The other potential seismic shift is SpaceX designing a payload adapter/container to dampen loads such that coupled load analysis of smallsat rideshares is no longer necessary. But that would kill the smallsat launcher market since time to launch drops to literally next Starship launch.
The Starlink Pez dispenser SS is specialized, so the transporter missions must await the generic cargo SS in most of our economic models. However, there is an alternative that might work for most smallsats: a ridshare carrier with the form factor of a pair of V.2 Starlinks, to replace one pair of Starlinks on a Starlink launch. This herds all of the cats into one nice well-specified bunch.

SpaceX will "make the extra effort to accommodate small fry" if it is profitable. That's what a for-profit company does. It will be profitable if they have spare launch capacity after handling a Starlink and all other higher-profit launches. with a constellation of 40,000 and a lifetime of 5 years, they must launch 8000/yr in steady state. at 100 Starlinks per SS, that's 80/yr, which leaves a whole lot of spare capacity even if they only had one tower, two SH, and three SS.

Offline ZachF

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #356 on: 03/22/2024 12:43 pm »
What makes you think that SpaceX would just abandon a chunk of its customer base because Starship came online?

This makes no sense. SpaceX claims that their cost of a Starship launch will be lower than their cost of an F9 launch. This means that if they can make money on a particular payload with F9, they will make more money on that same payload using Starship.  If that F9 payload is a 10 tonne transporter-1 and it out-competes small launchers on F9, then it will out-compete them even more on Starship even if they don't share that Starship with any other payload.

Even worse: at a high enough launch cadence, a Starship launch may be cheaper than a small launcher launch, so a customer with a 200 kg satellite will just use a dedicated Starship flight.

There is a possibility that a competitor may become operational and make some money before Starship reaches high cadence, but  I'm just not seeing it. Starship is already flying test flights.

It's the rideshare payload cat herding problem. It's tough enough getting everyone together and doing the coupled load analysis.

Now one could say if a single Starship launch actually is sold as cheaply or cheaper than Falcon 9, simply fitting a transporter stack in Starship would be the immediate solution. Same rideshare mass throughput per transporter launch. Maybe adjust the stack size or launch rate a bit to burn through the 2 year backlog.

But we know cat herding is a pain. When your largest payload by volume and mass is consistently Starlink, and the remainder are big ticket payloads with payments to match and comparatively simple payload processing flows, why make the extra effort to accommodate small fry? SpaceX could simply force the market by saying you must be this tall to ride, else you go sit at the kiddie table.

Which could trigger a dramatic mass shift in the rideshare market, pushing rideshares out of the payload range of smallsat launchers. Why stay at 3U when you can go 27U or 81U, and burn the extra U on propulsion/power without even changing your payload?

The other potential seismic shift is SpaceX designing a payload adapter/container to dampen loads such that coupled load analysis of smallsat rideshares is no longer necessary. But that would kill the smallsat launcher market since time to launch drops to literally next Starship launch.
The Starlink Pez dispenser SS is specialized, so the transporter missions must await the generic cargo SS in most of our economic models. However, there is an alternative that might work for most smallsats: a ridshare carrier with the form factor of a pair of V.2 Starlinks, to replace one pair of Starlinks on a Starlink launch. This herds all of the cats into one nice well-specified bunch.

SpaceX will "make the extra effort to accommodate small fry" if it is profitable. That's what a for-profit company does. It will be profitable if they have spare launch capacity after handling a Starlink and all other higher-profit launches. with a constellation of 40,000 and a lifetime of 5 years, they must launch 8000/yr in steady state. at 100 Starlinks per SS, that's 80/yr, which leaves a whole lot of spare capacity even if they only had one tower, two SH, and three SS.


What will happen is that spacex will sell its Starlink bus and smallsat companies will use that.

SpaceX may have such an economy of scale that it’ll cost less to buy a starship rudeshare and the Starlink bus than just the launch cost of other providers.
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Offline matt19215

I think its kinda funny how allot of small launch providers are complaining about transporter eating into their market share when a majority of these small launch companies are launching less rockets in a year than SpaceX launches transporter missions

Offline ZachF

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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #358 on: 03/22/2024 02:08 pm »
I think its kinda funny how allot of small launch providers are complaining about transporter eating into their market share when a majority of these small launch companies are launching less rockets in a year than SpaceX launches transporter missions

RocketLab to date has launched a little over 200 satellites totaling about 4,600kg, that’s equivalent to about 2 Transporter missions.
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Re: Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market
« Reply #359 on: 03/22/2024 04:10 pm »
<snip>
The Starlink Pez dispenser SS is specialized, so the transporter missions must await the generic cargo SS in most of our economic models. However, there is an alternative that might work for most smallsats: a ridshare carrier with the form factor of a pair of V.2 Starlinks, to replace one pair of Starlinks on a Starlink launch. This herds all of the cats into one nice well-specified bunch.
<snip>
Think there is room between the cargo deck floor and the propellant tank dome on the leeward side of the Pez Dispenser SS to installed 3 rideshare deployment modules. So no reduction of the Starlink comsats is needed. Preferably the rideshare deployment modules are just plugged in modular units.

As to why 3 rideshare deployment modules emplacements. It takes the place of 3 cosine thrusters in the Moonship (Artemis Option A HLS). There should be useful engineering studies available for using those volumes.

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