Author Topic: With Block 5, SpaceX to increase launch cadence and lower prices  (Read 44144 times)

Offline Elmar Moelzer

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For starters, Elon himself has said about the Ti grid fins that they’re expensive - very expensive. So much so that they were really the only thing he cared about getting back from the FH launch. Add to that the additional leg hardware, the additional heat shielding- including liquid cooling- and all the other bits that were required only for reuse and not for a one-off launch, my personal opinion (backed by no source) is its significantly more expensive to manufacture.

But - as mentioned, sell expendable B5 would prove me wrong. I’m so confident I’m right I’m willing to wager on it - and I’m not a betting man...
I would assume that an espendable B5 F9 would not feature grid fins and legs on it. Why would it have those if it is not going to land?

Offline jpo234

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For starters, Elon himself has said about the Ti grid fins that they’re expensive - very expensive. So much so that they were really the only thing he cared about getting back from the FH launch.

They expended B.1044 (Hispasat 30W-6) with Ti-grid fins attached.
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Offline dante2308

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For starters, Elon himself has said about the Ti grid fins that they’re expensive - very expensive. So much so that they were really the only thing he cared about getting back from the FH launch.

They expended B.1044 (Hispasat 30W-6) with Ti-grid fins attached.

When the grid fins were attached, the intention was to return them. They certainly didn't plan to put titanium into the sea. Their hand was forced either by schedule or process.

Offline Robotbeat

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I expect the cost of even the titanium grid fins will come done with volume. It’s not as buttery smooth as aluminum to machine, but the difference in cost from just 4 or 8 versus 80 of them is significant.

But I doubt this will matter much as the vast majority of block 5s will be reused, possibly even the upper stages, and the expendable ones won’t nominally use titanium grid fins.
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Offline mulp

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I've noted with some surprise the rapid rise in China launches, not all military related as far as I can tell, though likely dual use, e.g. GPS.

Shotwell is quoted as being disappointed SpaceX is falling behind China, not pulling ahead this year. Granted China uses 4-5 models/variants vs Spacex 2 variants.

As she was responsible for booking launches with deposits before SpaceX was ever successful, I trust her statement SpaceX is running out of customers willing to pay to launch.

Still, increased satellite reliability and capability, the value of one launch is much higher than when launches put cameras in orbit to shoot film that was deorbited and picked up (out of air) for film development.

The Space business needs increased costs, e.g. spending, to deliver what Elon wants. Shotwell understands this well.

Ideally every person in the US would spend $10 A month on space, maybe buying space zirconium, a bit of stuff flown into space, returned for sale. Ie, $3 billion spent per month on space business. Given marketing, etc, the overhead would leave only a billion per month or less going to the rocket company. $250 in Federal taxes per family per year would be far more efficient, and probably a fair market price for gps navigation, emergency services, weather forecasting, mapping services, etc for just the space assets. This would be at least twice current costs per household for services to households.

US households paid more for space in the 60s. And got much less in "product" benefits, but more in income. All the costs in the 60s were labor costs, money paid to US workers in every sector of the economy. The aluminum came from US mines and US dams and power plants and electric furnaces, the housing for NASA workers in Houston came from US forests and lumber mills.

Cost cutting creates jobs and growth only if unit consumption increases much faster than costs decline increasing total costs.

Ie, the average household is paying at least a thousand times as much for mobile phone service today than in 1980 when mobile phone meant pay phone or CB radio.

So, if SpaceX has cut the cost to customers, ie, price, of putting a Kg in LEO the number of things put there needs to increase by at least 3-4 times to justify the risk. SpaceX simply capturing all the launches is bad for the space business.

Bezos states the near term business case, industry in LEO. Something of high value produced better in microgravity with "cheap" energy, for example. $10 per Kg on earth sent to LEO coming back down at $100,000 which means customers pay $100 million in costs they weren't before on a monthly or weekly basis. Just for one product component.

But maybe the increased costs come from vacations, a week in space costing $20 million. 500 tourists per year to a hotel of Bigelow habitats.

But given the cost US residents pay for people running around a playing field, higher costs for space launch is pretty small.

Offline wannamoonbase

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I expect the cost of even the titanium grid fins will come done with volume. It’s not as buttery smooth as aluminum to machine, but the difference in cost from just 4 or 8 versus 80 of them is significant.

But I doubt this will matter much as the vast majority of block 5s will be reused, possibly even the upper stages, and the expendable ones won’t nominally use titanium grid fins.

