Author Topic: Reuse business case  (Read 318466 times)

Offline gadgetmind

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #300 on: 04/21/2016 08:35 am »
Contracts have been signed for multiple years now in the $60 +/- a few million ballpark.

But then I see the cost of the 1st stage being quoted as $60m and wonder how they intend to make money?

Offline Rebel44

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #301 on: 04/21/2016 09:24 am »
Contracts have been signed for multiple years now in the $60 +/- a few million ballpark.

But then I see the cost of the 1st stage being quoted as $60m and wonder how they intend to make money?

1st stage (Falcon 9) doesnt cost $60M.

Offline gadgetmind

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #302 on: 04/21/2016 01:02 pm »
1st stage (Falcon 9) doesnt cost $60M.

I'm totally sure you're right, but I've seen it widely quoted, and it's also what Elon said again in the CRS-8 post launch (and landing!) news event. However, he did say "the rocket" so this could be taken to mean both stages, but only one came back.

Offline Rebel44

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #303 on: 04/21/2016 01:49 pm »
1st stage (Falcon 9) doesnt cost $60M.

I'm totally sure you're right, but I've seen it widely quoted, and it's also what Elon said again in the CRS-8 post launch (and landing!) news event. However, he did say "the rocket" so this could be taken to mean both stages, but only one came back.
+-$60M is reported cost of Falcon 9 launch

Offline woods170

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #304 on: 04/22/2016 11:05 am »
That is strange. There was a rather honest post by .gif in this thread, but it's gone now. Either he removed it himself, or the mods did. I wonder why...

Offline Johnnyhinbos

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #305 on: 04/22/2016 12:45 pm »



I think barge (component) development tends to be cheaper than aircraft (component) development ... tolerances are lower.

I'd be surprised if they can develop their midair capture tech for less than SpaceX spent on ASDS.

NOTE: I think the spreadsheet is Dr. Sowers'  not Tory Bruno's (some folk were saying Tory's spreadsheet)

It isn't the price of the midair capture tech that would worry me, it's the hypersonic inflatable decelerator followed by the steerable parafoil, both of which have to work properly and then be thrown away. And that is for you to even get to the point of the midair capture.
You don't have to throw either away, though they're both cheap enough to do so.

But something like that makes more sense for upper stage recovery. Blue Origin and SpaceX have both proved that this idea of first stage VTVL recovery works. Just build a bigger first stage to compensate for the performance loss (a 3, 4, or 5 engine Vulcan? Built with Blue Origin tech? Optionally VTVL recoverable?), use the HIAD thing for upper stage recovery, and boom, ULA has a fully reusable VTVL rocket.

If ULA decide to build a 3-4 engine VTVL booster and they follow F9R test program it will be about 10 launches before a booster is successfully recovered. All the development launches will be sold at cost of a 2 engine ELV as that all performance missions need. ULA will have to wear extra cost of extra engines and larger stage. If they are lucky each launch will just break even ie no profit, more likely they will lose money on each launch.

With SMART they will still make a reduced profit on each development flight same as SpaceX did with F9. But most importantly a reasonable profit.

I do think SMART has higher chance of succeeding with less attempts than F9R. Both HIAD and MAR have already been proven along with explosive separation of engines ( see earlier Atlas ver1-2??).

Sent from my ALCATEL ONE TOUCH 6030X using Tapatalk
The thing that gets me about this is that there are other factors at play with recovering the entire stage. Ignoring for a moment the refirb / reuse part, there's incredible value to having the entire stage to examine in entirety to see if there design areas to improve to make the system more robust / find potential failure points / etc.

Let alone all the knowledge SpaceX is gaining for "free" that they will be able to employ in future systems development.

