No, I haven't made a single assumption. Quit putting words into my mouth. The only info I have to go from is a couple of official looking websites.If SpaceX's claim of an order of magnitude smaller workforce is true, who am I to assume otherwise? If someone has better info, then may they come forward. I could make the "assumption" that SpaceX is paying their workforce 10times the going rate and thus they aren't making a good profit. That's a safe assumption. Not.Furthermore, SpaceX claims to be making the large part of their rockets, not relying on sub-contractors, with their inevitable layers of overhead and profit. I didn't look into ULA's use of sub-contractors, just at the reported bottom line $90M number, so I can't comment on that.Now maybe my suggestions are wrong. So say that. Again, I didn't make a single assumption.
Forget GTO, then if you wish. I feel certain that SpaceX will get to GTO, since that's where a good bit of the comsat and geosat market is. And I'm sure government prices are much lower. [stifled snort] And when SpaceX sez: "same pricing for all customers" on their website, that's a falsehood?It appears that Atlas V 401 and Falcon 9 can carry roughly the same payload to LEO, and it also appears that Falcon 9 costs about half as much to launch. And if SpaceX has 1/10th the personell overhead, that tells me that oldspace looks more like a dinosaur, and newspace looks more like a mammal. It also suggests that SpaceX is making a good profit. Unless there's profit to be made in space, there will be no companies doing business in space.Which then suggests that commercial actors are beginning to succeed.
Quote from: JohnFornaro on 10/28/2009 06:11 pmNo, I haven't made a single assumption. Quit putting words into my mouth. The only info I have to go from is a couple of official looking websites.If SpaceX's claim of an order of magnitude smaller workforce is true, who am I to assume otherwise? If someone has better info, then may they come forward. I could make the "assumption" that SpaceX is paying their workforce 10times the going rate and thus they aren't making a good profit. That's a safe assumption. Not.Now maybe my suggestions are wrong. So say that. Again, I didn't make a single assumption.Well, risking to continue this off topic discussion:4. ULA has more employees than SpaceX. This is surely correct, but it is far from being one magnitude higher than SpaceX, despite ULA operating 3 rocket families with different rocket variations. I remember that Musk in an interview in 2004 said that he wanted to limit SpaceX to about 500 people because he wanted it to be small and efficient. SpaceX is at 800 now and counting - they will break the 1000 mark quite soon.
No, I haven't made a single assumption. Quit putting words into my mouth. The only info I have to go from is a couple of official looking websites.If SpaceX's claim of an order of magnitude smaller workforce is true, who am I to assume otherwise? If someone has better info, then may they come forward. I could make the "assumption" that SpaceX is paying their workforce 10times the going rate and thus they aren't making a good profit. That's a safe assumption. Not.Now maybe my suggestions are wrong. So say that. Again, I didn't make a single assumption.
1. Falcon 9, despite all announcements and efforts, is still a paper rocket with not a single launch.
2. It's very easy to state paper rocket launch prices on company websites. People might not remember, but the price for the Falcon 1 was originally stated to be 5 million USD in 2005, now it has risen to 10 million in just 4 years. Inflation wasn't that high...
3. Jim correctly pointed out that the prices SpaceX put on their website aren't prices that the government would have to pay. And even SpaceX says that those prices are only "guidance" and dependent on actual negotiations of particular contracts.4. ULA has more employees than SpaceX. This is surely correct, but it is far from being one magnitude higher than SpaceX, despite ULA operating 3 rocket families with different rocket variations. I remember that Musk in an interview in 2004 said that he wanted to limit SpaceX to about 500 people because he wanted it to be small and efficient. SpaceX is at 800 now and counting - they will break the 1000 mark quite soon.5. And just to put labor costs vs. claimed launch costs into perspective, let's assume the average engineer at SpaceX costs them 200k (that's salary, benefits, taxes etc. etc.) and assume they also got lower paid workers, very optimistically their per employee cost is in the 120k area (that's VERY optimistic) then at 800 employees SpaceX's labor costs alone are 100 million per year and once they got 1000 employees next year it's more. They need at least 3 launches per year at their stated prices to just pay their employees. And that's just labor costs, not counting costs for infrastructure, buildings, rocket parts, launch site fees, range fees etc.
