Author Topic: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.  (Read 29903 times)

Offline AncientU

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #40 on: 06/10/2014 01:45 pm »
Whenever i hear about these "magic $1000/lb to LEO barriers" etc i keep thinking that this will never happen because inflation will keep outpacing most of the progress being made.

Isn't it really the real (inflation-adjusted) cost that matters, though?

Of course, but i have not heard any of the "cheap access to space" preachers ever mention an inflation-adjusted magic $1045.34/lb barrier :)

The point is that we've been talking about the $1,000 per pound barrier since the early 1970s!  In today's dollars, that's $6,000 per pound -- F9 at 13.15Mt for $61.5M is $2,126 per pound and FH at 53 Mt for $128M (now uncertain?) will be $1,184 per pound.  Shuttle at $25,000 and EELVs at $10,000 per pound are(were) still north of the barrier in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Bottom line is the $1000/lb to LEO barrier has been shattered.
Maybe why SpaceX is stirring the pot so vigorously.

And this is without reusable rockets, which could reduce cost by 10x per Shotwell's $5-7M per launch goal.
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Online Coastal Ron

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #41 on: 06/10/2014 02:37 pm »
Welcome to the forum!  I only started posting earlier this year, so it won't take you long to feel like a regular contributor.  Now to the topic at hand...

Isn't the magical price point based on the potential tourism market?

Tourism has not been mentioned as a significant potential market, and I doubt it would be given the challenges involved.  Remember that all the space tourism so far has been to travel to the ISS and spend time there, so it's not the rides to/from space that are important, but the destinations.  And we only have one space-constrained destination right now.

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The target customers for such a market are the mega-rich...

There is an assumption that there is a segment of the wealthy population that would be willing to spend big bucks to travel to space, but just based on the relatively small number of people that have bought tickets on Virgin Galactic I think that segment would be really small.  Too small to risk a business model on.

Musk and company seem focused on the commercial & government launch market for non-crew transportation, but no doubt hope that the government Commercial Crew business leads to Bigelow starting up their private space station business.
If we don't continuously lower the cost to access space, how are we ever going to afford to expand humanity out into space?

Offline Burninate

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #42 on: 06/10/2014 02:53 pm »
Whenever i hear about these "magic $1000/lb to LEO barriers" etc i keep thinking that this will never happen because inflation will keep outpacing most of the progress being made.

Isn't it really the real (inflation-adjusted) cost that matters, though?

Of course, but i have not heard any of the "cheap access to space" preachers ever mention an inflation-adjusted magic $1045.34/lb barrier :)

The point is that we've been talking about the $1,000 per pound barrier since the early 1970s!  In today's dollars, that's $6,000 per pound -- F9 at 13.15Mt for $61.5M is $2,126 per pound and FH at 53 Mt for $128M (now uncertain?) will be $1,184 per pound.  Shuttle at $25,000 and EELVs at $10,000 per pound are(were) still north of the barrier in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Bottom line is the $1000/lb to LEO barrier has been shattered.
Maybe why SpaceX is stirring the pot so vigorously.

And this is without reusable rockets, which could reduce cost by 10x per Shotwell's $5-7M per launch goal.

And those of us who fall into the category of 'Unilaterally Metricated Americans' have started referring to a $1000/kg barrier, to top it all off!

Offline savuporo

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #43 on: 06/10/2014 04:10 pm »
Bottom line is the $1000/lb to LEO barrier has been shattered.
Maybe why SpaceX is stirring the pot so vigorously.

Yes, 70'ies $1000/lb has been shattered, yet the is no great wave of emigration to O'Neill colonies and constellations of solar power satellites circling the earth. IMHO because launch costs are only a relatively small part of the puzzle.
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Offline Robotbeat

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #44 on: 06/10/2014 04:33 pm »
December 2010 price for F9 was $56m, but that was for 4.68t to GTO. Today's $61m is for 4.85t to GTO. At an average inflation rate of 2% (last 4 years--2011, 2012, 2013, 2014--had an average of 2.05% inflation so this is slightly conservative), the real price per ton to GTO is actually slightly /lower/ for F9 now than it was in 2010 (about 2% lower, actually).