The Grid fins will be reused until the end of F9/FH program no matter how many cores they end up being on.
Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline abaddon

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I've noted with some surprise the rapid rise in China launches, not all military related as far as I can tell, though likely dual use, e.g. GPS.
China had a bigger-than-usual backlog this year due to the Long March 5 failure on July 2nd of last year.  Their next launch wasn't until the end of September, meaning they lost a quarter of the year due to the stand-down following the failure.

Then again, they still have 20+ launches theoretically booked for this year, most of which will likely not launch this year, so who knows.

Offline edkyle99

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I've noted with some surprise the rapid rise in China launches, not all military related as far as I can tell, though likely dual use, e.g. GPS.
The only reason mention of China's launch rate ends up here is that Elon Musk made one of his predictions, earlier this year after the Falcon Heavy success, that SpaceX would outlaunch China this year (or some-such).  Otherwise what SpaceX and China do in space are entirely unrelated.  SpaceX would never have launched any of the satellites flown this year from China.  China's current launch surge is fed in large part by the ongoing buildup of its new navigation satellite constellation.  It is also fed by China's 2017 launch failures (A CZ-3B and a CZ-5), which created a several-month backlog, and by the introduction of new small, solid launch vehicles like CZ-11, etc..

To me, the more interesting question is this.  Why is SpaceX slowing down when it still boasts a massive backlog?

 - Ed Kyle 
« Last Edit: 09/22/2018 04:15 am by edkyle99 »

Offline S.Paulissen

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I've noted with some surprise the rapid rise in China launches, not all military related as far as I can tell, though likely dual use, e.g. GPS.
The only reason mention of China's launch rate ends up here is that Elon Musk made one of his predictions, earlier this year after the Falcon Heavy success, that SpaceX would outlaunch China this year (or some-such).  Otherwise what SpaceX and China do in space are entirely unrelated.  SpaceX would never have launched any of the satellites flown this year from China.  China's current launch surge is fed in large part by the ongoing buildup of its new navigation satellite constellation.  It is also fed by China's 2017 launch failures (A CZ-3B and a CZ-5), which created a several-month backlog, and by the introduction of new small, solid launch vehicles like CZ-11, etc..

To me, the more interesting question is this.  Why is SpaceX slowing down when it still boasts a massive backlog?

 - Ed Kyle

The way you frame this suggests that you've a good picture of many payloads ready and waiting for a rocket.  I've not been able to find or successfully request a list of ready and waiting payloads.  What do you have that indicates this is a massive list?  (or is massive a pun?)
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Offline speedevil

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To me, the more interesting question is this.  Why is SpaceX slowing down when it still boasts a massive backlog?

The way you frame this suggests that you've a good picture of many payloads ready and waiting for a rocket.  I've not been able to find or successfully request a list of ready and waiting payloads.  What do you have that indicates this is a massive list?  (or is massive a pun?)
Gwynne(?) explicitly stated that the slowdown is due to lack of orders.

Offline woods170

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I've noted with some surprise the rapid rise in China launches, not all military related as far as I can tell, though likely dual use, e.g. GPS.
The only reason mention of China's launch rate ends up here is that Elon Musk made one of his predictions, earlier this year after the Falcon Heavy success, that SpaceX would outlaunch China this year (or some-such).  Otherwise what SpaceX and China do in space are entirely unrelated.  SpaceX would never have launched any of the satellites flown this year from China.  China's current launch surge is fed in large part by the ongoing buildup of its new navigation satellite constellation.  It is also fed by China's 2017 launch failures (A CZ-3B and a CZ-5), which created a several-month backlog, and by the introduction of new small, solid launch vehicles like CZ-11, etc..

To me, the more interesting question is this.  Why is SpaceX slowing down when it still boasts a massive backlog?

 - Ed Kyle 

Answer to your question: a substantial part of the backlog is not ready for launch (yet). For example: there are launches on the backlog that are not required to lift-off until 2023. That's five years from now, meaning that the payload in question might not even have started construction yet.
« Last Edit: 09/23/2018 02:17 pm by woods170 »

Offline Don S

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https://twitter.com/IridiumBoss/status/1028964871617105923

Matt Desch  "Satellite completion is gating, not rocket availability."

SPX-DM1 seems to be ready but the launch date seems to be out of Space X control.

Sure China is up on launch numbers, but would they be lifting 10 Iridium satellites at once or would that of been 5-10 launches?   

I agree that boasting of launch numbers may be the reason there is any debate.   There is still a disparity in types of loads and launch vehicles.
« Last Edit: 09/23/2018 11:50 pm by Don S »

Offline gongora

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I agree that boasting of launch numbers may be the reason there is any debate.   There is still a disparity in types of loads and launch vehicles.

