SpaceX has to recover $500m of R&D cost some how. Blue don't need to recover a cent of R&D costs.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 02/10/2018 06:00 pmSpaceX has to recover $500m of R&D cost some how. Blue don't need to recover a cent of R&D costs.I don't understand your logic here. Its not like SpaceX is operating in the red.
Elon has to account to its investors, they will want to see a return on the $500m.
The second stage is only initially expendable. Future versions will be reusable. The recovery method for New Glenn is less complex therefore probably cheaper. The business case for NG appears to be strong enough that they have already sold flights to multiple commercial customers, indicating that despite its large size it is competitive with existing or emerging launch vehicles.
Elon has to account to its investors, they will want to see a return on the $500m. Jeff wants to reduce cost of space access and is willing to throw money at it. Blue vehicles still need to be profitable once flying but Jeff may not be looking at recovering his R&D investment.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 02/10/2018 05:03 pmQuote from: Proxima_Centauri on 02/10/2018 01:31 pmQuote from: Darkseraph on 02/10/2018 02:46 amThe second stage is only initially expendable. Future versions will be reusable. The recovery method for New Glenn is less complex therefore probably cheaper. The business case for NG appears to be strong enough that they have already sold flights to multiple commercial customers, indicating that despite its large size it is competitive with existing or emerging launch vehicles.When did Blue Origin ever say that their S2 would be reusable?Quote from: Robotbeat on 02/10/2018 03:09 amQuote from: Steven Pietrobon on 02/10/2018 03:06 amIf Blue can make a successful reusable second stage I think that will be much more competitive in the commercial marketplace. A fully reusable New Glenn should be cheaper than Falcon Heavy or BFR, giving Blue the chance to capture a significant share of the market.I doubt a fully reusable New Glenn would be cheaper than BFR. BFR is RTLS and can do large GTO payloads with full reuse. New Glenn doesn't have the performance for either of those. The launch cradle concept could help make BFR much cheaper than even a fully reusable New Glenn.The launch cradle could end up being a disadvantage. It could cause significant damage to the pad on every landing, and if even 1/100 landings fail, that's a huge additional cost of rebuilding the pad many times to consider. I don't see how New Glenn couldn't do large GTO payloads when its reusable capability is already significantly higher than FH.BFR in general depends on high reliability all around. Launch cradle isn't without some costs, but the point is to get BFR reliability up to airline levels, which includes landing. So long term not necessarily a problem.(I also think this makes much less of a difference than people think... I mean, a landing failure could take out New Glenn's landing ship, too, and the cost for that may be about the same.)BFR is much larger than New Glenn, and a landing ship is not the same as a launch pad, where an accident could halt operations for a year or more.There is no way BFR will be up to "airline levels" of reliability, especially with the absence of a launch abort system. Airliners are more than three orders of magnitude more safe than even ULA rockets, let alone SpaceX ones. The people peddling this nonsense do not know what they are talking about.
Quote from: Proxima_Centauri on 02/10/2018 01:31 pmQuote from: Darkseraph on 02/10/2018 02:46 amThe second stage is only initially expendable. Future versions will be reusable. The recovery method for New Glenn is less complex therefore probably cheaper. The business case for NG appears to be strong enough that they have already sold flights to multiple commercial customers, indicating that despite its large size it is competitive with existing or emerging launch vehicles.When did Blue Origin ever say that their S2 would be reusable?Quote from: Robotbeat on 02/10/2018 03:09 amQuote from: Steven Pietrobon on 02/10/2018 03:06 amIf Blue can make a successful reusable second stage I think that will be much more competitive in the commercial marketplace. A fully reusable New Glenn should be cheaper than Falcon Heavy or BFR, giving Blue the chance to capture a significant share of the market.I doubt a fully reusable New Glenn would be cheaper than BFR. BFR is RTLS and can do large GTO payloads with full reuse. New Glenn doesn't have the performance for either of those. The launch cradle concept could help make BFR much cheaper than even a fully reusable New Glenn.The launch cradle could end up being a disadvantage. It could cause significant damage to the pad on every landing, and if even 1/100 landings fail, that's a huge additional cost of rebuilding the pad many times to consider. I don't see how New Glenn couldn't do large GTO payloads when its reusable capability is already significantly higher than FH.BFR in general depends on high reliability all around. Launch cradle isn't without some costs, but the point is to get BFR reliability up to airline levels, which includes landing. So long term not necessarily a problem.(I also think this makes much less of a difference than people think... I mean, a landing failure could take out New Glenn's landing ship, too, and the cost for that may be about the same.)
Quote from: Darkseraph on 02/10/2018 02:46 amThe second stage is only initially expendable. Future versions will be reusable. The recovery method for New Glenn is less complex therefore probably cheaper. The business case for NG appears to be strong enough that they have already sold flights to multiple commercial customers, indicating that despite its large size it is competitive with existing or emerging launch vehicles.When did Blue Origin ever say that their S2 would be reusable?Quote from: Robotbeat on 02/10/2018 03:09 amQuote from: Steven Pietrobon on 02/10/2018 03:06 amIf Blue can make a successful reusable second stage I think that will be much more competitive in the commercial marketplace. A fully reusable New Glenn should be cheaper than Falcon Heavy or BFR, giving Blue the chance to capture a significant share of the market.I doubt a fully reusable New Glenn would be cheaper than BFR. BFR is RTLS and can do large GTO payloads with full reuse. New Glenn doesn't have the performance for either of those. The launch cradle concept could help make BFR much cheaper than even a fully reusable New Glenn.The launch cradle could end up being a disadvantage. It could cause significant damage to the pad on every landing, and if even 1/100 landings fail, that's a huge additional cost of rebuilding the pad many times to consider. I don't see how New Glenn couldn't do large GTO payloads when its reusable capability is already significantly higher than FH.
