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SpaceX Vehicles and Missions => SpaceX Reusability => Topic started by: Radical_Ignorant on 05/25/2016 06:09 pm

Title: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Radical_Ignorant on 05/25/2016 06:09 pm
I've seen discussion about this spread around multiple topics. Please kill this topic if there is already one but I couldn't find it on my phone browser.

So there are various guesses but often vehicle price is guessed as 70% first stage, 30% upper stage. So initial impression is that flying reused booster can reduce launch cost by 70%. Of course that's not true, because there is refrubrishment cost, launch operation cost,  payload integration cost etc. Still it sounds like if reusing 1st stage could reduce cost by about 50%. And we still are not talking about price as it makes no sense for Space X to reduce their profit from service provided so it is about cost reduction which is different from price reduction.
Let's assume that this 50% cost price is good enough to include price of stage if split among multiple launches so it's 50% cost reduction for all launches.

Is that the case? No. Because building stage is only part of it's cost. There is also R&D cost per stage which is independent from if stage is build or not. There are for sure people here who know how  big part is this. But please keep in mind it's not development of Falcon9 cost. It's quite pernament cost of keeping engineering department in house. Which is used to improve technology continuesly. And I believe it's quite a cost. So Space X needs to earn enough by their services to pay for it. Since they are continuesly innovating this can be treated as kind of fixed cost indendent from if rockets are build or not. This cost could be reduced once tech is developed but nobody (except some imaginary investors and short sighted clients) really want Space X to be scalled down.

Finally there is keeping production line cost. Those are employees which are not hired by temporary work agency. Nobody want SpaceX to lose higly qualified work force.

So finally my reasoning is that reusing (in short term) saves very little. Some raw materials and outsorced parts, but those are not many.

What reusability allows is to use resurces currently engaged in building stages to be used for other purposes. If there is market increase  some of those can be transferred to build more second stages. Now for the same operational cost there can be more launches and there ara real savings.

But if launch rate doesn't grow enough or SpaceX doesn't  scale down there is only limited saving.

So assuming reusability is given and SpaceX won't scale down, which I believe are true assumtions, cost reduction allowed by this humongous achievement is dependent from demand side and can be very small if there is no increase in launch rate.

Space X has some backlog so some increase is possible. But how big is that?

And am I missing something? Maybe raw materials and outsorced parts are really costly? Or my reasoning is flawed?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: bstrong on 05/25/2016 06:45 pm
There have been lots of discussions on this, and pretty much everyone agrees that you need a high launch rate to justify reuse. The main disagreement is over what exactly that launch rate is and how likely SpaceX is to achieve it.

I recommend these threads:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35829.0
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Radical_Ignorant on 05/25/2016 07:35 pm
Sorry - my fault, or mobile opera to have something to blame :p
Economics of reusability is exactly the thread which I failed to found. Thanks a lot for pointing me there.

And this thread probably should be removed since it's duplicate to keep things clear. I couldn't do that myself.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/25/2016 08:19 pm
The Economics of Reusability topic is old, last posted in 2014. It's a good topic to review for context, but probably since it's locked, discussion should continue here[1].

1 - Ignore the fact that I merged them together, realised it was old and locked, and then unmerged them. Just ignore it, I say!!!
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/25/2016 11:46 pm
Gwynne Shotwell stated that a reused core would have a price reduced by 30%.  Since she seemed to be talking about now, I'd assume that she was talking about the present launch rate and manifest.  This should be a good price point to start the discussion.

Assuming the reused vehicle costs zero to refurbish*, the rest of launch costs plus profit (without considering the first stage) equal that 70% remaining -- nominally $43M.  If refurbishment costs are x, then the rest of launch costs are $43M minus x minus profit.

Note: Some say that SpaceX isn't making a profit, and others say they are losing money on each launch, so profit can be thought of as positive, zero, or negative.

* Recovery costs are part of 'refurbish'
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: SoulWager on 05/26/2016 04:31 am
The key issue has always been elasticity of demand, and the key issues for elasticity of demand are risk tolerance and time. Even a 50% discount is still be a lot of money for a startup.

I think SpaceX may need to fill its manifest gaps with home grown payloads while waiting for the satellite manufacturers to catch up. Hopefully that satellite internet thing works out.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/26/2016 07:12 am
There have been lots of discussions on this, and pretty much everyone agrees that you need a high launch rate to justify reuse.

I have to disagree on this. It's an old assumption, based on the expectation that a reusable design is a lot more expensive than an expendable one, requiring a lot of flights to recover cost. The Falcon reusable family is barely more expensive than expendable. It makes money with the first reuse.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: abaddon on 05/26/2016 01:52 pm
It makes money with the first reuse.
Assuming cost to recover & refurbish is lower than cost to manufacture, yes.  I have a really hard time seeing them burn $25-$30 million or whatever to recover & refurbish a first stage, so I agree.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Rocket Science on 05/26/2016 02:02 pm
I'm just going to add a thought. Just because a stage it deemed "reusable" and launched it may not be "reliable"... One needs to factor this into the cost structure estimates...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/26/2016 02:15 pm
I'm just going to add a thought. Just because a stage it deemed "reusable" and launched it may not be "reliable"... One needs to factor this into the cost structure estimates...

If rocket failures form a bathtub curve the reused stages will be more reliable than new ones, at least for a few launches.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Dudely on 05/26/2016 02:36 pm
It makes money with the first reuse.
Assuming cost to recover & refurbish is lower than cost to manufacture, yes.  I have a really hard time seeing them burn $25-$30 million or whatever to recover & refurbish a first stage, so I agree.

A stage costs no more than $15 million. We know this because expendable FH costs 30 million > expendable F9.

If recovery and refurbishment cost 3 million they have saved roughly 80% of their costs. They could then lower the price to about 50 million and have the same profit per mission.

I have heard Gwyne say they expect to go as low as 43 million for reused flights but I don't see how the math works.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/26/2016 03:45 pm
I'm just going to add a thought. Just because a stage it deemed "reusable" and launched it may not be "reliable"... One needs to factor this into the cost structure estimates...

IMO reusable implies reliable. An unreliable stage won't fly, SpaceX or any other provider cannot afford it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: nadreck on 05/26/2016 04:01 pm

A stage costs no more than $15 million. We know this because expendable FH costs 30 million > expendable F9.



I don't see where you can infer that it is expendable first stages on the launch vehicles quoted at $62M and $90M on http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities (http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities). The inference from the performance limits written in small print right below the price is that they are recoverable launches.  However, I do infer that an expendable F9 must cost more than $90M or there would be no incentive to use an FH.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: schaban on 05/26/2016 04:20 pm
I think what gets constantly overlooked are savings on logistics.
You save on whole operations between California, Texas and Florida for the most costly piece of equipment. Including tests.
You eliminate static fire and WDR.
those are significant parts of launch cost. much bigger then leasing ships
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Rocket Science on 05/26/2016 04:22 pm
I'm just going to add a thought. Just because a stage it deemed "reusable" and launched it may not be "reliable"... One needs to factor this into the cost structure estimates...

IMO reusable implies reliable. An unreliable stage won't fly, SpaceX or any other provider cannot afford it.
Yes I agree in theory, however the conclusion can not be drawn until repeated successful "reliable-reused" flights have been demonstrated...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tp1024 on 05/26/2016 05:21 pm

A stage costs no more than $15 million. We know this because expendable FH costs 30 million > expendable F9.



I don't see where you can infer that it is expendable first stages on the launch vehicles quoted at $62M and $90M on http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities (http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities). The inference from the performance limits written in small print right below the price is that they are recoverable launches.  However, I do infer that an expendable F9 must cost more than $90M or there would be no incentive to use an FH.

If we assume that reusability reduces maximum payload by about 30% and take 22.2 tons to GTO as a baseline for FH, then a reusable FH should have a payload of just under 16 tons. FH could carry two 8ton payloads. If a single 8-ton-payload costs $90mio, they will probably try to get two payloads. (The market being what it is, they will probably be in the 6-7ton range.)

So, it is reasonable to assume a (fully expendable) launch price on the order of $180mio for FH. Triple the price of a fully expendable F9. And why shouldn't that be the case?

FH will require a special core stage that will not benefit from the same economies of scale as a regular F9, more quality control to ensure proper detachment of the boosters plus the necessary equipment. It does need dedicated erectors and launch pads that must somehow be financed. I would also consider it likely that FH will get a bigger upper stage than F9, a beefier payload adapter (the current one is only suitable up to 10.5 tons payload) and probably also a bigger fairing.

There will be some extra cost, so the price is quite justified. Frankly, $90mio for an FH launch without reuse strikes me as quite ludicrous.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: abaddon on 05/26/2016 05:30 pm
So, it is reasonable to assume a (fully expendable) launch price on the order of $180mio for FH. Triple the price of a fully expendable F9. And why shouldn't that be the case?
Only one S2, interstage, PLF.  Any non-hardware cost (range fees, payload processing, etc) are likely to be closer to F9 than triple F9 costs.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: nadreck on 05/26/2016 05:53 pm


If we assume that reusability reduces maximum payload by about 30% and take 22.2 tons to GTO as a baseline for FH, then a reusable FH should have a payload of just under 16 tons. FH could carry two 8ton payloads. If a single 8-ton-payload costs $90mio, they will probably try to get two payloads. (The market being what it is, they will probably be in the 6-7ton range.)

If you look at http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39181.msg1521480#msg1521480 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39181.msg1521480#msg1521480) which was modeled with the original full thrust numbers you will see that this is not the case. Also why would they mix an LV cost for F9 with a shared payload cost for FH side by side?

You can also play with my spreadsheet model see http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34077.msg1500227#msg1500227 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34077.msg1500227#msg1500227) and the posts it refers to for more details.


So, it is reasonable to assume a (fully expendable) launch price on the order of $180mio for FH. Triple the price of a fully expendable F9. And why shouldn't that be the case?

The side boosters have been described by Elon as almost identical to F9 cores and current estimates by a number of members on NSF (myself included) are that S1 cores cost between $20M and $25M to produce.


There will be some extra cost, so the price is quite justified. Frankly, $90mio for an FH launch without reuse strikes me as quite ludicrous.

Exactly my point $90M is for a launch with all cores recoverable. In fact with all cores RTLS'ing  (EDIT to add a parenthetic: "at least as far as my modelling suggests")
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Mader Levap on 05/26/2016 09:59 pm
A stage costs no more than $15 million. We know this because expendable FH costs 30 million > expendable F9.
Wrong. 60 milion is for expendable F9, but 90 milion is for at least partially reusable FH.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/27/2016 04:53 am
Let me see if I can clear uop some confusion that seems to run rampant on this subject.

The terms expendable and reusable when applied in the context of flight profiles does not drive costs. It is whether the booster per GS is new or used. This is because recovery is still a much higher risk than launch and basing costs on flight profiles would be at first backwards with a fully expendable actually costing less than a recovery. In fact it would always be that way. But a recovery gets you back a stage that can be reused that for the next launch would enable offering a discount.

The other confusion comes from the association that is made because the two items are next to each other of price and payload. The prices are for new boosters. The payload is for a recovery profile. The point being that with new boosters an expendable profile would have the same price.

Now for where that $90M price for FH came from. Back when the F9 was priced at $54M and there was two hardware versions for FH of crossfeed and no-crossfeed, the $90M number was associated with the no-crossfeed. A value of $125M was shown for the crossfeed. The key here is that the current makeup of the FH is a no-crossfeed and would follow closely to that pricing of $90M. But also that $90M was for new and not used boosters as well. Although reuse was on the horizon it was not part of the pricing workups at that time.

The conclusion is that with other statements of GS is that the price of a F9 with used booster would be ~$43M and a FH with all 3 used boosters probably ~$50M (~6M more because of the cost of refurbishment etc of the 2 extra boosters). In modeling the cost of manufacture the cost of a 1st stage of $17M makes all the number s come out right if SpaceX only makes the same total profit on an FH flight (lower profit margin) that they do on a F9 flight. Making all other costs and profit for a flight besides the cost of the 1st stgaes manufacture to be ~40M for either F9 or FH. So the differences in price for an F9 with used booster and a FH with 3 used boosters will be ~$6M more vs $30M more when both have all new boosters.

It that latest which will have the largest impact on the space industry.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/27/2016 05:55 am
Lets not forget that part of Falcon 9 reliability is due to extensive over design for reuse.
A while back there was talk that Musk's demand that a Merlin engine needed margins for dozens of flights added at least an year (I don't recall if it held the first Falcon version or the v1.0 series).
Most of that has been invested and is a sunk cost.
I don't see SpaceX going back and removing margins to reduce manufacturing costs.

But the benefit that Falcon 9 had a single launch failure that was not a design problem, but rather a QA failure caused by a bad outsourced part attests that there's a LOT of implicit advantages to the SpaceX design concept, regardless of reuse (a big implicit benefit IMO).

Then we're left with added costs to recover birds:
1 - Maintaining ASDS + entourage (tug/support ship/personnel) and the ground LZ
2 - ground transportation cost from port to hangar / LZ to hangar
3 - costs to re qualify the first few recovered boosters until they're confident they nailed the process, consumables (reapplying SPAM, re painting)
4 - Future design changes to improve landing odds and improve the conditions of toasty re-entries like JCSAT booster.

Bottom line is SpaceX is already incurring most of those costs without any payback yet, and Musk seems OK with that.
There are way too many variables to allow us to estimate the costs (with useful accuracy) moving forward.
I think it would be fair to make the Tesla -> SpaceX analogy that:
Falcon 1 was a prototype
Falcon 9 first gen was like the Tesla Roadster
Falcon 9 v1.1 and full thrust was like the Tesla Model S
but the end game are the Methalox rockets which are still in the drawing board, and pursuing reuse right now is providing ultra valuable data to enable the next generation rockets to be fully reusable from the get go. Those are like the Model 3 (high volume car).

The engineer in me only cares that SpaceX doesn't go bankrupt until they deliver fully MetaLox rockets. Cost details matter very little until then. The extra ISP afforded by MetaLox allows SpaceX to do stuff that's just impossible today, like standard boostback / gentler re-entry burns (if those are actually needed).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ludus on 05/28/2016 03:50 am
If you assume reuse is completely successful as planned, the marginal cost of a launch would drop immediately and dramatically. Doing a launch with a reused core that's already been written off would cost a small fraction of using a new core. The difference between the reuse marginal cost and the reuse price would still have to contribute as much to the rest of SpaceX balance sheet as a new core launch. Otherwise they're losing money. That still allows space for both significant price cuts and bigger profits.

The big issue is how quickly can SpaceX repurpose it's complex, expensive capacity to build rockets (fixed cost) to take advance of the reuse. This is happening at a point that SpaceX has a big backlog in it's manifest and is just starting to ramp up production of cores. If they can earn as much or more per launch as they would have using a new core, they can work their way through the manifest faster while offering cuts in their already market leading prices (and capturing more business) while still covering fixed costs. They have to build proportionately more second stages in a period where an increasing number of launches are core reuse. They have to adjust the ramp up of their booster core production to match the reuse rate increase.

Because marginal internal costs for reused core launches would be MUCH lower, SpaceX could afford an increasing number of launches for internal purposes like the Internet Constellation or Red Dragons.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Nibb31 on 05/28/2016 07:08 am
If you assume reuse is completely successful as planned, the marginal cost of a launch would drop immediately and dramatically. Doing a launch with a reused core that's already been written off would cost a small fraction of using a new core. The difference between the reuse marginal cost and the reuse price would still have to contribute as much to the rest of SpaceX balance sheet as a new core launch. Otherwise they're losing money.

The first stage hardware is only a small part of the cost of the launch service. There are many complex operations involved in launching a rocket: the logistics, the infrastructure, payload integration, stacking, fueling, mission control, pre-launch and post-launch operations, as well as all the administrative overhead and the R&D. The biggest center of cost is the payroll for all the people who do all that work, and none of that is affected by core reuse.

Nobody seriously expects SpaceX to save more that 20% in costs through reusing the 1st stage.

Quote
That still allows space for both significant price cuts and bigger profits.

It's one or the other really. SpaceX is already the cheapest shop in town with a growing backlog. They have nothing to gain by cutting prices.

In fact, if they want their Mars plans to come into fruition, they are going to need deeper pockets, because nobody else is going to pay for them. So their best option would be not to cut prices and to use any cost savings to pay for Musk's expensive hobby.

I suspect that whether the core is reused or not will be transparent to the user, just like you don't get the flight history of a Boeing 737 when you book a flight as a passenger. I don't see them handing out discounts for pre-flown boosters. After all, customers don't buy rockets, they buy a launch service.

SpaceX will likely be offering a service to put a given payload into a given orbit for a given price, which would be calculated based on the total dV cost. Planning the trajectory, operating the launch, recovery, maintenance, fleet management, etc... is their job and those internal costs will be spread over the number of launches that they expect to get out of the hardware, just like any other transportation service.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/28/2016 09:12 am
Nobody seriously expects SpaceX to save more that 20% in costs through reusing the 1st stage.

Except SpaceX perhaps. They are talking about launch prices in the 40 million $ range which would be over 30% price cut and we can safely assume their profit in $, not in % will remain at least the same per launch, or else they would cut less.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Nibb31 on 05/28/2016 09:37 am
Nobody seriously expects SpaceX to save more that 20% in costs through reusing the 1st stage.

Except SpaceX perhaps. They are talking about launch prices in the 40 million $ range which would be over 30% price cut and we can safely assume their profit in $, not in % will remain at least the same per launch, or else they would cut less.

Which assumes that a Falcon 9 first stage alone costs over $20 million to make and that the rest of the rocket hardware, infrastructure costs, R&D, personnel, logistics, operations, account for less than 60% of the total cost.

I find that cost structure hard to believe.

Experience show that you've got to take a lot of the optimistic PR that comes out of SpaceX and Musk's twitter account with a pinch of salt.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ikarie XB-1 on 05/28/2016 10:35 am
Elon reasons from first principles and some of his statements are also reduced to first principles. Obviously, even if S1 was rendered free as in beer, cost of launch wouldn't drop even to one half, let alone by an order of magnitude. It's just that w/o stage reuse, there's not even a path towards substantially lowering costs. I find it hard to believe that building S1s in California and then qualifying them in Texas is that cheap - even with vertical integration and in startup mode. Returned cores should soon enough require limited checkup/refurb in known spots before being flight ready.

I believe the notional 30% price reduction fully preserves (if not increases) SpaceX's margins in $ terms. That implies through reuse their internal costs drop by at least $19m, which means S1 must cost somewhat more than that to amortise initial mfg costs. A good indication of internal S1 costs from factory to pad. R&D costs are largely independent on whether you build new cores or reuse existing ones - in either case they had to be designed first.

Also interesting that they're spending effort to reuse the relatively cheap fairings. Could be either a good exercise or those couple of million $ make up a significant enough portion of internal costs of launch - in post S1 reuse scenario.

Also Jurvetson's 'financial porn' comments could be understood as a fact that SpaceX would be doing fine with reasonable margins flying expendable as they are, but once reuse enters the picture, their margins in % terms will give Apple a blush...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/28/2016 12:29 pm
If you assume reuse is completely successful as planned, the marginal cost of a launch would drop immediately and dramatically. Doing a launch with a reused core that's already been written off would cost a small fraction of using a new core. The difference between the reuse marginal cost and the reuse price would still have to contribute as much to the rest of SpaceX balance sheet as a new core launch. Otherwise they're losing money.

The first stage hardware is only a small part of the cost of the launch service. There are many complex operations involved in launching a rocket: the logistics, the infrastructure, payload integration, stacking, fueling, mission control, pre-launch and post-launch operations, as well as all the administrative overhead and the R&D. The biggest center of cost is the payroll for all the people who do all that work, and none of that is affected by core reuse.

Nobody seriously expects SpaceX to save more that 20% in costs through reusing the 1st stage.

Quote
That still allows space for both significant price cuts and bigger profits.

It's one or the other really. SpaceX is already the cheapest shop in town with a growing backlog. They have nothing to gain by cutting prices.

In fact, if they want their Mars plans to come into fruition, they are going to need deeper pockets, because nobody else is going to pay for them. So their best option would be not to cut prices and to use any cost savings to pay for Musk's expensive hobby.

<snip>

Taking the three bolded statements in order:
1) The $19M reduction advertised by GS indicates that first stage cost minus retrieval/refurbishment equals that figure.  Assuming rework costs are $3-5M, the first stage hardware costs are $22-24M -- let's use $24M (40% or so of the launch price).  The first stage is quoted at 75% of the F9 hardware costs.  Entire F9 would then cost $32M.  This leaves $30M-ish for all other operations plus profit.
2) Gwynne Shotwell does, and she's not nobody.
3) In someone else's world, the best option would be to not cut prices, but this is Elon Musk's world.  He has declared that cutting the cost to orbit is why SpaceX was founded. He could already be charging significantly more per launch and be competitive -- but the fact that he is not doing that is an important data point informing against your 'best option.' 

By the way, his expensive hobby happens to be NASA's stated goal for the last few decades.  And I think they will finally have an affordable ride to reach that goal.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/28/2016 08:00 pm
The first stage hardware is only a small part of the cost of the launch service. There are many complex operations involved in launching a rocket: the logistics, the infrastructure, payload integration, stacking, fueling, mission control, pre-launch and post-launch operations, as well as all the administrative overhead and the R&D. The biggest center of cost is the payroll for all the people who do all that work, and none of that is affected by core reuse.

Nobody seriously expects SpaceX to save more that 20% in costs through reusing the 1st stage.

This is a good point but I suggest there's a flaw with the conclusion you are trying to draw.

1) As is expressed above, the cost of hardware is not a small part.  If it were the case for reuse would be greatly reduced.  Hardware is a significant cost.

2) True there are many other costs however absent the extreme hypothetical that SpaceX contracts for everything launch related on a mission by mission basis, most of those costs are fixed.  The question is what are the marginal costs associated with a launch and how much can those marginal costs be driven down.

3) The fixed costs would be amortized across the yearly launches and from an accounting perspective you would be able to calculate profit for each launch.

4) So I think the proper articulation of the benchmark against which to compare hardware costs would be variable costs per launch.  Fuel, Refurb, Replacement Parts, delta Processing and Handling, range related costs, rentals, contract labor, allocation of additional labor required by increase launch cadence,.

5) Elon stated 100x reduction.  While I don't read that statement too literally, I do think it suggests that a very large reduction is possible.  Let me suggest it would be something on the order of Elon being able to purchase a launch pre-SpaceX or from SpaceX for market price vs. the marginal cost to SpaceX to let Elon give away a launch for free.
 


Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/28/2016 09:47 pm
Once first stage reuse with minimal refurbishment becomes standard practice, two major reductions are still possible -- build reusable second stage/fairing and increase launch rate/efficiency.  The latter has been discussed at length with 1-2 hour roll-out to launch, automated roll-out, no static fire in future, etc.  Doubling the launch rate with same ground ops crew halves the per launch cost.  The former is postponed except for fairing recovery... but it will resurface again (maybe in 1-2 years).  Fairing recovery seems incongruous until you realize that cost, though small, is seen as significant down the road... not a good sign for those who believe that there is little cost reduction possible from this point forward.

It is possible to get to $20-30M on this path in next few years.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/29/2016 01:15 am
When I look at the cost of F9 operations optimisticly but with a spreadsheet backing up my estimations I do not see costs (internal to SpaceX and no -profit) getting as low as $20M. My lowest number for costs (not price) [full reusability] is ~$23M with a price of ~$30M. Note this price is also a profit reduction per launch ($7M of profit vs current). But the real shocker here is that FH could have as low of a cost (not price) of $30M and a price of $40M. While that $23M for F9 could be shaved down as much as $3M (refurbishment cost 0) the FH would see a reduction of $9M making an FH cost (not price) nearly the same as an F9 per launch. Litterally just $2M different even if the manufacturing costs are amortized accross 20 launches.

On another note is that once SpaceX figures out what their costs are for reuse they could get to the "it does not matter if it is launch #1 or #20 the price is the same". In this scenario, it takes only 2 succesfull flights of a booster to break even with all costs. If the average is 20 flights except the very infrequent failure that would cause the booster to not be reused if recovered or not recovered SpaceX will not have many cases if any where they don't break even on costs for a booster. Once SpaceX is at this point then the all flights have same price and that price is the used booster price. SpaceX sacrifices $1-4M [20 down to 5 flights per booster] in profit, maybe. They could have reduced their costs for the reuse that increased their profit to equal the amortization charge for manufacturing costs.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ikarie XB-1 on 05/29/2016 02:50 am
I like how they aim to standardise on a single GTO launch/landing trajectory, regardless of payload flown. This should commoditise their operations to a degree and could lower per mission NRE costs. The same trick could probably work for S2 as well, should they ballasted payloads for nominal mass and always target the same orbital parameters. Clearly it's more valuable to customise the S2 trajectory to minimise sat's final delta-V to GTO than it is to save a bit of launch costs. Could 2~3 standard flight profiles to choose from do the trick?

Also, I imagine the number of different payload interfaces required by different sat buses is finite and not very high. Once they've been through most, isn't the initial NRE and effort amortised? From that point on, it's just the variable costs.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Nilof on 05/29/2016 05:04 am
I think a lot of people here are forgetting that SpaceX is vertically integrated. They do not have significant marginal costs associated with making new Falcon 9 rockets, so calculations of the internal cost of a booster are mostly meaningless unless you consider it as an alternative cost. SpaceX has mostly fixed costs due to keeping their workforce employed, and the marginal costs that they do have (such as range use) would be mostly independent of reuse.

Reuse isn't really a way to reduce costs, it is a way to increase the launch rate without increasing the size of the production line. A booster doesn't get any cheaper because you reuse it if the fixed costs and the launch rate stay constant. You need to take advantage of the new capabilities of your launcher.

Regarding the cost of the F9/FH variants, I interpret the F9 cost as the price for a new rocket, but which SpaceX is allowed to use in their development program. In other words, the cost is reduced because it helps SpaceX to introduce reuse earlier, which allows them to expand their launch rates in the future making this a direct investment in their growth from their perspective. From an investor's perspective, company growth is a form of profit, so reduced cashflow due to investments in growth are reasonable.

For FH it could be either way, but I don't expect SX to ever fly the FH without side core RTLS because of how early the boosters separate.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Geron on 05/29/2016 07:32 am
What I think a lot of people are missing is that SpaceX has ambitions beyond building first stages.

I believe that when they master first stage reuse and have an armada of falcon 9 and heavy first stages, they will not leave their production lines idle. Instead they will either be building payloads in the form of satellites or dragons; or habitats; cargo; isru infrastructure; and/or methalox rocket parts.

The falcon 9 rocket line is a means to an end. When I visited SpaceX I was told that the vision is to have many many launch sites launching almost daily. They plan to get their with methalox rockets as they are easier to reuse.

Their track record for successful landings with falcon 9 is looking better every month, but coking may be an issue with multiple reuses with rp 1.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/29/2016 11:46 am
When I look at the cost of F9 operations optimisticly but with a spreadsheet backing up my estimations I do not see costs (internal to SpaceX and no -profit) getting as low as $20M. My lowest number for costs (not price) [full reusability] is ~$23M with a price of ~$30M. Note this price is also a profit reduction per launch ($7M of profit vs current). But the real shocker here is that FH could have as low of a cost (not price) of $30M and a price of $40M. While that $23M for F9 could be shaved down as much as $3M (refurbishment cost 0) the FH would see a reduction of $9M making an FH cost (not price) nearly the same as an F9 per launch. Litterally just $2M different even if the manufacturing costs are amortized accross 20 launches.

On another note is that once SpaceX figures out what their costs are for reuse they could get to the "it does not matter if it is launch #1 or #20 the price is the same". In this scenario, it takes only 2 succesfull flights of a booster to break even with all costs. If the average is 20 flights except the very infrequent failure that would cause the booster to not be reused if recovered or not recovered SpaceX will not have many cases if any where they don't break even on costs for a booster. Once SpaceX is at this point then the all flights have same price and that price is the used booster price. SpaceX sacrifices $1-4M [20 down to 5 flights per booster] in profit, maybe. They could have reduced their costs for the reuse that increased their profit to equal the amortization charge for manufacturing costs.

Would you be willing to share your spreadsheets? (Maybe you have on another thread, so a link would be great.) Would be very interested in seeing what factor(s) you find to be holding the cost/price at this level -- I agree that this is achievable, but not a floor.  Also, is this $23M figure for RTLS or down range recovery?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 12:30 am
I think a lot of people here are forgetting that SpaceX is vertically integrated. They do not have significant marginal costs associated with making new Falcon 9 rockets, so calculations of the internal cost of a booster are mostly meaningless unless you consider it as an alternative cost. SpaceX has mostly fixed costs due to keeping their workforce employed, and the marginal costs that they do have (such as range use) would be mostly independent of reuse.

Reuse isn't really a way to reduce costs, it is a way to increase the launch rate without increasing the size of the production line. A booster doesn't get any cheaper because you reuse it if the fixed costs and the launch rate stay constant. You need to take advantage of the new capabilities of your launcher.

Regarding the cost of the F9/FH variants, I interpret the F9 cost as the price for a new rocket, but which SpaceX is allowed to use in their development program. In other words, the cost is reduced because it helps SpaceX to introduce reuse earlier, which allows them to expand their launch rates in the future making this a direct investment in their growth from their perspective. From an investor's perspective, company growth is a form of profit, so reduced cashflow due to investments in growth are reasonable.

For FH it could be either way, but I don't expect SX to ever fly the FH without side core RTLS because of how early the boosters separate.

I think this overstates a few things including how vertically integrated they are.

1) Employment is not a fixed cost. People can be laid off or hired as needed. In SpaceX's case, they will likely be re-tasked where possible to other funded ventures such as CC or satellites with no real bearing on the cost per rocket.

2) As long as SpaceX is reusing only the first stage, they will need to produce fresh second stages for every launch.

3) They do in fact have suppliers, material costs, and transportation costs.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 12:35 am
I don't know how much it has been stated, but the real issue I'm seeing is with second stage reuse being tied to Mars transportation. I'm not quite understanding the business case for reusing an interplanetary stage that makes 4 trips per decade (assuming Mars launch windows) unless it also doubles as a well-used transportation system to Earth orbit. However Elon is adamant that the Falcon line will take care of the satellite market for the foreseeable future and has indicated that the second state reuse plans aren't compatible with the Falcon rocket architecture.

I attached a porkchop plot showing the delta-v space for Mars as the sum of hyperbolic excess velocities. Sorry, I didn't spend any time making it pretty. The point the plot makes is simply that the Mars windows are not really voluntary.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/30/2016 12:39 am
I think this overstates a few things including how vertically integrated they are.