That all has direct, if less tangible, value and should really be factored into the business case as a whole...
John Hanzl. Author, action / adventure www.johnhanzl.com

Offline russianhalo117

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #306 on: 04/22/2016 06:32 pm »
That is strange. There was a rather honest post by .gif in this thread, but it's gone now. Either he removed it himself, or the mods did. I wonder why...
I believe .gif is a ULA employee.
he was modded

(No, he wasn't. RussianHalo isn't a moderator and is not in a position to make such a claim. As below, his comment was shown to be totally false - Chris).
« Last Edit: 05/07/2016 01:43 pm by Chris Bergin »

Offline gadgetmind

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #307 on: 04/22/2016 09:03 pm »
That is strange. There was a rather honest post by .gif in this thread, but it's gone now. Either he removed it himself, or the mods did. I wonder why...
I believe .gif is a ULA employee.
he was modded

Those of us who have full delivery of postings via email still have that message, but whether withdrawn by author or mods, it's best forgotten.  I'm sure we all vent at times and then regret it, so let's let this sleeping dog lie.

Offline rcoppola

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #308 on: 04/22/2016 09:55 pm »
Some of us would love nothing more than to let certain sleeping dogs lie. But it seems every time a falcon lands, the dog awakes all on its own.
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Offline .gif

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #309 on: 04/23/2016 06:06 am »
That is strange. There was a rather honest post by .gif in this thread, but it's gone now. Either he removed it himself, or the mods did. I wonder why...
I believe .gif is a ULA employee.
he was modded
I modded myself. There was nothing proprietary or anything, I was just venting abut our executive leadership. It didn't really add to the discussion.

Offline gadgetmind

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #310 on: 04/23/2016 07:57 am »
I don't really understand the "trash talk" aspects of this. If one has a better idea, then crack on with implementation, and let the strength of the concept shine through once launching.  I think we've seen plenty of ideas for launching/landing that looked great in powerpoints and spreadsheets but that didn't pan out in practice.

I'm utterly convinced that reuse is critical, but TBH all the players need to be able to turn on a profit on launching alone while they perfect it.

Offline Lar

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #311 on: 04/23/2016 12:43 pm »
I don't really understand the "trash talk" aspects of this. If one has a better idea, then crack on with implementation, and let the strength of the concept shine through once launching.   

That's engineering thinking. Clearly you're not a marketer. (I'm an engineer and it's the sort of thinking I prefer but...)  FUD is a great marketing technique
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline rcoppola

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #312 on: 04/23/2016 04:11 pm »
I don't really understand the "trash talk" aspects of this. If one has a better idea, then crack on with implementation, and let the strength of the concept shine through once launching.   

That's engineering thinking. Clearly you're not a marketer. (I'm an engineer and it's the sort of thinking I prefer but...)  FUD is a great marketing technique
Everyone has a role to play. With very few exceptions, it's typically not a good idea to have your engineers design your communications or your marketers design your rockets.
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Offline .gif

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #313 on: 04/23/2016 05:47 pm »
FUD is a great marketing technique
ULA is very bad at it though.  It just comes across as sour grapes and reeks of desperation.

Offline gadgetmind

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #314 on: 04/23/2016 06:31 pm »
That's engineering thinking. Clearly you're not a marketer. (I'm an engineer and it's the sort of thinking I prefer but...)  FUD is a great marketing technique

I'm described as a "Senior Director" and have to get into marketing, PR, and other such murky areas as well as engineering (life blood). However, I'm semiconductors, so totally different market.

But I just can't see why you'd spout forth about your approach being better when 1) competitor has theirs working, 2) you're years off, 3) who knows which is best until you're flying/landing head to head.

I can't see customers being either fooled or particularly caring, so whose eyes is the wool being pulled over? US politicians? Investors? I really don't know.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #315 on: 04/23/2016 06:38 pm »
I'm utterly convinced that reuse is critical, but TBH all the players need to be able to turn on a profit on launching alone while they perfect it.

Reuse is as political as it is economic. These run contrary, because the "high expense" of expendables pays certain constituencies, many of which also rail against government waste, but when some waste falls under the illusion of "necessary waste" as in "soft power" of "national security" by "only proven means" as expendable, why then you annoy them by making it reusable/economic.

The virtue to many of the Shuttle was that it wasn't economic, even though a demonstration of partially reusable.

