Author Topic: Rockets launches cost breakdown?  (Read 7025 times)

Offline pagheca

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Rockets launches cost breakdown?
« on: 04/15/2014 02:26 pm »
Which is the cost of a rocket engine respect to the complete rocket? Does anyone have any number for the most common liquid propellant rockets? Searched over the internet but found no info.

I would in particular interested to get an approximate answer for the Space Shuttle OV, Saturn V and Falcon 9.

A breakdown like:

Total cost of each launch
Cost of rocket engine(s) - investment vs. manufacturing
Cost of overall rocket hardware
Cost of launch operation
...

Would be even better.

I know it is tricky to figure those number, considering the investment cost is huge and the dependence on the number of launches. However, something like that must exist, as for the rule that "any info better than nothing"...

EDIT: maybe this is not the right place for this question and to get an interested audience. May I kind ask the mods to move it wherever they think is more appropriate?
« Last Edit: 04/15/2014 10:44 pm by Chris Bergin »

Offline pagheca

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Re: rockets launches cost breakdown?
« Reply #1 on: 04/15/2014 03:13 pm »
just found an interesting discussion about rocket launch costs, but nothing quantitative.

Offline deaville

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Re: rockets launches cost breakdown?
« Reply #2 on: 04/15/2014 03:32 pm »
These figures are from 2010 for a Saturn V, if it helps -

I stand to be corrected if my maths are off-line.

The LH2 price is current, the nearest LO2 cost I could find is for 2001 and I've assumed that the 1970 cost of kerosene is roughly the same as petrol. This gives the LOX cost at $0.21 per kg; LH2 cost at $5.5 per kg and kerosene at $0.36 per gallon.

    So, first stage LO2 cost $312,259 approx.
    First stage kerosene cost $76625 approx.
    Second stage LO2 cost $75,123 approx.
    Second stage LH2 cost $383,240 approx.
    Third stage LO2 cost $18,329
    Third stage LH2 cost $108,750.

To cost the metal used I've had to assume that it was built entirely of aluminium. Okay - I know it wasn't but I reckon that costs of more exotic materials will be offset as I've had to use the 2007 prices of $1.15 per lb. This gives a costing for the stages -

    1st stage - $332,062
    2nd stage - $91,905
    3rd stage - $28,750.

This prices the actual cost of the Saturn at $1,427,043 excluding other consumables.

If these figures are anything like in the ball park, then these unrecovered costs of the Saturn V represented just 0.4% of the total claimed launch cost of $350 million. From this, can one assume that something over 95% of the Apollo costs stayed on the ground to be spent boosting the US economy?

 I've taken the quoted launch weights for Apollo 11 as the base for the numbers and, as before assumed aluminium as the construction material throughout. This gives ball-park costs of -

    LES - $10,246
    CM - $14,088
    SM - $58,930
    LM - $38,186
    SLA - $4,600

There is some additional cost to be made for the fuel, particularly for the LM. However, since the weights used above are launch weight, then this will be somewhat offset. Please feel free to correct the numbers, but bear in mind that the current cost for nitrogen tetroxide is $133.35 per gallon and for unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine it's $445.30 a gallon.

This brings the total unrecovered cost of an Apollo launch to $1,553,093, still less than 0.5% of the total cost.

As closing point of interest, an Apollo flight cost about $974,326 to fuel, a Shuttle mission costs $1,380,000 to fuel with just the liquid propellants.

A footnote - I originally posted this in 'another place' some four years ago.
« Last Edit: 04/15/2014 05:00 pm by deaville »
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Offline pagheca

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Re: rockets launches cost breakdown?
« Reply #3 on: 04/15/2014 08:45 pm »
These figures are from 2010 for a Saturn V, if it helps -

To cost the metal used I've had to assume that it was built entirely of aluminium. Okay - I know it wasn't but I reckon that costs of more exotic materials will be offset as I've had to use the 2007 prices of $1.15 per lb.

Thanks deaville, but I think that the cost of fuel and raw material are marginal respect to the overall cost of design, workmanship, testing, etc. of such a refined thing like a rocket.
« Last Edit: 04/15/2014 08:54 pm by pagheca »

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