1) Employment is not a fixed cost. People can be laid off or hired as needed. In SpaceX's case, they will likely be re-tasked where possible to other funded ventures such as CC or satellites with no real bearing on the cost per rocket.

2) As long as SpaceX is reusing only the first stage, they will need to produce fresh second stages for every launch.

3) They do in fact have suppliers, material costs, and transportation costs.

These points are true but the point remains that the variable costs of an additional launch are the comparison point for  reuse savings calculations.

1)  If the are reusing more and the cannot layoff (I don't think they do the between launches) or need to hire due to increased cadence, that is a variable cost in the short term.

2)  2nd Stages are a variable cost until they get to reuse.

3)  Suppliers, material, and transportation are only variable to the extent they are variable.  If they have to rent Range Resources that's variable.  If they need more SPAM, that's variable.  If they don't integrate transportation, that's variable except for gas and maintenance.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 12:47 am
I think this overstates a few things including how vertically integrated they are.

1) Employment is not a fixed cost. People can be laid off or hired as needed. In SpaceX's case, they will likely be re-tasked where possible to other funded ventures such as CC or satellites with no real bearing on the cost per rocket.

2) As long as SpaceX is reusing only the first stage, they will need to produce fresh second stages for every launch.

3) They do in fact have suppliers, material costs, and transportation costs.

These points are true but the point remains that the variable costs of an additional launch are the comparison point for  reuse savings calculations.

1)  If the are reusing more and the cannot layoff (I don't think they do the between launches) or need to hire due to increased cadence, that is a variable cost in the short term.

2)  2nd Stages are a variable cost until they get to reuse.

3)  Suppliers, material, and transportation are only variable to the extent they are variable.  If they have to rent Range Resources that's variable.  If they need more SPAM, that's variable.  If they don't integrate transportation, that's variable except for gas and maintenance.

Everything you're saying is true. I think that SpaceX will naturally have to reorganize their entire organization to optimize around reuse eventually anyway and I think that means that they will try to eliminate fixed costs where they have the luxury to even if they lose some of their vertical integration. That should be on the table at least.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/30/2016 01:24 am
I don't know how much it has been stated, but the real issue I'm seeing is with second stage reuse being tied to Mars transportation. I'm not quite understanding the business case for reusing an interplanetary stage that makes 4 trips per decade (assuming Mars launch windows) unless it also doubles as a well-used transportation system to Earth orbit. However Elon is adamant that the Falcon line will take care of the satellite market for the foreseeable future and has indicated that the second state reuse plans aren't compatible with the Falcon rocket architecture.

I attached a porkchop plot showing the delta-v space for Mars as the sum of hyperbolic excess velocities. Sorry, I didn't spend any time making it pretty. The point the plot makes is simply that the Mars windows are not really voluntary.
Realize that the interplanetary stage will be reused multiple times per each mission cycle:
1) launch
2) refuel and fire again from Earth orbit toward Mars
3) landing on Mars
4) refuel and ascent from Mars
(possible refueling in Mars orbit, perhaps not required)
5) landing on Earth

The stage has to be intact at each stage, not shedding parts that it'll need in the rest of the mission. So you ALREADY need a reusable stage (really a spacecraft, but I'll stick with your terminology) just so the architecture works, so you might as well use it again. And getting 10-15 mission cycles out of each manufactured stage makes a non-insignificant reduction in cost! ...even if it is over 2-3 decades.

...additionally, SpaceX will require the stage to do refueler duty and cargo duty. They need the stage to be capable of a lot more than 10-15 reuses in those configurations.

And yeah, the potential cost reduction of 4-5 mission cycles per decade is still important. They need the cost as low as possible in order to achieve the sub-$500k/person ticket price, and at the full swing of 80,000 people to Mars per year, they'll need that reuse just to keep up.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/30/2016 01:49 am
The reusable second stage will be shuttling enormous amounts of propellent and cargo in LEO, roughly 5000 tonnes per 100 people sent to Mars. That's not feasible with disposable upper stages.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 01:53 am
I don't know how much it has been stated, but the real issue I'm seeing is with second stage reuse being tied to Mars transportation. I'm not quite understanding the business case for reusing an interplanetary stage that makes 4 trips per decade (assuming Mars launch windows) unless it also doubles as a well-used transportation system to Earth orbit. However Elon is adamant that the Falcon line will take care of the satellite market for the foreseeable future and has indicated that the second state reuse plans aren't compatible with the Falcon rocket architecture.

I attached a porkchop plot showing the delta-v space for Mars as the sum of hyperbolic excess velocities. Sorry, I didn't spend any time making it pretty. The point the plot makes is simply that the Mars windows are not really voluntary.
Realize that the interplanetary stage will be reused multiple times per each mission cycle:
1) launch
2) refuel and fire again from Earth orbit toward Mars
3) landing on Mars
4) refuel and ascent from Mars
(possible refueling in Mars orbit, perhaps not required)
5) landing on Earth

The stage has to be intact at each stage, not shedding parts that it'll need in the rest of the mission. So you ALREADY need a reusable stage (really a spacecraft, but I'll stick with your terminology) just so the architecture works, so you might as well use it again. And getting 10-15 mission cycles out of each manufactured stage makes a non-insignificant reduction in cost! ...even if it is over 2-3 decades.

...additionally, SpaceX will require the stage to do refueler duty and cargo duty. They need the stage to be capable of a lot more than 10-15 reuses in those configurations.

And yeah, the potential cost reduction of 4-5 mission cycles per decade is still important. They need the cost as low as possible in order to achieve the sub-$500k/person ticket price, and at the full swing of 80,000 people to Mars per year, they'll need that reuse just to keep up.

The biggest problem I'm seeing isn't so much whether they have the opportunity to use it 10-15 times in 2-3 decades. It's whether it is even possible to iterate towards something that enduring and robust and fund the initial R&D and capital costs for something with such a long time horizon.

That obligatory bout of skepticism aside, I think it would do to sort of lay out the requirements for 80,000 people per year and $500k/passenger.

1) You have 4-5 launch windows per decade to lift 800,000 people onto TMI. If each ship holds 100 people, then that's 800 launches total. If you aren't loitering a city full of people in orbit, then that's at least 160 launches during window years or 3 per week if they are spread out over the year. With three pads, this is 1 per week per pad however, this still means people will have to loiter in parking orbit for up to 6 months.

2) If you reuse each interplanetary stage on subsequent launches, in one decade you have to manufacture at least 160 interplanetary ships or about 16 per year during the ramp up.

3) The cost per interplanetary ship must be at maximum $250m assuming zero fixed launch costs if the costs are to be recovered in one decade.

My take is that (1) is unprecedented, (2) is feasible but currently unfunded, and (3) is unprecedented but possible. The key is again producing a manned spaceship that lasts at least a decade and can function unaided for at least 6-9 months at a time for a sustainable cost. I agree that the mission architecture itself assumes that  craft survives planetary entry in a flight-ready condition, but that's only one of the technological blockers. There are no historical references for this kind of thing.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 01:57 am
The reusable second stage will be shuttling enormous amounts of propellent and cargo in LEO, roughly 5000 tonnes per 100 people sent to Mars. That's not feasible with disposable upper stages.

5,000 tons? About a quarter of the LEO mass will make it to Mars. That's quite the haul.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/30/2016 02:01 am
The reusable second stage will be shuttling enormous amounts of propellent and cargo in LEO, roughly 5000 tonnes per 100 people sent to Mars. That's not feasible with disposable upper stages.

5,000 tons? About a quarter of the LEO mass will make it to Mars. That's quite the haul.

Musk estimated 10 cargo flights per passenger flight, all hauling 100t of payload and probably about as much dry mass (engines, structure, heatshield, etc.). That's thousands of tons in LEO, once you include propellent.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 02:03 am
The reusable second stage will be shuttling enormous amounts of propellent and cargo in LEO, roughly 5000 tonnes per 100 people sent to Mars. That's not feasible with disposable upper stages.

5,000 tons? About a quarter of the LEO mass will make it to Mars. That's quite the haul.

Musk estimated 10 cargo flights per passenger flight, all hauling 100t of payload and probably about as much dry mass (engines, structure, heatshield, etc.). That's thousands of tons in LEO, once you include propellent.

I think the likely explanation is that we're not talking about a 100t payload fully reusable launcher and/or we're not talking about only 100 people because I'm fairly certain that we're not talking about a 5,000 ton starship.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/30/2016 02:08 am
There will be no frequent missions to Mars until there's full reuse. None.
Even with full reuse, SpaceX needs low cost turn around (gas up, perhaps reapply some ablative material here and there, and fly again).
I predict there will be a handful of FH missions to Mars (either with a M1D or Raptor 2nd stage) and just a handful of non Mars planetary missions.
I feel thorn apart here at NSF, since I'm part scientist, part engineer, part businessmen, with the norm of the overwhelming majority here being not business people at all.
SpaceX needs tens of billions in free cashflow to finish MCT design and build the first 10 MCT vehicles.

Stop mixing things up. Right now SpaceX primary concern is have a profitable cash cow, while designing Raptor engine+rockets, some of those rockets will be built to launch sats to GTO, and do some sort of Cargo/Crew missions to LEO (probably with a shuttle sized vehicle that will do about 2x a current cargo mission plus a full Dragon Crew load per flight).

Sorry to burst your bubble. Maybe I deserve a good smacking from the moderators.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/30/2016 02:09 am
I don't see how a bigger expendable launcher is any cheaper. Colonization isn't feasible unless the launcher is cheaply and quickly reusable, including the second stage. That's true no matter what the scale.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 02:13 am
I don't see how a bigger expendable launcher is any cheaper. Colonization isn't feasible unless the launcher is cheaply and quickly reusable, including the second stage. That's true no matter what the scale.

I don't mean to suggest that expendable launchers are cheaper. I'm just wondering how feasible it is to lower the cost of an interplanetary stage by aiming to reuse it 4 times/decade. It sort of seems like the goal you have after you've been building something similar for decades and all the investors are lined up though there is something to be said for "getting to the point." Unaided, this would take at least a century of steady progress and the combined resources of all space-faring nations it would seem.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/30/2016 02:26 am
The vast majority of launches will not be interplanetary though. To send a 11 ships to Mars (one with 100 passengers, ten with 100t cargo each) will require not 11 but about 50 launches of 100t each to LEO (to orbit the 5000t I mentioned before).

A cheaply reusable super heavy lift upper stage is absolutely indispensable to making colonization work.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 02:33 am
The vast majority of launches will not be interplanetary though. To send a 11 ships to Mars (one with 100 passengers, ten with 100t cargo each) will require not 11 but about 50 launches of 100t each to LEO (to orbit the 5000t I mentioned before).

A cheaply reusable super heavy lift upper stage is absolutely indispensable to making colonization work.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a ship that is equally useful as a LEO hauler and a manned Mars expedition ship. I would assume two separate versions under normal circumstances.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: DAZ on 05/30/2016 02:44 am
It would seem having so much expensive infrastructure sitting around for 2 years at a time with nothing to do would doom such a project to economic failure.  Trying to move 100 – 800 people every 2 years with an eventual goal of 800,000 – 1 million spread over 2 to 3 decades would also appear to be a recipe for failure.  It would make more sense for the 1st few cycles to carry 10 – 20 people at a time with their associated equipment to establish the initial colony and then expanded the system into something much more efficient.

As has probably been discussed before, using a Mars cycler with transit stations at both Earth and Mars would make much more sense.  The cargo would go by SEP which could be launched at any time and spiral out until they can leave during the appropriate window.  When it gets closer to the appropriate window the people can launch and stay at a station at ELL2 and then leave to catch the Mars cycler.  At the Mars end they could depart and wait at the Mars station to catch the landing craft down.

The beauty of using a Mars cycler is that almost all of the living space, radiation shielding, power and food/water production is only launched once.  It doesn’t slow down at the Mars end nor at the earth end.  By using the infrastructure to build more infrastructure you are more akin to building a road than just a simple boat like the Mayflower.

On each cycle SEP tugs could bring more modules and supplies to the Mars cycler.  These cycles would be on both the inbound and the outbound trip thus doubling the number of opportunities.  The people would only be going on the outbound side.  On each outbound the people could add the new modules and thus increase the number of people this cycler could handle on each trip.  This means the system could be expanded and thus make use of all of the infrastructure over the entire departure Mars cycle instead of just being clustered around a small 2 to 3 week window.

As most of the people would be going outbound at 1st there would only be in need in the beginning for an outbound cycler.  As commerce increases eventually a Mars – Earth inbound cycler could be constructed.  In the beginning the most logical cycler to use would be the Aldrin cycler.  At the moment there are 18 other cyclic orbits known.  Each of these with different time periods per cycle and earth to Mars transit times.  But as the commerce between Earth and Mars increases it might make sense to add at least some of these other cyclic periods to the overall system.  This would increase the number of transit times available to Mars from approximately once every 2 years to an occasional of multiple times every 2 years.

What SpaceX’s long-term plans are only SpaceX knows.  But it would seem that the economics would force the maximum use of the infrastructure if a long-term project is to have any chance at all of succeeding.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 02:54 am
It would seem having so much expensive infrastructure sitting around for 2 years at a time with nothing to do would doom such a project to economic failure.  Trying to move 100 – 800 people every 2 years with an eventual goal of 800,000 – 1 million spread over 2 to 3 decades would also appear to be a recipe for failure.  It would make more sense for the 1st few cycles to carry 10 – 20 people at a time with their associated equipment to establish the initial colony and then expanded the system into something much more efficient.

As has probably been discussed before, using a Mars cycler with transit stations at both Earth and Mars would make much more sense.  The cargo would go by SEP which could be launched at any time and spiral out until they can leave during the appropriate window.  When it gets closer to the appropriate window the people can launch and stay at a station at ELL2 and then leave to catch the Mars cycler.  At the Mars end they could depart and wait at the Mars station to catch the landing craft down.

The beauty of using a Mars cycler is that almost all of the living space, radiation shielding, power and food/water production is only launched once.  It doesn’t slow down at the Mars end nor at the earth end.  By using the infrastructure to build more infrastructure you are more akin to building a road than just a simple boat like the Mayflower.

On each cycle SEP tugs could bring more modules and supplies to the Mars cycler.  These cycles would be on both the inbound and the outbound trip thus doubling the number of opportunities.  The people would only be going on the outbound side.  On each outbound the people could add the new modules and thus increase the number of people this cycler could handle on each trip.  This means the system could be expanded and thus make use of all of the infrastructure over the entire departure Mars cycle instead of just being clustered around a small 2 to 3 week window.

As most of the people would be going outbound at 1st there would only be in need in the beginning for an outbound cycler.  As commerce increases eventually a Mars – Earth inbound cycler could be constructed.  In the beginning the most logical cycler to use would be the Aldrin cycler.  At the moment there are 18 other cyclic orbits known.  Each of these with different time periods per cycle and earth to Mars transit times.  But as the commerce between Earth and Mars increases it might make sense to add at least some of these other cyclic periods to the overall system.  This would increase the number of transit times available to Mars from approximately once every 2 years to an occasional of multiple times every 2 years.

What SpaceX’s long-term plans are only SpaceX knows.  But it would seem that the economics would force the maximum use of the infrastructure if a long-term project is to have any chance at all of succeeding.

The Aldrin Cycler has several drawbacks. I've attached it here.

1) The synodic period of Earth-Mars cycling is extremely long and by definition requires multi-year transits. (Note the long semi-major axis). Each cycler class is a multiple of one synodic period (2.41 years).

2) Feasible launch windows are infrequent no matter how many cyclers exist since cyclers that come in on off years have huge excess velocities and are generally non-Hohmann.

3) Rendezvous are one-shot, risky, and require a LOT more delta-v.

4) You still have to transport the cargo and the fuel. In the end, you're just saving on structural mass and the fuel to accelerate structural mass.

If it's just about the optimal orbital mechanics of the Earth-Mars transit system, I'll post a paper here later on this summer I'm working on for NSF to tear apart if you wish. I'm working on something hopefully better than cyclers.

Attached after the image is a recent-ish paper with cycler classes and the source of the image.

Edit: I just wanted to add that most cyclers assume a gravity assist at Earth encounter so they come quite close to the planet at great velocity. In order for an SEP tug to meet a cycler, it would have to accumulate quite a bit of velocity and be a good bit of the way to Mars. It also might be functionally impossible to go from LEO to a cycler orbit with SEP in a time frame not measured in years. We're talking about mili-Newtons and tons and an extremely large delta-v. At the very least the rendezvous may happen after Mars.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/30/2016 02:57 am
Probably three: manned, cargo, and propellent tanker, differing mostly in how payload is stored. They would use the same launcher and engines, and probably be built on the same production line. All would need about the same payload and Delta v performance, and all would need to be capable of Mars and/or Earth EDL.

I don't see how building one version to be reusable while the others are expendable saves any cost or time. They all need landing capability (and return, for Mars ships) anyway.

The vast majority of launches will not be interplanetary though. To send a 11 ships to Mars (one with 100 passengers, ten with 100t cargo each) will require not 11 but about 50 launches of 100t each to LEO (to orbit the 5000t I mentioned before).

A cheaply reusable super heavy lift upper stage is absolutely indispensable to making colonization work.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a ship that is equally useful as a LEO hauler and a manned Mars expedition ship. I would assume two separate versions under normal circumstances.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 02:59 am
Probably three: manned, cargo, and propellent tanker, differing mostly in how payload is stored. They would use the same launcher and engines, and probably be built on the same production line. All would need about the same payload and Delta v performance, and all would need to be capable of Mars and/or Earth EDL.

I don't see how building one version to be reusable while the others are expendable saves any cost or time. They all need landing capability (and return, for Mars ships) anyway.

The vast majority of launches will not be interplanetary though. To send a 11 ships to Mars (one with 100 passengers, ten with 100t cargo each) will require not 11 but about 50 launches of 100t each to LEO (to orbit the 5000t I mentioned before).

A cheaply reusable super heavy lift upper stage is absolutely indispensable to making colonization work.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a ship that is equally useful as a LEO hauler and a manned Mars expedition ship. I would assume two separate versions under normal circumstances.

I never suggested anything should be expendable.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/30/2016 03:11 am
I never suggested anything should be expendable.

Fair enough. Reusability isn't optional, for many reasons, so the cost savings for long term stuff will have to come from component commonality with hardware that's flown very often.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/30/2016 03:33 am
I'm just wondering how feasible it is to lower the cost of an interplanetary stage by aiming to reuse it 4 times/decade. It sort of seems like the goal you have after you've been building something similar for decades
...
I don't disagree with this part. There will be a massive upfront investment required to get any reusable system flying. The feasibility of it all is TBD.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/30/2016 06:05 am
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a ship that is equally useful as a LEO hauler and a manned Mars expedition ship. I would assume two separate versions under normal circumstances.

I see it working out this way: A MCT will have an engine section and a cargo or passenger section. The engine section will have tanks big enough to work as a tanker as well. With tanks that big it can do fast transfer even in unfavorable launch windows. It just needs another fueling flight.

So a new MCT will start its life as a tanker. No passenger or cargo section added, saving weight. Only a cap with heatshield on top. It will do 5 or whatever flights as a tanker until it is proven reliable. Then a cargo or passenger section gets added and it will do ~10 or whatever flights to Mars. At the end of its life the cargo section gets removed and it works as a tanker again. This way you can get at least 40 launches out of the expensive part, the engine section.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 05/30/2016 06:42 am
Gucky, I like the plan. However, I would put less Mars flights on the menue. If they keep flying the same engine section ~10 times to Mars, they will need to support the same hardware, software, all the replacement parts, etc for about 30 years. Thats a pretty long time. It is more likely that technology advances fast enough to make a replacement of an MCT as a Mars shuttle every ~3 trips more likely. That way, they can phase out old technology every 10 years or something which is much more reasonable.

It doesnt really hurt either because the engine section can do just more tanker runs, or even cargo to LEO or GTO missions. In fact, a MCT for GTO missions would be quite cost efficient since the entire rocket gets re-used naturally. Dont know what the payload limits would be though.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/30/2016 06:45 am
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around a ship that is equally useful as a LEO hauler and a manned Mars expedition ship. I would assume two separate versions under normal circumstances.

I see it working out this way: A MCT will have an engine section and a cargo or passenger section. The engine section will have tanks big enough to work as a tanker as well. With tanks that big it can do fast transfer even in unfavorable launch windows. It just needs another fueling flight.

So a new MCT will start its life as a tanker. No passenger or cargo section added, saving weight. Only a cap with heatshield on top. It will do 5 or whatever flights as a tanker until it is proven reliable. Then a cargo or passenger section gets added and it will do ~10 or whatever flights to Mars. At the end of its life the cargo section gets removed and it works as a tanker again. This way you can get at least 40 launches out of the expensive part, the engine section.

I'm not sure the engine is the most expensive part of a manned interplanetary spacecraft.

What you prescribed is what I understood as the best case scenario, but that puts a floor on the price because the most complex and novel component, the cargo and passenger interplanetary stage, is the one that will be reused the least and will have to last an incredibly long time to be reused at all. Literally years in deep space. It raises the $15m question for Elon. Is his $15m 1/10th or so of a spaceship to Mars because in normal accounting, that's off by (at least) two orders of magnitude.

Gucky, I like the plan. However, I would put less Mars flights on the menue. If they keep flying the same engine section ~10 times to Mars, they will need to support the same hardware, software, all the replacement parts, etc for about 30 years. Thats a pretty long time. It is more likely that technology advances fast enough to make a replacement of an MCT as a Mars shuttle every ~3 trips more likely. That way, they can phase out old technology every 10 years or something which is much more reasonable.

It doesnt really hurt either because the engine section can do just more tanker runs, or even cargo to LEO or GTO missions. In fact, a MCT for GTO missions would be quite cost efficient since the entire rocket gets re-used naturally. Dont know what the payload limits would be though.

Here is my second worry beyond the frequency of interplanetary stage reuse. How do you iterate towards the correct design? We all watched SpaceX redesign the Falcon 9 over the years before they got the stages to land and we can expect several more iterations before they achieve "rapid" reuse. That's just the nature of bleeding-edge engineering. How many chances do they get to nail down MCT's architecture in a way that really optimizes against any contingency in a sustainable way? How many flights before you even put people on that voyage? Rationally, the process to reusable interplanetary spacecraft should take at least half a century if we were in a rush.

However, rather than just be skeptical, might I suggest that perhaps a more sustainable path to this kind of thing might actually be the moon after all? So many technologies can be qualified getting there and it's only a few days away. Tickets will sell just as well or better too.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/30/2016 08:04 am
It doesnt really hurt either because the engine section can do just more tanker runs, or even cargo to LEO or GTO missions. In fact, a MCT for GTO missions would be quite cost efficient since the entire rocket gets re-used naturally. Dont know what the payload limits would be though.

I see the problem with a long use time. However it is the only way to get many reuses. Airframes of planes are the same. They get used a long time despite changes to newer versions. Keep attachment points and fuel type the same so that different iterations can be supported by the same GSE.

Unfortunately you cannot get around this by doing more tanker flights. The ratio Mars/tanker is fixed at betwen 3-1 and 4-1. The only development that could get many flights and a shorter life span would be large demand for flights in cislunar space. This may happen but I doubt Elon Musk counts on it when doing his Mars design.

I don't see the cost for passenger compartments that high, at least not when they are produced in significant numbers. The complex and expensive part will be development. Development of ECLSS will be ongoing and changes towards lower production and maintenance costs will be implemented in existing stages I expect. It will be an evolutionary process as early passenger MCT will not have to support 100 people.

Edit: The propulsion unit has more cost than the engines. There are engines, thrust structure, tanks - probably insulated, the avionics, the sensor suite and above all the cost of integrating everyting.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/30/2016 11:55 am

<snip>

Here is my second worry beyond the frequency of interplanetary stage reuse. How do you iterate towards the correct design? We all watched SpaceX redesign the Falcon 9 over the years before they got the stages to land and we can expect several more iterations before they achieve "rapid" reuse. That's just the nature of bleeding-edge engineering. How many chances do they get to nail down MCT's architecture in a way that really optimizes against any contingency in a sustainable way? How many flights before you even put people on that voyage? Rationally, the process to reusable interplanetary spacecraft should take at least half a century if we were in a rush.

However, rather than just be skeptical, might I suggest that perhaps a more sustainable path to this kind of thing might actually be the moon after all? So many technologies can be qualified getting there and it's only a few days away. Tickets will sell just as well or better too.

I believe that iteration toward the correct design has begun.  F9 is demonstrating or will demonstrate a set of technologies and approaches that will be directly applicable to BFR (and FH obviously), so that 15,000,000lbf booster can be born reusable -- a few iterations will no doubt be needed, but this is much more affordable if the basic scheme is proven.  In a similar manner, a reusable second stage can and I believe will be built for FH to iterate MCT technologies, those needed on Earth end, in transit, and at Mars end.  Refueling technology will be proven early with a reusable FH tanker.  Red Dragon is building on iterations with the tech on Dragon 2 which is building on the tech from Dragon (1).  EDL with RD will lay foundation for EDL with FH reusable second stage -- mini-MCT if you will.  And on and on.  It's iterations all the way down.

This is the key to SpaceX's potential to realize their vision... each thing they do is done in light of that vision.  By the time MCT flies, there will be little but the enormity (scale) factor to be iterated.

Notes:
1) The Moon is slated to be used as a proving ground.
2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...


Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/30/2016 12:58 pm
2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...

So you expect them to land people around 2030? Sounds reasonable to me.  :)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/30/2016 02:45 pm
Everything you're saying is true. I think that SpaceX will naturally have to reorganize their entire organization to optimize around reuse eventually anyway and I think that means that they will try to eliminate fixed costs where they have the luxury to even if they lose some of their vertical integration. That should be on the table at least.

I look at it from a different perspective.  It seems that reorganization would be one that would make sense from a business standpoint where generating maximum profit relative to how much skin SpaceX has in the game.  While certainly some vertical integration like components might go somewhere else, but I wouldn't think there would be any large move in this direction.

I'm thinking the goal is to build a enterprise in the commercial launch business with comfortable enough margins that easily supports fixed costs that have the capacity to address marginal launches without incurring anything other than the variable costs.  This provides the opportunity for a closely add some launches for only the variable cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/31/2016 03:46 pm

Unfortunately you cannot get around this by doing more tanker flights. The ratio Mars/tanker is fixed at betwen 3-1 and 4-1. 

Not sure I agree with this in all cases. If a given airframe is, at birth, either a tanker, or a cargo hauler, or a passenger carrier, then yes, you are correct.  But IF an airframe can carry modular payloads (or can serve as a tanker when empty of a module altogether) then yes, there is a way to get more flights on an airframe in a given time period.  As described above. What's the hole in the logic?

Even if it's a one time (not costless) conversion, there still is a way to do the conversion and get more flights...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/31/2016 04:09 pm
My reasoning is that the ratio between tank flights and flights to Mars is fixed. 3 to 4 tanker launches are needed for one flight to Mars.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jim on 05/31/2016 04:30 pm

2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...


That is slow.  Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/31/2016 04:52 pm
My reasoning is that the ratio between tank flights and flights to Mars is fixed. 3 to 4 tanker launches are needed for one flight to Mars.

Suppose you don't replace an airframe until you get 10 flights on it. How many synods before you replace? Assume a static fleet to make this contrived example simpler

If you have 5 airframes. 4 tanker and 1 cargo (assume cargo is all you are doing, again, to make this contrived example simpler) ... then yes, it takes 10 synods before you get 10 flights on an airframe. 

But if you have only 2 airframes, that can play whatever role you want...  call them A1 and A2
Synod 1: A1 plays the role of cargo. A2 tanker. A1 launches 1 time. A2 launches 4 times to fill up A1. Total launches 5.
Synod 2: A2 plays the role of cargo. A1 tanker. A2 launches 1 time.  A1 launches 4 times to fill up A2. Total launches now 10. (5 for each airframe)

repeat that pattern for 2 more synods, and you'll find that you got to 10 launches each in just 4 synods.

If you add new builds (say, for example adding 2 new builds a synod) and increase the number of outbound cargo/passenger flights as you can, it gets to even fewer synods before you replace.  Just put it in a spreadsheet and work it, you'll convince yourself.

This depends on two things: fast turnaround, so the same tanker can be used more than once, and convertability with little effort.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/31/2016 04:53 pm

2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...


That is slow.  Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)

It is slow! For sure. But everything is slower these days and SpaceX doesn't have a significant fraction of GDP at its disposal, this is (a lot closer to) self funded.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/31/2016 05:22 pm

2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...


That is slow.  Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)

Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: bstrong on 05/31/2016 05:31 pm
My reasoning is that the ratio between tank flights and flights to Mars is fixed. 3 to 4 tanker launches are needed for one flight to Mars.

The fact that the system is designed/optimized for Mars doesn't mean it can't be gainfully employed in cislunar space, as well. Assuming BFS can also be put to use for missions requiring less performance than Mars, the ratio doesn't have to be fixed.

IMO, figuring out how to keep all the parts of the system fully utilized between Mars windows is one of the key challenges for closing the Mars business case.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jim on 05/31/2016 05:57 pm

Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.

Still wrong.  Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/31/2016 06:01 pm

2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...


That is slow.  Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)

It is slow! For sure. But everything is slower these days and SpaceX doesn't have a significant fraction of GDP at its disposal, this is (a lot closer to) self funded.

Assume for the sake of the argument you have Musk's 100x reuse economically, with at or better performance levels he posts. Assume a political imperative for 2-3 nations to go up against  1-2 nations in a similar "space race" for a few "long stay" HSF Mars landing missions (not flag and footprints).

Assume you finish Vulcan/Atlas/Ariane and SLS Block 1b as ELVs.

Then you have "public/private" partnership to go to Mars, say at 50% funding of Apollo/Saturn.

With them busting butts instead of stepping on each others ... I'd bet good money you'd have something in three synods. And more set by the timing/success of the synods then anything else.

Unlike Apollo/Saturn we know what we're doing (for Mars), have the capability/experience. And the right tools. And can work together when it matters. Economies of scale/reuse might dominant above other considerations.

It currently doesn't matter. So we don't work together. Other considerations dominate. So each steps on each others ...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/31/2016 06:22 pm
Sure. A partnership of organizations using expendables could do something, and something significant, for public expenditure levels of 50% of Apollo, with some clear headed thinking about how to spend that budget thoughtfully and efficiently. 