Basically, the real specific price is unchanged.
« Last Edit: 06/10/2014 04:34 pm by Robotbeat »
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Online oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #45 on: 06/10/2014 07:51 pm »
The barrier price point is related to a new space industry lauch capability price point that is needed for the business case to close.

So what new industry is talked about in relation to the $1000/lb.

In 1970's SPS business case closed at $285/lb.  Now it is more like $500/lb.  This is because the US kw/hr busbar prices have not risen at the same rate of inflation.  The barrier is almost directly related to busbar price. The new EPA rules may cause a sharp rise in the busbar prices, in that case the barrier price for SPS will rise also.

Now enough OT and back to SpaceX priceing.  Manpower raises that match inflation is the largest reason for price increases.  If you don't keep saleries up with inflation people leave.  Most of the cost of any LV is the labor and not the material.

Offline CuddlyRocket

Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #46 on: 06/11/2014 10:39 am »
at least some of the financial types on the board are going to be asking if SpaceX is pricing under what the market will bear!
Uhh, you know that at this moment Elon Musk answers only to Elon Musk, riiiight?

I said 'asking' not 'insisting'; there's nothing to stop Elon listening to them! :) (In any event, majority shareholders don't have carte blanche; when acting as a director they still have to take account of the interests of minorities or risk facing a shareholder oppression lawsuit.)
« Last Edit: 06/11/2014 10:40 am by CuddlyRocket »

Offline rpapo

Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #47 on: 06/11/2014 10:52 am »
I said 'asking' not 'insisting'; there's nothing to stop Elon listening to them! :) (In any event, majority shareholders don't have carte blanche; when acting as a director they still have to take account of the interests of minorities or risk facing a shareholder oppression lawsuit.)
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it is my understanding that SpaceX is privately held.  In other words, it does not have stockholders, nor a board acting as their proxy.  Now I am aware that there are a handful of private investors who have provided a certain amount of capital in support of the company, but those investors seem to be happy to let Elon Musk run the show.

AFAIK, it is not at all like the arrangement at Tesla.  As long as Elon manages to avoid going into the red (and thereby requiring more outside investment or loans), he should be able to remain in control.
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Offline fatjohn1408

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #48 on: 06/11/2014 11:44 am »

Bottom line is the $1000/lb to LEO barrier has been shattered.


FYI, starting with Proton in the nineties. With 36M for a Proton K at unsustainable price, later 52M for a 3 Proton K block buy. I don't know what the price of a Proton is now, but those saying I shouldn't compare it with Ariane 6 because it's paper, well around 2000 a Proton was offered as low as US$70M, keep in mind these prices have gone up, yes, but Proton performance is a lot higher than F9.

http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/3-2002/mas/kclrss/?form=print

Offline john smith 19

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #49 on: 06/11/2014 04:34 pm »
Bottom line is the $1000/lb to LEO barrier has been shattered.
Maybe why SpaceX is stirring the pot so vigorously.

Yes, 70'ies $1000/lb has been shattered, yet the is no great wave of emigration to O'Neill colonies and constellations of solar power satellites circling the earth. IMHO because launch costs are only a relatively small part of the puzzle.
There are 2 (possibly 3) parts to this.
1) Those prices must be sustainably low for years for the effect to start to show through given the glacial speed at which new payloads are built.
2) The LV market is one of those where reliability is at least as important as cost. ELV reliability stats are slow to build, easy to damage and prone to peoples perception  that a vehicle is "too cheap" to be reliable.  :( Russia builds their ELVs to a Safety Factor of 2.0, ULA to 1.25. Costa a bit in payload, saves a lot in (expensive) structural analyst hours to prove that no flight load will exceed the wafer thin margins you built your vehicle on.
3) Historically LV suppliers haven't cared if they could return payloads to Earth. Had they been able to the cost of those payloads could have been substantially reduced as a faulty satellite could be returned for repair. No triplicated hardware, no hugely elaborate redundancy management to control it.