To sum things up, we can safely assume SpaceX's actual launch prices will be in the range of other market players. They will compete with others and offer launches at prices that help them get contracts even for a yet unproven rocket. If the Falcon 9 proves to be a reliable vehicle, they will increase its price further.
Building rockets to a companies internal requirements sets up a certain level of needed people. Such a company may or may not wind up with a reliable launch system. I think that although SpaceX has succeeded twice in launching Falcon 1’s the jury is still out as to will it be reliable. And the Falcon 9 is still a complete unknown. I am not in anyway trying to be unkind to SpaceX here, I wish them the best of luck!The American government payloads are typically one of a kind, very expensive, frequently over $1,000 million. The government self “insures” these payloads because loss of mission means so much more than simply the money involved. To help ensure a successful launch the government literally hires a large mission assurance army of civil servant and contract help to poke into every aspect of the rocket. Jim and Antares represent just 2 of the thousands of these folks trying to ensure successful launches. This mission assurance army’s sole job is to dig and dig and dig trying to find hidden failure opportunities. At the contractor it takes another army of equally dedicated people to answer the questions brought forth by the mission assurance army.For COTS NASA kept their mission assurance army away from SpaceX to allow SpaceX the freedom of a small company to develop Falcon. SpaceX is just beginning to enjoy the oversight environment of trying to get American government launch approval for critical, expensive, national payloads.
1) And then there is the CRS $1.6B which he doesn't get any money from until he delivers but can be used to leverage private investment.2) NASA sience had the free ride, getting to use these two world class rockets without investing in their development.
Quote from: Xplor on 10/28/2009 10:26 am1) And then there is the CRS $1.6B which he doesn't get any money from until he delivers but can be used to leverage private investment.2) NASA sience had the free ride, getting to use these two world class rockets without investing in their development.1) False. Most commercial launch contracts, NASA and USAF and private satellites, have milestone payments. Rare are the ones all at the end (NSS-8 being one I can think of). The CRS RFP, just like other NASA launch contracts, asked for milestone payments to be proposed. Given the structure of the SpaceX COTS milestones which get most of the money without launching, I wouldn't imagine that SpaceX would settle for all of the money at the end. Those who provided earlier funds and expect a return would never go for that.2) Sorta. The launch prices, for all customers not just NASA Science, include what Boeing and LM want to recoup their development costs.I really like this commercial debate, but we're in a wrong thread for it. Can we move it somewhere else?
Quote from: Xplor on 10/28/2009 09:25 pmXplor, I'm curious what you think the relative sizes of armies are:Shuttle ContractorsShuttle NASAULAOrbitalSpaceXUSAF ELVNASA ELV
If there's some magical launch site with virtually no range restrictions (like their Kwaj site)
Quote from: Robotbeat on 10/28/2009 09:30 pm If there's some magical launch site with virtually no range restrictions (like their Kwaj site)Kwaj isn't so magical. It shuts down weeks at time.
200k? 120k? That's pretty impressive... I know how much benefits, etc, cost, but that is rather high pay.
SpaceX makes their own rocket parts, they bought their launch site second-hand, they don't have requirements to keep two or more separate rocket families available etc...
1. There are many, many differences between SpaceX and ULA that could drive down the cost of launching for SpaceX. 2. Besides, SpaceX is a private company owned by, as far as I'm aware of, space enthusiasts (Elon Musk, etc) that have a non-financial motive for lowering the costs.
1. If Falcon 9 turns out to be a reliable and reusable launch vehicle, it would likely have lower launch costs rather than higher launch costs. 2. Otherwise, their customers would demand a brand new Falcon 9 every time.
I've noticed that some people are fans of both NASA launchers and SpaceX while they dislike ULA. I found this perplexing, but it may have something to do with political outlook.