But I suspect that Musk can and will do it for less, and that it will be a larger footprint (in the sense of tonnes landed and infrastructure built). But that's my ideology talking, I freely admit. Blackstar would no doubt say exactly the opposite.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/31/2016 07:02 pm
Sure. A partnership of organizations using expendables could do something, and something significant, for public expenditure levels of 50% of Apollo, with some clear headed thinking about how to spend that budget thoughtfully and efficiently.

Because govt "overspending" private coupled with private efficiencies govt can't imagine, plus govt + heritage doing what they do best instead of what they both do worst ... matters. Not just American govt/industry either, they are all in the same boat.

Quote
But I suspect that Musk can and will do it for less, and that it will be a larger footprint (in the sense of tonnes landed and infrastructure built). But that's my ideology talking, I freely admit.

He has to take lots longer (>15 synods). Also his footprint per synod will vary due to economic conditions, such that planning will tend to drastically "compress" as each synod approaches. That's my "reality undistortion field" talking.

Quote
Blackstar would no doubt say exactly the opposite.

IMHO you should listen to the "post RD" Blackstar. His current perspective (and biases) are irrelevant because the communities he's close to, have yet to get the effects of ULA/SX "business rewriting", which are unstable as well ATM.

When Shelby finds peace with SX eating 20-30% of ULA's "lunch" as steady state, there's a hint that things will be stabilizing. Don't see it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: woods170 on 05/31/2016 07:43 pm

Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.

Still wrong.  Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.
Yeah, but not manned missions to Mars.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/31/2016 08:10 pm

Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.

Still wrong.  Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.

How many 'groups' in this non-monolithic organization are sending people to Mars?
(What woods170 said)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: llanitedave on 05/31/2016 08:14 pm

2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...


That is slow.  Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)

NASA didn't have to make a profit while paying its own way there.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dante2308 on 05/31/2016 08:37 pm

2) By the time SpaceX lands people on Mars, they will have been working toward this reusable interplanetary spacecraft for a quarter century.  They work fast...


That is slow.  Moon landing was 8 years from the start of the program and 19 from starting from complete scratch (first large US indigenous liquid fueled rocket)

The Apollo Program is significantly less complex than a resuable-based Mars colonization program in almost every way imaginable and would have been beyond the reach of NASA at the time of Apollo. Any manned exploration of Mars on any time scale cannot be declared "slow" when it happens. There are no other data points.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 05/31/2016 08:39 pm

Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.

Still wrong.  Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.

They may be able to do things quickly, but do they actually do things quickly (or allowed to)? Not quite the same thing - example would be useful.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/31/2016 08:44 pm

Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.

Still wrong.  Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.

They may be able to do things quickly, but do they actually do things quickly (or allowed to)? Not quite the same thing - example would be useful.

An example that includes going to Mars, that is...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/31/2016 08:52 pm
I have this vision of Jim beset by a horde of yapping yorkies... all saying "but Mars is different" or "NASA's not monolithic" or "NASA isn't (mostly) self funding this" etc....

Hmm.. now how do I look as a terrier???

I think the point is made, all analogies break down if you look at them too closely. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: llanitedave on 05/31/2016 09:28 pm

Hmm.. now how do I look as a terrier???

Quite snapped together, if I do say so myself.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jim on 05/31/2016 11:11 pm

Relative to NASA today, it is light speed.

Still wrong.  Again, NASA is not monolithic, there are groups within that can do things quickly.

They may be able to do things quickly, but do they actually do things quickly (or allowed to)? Not quite the same thing - example would be useful.

An example that includes going to Mars, that is...

Spacex hasn't made it to Mars at this time.  Quit talking like it is a given
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: kch on 05/31/2016 11:20 pm
I have this vision of Jim beset by a horde of yapping yorkies ...

I've had that vision for quite some time (and I'd bet Jim has, too)!  ;)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 06/01/2016 12:11 am
I am reluctant to shut down interesting lines of discussion but there seem to be at least two that are tangential to the purpose of this thread.   I leave it to my betters whether that observation is accurate or needs redress.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: LouScheffer on 06/01/2016 12:15 am
I have this vision of Jim beset by a horde of yapping yorkies... 
Quite off topic, but believe it or don't, people have been killed by Yorkies...  See  Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States  between 1979 and 1998 (http://sfdogmauling.com/fataldogattacks.pdf), page 839.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 06/01/2016 02:48 am
I am reluctant to shut down interesting lines of discussion but there seem to be at least two that are tangential to the purpose of this thread.   I leave it to my betters whether that observation is accurate or needs redress.
I think he's telling you lot to get back on topic. (clearly he's not talking to ME... er wait...)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 06/01/2016 09:20 am
My reasoning is that the ratio between tank flights and flights to Mars is fixed. 3 to 4 tanker launches are needed for one flight to Mars.

You are correct, I didnt think of that. Yes, the number of trips to Mars vs. the number of tanker flights is fix if you only consider Mars flights. Therefore, it is not possible to launch a BFS thrust structure segment more often to reduce the time it needs to be in service for the entire fleet. Only for individual stages as Lar demonstrated.

I would suggest to look at LEO delivery runs. BFR/BFS might be designed with Mars as target but I don't see a reason why it can't be used also to deliver satellites and payloadsto LEO/GTO/Moon. The launches to GTO might even outnumber launches to Mars initially. Also for the planned internet constellations, BFR would be ideal because it could loft a lot of inexpensive satellites at once to an orbital plane. There are many more uses in BFR besides Mars even today or in the near future. Space Tourist hotels would be an other destination that is .. frankly .. even more likely to emerge than a Mars colony.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 06/01/2016 01:01 pm
I am reluctant to shut down interesting lines of discussion but there seem to be at least two that are tangential to the purpose of this thread.   I leave it to my betters whether that observation is accurate or needs redress.
I think he's telling you lot to get back on topic. (clearly he's not talking to ME... er wait...)

The OP clearly intended a discussion of Falcon reuseability and costs, but the title of the thread is not very specific. All the MCT discussion probably better fits in the MCT speculation thread, but I don't know that it's really that far OT here.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Pipcard on 07/10/2016 02:36 am
The $62 million price point for Falcon 9 v1.2 is for 5.5 t to GTO (http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities).

So what then is the price of an F9 when launching its full expendable capacity of 8.3 t to GTO? Is $62 million dependent on something like barge reuse?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 07/10/2016 03:30 am
The $62 million price point for Falcon 9 v1.2 is for 5.5 t to GTO (http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities).

So what then is the price of an F9 when launching its full expendable capacity of 8.3 t to GTO? Is $62 million dependent on something like barge reuse?
$62 million almost certainly doesn't actually require reuse, but it may be that SpaceX is charging more if the customer requires or desires an expendable launch.

Some of that may be market segmentation, but a lot of it is SpaceX going, "Hey, reuse is central to our goals long-term, and if you're not going to allow us to attempt reuse, it's going to cost you more." But that doesn't mean they can't do just fine with $62 million and a fully expended Falcon 9.

tl;dr: Price is not cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/10/2016 01:52 pm
The $62 million price point for Falcon 9 v1.2 is for 5.5 t to GTO (http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities).

So what then is the price of an F9 when launching its full expendable capacity of 8.3 t to GTO? Is $62 million dependent on something like barge reuse?
$62 million almost certainly doesn't actually require reuse, but it may be that SpaceX is charging more if the customer requires or desires an expendable launch.

Some of that may be market segmentation, but a lot of it is SpaceX going, "Hey, reuse is central to our goals long-term, and if you're not going to allow us to attempt reuse, it's going to cost you more." But that doesn't mean they can't do just fine with $62 million and a fully expended Falcon 9.

tl;dr: Price is not cost.
SpaceX is not yet ready to give discounts where the booster is recovered. So the price of $62M for 5.5mt or 8.3mt is the same at this point. The difference being the ability to "test" recovery. Once reuse is normalized then the price for 5.5mt will drop but the price for 8.3mt would stay at $62M. $62M is the expendable price. SpaceX has yet to set the reuse price.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: edkyle99 on 07/10/2016 02:27 pm
SpaceX is not yet ready to give discounts where the booster is recovered. So the price of $62M for 5.5mt or 8.3mt is the same at this point.
You may be right, but there is to date no evidence to support this assertion.  SpaceX web site specifically says $62 million for "up to 5.5 metric tons to GTO", while also saying that max payload to GTO is 8.3 metric tons.  To me that sounds like higher price for more than 5.5 tonnes.  It also suggests, to me, that payload beyond 5.5 tonnes requires expending the first stage.

We'll see.

 - Ed Kyle
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/11/2016 04:41 pm
SpaceX is not yet ready to give discounts where the booster is recovered. So the price of $62M for 5.5mt or 8.3mt is the same at this point.
You may be right, but there is to date no evidence to support this assertion.  SpaceX web site specifically says $62 million for "up to 5.5 metric tons to GTO", while also saying that max payload to GTO is 8.3 metric tons.  To me that sounds like higher price for more than 5.5 tonnes.  It also suggests, to me, that payload beyond 5.5 tonnes requires expending the first stage.

We'll see.

 - Ed Kyle
Yes we will see.

But I believe the 5.5mt value is a notice to future payloads that if they are less than that weight then they could take advantage of a lower price, whatever that may be in the future. While larger payloads would have to pay the current price.

Also there may be as many as three prices for an F9:

- As low as $42M for an RTLS flight. The up to 30% reduction stated by SpaceX's Ms Shotwell.

- As low as $52M for an ASDS flight. This is because there is a higher risk of stage loss during recovery and the artificial life shortening because of this would be an higher price to average out the lower recovery rate. I used a recovery rate for ASDS of 80% and for RTLS a very high value at near the same as the launch failure rate of 95%. The added cost due to lower recovery rate adds up to $10M to the costs.

- $62M for an expendable flight.

In general the ASDS recovery rate is still a "?". As is the RTLS recovery rate. Both of these values play into reusability costing.

A BTW is that an FH all RTLS price could be as low as $52M meaning there would after FH is reliably flying no expendable F9s and the offer for them would be removed. This also meands that a FH ASDS center recovery would be $62M and a FH all ASDS recovery as high as $82M. Not much of a savings over the current $90M price.

But here the $90M price is a question. And that is whether the price is an all expended or for at least booster recovery. There is some indication that the price is for at least booster recovery (ASDS).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: cuddihy on 07/14/2016 11:15 am

A BTW is that an FH all RTLS price could be as low as $52M meaning there would after FH is reliably flying no expendable F9s and the offer for them would be removed. This also meands that a FH ASDS center recovery would be $62M and a FH all ASDS recovery as high as $82M. Not much of a savings over the current $90M price.

But here the $90M price is a question. And that is whether the price is an all expended or for at least booster recovery. There is some indication that the price is for at least booster recovery (ASDS).

Jim has implied on another thread that this has actually already effectively happened -- i.e. that SpaceX, no matter what the website says, is actually no longer accepting F9 expendable orders, and only would by exception, presumably for explicit, non-monetary reasons like prestige or perhaps something critical to a market segment like EELV. Makes sense if their backlog is now such that FH would be able to fly those missions fully reusable, but the timeline to prove out FH is still uncertain.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: IntoTheVoid on 08/15/2016 03:49 pm
From:SpaceNews - SpaceX successfully launches JCSAT-16 (http://spacenews.com/spacex-successfully-launches-jcsat-16-satellite-faces-crowded-end-year-manifest/)
Quote
SES has said it wants a substantial discount on SpaceX’s already low price in exchange for being the first customer. But SES has made clear to investors that regular use of partially reusable rockets is a key component of SES’s strategy for reducing capital spending. SES insurance underwriters have said they will not insist on major premium increases to cover a launch with a reused first stage.

Hadn't seen that bold nugget mentioned and this seemed the best place.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: First Mate Rummey on 08/15/2016 05:34 pm
I read the 62M$ for 5.5t as the price/mass that permits a (potential) recovery. I suspect in the future they'll keep the mass limitation but lower the price when reusing core is standard. If you really want a new core the price will increase. If you have to orbit > 5.5t you'll also have to pay more since the first stage cannot be recovered.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: dror on 08/15/2016 06:16 pm
...

But I believe the 5.5mt value is a notice to future payloads that if they are less than that weight then they could take advantage of a lower price, whatever that may be in the future. While larger payloads would have to pay the current price.

Also there may be as many as three prices for an F9:
...

From:SpaceNews - SpaceX successfully launches JCSAT-16 (http://spacenews.com/spacex-successfully-launches-jcsat-16-satellite-faces-crowded-end-year-manifest/)
Quote
SES has said it wants a substantial discount on SpaceX’s already low price in exchange for being the first customer. But SES has made clear to investors that regular use of partially reusable rockets is a key component of SES’s strategy for reducing capital spending. SES insurance underwriters have said they will not insist on major premium increases to cover a launch with a reused first stage.

I belive, as has been suggested elsewhere, that prices will be lower for reused stages, not for reusable ones.
At least at start and for quite a long time.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/15/2016 06:33 pm
I read the 62M$ for 5.5t as the price/mass that permits a (potential) recovery. I suspect in the future they'll keep the mass limitation but lower the price when reusing core is standard.

SpaceX lists the Falcon 9 for $62M on their website, with the ability to place up to 5.5mT to GTO.

Quote
If you really want a new core the price will increase.

I think you have that backwards.  The current price is for new core, and SpaceX reserves the right to recover that core.  I don't think the customer has a choice in that respect.  However, SpaceX will sell a service that exceeds the 5.5mT capability, and as we've already seen they may not try to recover the stage, and I'm not sure we know what the price of that launch is.

But if SpaceX perfects reusability the price for the 5.5mT to GTO is supposed to be less than $62M if the customer chooses a stage that has previously flown.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/15/2016 06:38 pm

But no, they aren't free.

You have two costs here (at least). The cost of the RLV above that of the ELV it could have been with the same technology base, and the cost of recovery and non-trivial, non "gas-n-go" handling prior to vehicle integration.

These are non-trivial costs, a fair fraction of the total LV cost.

Free in the sense that whether or not they cost more to manufacture than a stage designed to be expendable-only, they have been paid for on their first flight. 

You don't know that. You'd have to have access to SX financials to know that.

All you know is that the costs have been expended to build, test, qualify, integrate, launch and recover a vehicle. Note that "recover" cost. More than an ELV.

For all you know, they could have a financial model that batches into, say, 100 launches, with a phase in of reuse, where a part of the "reuse to come" has already been part of the LV provider's embedded fixed cost.

Quote
That will change later, when SpaceX lowers its price in response to the assumption of stage re-use, but as long as launches are priced based on the assumption of an expended booster, then that successfully returned boosters higher cost doesn't really matter, as its cost has already been recovered. So "Free" in that sense.
Source for these three, broad, assumptions?

The financial "good news" is that it appears that the flight test program is drawing to a close.

The uncertainties here are in what changes to the CONOPs/vehicle will do to costing.

Again, not an enthusiast here but a businessman with pragmatics. You do know it is a business that is very pragmatic ...

Shotwell already announced that the price of the first ride on a relaunched booster would be about 30% lower, so that claim is not exactly an assumption.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: deruch on 08/18/2016 03:09 am
The current price is for new core, and SpaceX reserves the right to recover that core. 

The current price is for a launch service for payloads up to 5.5mT to GTO.  It doesn't say anything about the type of core.  Assuming SpaceX is totally serious about their reuse plans and that the booster stages are actually capable of many reflights (i.e. more than just 3 or 4), they'll have to stop differentiating between "new" and "previously flown" boosters.  In the long run, with many multiple reuses, the only price differentiation that makes sense is whether (and possibly the calibrated likelihood) they can recover the booster on a mission.  In which case, charging more for missions that will preclude recovery makes perfect sense.

It makes sense for SpaceX to offer a discount to current customers willing to accept the risk of early adopters and to use those missions and their testing to determine exactly what the flight number/type limits are for their recovery.  But after that initial discount period, and again assuming everything works out, I imagine they'll just move to an overall lower price for the offered launch service that is agnostic to whether the booster is new or used. 

There just aren't enough missions on their current manifest that will require expended stages.  With the impressive performance gains they've been able to eke out of the Falcon 9 and their equally impressive achievements in improving the successful landing rate, they are likely to be attempting recovery of the boosters on very nearly all currently manifested missions.  How large a booster fleet do they need?  They'll move production to upper stages and only need a few boosters to make up for failed landings and fleet retirement as booster flight limits are reached.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/18/2016 04:44 am
The current price is for new core, and SpaceX reserves the right to recover that core. 

The current price is for a launch service for payloads up to 5.5mT to GTO.  It doesn't say anything about the type of core.

As I recall, at least Gwynne Shotwell has addressed this specifically and said that for now their customers will have the option to choose unflown cores or previously flown cores.  AND, if they choose previously flown cores they get a discounted price, which is supposedly around 70% the full price.

Quote
Assuming SpaceX is totally serious about their reuse plans and that the booster stages are actually capable of many reflights (i.e. more than just 3 or 4), they'll have to stop differentiating between "new" and "previously flown" boosters.

I agree that at some point in the future it won't matter.  But since reusability has not been proven or validated yet, and there are potentially unknown risks, SpaceX differentiates the difference between a never-flown core and a previously-flown core by using a different purchase price for those two options.

Quote
There just aren't enough missions on their current manifest that will require expended stages.

So far SpaceX is exceeding their initial projected recovery rate, which if reusability is perfected could mean that SpaceX could move quicker to a higher mix of reused cores.  It will depend on what their customers want though.

Quote
How large a booster fleet do they need?  They'll move production to upper stages and only need a few boosters to make up for failed landings and fleet retirement as booster flight limits are reached.

There are a number of business assumptions SpaceX is making that we don't have insight into.  As a scheduling professional I can make a number of assumptions, but without knowing what the future "demand" will be it's difficult to forecast what they will do.

And if a 1st stage core can be reflown 10 times, then yes, there won't be a need to build new 1st stage cores very often, and the current production line will just stay busy building 2nd stages.  Which is not a bad problem to have if that happens...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 08/18/2016 11:36 pm
The current price is for a launch service for payloads up to 5.5mT to GTO.  It doesn't say anything about the type of core.  Assuming SpaceX is totally serious about their reuse plans and that the booster stages are actually capable of many reflights (i.e. more than just 3 or 4), they'll have to stop differentiating between "new" and "previously flown" boosters.

I like this articulation and feel it is likely to represent how the pricing model will work.  They will discount for some number of launches confirming reusability but after that they set the price of the launch service to account for demand and strategic objectives with addons to the base launch service extra.  Most importantly, it is my opinion that the base price will be based on the market and their strategic objectives and not specifically a reflection of the launch cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/18/2016 11:56 pm
Most importantly, it is my opinion that the base price will be based on the market and their strategic objectives and not specifically a reflection of the launch cost.

That would be a change from how they price today, where so far they have offered extremely stable public pricing.  And for reusability to really catch on I think the pricing of their services needs to be predictable, since it is the combination of lower pricing and certainty that the prices won't rise that will allow companies to test out new products and services that take years to develop and get ready for launch.

If SpaceX is perceived to have prices that could rise unpredictably, I don't think the market will expand fast enough to need or use a fleet of reusable rockets - not when satellite owners will still want to keep other launch providers busy enough so that SpaceX doesn't become a monopoly (which no one should want).

My $0.02
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 08/19/2016 12:36 am
That would be a change from how they price today, where so far they have offered extremely stable public pricing.

I'm not suggesting the price will be unstable. 

I'm trying to suggest they will pick their stable price point that reflects the market, how they want to maximize monetizing it, and their strategic objectives.  I guess it's nuance but I feel like a lot of price discussion implicity assumes that the price point with be tied to their costs.  Like if they can save $40M with reuse they'll reduce the price point by $20M.  I think they will not do that.

Feels to me like they will pick a price point that maximizes how they monetize the market and (as a strategic objective) decide how much to concede from their savings.

 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/19/2016 12:48 am

That would be a change from how they price today, where so far they have offered extremely stable public pricing.  And for reusability to really catch on I think the pricing of their services needs to be predictable, since it is the combination of lower pricing and certainty that the prices won't rise that will allow companies to test out new products and services that take years to develop and get ready for launch.

If SpaceX is perceived to have prices that could rise unpredictably, I don't think the market will expand fast enough to need or use a fleet of reusable rockets - not when satellite owners will still want to keep other launch providers busy enough so that SpaceX doesn't become a monopoly (which no one should want).

My $0.02

I would expect the opposite... prices could fall unpredictably.  They are 'over achieving' on recovery, and reuse with little refurb appears in the near future.  If they end the year with ten cores in the barn and have relaunched twice successfully, then all launch prices could begin to collapse toward the discounted first reuse launches.

In this environment, companies could fairly confidently test new products and services.  As capital expenditures decrease (SES planning for example), a virtuous cycle may be established.

On the other hand, if you are competing in this launch market, investments in next generation of launchers (like Ariane 6 or Vulcan planning for a halving of 2010-2015 prices by 2020-2025) will always be behind the curve.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 08/19/2016 05:43 am
If they end the year with ten cores in the barn and have relaunched twice successfully, then all launch prices could begin to collapse toward the discounted first reuse launches.

That will eventually happen. However IMO not as long as there is a single customer who demands new cores. They could and would keep first launch prices and maybe even increase with shrinking production.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/19/2016 10:54 am
A two tier pricing structure may exist for a while, but as the cost gap grows (and additional reliability of the bathtub curve is understood) the high tier will disappear. IMO, of course.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: WmThomas on 08/19/2016 11:05 pm
If they end the year with ten cores in the barn and have relaunched twice successfully, then all launch prices could begin to collapse toward the discounted first reuse launches.

If SpaceX soon starts reflying stage one often, they will be pad and processing-constrained, not production-constrained. But without a system that lets them fly weekly or more often, they can't drop prices all that much.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 08/20/2016 12:25 am
If they end the year with ten cores in the barn and have relaunched twice successfully, then all launch prices could begin to collapse toward the discounted first reuse launches.

If SpaceX soon starts reflying stage one often, they will be pad and processing-constrained, not production-constrained. But without a system that lets them fly weekly or more often, they can't drop prices all that much.
They've shown a 2 week turnaround on a single pad and so far have maintained about 1 launch per month steady state. Once they have their 4 pads running at the same pace and can do test-firings on the pad for reused stages, I see no reason why they couldn't fly once or twice a week with all their pads combined.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/20/2016 01:07 pm
If they end the year with ten cores in the barn and have relaunched twice successfully, then all launch prices could begin to collapse toward the discounted first reuse launches.

If SpaceX soon starts reflying stage one often, they will be pad and processing-constrained, not production-constrained. But without a system that lets them fly weekly or more often, they can't drop prices all that much.
They've shown a 2 week turnaround on a single pad and so far have maintained about 1 launch per month steady state. Once they have their 4 pads running at the same pace and can do test-firings on the pad for reused stages, I see no reason why they couldn't fly once or twice a week with all their pads combined.

GS said two per month per pad... that's two per week as their goal.
Work is long underway to deal with pad and processing constraints... a 4-hour roll-out to launch was discussed on last launch broadcast.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/20/2016 04:23 pm
...
All you know is that the costs have been expended to build, test, qualify, integrate, launch and recover a vehicle. Note that "recover" cost. More than an ELV.

For all you know, they could have a financial model that batches into, say, 100 launches, with a phase in of reuse, where a part of the "reuse to come" has already been part of the LV provider's embedded fixed cost.
...
Again, not an enthusiast here but a businessman with pragmatics. You do know it is a business that is very pragmatic ...

As you say, it's a pragmatic business. Why would they leave money on the table (they could certainly charge more and still have more payloads than they can launch) and at the same time eat the cost of building, flying, recovering, and reusing the vehicle? That's bleeding money both ways for the last 5 years, with no end in sight.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 08/20/2016 06:38 pm
...
All you know is that the costs have been expended to build, test, qualify, integrate, launch and recover a vehicle. Note that "recover" cost. More than an ELV.

For all you know, they could have a financial model that batches into, say, 100 launches, with a phase in of reuse, where a part of the "reuse to come" has already been part of the LV provider's embedded fixed cost.
...
Again, not an enthusiast here but a businessman with pragmatics. You do know it is a business that is very pragmatic ...

As you say, it's a pragmatic business. Why would they leave money on the table (they could certainly charge more and still have more payloads than they can launch) and at the same time eat the cost of building, flying, recovering, and reusing the vehicle? That's bleeding money both ways for the last 5 years, with no end in sight.

Agreed.

Suggest that the reason would be that they are working to such a financial model as earlier suggested, as a long term pricing where the "early" launch services are under margin while longer term over margin, based on meeting performance objectives as recovery/reuse/gas-n-go progresses.

In that case, the "bleeding money" is like building construction financing, which has aggressive compounding in the "construction"/development phase, and a long "tail-off" during the operational phase-in following.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/20/2016 06:55 pm
How does the already announced reduced prices for rides on reused boosters fit into this financial model? If reuse is already costed in, there shouldn't be room to drop prices.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/20/2016 07:48 pm
I would expect the opposite... prices could fall unpredictably.  They are 'over achieving' on recovery, and reuse with little refurb appears in the near future.  If they end the year with ten cores in the barn and have relaunched twice successfully, then all launch prices could begin to collapse toward the discounted first reuse launches.

From a customer standpoint, price predictability is far better when you know what the highest price is, not the lowest.  And while prices could fall faster than the market expects, there is likely a floor that will occur fairly quickly due to inherent costs SpaceX has to cover if they want to make a profit - and they have to make a profit on Falcon 9 flights if they want to fund their Mars efforts.

Conversely, there is no real limit to how high prices can rise, so once customers see prices rising they will likely become very hesitant make long-term commitments that require stable pricing.

Quote
In this environment, companies could fairly confidently test new products and services.  As capital expenditures decrease (SES planning for example), a virtuous cycle may be established.

I think SpaceX is hoping to start some sort of virtuous cycle once they achieve some degree of reusability and lower launch prices.

Quote
On the other hand, if you are competing in this launch market, investments in next generation of launchers (like Ariane 6 or Vulcan planning for a halving of 2010-2015 prices by 2020-2025) will always be behind the curve.

These are great times for those of us outside of the launch services sector, but if/when SpaceX does achieve some degree of reusability that justifies significantly lower customer launch prices, there could be major changes ahead for the rest of the launch providers.  And that is both good and scary...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 08/20/2016 08:35 pm
Initially the norm is new booster and the customer deciding to fly with a reused booster an exception such that SpaceX will give them a discount. But soon thereafter the reused booster will be the norm such that the pricing will not be whether flying a new or used booster but on the risk of recovery.

For RTLS (low risk mostly LEO orbits) becomes the base price.

Then for ASDS (moderate to high based on payload and orbit specifics mostly GTO orbits) several prices or a published  algorithm that gives price based on orbit drop-of delta V, inclination and payload weight.

And finally the no recovery which SpaceX is unlikely to ever sell for F9's once FH is flying (except if the customer is willing to accept significant schedule uncertainty to wait for a close to end of life booster).

Same pricing would be true for FH but slightly more complex since there are more variations on recovery risks.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/20/2016 08:52 pm
How does the already announced reduced prices for rides on reused boosters fit into this financial model? If reuse is already costed in, there shouldn't be room to drop prices.

Reuse only reduces the hardware side of costs (assuming all of the hardware testing at McGregor, transportation across the country, etc. are included in hardware costs), and that only on the first stage; 25% of hardware cost is locked in as long as second stage is expended.  This is around half the cost of a launch, I believe.  The other half, launch operations, is where further reductions will be realized.  Increased launch rate, better flow, dropping tests like WDR/static fire, automated roll-out, quicker/more efficient turn-around of recovered boosters, etc. have great potential for equivalent or better cost reductions than the hardware side.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 08/20/2016 09:04 pm
Yes, with full absorption cost financial model no further improvement would be had.

Yes, CONOPs improvements would advance things independent of manufacturing.

Thirdly, new developments might affect/improve both still further.

Bottom line: we don't know how complicated the financial model is here, and our assumptions may be altogether wrong.

One of the things to keep in mind is that SX business model and financial skills are a very significant part of their strengths against global rivals, who only have to deal usually with attending to governmental financial needs, which don't require as much skill as commercial does.

Like bringing a shotgun to a water gun fight. Don't make the mistake of underestimating this effect.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/20/2016 09:29 pm
You think launch ops currently cost upwards of $30 million expended on every mission? That seems pretty high to me. And they would be eating most of that cost if hardware is $50 to 60 million (which Elons says it does) and they are only charging about $65 million for a commercial launch.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/20/2016 10:24 pm
You think launch ops currently cost upwards of $30 million expended on every mission? That seems pretty high to me. And they would be eating most of that cost if hardware is $50 to 60 million (which Elons says it does) and they are only charging about $65 million for a commercial launch.

Here is how I came to this cost break-out(based on EM's 75% of hardware cost is first stage):
Quote
The $19M reduction advertised by GS indicates that first stage cost minus retrieval/refurbishment equals that figure.  Assuming rework costs are $3-5M, the first stage hardware costs are $22-24M -- let's use $24M (40% or so of the launch price).  The first stage is quoted at 75% of the F9 hardware costs.  Entire F9 would then cost $32M.  This leaves $30M-ish for all other operations plus profit.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg1541230#msg1541230

YMMV
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/21/2016 01:03 am
You're assuming they want to pass the entire savings on to customer immediately. I think they will eventually, but first need to recover some of the many millions they spent developing a recoverable and reuseable system.

Musk has said
Quote
Our pricing right now assumes no reusability. None of our prices are contingent on that. Any reusability we're able to achieve would only allow us to reduce prices from where they are today. The more often we're able to fly and the more often we're able to reuse the stages and the less work they require between flights, the lower the costs can be. The boost stage is roughly 70% of the cost of a launch. So, if we're able to reuse it and refly it with minimal work between flights, and customers are comfortable with that - and it might take a few years for customers to get comfortable with that - then obviously there's as much as - ultimately - a 70% reduction from where things are today.

[emphasis mine]

http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-press-conference-at-the-national-press-club-2014-04-25
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/21/2016 12:50 pm
Hadn't seen that quote... there are two different EM statements, then, so we'll have to wait for clarification.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 08/21/2016 07:30 pm
You're assuming they want to pass the entire savings on to customer immediately. I think they will eventually, but first need to recover some of the many millions they spent developing a recoverable and reuseable system.

Musk has said
Quote
The boost stage is roughly 70% of the cost of a launch. So, if we're able to reuse it and refly it with minimal work between flights, and customers are comfortable with that - and it might take a few years for customers to get comfortable with that - then obviously there's as much as - ultimately - a 70% reduction from where things are today.

Is there something public that supports your belief they will eventually pass the entire savings to the customer?