Time will tell if Spacex can offer ULA reliability at Ariane prices in the US.
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Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #50 on: 06/11/2014 04:43 pm »

2) The LV market is one of those where reliability is at least as important as cost. ELV reliability stats are slow to build, easy to damage and prone to peoples perception  that a vehicle is "too cheap" to be reliable.  :( Russia builds their ELVs to a Safety Factor of 2.0, ULA to 1.25. Costa a bit in payload, saves a lot in (expensive) structural analyst hours to prove that no flight load will exceed the wafer thin margins you built your vehicle on.
3) Historically LV suppliers haven't cared if they could return payloads to Earth. Had they been able to the cost of those payloads could have been substantially reduced as a faulty satellite could be returned for repair. No triplicated hardware, no hugely elaborate redundancy management to control it.


2. Designing a vehicle to 2.0 vs 1.25 takes the same amount of analyst time.   The model is the model and the loads are the loads.

3.  Not so, payload would have to be over built to handle return loads.

Offline CuddlyRocket

Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #51 on: 06/12/2014 06:40 am »
I said 'asking' not 'insisting'; there's nothing to stop Elon listening to them! :) (In any event, majority shareholders don't have carte blanche; when acting as a director they still have to take account of the interests of minorities or risk facing a shareholder oppression lawsuit.)
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it is my understanding that SpaceX is privately held.  In other words, it does not have stockholders, nor a board acting as their proxy.
No, the difference between a private and public company is not that one has stockholders and the other doesn't; it's that a public company is one that issues share to the public, and which shares are traded on a public market. It's clear that SpaceX has shareholders other than Elon; both from statements of private investors and because they run an employee share scheme.

Quote
Now I am aware that there are a handful of private investors who have provided a certain amount of capital in support of the company, but those investors seem to be happy to let Elon Musk run the show.

They're happy to let Elon run the show as long as they're happy with how he runs the show.

Quote
AFAIK, it is not at all like the arrangement at Tesla.  As long as Elon manages to avoid going into the red (and thereby requiring more outside investment or loans), he should be able to remain in control.

Control gives him wide discretion; but not carte blanche. He still has to take into account the interests of minority shareholders.

But this is getting off-topic. The point I was making was that if SpaceX is winning all the contractual competitions someone would be asking if they were pricing things too cheaply.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #52 on: 06/12/2014 07:56 am »
2. Designing a vehicle to 2.0 vs 1.25 takes the same amount of analyst time.   The model is the model and the loads are the loads.
Not in the coupled loads analysis you have to run for every payload so you don't shake the payload apart or start a resonance in the payload that shakes the LV apart. Since you've commented extensively on "missioni assurance" and the unexpected costs Spacex will incur when when they launch USAF payloads I'd have thought my meaning was obvious.
Quote
3.  Not so, payload would have to be over built to handle return loads.
That would depend on how the fairing was designed to protect a returning payload during re-entry, wouldn't it?
A fairing designed to go both ways would likely be a very different beast to the kind we currently use. Of course for an LV mfg to have done that there would have to have been a market which incentivized them to do so, and that never happened.  :(

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Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #53 on: 06/12/2014 01:30 pm »

1.  Not in the coupled loads analysis you have to run for every payload so you don't shake the payload apart or start a resonance in the payload that shakes the LV apart. Since you've commented extensively on "missioni assurance" and the unexpected costs Spacex will incur when when they launch USAF payloads I'd have thought my meaning was obvious.

