The one thing that really surprises me about the Falcon 9 reusable is that all three stages have landing legs. You would think it would be better to just catch them in a net and ditch the legs! Especially the second stage landing legs, which are big and subtract directly off the payload mass. Probably about 250kgs for second stage legs and another 100 or so for for the dragon legs. That's what, a 7% payload increase straight away. Overall, I don't know a good way to estimate how much all this weighs. I also don't know how to estimate what the probability of success is. If they get this to work, we will see the dawn of the second space age. I think people don't grok how significant this will be if it works. Imagine if they just got to $500,000 per launch, which works out at $83 per kg to LEO. Mars and the asteroids start to look tempting at that price, don't they? Especially when China knocks it off and undercuts SpaceX at $40 per kg
If they get this to work, we will see the dawn of the second space age. I think people don't grok how significant this will be if it works. Imagine if they just got to $500,000 per launch, which works out at $83 per kg to LEO. Mars and the asteroids start to look tempting at that price, don't they? Especially when China knocks it off and undercuts SpaceX at $40 per kg
For instance at 10.1 reduction in falcon 9 extended version could mean around 6 mill for 16 tonnes to orbit. I could easily imagine a Market for a vehicle to launch 20 people into orbit at a time for 300,000 dollars a piece. 100.1 would bring a ticket price down to 30,000 a ticket
Why are folks assuming that just because you land a 1st stage on legs that you can then turn around and fly it again the next day for little or no processing or cost?
The reality is that even with a fully intact first stage recovery, there will be significant processing required to refurb or requalify the stage for reflight.
It remains to be seen if the cost of preparing an intact stage for reflight would be more or less than the cost of integrating a new stage, or re-using portions of the recovered stage to fit out an incoming set of tankage and structure.Recovering the stage is just one incremental step along the path to a reusable launch vehicle that would be operationally similar to an airliner. It would be a big step forward, but only a step along a path to a reusable system.
however reducing launch costs may make solar power station in orbit a proposition.
16 tonnes would have been without the recovery hardware. After recovery, they will be lucky to get 10tonnes. BTW, a 10:1 reduction would but them at 6M. That would mean that the hardware should be usable for what, 20, 30 times? How much for the refurbishing of the engines?
Plus fees and such, say 6M per trip. That's a lot less of what NASA currently pays. But how much market you think there's at those numbers? And they would do what? orbit for a couple of hours? You'd need a bathroom for more than a few hours. And at least a year of training. Who can pay 6M AND take a sabbatical year?
In fact in many ways jets are more complex than rockets.
A 747-400 has six million parts
the [Saturn V] contained three million parts
QuoteA 747-400 has six million partsQuotethe [Saturn V] contained three million parts
I do agree with you that there are a number of fixed costs. But if flying once a week with a fleet of say 4 reusable falcon 9s it should be possible to bring these down. In ELon musk presentation he talks about launch costs around 1,000,000 bucks. But I am sure this is a low ball estimate. Hopefully can do better than 4.1.
Elon stated that he could keep his pricing with at least 10 launches per year, half of them FH.
When doing a cost model of reusable F9 and FH with their possible payload reductions:1) the vehicles fly 10 times before major refurbishment, a savings of $20M per 1st stage and $10M per second stage when reused over a new stage, plus over 10 flights a total of $60M for F9 for additional hardware and processing incurred by reusable over non-reusable and $100M for 10 flights for an FH2) the F9 non-reusable payload 16MT and price of $54M per flight = $3,375/kg3) the reusable F9 payload of 11MT and price of $33M per flight ( the best case envisioned) = $3,000/kg only a reduction of 11% which is not very significant and could be lost due to increased processing or increased hardware costs for the addition hardware4) the FH non-reusable payload of 53MT and price of $125M per flight = $2,358/kg5) the reusable FH payload of 45MT and price of $72M per flight = $1,600/kg a reduction of 32% which is significantConclusion is that economic reusability for an F9 especially the US is marginal at best whereas the FH because more cost is in the first stages (3 times as much as that of an F9) reusability is not marginal.
Quote from: corneliussulla on 10/11/2011 04:39 pm however reducing launch costs may make solar power station in orbit a proposition.Desert will always be cheaper.
Quote from: Jim on 10/11/2011 04:45 pmQuote from: corneliussulla on 10/11/2011 04:39 pm however reducing launch costs may make solar power station in orbit a proposition.Desert will always be cheaper.Tell that to Spain & Solyndra
100W/kg is definitely not the limit. We'll probably get specific power to near 1000W/kg before launch costs are below $1000/kg.
Quote from: docmordrid on 10/11/2011 08:46 pmQuote from: Jim on 10/11/2011 04:45 pmQuote from: corneliussulla on 10/11/2011 04:39 pm however reducing launch costs may make solar power station in orbit a proposition.Desert will always be cheaper.Tell that to Spain & Solyndra The current kg/kw is 10kg/kw of power produced for space solar power. Using that a 1GW SPS would need 223 FH flights to put up the weight involved. In evaluating what would be the crossover point for $/kg to orbit needed to make SPS a viable contender to other large scale power production gives that <$600/kg would be needed. For a reusable FH that has max payload of 45MT $600/kg gives a per flight Price of $27M. We are a long way away. But a much larger vehicle 200MT+ size may be capable of that $/kg rate especially if the flight rate is 50 a year at a price of $100M per flight.
Do not forget the cost and mass of the transmitter to send the power to the Earth.On the Earth you will need a power receiver. This is very very large so you will need an area of desert about the same size as for a ground based solar power station.
Atlas I believe that your numbers are probably wrong. Basically you are saying there are almost no savings to be had from relaunching 10 times versus 100 times a year. I think it is more likely that there will be quite large savings. One only has to look at the example of the airline industry. Companies cam fly people a few hundred miles and make a profit out of charging 50-100 bucks. The reason, they have the plane in the air 6 times a day.
Welcome to the forum.Please note that it is questionable protocol to include in your first post (or first 100 posts)
On loss of payload it depends where the mass is 4 tons extra on the first stage does not necessary mean you lost four tons of payload.Here you'll probably only lose 1 ton of payload.This is why the Saturn I still worked well despite have a somewhat inefficient first stage design.The second stage how ever is a different story ton of extra mass is a ton of lost payload.
On training you're using the RSA a government entity as an example which is literally going to cosmonaut school no commercial entity is going to be like that unless they're hiring you.In reality a passenger should only need a hundred hours of instruction and this could be done on weekends or after work.At worst it should be similar to getting a private pilot's license plus having to ride the vomit comet and a centrifuge.For insurance there may be instruction on how to escape a flooded vehicle.