That statement there by EM reads to me as information about the cost to SpaceX rather than a price (cost) to the customer.  There is a several major drivers of very big incentive for SpaceX to book profits.  Is it not the case that the GS 30% discount is simply the "bait" to hook the customers necessary to proof reliable reuse such that they can go back to selling "launch services" rather than having the customer worry about the booster details?

Absent better information, I'm inclined to believe that the 30% is temporary and that their standard list price for launch services when reuse is no longer considered any different from non-reuse will be the price that maximizes their profit minus the amount of their profit they are strategically willing to concede for various selfish reasons (PR, general boost to the industry).

It would be extraordinarily suprising to me if they passed anything close to full savings on to customers.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 08/21/2016 08:09 pm
The only thing that matters here regarding external pricing of services is "revenue recognition", e.g. when monies received becomes linked with expenses for that "sale", due to the GAAP "matching principle".

The rest is inside the financial model. The accounting to customer need not match the internal accounting, because they serve different purposes - costs in the organization are structured around operating groups/divisions such that those can be managed comprehensively as a measure of the organization as a whole.

For FAR (and other accounting), the structure is centered around other means to state the functioning of the activity, irrespective of the way that the firm's means for visibility/management of its operations, as the intent is to validate proper adherence/compliance to government rules/requirements. There can be many "layers" of this, that all need reconciliation.

Accounting here is by no means obvious and single valued. Musk does mean what he says, but that does not mean that in every way to account for it, the same gross discounts would apply/match, because all of the definitions/terms are written intentionally differently for those interests for their own agendas, and the differences are considerable as the agendas are. Maddeningly so, and often ironically in the desire for control/containment, they end up working against the agendas, because the rigidity of the forms of accounting neglect the flexibility of a situation.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/21/2016 11:33 pm
<snip>
Absent better information, I'm inclined to believe that the 30% is temporary and that their standard list price for launch services when reuse is no longer considered any different from non-reuse will be the price that maximizes their profit minus the amount of their profit they are strategically willing to concede for various selfish reasons (PR, general boost to the industry).

It would be extraordinarily suprising to me if they passed anything close to full savings on to customers.

The price that the current market can bear is significantly higher than they are charging, and a significant amount of their 'profit' is being rolled back into R&D for future unprofitable-to-the-extreme adventures.
Maximizing their profit doesn't seem to be their business model to date... certainly that could change, but I don't see any indication of that new M.O.   Do you?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ludus on 08/22/2016 02:13 am
SpaceX has been in a sort of start up mode until now. Trying to break into a very conservative market, having publicly posted low prices was a major selling point. Charging at the market wouldn't have built up a big manifest.

With a breakthrough into reusability they can do even better and have prices no competitor can even get close to. I don't think that implies cutting prices to match reduction in costs. Nothing about posting launch prices implies that they can't cut even better deals with particular customers for any reason they want though. They can price optimally to get all the business that's available to them. A major surge in launch rate and profits is necessary to pay for what would a couple years ago have seemed like ridiculously ambitious spending plans for BFR/MCT.

I don't think SpaceX ever intends to pay dividends or do anything with profits but reinvest them, but they'll need a lot to do what they're planning.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 08/22/2016 11:13 am
100 launches per year at 60m a launch = 6 billion dollars a year!
6 billion a year should pay for a lot.
Of course to get 100 launches per year? Is there that many launches from all providers now? At some point we need more people needing things launched. Which means lower prices.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/22/2016 12:32 pm
Is there something public that supports your belief they will eventually pass the entire savings to the customer?
...

"Eventually" is a long time, and SpaceX doesn't have profit as a primary mission. They NEED profit in the short term to accomplish their mission, but it's not their long-term goal.

Per Musk:
Quote
Well, cheaper is one way to say it, another way to say it is we're trying to make space accessible to everyone. We want it to be such that if you want to go to orbit or beyond, then you can do so. We want to open up space for humanity, and in order to do that, space must be affordable.

https://youtu.be/uBaLYDbk4fY

Also, IMO they will eventually face competitive pressure from someone (probably BO) and have to lower their prices.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 08/23/2016 08:23 pm
100 launches per year at 60m a launch = 6 billion dollars a year!
6 billion a year should pay for a lot.
Of course to get 100 launches per year? Is there that many launches from all providers now? At some point we need more people needing things launched. Which means lower prices.
A simple look at this year 2016 with 16 paid F9 flights and 3 of those being a CRS that's a total of paid for launches made this year of 16*$62M + 3 *$70M = $1.2B.

For 2017 the numbers will be bigger (hopefully) by 50% or close to $2B.
18-19 F9 + 3 FH + 3 CRS + 2 CC
19* $62M + 3*$90M +3*$70M + 2 *$80M = $1.8B

The question is that if 30% reduction in launch price is made in general (all launches no consideration of new or used booster) but a launch rate is increased by 30% to  25 F9 and 4 FH for 2018 over that of 2017 then the revenue will not drop year over year between 2017 and 2018.

Meaning that by 2020 they could easily be at $2B/year in launch operations + Dragon operations (Paid customers not SpaceX internal flights such as RD or "CommX"). If then add a %B or 2 from comm services revenue they could be headed into the $5B+ numbers by mid 2020's. Even with further reductions in launch services prices.

The major impact of lower launch costs is the goal of more launches seen in more tonnage to orbit, whether by using bigger boosters (BFR/BFS or FH) or launching reusable vehicles very often (more than once a week).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MP99 on 08/24/2016 07:09 am


You're assuming they want to pass the entire savings on to customer immediately. I think they will eventually, but first need to recover some of the many millions they spent developing a recoverable and reuseable system.

SpaceX ultimately want to drive a larger market - market elasticity.

I suspect they will reserve really low prices for customers who want to order multiple flights in new markets. They may be their own first customer here with their CommSat constellation.

Cheers, Martin
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 08/24/2016 01:13 pm
<snip>
 standard list price will be the price that maximizes their profit minus the amount of their profit they are strategically willing to concede for various selfish reasons

It would be extraordinarily suprising to me if they passed anything close to full savings on to customers.

The price that the current market can bear is significantly higher than they are charging, and a significant amount of their 'profit' is being rolled back into R&D for future unprofitable-to-the-extreme adventures.
Maximizing their profit doesn't seem to be their business model to date... certainly that could change, but I don't see any indication of that new M.O.   Do you?

That's not what I said.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 08/25/2016 08:09 am
That statement there by EM reads to me as information about the cost to SpaceX rather than a price (cost) to the customer. 
Correct.
Quote
There is a several major drivers of very big incentive for SpaceX to book profits. 
That would be the VC investors and any planned IPO.
Quote
Is it not the case that the GS 30% discount is simply the "bait" to hook the customers necessary to proof reliable reuse such that they can go back to selling "launch services" rather than having the customer worry about the booster details?
So you're not making a statement, you're asking a question. AFAIK SX have not set permanent pricing for the flights using reused 1st stages.
Quote
Absent better information, I'm inclined to believe that the 30% is temporary and that their standard list price for launch services when reuse is no longer considered any different from non-reuse will be the price that maximizes their profit minus the amount of their profit they are strategically willing to concede for various selfish reasons (PR, general boost to the industry).
IOW Charge customers what the market will bear and keep the rest of the profits. Just like every launch vehicle services company.
Quote
It would be extraordinarily suprising to me if they passed anything close to full savings on to customers.
Historically this is exactly what has happened.   That's the BAU model.

First off this would destroy a very large amount of good will that SX has built up. Secondly it gives no incentive for organizations that were considering an orbital solution as the least affordable option to solve their business problem to put it up their list of options.

Suspicion that the market would not expand enough to re-coup their investment given the kind of prices (other suppliers) thought they could give customers is probably the  reason why incumbents have never gone any further than paper exercises (usually government funded) to do this.

To get significant market growth SX has to lower it's prices for some of its launches to see price elasticity. How much is significant is a tricky question.  Some think 30$ is significant. Some do not.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Zach Swena on 08/25/2016 09:21 pm
It is easy to get confused between cost savings and prices.  Personally, I think spacex will make the reused booster prices just low enough to gauge how much growth room there is for lower priced launches.  Aside from trying to prove the launch market can grow, they probably will maximize profit as much or more then other launch providers for the reused vehicles.  The motivation for this would be to fund the development of their mars architecture. 

Once they have the mars rocket operational, they can probably do two stage RTLS for almost any payload class currently used.  That is the point where it makes sense for them to offer the extra low launch cost.  That way they can increase the flight rate of their super heavy fully reusable launcher with both minimal fixed and incremental cost compared to the current situation where they have certain manufacturing capacity limits on expended parts for each launch short of expanding factory and processing space.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: wannamoonbase on 08/25/2016 09:56 pm
It is easy to get confused between cost savings and prices.  Personally, I think spacex will make the reused booster prices just low enough to gauge how much growth room there is for lower priced launches.  Aside from trying to prove the launch market can grow, they probably will maximize profit as much or more then other launch providers for the reused vehicles.  The motivation for this would be to fund the development of their mars architecture. 
...

Agreed, and there are a lot of unknowns and risks while developing reuse.  It'd be foolish for SpaceX to go too quickly or give away too much early on.

The reuse price does need to be low enough to attract customers, but that maybe avoided by providing a quicker launch for some.  Wait for a new booster or fly soon on a refurbished vehicle.

Mars ain't cheap, make profit when and where they can.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 08/26/2016 01:34 pm
There is a several major drivers of very big incentive for SpaceX to book profits. 
That would be the VC investors and any planned IPO.
Incomplete answer and not at all the two most important ones that I was considering:

1)  Employees who can monetize some of their equity-based compensation via annual or bi-annual liquidity events. [Specifically discussed by EM in an Employee Letter]
2)  Capital to plow back into the broader goals.

Quote
Quote
Absent better information, I'm inclined to believe that the 30% is temporary and that their standard list price for launch services when reuse is no longer considered any different from non-reuse will be the price that maximizes their profit minus the amount of their profit they are strategically willing to concede for various selfish reasons (PR, general boost to the industry).
IOW Charge customers what the market will bear and keep the rest of the profits. Just like every launch vehicle services company.

Seriously?   How difficult is it to read the text in RED italics  underline bold and still conclude that IOW I'm saying MAX PROFITS?  Especially when I said "minus" "strategically" "concede[d profit for]" "PR, general boost to the industry"?


Quote
Quote
It would be extraordinarily suprising to me if they passed anything close to full savings on to customers.
To get significant market growth SX has to lower it's prices for some of its launches to see price elasticity. How much is significant is a tricky question.  Some think 30$ is significant. Some do not.

I'm simply trying to suggest, passing along all savings is IN MY OPINION very unlikely whereas others have said they expect that to be the case.  They have very valid reasons to not pass along a reasonably sized portion of the savings, reasons THAT FURTHER THE BROADER MISSION OF SPACE-X and reasons that are not Greedy or Just like every other Launch Vehicle Services Company. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Zach Swena on 08/26/2016 01:58 pm
I'm simply trying to suggest, passing along all savings is IN MY OPINION very unlikely whereas others have said they expect that to be the case.  They have very valid reasons to not pass along a reasonably sized portion of the savings, reasons THAT FURTHER THE BROADER MISSION OF SPACE-X and reasons that are not Greedy or Just like every other Launch Vehicle Services Company.

Agreed, the action (maximizing profit in the near term) is similar to other launch services companies, but the motivation is vastly different.  Spacex has a goal of developing the technology, equipment, and infrastructure to allow human space travel at the planetary level and beyond.  They will do what best forwards that goal.  I would also argue that waiting for the huge price cut till they have a fully reusable vehicle also makes the most sense if their goal was only to reduce launch prices drastically.  It does not make sense to expand the production of expendable components to the scale to meet the theoretical demand that they would need to close the business case for a minimum priced falcon 9 when they could spend that same capital to develop a fully reusable vehicle.  Full reuse also should have a much better ratio of profit to fixed infrastructure costs even at the lower price.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/26/2016 02:29 pm
...
I'm simply trying to suggest, passing along all savings is IN MY OPINION very unlikely whereas others have said they expect that to be the case.  They have very valid reasons to not pass along a reasonably sized portion of the savings, reasons THAT FURTHER THE BROADER MISSION OF SPACE-X and reasons that are not Greedy or Just like every other Launch Vehicle Services Company.

I did say EVENTUALLY in the post that started all this. Eventually, a number of factors will force them to pass on a significant majority of the launch cost reductions in the form of price cuts to a significant number of customers (though perhaps not all customers). Those factors could be competition, a desire to dramatically increase launch rate, and the simple fact that Mars colonization isn't feasible at current prices.

For instance, I doubt they will charge internal customers (e.g. CommX) prices much above reuseable cost for a launch. However, Falcon 9 might be retired or significantly different from it's current form by the time they do that for external customers.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/26/2016 02:31 pm
I'm simply trying to suggest, passing along all savings is IN MY OPINION very unlikely whereas others have said they expect that to be the case.  They have very valid reasons to not pass along a reasonably sized portion of the savings, reasons THAT FURTHER THE BROADER MISSION OF SPACE-X and reasons that are not Greedy or Just like every other Launch Vehicle Services Company.

Agreed, the action (maximizing profit in the near term) is similar to other launch services companies, but the motivation is vastly different.  Spacex has a goal of developing the technology, equipment, and infrastructure to allow human space travel at the planetary level and beyond.  They will do what best forwards that goal.  I would also argue that waiting for the huge price cut till they have a fully reusable vehicle also makes the most sense if their goal was only to reduce launch prices drastically.  It does not make sense to expand the production of expendable components to the scale to meet the theoretical demand that they would need to close the business case for a minimum priced falcon 9 when they could spend that same capital to develop a fully reusable vehicle.  Full reuse also should have a much better ratio of profit to fixed infrastructure costs even at the lower price.

I'm among those who think SpaceX will pass the bulk of savings from reuse on to customers immediately.

Reasoning goes like this:
1. SpaceX is currently funding a massive research and development effort with profit margin as-is*.
2. A significant portion of profit seems to be from CRS and other NASA support efforts, which are solidly booked into mid-2020s (over 20 NASA flights on manifest). These flights are also supplying a nice stream of shinny new, completely funded boosters.
3. Infrastructure development (heading for four launch sites, refurb facilities, barges, etc.) is based on launching greater than or equal to the stated goal of 2 per month per pad... 100 per year.
4. Lowest price in the market has fleshed out the SpaceX manifest to $10ish Billion and growing, though current manifest is only a quarter of the goal of 100 flights per year.
5. The missing link in this entire strategy is a display of market elasticity...
6. Lower prices -- reflecting the bulk of savings from reuse -- are the only path to keeping the manifest growing and priming the market elasticity pump.
7. Increasing flight rate with existing profit PER FLIGHT (on lower cost vehicles) improves profitability, so Raptor and BFR/BFS will have increasing R&D revenue.

So, increasing flight rate is the way SpaceX will maximize cash flow, near term and long.
My opinion only.

 * If it is true that SpaceX is losing lots of money on each flight, they'll be out of business soon. 
All of this will be OBE.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/26/2016 02:39 pm
...
 * If it is true that SpaceX is losing lots of money on each flight, they'll be out of business soon. 
...

They would have been out of business a long time ago if they were losing lots of money on every flight. They already have way too many negative cash-flow projects for launching Falcon 9's to be anything other than profitable.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 08/26/2016 02:50 pm
I did say EVENTUALLY in the post that started all this. Eventually, a number of factors will force them to pass on a significant majority of the launch cost reductions in the form of price cuts to a significant number of customers (though perhaps not all customers). Those factors could be competition, a desire to dramatically increase launch rate, and the simple fact that Mars colonization isn't feasible at current prices.

For instance, I doubt they will charge internal customers (e.g. CommX) prices much above reuseable cost for a launch. However, Falcon 9 might be retired or significantly different from it's current form by the time they do that for external customers.

I generally agree but here is how I see the factors you cited.

1)  Competition.  Starting from the premise of Reusability, I don't see where the competition is coming from but it may develop and pricing certainly permits and aggressive stance toward it if it develops.
2)  Launch Rate.  Starting from the premise of Reusability and more launch facilities, there's plenty of room to increase launch rate by consolidating the existing market and with modest pricing-based growth.  I tend to think it will be hard to drive growth that outweighs the reduced margins of very aggressive price reductions for typical commerical customers.  I could be wrong.  Just gut-feel.
3)  Mars.  One of the "Strategic Concessions" I've always envisioned are in-house launches (CommX, staging to LEO), pro-bono launches (for some kind of worthy non-commercial endeavor), and Mars Colonization at-cost launches.  The profits from the commercial side enable these low-margin services.



Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Kabloona on 08/26/2016 03:32 pm
You're assuming they want to pass the entire savings on to customer immediately. I think they will eventually, but first need to recover some of the many millions they spent developing a recoverable and reuseable system.

Musk has said
Quote
The boost stage is roughly 70% of the cost of a launch. So, if we're able to reuse it and refly it with minimal work between flights, and customers are comfortable with that - and it might take a few years for customers to get comfortable with that - then obviously there's as much as - ultimately - a 70% reduction from where things are today.

Is there something public that supports your belief they will eventually pass the entire savings to the customer?

That statement there by EM reads to me as information about the cost to SpaceX rather than a price (cost) to the customer.  There is a several major drivers of very big incentive for SpaceX to book profits.  Is it not the case that the GS 30% discount is simply the "bait" to hook the customers necessary to proof reliable reuse such that they can go back to selling "launch services" rather than having the customer worry about the booster details?

Absent better information, I'm inclined to believe that the 30% is temporary and that their standard list price for launch services when reuse is no longer considered any different from non-reuse will be the price that maximizes their profit minus the amount of their profit they are strategically willing to concede for various selfish reasons (PR, general boost to the industry).

It would be extraordinarily suprising to me if they passed anything close to full savings on to customers.

Let's not forget that Musk is not an ordinary businessman. He has talked at length publicly about the potential cost savings of reuse, implying that the customer would benefit from those savings. He seems truly passionate in the belief that spaceflight is too expensive *for the customer* and after all his talk, he's now in a position to start backing it up.

So yes, he has a business incentive to make a profit, but he also has a personal "mission" to reduce to cost of spaceflight, and I expect him to push the latter as aggressively as he can while keeping an eye on the bottom line.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 08/26/2016 04:07 pm
and I expect him to push the latter as aggressively as he can while keeping an eye on the bottom line.

That's all I mean by "strategic concessions off market rates". 

Maybe he wants to sell launches for a fraction over cost.  I don't think that allows for his other objectives and I think the other objectives require significantly less than a full concession.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 08/26/2016 07:31 pm

Maybe he wants to sell launches for a fraction over cost.  I don't think that allows for his other objectives and I think the other objectives require significantly less than a full concession.

I think musk may once again pull a rabbit out of his hat and think of some clever way to make his "other objectives" pay their way.
For example:
1. Very cheap delivery of science payloads to any surface in solar system.
Universities, NASA don't have to develop launch vehicle, entry, descent, landing. Could subtract a lot off science missions.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 08/28/2016 01:24 pm

For instance, I doubt they will charge internal customers (e.g. CommX) prices much above reuseable cost for a launch. However, Falcon 9 might be retired or significantly different from it's current form by the time they do that for external customers.
A significant cost driver will be running the Mars settlement programme afffordably. But that's an internal customer, so again does not help anyone outside looking for a lower $/lb price.

Maybe he wants to sell launches for a fraction over cost.  I don't think that allows for his other objectives and I think the other objectives require significantly less than a full concession.
1. Very cheap delivery of science payloads to any surface in solar system.
Universities, NASA don't have to develop launch vehicle, entry, descent, landing. Could subtract a lot off science missions.
It's an interesting idea but keep in mind NASA like developing EDL systems, they just don't like the bill for TPS.

OTOH being someone other than NASA and yet being able to put a science payload on Mars/Venus/Mercury/Whatever could be product SX could sell.

Agreed, the action (maximizing profit in the near term) is similar to other launch services companies, but the motivation is vastly different. 
From an economics PoV (note the thread title) who cares?

If you're right the net effect is no drop in price and I think that guarantees there will be no market expansion.  Those who can afford to run mission at SX's asking price will do so. Those who can't, won't.  :(

Things get interesting if they can keep the profit they earn per flight fixed IE their % margin rises. Then every additional flight they win benefits them regardless of market growth. Wheather this is a viable option is unclear.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jcc on 08/28/2016 07:03 pm
I think for the first few years of Falcon 9 reuse, they can't cut prices by anything more than 20-30% or even less, because the cost of recovery/referb/recert will still be relatively high. They will have to cut launch prices by something otherwise there will be a lot of "I told you it wasn't worth doing" by competitors and skeptics.

As the reuse process is streamlined, their real costs will decrease, so they could cut prices more, but they have every reason to let their margins and profits rise, and use that money to fund their Mars program.

They do want to take some of the existing market from competitors, but I don't think they have an interest in putting ULA, Orbital ATK, Arianespace and other out of business. The long term goal is to have much lower cost and higher reliability for space access for everyone, so the best way to guarantee that is having a competitive environment where companies actually compete. I think they do that by that pursuing vigorously a strategy to dramatically increase efficiency and encourage competition, rather than predatory pricing to kill competition.

To that I would add that if they do launch a 4000 satellite constellation, they will be creating a vastly expanded market all on their own. Other companies may do something similar, so that is thousands more birds. That is not a one-time thing, they have to maintain a constant launch cadence to maintain the constellation. In order to do this cost-effectively, launch services need to become much cheaper. So there is your market elasticity right there, increased based on cheaper launch prices.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/28/2016 08:30 pm
Unless I'm missing something, then just the rumoured $300m price tag of the Red Dragon mission in 2018 will already exceed the total gross profits earned from all of SpaceX's 16 or so commercial launches this year (based on the assumption that each launch currently costs them around $50m and that they're earning around $65m per launch).

So where are all the billions for BFR, MCT etc. going to come from? In my view, it has to come from steady profits earned from their ramped up commercial launch manifest in years to come. So, if they are currently earning $10m gross profit per $65m launch, I would expect them to try and earn at least the same profit number from a $30m launch in 2 years time. There is no reason why they cannot charge $30m per launch if their competitors are still charging $100m per launch or more.

That alone should allow them to scoop up most of the market, in addition to expanding the market size significantly. But even then, if they get to a hypothetical 100 launches per year, then a profit of $10m per launch still only earns them around $1bn in gross profit annually. This is still far too small to fund the type of Mars plans that Elon has lined up.

I think they should milk the cash cow while they have cornered the market, and build up as large a cash reserve as possible to sink into R&D for Mars colonization. Try and make $20m profit per launch. Or $30m. That is easily achievable if you are still 50% cheaper than your closest competitor.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 08/28/2016 09:07 pm
They don't need billions to do BFR/BFS. They need cash flow. They can get adequate cash flow if they raise launch frequency with the assistance of a flow of booster reuse. The tipping point is greater than 51 percent global telecom (plus other) payloads. That will cause a imbalance in costing of other LVs that force the bimodal distribution of launch pricing to split widely.

Other global LV's still continue, but once you sweep too much onto F9/FH manifest, then it become self-reinforcing.

Nor does it destabilize in down years - you just scale back operations, ready to scale up when needed.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/28/2016 09:12 pm
They don't need billions to do BFR/BFS. They need cash flow. They can get adequate cash flow if they raise launch frequency with the assistance of a flow of booster reuse. The tipping point is greater than 51 percent global telecom (plus other) payloads. That will cause a imbalance in costing of other LVs that force the bimodal distribution of launch pricing to split widely.

Other global LV's still continue, but once you sweep too much onto F9/FH manifest, then it become self-reinforcing.

Nor does it destabilize in down years - you just scale back operations, ready to scale up when needed.

Are you suggesting that they run it all on massive debt then, with just sufficient cash flow to service that debt on an ongoing basis? If so, that seems awfully risky to me, and reduces your ability to absorb mishaps, failures and unexpected challenges without breaking stride.

A healthy pot of money gives you that much more flexibility. If they can really reduce the cost of a launch to something around $20m, they can wipe out all the competition even if they charge $30m or $40m per launch for the next 5 years. And pour all of that surplus cash into building BFR and MCT.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: HIP2BSQRE on 08/28/2016 09:24 pm
They don't need billions to do BFR/BFS. They need cash flow. They can get adequate cash flow if they raise launch frequency with the assistance of a flow of booster reuse. The tipping point is greater than 51 percent global telecom (plus other) payloads. That will cause a imbalance in costing of other LVs that force the bimodal distribution of launch pricing to split widely.

Other global LV's still continue, but once you sweep too much onto F9/FH manifest, then it become self-reinforcing.

Nor does it destabilize in down years - you just scale back operations, ready to scale up when needed.

Totally agree...SpaceX for the next couple of years needs to raise launch frequency.  Most people on the board projected SpaceX doing 12 maybe 13 launches this year.  2016 will be the highest number of launches for SpaceX.  Now next year and 2018 with 3  or 4 launches sites - with no mishaps - I would expect SpaceX to be launching at least 24 times per year.  Now if you were ULA - would you not like to be launching 24 times a year and increasing?  Now - put in resuseability - I would take the those prices down to $50 million.  I can beat you they will find buyers for those launches.  They have too many buyers now - if the price is lower - demand will go up.  Remember the airforce thought the price for the recent contract that SpaceX won to be about $140 million.  If SpaceX raised the price of its launch to $100 million do you think ULA would have won?  Nope.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: the_other_Doug on 08/28/2016 09:26 pm
It's not exactly like SpaceX says "We want to fly Red Dragon" and someone else says "Great, that'll be $300 million, please."

You plan out the amount of spending you need to be doing -- sometimes by the fiscal year, sometimes by the quarter, sometimes even for a given month -- to get you to landing a Red Dragon on Mars.

You then arrange your cash flow to cover the spending that needs to be done.  Sometimes (often, actually) that cash flow has to be enhanced with things like bank loans and venture capital.  But if you have healthy revenues, you just continue to pay off old short-term loans and get new ones, and balance it all on the bigger payoffs projected for the near- and -medium-term future.

So, as long as SpaceX achieves the cash flows it has projected to cover the financial house of cards that every American corporation ends up playing with, there really isn't a problem from the funding side.  The corporate banking/VC/etc. funding system in the U.S. is designed to cushion and support corporate expansions much larger than this.

Of course, the economies of re-use will need to provide the anticipated profit margin for the house of cards to remain standing, I think...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/28/2016 09:29 pm
They don't need billions to do BFR/BFS. They need cash flow. They can get adequate cash flow if they raise launch frequency with the assistance of a flow of booster reuse. The tipping point is greater than 51 percent global telecom (plus other) payloads. That will cause a imbalance in costing of other LVs that force the bimodal distribution of launch pricing to split widely.

Other global LV's still continue, but once you sweep too much onto F9/FH manifest, then it become self-reinforcing.

Nor does it destabilize in down years - you just scale back operations, ready to scale up when needed.

Totally agree...SpaceX for the next couple of years needs to raise launch frequency.  Most people on the board projected SpaceX doing 12 maybe 13 launches this year.  2016 will be the highest number of launches for SpaceX.  Now next year and 2018 with 3  or 4 launches sites - with no mishaps - I would expect SpaceX to be launching at least 24 times per year.  Now if you were ULA - would you not like to be launching 24 times a year and increasing?  Now - put in resuseability - I would take the those prices down to $50 million.  I can beat you they will find buyers for those launches.  They have too many buyers now - if the price is lower - demand will go up.  Remember the airforce thought the price for the recent contract that SpaceX won to be about $140 million.  If SpaceX raised the price of its launch to $100 million do you think ULA would have won?  Nope.

This is what I mean.

Reduce the price just enough to price out the competition, while still raking in absurd profits. By stealing market share in that way, SpaceX will already increase their launches to 30 plus per annum, and then more after that.

Then, if they wish the market to grow further, they simply reduce prices by the amount necessary to achieve the market size they want. But there is no sense in throwing away profits by reducing your already low prices even further, just because you happen to have the ability to launch absurdly cheaply.

Rather rake in that money and put it to good use.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 08/28/2016 09:31 pm
It's not exactly like SpaceX says "We want to fly Red Dragon" and someone else says "Great, that'll be $300 million, please."

You plan out the amount of spending you need to be doing -- sometimes by the fiscal year, sometimes by the quarter, sometimes even for a given month -- to get you to landing a Red Dragon on Mars.

You then arrange your cash flow to cover the spending that needs to be done.  Sometimes (often, actually) that cash flow has to be enhanced with things like bank loans and venture capital.  But if you have healthy revenues, you just continue to pay off old short-term loans and get new ones, and balance it all on the bigger payoffs projected for the near- and -medium-term future.

So, as long as SpaceX achieves the cash flows it has projected to cover the financial house of cards that every American corporation ends up playing with, there really isn't a problem from the funding side.  The corporate banking/VC/etc. funding system in the U.S. is designed to cushion and support corporate expansions much larger than this.

Of course, the economies of re-use will need to provide the anticipated profit margin for the house of cards to remain standing, I think...

Fair point. It just seems to me that if you are eventually able to provide a service at 20% of the cost of your closest competitor, you can go a long way in avoiding the need for the house of cards.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jcc on 08/28/2016 10:19 pm
As far as Red Dragon, they will be spending a lot of cash to do it, but that is meant to be a demo mission to establish a regular service that will pay for itself and earn profit in its own right. Payload to Mars for a fraction of the cost of NASA, ESA or Russia, and larger payloads than anyone else has landed, just using FH and RD. And hopefully with a better success rate.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: CuddlyRocket on 08/29/2016 04:08 am
... they can wipe out all the competition ...
Reduce the price just enough to price out the competition ...

Neither of those is going to happen. Foreign governments would not permit it and even the US government has learned the lesson of what happens if you have only one launch provider. SpaceX should aim for a healthy market share but realise there's a political limit to what that share is.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/29/2016 04:02 pm
... they can wipe out all the competition ...
Reduce the price just enough to price out the competition ...

Neither of those is going to happen. Foreign governments would not permit it and even the US government has learned the lesson of what happens if you have only one launch provider. SpaceX should aim for a healthy market share but realise there's a political limit to what that share is.

SpaceX has already priced out the competition from the market segments they serve. But that won't last forever. Once they validate their business model, other competition will get into the market. And some might make it to market even sooner than that (Blue Origin, most likely).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 08/29/2016 10:22 pm
SpaceX has already priced out the competition from the market segments they serve. But that won't last forever. Once they validate their business model, other competition will get into the market. And some might make it to market even sooner than that (Blue Origin, most likely).
If by that you mean anything below 16 tonnes to LEO then you'd be right.

