I do wonder if Elon and Jeff have met in private at any point. That would have been an interesting conversation for sure. But I agree it's better to have competition and SpaceX and Blue Origin are operating on different principles SpaceX is the Hare Blue Origin is the Tortoise (and NASA the wounded slug).
Quote from: Slarty1080 on 04/06/2018 12:30 pmI do wonder if Elon and Jeff have met in private at any point. That would have been an interesting conversation for sure. But I agree it's better to have competition and SpaceX and Blue Origin are operating on different principles SpaceX is the Hare Blue Origin is the Tortoise (and NASA the wounded slug).In Christian Davenport's new book The Space Barons, it does mention that they did have dinner in 2004, when Elon heard that Jeff had set up a rocket company on the quiet. They discussed space over that dinner. The book quotes Elon as having said that he tried to give Jeff good advice but that Jeff seemed to ignore any advice that was given.It would be interesting if we ever get a full recounting of that dinner conversation from either of them and if and how it had any flow on effects to what has transpired since.
There's no possible way BE-4 cost $50 million. The whole flight set of BE-4s on a New Glenn might cost about $40M, based on the reports that Blue is selling them to ULA for $8M each and probably tacking a 30% profit on that.You are confusing operating at a profit with payback time. Blue doesn't ever have to payback the dev cost of New Glenn in order to operate at a profit. They just have to charge more than the marginal cost of a launch.And Blue will nail reuse very quickly. They aren't developing New Shepard for fun, and New Glenn has lots of margins for reuse. Blue isn't SpaceX. They aren't going to crash lots of rockets before succeeding with landing New Glenn. They don't have to make money on every flight or iterate fast or run at very slim margins. If the first New Glenn survives reentry, I pretty sure it will stick the landing perfectly.
And Blue will nail reuse very quickly. They aren't developing New Shepard for fun, and New Glenn has lots of margins for reuse. Blue isn't SpaceX. They aren't going to crash lots of rockets before succeeding with landing New Glenn. They don't have to make money on every flight or iterate fast or run at very slim margins. If the first New Glenn survives reentry, I pretty sure it will stick the landing perfectly.
Quote from: johnfwhitesell on 05/16/2018 04:35 pmThe engine alone probably cost them 50 million dollars to make. Or approach the problem from the other side and look at overhead. They are going to be spending the ammoritization cost of their initial 2.5 billion (plus several years interest before ammoritization starts) plus a billion in yearly spending. So that's about 1.35 billion or so. Divide that 1.35 billion by the number of rockets they will be building a year. Two? Four?There's no possible way BE-4 cost $50 million. The whole flight set of BE-4s on a New Glenn might cost about $40M, based on the reports that Blue is selling them to ULA for $8M each and probably tacking a 30% profit on that.
The engine alone probably cost them 50 million dollars to make. Or approach the problem from the other side and look at overhead. They are going to be spending the ammoritization cost of their initial 2.5 billion (plus several years interest before ammoritization starts) plus a billion in yearly spending. So that's about 1.35 billion or so. Divide that 1.35 billion by the number of rockets they will be building a year. Two? Four?
Quote from: envy887 on 05/16/2018 07:17 pmAnd Blue will nail reuse very quickly. They aren't developing New Shepard for fun, and New Glenn has lots of margins for reuse. Blue isn't SpaceX. They aren't going to crash lots of rockets before succeeding with landing New Glenn. They don't have to make money on every flight or iterate fast or run at very slim margins. If the first New Glenn survives reentry, I pretty sure it will stick the landing perfectly.Some things will only be learned by testing at the edges of the envelope. Why do you think SpaceX is continuing to "crash" rockets even after succeeding with recovery/reuse? I don't think Blue will be able to achieve the same level of rapid/cheap reuse that SpaceX seems on the verge of achieving without crashing a few rockets of their own. Even if they are able to stick the landing from the beginning that may not be enough to get them where they want to go.
Quote from: envy887 on 05/16/2018 07:17 pmQuote from: johnfwhitesell on 05/16/2018 04:35 pmThe engine alone probably cost them 50 million dollars to make. Or approach the problem from the other side and look at overhead. They are going to be spending the ammoritization cost of their initial 2.5 billion (plus several years interest before ammoritization starts) plus a billion in yearly spending. So that's about 1.35 billion or so. Divide that 1.35 billion by the number of rockets they will be building a year. Two? Four?There's no possible way BE-4 cost $50 million. The whole flight set of BE-4s on a New Glenn might cost about $40M, based on the reports that Blue is selling them to ULA for $8M each and probably tacking a 30% profit on that.So there were two possible ways for you to read my post:A) I arrived at nearly the same figure as you but made a typo when typing "engines"B) I am not only a grossly uninformed idiot but I am furthermore incapable of basic arithmaticYou really dont seem to like me.
