Musk’s money-saving strategy is to produce reusable rockets, which will return to Earth and land on a seagoing barge. SpaceX called off its second attempt at a barge landing, on Feb. 11, because of heavy seas. The company was due to try again in April. “Aircraft do tens of thousands of flights,” Musk told Bloomberg News in January. If SpaceX rockets can be reused, he said, the cost comes down to “$200,000 to $300,000 per flight in fuel and oxygen versus a $60 million rocket.”
And the Mars colony? Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, says the first step, manned flights to the planet, could begin in 15 years.
QuoteMusk’s money-saving strategy is to produce reusable rockets, which will return to Earth and land on a seagoing barge. SpaceX called off its second attempt at a barge landing, on Feb. 11, because of heavy seas. The company was due to try again in April. “Aircraft do tens of thousands of flights,” Musk told Bloomberg News in January. If SpaceX rockets can be reused, he said, the cost comes down to “$200,000 to $300,000 per flight in fuel and oxygen versus a $60 million rocket.”Wonderful news!http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex-profitable-as-musk-pulls-in-nasa-contracts-google-cash
Quote from: Alexsander on 03/05/2015 07:12 pmQuoteMusk’s money-saving strategy is to produce reusable rockets, which will return to Earth and land on a seagoing barge. SpaceX called off its second attempt at a barge landing, on Feb. 11, because of heavy seas. The company was due to try again in April. “Aircraft do tens of thousands of flights,” Musk told Bloomberg News in January. If SpaceX rockets can be reused, he said, the cost comes down to “$200,000 to $300,000 per flight in fuel and oxygen versus a $60 million rocket.”Wonderful news!http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex-profitable-as-musk-pulls-in-nasa-contracts-google-cashThe Google and Fidelity investments are old news that has been discussed already here:http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35364.msg1319128#msg1319128As for the cost of a launch depending only on the cost of propellant, let's not start a new thread to discuss that fallacy. Even Elon knows the cost of manpower, refurbishment, facilities, overhead, etc, will dominate the cost of reflying recovered stages.There are several other threads covering that subject. Let's use them.
The Google and Fidelity investments are old news (...)
As for the cost of a launch depending only on the cost of propellant, let's not start a new thread to discuss that fallacy. Even Elon knows the cost of manpower, refurbishment, facilities, overhead, etc, will dominate the cost of reflying recovered stages.
There are several other threads covering that subject. Let's use them.
The man wants gas and go airliner type efficiency. They're obviously a long way from that, even if the 1st stage becomes everything they want. And it doesn't seem likely the 2nd stage will be reusable any time soon. Maybe never. The type of service where fuel is the main might not be the F9, but it is the ultimate goal.
Quote from: Kabloona on 03/05/2015 07:53 pmThe Google and Fidelity investments are old news (...)I'm not talking about the investments.Quote from: KabloonaAs for the cost of a launch depending only on the cost of propellant, let's not start a new thread to discuss that fallacy. Even Elon knows the cost of manpower, refurbishment, facilities, overhead, etc, will dominate the cost of reflying recovered stages.The quote is clear: "in fuel and oxygen" only. The question is: how much MORE would be needed? Even if the cost of a refurbished mission is $ 6,000,000 it's still 10% of the previous cost. That's a HUGE reduction.Quote from: KabloonaThere are several other threads covering that subject. Let's use them.I've used The Search, found no reference to these numbers or the text "per flight in fuel and oxygen versus" anywhere.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex-profitable-as-musk-pulls-in-nasa-contracts-google-cash
Look, quotes like this need to be taken in context: airline-like operations is the goal, not just a simple extrapolation of current launch vehicle operations. SpaceX is decades away from that.
Airliners also use less propellant than a rocket does.
Look, quotes like this need to be taken in context: airline-like operations is the goal, not just a simple extrapolation of current launch vehicle operations. SpaceX is decades away from that. Even MCT/BFR will initially not be capable of airline operations (same goes for just about any other tech, by the way, including Skylon), which implies tens of thousands of reuse cycles. But even if you get just dozens or hundreds of reuses, you can STILL hugely reduce per-flight and per-kg costs. By two orders of magnitude. That, combined with other operational improvements, is enough to enable space colonization.
But fundamentally, if you assume tens of thousands of reuses combined with operations streamlining and automation, there's no reason in principle you couldn't get launch costs down to basically the propellant costs or a low multiple thereof. But you need to think up a reason for tens of thousands of launches on a large fleet (100s) of vehicles. That's actually well beyond even Musk's Mars colonization plans.
The quote is clear: "in fuel and oxygen" only. The question is: how much MORE would be needed? Even if the cost of a refurbished mission is $ 6,000,000 it's still 10% of the previous cost. That's a HUGE reduction.
Just keep in mind that it was barely "decades" between Wright brother's first flight and airline-like operations....(Think of bomber squadrons in WWII)
I betcha by the time the mega-constellation if being launched, (some 50 flights per year just for that), reuse will be routine, you'd be able to call the operation "airline like", even if the U/S is still expendable.
$6m is now a fantasy based on a fully reusable F9. Somewhere between 201 an 2014 SpaceX discovered that it cannot be made to work.
Just keep in mind that it was barely "decades" between Wright brother's first flight and airline-like operations....
Airliner uses about x times more/less fuel than F9.
It's been discussed before but when you expend an upper stage costing more than that it will never happen. SpaceX have stated the first stage is 70% of the hardware cost and we know their launch price.$6m is now a fantasy based on a fully reusable F9. Somewhere between 201 an 2014 SpaceX discovered that it cannot be made to work.
We know the 1st stage is 70% of the hardware cost, but it does NOT mean they throw away the other 30%: the Dragon capsule will also land on pad intact. Considering the complexity of the capsule versus the second stage, probably the 30% is split in something like 20% capsule + 10% second stage (interstage + 1 engine + tanks + trunk). That's 90% of reusabilty; considering a current cost of $60M (wild guess) the US$ 7M cost stated by SpaceX (read it in the other thread) may include $300K fuel + ~$6M 2nd stage + $700K labor. And I think the 2nd stage costs significantly less than that.
Quote from: meekGee on 03/06/2015 05:20 amJust keep in mind that it was barely "decades" between Wright brother's first flight and airline-like operations....We have had decades between Gagarin and today and I see no substantial improvement towards an airline-like operation.
No. The capsule is not a part of the rocket, it's the payload. The 70%/30% split refers to the rocket.