Once  you move to GTO it's a different story and a very different (unpublished) price, which is partly why Arianespace (along with it's considerably longer successful launch record) is still in business.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 08/29/2016 11:04 pm
...
Once  you move to GTO it's a different story and a very different (unpublished) price, which is partly why Arianespace (along with it's considerably longer successful launch record) is still in business.

SpaceX publishes prices for GTO launch: 62 million for 5.5 metric tons to GTO.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 08/30/2016 12:27 am
SpaceX has already priced out the competition from the market segments they serve. But that won't last forever. Once they validate their business model, other competition will get into the market. And some might make it to market even sooner than that (Blue Origin, most likely).
If by that you mean anything below 16 tonnes to LEO then you'd be right.

Once  you move to GTO it's a different story and a very different (unpublished) price, which is partly why Arianespace (along with it's considerably longer successful launch record) is still in business.
By the way, Ariane 5 had twice as many full (and partial) launch failures in its first 20 launches than SpaceX has had with Falcon 9. And SpaceX's launch rate (at least so far this year) is twice that of the usual Ariane 5 launch rate and is improving significantly every year. Arianespace's longer successful launch record will not last, and the counter is reset when they move to Ariane 6.

...if SpaceX continues to undercut Ariane, and as SpaceX hits more of its stride and approaches a similar reliability record, the situation will soon accelerate until Ariane 6, when the reliability record will flip.

The situation of Ariane vs SpaceX looks quite dire for Ariane given the weak sauce Ariane 6 proposal.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/31/2016 12:29 am
Quote
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said in March that the launch provider hopes to offer price reductions of as much as 30 percent to customers willing to launch their satellites on a reused rocket.

Quote
A 30 percent discount would put Falcon 9 prices near $43 million, at least compared to SpaceX’s online list price. Shotwell said further cuts could come as SpaceX improves on the time and cost of turning around flown rocket stages for another launch.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/08/30/ses-agrees-to-launch-satellite-on-flight-proven-falcon-9-rocket/

Listen to the boss.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 08/31/2016 01:27 am
...
Once  you move to GTO it's a different story and a very different (unpublished) price, which is partly why Arianespace (along with it's considerably longer successful launch record) is still in business.

SpaceX publishes prices for GTO launch: 62 million for 5.5 metric tons to GTO.


Ariane was on launch 200 or so when the first F9 flew six years ago.  They've since cancelled their Ariane 5 upgrade, are going to the Ariane 6 in early 2020s which is cutting price by 50%, and investing in reusable rocket technology.  The cost advantage that SpaceX has today doesn't yet reflect the 30% potential reduction for reusable booster or the economies of increased launch rate discussed by GS and quoted above.  By 2020 when Ariane 6 is being tested, the $100M euro target price could well be less favorable than the cost disadvantage Ariane 5 experiences today.  And the European community will be $5B euros into it...

Yes, Arianespace is still in business, but they are no longer on top and their relative trajectory is not looking good.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: philw1776 on 09/04/2016 09:33 pm
Quote
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said in March that the launch provider hopes to offer price reductions of as much as 30 percent to customers willing to launch their satellites on a reused rocket.

Quote
A 30 percent discount would put Falcon 9 prices near $43 million, at least compared to SpaceX’s online list price. Shotwell said further cuts could come as SpaceX improves on the time and cost of turning around flown rocket stages for another launch.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/08/30/ses-agrees-to-launch-satellite-on-flight-proven-falcon-9-rocket/

Listen to the boss.

Made a spreadsheet analyzing re-use of F9 first stages assuming various mfg costs, launch ops costs, core recovery costs and refurbish & re-test costs.  Re-use should be very lucrative.

However you need to factor in Recovery % which decreases the # of re-useable cores rapidly unless % is high, and most of all Failure % which also removes cores from the re-use pool.

For example (see attached spreadsheet) at an imaginary failure rate of 0% and recovery rate of 90%, still only 39% of the cores make their 10th flight.  So core robustness is not the limiting factor.
Conversely at a current failure rate of 5% and recovery rate of 90% only 23% of the cores make their 10th flight.
And at a failure rate of 5% and recovery rate of 80% only 8% of the cores make their 10th flight.  Recovery % really matters.

Lots of room for improvement.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: the_other_Doug on 09/04/2016 09:36 pm
Quote
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said in March that the launch provider hopes to offer price reductions of as much as 30 percent to customers willing to launch their satellites on a reused rocket.

Quote
A 30 percent discount would put Falcon 9 prices near $43 million, at least compared to SpaceX’s online list price. Shotwell said further cuts could come as SpaceX improves on the time and cost of turning around flown rocket stages for another launch.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/08/30/ses-agrees-to-launch-satellite-on-flight-proven-falcon-9-rocket/

Listen to the boss.

Made a spreadsheet analyzing re-use of F9 first stages assuming various mfg costs, launch ops costs, core recovery costs and refurbish & re-test costs.  Re-use should be very lucrative.

However you need to factor in Recovery % which decreases the # of re-useable cores rapidly unless % is high, and most of all Failure % which also removes cores from the re-use pool.

For example (see attached spreadsheet) at an imaginary failure rate of 0% and recovery rate of 90%, still only 39% of the cores make their 10th flight.  So core robustness is not the limiting factor.
Conversely at a current failure rate of 5% and recovery rate of 90% only 23% of the cores make their 10th flight.
And at a failure rate of 5% and recovery rate of 80% only 8% of the cores make their 10th flight.  Recovery % really matters.

Lots of room for improvement.

True -- but the recovery % is trending in the right direction, I think...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: philw1776 on 09/04/2016 09:42 pm
Yes, already better than the original 70% cited, HOWEVER we don't know what % of the recovered cores are re-flyable.  Right now they're as Musk has said, learning as they go so any % #s are premature.

I should have added another %, the % of recovered cores able to be re-flight certified, and every time you multiply by a % the answer gets smaller.  Lots of work to do.  Time to do it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 09/05/2016 12:20 pm
Quote
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said in March that the launch provider hopes to offer price reductions of as much as 30 percent to customers willing to launch their satellites on a reused rocket.

Quote
A 30 percent discount would put Falcon 9 prices near $43 million, at least compared to SpaceX’s online list price. Shotwell said further cuts could come as SpaceX improves on the time and cost of turning around flown rocket stages for another launch.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/08/30/ses-agrees-to-launch-satellite-on-flight-proven-falcon-9-rocket/

Listen to the boss.

Made a spreadsheet analyzing re-use of F9 first stages assuming various mfg costs, launch ops costs, core recovery costs and refurbish & re-test costs.  Re-use should be very lucrative.

However you need to factor in Recovery % which decreases the # of re-useable cores rapidly unless % is high, and most of all Failure % which also removes cores from the re-use pool.

For example (see attached spreadsheet) at an imaginary failure rate of 0% and recovery rate of 90%, still only 39% of the cores make their 10th flight.  So core robustness is not the limiting factor.
Conversely at a current failure rate of 5% and recovery rate of 90% only 23% of the cores make their 10th flight.
And at a failure rate of 5% and recovery rate of 80% only 8% of the cores make their 10th flight.  Recovery % really matters.

Lots of room for improvement.

Exactly... have tried to get that point across for a couple months.  It will require a 93.3% recovery rate to get half of the cores to ten flights.

You raise another interesting point, though.  At 5% ongoing failure rate, lots of non-statistical bad things begin to happen, such as frequent interruptions for return-to-flight, declining manifest due to loss of confidence (crew flights will be first to go), and general lack of good will toward their way of doing business.  These items and others like them are difficult to quantify, but will have much greater impact than a spreadsheet can reveal.

In other words, SpaceX may not achieve any of its goals if they have a significant ongoing launch failure rate.  Much more troubling than barge recovery rate...

First of many articles that will pour out on this topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/spacexs-explosion-reverberates-across-space-satellite-and-telecom-industries.html?_r=0

Quote
The explosion investigation and launchpad repair seem sure to scuttle SpaceX’s aggressive launch plans this year. The company had hoped for as many as 18 rocket launches this year. It has had eight so far; last week’s would have made nine. Over all, SpaceX has had 27 successful launches of Falcon 9 rockets.

The Florida accident is also rippling through the insurance market. Insuring the risk of getting a satellite into space comes in two stages. The preflight insurance is intended to mainly cover the risk of damage to the rocket and satellite on their way to the launchpad. Premiums are a fraction of a percent.

Launch policies, which take effect when the rocket is fired up, are costly, ranging from 5 to 15 percent historically.

But the Falcon 9 exploded during a prelaunch test. So launch policies did not kick in. And the insurance payout will fall on the roughly two dozen preflight insurers.

Richard Parker, managing director of Assure Space, an underwriting agency, is waiting to see the cause of the explosion. If it is a design or manufacturing flaw or an operational error, launch rates for SpaceX flights may well go up. His firm had underwritten a launch policy on last week’s flight at 6 percent, he said.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: philw1776 on 09/05/2016 03:53 pm

Exactly... have tried to get that point across for a couple months.  It will require a 93.3% recovery rate to get half of the cores to ten flights.

You raise another interesting point, though.  At 5% ongoing failure rate, lots of non-statistical bad things begin to happen, such as frequent interruptions for return-to-flight, declining manifest due to loss of confidence (crew flights will be first to go), and general lack of good will toward their way of doing business.  These items and others like them are difficult to quantify, but will have much greater impact than a spreadsheet can reveal.

In other words, SpaceX may not achieve any of its goals if they have a significant ongoing launch failure rate.  Much more troubling than barge recovery rate...

First of many articles that will pour out on this topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/business/spacexs-explosion-reverberates-across-space-satellite-and-telecom-industries.html?_r=0

Quote
The explosion investigation and launchpad repair seem sure to scuttle SpaceX’s aggressive launch plans this year. The company had hoped for as many as 18 rocket launches this year. It has had eight so far; last week’s would have made nine. Over all, SpaceX has had 27 successful launches of Falcon 9 rockets.

The Florida accident is also rippling through the insurance market. Insuring the risk of getting a satellite into space comes in two stages. The preflight insurance is intended to mainly cover the risk of damage to the rocket and satellite on their way to the launchpad. Premiums are a fraction of a percent.

Launch policies, which take effect when the rocket is fired up, are costly, ranging from 5 to 15 percent historically.

But the Falcon 9 exploded during a prelaunch test. So launch policies did not kick in. And the insurance payout will fall on the roughly two dozen preflight insurers.

Richard Parker, managing director of Assure Space, an underwriting agency, is waiting to see the cause of the explosion. If it is a design or manufacturing flaw or an operational error, launch rates for SpaceX flights may well go up. His firm had underwritten a launch policy on last week’s flight at 6 percent, he said.


As launch cadence increases, failure rate has more and more effect with long indeterminate hiatus for RTF.  Assuming their internal costs are in control as Elon and Gwynne assert, THE most important metric for SX has to be failure rate.  It kills quarterly revenue causing cash flow problems and worse yet it can lose customers.  A downward spiral.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Kabloona on 10/05/2016 05:19 pm
This is more about "price" than "cost," but I couldn't find a "price" thread.

Gwynne Shotwell now saying SpaceX will offer 10% discount for customers flying on a reused F9 booster,  much less than the 30% number being discussed earlier.

http://spacenews.com/spacexs-shotwell-on-falcon-9-inquiry-discounts-for-reused-rockets-and-silicon-valleys-test-and-fail-ethos/

Gwynne floated the 30% figure back in March:

http://spacenews.com/spacex-says-reusable-stage-could-cut-prices-by-30-plans-first-falcon-heavy-in-november/
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Blackstar on 10/08/2016 01:18 am
This is more about "price" than "cost," but I couldn't find a "price" thread.

Gwynne Shotwell now saying SpaceX will offer 10% discount for customers flying on a reused F9 booster,  much less than the 30% number being discussed earlier.

http://spacenews.com/spacexs-shotwell-on-falcon-9-inquiry-discounts-for-reused-rockets-and-silicon-valleys-test-and-fail-ethos/

Gwynne floated the 30% figure back in March:

http://spacenews.com/spacex-says-reusable-stage-could-cut-prices-by-30-plans-first-falcon-heavy-in-november/

And from the first article:

"At this point that is a reasonable reduction and then, as we recover some of the costs associated with the investment that we put into the Falcon 9 to achieve that, then we might get a little bit more. But in general, it’s about 10 percent right now."

So, even at best, reusability will get a little bit more than 10% reduction in price. One can only conclude that SpaceX's models indicate that they're not going to save much money with reusability, because they're not going to pass much savings to the customer.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 10/08/2016 01:57 am
So, even at best, reusability will get a little bit more than 10% reduction in price. One can only conclude that SpaceX's models indicate that they're not going to save much money with reusability, because they're not going to pass much savings to the customer.
"only conclude" ??

Actually one can conclude all sorts of things from that... for example, that they have decided their manifest is full enough that they don't need to discount heavily yet, and would rather get more revenue for a while.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Kabloona on 10/08/2016 02:59 am
This is more about "price" than "cost," but I couldn't find a "price" thread.

Gwynne Shotwell now saying SpaceX will offer 10% discount for customers flying on a reused F9 booster,  much less than the 30% number being discussed earlier.

http://spacenews.com/spacexs-shotwell-on-falcon-9-inquiry-discounts-for-reused-rockets-and-silicon-valleys-test-and-fail-ethos/

Gwynne floated the 30% figure back in March:

http://spacenews.com/spacex-says-reusable-stage-could-cut-prices-by-30-plans-first-falcon-heavy-in-november/

And from the first article:

"At this point that is a reasonable reduction and then, as we recover some of the costs associated with the investment that we put into the Falcon 9 to achieve that, then we might get a little bit more. But in general, it’s about 10 percent right now."

So, even at best, reusability will get a little bit more than 10% reduction in price. One can only conclude that SpaceX's models indicate that they're not going to save much money with reusability, because they're not going to pass much savings to the customer.

Seems to me the key phrase is "as we recover some of the costs associated with the investment that we put into the Falcon 9 to achieve (reusability), then we might get a little bit more (price reduction)..."

Which says to me they're simply trying to recoup the major investment they've made in recoverability efforts, the ASDS fleet, etc, before dropping the price significantly.

So it seems they're counting heavily on the appeal of a "previously flown" booster as a flight-proven item that sells itself without a big discount. I don't think they'll have any problem finding takers at "only" 10% off. And the first stage has proven itself to be quite robust.

Now to fix that pesky second stage...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Blackstar on 10/08/2016 03:04 am
So, even at best, reusability will get a little bit more than 10% reduction in price. One can only conclude that SpaceX's models indicate that they're not going to save much money with reusability, because they're not going to pass much savings to the customer.
"only conclude" ??

Actually one can conclude all sorts of things from that... for example, that they have decided their manifest is full enough that they don't need to discount heavily yet, and would rather get more revenue for a while.

There's gotta be a pony in there somewhere, huh?

They were talking 30% seven months ago, only 10% now. So I guess you'd think it is a good thing if they started talking 5%, huh?

And note that this is actually the opposite from the way that companies usually work. They usually offer big discounts up front to attract customers, then they raise their prices. That's how airplane manufacturers do it--the first buyers get deep discounts, the latter ones not so much.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Blackstar on 10/08/2016 03:07 am
Seems to me the key phrase is "as we recover some of the costs associated with the investment that we put into the Falcon 9 to achieve (reusability), then we might get a little bit more (price reduction)..."

Which says to me they're simply trying to recoup the major investment they've made in recoverability efforts, the ASDS fleet, etc, before dropping the price significantly.


Except she did not say they would "drop the price significantly."

She said "a little bit more."

You do realize that "little bit" and "significantly" are not synonyms?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: savuporo on 10/08/2016 03:30 am
The revolution in space launch has been postponed by 20%, again.

If they figured out that "their manifest is full" that means they have realized they won't be able to fly any more often than they do now, reusability or not.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: su27k on 10/08/2016 03:52 am
Someone has to pay the bill for rebuilding SLC-40, there's also the development cost of ITS, where else do you think the money would come from?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: HMXHMX on 10/08/2016 04:01 am
Labor. Labor. Labor.

Say it three times.

If the rocket is free, the propellant is free, the range is free, and the insurance is free, take the number of bodies required by the company, multiply by whatever FTE cost you want and divide by the number of launches.  That's the minimum cost per flight.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 10/08/2016 04:25 am
So, even at best, reusability will get a little bit more than 10% reduction in price. One can only conclude that SpaceX's models indicate that they're not going to save much money with reusability, because they're not going to pass much savings to the customer.
"only conclude" ??

Actually one can conclude all sorts of things from that... for example, that they have decided their manifest is full enough that they don't need to discount heavily yet, and would rather get more revenue for a while.

There's gotta be a pony in there somewhere, huh?

They were talking 30% seven months ago, only 10% now. So I guess you'd think it is a good thing if they started talking 5%, huh?

And note that this is actually the opposite from the way that companies usually work. They usually offer big discounts up front to attract customers, then they raise their prices. That's how airplane manufacturers do it--the first buyers get deep discounts, the latter ones not so much.

Companies with the lowest prices on the market, whose services are in high demand, usually aren't offering discounts to anyone. Especially when the market is relatively inelastic and they have a lot of R&D that needs revenue.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 10/08/2016 10:15 am
Labor. Labor. Labor.

Say it three times.

If the rocket is free, the propellant is free, the range is free, and the insurance is free, take the number of bodies required by the company, multiply by whatever FTE cost you want and divide by the number of launches.  That's the minimum cost per flight.

Valid point. However, I could have sworn that the reason why SpaceX offers rides for less money than other firms is due to the lower labor cost (looks at Jim).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 10/08/2016 10:57 am
Labor. Labor. Labor.

Say it three times.

If the rocket is free, the propellant is free, the range is free, and the insurance is free, take the number of bodies required by the company, multiply by whatever FTE cost you want and divide by the number of launches.  That's the minimum cost per flight.

Most of these people will do development and building a new type of rocket. It is not part of the cost of flight. You are arguing that the rockets will pay for development which is what will happen, but that's from profits out of the launch, not part of the launch cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: HMXHMX on 10/08/2016 11:25 am
Labor. Labor. Labor.

Say it three times.

If the rocket is free, the propellant is free, the range is free, and the insurance is free, take the number of bodies required by the company, multiply by whatever FTE cost you want and divide by the number of launches.  That's the minimum cost per flight.

Most of these people will do development and building a new type of rocket. It is not part of the cost of flight. You are arguing that the rockets will pay for development which is what will happen, but that's from profits out of the launch, not part of the launch cost.

Sooner or later, launch customers pay for everything. Either that, or the taxpayer pays.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: savuporo on 10/08/2016 11:26 am
Labor. Labor. Labor.

Say it three times.

If the rocket is free, the propellant is free, the range is free, and the insurance is free, take the number of bodies required by the company, multiply by whatever FTE cost you want and divide by the number of launches.  That's the minimum cost per flight.

Most of these people will do development and building a new type of rocket. It is not part of the cost of flight. You are arguing that the rockets will pay for development which is what will happen, but that's from profits out of the launch, not part of the launch cost.
Umm, accountant, lawyer and janitor payroll are part of your launch costs, if you only have a single revenue stream.

Also, citation needed on " most people are in R&D", I don't think that's true
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 10/08/2016 12:29 pm
Most of these people will do development and building a new type of rocket. It is not part of the cost of flight. You are arguing that the rockets will pay for development which is what will happen, but that's from profits out of the launch, not part of the launch cost.
Umm, accountant, lawyer and janitor payroll are part of your launch costs, if you only have a single revenue stream.

Also, citation needed on " most people are in R&D", I don't think that's true

You quoted my post, read it again.

Development and building a new rocket is not the same as R&D. The new rocket is ITS.

Also support posts like accountant, lawyer and janitor costs are split between all parts of the company, they are not launch cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: savuporo on 10/08/2016 12:44 pm
Also support posts like accountant, lawyer and janitor costs are split between all parts of the company, they are not launch cost.

The cost of the company is the cost of the launch as long as you have one revenue stream, which is launch services. The more you launch and the higher the revenue, the thinner you spread these costs across a single launch. It's pretty simple, really.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: CuddlyRocket on 10/09/2016 05:54 am
Seems to me the key phrase is "as we recover some of the costs associated with the investment that we put into the Falcon 9 to achieve (reusability), then we might get a little bit more (price reduction)..."

Which says to me they're simply trying to recoup the major investment they've made in recoverability efforts, the ASDS fleet, etc, before dropping the price significantly.


Except she did not say they would "drop the price significantly."

She said "a little bit more."

You do realize that "little bit" and "significantly" are not synonyms?

You don't tell your customers or potential customers that with a 10% reduction SpaceX will have nice, big, fat profit margins. People get miffed if they think you're coining it at their expense! Far better to imply there'll be a little more cost reduction in future and have them be pleasantly surprised at consequent price reductions rather than have them thinking 'about time!'
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 10/09/2016 06:10 am
Also support posts like accountant, lawyer and janitor costs are split between all parts of the company, they are not launch cost.

The cost of the company is the cost of the launch as long as you have one revenue stream, which is launch services. The more you launch and the higher the revenue, the thinner you spread these costs across a single launch. It's pretty simple, really.

You are saying development cost of the next car generation is part of the production cost of the present car generation. That's not simple, it's simply wrong.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: b0objunior on 10/09/2016 08:15 am
Also support posts like accountant, lawyer and janitor costs are split between all parts of the company, they are not launch cost.

The cost of the company is the cost of the launch as long as you have one revenue stream, which is launch services. The more you launch and the higher the revenue, the thinner you spread these costs across a single launch. It's pretty simple, really.

You are saying development cost of the next car generation is part of the production cost of the present car generation. That's not simple, it's simply wrong.
I think he's talking about net profit, still wrong thought.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: TrevorMonty on 10/09/2016 08:31 pm
If a company needs to recover their R&D investment, which is normal practice, then discounts on RLV launch costs a going to be small.
What say there is no requirement to recover R&D investment, then launch costs only need to cover operational costs plus modest profit. Blue may well be in this situation, Bezos is funding Blue to get more people into space, not to grow his future in near term.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 10/10/2016 04:28 pm
Seems to me the key phrase is "as we recover some of the costs associated with the investment that we put into the Falcon 9 to achieve (reusability), then we might get a little bit more (price reduction)..."

Which says to me they're simply trying to recoup the major investment they've made in recoverability efforts, the ASDS fleet, etc, before dropping the price significantly.


Except she did not say they would "drop the price significantly."

She said "a little bit more."

You do realize that "little bit" and "significantly" are not synonyms?

Shotwell is obviously tempering expectations, that's part of her job.

Lars Hoffman, who is also a senior SpaceX exec, put it a little bit 8) differently a few weeks ago:

Quote
Hoffman: expect to take a couple years to refine the refurb process and costs. See “significant” cost savings in a few years. #AIAASpace
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/775816294234857474 (https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/775816294234857474)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: DOCinCT on 10/10/2016 05:15 pm
Also support posts like accountant, lawyer and janitor costs are split between all parts of the company, they are not launch cost.

The cost of the company is the cost of the launch as long as you have one revenue stream, which is launch services. The more you launch and the higher the revenue, the thinner you spread these costs across a single launch. It's pretty simple, really.

You are saying development cost of the next car generation is part of the production cost of the present car generation. That's not simple, it's simply wrong.

You either borrow the money to pay for the development costs or you self-fund it out of revenue stream (profits).  Boeing is $30Billion in the hole on the 787 aircraft which has been amortized over 10 years. They won't break even until they sell 1,100 planes, thus recouping the investment.  Sales of existing planes helped pay for that cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 10/10/2016 05:27 pm

You either borrow the money to pay for the development costs or you self-fund it out of revenue stream (profits).  Boeing is $30Billion in the hole on the 787 aircraft which has been amortized over 10 years. They won't break even until they sell 1,100 planes, thus recouping the investment.  Sales of existing planes helped pay for that cost.

None of this makes those cost part of the launch cost of the present generation of rockets. And that's where the argument started.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: savuporo on 10/12/2016 03:02 am
http://spacenews.com/shotwell-says-spacex-homing-in-on-cause-of-falcon-9-pad-explosion/

Quote
Two more full-duration static-fire tests are planned for the stage to gain confidence for limited reuse of the first stage. “We’ll feel pretty good about reflying each stage once or twice” once those tests are complete, she said. An updated version of the Falcon 9, to be rolled out next year, should be able to reuse its first stage up to 10 times


Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Radical_Ignorant on 10/15/2016 11:12 pm
Financial house of cards. That's nice. Yeah. What cost is, that's quite a question. It's not that SpaceX is outsourcing rocket production and cost is in bill for the booster. It's some artificial figure. And it is also true that SpaceX has some running costs and income from launch services. As GS stated less than 10% of company is working on other things than current rocket, so basically idea that SpaceX operating costs divided by nr of launches is their cos is pretty close. Especially that EM likes vertical integration and costs of materials are not big. So that's pretty good approximation IMHO. Reusability can free up some resources to achieve greater launch rate and thus reduce cost. But still bottleneck to this can be in  some launch process operations.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gosnold on 10/17/2016 05:33 pm
I found this interesting slide in a CNES presentation (IAC-16,D2,4,6,x32453) at the last IAC.

Also, there was a presentation from RuAG about fairing reusability (IAC-16,D2,5,13,x35869), and they think it is feasible. They are working on it. I attached one slide with the estimated savings.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/17/2016 06:06 pm
If a company needs to recover their R&D investment, which is normal practice, then discounts on RLV launch costs a going to be small.
In pretty well every other industry except the launch business, where historically major new developments have been funded either directly by governments or with very substantial funding by a government who expects to use the vehicles heavily. IE the EELV programme.
Quote
What say there is no requirement to recover R&D investment, then launch costs only need to cover operational costs plus modest profit. Blue may well be in this situation, Bezos is funding Blue to get more people into space, not to grow his future in near term.
We'll see either way.

So 2 reuses or 10 reuses is not going to bring down the launch cost very much at all.   :(

It just won't

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 10/17/2016 08:33 pm
...
So 2 reuses or 10 reuses is not going to bring down the launch cost very much at all.

Cost or price? I can't imagine even 1 reuse not bringing the per launch expended cost down significantly.

Price, however needs a driver. SpaceX has no real reason to lower the price right now.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 10/18/2016 12:28 pm
If a company needs to recover their R&D investment, which is normal practice, then discounts on RLV launch costs a going to be small.
In pretty well every other industry except the launch business, where historically major new developments have been funded either directly by governments or with very substantial funding by a government who expects to use the vehicles heavily. IE the EELV programme.
Quote
What say there is no requirement to recover R&D investment, then launch costs only need to cover operational costs plus modest profit. Blue may well be in this situation, Bezos is funding Blue to get more people into space, not to grow his future in near term.
We'll see either way.

So 2 reuses or 10 reuses is not going to bring down the launch cost very much at all.   :(

It just won't

Why should SpaceX drops launch price when they are still cheaper than anyone else? They can use a few years of launches to get some real cash in for R&D; as others drop their price, they have the margin to drop theirs. The only reasons to drop now would be to increase market size, but since they have a long manifest waiting anyway, there is no point. Which is a shame, as there are scientists waiting for cheaper launch costs. They will just have to wait a bit longer.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: savuporo on 10/18/2016 12:34 pm
Why should SpaceX drops launch price when they are still cheaper than anyone else?..
For the same reason why Spirit Airlines charges less.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 10/18/2016 12:50 pm
Why should SpaceX drops launch price when they are still cheaper than anyone else?..
For the same reason why Spirit Airlines charges less.
They charge less because they can increase total revenue through a variety of mechanisms, most of which don't apply to the orbital launch market. Also, they have competition that's much more competitive than SpaceX's.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 10/19/2016 03:13 am
...
So 2 reuses or 10 reuses is not going to bring down the launch cost very much at all.   :(

It just won't
Yeah it would.

Let's say SpaceX can't actually produce more than 9 Falcon cores per year (let's forget upper stages for now). That means they can do 9 F9 launches or 3 Heavies or some mixture in between. That's it. That's as good as they've done so far, but this here would be at the limit of their production capability. No more growth possible.

If they can reuse stuff 10 times (with minimal refurb, for the sake of this argument), that means, say, 20 Falcon 9s and 20 Falcon Heavies per year (assume some of the center cores are expended). Or 90 Falcon 9s per year.

An order of magnitude more launches with the same manufacturing line. That'd DRAMATICALLY cut down on the cost per launch to SpaceX, thus giving them huge profits or allowing large price reductions.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/19/2016 03:19 am
...
So 2 reuses or 10 reuses is not going to bring down the launch cost very much at all.

Cost or price? I can't imagine even 1 reuse not bringing the per launch expended cost down significantly.

Price, however needs a driver. SpaceX has no real reason to lower the price right now.
Cost. Price is whatever SX want to charge customers. And I'll repeat SX is not  cheaper than all other suppliers in the comm sat market. It is competitive with Arianespace in this sector.  It's not I'd-be-crazzzy-to-buy-a-launch-from-anyone-else good.If you're worried about launch risk however you'd go with Ariane 5 right now.

While you throw away the upper stage system price drops to roughly the refurb cost of the lower stage  plus the cost of the new upper stage.

As a customer I'd want substantially  lower prices because SX are getting half their rocket back. I certainly don't want to pay the full (expendable) launch price. Can I have that offset against the cost of a future launch? 

I'll remind people $62m to LEO is only relatively cheap to orbit. Look at how the round trip costs between 2 cities roughly on opposite sides of this planet (roughly the same energy cost) by air compare to see what real low cost means.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/19/2016 03:24 am
An order of magnitude more launches with the same manufacturing line. That'd DRAMATICALLY cut down on the cost per launch to SpaceX, thus giving them huge profits or allowing large price reductions.
This story only works if there are enough payloads out there that will accept using F9 or FH at the prices SX charge.

BTW Shotwell stated the FH core will be different to the F9 lower stage which implies they will not be interchangeable. Once you commit to making that core an FH core you've also committed to a certain mix of F9 and FH launches. Not necessarily an issue as long as you don't have a surge of launches that exhausts your store of the right kind of cores or your refurb capability.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 10/19/2016 09:13 am
As a customer I'd want substantially  lower prices because SX are getting half their rocket back. I certainly don't want to pay the full (expendable) launch price. Can I have that offset against the cost of a future launch? 

As a customer, you can complain all you like, but if SpaceX are cheaper, and you go with someone else because you are not getting a discount since SpaceX are getting half their rocket back, then you are making a bad business decision. You are paying more for the same service, because you are being petty. Shareholders might have something to say about that.

SpaceX just need to be cheaper, whether reusable or not, for people to use them in preference.




Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/19/2016 11:18 am
As a customer, you can complain all you like, but if SpaceX are cheaper, and you go with someone else because you are not getting a discount since SpaceX are getting half their rocket back, then you are making a bad business decision. You are paying more for the same service, because you are being petty. Shareholders might have something to say about that.