Quote from: Steven Pietrobon on 02/10/2018 03:06 amIf Blue can make a successful reusable second stage I think that will be much more competitive in the commercial marketplace. A fully reusable New Glenn should be cheaper than Falcon Heavy or BFR, giving Blue the chance to capture a significant share of the market.I doubt a fully reusable New Glenn would be cheaper than BFR. BFR is RTLS and can do large GTO payloads with full reuse. New Glenn doesn't have the performance for either of those. The launch cradle concept could help make BFR much cheaper than even a fully reusable New Glenn.
If Blue can make a successful reusable second stage I think that will be much more competitive in the commercial marketplace. A fully reusable New Glenn should be cheaper than Falcon Heavy or BFR, giving Blue the chance to capture a significant share of the market.
Quote from: Darkseraph on 02/10/2018 02:46 amThe second stage is only initially expendable. Future versions will be reusable. The recovery method for New Glenn is less complex therefore probably cheaper. The business case for NG appears to be strong enough that they have already sold flights to multiple commercial customers, indicating that despite its large size it is competitive with existing or emerging launch vehicles.How cheaper, exactly? This is something I've been wondering ever since NG was unveiled.
Elon has to account to the majority of shareholders, which is just himself. IIRC, he has ~55% of shares and ~75% of voting shares.
One advantage New Glenn has is that it's being designed from scratch with first stage re-usability in mind. I don't think Musk planned that when he launched the first Falcon 9.
Quote from: ncb1397 on 02/10/2018 06:31 pmElon has to account to the majority of shareholders, which is just himself. IIRC, he has ~55% of shares and ~75% of voting shares. The minority shareholders MIGHT do some jawboning about no returns, and that MIGHT impact future investments.
Jeff wants to reduce cost of space access and is willing to throw money at it. Blue vehicles still need to be profitable once flying but Jeff may not be looking at recovering his R&D investment.
Most of the minority shareholders in SpaceX, other than Jurvetson and Google, are SpaceX employees. I don't think they would very upset about no returns, other than the awesome jobs they have.
Flight rate is not the same as reliability. Falcon 9 would need something like 250 more perfect launches in a row to match the reliability of Atlas V. And the only reason I bring up ULA is that they are currently the most reliable, and even then it's still far worse than airliners. Blue Origin hasn't flown their vehicle enough to know whether or not it will be reliable. Even rockets like Ariane V are slipping up big time lately.
Falcon 9 has already failed several more times than Atlas V has.
Atlas V had one failure in 75 flight attempts:Falcon 9 had 3 failures in 49 flight attempts:1 in 75 = 3 in 225225 - 49 = 176 176 missions that falcon 9 needs to pull off in a row perfectly to match Atlas V's current record.
Quote from: joek on 02/11/2018 06:31 pmQuote from: Proxima_Centauri on 02/11/2018 06:17 pmAtlas V had one failure in 75 flight attempts:Falcon 9 had 3 failures in 49 flight attempts:1 in 75 = 3 in 225225 - 49 = 176 176 missions that falcon 9 needs to pull off in a row perfectly to match Atlas V's current record.So now we're down to 176 F9 successes vs. 250? What changed?Also interesting that you appear to interpret success-fail of Atlas V optimistically and F9 pessimistically.Not to mention the simplistic statistical interpretation. Do you seriously believe that is a correct interpretation?Atlas V will not stop flying any time soon, and has at least 25 flights left before Vulcan takes over, so the 250 number makes perfect sense.The most pessimistic interpretation of Atlas V yields 1 partial failure. I'm actually being generous to Falcon 9, as the first mission with its uncontrolled roll at the end of flight would have failed any non-boilerplate mission.
Quote from: Proxima_Centauri on 02/11/2018 06:17 pmAtlas V had one failure in 75 flight attempts:Falcon 9 had 3 failures in 49 flight attempts:1 in 75 = 3 in 225225 - 49 = 176 176 missions that falcon 9 needs to pull off in a row perfectly to match Atlas V's current record.So now we're down to 176 F9 successes vs. 250? What changed?Also interesting that you appear to interpret success-fail of Atlas V optimistically and F9 pessimistically.Not to mention the simplistic statistical interpretation. Do you seriously believe that is a correct interpretation?
NG will not be competing with BFR. NA will compete with BFR. However NG should wipe the floor with FH and F9 with large volume payloads that will fit inside NG's 7m dia. fairing which will not fit in FH's and F9's 5.2m dia. fairing. So the business case for NG is in launching large volume payloads which will not fit in any other launchers. However this will be a short window until BFR becomes available. NG's business case may well collapse when BFR enters service so BO will need to get NA dev. ASAP to stay competitive with SpaceX. Perhaps BO like SpaceX with their Falcon family will see NG merely as a stepping stone to NA and replace NG with NA after just a few years service.