A couple of competitors say the same thing about SpaceX's launch numbers.  (I also haven't seen any indication that DM-1 is ready to fly.)

Offline wannamoonbase

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Answer to your question: a substantial part of the backlog is not ready for launch (yet). For example: there are launches on the backlog that are not required to lift-off until 2023. That's five years from now, meaning that the payload in question might not even have started construction yet.

Yep, they've caught up to the market.

Now we'll see how flexible the market is, do birds get bigger, smaller, more frequent, can SpaceX win more market share. 

Until they start flying Starlink flights, watching the market response is going to be very interesting. 

Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline edkyle99

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OK, if they've caught up to the market already, why all the talk just a few months ago (see the start of this thread) about 30 launches this year, etc.?  It looks like 20-22 is a more likely final number for Falcon 9 proper.

 - Ed Kyle

Offline woods170

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OK, if they've caught up to the market already, why all the talk just a few months ago (see the start of this thread) about 30 launches this year, etc.?  It looks like 20-22 is a more likely final number for Falcon 9 proper.

 - Ed Kyle

Because:
- "30 Launches" includes both FH and F9, not just F9 proper.
- "30 Launches" was supposed to include DM-1, Ascent Abort and DM-2 (now likely to be only DM-1)
- "30 Launches" was supposed to include a Cargo Dragon mission which was shifted into 2019 (by NASA)
- "30 Launches" was supposed to see (at least) 3 FH launches (will now likely be 2, at best)
- "30 Launches" was to include launches of commercial payloads that are not in fact ready to launch (yet)

So, this lower final number is partially caused by SpaceX itself (particularly the delays in FH and CCP missions) and partially by the customers (NASA shifting a CRS-1 mission into the next year and commercial payloads not being ready).
« Last Edit: 09/25/2018 08:44 am by woods170 »

Online JamesH65

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Does anyone really care about the specific number of launches SpaceX, China, ULA etc have per year? Seems like a fairly useless metric. Things fly when they are ready. Either the payload or the launcher can cause delays, as can weather, money, customer need. All sorts.

Offline abaddon

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From the Iridium mission thread:
Don't remember if this was posted before, from Iridium corporate filings:
Quote
SpaceX
In March 2010, the Company entered into an agreement with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (“SpaceX”) to secure SpaceX as the primary launch services provider for Iridium NEXT (as amended to date, the “SpaceX Agreement”). The total price under the SpaceX Agreement for seven launches and a reflight option in the event of a launch failure is $453.1 million. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is configured to carry ten Iridium NEXT satellites to orbit for each of these seven launches. In November 2016, the Company entered into an agreement for an eighth launch with SpaceX to launch five additional satellites and share the launch with GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences (“GFZ”). This launch took place in May 2018. The total price under the SpaceX Agreement for the eighth launch was $61.9 million. GFZ paid Iridium $29.8 million to include in the launch NASA’s two Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On satellites. As of June 30, 2018, the Company had made aggregate payments of $486.4 million to SpaceX, which were capitalized as construction in progress within property and equipment, net in the accompanying condensed consolidated balance sheet.
For those trying to guess the price of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch based on recent government-contracted launches, we are once again reminded that the government pays extra for special services.  This should be no surprise since it has always been the case, but it's a good reminder.

So, as of the end of 2016, a commercial launch was being sold for just north of $60 million, which is nicely aligned with SpaceX statements on pricing.  Of course, this is prior to reusable first stages being the norm, but it does give us a good baseline for where the price was not long before.
« Last Edit: 09/25/2018 01:41 pm by abaddon »

Offline wannamoonbase

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OK, if they've caught up to the market already, why all the talk just a few months ago (see the start of this thread) about 30 launches this year, etc.?  It looks like 20-22 is a more likely final number for Falcon 9 proper.

 - Ed Kyle

I'm not a fortune teller but I never 30 was going to happen with the current manifest.  Too many things in this industry slide to the right on the schedule.  Plus Iridium has been a big part of the last 2 years and they are almost finished.

20-22 a year is huge though, compared to where they started and where they were just 2 years ago.

SpaceX has built themselves to handle a much higher flight rate, which they will need if and when Starlink becomes reality.  But Starlink is also a reinforcing component in case a higher flight rate doesn't naturally evolve.
Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline envy887

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OK, if they've caught up to the market already, why all the talk just a few months ago (see the start of this thread) about 30 launches this year, etc.?  It looks like 20-22 is a more likely final number for Falcon 9 proper.

 - Ed Kyle

Most people predicted 24-29 launches including FH. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43942.0

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