SpaceX just need to be cheaper, whether reusable or not, for people to use them in preference.
All things being equal you might be right. But then you factor in their recent safety record IE your chance of getting to orbit.

The 2nd explosion will have an effect on sales that only a successful RTF will cure.  :(

My interest is solely on lowering the price of launch for a viable payload by a lot.

2-10 flights of re use and an expendable US won't deliver that.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: llanitedave on 10/19/2016 12:42 pm
As a customer, you can complain all you like, but if SpaceX are cheaper, and you go with someone else because you are not getting a discount since SpaceX are getting half their rocket back, then you are making a bad business decision. You are paying more for the same service, because you are being petty. Shareholders might have something to say about that.

SpaceX just need to be cheaper, whether reusable or not, for people to use them in preference.
All things being equal you might be right. But then you factor in their recent safety record IE your chance of getting to orbit.

The 2nd explosion will have an effect on sales that only a successful RTF will cure.  :(

My interest is solely on lowering the price of launch for a viable payload by a lot.

2-10 flights of re use and an expendable US won't deliver that.

You imply that a successful RTF is somehow unlikely?  I do think your concerns are way overblown, and your expectations are unrealistic.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 10/19/2016 01:35 pm
The key people who answer about recent failures is the insurance companies. And so far they have said no change in premium.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: savuporo on 10/19/2016 02:09 pm
The key people who answer about recent failures is the insurance companies. And so far they have said no change in premium.

Statements made about 2 hours after kaboom, with no details available.
Its a developing story, and the duration of investigation, nature of failure, independent assessments, market reaction etc will all affect these things. This is not '15 minutes car insurance call with no hidden fees' exactly, much more nuanced and individual deals often can get very different terms, too.
You can really assess the impact after 2-3 new contracts have been placed
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 10/19/2016 06:53 pm
The key people who answer about recent failures is the insurance companies. And so far they have said no change in premium.

Statements made about 2 hours after kaboom, with no details available.
Its a developing story, and the duration of investigation, nature of failure, independent assessments, market reaction etc will all affect these things. This is not '15 minutes car insurance call with no hidden fees' exactly, much more nuanced and individual deals often can get very different terms, too.
You can really assess the impact after 2-3 new contracts have been placed

In insurance terms, AMOS-6 was a pre-launch test failure. Pre-launch premiums will almost certainly rise, and not only for Falcon 9 launches, because a lot of premium payments were wiped out by just the AMOS claim.

the LAUNCH insurance market is a different beast. There haven't been many claims recently, and a lot of insurance is available at very low prices. It doesn't appear there will be a significant change to those premiums (for Falcon 9 or anyone else) unless there's an actual launch failure.

If there's any reliable sources indicating that premiums for a F9 launch on a used booster are higher, I haven't seen them. SES has indicated that the insurance costs are the same for used and new boosters.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/19/2016 10:33 pm
You imply that a successful RTF is somehow unlikely?
No. If I thought that I would have said that. However in any real situation there is a finite possibility that would happen, although AFAIK it's never happened with any other LV's RTF
Quote
I do think your concerns are way overblown, and your expectations are unrealistic.
I have no concerns over SX's RTF and my expectations of how much SX's reuse of the F9 first stage will lower their prices are very modest. 

I've never expected the partial reuse approach would give the (potential) price lowering full reuse would give (to the $6m/launch level Shotwell talked about). It's looking like people with be lucky if it delivers anything below BAU. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 10/19/2016 11:11 pm
You imply that a successful RTF is somehow unlikely?
No. If I thought that I would have said that. However in any real situation there is a finite possibility that would happen, although AFAIK it's never happened with any other LV's RTF
Quote
I do think your concerns are way overblown, and your expectations are unrealistic.
I have no concerns over SX's RTF and my expectations of how much SX's reuse of the F9 first stage will lower their prices are very modest. 

I've never expected the partial reuse approach would give the (potential) price lowering full reuse would give (to the $6m/launch level Shotwell talked about). It's looking like people with be lucky if it delivers anything below BAU. 

FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit ???

Oh John, you're so predictable. Skylon always will hit the most optimistic assumption based estimates, and everything else won't hit even the pessimistic assumption based estimates.

I'd expected SpaceX to get more aggressive on price but I have some ideas (as do others in the thread) on why they might feel they don't need to. Price != Cost though.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 10/20/2016 03:31 am
Considering ULA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Masten, and even Ariane are pursuing reuse to some extent, maybe we should have a thread about "Expendability effect on costs."
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/20/2016 07:24 am
FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit ???
Business As Usual. The shorthand term for when a company morphs into the Big Aerospace mindset.  :(
Quote
Oh John, you're so predictable. Skylon always will hit the most optimistic assumption based estimates, and everything else won't hit even the pessimistic assumption based estimates.
This thread has nothing to do with Skylon but since you brought it in REL have worked hard to look at the worst case in terms of pricing and development costs.

So far I've heard SX prices go from (projected) $6m (full reuse) to a desire for 50% below expendable price with SX countering with maybe  a 30% price discount and now possibly none.

I'll skip the pad explosion centered on the 2nd (expendable) stage which even when it flies will be the one part that will not be fully testable until launch.
Quote
I'd expected SpaceX to get more aggressive on price but I have some ideas (as do others in the thread) on why they might feel they don't need to. Price != Cost though.
As anyone on this thread should be aware.  Thanks for reminding us of this important fact.

But price to customer is what expands the market and it's what must come down if people wat to see serious expansion. A semi expendable architecture could deliver frequent enough access to LEO to support things like in space mfg but the price per unit mass eliminates AFAIK every possible product such a facility could make.

As for space tourism I'm quite sure Bigelow would have done it by now if a $6m/flight fully reusable F9 existed. Likewise NASA (or even some universities) might consider the first dedicated mission to Uranus (orbital plan nearly 90deg to the ecliptic). Likewise Saturn has had little attention, although both are as big as Jupiter.

I'll be very excited to see SX RTF. I hope it will be off their new pad opening in November, which seems the earliest possible. I don't think the damaged pad will be back in operation before next year. What I really want to see is that launch price lowered.

Classic "Big Aerospace" policy is charge what the market will bear. 

Let's see if SX will take the gamble and see if they offer it at a better price wheather the business will come at that price.  They don't have to but it'll be a real test of their faith in their vision.

Then I'll look forward to their first booster reflight.

Edit/Lar: fixed John's quotes for him. Left the snark.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 10/20/2016 04:15 pm
So far I've heard SX prices go from (projected) $6m (full reuse) to a desire for 50% below expendable price with SX countering with maybe  a 30% price discount and now possibly none.

They never said they would reach that price with Falcon. They are clearly planning to reach that price with their methane architecture, even with ITS.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/20/2016 05:56 pm
So far I've heard SX prices go from (projected) $6m (full reuse) to a desire for 50% below expendable price with SX countering with maybe  a 30% price discount and now possibly none.

They never said they would reach that price with Falcon. They are clearly planning to reach that price with their methane architecture, even with ITS.
If you mean $6m that's the figure Shotwell was talking about in 2014 at that years comm sat conference.  she seemed to think it was doable with the technology SX had on hand at the time.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 10/21/2016 07:48 am
So far I've heard SX prices go from (projected) $6m (full reuse) to a desire for 50% below expendable price with SX countering with maybe  a 30% price discount and now possibly none.

They never said they would reach that price with Falcon. They are clearly planning to reach that price with their methane architecture, even with ITS.
If you mean $6m that's the figure Shotwell was talking about in 2014 at that years comm sat conference.  she seemed to think it was doable with the technology SX had on hand at the time.

That's your interpretation. She did not say that.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: GWH on 10/21/2016 07:31 pm
So far I've heard SX prices go from (projected) $6m (full reuse) to a desire for 50% below expendable price with SX countering with maybe  a 30% price discount and now possibly none.

They never said they would reach that price with Falcon. They are clearly planning to reach that price with their methane architecture, even with ITS.
If you mean $6m that's the figure Shotwell was talking about in 2014 at that years comm sat conference.  she seemed to think it was doable with the technology SX had on hand at the time.

That's your interpretation. She did not say that.

Musk has said a single order of magnitude  cost reduction with partially expendable launch system. Another order of magnitude by going fully reusable. 
Saying that they really meant with a new generation of hardware is disingenuous.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 10/21/2016 08:18 pm
No it isnt. It's disingenuous to put words in either Musk's or Shotwell's mouth. Musk speaks in generalities and first principle relations. Unless otherwise specified, interpret Musk's statement in that way.

He thinks it is possible in principle to get up to an order of magnitude cost reduction using partial reuse (a good case being Falcon Heavy). He thinks it's possible in principle to get two orders of magnitude cost reduction with full reuse.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 10/21/2016 08:30 pm
And Shotwell's comment implied full Reusability.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: GWH on 10/22/2016 12:28 am
Yes Gwynne Shotwell spoke on full reusability costs of Falcon 9. 
"but its pulling all of those kinds of pieces together, that allow us to fly Falcon 9 for a nice price reduction in the industry. But the real key to changing things dramatically is this concept of re-usability. That's when you go from flying a 60 million dollar mission to flying a 5, 6 or 7 million dollar mission."
http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/singapore-satellite-industry-forum-2013-opening-keynote-gwynne-shotwell-2013-06-23

Elon Musk speaking in generalities but directly regarding Falcon 9:
"[1:29]
If you can perfect this technology to the point where you can begin actually reusing boosters can you give us a sense of what that might mean for lowering launch costs?
Yeah, absolutely. The Falcon 9 rocket costs about $60 million to build. It's kind of like a big jet. But, the cost of the propellant, which is mostly oxygen and the gas, is only about $200,000. That means that the potential cost reduction over the long term is probably in excess of a factor of 100."
http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/postlanding-teleconference-with-elon-musk-2015-12-22

Not trying to put words in either Musk's or Shotwell's mouth.  That being said I think that the assumption they were talking about the potential of Falcon 9 (with full reusability) is a more fair statement than:

They never said they would reach that price with Falcon. They are clearly planning to reach that price with their methane architecture, even with ITS.

Maybe they are at the realization NOW that their methane based architecture is needed, but looking back I don't think it's fair so say that was their plan all along (see the original, full reuse F9 and associated quotes):
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a7446/elon-musk-on-spacexs-reusable-rocket-plans-6653023/
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 10/22/2016 01:02 am
This thread should be renamed Launch Failure Effect on Costs.

What we are seeing now is the attempt to pay for 10 months of not launching in the last 20 months, plus cost of rebuilding LC-40.  Not surprising the discount is disappearing... and a base price increase wouldn't be a surprise either.  Cannot separate reusability effects on costs from these recent kabooms; failures take a huge financial toll*.

Two or ten reuses are steps on a path to reuse being the industry standard. 
But those are walking steps, not running yet.

They are still far ahead of whomever is second in the reuse and low cost games.

* Something in the neighborhood of a billion dollars I'd estimate.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Dante2121 on 10/22/2016 12:15 pm

But price to customer is what expands the market and it's what must come down if people wat to see serious expansion. A semi expendable architecture could deliver frequent enough access to LEO to support things like in space mfg but the price per unit mass eliminates AFAIK every possible product such a facility could make.

Made in Space is getting excitingly close to demonstrating profitable space mfg - even at today's launch costs.  Discussion starts here in the 3D space printing thread.

Next year Made in Space is going to start trial manufacturing ZBLAN on the ISS.

http://www.engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/ArticleID/12662/Made-In-Space-to-Make-Fiber-Optics-in-Space.aspx

This is really cool because the material is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per kilogram - e.g.it could be wildly profitable even with today's launch costs.

https://sites.google.com/site/cmapproject/case-studies/exotic-glasses-and-fibers
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 10/22/2016 02:55 pm
So far I've heard SX prices go from (projected) $6m (full reuse) to a desire for 50% below expendable price with SX countering with maybe  a 30% price discount and now possibly none.

They never said they would reach that price with Falcon. They are clearly planning to reach that price with their methane architecture, even with ITS.
If you mean $6m that's the figure Shotwell was talking about in 2014 at that years comm sat conference.  she seemed to think it was doable with the technology SX had on hand at the time.
$6m Falcon 9 launch prices REQUIRES both a reusable upper stage/PLF and very high flight rate, as in multiple launches per week. They may have been the original plan for Falcon 9, but that clearly isn't the plan now.

And a reusable upper stage has never been "on hand" technology.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/22/2016 05:51 pm
Maybe they are at the realization NOW that their methane based architecture is needed, but looking back I don't think it's fair so say that was their plan all along (see the original, full reuse F9 and associated quotes):
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a7446/elon-musk-on-spacexs-reusable-rocket-plans-6653023/
Indeed. A fully reusuable F9 seemed to be the plan up till around 2014. I'd love to know what SX have learned that turned that around. :(
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/22/2016 05:56 pm
$6m Falcon 9 launch prices REQUIRES both a reusable upper stage/PLF and very high flight rate, as in multiple launches per week. They may have been the original plan for Falcon 9, but that clearly isn't the plan now.
I'd certainly agree with the reusable US, and a reusable PLF would simplify this however high flight rate would be needed to maintain revenue.  Obviously the belief was the massively lowered launch cost would greatly increase the number of people willing to use space rather than a last resort.
Quote
And a reusable upper stage has never been "on hand" technology.
True.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 10/22/2016 07:21 pm
Maybe they are at the realization NOW that their methane based architecture is needed, but looking back I don't think it's fair so say that was their plan all along (see the original, full reuse F9 and associated quotes):
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a7446/elon-musk-on-spacexs-reusable-rocket-plans-6653023/
Indeed. A fully reusuable F9 seemed to be the plan up till around 2014. I'd love to know what SX have learned that turned that around. :(
That's the same time ITS started to be formulated. I suspect a lot of it was that they realized they really wanted to move to methane long term because of the lack of coking. I don't think kerosene can ever be as fast turnaround as methane due to kerosene's coking requiring some cleaning. They decided not to do a rocket using both methane and kerosene for handling simplicity and because a methane stage really wants to be bigger.

For LEO, they would definitely have enough performance for a reusable upper stage, especially for Falcon Heavy. But you can improve costs even more if you have a single core vehicle that's fully reusable and uses a propellant that enables rapid reuse (i.e. No major coking). I don't think ITS will be the only methane rocket they build long term.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Pipcard on 10/22/2016 07:58 pm
If a single core fully reusable FH is so much better/simpler operationally than a three-core of an equivalent capacity, should SpaceX have developed a suborbital reusable test vehicle akin to New Shepard, or a reusable Falcon 1, to test out the viability of maintaining reusable engines vs expending them, then go straight to an FH-class single core launcher like New Glenn?

Or was going for the single/triple-core family the right decision at the time? With the consideration of lower flight rates (i.e. today's), a partially reusable launcher (with expendable upper stage) would be more viable because of the higher payload penalty and development costs of upper stage reuse, but the expended upper stage would be oversized for smaller payloads if it were a single core 50 tonne launcher. The idea of being oversized will not matter with full reuse, but that requires higher launch rates and demands than today.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Prettz on 10/22/2016 11:05 pm
SpaceX could not have gone with a wider rocket than Falcon 9 regardless, so it doesn't matter. Without road transportability, that blows away the initial plan for low costs and high flight rate.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Pipcard on 10/22/2016 11:23 pm
Musk said in the infamous Q&A section (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YxNYiyALg?t=1h27m24s) of his ITS presentation that the booster and spaceship, too large for road transportability, might be manufactured among "multiple states," and that's he's considering Louisiana (Michoud) as one of them. So that point may be moot.

Or what about just building the wider rocket near the launch site?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Prettz on 10/22/2016 11:40 pm
I thought you were talking about instead of making F9 and FH.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Pipcard on 10/22/2016 11:46 pm
I thought you were talking about instead of making F9 and FH.
I am still talking about alternate history; I was using Musk's statement as an example.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 10/23/2016 12:41 am
FH is still probably a better approach for them even if they had a "do-over." Road transportability is a big problem, and would've meant SpaceX wouldn't have built a factory in the middle of LA, which had a bunch of cheap facilities at the time SpaceX was building out their factories and a large labor pool of aerospace workers and also all the other advantages of being in an actual, real city. And SpaceX wants to do polar as well as equatorial and ISS launches plus testing in McGregor (a facility which they got CHEAP with an included huge test stand which they used for their many initial flights), which means they would have to transport stages a lot, and road is still the best way to do that if you can manage it. And they were operating expendably for a long time, since they hadn't yet discovered/invented practical reuse concepts, so that meant transporting every stage for every flight, probably multiple times: from factory near/in a big city to somewhere in the boonies to test--McGregor being great because it was so cheap and already built--and then to a coast to launch.

SpaceX's ITS only needs equatorial for its main mission, and probably can't be tested in McGregor anyway. And it will be fully reusable from the start, so once built and acceptance testing (we don't yet know where for either of those things), it doesn't need to be moved to a new launch site each launch. But they couldn't have done this at first, because they were necessarily operating expendably. So no, I don't think it'd make sense for them to have chosen a bigger diameter. Things COULD'VE gone differently, but it's definitely not a mistake that they went the way they did. It was pretty strongly determined.

Blue Origin is having to build a factory in Florida. They claim to not want to enter the DoD market or otherwise directly compete with ULA, so they don't need polar launch. They can get by with one launch site, and so road transportability is not an issue for them. Especially since they seemed to have finally gotten a handle on a reasonable reuse method that should work nearly off the bat (they have their experience from New Shepard and can draw on some lessons from SpaceX, too), and anyway, they probably can't afford to operate expendably like SpaceX.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 10/24/2016 03:51 am
F1 is too small and FH too big for most payloads today. F9 is basically perfect in size and much better suited for SpaceX operations flows.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/24/2016 08:31 am
F1 is too small and FH too big for most payloads today. F9 is basically perfect in size and much better suited for SpaceX operations flows.
Which is why I'm sceptical about the argument that upping the payload size lowers the $/lb price only if you can use the full payload.

People forget SX were talking an F3 and an F5 after the F1 but they both went away when they found no market for intermediate sizes.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 10/24/2016 11:59 am
there was a market for F5. Just that there was a larger one for F9 and they could also launch F5 payloads on F9. Heck, they launched F1 payloads with F9.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 10/24/2016 12:14 pm
there was a market for F5. Just that there was a larger one for F9 and they could also launch F5 payloads on F9. Heck, they launched F1 payloads with F9.

Doesn't the same apply to BFR/BFS.
It can launch anything and if fully and rapidly reusable should be (very) cheap.
So if launches a small payload the excess capacity/space will be filled with something.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 10/24/2016 06:05 pm
there was a market for F5. Just that there was a larger one for F9 and they could also launch F5 payloads on F9. Heck, they launched F1 payloads with F9.

Doesn't the same apply to BFR/BFS.
It can launch anything and if fully and rapidly reusable should be (very) cheap.
So if launches a small payload the excess capacity/space will be filled with something.
It's cheap in $/lb if the extra payload is used by someone else.

Otherwise you just bought a very oversized launcher to send up a small payload.  :(

"It's only X $/lb if you use FH" still needs an absolute cost several x bigger than the F9.

I'm interested in low $/lb at a payload size people can fully use.


Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Arb on 11/16/2016 05:29 pm
A couple of recent documents have just been listed on NTRS that may be of interest to readers of this thread.  One is a conference paper and the other is the presentation slides that accompany it.

Is It Worth It? - the Economics of Reusable Space Transportation

Abstract
...
Abstracts usually include the conclusion; this one is pure tease (and long-winded at that). Would someone who's read the papers kindly provide a TL:DR. Many thanks.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 11/16/2016 07:36 pm
I wanted to spare my time and looked at the presentation. I am not impressed, its on exactly the same level of insight as we have established within this very forum already. Is this type of explanatory power common for economics papers? I am only used to computer science and astronomy papers. Such a content would never be accepted for any publisher I know. The conclusion "It depends" is a tautology and always valid. And it doesnt even explore the variables it depends on. It doesnt come with an economic model. It doesnt have any predictive power. You cant make any decision based on the presented information. Sorry to give it such a harsh review, but this is just not worth the time to read. No new insights expected.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 12/01/2016 09:06 am
Sorry to give it such a harsh review, but this is just not worth the time to read. No new insights expected.
I've skimmed it.

Lots of chaff with a few grains of wheat in here.

Actually discusses price elasticity and does do a DCF on a simplistic model of an RLV. The pareto analysis is also interesting. Top 3 items on the Atlas are "Systems engineering & prgramme management, 1st stage engine, launch and mission operations." IOW 2 of these, making up about 34% of the whole mission cost, are not physical at all. This suggests there is significant scope for improvement in these items.

Beyond that.
You could cut half the words and still be left with a coherent paper. Also note this company was involved in the X33/Venturestar programme.  :( Also note the comment on page 9

"Some apologists for investment in reusable systems predict potentially important benefits to humankind if reusable transportation reduces the cost of access to space to such a significant degree that space is opened up to ever more, as yet untapped uses. "

I guess that would include Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the list of "apologists."

Apparently this is part of a training course from the "International Cost Estimating and Analysis Association."

Not impressed.  :(
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jet Black on 12/01/2016 11:38 am
there was a market for F5. Just that there was a larger one for F9 and they could also launch F5 payloads on F9. Heck, they launched F1 payloads with F9.

Doesn't the same apply to BFR/BFS.
It can launch anything and if fully and rapidly reusable should be (very) cheap.
So if launches a small payload the excess capacity/space will be filled with something.

That really depends on whether you can get enough compatible payloads that want to go into compatible orbits at the same time.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 12/01/2016 12:06 pm

Quote
Doesn't the same apply to BFR/BFS.
It can launch anything and if fully and rapidly reusable should be (very) cheap.
So if launches a small payload the excess capacity/space will be filled with something.

That really depends on whether you can get enough compatible payloads that want to go into compatible orbits at the same time.
for geosynchronous they are all compatible. Same altitude, same inclination. A slighter lower orbit will rotate around to the correct position. It can take as little delta-V as you like.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: deruch on 12/02/2016 03:55 am
I guess that would include Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the list of "apologists."
Note, "apologist" in this context is not a perjorative usage but merely describing someone who offers arguments in support of a position/idea.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 12/02/2016 10:10 am
I guess that would include Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the list of "apologists."
Note, "apologist" in this context is not a perjorative usage but merely describing someone who offers arguments in support of a position/idea.

It also implies there is something to apologise for, which I do not think is the case. It's the wrong word.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: allhumanbeings07 on 12/02/2016 10:33 pm
I guess that would include Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos in the list of "apologists."
Note, "apologist" in this context is not a perjorative usage but merely describing someone who offers arguments in support of a position/idea.

It also implies there is something to apologise for, which I do not think is the case. It's the wrong word.

It's a completely neutral term for describing the nature of someone's position in a debate, and used exactly how it should be here... is it *wrong* for physicists to say that quarks have colors if they don't mean what the most common definition of color means? Is it *wrong* for us to say that rockets have stages if that causes someone who knows nothing about rockets to wonder where the actors are?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 12/03/2016 05:57 am
Think "apologetics." Not at all a negative term.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: sdsds on 12/03/2016 06:11 am
It also implies there is something to apologise for

You are correct the author is implying something. But it isn't that there is something to "say you are sorry" about.

The main place where the term apologist is used is in the context of religious apologetics. There is also a common tendency to use the term "religion" to refer to strongly held secular beliefs, particularly in new technology fields. The author is thus simply implying that some of those who believe strongly in reusable spaceflight technology believe humankind as a whole will benefit from its introduction.

I rather agree with your point that there would have been better words to use in that sentence that would have been less likely to cause confusion. Were I the author's editor I would have suggested zealot. Or fanatic. Or simply ... fan.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: DOCinCT on 12/03/2016 02:27 pm
A couple of recent documents have just been listed on NTRS that may be of interest to readers of this thread.  One is a conference paper and the other is the presentation slides that accompany it.

Is It Worth It? - the Economics of Reusable Space Transportation

Abstract
...
Abstracts usually include the conclusion; this one is pure tease (and long-winded at that). Would someone who's read the papers kindly provide a TL:DR. Many thanks.
Best slide is #17 "cost of transportation systems"   might be worth comparing the cost breakdown there with eter B. de Selding's article http://spacenews.com/spacexs-reusable-falcon-9-what-are-the-real-cost-savings-for-customers/
As to a conclusion, the author doesn't really have one other than it depends.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 03/31/2017 07:05 am
In the SES-10 press conference Elon said SpaceX have spent something like a billion dollars developing re-usability. So there's a lot of development cost to pay off. Elon said there will be a 'meaningful' discount for re-using a booster now but they won't pass on full savings so development cost can be recouped.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: jg on 04/01/2017 12:32 am
In the SES-10 press conference Elon said SpaceX have spent something like a billion dollars developing re-usability. So there's a lot of development cost to pay off. Elon said there will be a 'meaningful' discount for re-using a booster now but they won't pass on full savings so development cost can be recouped.

Also remember that "fast followers" (or slow followers) won't have as healthy prices to repay their re-usability development costs.  The new entrants get to compete at a much lower price point for each "test" flight and are going to get to subsidize flights to win contracts.

This is a situation where the later entrants have a higher entry cost.  Bezos has so much money it may not matter, but others who want to follow are going to find it tough to get profitable paid missions to perfect their implementations.  They do have the advantage of knowing it *can* be done, of course.
                 - Jim
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: su27k on 04/01/2017 03:17 am
In the SES-10 press conference Elon said SpaceX have spent something like a billion dollars developing re-usability. So there's a lot of development cost to pay off. Elon said there will be a 'meaningful' discount for re-using a booster now but they won't pass on full savings so development cost can be recouped.

Actually I'm not sure the $1B figure is for reusability alone, seems way too high for just the test program/grid fin/legs/ASDS etc. $1B is about 1000 engineers for 5 years, I think that's the total R&D they have invested in F9, which include all the performance upgrades too.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 04/01/2017 02:58 pm
Actually I'm not sure the $1B figure is for reusability alone, seems way too high for just the test program/grid fin/legs/ASDS etc. $1B is about 1000 engineers for 5 years, I think that's the total R&D they have invested in F9, which include all the performance upgrades too.

Sounds right to me. It does contrast extremely with rocket development cost of other launch service providers. Maybe the whole development cost after the 1.0. That was 300 million $, right?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Prettz on 04/01/2017 03:04 pm
Would that $1 billion include the cost of all the recovery-related hardware on all the boosters they've launched thus far? That would make sense to me.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: mme on 04/01/2017 05:16 pm
In the SES-10 press conference Elon said SpaceX have spent something like a billion dollars developing re-usability. So there's a lot of development cost to pay off. Elon said there will be a 'meaningful' discount for re-using a booster now but they won't pass on full savings so development cost can be recouped.

Actually I'm not sure the $1B figure is for reusability alone, seems way too high for just the test program/grid fin/legs/ASDS etc. $1B is about 1000 engineers for 5 years, I think that's the total R&D they have invested in F9, which include all the performance upgrades too.
The performance upgrades where required for reusability.  Basically all development after v1.0 was because parachute recovery failed.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MP99 on 04/01/2017 06:09 pm


Actually I'm not sure the $1B figure is for reusability alone, seems way too high for just the test program/grid fin/legs/ASDS etc. $1B is about 1000 engineers for 5 years, I think that's the total R&D they have invested in F9, which include all the performance upgrades too.

Sounds right to me. It does contrast extremely with rocket development cost of other launch service providers. Maybe the whole development cost after the 1.0. That was 300 million $, right?

Recovery does depend on having the performance to spare, and on having the mass fractions to make that penalty not too large.

Cheers, Martin

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: meekGee on 04/02/2017 08:44 am
In the SES-10 press conference Elon said SpaceX have spent something like a billion dollars developing re-usability. So there's a lot of development cost to pay off. Elon said there will be a 'meaningful' discount for re-using a booster now but they won't pass on full savings so development cost can be recouped.

Actually I'm not sure the $1B figure is for reusability alone, seems way too high for just the test program/grid fin/legs/ASDS etc. $1B is about 1000 engineers for 5 years, I think that's the total R&D they have invested in F9, which include all the performance upgrades too.
The performance upgrades where required for reusability.  Basically all development after v1.0 was because parachute recovery failed.
Propulsive RTLS started, from what I know, just a bit after the first F9 flight.  The parachutes were something they experimented with, but it was not the main plan from a very early date.

The "cost of reusability" figure IMO includes the hardware - GH and launches with experimental hardware.  Otherwise $1B is too high.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 04/02/2017 01:49 pm
Yes, if you include all vehicle mods, Merlin upgrades, landing legs, sport interstages, ASDSs, fleet operations, Grasshopper/Dev testing, etc., and the engineering/labor to make these tests happen -- all stuff that could simply been ignored if they were splashing all stages, then $1B isn't too unreasonable.  Might even say the rebuilding of LC-40 is a cost of reusability (fast operational flow) testing, but drawing an exact line is not possible.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: ChrisGebhardt on 04/05/2017 02:40 pm
I'm trying to understand the practical nature of the "100 fold decrease to overall coast" statement Musk made in the post-launch news conference for SES-10.  So, have I done this right...

If a baseline F9 cost $62M (SpaceX website) then to find the price after a 100 fold decrease, it's:

62/x = 100 fold.

Solving for x, I get 38.

So a 100 fold reduction in cost leads to a new value of $38M for a flight-proven core after a $24M reduction.

Have I done that right?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 04/05/2017 02:44 pm
I'm trying to understand the practical nature of the "100 fold decrease to overall coast" statement Musk made in the post-launch news conference for SES-10.  So, have I done this right...

If a baseline F9 cost $62M (SpaceX website) then to find the price after a 100 fold decrease, it's:

62/x = 100 fold.

Solving for x, I get 38.

So a 100 fold reduction in cost leads to a new value of $38M for a flight-proven core after a $24M reduction.

Have I done that right?

I took a hundred fold reduction as meaning two orders of magnitude. Meaning 62m/100 = $620k or 1% of the original cost. But I guess it depends on the exact context of the quote.

If it is 100 fold applied only to the booster cost, then it is a reduction of 99% of the booster cost, which would be 62m x 70% x 99% = a $42.9m saving, once the 100 fold reduction comes into effect.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: ChrisGebhardt on 04/05/2017 02:47 pm
I'm trying to understand the practical nature of the "100 fold decrease to overall coast" statement Musk made in the post-launch news conference for SES-10.  So, have I done this right...

If a baseline F9 cost $62M (SpaceX website) then to find the price after a 100 fold decrease, it's:

62/x = 100 fold.

