Looks like a road trip to Mahia before Christmas is called for. Hope it is weekend launch as I'm short on leave.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 10/20/2016 04:10 pmLooks like a road trip to Mahia before Christmas is called for. Hope it is weekend launch as I'm short on leave.If they announce a date for the launch I'll come join you. Are the beaches good?
Check out the date on that article - August 2015.
Any thoughts on how the recent cratering of Firefly will affect RocketLab?I tend to think it will help RocketLab because it eliminates what might well have been their strongest competitor.On the other hand, it also might tend to throw doubt on the whole industry and scare off investors.
Especially given that RLUS seems far ahead of any other competitors in regards to actually providing a working product.
..the age of Blue Origin and SpaceX with their reusable, much larger, launchers.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 10/27/2016 06:31 am..the age of Blue Origin and SpaceX with their reusable, much larger, launchers.I hope you are not forgetting that this age of reusable rockets was first heralded over 3 years ago now, with no tangible deliverables so far in terms of cost reductions or turnaround times. With a reasonable turnaround time three years is a lot of time to actually generate revenue, if you can keep a rocket in service.
Soviets managed to fly R7's at a record turnaround time of roughly once a week a few decades ago, and Electron is a lot smaller. If payloads show up, there is plenty of business to be made.A reasonable advice often given to startups is - forget what the industry giants might be doing in terms of competition, focus on delivering your value proposition and if you do it well, competition won't matter.
So far there really isn't any evidence that reusable rockets will ever be profitable. It's a shame, as true believers like us want them for our space dreams, but in terms of actually delivering a product you're taking a huge gamble by betting on reusability. Lean efficient production of small rockets to reduce operational costs with minimal R&D is a very competitive path. There's an opportunity now to start offering services at affordable prices with a healthy profit margin and reinvest in trimming the margins. Rockets are not commodity products, you care where your launch comes from because that affects your business case. There's lots of facets. RocketLab are aiming to win on facets that most other providers are ignoring.
Quote from: QuantumG on 10/27/2016 09:37 pmSo far there really isn't any evidence that reusable rockets will ever be profitable. It's a shame, as true believers like us want them for our space dreams, but in terms of actually delivering a product you're taking a huge gamble by betting on reusability. Lean efficient production of small rockets to reduce operational costs with minimal R&D is a very competitive path. There's an opportunity now to start offering services at affordable prices with a healthy profit margin and reinvest in trimming the margins. Rockets are not commodity products, you care where your launch comes from because that affects your business case. There's lots of facets. RocketLab are aiming to win on facets that most other providers are ignoring.That's a reasonable argument. It remains to be seen whether reusable rockets will be economically viable. I think it's likely they will, but it's by no means certain, and, even if they are economically viable eventually, that doesn't mean that small, cheap expendables don't have a place for the short-to-mid-term until they are eventually displaced by reusables.
Looking forward to the first launch.
Personally, I think it comes down to material technology. When thinking of RLVs it seems we all tend to switch off that part of the brain that processes what happens to the rocket on its way up (ridiculously high speeds, stupidly high heating, words like "plasma", "fireball", etc...) and think that somehow a thin aluminium shell is going to fare just as well over repeated flights as it does in a sub-sonic low-altitude airliner. ..but that's simply not true.
Quote from: CameronD on 10/28/2016 01:21 amPersonally, I think it comes down to material technology. When thinking of RLVs it seems we all tend to switch off that part of the brain that processes what happens to the rocket on its way up (ridiculously high speeds, stupidly high heating, words like "plasma", "fireball", etc...) and think that somehow a thin aluminium shell is going to fare just as well over repeated flights as it does in a sub-sonic low-altitude airliner. ..but that's simply not true.I don't know how you can say "that's simply not true" without any evidence. The evidence suggests the opposite is true. SpaceX has actually landed several stages, and after careful examination they have concluded that they can fly these "thin aluminium shell" stages over and over indefinitely.These are the people who are actually launching real payloads into orbit. They know what they're doing. And they have landed stages, and they have examined them in detail. And yet, somehow, you think that it's so obvious that they're wrong that you only have to say "that's simply not true" to refute them.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 10/28/2016 05:20 amQuote from: CameronD on 10/28/2016 01:21 amPersonally, I think it comes down to material technology. When thinking of RLVs it seems we all tend to switch off that part of the brain that processes what happens to the rocket on its way up (ridiculously high speeds, stupidly high heating, words like "plasma", "fireball", etc...) and think that somehow a thin aluminium shell is going to fare just as well over repeated flights as it does in a sub-sonic low-altitude airliner. ..but that's simply not true.I don't know how you can say "that's simply not true" without any evidence. The evidence suggests the opposite is true. SpaceX has actually landed several stages, and after careful examination they have concluded that they can fly these "thin aluminium shell" stages over and over indefinitely.These are the people who are actually launching real payloads into orbit. They know what they're doing. And they have landed stages, and they have examined them in detail. And yet, somehow, you think that it's so obvious that they're wrong that you only have to say "that's simply not true" to refute them.Before anyone says blowing up a rocket on the launch pad during fueling with a payload on top says a thing or two how much they know what they're doing, let's wait for the first actual relaunch before drawing too many conclusions.To bring this back on topic: you guys are forgetting that Beck has stated
that the important thing is the 'per launch' cost and lead time to launch.
Even with reusable rockets having a smaller price per kg of payload, 'mass' produced smaller launch vehicles still have a market segment to cater to: smaller payloads that don't want to wait for years until the next rideshare opportunity becomes available,
or all the red tape that comes with that for the main customer or other rideshares to allow you to share the rocket. 'Order today, launch next week' (or next month, more likely) sounds like quite a good catch phrase.
Buying a ride years in advance means you need to have a lot of money early on, and a fixed deadline to finish the thing you want to launch.
Not easy if you're launching something new and experimental. If you could focus on working the kinks out of what you want to launch, showing advancement every time you talk to whoever is giving you the money, and only buy the ride with the finished product in hand without having it lying around for years afterwards, that sounds much more convincing to investors/donators. And that's how Beck attracted his investors as well: show them the hardware. Attract more money, postpone costs to when you actually use what you buy, and go through tests and red tape with the actual hardware instead of plans and designs that might eventually turn out to not be less than optimal.