Quote from: envy887 on 05/23/2017 04:11 pmAirplanes are built and operated assuming they will spend more time flying and earning money than on the ground.Rockets are (until now) built and operated assuming they will be used once and that's it. You can't use the same financial model for both and expect sensible results.Yep.... not yet.... maybe not ever. BUT... Get the cadence to once every week across two pads and you're definitely moving in that direction. It is a baby step but it's moving from custom to scheduled/assembly line... And then (as long as the payloads are there[1]) you can keep driving process improvements. SpaceX is all about those. Contrast the time for the first ASDS unload-trip to hangar to the time for the latest.Quote from: tvg98 on 05/23/2017 06:10 pmSo they're getting a better bang for their buck by effectively increasing productivity. Would they move the work force responsible for manufacturing new first stages to other projects to keep costs low and productivity high? Like you said, it is in their best interests to keep the crew busy and not have them standing around and doing nothing.Obviously they would. First thing they'll be doing? Making more second stages than 1:1 with first stages. They already have made at least one more, presumably, and are about to have made 2 more (discounting test articles)1 - CommsX makes sure they will be. Talk about eating your own dogfood...
Airplanes are built and operated assuming they will spend more time flying and earning money than on the ground.Rockets are (until now) built and operated assuming they will be used once and that's it. You can't use the same financial model for both and expect sensible results.
So they're getting a better bang for their buck by effectively increasing productivity. Would they move the work force responsible for manufacturing new first stages to other projects to keep costs low and productivity high? Like you said, it is in their best interests to keep the crew busy and not have them standing around and doing nothing.
Boeing has just entered the reusability circle with its DARPA spaceplane that is to be a rapid "gas and go" 24 hr turnaround.If they are successful it would push the envelope in the direction of aircraft like operations for space launch. As well if SpaceX is successful then there would be two "gas and go" reusable LV systems in operation.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/25/2017 06:30 pmBoeing has just entered the reusability circle with its DARPA spaceplane that is to be a rapid "gas and go" 24 hr turnaround.If they are successful it would push the envelope in the direction of aircraft like operations for space launch. As well if SpaceX is successful then there would be two "gas and go" reusable LV systems in operation.If it were to work just as intended, could it be scaled up so that it could deliver a similar payload to LEO compared to Falcon 9, at a similar price point? We could see some serious competition if that is the case.
This has made the easy analysis of how your vehicle stacks up with others no longer usable. A greater in depth economic analysis now must be done by the teams during the preliminary design phase to determine if the end product when fielded will be able to compete.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/26/2017 01:42 amThis has made the easy analysis of how your vehicle stacks up with others no longer usable. A greater in depth economic analysis now must be done by the teams during the preliminary design phase to determine if the end product when fielded will be able to compete.This is tough-to-impossible to do reliably. Boeing and Airbus, with all the incentive in the world, find it very hard to predict how a proposed product will fare in five years, in the market and competitive landscape that will exist at that time. And that's with just one serious competitor, relatively stable technology, and a fairly well understood market.So the teams will try for "an in-depth economic analysis", but I think the true strategy will be to pick a design that gets in the ballpark and plays to your strengths, then make it as cheap as possible.
With all the discussion about the Block 5 upgrades to the F9, aren't you looking at the wrong rocket? Tom Mueller was pretty clear in the interview: "But we want like a hundred or more reduction in costs; and that’s what the Mars rocket’s gonna do. That’s going to be the revolutionary rocket."Looking at the Mars presentation we get less than 5 million dollars per launch for a payload of up to 380 metric tonnes. A BFR launch will be cheaper than an Electron launch and carry more than 1000x the mass.
All of this discussion has so far been mainly about a rocket that is already flying and being recovered/reused. ITS/BFR is still so notional that we have no basis for solid discussion beyond just what Elon and Tom have talked about for their aspirations for that system/vehicle. Until we start seeing how well they are meeting those goals, IMO it's too early to try for any analysis. While a weaker form of the same argument might be made about Block 5, at least we have solid data about the relative costs of production/use/recovery/reuse for that vehicle.
Quote from: deruch on 05/26/2017 02:59 amAll of this discussion has so far been mainly about a rocket that is already flying and being recovered/reused. ITS/BFR is still so notional that we have no basis for solid discussion beyond just what Elon and Tom have talked about for their aspirations for that system/vehicle. Until we start seeing how well they are meeting those goals, IMO it's too early to try for any analysis. While a weaker form of the same argument might be made about Block 5, at least we have solid data about the relative costs of production/use/recovery/reuse for that vehicle. That's true. I just found it remarkable that in just a few years (if all goes right) one could order a BFR launch for maybe 1% of the current launch cost per mass. Even if SpaceX misses the target by an oder of magnitude, the savings would be dramatic.
The snowball of of rapid reusability has started to roll and it has even started to get bigger and roll faster.Those (new medium/heavy LV designers) that don't plan for it will get crushed by it. At the moment small payloads LVs in the ~100kg size are excluded but as the medium prices drop they could be in competition on a per flight price with LVs that do 10X the payload size. So even that market is not isolated from the effect in the end. The end being somewhere around early 2020. So the smallsat launcher market has only a few more years (<6) before rapid reusibility could obliterate it.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/26/2017 03:48 pmThe snowball of of rapid reusability has started to roll and it has even started to get bigger and roll faster.Those (new medium/heavy LV designers) that don't plan for it will get crushed by it. At the moment small payloads LVs in the ~100kg size are excluded but as the medium prices drop they could be in competition on a per flight price with LVs that do 10X the payload size. So even that market is not isolated from the effect in the end. The end being somewhere around early 2020. So the smallsat launcher market has only a few more years (<6) before rapid reusibility could obliterate it.That's what I was getting at when I compared the (probably optimistic) cost estimates for BFR with a payload of up to 380 tonnes (5 million dollars per launch) with the launch price for Electron (5 million dollars, too) for just 225 kilograms.
That's what I was getting at when I compared the (probably optimistic) cost estimates for BFR with a payload of up to 380 tonnes (5 million dollars per launch) with the launch price for Electron (5 million dollars, too) for just 225 kilograms.
Quote from: jpo234 on 05/26/2017 06:48 pmThat's what I was getting at when I compared the (probably optimistic) cost estimates for BFR with a payload of up to 380 tonnes (5 million dollars per launch) with the launch price for Electron (5 million dollars, too) for just 225 kilograms.I am convinced your optimism is warranted for the following reason and it leads me to another conclusion about reusability costs:With the performance SpaceX has demonstrated at this point as describedd by Ed Kyle after Inmarsat and with remaining performance improvements to come, I'm convinced of Musk's ability to deliver preformance beyond early projections while maintaining costs and meeting goals. The response to and comeback from the RUDs has been very impressive. I think enough has been proven that SpaceX is relatively insulated now from normal RUDs and only exposed to some Black Swan that takes them out. While space is hard no doubt, I'm not sure what technical impediment might prevent them from reaching their goals including eventually continuous operations.So not sure if $5M is exactly right but that's besides the point. I think they'll achieve gas-n-go (or close enough to it) cost.When that happens it opens up a vast spectrum of otherwise impossible business opportunity in the $T's of revenue.