It should be no surprise that only billionaires could do reusable space. Because billionaires can get away with flaunting other billion dollar activities, which would use economics to extinguish anything smaller.

If reusable economics due change the rules here, expendables and govt investment won't go away, it'll just be that it "transmutes" into some other form, which may or may not make use of some reusable components.

I don't really understand the "trash talk" aspects of this. If one has a better idea, then crack on with implementation, and let the strength of the concept shine through once launching.  I think we've seen plenty of ideas for launching/landing that looked great in powerpoints and spreadsheets but that didn't pan out in practice.

ULA has insecurities about this, along with government primes, because of attempts to change the rules by one of the players - Musk - he "monkey wrenches" their survival because its in his way (Bezos coopts them, in comparison, just like he'd sell his own mother for the right price IMHO). All here are quite ruthless.

The "trash talk" is simply done to gain advantage. Because there are dopes that like it. Just like presidential candidates.

Offline Lar

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #316 on: 04/23/2016 06:44 pm »
But I just can't see why you'd spout forth about your approach being better when 1) competitor has theirs working, 2) you're years off, 3) who knows which is best until you're flying/landing head to head.

If you ask outsiders[1], both MS and IBM were perceived as doing this with some considerable success for many years.

1 - Don't ask me, I am not an official spokeperson for IBM and I don't trash competitors so I can't say about either one, but that's what I've heard :)
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline oldAtlas_Eguy

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #317 on: 04/23/2016 08:14 pm »
I posted a economic modeling conclusion on this other thread which is also gremain to this one:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40121.msg1522842#msg1522842

Quote
The thing I found when modeling the Mass production and Reuse is that if the % cost of refurbishment/flight to the cost of a new vehicle is more than 30% then Mass production starts to have an edge for being cheaper at high flight rates >5. But if refurb costs are less than 30% of a new vehicle (gas and go) then reuse wins hands down even at as low a reuse rate of 2 flights per vehicle. The even point between Mass production and reuse was a reuse rate of 5, flight rate of >5 and a refurbishment % of 30%.

So for SpaceX with a refurb % looking to be as low as 10% and flight rates pushing eventually 20 with possible reuse of 10 there is no way Mass production/expendable method will be able to match the prices. [Added] The difference is that reuse at these values is 46% of that of Mass production/expendable so even if you consider the performance loss for reuse of 30% in comparison of strict $/kg values, Mass production still costs more.

Offline AncientU

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #318 on: 04/25/2016 11:04 pm »

I don't really understand the "trash talk" aspects of this. If one has a better idea, then crack on with implementation, and let the strength of the concept shine through once launching.  I think we've seen plenty of ideas for launching/landing that looked great in powerpoints and spreadsheets but that didn't pan out in practice.

ULA has insecurities about this, along with government primes, because of attempts to change the rules by one of the players - Musk - he "monkey wrenches" their survival because its in his way (Bezos coopts them, in comparison, just like he'd sell his own mother for the right price IMHO). All here are quite ruthless.

The "trash talk" is simply done to gain advantage. Because there are dopes that like it. Just like presidential candidates.

'SMART' reuse... trash talk begins at the beginning of this discussion. (Note: Not-so-subtle put down, unless subtly is completely lost on you.)
That's how the game has been played from the start.

FUD is a great marketing technique
ULA is very bad at it though.  It just comes across as sour grapes and reeks of desperation.
« Last Edit: 04/25/2016 11:34 pm by AncientU »
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Offline RyanC

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Re: Reuse business case
« Reply #319 on: 05/07/2016 01:41 am »
ULA is boned.

Right now, SpaceX is starting to capture the all important mental "head space" of the general public with the barge landings of Falcon 9, even though they've just started.

By the time Vulcan launches in 2019; SpX is going to have been recovering boosters like clockwork for three years and the public (and congress) is going to ask why NASA/DoD contract money is being spent on something that dumps the first stage in the ocean (Vulcan isn't even going to have engine recovery until a few years down the line).

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