Quote from: deruch on 05/17/2018 01:57 amQuote from: envy887 on 05/16/2018 07:17 pmAnd Blue will nail reuse very quickly. They aren't developing New Shepard for fun, and New Glenn has lots of margins for reuse. Blue isn't SpaceX. They aren't going to crash lots of rockets before succeeding with landing New Glenn. They don't have to make money on every flight or iterate fast or run at very slim margins. If the first New Glenn survives reentry, I pretty sure it will stick the landing perfectly.Some things will only be learned by testing at the edges of the envelope. Why do you think SpaceX is continuing to "crash" rockets even after succeeding with recovery/reuse? I don't think Blue will be able to achieve the same level of rapid/cheap reuse that SpaceX seems on the verge of achieving without crashing a few rockets of their own. Even if they are able to stick the landing from the beginning that may not be enough to get them where they want to go.Maybe they will crash a few. But they are completely different approaches. SpaceX starts outside the envelope and fails until they find out what works. Blue plays it safe, and then pushes the envelope until they get where they need to go.New Glenn is a giant, enormous, huge rocket. It's gigantic. Did I mention it was big? It has considerably more payload capability than Falcon Heavy with full booster reuse, and I think Blue is even sandbagging those numbers considerably. It will have huge amounts of margin to stay within a very safe envelope on the first few flights. And that's where Blue is going to keep it.Reuse isn't optional with New Glenn, and Blue will spent the development time and money and iterations to make reuse work early.
I'm not sure we can have a discussion about the business case for New Glenn right now. We don't know enough about the rocket. On the one hand, Blue Origin's web site shows a BE-4U powered second stage and lists payload performance numbers. On the other hand, Space News reported some time ago that the second stage would be BE-3U powered, using LH2 rather than methane fuel. This change seemed directed at the USAF "EELV-2" competition, so we can assume that this New Glenn version is being designed to meet those payload goals - which are mostly much less than the original claimed capabilities. New Glenn might not now be as capable as originally claimed (because it doesn't need to be to meet this customer's needs), or it might be more capable (for some other unknown goal). And who knows what other, unannounced changes Blue Origin has made to the design? - Ed Kyle
I don't think anyone outside of the company has enough information to make a reasonable estimate about Blue's business case at this point. My guesses:I personally expect Bezos will be quite happy to write-off the sunk development costs entirely, so I don't think that's a long-term factor.After that most of it boils down to flight rate. I don't think there are sufficient existing satellite customers to allow Blue to get their prices below those of SpaceX's existing offerings (at least not profitably), so for them to be able to gain traction in the industry they're going to need to find, or create, a large amount of brand-new launch demand in order to enable the high fixed annual costs (and the $1.35bn figure mentioned above, if real, is not dramatically different to SpX's fixed annual costs BTW) to be amortised effectively.SpaceX have chosen to drive a very high initial flight rate themselves, specifically through Starlink.Bezos certainly has deep enough pockets to pay for an equivalent project to drive Blue's flight rate, if he can't find anyone else willing to do so. He might try a comms constellation of his own, a major human spaceflight/industrial/tourism system, an SBSP system, a large-scale asteroid mining architecture, or something else entirely - there are plenty of options and it depends on what business opportunity floats his personal risk/benefit boat.Then it mostly comes down to the reflight costs. From what I can see, the Falcon family isn't intended to get down to a real "minimum costs" system for SpX and they are waiting for BFR to drive the reflight costs down as much as possible. This does leave an opportunity for Blue to exploit.Is New Glenn designed to minimise reflight costs from day 1? I don't know. Perhaps, though. It better, or they've already lost this fight. Assuming it is, it should follow that a genuine "minimum cost" 45 ton launcher could theoretically be close to 35-40% the reflight cost of SpX's "minimum cost" 150 ton launcher. If the majority of customer payloads require less than 45 tons, why would customers pay for the bigger launcher at nearly triple the price?That might be where Bezos is trying to position his wares. There are just too many unknowns to be sure at this stage though. Its all speculation until we actually start to see them compete head-to-head.Ross.