Solving for x, I get 38.

So a 100 fold reduction in cost leads to a new value of $38M for a flight-proven core after a $24M reduction.

Have I done that right?

I took a hundred fold reduction as meaning two orders of magnitude. Meaning 62m/100 = $620k or 1% of the original cost. But I guess it depends on the exact context of the quote.

I don't think that jives with SpaceX's statements of offering the first few flight-proven core customers 10% discount
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 04/05/2017 02:58 pm
Was the 100 fold reduction not applicable in the long term, rather than immediately?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: kaiser on 04/05/2017 03:01 pm
In the SES-10 press conference Elon said SpaceX have spent something like a billion dollars developing re-usability. So there's a lot of development cost to pay off. Elon said there will be a 'meaningful' discount for re-using a booster now but they won't pass on full savings so development cost can be recouped.

Actually I'm not sure the $1B figure is for reusability alone, seems way too high for just the test program/grid fin/legs/ASDS etc. $1B is about 1000 engineers for 5 years, I think that's the total R&D they have invested in F9, which include all the performance upgrades too.

As always, it's more complex than what you saw.  But I agree that $1B covers likely more than just the reusability.  Edit:  I also get a bit less engineering hours than you, about half....these engineers have lots of overhead (specialty software, high end computers, lab space, etc that drives rates fairly high in my estimation).  Usually over half of your money during development/design is spent on hardware, so even less than that.  Then it would be a couple hundred engineers for a couple of years, which seems fair.

But remember that these didn't just spring forward out of nowhere.  They had to initially test the grid fins in some chamber, and so on.  Not to mention design and iterate/optimize that design.  You have a whole set of capital equipment for implementing it, which is quite expensive.

Also, I attended a talk from a SpaceX employee about how they gathered a team of physicists and mathematicians and essentially re-wrote from scratch all of the aerodynamic/fluid flow equations and software.  What everyone is using works great on regular CPUs, but they realized that they couldn't throw enough horsepower at the problem for them to be able to solve all of the tricky issues with respect to iterating on reuse.  It would take many weeks for even a small design alteration to get fluid flow answers back.

So, they re-formulated all of the equations so that they could run on a GPU.  Non-trivial task that they had large a pretty good chunk of high end physicists and mathematicians working on.  But once complete, it allowed them to quickly iterate and run optimization sweeps on the design.

Then add in the millions of dollars of servers full of GPUs to serve as the computing cluster, and it adds up.

BTW, that talk was at Nvidia's Developer Conference probably 2-3 years ago if I remember right...they usually have them online for those whom want to watch it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: saliva_sweet on 04/05/2017 03:56 pm
Was the 100 fold reduction not applicable in the long term, rather than immediately?

IIRC from the presser, it was the ITS BFR that was supposed to give 100x reduction in $/kg.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/05/2017 04:20 pm
Yes, Elon has long talked about a 100-fold reduction in terms of the long-term aim, with full (all stages) and rapid re-use. He's basing that on the cost of propellant vs pre-SpaceX prices.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 04/05/2017 04:22 pm
In the SES-10 press conference Elon said SpaceX have spent something like a billion dollars developing re-usability. So there's a lot of development cost to pay off. Elon said there will be a 'meaningful' discount for re-using a booster now but they won't pass on full savings so development cost can be recouped.

Actually I'm not sure the $1B figure is for reusability alone, seems way too high for just the test program/grid fin/legs/ASDS etc. $1B is about 1000 engineers for 5 years, I think that's the total R&D they have invested in F9, which include all the performance upgrades too.
The performance upgrades where required for reusability.  Basically all development after v1.0 was because parachute recovery failed.
Um, the performance upgrades were required in any case, IMHO... F9 1.0 wasn't capable of serving the GTO market well, again IMHO.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 04/05/2017 05:09 pm

Um, the performance upgrades were required in any case, IMHO... F9 1.0 wasn't capable of serving the GTO market well, again IMHO.

what was the gto performance of v1.0 expendable?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 04/05/2017 05:40 pm

Um, the performance upgrades were required in any case, IMHO... F9 1.0 wasn't capable of serving the GTO market well, again IMHO.

what was the gto performance of v1.0 expendable?

4680 kg, according to

https://web.archive.org/web/20101222155322/http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php

It never flew to GTO, though.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/05/2017 06:02 pm
Quote
Shotwell: cost of refurbishing F9 first stage was “substantially less” than half of a new stage; will be even less in the future. #33SS

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/849679544923697152 (https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/849679544923697152)

Edit to add: important extra point

Quote
Shotwell: Falcon booster refurbishment cost substantially less than 1/2 cost of new build; more done for SES-10 than future flights. #33SS

https://twitter.com/flatoday_jdean/status/849679956988674048 (https://twitter.com/flatoday_jdean/status/849679956988674048)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: speedevil on 04/08/2017 01:16 pm
Quote
Shotwell: cost of refurbishing F9 first stage was “substantially less” than half of a new stage; will be even less in the future. #33SS

If the stated aim is to get F9 flying within a day, I can't see how you'd spend even a small fraction of that.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 04/09/2017 07:27 pm
Quote
Shotwell: cost of refurbishing F9 first stage was “substantially less” than half of a new stage; will be even less in the future. #33SS

If the stated aim is to get F9 flying within a day, I can't see how you'd spend even a small fraction of that.

Well, yes. Fairly obvious I would have thought· If they can get it down to 24 hrs, the costs are going to drop substantially (even if those 24hrs are spread over longer periods). To do that, huge sensor suites in the rocket, which are actually pretty cheap, and good engineering to fix parts that are determined to fail earlier than needed.

This one was expensive because the first of anything is usually a pathfinder, and much more than subsquents.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/12/2017 06:15 pm
Quote
Shotwell: cost of refurbishing F9 first stage was “substantially less” than half of a new stage; will be even less in the future. #33SS

If the stated aim is to get F9 flying within a day, I can't see how you'd spend even a small fraction of that.
I believe she also stated that the next ones will be 1/10 that of the SES-10. So that puts refurbishment costs at <$2M.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/11/musk-wants-to-make-falcon-9-rocket-fully-reusable/ (https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/11/musk-wants-to-make-falcon-9-rocket-fully-reusable/)
Quote
For the next few rockets SpaceX aims to refly, Shotwell said engineers will do about a tenth of the work that they did to refurbish the booster that launched March 30 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the SES 10 communications satellite.
Costs = level of manpower "work" plus replaced parts value.

If no parts are replaced then the cost of refurbishment is just the labor. So we have a floor for minimum costs. Now add the average cost of replaced parts which would probably be only another $2M (an M1D costs less than $2M) and you get a value for refurbishment at somewhere around $2-4M.

That is a savings of $20M+ over a new booster. The question becomes  how much will SpaceX allocate to paying back reusability development costs and how much to a customer discount.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MikeAtkinson on 04/12/2017 08:22 pm
I think the best strategy is to offer really good deals on bulk purchase (multi-launch of similar satellites), while keeping the price for single satellites only a bit below that at present.

Growth in the market is going to come through large constellations and repeated launch of similar missions (tourism, dragonlab, etc.). Over the next few years, this bulk market is one that SpaceX are uniquely able to fill. A $5 M profit margin on a 100 launch deal will make much more money than a $20 M margin on all the currently winnable commercial contracts for GEO communication satellites.

Growing the market is in my opinion the best strategy, but it will take many years for the market to react to price signals (very inelastic in the short term, it seems moderately elastic in the medium term, 5-10 years). So promising very low prices in 5 years for bulk purchase, while keeping prices high in the short term should maximise profit.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/13/2017 05:08 pm
I believe that the pricing structure is headed towards the following:

1) If the contract specify use of new booster customer will be charged an additional fee.

2) Based on the landing mission mode (RTLS, ASDS, EXPD) this will control the basic price. There will be probably a stiff penalty for use of EXPD mode. These prices would assume no specificity by the contract on vehicle usage status.

This type of pricing structure will probably take over once the usage rate of used boosters get to the 70% level. But until then the pricing structure is a price and then discounts.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: hkultala on 04/13/2017 08:36 pm

Um, the performance upgrades were required in any case, IMHO... F9 1.0 wasn't capable of serving the GTO market well, again IMHO.

what was the gto performance of v1.0 expendable?

4680 kg, according to

https://web.archive.org/web/20101222155322/http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php

It never flew to GTO, though.

I think this is not v1.0.

I think that In the page they are advertising the planned second model of Falcon 9 which was supposed to have higher thrust "Merlin 1C+" engines, and they payloads are for that model. But instead they managed to make the even more powerful Merlin 1D engine and this version with the "merlin 1C+" never flew.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 04/13/2017 08:55 pm

Um, the performance upgrades were required in any case, IMHO... F9 1.0 wasn't capable of serving the GTO market well, again IMHO.

what was the gto performance of v1.0 expendable?

4680 kg, according to

https://web.archive.org/web/20101222155322/http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php

It never flew to GTO, though.

I think this is not v1.0.

I think that In the page they are advertising the planned second model of Falcon 9 which was supposed to have higher thrust "Merlin 1C+" engines, and they payloads are for that model. But instead they managed to make the even more powerful Merlin 1D engine and this version with the "merlin 1C+" never flew.

You're right, it says "Data reflects the Falcon 9 Block 2 design."

Wonder if that's v1.1...?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 04/13/2017 09:05 pm
No, it's a version of v1.0 that never flew.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 04/13/2017 11:41 pm
No, it's a version of v1.0 that never flew.

It must have morphed into v1.1, since we know that FT/v1.2 is Block 3.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/16/2017 08:11 am
I believe she also stated that the next ones will be 1/10 that of the SES-10. So that puts refurbishment costs at <$2M.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/11/musk-wants-to-make-falcon-9-rocket-fully-reusable/ (https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/11/musk-wants-to-make-falcon-9-rocket-fully-reusable/)
Quote
For the next few rockets SpaceX aims to refly, Shotwell said engineers will do about a tenth of the work that they did to refurbish the booster that launched March 30 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the SES 10 communications satellite.

Yes, it can just be heard on a video of the talk, with transcription by RedLineTrain: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39167.msg1667230#msg1667230 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39167.msg1667230#msg1667230)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/16/2017 05:27 pm
The main kicker here is the effect such low refurbishment costs have on the cost per flight of an FH. At 10 flights per booster the average savings per flight is ~$20M for an F9. But for an FH it is $60M. Putting the pricing of an FH at about $15M more than an F9. If the new price of an F9 eventually gets to a value of $45M then the price for a FH would be ~$60M. That last flight flying as an expendable fully loaded would make the $/kg to LEO only $937.

Now drop the price another $3M for reusing the faring.
Price $57M - $/kg $890.

Added:
By 2020 the $/kg potential could be as low as $800 this is a factor of 10 from where the $/kg was at prior to F9's first flight in 2010 ($10,000/kg for an Atlas V 551 - best cost performance of all US LVs). So a factor of 10 over 10 years. What will the next ten years bring? $80/kg! (This is the goal of the ITS BTW).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 04/16/2017 05:43 pm
A year ago, Jeffries put together a simple reusability model (http://spacenews.com/spacexs-reusable-falcon-9-what-are-the-real-cost-savings-for-customers/) that was referenced by Space News.  I found it pretty helpful at the time in thinking about the impact of reusability so I put it in a spreadsheet.

After talk of fairing and second stage reuse became more concrete, I broke out the costs into four components:  first stage, second stage, fairing, and flight ops and calculated various reuse scenarios for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.  Attached is the slightly more complicated model.  Variables in red can be changed to suit.

Feedback welcome.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/16/2017 06:44 pm
Thanks for the spreadsheet.

Now for the other item. How long will it take for SpaceX to recover their $1B investment in reuse.

At 25 flights / yr and 70% being used boosters and SpaceX recovering $10M to pay against this charge per reused booster flight it will be 6 years for them to recover this development cost. Number of flight goes up or % of reused to new goes up then the time for this recovery will shorten. At 90% and 35 flights per year it would take only 4 years. So with SpaceX's flight projections the recovery period will be closer to 4 than it will be to 6. Putting recovery period ending in 2021. So in 2022 the prices could drop an additional $10M for an F9 and as much as $30M for an FH. The key here is that SpaceX is still making the same amount of profit per flight as they are now but at prices are a lot lower.

This is a very stiff competition price point profile. Other LV's would be hard pressed to keep up unless they were fully reusable. These price drops would occur only 2 years after the NG and Vulcan are operating.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 04/16/2017 07:15 pm
I am not sure I buy that 1B number as an actual out of pocket cost... I think it might be padded for customer benefit.  Remember that a lot of the experiments are done on hardware that otherwise is going into the ocean and is otherwise paid for. 1B buys a LOT of barge time/ tug time/fins and legs, etc

I would be interested in any rough budgets that people might have. We know tug rates and barge rates and stuff....

ok now i'm convincing myself that maybe it is 1B... but it's a self funded 1B ...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Eric Hedman on 04/16/2017 07:18 pm
The main kicker here is the effect such low refurbishment costs have on the cost per flight of an FH. At 10 flights per booster the average savings per flight is ~$20M for an F9. But for an FH it is $60M. Putting the pricing of an FH at about $15M more than an F9. If the new price of an F9 eventually gets to a value of $45M then the price for a FH would be ~$60M. That last flight flying as an expendable fully loaded would make the $/kg to LEO only $937.

Now drop the price another $3M for reusing the faring.
Price $57M - $/kg $890.

Added:
By 2020 the $/kg potential could be as low as $800 this is a factor of 10 from where the $/kg was at prior to F9's first flight in 2010 ($10,000/kg for an Atlas V 551 - best cost performance of all US LVs). So a factor of 10 over 10 years. What will the next ten years bring? $80/kg! (This is the goal of the ITS BTW).
Those kind of cost improvements, other than computers, don't tend to keep going at the same breakneck pace over the long haul without some other technological revolution.  Something beyond re-usability and optimal scale will probably be needed to get costs down to $80/kg.  I would be happy to see anything under $800/kg for the next couple of decades.   Even $800/kg will probably be enough of a reduction to open up significant growth in a space economy.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 04/16/2017 07:22 pm
And that's where the kicker comes in. Although some think that there are some fixed costs that will go up (and thus not be truly fixed) if the traffic volume goes up 10x, that is likely to drive down cost just from efficiency reasons. Not with the current ranges though.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RonM on 04/16/2017 07:22 pm
That $1B R&D resulted in technology that will apply to ITS and any other VTVL rockets SpaceX will develop. F9/FH programs don't have to recover the entire cost for them to be a success.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 04/16/2017 07:42 pm
I am not sure I buy that 1B number as an actual out of pocket cost... I think it might be padded for customer benefit.

I would describe the $1 billion as a number that doesn't impact the way in which SpaceX will run its business going forward.  They will look more to cash-on-hand and supporting and keeping busy the 6,000 employees on the payroll as they change to being an RLV provider.  And in this sense, they need to be thoughtful and careful.

I was a little shocked at learning the 6,000 number.  They haven't even ramped up for their constellation.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MikeAtkinson on 04/16/2017 08:26 pm
Thanks for the spreadsheet.

Now for the other item. How long will it take for SpaceX to recover their $1B investment in reuse.

At 25 flights / yr and 70% being used boosters and SpaceX recovering $10M to pay against this charge per reused booster flight it will be 6 years for them to recover this development cost. Number of flight goes up or % of reused to new goes up then the time for this recovery will shorten. At 90% and 35 flights per year it would take only 4 years. So with SpaceX's flight projections the recovery period will be closer to 4 than it will be to 6. Putting recovery period ending in 2021. So in 2022 the prices could drop an additional $10M for an F9 and as much as $30M for an FH. The key here is that SpaceX is still making the same amount of profit per flight as they are now but at prices are a lot lower.

This is a very stiff competition price point profile. Other LV's would be hard pressed to keep up unless they were fully reusable. These price drops would occur only 2 years after the NG and Vulcan are operating.

One way of looking at things, allocates only the extra profit margin from launches that SpaceX would have done anyway but the full profit margin from launches that SpaceX pick up because reusability brings down the cost.

So if without reusability a launch costs $60M with a profit of $15M and after cost reductions due to reusability the profit margin goes up to $20M, those flights have $5M to pay off the development cost of reusability. But if the number of launches goes up from 20/year to 30/year then the entire profit from those extra 10 launches can be allocated to pay off the reusability cost. So the first 20 launches in a year that they would have got gives $100M and the 10 extra launches give $200M. [all figures completely made up for illustration purposes only]

A second advantage of reusability is that it avoids SpaceX hitting the limits of Hawthorne factory (about 40 cores per year). Using expendable launches CommX plus their normal commercial customers would exceed that limit, so they would have considerable capital cost and time bringing a new factory on-line and expanding their Texas testing facilities.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MikeAtkinson on 04/16/2017 08:44 pm
I was a little shocked at learning the 6,000 number.  They haven't even ramped up for their constellation.
Considering they have 6 major development projects (block 5, resuable US, CommX, Raptor, ITS and Dragon 2), numerous smaller development projects, 2 operation pads and 2 being built, attempting a launch cadence of 2 per month, etc. and that they are vertically integrated so that most of the costs fall on them, it is amazing the headcount is so low.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Eric Hedman on 04/16/2017 08:54 pm
A second advantage of reusability is that it avoids SpaceX hitting the limits of Hawthorne factory (about 40 cores per year). Using expendable launches CommX plus their normal commercial customers would exceed that limit, so they would have considerable capital cost and time bringing a new factory on-line and expanding their Texas testing facilities.
Great point!  If launch demand grows significantly that will be a big advantage for both SpaceX and Blue Origin.  Anyone without a reusable first stage will have a much higher overhead to maintain.  The reusable in space ACES stage might be the sweet spot for ULA in the long haul for the same reason.  It brings us back to the fuel depot argument.  Cheap fuel to a depot and a reusable in space tug instead of an expendable second or third stage to get out of LEO.  Add in SEP tugs and you have a pretty good cost effective solution for all sorts of destinations.  Everything reusable.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Eric Hedman on 04/16/2017 09:06 pm
I would like the terminology to change.  Call rockets from SpaceX and Blue origin just rockets.  Call everything else from other companies throwaway, disposable or single use rockets and put the negative connotation on them.  You don't ever hear anybody call a 787 a reusable airplane.  It's just assumed.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: joek on 04/16/2017 09:13 pm
I am not sure I buy that 1B number as an actual out of pocket cost... I think it might be padded for customer benefit.  Remember that a lot of the experiments are done on hardware that otherwise is going into the ocean and is otherwise paid for. 1B buys a LOT of barge time/ tug time/fins and legs, etc

Given that F9v1.0 (block 1) reportedly cost $400M... If SpaceX is counting from zero, fairly easy to believe, possibly minus some outliers such as CCtCap- or DOD-specific spend?  That would put post-v1.0- R&D at ~$600M.  If counting from F9v1.0, that would put total R&D at ~$1.4B (including FH?); does not seem too far out of line in comparison to other efforts.

Then again, I'd agree as you suggest that the way SpaceX has conducted their R&D makes it difficult to quantify... did the cost of every flight also count against reuse R&D?  Maybe for accounting purposes, but not necessarily from a cash perspective.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: joek on 04/16/2017 09:33 pm
I believe that the pricing structure is headed towards the following:

1) If the contract specify use of new booster customer will be charged an additional fee.

2) Based on the landing mission mode (RTLS, ASDS, EXPD) this will control the basic price. There will be probably a stiff penalty for use of EXPD mode. These prices would assume no specificity by the contract on vehicle usage status.

This type of pricing structure will probably take over once the usage rate of used boosters get to the 70% level. But until then the pricing structure is a price and then discounts.

Generally agree, but I think you can simplify...
Customer: I want payload [mass] P delivered to location/trajectory Q at time R.
SpaceX: Price is $X.  We'll figure out the rest.
Customer: And I want a new/unused/non-flight-proven vehicle.
SpaceX: Price is $X+/-$Z.[1]  Time R depends on inventory/availability.[2]

[1] May be a premium in the near term; may be a discount in the future.
[2] You want new and you want it soon... gonna cost.  Take first available from inventory (new or used) and you get it sooner.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: LouScheffer on 04/17/2017 11:19 am
I am not sure I buy that 1B number as an actual out of pocket cost... I think it might be padded for customer benefit.  Remember that a lot of the experiments are done on hardware that otherwise is going into the ocean and is otherwise paid for. 1B buys a LOT of barge time/ tug time/fins and legs, etc

I would be interested in any rough budgets that people might have. We know tug rates and barge rates and stuff....

ok now i'm convincing myself that maybe it is 1B... but it's a self funded 1B ...
I think this type of calculation is much more interesting for ULA (or other new vendors) than SpaceX.  Let's assume it costs about $1B more to develop an re-usable rocket than an expendable, as Musk has stated.

SpaceX has already spent the money - it's a sunk cost.  Whether or not this was a good investment is irrelevant going forward.  Provided it saves them anything at all, even only $1M per launch, it's still worth it for them to go reusable.

But for someone who has not spent the $1B for re-usability yet, these are very interesting numbers.  How much can I save per launch?  How many do I need to sell to recover my development cost?  What kind of market share changes will I see with re-use?  This type of calculation appears all the time in the airline industry (see discussion of how long it will take the 787 and A380 to pay back their development cost).  Surely Boeing and LM, already experienced in this type of analysis, are applying this to Vulcan development and whether or not it should include re-usability.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/17/2017 05:40 pm
A thought about where that recovered $1B would go during the 4 years it would take to recover the funds. At $250M a year that is quite a large fund for SpaceX to fund additional rocket developments. Now add another $250M from other profits you get a yearly R&D budget of $500M. Over 5 years that is $2.5B. This should be sufficient for the beginnings of ITS development.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 04/17/2017 05:57 pm
I am not sure I buy that 1B number as an actual out of pocket cost... I think it might be padded for customer benefit.  Remember that a lot of the experiments are done on hardware that otherwise is going into the ocean and is otherwise paid for. 1B buys a LOT of barge time/ tug time/fins and legs, etc

I would be interested in any rough budgets that people might have. We know tug rates and barge rates and stuff....

ok now i'm convincing myself that maybe it is 1B... but it's a self funded 1B ...
I think this type of calculation is much more interesting for ULA (or other new vendors) than SpaceX.  Let's assume it costs about $1B more to develop an re-usable rocket than an expendable, as Musk has stated.

SpaceX has already spent the money - it's a sunk cost.  Whether or not this was a good investment is irrelevant going forward.  Provided it saves them anything at all, even only $1M per launch, it's still worth it for them to go reusable.

But for someone who has not spent the $1B for re-usability yet, these are very interesting numbers.  How much can I save per launch?  How many do I need to sell to recover my development cost?  What kind of market share changes will I see with re-use?  This type of calculation appears all the time in the airline industry (see discussion of how long it will take the 787 and A380 to pay back their development cost).  Surely Boeing and LM, already experienced in this type of analysis, are applying this to Vulcan development and whether or not it should include re-usability.



My desire to see the numbers was to see if 1B is reasonable... I was thinking initially it might be a bit fluffy for customer consumption...

Re the A380, I heard (in Aviation Week???)  that the latest projection on paying back dev't cost is "never".
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: CuddlyRocket on 04/17/2017 11:10 pm
I would like the terminology to change.  Call rockets from SpaceX and Blue origin just rockets.  Call everything else from other companies throwaway, disposable or single use rockets and put the negative connotation on them.  You don't ever hear anybody call a 787 a reusable airplane.  It's just assumed.

That will happen when the numerical balance between expendable and reusable rockets shifts towards the latter. A similar thing happened with the introduction of jet aircraft.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/19/2017 05:49 pm
I would like the terminology to change.  Call rockets from SpaceX and Blue origin just rockets.  Call everything else from other companies throwaway, disposable or single use rockets and put the negative connotation on them.  You don't ever hear anybody call a 787 a reusable airplane.  It's just assumed.

That will happen when the numerical balance between expendable and reusable rockets shifts towards the latter. A similar thing happened with the introduction of jet aircraft.
If by EOY 2018 or 2019 SpaceX is flying 20 reused booster flights and the total number of launches worldwide is 100 then the percentage of reuse to expendable is 20% reused to 80% expendable worldwide. If SpaceX expands their launch rate to 50 from 30 and those additional increase the world total to 120 with the the reuse count being 90% or 45 launches then the reuse to expendable ratio would be 37.5%/62.5%. Now add another expansion of 20 launches with 80% reused (the NGs) with total worldwide of 140 the ratio goes to 44%/56%. So sometime in the 2020's it is possible that the reuse launches will outnumber the expendable launches. As the number of launches on reuse capable vehicles grow and the number of expendable launches shrink.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/22/2017 04:39 pm
An item that just popped up in my thoughts on another thread is the manpower levels needed to support a launch every 2 weeks. At $1-2M for refurbishment and parts between flight that represents 5,000 to 10,000 manhours of refurbishment work on a booster. A crew of 25 would take from 5 to 10 weeks to do the refurbishment. To support an every other week flight the refurbishment crews should number in the 60 to 125 personnel. And they would be constantly busy with no down time unless the pad/vehicle is also in a significant launch downtime for some reason (failure investigation or severe weather event like a huricane).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 04/22/2017 10:48 pm
I am not sure I buy that 1B number as an actual out of pocket cost... I think it might be padded for customer benefit.

I would describe the $1 billion as a number that doesn't impact the way in which SpaceX will run its business going forward.  They will look more to cash-on-hand and supporting and keeping busy the 6,000 employees on the payroll as they change to being an RLV provider.  And in this sense, they need to be thoughtful and careful.

I was a little shocked at learning the 6,000 number.  They haven't even ramped up for their constellation.

6,000 also doesn't include running four pads flat out.  With 400+ wanted ads out there as an indicator, and these new personnel demands on the near horizon, growth will continue to be robust for several years.  Breaking 10,000  by 2020 is possible, IMO. (They've doubled in size in the last 3-4 years...)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 04/22/2017 11:26 pm
6,000 also doesn't include running four pads flat out.  With 400+ wanted ads out there as an indicator, and these new personnel demands on the near horizon, growth will continue to be robust for several years.  Breaking 10,000  by 2020 is possible, IMO. (They've doubled in size in the last 3-4 years...)

They definitely need big-time revenue.  Perhaps they will go after the other satellite verticals.  We all need a 10,000 satellite reconnaissance constellation, after all.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/23/2017 05:23 pm
6,000 also doesn't include running four pads flat out.  With 400+ wanted ads out there as an indicator, and these new personnel demands on the near horizon, growth will continue to be robust for several years.  Breaking 10,000  by 2020 is possible, IMO. (They've doubled in size in the last 3-4 years...)

They definitely need big-time revenue.  Perhaps they will go after the other satellite verticals.  We all need a 10,000 satellite reconnaissance constellation, after all.
Re-flight rate of only 67% here is the potential revenue/profit estimates (values are in Millions of US dollars):

                                                            Per Flight      At re-flight rate of 20 /yr out of total 30 flights
Normal Price per flight                             $62.00            $620.00
Discounted Flight Price for Reused booster  $50.00          $1,000.00
Normal Profit on Flight                             $10.00             $300.00
Additional Margin assigned for R&D            $10.00            $200.00
Total funds available for reinvestment /yr                          $500.00
Total revenue /yr                                                        $1,620.00

Is this big enough for you?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 04/24/2017 08:49 pm
An item that just popped up in my thoughts on another thread is the manpower levels needed to support a launch every 2 weeks. At $1-2M for refurbishment and parts between flight that represents 5,000 to 10,000 manhours of refurbishment work on a booster. A crew of 25 would take from 5 to 10 weeks to do the refurbishment. To support an every other week flight the refurbishment crews should number in the 60 to 125 personnel. And they would be constantly busy with no down time unless the pad/vehicle is also in a significant launch downtime for some reason (failure investigation or severe weather event like a huricane).
Thanks for that. These are the missing numbers for the modelling game.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 04/25/2017 11:01 am
An item that just popped up in my thoughts on another thread is the manpower levels needed to support a launch every 2 weeks. At $1-2M for refurbishment and parts between flight that represents 5,000 to 10,000 manhours of refurbishment work on a booster. A crew of 25 would take from 5 to 10 weeks to do the refurbishment. To support an every other week flight the refurbishment crews should number in the 60 to 125 personnel. And they would be constantly busy with no down time unless the pad/vehicle is also in a significant launch downtime for some reason (failure investigation or severe weather event like a huricane).
Thanks for that. These are the missing numbers for the modelling game.

Does that make any sense though when combined with the SpaceX desire to have 24hr refurb times? Which in my view is not about 24hr turnaround, but being able to do all the maintenance required to refly in 24hr, which means very cheap to do indeed. They don't need to have a booster ready in 24hrs, but to be able to have it refurbed in those timescales reduces costs hugely.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 04/25/2017 11:44 am
I think 2M for refurb costs is high if you're talking 24 hour turnarounds. Airliners are at similar price points (within an order of magnitude) for initial cost of the vehicle and don't spend nearly that much getting ready for their next flight. Maybe when they have scheduled overhauls and have to replace an engine

You may say that SpaceX can't achieve these turnaround times and costs but that's their goal. They may not make it... but I'm thinking a crew of 500 spending 2M in small parts? no.  I could see the average cost being 1M IF you include the once every 10 flights heavy overhaul that might include some engine changeouts if an engine was found to be marginal.... but even that seems high.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 04/25/2017 09:09 pm
I think 2M for refurb costs is high if you're talking 24 hour turnarounds. Airliners are at similar price points (within an order of magnitude) for initial cost of the vehicle and don't spend nearly that much getting ready for their next flight. Maybe when they have scheduled overhauls and have to replace an engine

You may say that SpaceX can't achieve these turnaround times and costs but that's their goal. They may not make it... but I'm thinking a crew of 500 spending 2M in small parts? no.  I could see the average cost being 1M IF you include the once every 10 flights heavy overhaul that might include some engine changeouts if an engine was found to be marginal.... but even that seems high.
For general aviation passenger services the rule of thumb has been that total costs per flight were 3x the fuel costs. Given Musk has said F9 costs about $200K in propellant that would be about about $600-800K. However since unless the US is fully recoverable that will have to be written off and that's around $17m.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/03/2017 01:16 pm
Elon Musk has said they spent about a billion dollars developing recovery and reuse. So that needs to be recovered before they are making money with reuse. How long that takes depends on how much they discount the rockets for launch and how much it costs to refurbish them for the next launch. The issue boils down to the question - when do they make more money by reusing rockets than they spent on making them reusable?

An additional facet of this is "how much of your capabilities have you intentionally sacrificed to make your rocket reusable?" which is what ULA has been asking.

Which is a bogus question.