2.  That would depend on how the fairing was designed to protect a returning payload during re-entry, wouldn't it?
A fairing designed to go both ways would likely be a very different beast to the kind we currently use. Of course for an LV mfg to have done that there would have to have been a market which incentivized them to do so, and that never happened.  :(

1.  1.25 vs 2.0 doesn't change that.   The analysis has to be done either way.  Yes, they would be different models, but the work is the same.

2.  See shuttle.  Landing adds new loads. 
« Last Edit: 06/12/2014 01:30 pm by Jim »

Offline john smith 19

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #54 on: 06/12/2014 07:47 pm »
1.  1.25 vs 2.0 doesn't change that.   The analysis has to be done either way.  Yes, they would be different models, but the work is the same.
Difference is when you run that analysis and the loads are 25% or more higher than maximum you're in a re-design and re-analysis cycle. With the Russian approach you'd have to be 100% out before a new re-design and analysis cycle is needed.
Quote
2.  See shuttle.  Landing adds new loads.
Was a vehicle whose payload take off vertically and landed horizontally ever likely to not have new loads?  :(
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #55 on: 06/12/2014 08:01 pm »

Was a vehicle whose payload take off vertically and landed horizontally ever likely to not have new loads?  :(

Landing in any orientation is going to have different loads than experienced during launch and flight to orbit.

Offline arachnitect

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #56 on: 06/12/2014 08:08 pm »
1.  1.25 vs 2.0 doesn't change that.   The analysis has to be done either way.  Yes, they would be different models, but the work is the same.
Difference is when you run that analysis and the loads are 25% or more higher than maximum you're in a re-design and re-analysis cycle. With the Russian approach you'd have to be 100% out before a new re-design and analysis cycle is needed.

What you're describing isn't safety factor; you're describing margins.

Safety factor is off limits. If you have a really high safety factor, you could re-qualify at a lower one, but then you're just admitting you should have picked the lower number in the first place.

Offline Jim

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #57 on: 06/12/2014 08:09 pm »

Difference is when you run that analysis and the loads are 25% or more higher than maximum you're in a re-design and re-analysis cycle. With the Russian approach you'd have to be 100% out before a new re-design and analysis cycle is needed.

No, because LV loads margin does not translate to spacecraft loads margin.  What margins the launch vehicle is designed to has little bearing on the spacecraft loads.  The spacecraft is designed to the environment specified by the LV. 

Load analysis are redone because the spacecraft is seeing exceedances, not the launch vehicle.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #58 on: 06/13/2014 06:31 am »
No, because LV loads margin does not translate to spacecraft loads margin.  What margins the launch vehicle is designed to has little bearing on the spacecraft loads.  The spacecraft is designed to the environment specified by the LV. 

Load analysis are redone because the spacecraft is seeing exceedances, not the launch vehicle.
There's a reason why they call it a coupled loads analysis.  :(

Superficially there's no way a payload that's somewhere around 30x the mass of the LV can affect the rocket.
But most payloads persist in having no vibration damping and being hard mounted to the LV. So vibration coupling between payload and LV is bi-directional.
Second by second the LV's Cg and Cp change, as do its resonant frequencies.
What's really good to find any dangerous resonances in a structure is to hit it with multiple high amplitude narrow pulses which have a broad frequency spectrum. Firing a bunch of explosive bolts (with their 20 000 lb microsecond wide shock spectrum) should do nicely. MECO's, stage separations, main engine starts are all good too.

Yes it's the payload part that will get re-designed. But it can be because (at some point in the trajectory) the payload will damage the LV and on an EELV that limit is a lot lower than on a Russian or a Spacex LV.

And as we know if you're launching a $1Bn satellite that risk is just too great.

A long time ago the Martin company devised a quick and dirty way to do CLA's with lumped parameters on the LV. The sort of thing today you could incorporate in a Javascript program and it'd still run fast enough.
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline fatjohn1408

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Re: SpaceX ups prices with almost 10%.
« Reply #59 on: 06/13/2014 07:45 am »
You guys are drifting a bit IMHO.

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