Quote from: Vultur on 06/10/2014 01:58 amQuote from: savuporo on 06/09/2014 07:47 pmWhenever 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
Quote from: savuporo on 06/09/2014 07:47 pmWhenever 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?
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 the magical price point based on the potential tourism market?
The target customers for such a market are the mega-rich...
Quote from: savuporo on 06/10/2014 04:34 amQuote from: Vultur on 06/10/2014 01:58 amQuote from: savuporo on 06/09/2014 07:47 pmWhenever 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.
Bottom line is the $1000/lb to LEO barrier has been shattered. Maybe why SpaceX is stirring the pot so vigorously.
Quote from: CuddlyRocket on 06/10/2014 07:07 amat 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?
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!
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.)
Bottom line is the $1000/lb to LEO barrier has been shattered.
Quote from: AncientU on 06/10/2014 01:45 pmBottom 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.
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.
Quote from: CuddlyRocket on 06/11/2014 10:39 amI 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.
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.
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.
Was a vehicle whose payload take off vertically and landed horizontally ever likely to not have new loads?
Quote from: Jim on 06/12/2014 01:30 pm1. 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.
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.