Payload has a fixed mass. You get paid for orbiting this payload. Any extra performance you have over this weight on this flight would not earn you a single extra dollar.
If you can orbit the payload of this fixed mass and land the stage, you "sacrificed" nothing for reusing this state.
If you can orbit the payload of this fixed mass only by expending the stage, you are no worse than your competitors who do not have reuse option at all.

ULA are not stupid, they know this too. They are just not yet resigned to accept the new reality.

1) Extra performance can certainly earn more money on many missions.

2) The extra performance required for reuse means a bigger rocket, which is more expensive than a smaller rocket. However, this is offset to some extent by 1), where more performance can earn more money on an expendable mission.

3) You have to design the recovery systems, which are part of the fixed development cost - even the expendable rockets must bear those. And expending a recoverable rocket is always going to be somewhat more expensive than expending a rocket designed to be expendable.

However, all of the above are offset by the fact that later flights of the same rocket are FAR cheaper than building a new one. Including expendable flights, where you can get all the performance on a rocket that's already paid for itself many times over. THIS is the point of reuse. It's cheaper to build 1 oversized rocket with 10 lives than 10 undersized rockets.

The part I don't get about ULA's response is that SpaceX is beating them on price while throwing away reuseable rockets. How can ULA possibly compete economically now that SpaceX has started reusing them?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Joffan on 05/03/2017 04:43 pm
I think even the billion-dollar budget for reusability is a bit of a red herring. Some of that expenditure has more benefits than just the ability to reuse the lower stage, so that continually improves the value of the SpaceX service.

As a simple example, the ability to review a used stage informs and improves the next increment of design of new stages. As a more subtle example, the continued engagement of capable people in exciting work maintains a high quality of staff (and work) at SpaceX.

Agreed that SpaceX will make more money from reused stages than from continuing the expendable path, so in fact they will become more profitable also. However I think Musk is still holding to his intention to continue lowering the cost of access to space, and trusting that the benefit in gradually expanding the market for launches will allow that to be an on-going process: sales volume feeding efficiency investments, feeding cost reduction, feeding sales volume etc.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RyanC on 05/03/2017 09:05 pm
Now for the other item. How long will it take for SpaceX to recover their $1B investment in reuse.

At 25 flights / yr and 70% being used boosters and SpaceX recovering $10M to pay against this charge per reused booster flight it will be 6 years for them to recover this development cost.


What if.... Space X doesn't intend to fully recover their $1B investment?

What if they:

A.) Just charge a good portion of the cost off to the MCT/ITS accounts as a "sunk cost" for development of MCT/ITS reusable stage technology?

B.) Count it as a "sunk cost" to capture more of the marketplace for orbital launches?

Remember, SpX doesn't operate like LockMart/Boeing/ULA/NoGrumman, but more like Amazon, which continually plows profits back into the company to grow it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/03/2017 09:12 pm
I think 2M for refurb costs is high if you're talking 24 hour turnarounds. Airliners are at similar price points (within an order of magnitude) for initial cost of the vehicle and don't spend nearly that much getting ready for their next flight. Maybe when they have scheduled overhauls and have to replace an engine

You may say that SpaceX can't achieve these turnaround times and costs but that's their goal. They may not make it... but I'm thinking a crew of 500 spending 2M in small parts? no.  I could see the average cost being 1M IF you include the once every 10 flights heavy overhaul that might include some engine changeouts if an engine was found to be marginal.... but even that seems high.
For general aviation passenger services the rule of thumb has been that total costs per flight were 3x the fuel costs. Given Musk has said F9 costs about $200K in propellant that would be about about $600-800K. However since unless the US is fully recoverable that will have to be written off and that's around $17m.

Not counting the US, that's totally irrelevant to refurb costs, and you know it.

The topic being discussed was how much refurb costs them. NOT how much the total mission cost is.

I'm interested in people's spitballs on what fairing refurb will cost. I am thinking you don't want to just keep painting over old logos as that increases the weight of the fairing each time.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: ulm_atms on 05/03/2017 09:45 pm
I'm interested in people's spitballs on what fairing refurb will cost. I am thinking you don't want to just keep painting over old logos as that increases the weight of the fairing each time.

Hopefully the atmosphere will remove some/most of the painting/logos (especially if the painting is ablative tps paint)   ;D

But my guess would be the cost of 1. Getting the fairing back to the "refurb center"  2. Cost of consumables (RCS gasses,parachutes, etc...) 3.  Paint/tps and 4.  Possibly the materials that keep the two halfs together depending on how singed the edges get on return.  If all that is over 1M total I would be surprised.

So my spitball is less then 1M, hopefully closer to $500K
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/03/2017 10:13 pm
I think if we're trying to accurately model costs we need to separate recovery from refurb... S1 recovery may be less (if it's RTLS) or more, if it's ASDS.... The exact amount for recovery varies by mission too, as the ASDS may be farther or closer, and there may be a scrub that adds a day of labor/rental.

Recovery ends and refurb starts when the stage rolls in the facility (you could say "when the stage is loaded on the transporter" I guess)

Similarly depending on the profile flown, the bouncy castle may be closer or farther from shore. But I think the variability there is lower?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/04/2017 08:44 am
I don't see why the expectation is that SpaceX will substantially reduce prices in accordance with their reusability cost savings. Musk said that they first want to recover the $1B reusability investment. But why stop even there?

I saw the calculations upthread showing 4 years required for recovery of the $1B investment. But what stops SpaceX from dropping their current launch price by just a marginal amount - from $62m to say $55m, and making a $30m gross profit per F9 launch for the foreseeable future?

At $62m they are already cheaper than  any of their competitors. Going down another $7m would undercut everyone else even further, while still giving SpaceX massive profits per launch.

With a 70 launch manifest, at $30m profit per launch they could recover their $1B investment in just over 30 launches - possibly the number of flights they will do in one year in 2018. And still have a massive and growing manifest ahead.

And even after that, why not continue charging say $50m per launch until someone else can do it for $49m? Even at current prices they are charging towards 30 launches per year, so its not like demand isn't there.

30 launches at $30m profit per launch is better than 50 launches at only $10m profit per launch.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 05/04/2017 09:45 am
I don't see why the expectation is that SpaceX will substantially reduce prices in accordance with their reusability cost savings. Musk said that they first want to recover the $1B reusability investment. But why stop even there?

I saw the calculations upthread showing 4 years required for recovery of the $1B investment. But what stops SpaceX from dropping their current launch price by just a marginal amount - from $62m to say $55m, and making a $30m gross profit per F9 launch for the foreseeable future?

At $62m they are already cheaper than  any of their competitors. Going down another $7m would undercut everyone else even further, while still giving SpaceX massive profits per launch.

With a 70 launch manifest, at $30m profit per launch they could recover their $1B investment in just over 30 launches - possibly the number of flights they will do in one year in 2018. And still have a massive and growing manifest ahead.

And even after that, why not continue charging say $50m per launch until someone else can do it for $49m? Even at current prices they are charging towards 30 launches per year, so its not like demand isn't there.

30 launches at $30m profit per launch is better than 50 launches at only $10m profit per launch.

Entirely agree. All they have the ensure is that they are cheaper than the competition and at least as reliable. I suspect they are almost there with both of those - still a few reused boosters to try to get some decent reliability figures.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/04/2017 02:45 pm
I don't see why the expectation is that SpaceX will substantially reduce prices in accordance with their reusability cost savings. Musk said that they first want to recover the $1B reusability investment. But why stop even there?

I saw the calculations upthread showing 4 years required for recovery of the $1B investment. But what stops SpaceX from dropping their current launch price by just a marginal amount - from $62m to say $55m, and making a $30m gross profit per F9 launch for the foreseeable future?

At $62m they are already cheaper than  any of their competitors. Going down another $7m would undercut everyone else even further, while still giving SpaceX massive profits per launch.

With a 70 launch manifest, at $30m profit per launch they could recover their $1B investment in just over 30 launches - possibly the number of flights they will do in one year in 2018. And still have a massive and growing manifest ahead.

And even after that, why not continue charging say $50m per launch until someone else can do it for $49m? Even at current prices they are charging towards 30 launches per year, so its not like demand isn't there.

30 launches at $30m profit per launch is better than 50 launches at only $10m profit per launch.

Entirely agree. All they have the ensure is that they are cheaper than the competition and at least as reliable. I suspect they are almost there with both of those - still a few reused boosters to try to get some decent reliability figures.

Not so fast... lowering the price is the forcing function for market expansion.
Market expansion is essential for SpaceX to obtain needed revenue -- long term gain vs short term profits.  This is why a private company is necessary for a while.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/04/2017 03:14 pm
Yeah I don't see going 50M, then going 48M when someone else goes 49M as fitting the model well.... Musk wants to force this. The West was exploited a LOT better by railroads than wagon trains... because railroad freight rates were so much better.

This might be a bit off topic though.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: WmThomas on 05/04/2017 04:00 pm
Now for the other item. How long will it take for SpaceX to recover their $1B investment in reuse.

I think the $1B number Elon threw out is being misunderstood. I think that was more like the cost of all Falcon 9 development to date.

Elon didn't explain what that estimate meant and I haven't seen any serious attempt to make sense of that number.  SpaceX has spent a lot on launch pads, building rockets, Dragon, etc. Reuse would include the autonomous drone ships, Grasshopper and FR-Dev, Raptor, and lot of R&D. But $1 Billion? I don't buy it.

Also, note that Raptor development and a good deal of Falcon 9 and Dragon development were paid for by the government, the Air Force and NASA respectively. So SpaceX isn't even out $1B net on the Falcon 9 development, I don't think.

I'd be interested in other people's estimates of what Elon meant and what SpaceX's development expenses have been, and what funded it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/04/2017 04:15 pm
I don't see why the expectation is that SpaceX will substantially reduce prices in accordance with their reusability cost savings. Musk said that they first want to recover the $1B reusability investment. But why stop even there?

I saw the calculations upthread showing 4 years required for recovery of the $1B investment. But what stops SpaceX from dropping their current launch price by just a marginal amount - from $62m to say $55m, and making a $30m gross profit per F9 launch for the foreseeable future?

At $62m they are already cheaper than  any of their competitors. Going down another $7m would undercut everyone else even further, while still giving SpaceX massive profits per launch.

With a 70 launch manifest, at $30m profit per launch they could recover their $1B investment in just over 30 launches - possibly the number of flights they will do in one year in 2018. And still have a massive and growing manifest ahead.

And even after that, why not continue charging say $50m per launch until someone else can do it for $49m? Even at current prices they are charging towards 30 launches per year, so its not like demand isn't there.

30 launches at $30m profit per launch is better than 50 launches at only $10m profit per launch.

Entirely agree. All they have the ensure is that they are cheaper than the competition and at least as reliable. I suspect they are almost there with both of those - still a few reused boosters to try to get some decent reliability figures.

Not so fast... lowering the price is the forcing function for market expansion.
Market expansion is essential for SpaceX to obtain needed revenue -- long term gain vs short term profits.  This is why a private company is necessary for a while.

I don't get this argument entirely. What does SpaceX gain by increasing demand to 100 flights instead of 50 from one year to the next if they make half the revenue per flight and thus have no increased gain from it?

What's the point of eventually making $1m profit per flight from 100 flights, if you could have achieved $20m per flight from just 5 fligths? Once ITS is operational, sure, they will benefit from an expanded market. But currently, they can't even service the manifest they do have.

For the foreseaable future they can rake in the cash and still have more demand than they can service. 3 years from now that may change. But until then they need all the cash they can get to invest in their next generation vehicle.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/04/2017 04:28 pm
Now for the other item. How long will it take for SpaceX to recover their $1B investment in reuse.

I think the $1B number Elon threw out is being misunderstood. I think that was more like the cost of all Falcon 9 development to date.

Elon didn't explain what that estimate meant and I haven't seen any serious attempt to make sense of that number.  SpaceX has spent a lot on launch pads, building rockets, Dragon, etc. Reuse would include the autonomous drone ships, Grasshopper and FR-Dev, Raptor, and lot of R&D. But $1 Billion? I don't buy it.

Also, note that Raptor development and a good deal of Falcon 9 and Dragon development were paid for by the government, the Air Force and NASA respectively. So SpaceX isn't even out $1B net on the Falcon 9 development, I don't think.

I'd be interested in other people's estimates of what Elon meant and what SpaceX's development expenses have been, and what funded it.

Here's Elon's quote: (https://github.com/robbak/SES10-post-launch-conference/blob/master/SES10-press-transcript.txt)
Quote
: I think just a little celebration is in order... If you just say, how much effort has SpaceX put into Falcon reusability, and nobody was paying us for reusability, so it had to be on our own dime, it's probably - at least a billion dollars that we spent developing this, so it'll take a while to pay that off. And then we need to get really efficient with the reuse of boosters and with the fairing. So I would expect the economics to start becoming sensible next year - so it's pretty close - and we expect the boosters to .. I mean, with no refurbishment, be capable of 10 flights, and with moderate refurbishment to be capable of 100 flights. So you can imagine that if the cost of the rocket is say 60 million dollars - really we're not re-using the whole thing, but - with the fairing, assuming fairing reuse works out, and as we optimize the cost of the reuse of the booster, really looking at maybe 3/4 of the rocket cost dropping by an order of magnitude, maybe more.

It doesn't sound like the $1 billion or more estimate specifically includes initial F9 development or anything that NASA or DOD paid for, although there is almost certainly a lot of overlap.

And I'm curious what "the economics to start becoming sensible next year" means. Does that mean the $1B investment will be paid off?

From Elon's answer, Falcon 9 costs $60 million, the booster costs $45 million, and the cost of the booster over it's lifetime is $4.5 million (or less) per flight, so the booster reuse cost savings is $40.5M per flight. If SpaceX is saving $40.5M in costs per reuse and only giving up 10% ($6.22M) in price that's a net profit of $32.3M per reuse, and they need 30 reuse flights to get $1B in savings. 30 reflights seems pretty aggressive by "next year".
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/04/2017 04:37 pm
Six reflights this year, 24 next -- if 3/4ths of flights are reused, that is 32 flights next year (about what they are planning).  If fraction reused takes longer to build up, maybe another year. 

Then they start launching the constellation, and the reusable launchers will repay the investment or more every year thereafter in the form of profit or reduced capital expenditure.  Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

By the way, NASA/DoD did not pay for the F9/FH.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/04/2017 05:01 pm
Six reflights this year, 24 next -- if 3/4ths of flights are reused, that is 32 flights next year (about what they are planning).  If fraction reused takes longer to build up, maybe another year. 

Then they start launching the constellation, and the reusable launchers will repay the investment or more every year thereafter in the form of profit or reduced capital expenditure.  Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

By the way, NASA/DoD did not pay for the F9/FH.

It's pretty optimistic to see it happen by next year, though I have no doubts that they can eventually get 30 reflights out of F9. If that's all it takes to repay for reuse development I'd say they are doing great; a 2-3 year 100% return on investment is just fine.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Mongo62 on 05/04/2017 06:11 pm
I don't understand this $1B figure. Isn't most of this simply the cost of developing the Merlin engine and the F9 system, through its various iterations? The incremental cost of developing reusability, given the initial version of the F9, does not seem anything like a billion dollars to me. The flight tests were essentially free, since they were added to commercial and government flights paid for by commercial and government customers, and the extra hardware needed was minimal. The grid fins and upgraded 'non-sticky' servos, as far as I know. The rest was already designed and built for the expendable version of F9. Add the cost of Grasshopper, the 'drone ships', landing zones, etc., and it still does not seem close to a billion dollars.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/04/2017 07:15 pm
I don't understand this $1B figure. Isn't most of this simply the cost of developing the Merlin engine and the F9 system, through its various iterations? The incremental cost of developing reusability, given the initial version of the F9, does not seem anything like a billion dollars to me. The flight tests were essentially free, since they were added to commercial and government flights paid for by commercial and government customers, and the extra hardware needed was minimal. The grid fins and upgraded 'non-sticky' servos, as far as I know. The rest was already designed and built for the expendable version of F9. Add the cost of Grasshopper, the 'drone ships', landing zones, etc., and it still does not seem close to a billion dollars.

Perhaps because you have a narrow view of what its about. Like perhaps direct/fixed costs.

There's  lots of other costs, including opportunity costs. Can easily see ways to find more than $2B in costs, so was surprised when he said just $1B. Think it is too low. Keep in mind the added cost of LOM's/RTF's brought on by the reuse agenda, as well as failed landings. If you don't use these as costs, you're cherry picking your numbers.

The more you invest in your business strategically, the less obvious the costs become. Which is why a lot of "hand to mouth" firms don't dare it.

Suggest that he's decided on a near term means of assessing SX by means of two timelines - one where they went all in on ELV, and the other where they did what they have done, i.e. this timeline.

That could get you easily $1B. And any accountant would accept this as reasonable guidance.

Now, he recovers that $1B to bring the two timelines back into synch. One way you could do that is to have the incremental cost savings and flight frequency increases "happen", such that as you use the benefits in a gradually increasing way, the delta between the timelines shrinks.

When it's shrunk to nothing, then all you have is the lost time it took to get there.

When it goes positive, you then have a means of valuing it as an competitive advantage over rivals. Which you could use to a)predict market share gains/dominance if unopposed, b)a measure of lead time ahead of rivals, or c) a lever on the market to drive demand where you'd like it to go to.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/04/2017 08:39 pm
Perhaps because you have a narrow view of what its about. Like perhaps direct/fixed costs.

There's  lots of other costs, including opportunity costs. Can easily see ways to find more than $2B in costs, so was surprised when he said just $1B. Think it is too low. Keep in mind the added cost of LOM's/RTF's brought on by the reuse agenda, as well as failed landings. If you don't use these as costs, you're cherry picking your numbers.
...

This gets tricky really fast. Developing an expendable vehicle has it's own set of opportunity costs. And there is no way to know that the same failures, or new ones, wouldn't have occurred while developing a ELV. Certainly the CRS-7 failure or a similar one was just waiting to happen.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: docmordrid on 05/04/2017 11:23 pm
Of course the maximum benefit from reuse will be gained by who will be SpaceX's biggest customer: SpaceX, via the Internet constellation. Lowered implementation and  operating costs (replacements) for "CommX" also has to be figured in.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Joffan on 05/04/2017 11:28 pm
There's  lots of other costs, including opportunity costs.
Hmm. Has reuse really slowed their launch cadence ramp-up? Or were you thinking they'd be further ahead with some other project? Not Dragon 2 - that's been paced by NASA's budget. Falcon Heavy, perhaps? except that's actually being helped towards an affordable demonstration flight by reuse. So I don't know what opportunities you mean, specifically.

Keep in mind the added cost of LOM's/RTF's brought on by the reuse agenda
Citation required. I see no evidence that Falcon 9's failures were a product of the drive for resuability. Their startup launch failure rate has not been at a level that would suggest that the attempt to re-use has played into more failures than expected. As I mentioned above, recovery of intact stages is more likely to play in to better reliability and fewer future failures.

as well as failed landings.
What, the cost of the legs? the damage to the ASDS? - peanuts. Certainly you can't possibly mean the cost of the rocket bodies, since in the expendable scenario, they would be lost anyway.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jcc on 05/05/2017 01:23 am
I don't understand this $1B figure. Isn't most of this simply the cost of developing the Merlin engine and the F9 system, through its various iterations? The incremental cost of developing reusability, given the initial version of the F9, does not seem anything like a billion dollars to me. The flight tests were essentially free, since they were added to commercial and government flights paid for by commercial and government customers, and the extra hardware needed was minimal. The grid fins and upgraded 'non-sticky' servos, as far as I know. The rest was already designed and built for the expendable version of F9. Add the cost of Grasshopper, the 'drone ships', landing zones, etc., and it still does not seem close to a billion dollars.

Maybe he gave an inflated price to scare away competitors.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: kaiser on 05/05/2017 04:10 am
There's  lots of other costs, including opportunity costs.
Hmm. Has reuse really slowed their launch cadence ramp-up? Or were you thinking they'd be further ahead with some other project? Not Dragon 2 - that's been paced by NASA's budget. Falcon Heavy, perhaps? except that's actually being helped towards an affordable demonstration flight by reuse. So I don't know what opportunities you mean, specifically.

Keep in mind the added cost of LOM's/RTF's brought on by the reuse agenda
Citation required. I see no evidence that Falcon 9's failures were a product of the drive for resuability. Their startup launch failure rate has not been at a level that would suggest that the attempt to re-use has played into more failures than expected. As I mentioned above, recovery of intact stages is more likely to play in to better reliability and fewer future failures.

as well as failed landings.
What, the cost of the legs? the damage to the ASDS? - peanuts. Certainly you can't possibly mean the cost of the rocket bodies, since in the expendable scenario, they would be lost anyway.

Not the damage to the ASDS, the actual ASDS.  Just the cost of designing, procuring, modifying, licensing, testing, and operating both of those ships during the reuse testing phase is in the mid to high double digit millions.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 05/05/2017 11:27 am
There's  lots of other costs, including opportunity costs.
Hmm. Has reuse really slowed their launch cadence ramp-up? Or were you thinking they'd be further ahead with some other project? Not Dragon 2 - that's been paced by NASA's budget. Falcon Heavy, perhaps? except that's actually being helped towards an affordable demonstration flight by reuse. So I don't know what opportunities you mean, specifically.

Keep in mind the added cost of LOM's/RTF's brought on by the reuse agenda
Citation required. I see no evidence that Falcon 9's failures were a product of the drive for resuability. Their startup launch failure rate has not been at a level that would suggest that the attempt to re-use has played into more failures than expected. As I mentioned above, recovery of intact stages is more likely to play in to better reliability and fewer future failures.

as well as failed landings.
What, the cost of the legs? the damage to the ASDS? - peanuts. Certainly you can't possibly mean the cost of the rocket bodies, since in the expendable scenario, they would be lost anyway.

Not the damage to the ASDS, the actual ASDS.  Just the cost of designing, procuring, modifying, licensing, testing, and operating both of those ships during the reuse testing phase is in the mid to high double digit millions.

Which is still a small proportion of $1B.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/05/2017 03:12 pm
There's  lots of other costs, including opportunity costs.
Hmm. Has reuse really slowed their launch cadence ramp-up? Or were you thinking they'd be further ahead with some other project? Not Dragon 2 - that's been paced by NASA's budget. Falcon Heavy, perhaps? except that's actually being helped towards an affordable demonstration flight by reuse. So I don't know what opportunities you mean, specifically.

Keep in mind the added cost of LOM's/RTF's brought on by the reuse agenda
Citation required. I see no evidence that Falcon 9's failures were a product of the drive for resuability. Their startup launch failure rate has not been at a level that would suggest that the attempt to re-use has played into more failures than expected. As I mentioned above, recovery of intact stages is more likely to play in to better reliability and fewer future failures.

as well as failed landings.
What, the cost of the legs? the damage to the ASDS? - peanuts. Certainly you can't possibly mean the cost of the rocket bodies, since in the expendable scenario, they would be lost anyway.

Not the damage to the ASDS, the actual ASDS.  Just the cost of designing, procuring, modifying, licensing, testing, and operating both of those ships during the reuse testing phase is in the mid to high double digit millions.

Which is still a small proportion of $1B.

~5% or so.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 05/05/2017 03:23 pm

Citation required. I see no evidence that Falcon 9's failures were a product of the drive for resuability. Their startup launch failure rate has not been at a level that would suggest that the attempt to re-use has played into more failures than expected. As I mentioned above, recovery of intact stages is more likely to play in to better reliability and fewer future failures.


How about they went to chilled LOX because they needed extra performance for reusability.
The question is:
would they have pushed for greater margins if they didn't want reusability?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/05/2017 06:14 pm

Citation required. I see no evidence that Falcon 9's failures were a product of the drive for resuability. Their startup launch failure rate has not been at a level that would suggest that the attempt to re-use has played into more failures than expected. As I mentioned above, recovery of intact stages is more likely to play in to better reliability and fewer future failures.


How about they went to chilled LOX because they needed extra performance for reusability.
The question is:
would they have pushed for greater margins if they didn't want reusability?

Maybe they needed extra performance to compete with Ariane and Proton?

Eventually, ELVs would have bumped hard into SpaceX's greater goals. They don't exist to make a quick buck. They exist to move humanity out into the solar system. How do you measure the opportunity cost of never being able to achieve your overarching goal?

ELVs might make more sense for ULA. They absolutely don't for SpaceX to Blue Origin.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Joffan on 05/05/2017 07:10 pm

as well as failed landings.
What, the cost of the legs? the damage to the ASDS? - peanuts. Certainly you can't possibly mean the cost of the rocket bodies, since in the expendable scenario, they would be lost anyway.

Not the damage to the ASDS, the actual ASDS.  Just the cost of designing, procuring, modifying, licensing, testing, and operating both of those ships during the reuse testing phase is in the mid to high double digit millions.
Failed landings don't add the acquisition of the ASDS as an extra cost. The reusability program requires ASDS.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/06/2017 01:33 am
A lot of nonsense posts here. Will try one more time. With small words.

Anything that deals with the path to reuse, including propulsion enhancement (to cover losses), is part of that $1B.

In theory, anything post F9 1.0. That I as an accountant/CFO can categorize as such.

And we are talking GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) rules here, not whatever nonsense rules you think up on your own.

It's nothing even up for debate.

But then there are people who debate physics, law, ... and think of them as if they are a form of ideology/politics/rhetoric. They're not.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/06/2017 03:06 am
A lot of nonsense posts here. Will try one more time. With small words.

Anything that deals with the path to reuse, including propulsion enhancement (to cover losses), is part of that $1B.

In theory, anything post F9 1.0. That I as an accountant/CFO can categorize as such.

And we are talking GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) rules here, not whatever nonsense rules you think up on your own.

It's nothing even up for debate.

But then there are people who debate physics, law, ... and think of them as if they are a form of ideology/politics/rhetoric. They're not.
Meaning the M1D and all its updates is part of those costs. Also included is the stage stretches, simulations, modeling software development, etc. That $1B represents a lot of work over more than 7 years.

As an equivalent in manyears that $1B equals 5,000 manyears of work. Which implies a large portion of the manpower of SpaceX has been charging toward this work since 2010. That manpower will after this start work on the ITS in ever increasing amounts. Such that that recovery and profit from launch totaling an almost $20M / launch will go toward paying the continuation of the R&D work of future LVs. Estimate is that this is a value of up to $0.5B per year or enough to fund the work of as many as 2000 persons per year doing R&D.

This sizes the SpaceX R&D teams as a significant portion of all of SpaceX's manpower (~1/3).

As SpaceX's manpower scales up for its operations this will also enable the scaling up of that significant portion of R&D staff. Such that 1 out of every 3 or 4 hires is for R&D work vs production/operations.

This is a very aggressive expansionist culture. It is also a self fulfilling cycle of lowering costs to be able to lower costs in the near future even more "rinse and repeat".
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 05/06/2017 08:34 am
Anything that deals with the path to reuse, including propulsion enhancement (to cover losses), is part of that $1B.

In theory, anything post F9 1.0.

The problem is that there's no way for us to know what proportion of the cost of changes made (such as Merlin upgrades) were for re-use. Even as an ELV it's clear SpaceX would have upgraded to increase payload and thus the amount of the market F9 could serve.

$1B was Elon's off-the-cuff estimate of re-use cost but no way to know how accurate it is. So I think all we can take from this is that re-use development costs were substantial (at least 100s of millions, maybe well over a billion).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/06/2017 06:19 pm
Meaning the M1D and all its updates is part of those costs. Also included is the stage stretches, simulations, modeling software development, etc. That $1B represents a lot of work over more than 7 years.
Falcon 9 1.0 /M1C was a perfectly usable  Delta-II class vehicle with a significant manifest.

They would have been a successful provider, quite healthy financially, and likely focussed on gradual F9US capabilities/performance, then gradually phased in booster/M1C improvements much more gradually.

Quote
As an equivalent in manyears that $1B equals 5,000 manyears of work. Which implies a large portion of the manpower of SpaceX has been charging toward this work since 2010. That manpower will after this start work on the ITS in ever increasing amounts. Such that that recovery and profit from launch totaling an almost $20M / launch will go toward paying the continuation of the R&D work of future LVs. Estimate is that this is a value of up to $0.5B per year or enough to fund the work of as many as 2000 persons per year doing R&D.
Agree, but I'd say since 2009.

Quote
This sizes the SpaceX R&D teams as a significant portion of all of SpaceX's manpower (~1/3).

As SpaceX's manpower scales up for its operations this will also enable the scaling up of that significant portion of R&D staff. Such that 1 out of every 3 or 4 hires is for R&D work vs production/operations.

This is a very aggressive expansionist culture. It is also a self fulfilling cycle of lowering costs to be able to lower costs in the near future even more "rinse and repeat".
Musk would likely agree with this.

There was no business need to aggressively compete for either reuse or max/exceed ULA/Airbus-Safran.

Indeed, there was extremely good reasons to take F9 1.0 and make it a as reliable as Atlas V, with a more active manifest, and get the then Falcon 9H onto SLC-4E, as an alternative to DIVH.

Anything that deals with the path to reuse, including propulsion enhancement (to cover losses), is part of that $1B.

In theory, anything post F9 1.0.

The problem is that there's no way for us to know what proportion of the cost of changes made (such as Merlin upgrades) were for re-use. Even as an ELV it's clear SpaceX would have upgraded to increase payload and thus the amount of the market F9 could serve.
Yes there is. SX's original story. It would have covered the same market. Just done so in a different way.

(Keep in mind that anything that ULA does going forward, faces the same situation. If Vulcan/BE4, Vulcan/AR1, Atlas VI/AR1 ... they'll start out with lesser performance/higher cost, and converge on the market as is.)

Quote
$1B was Elon's off-the-cuff estimate of re-use cost but no way to know how accurate it is. So I think all we can take from this is that re-use development costs were substantial (at least 100s of millions, maybe well over a billion).

More like $2B. Because there are other "reuse investments" yet to make the mark, that have been invested in all along, just not fielded.

He is underplaying his hand. Which turns out to be wise at the moment.

My guess is that by doing so, with rivals in slow pursuit, the gradual, growing effect of global market launch prices declining, frequency increasing ... SX wins by not losing. "Trash talking" just looks like bitterness of outdistanced rivals.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/06/2017 06:33 pm
I don't understand this $1B figure. Isn't most of this simply the cost of developing the Merlin engine and the F9 system, through its various iterations? The incremental cost of developing reusability, given the initial version of the F9, does not seem anything like a billion dollars to me. The flight tests were essentially free, since they were added to commercial and government flights paid for by commercial and government customers, and the extra hardware needed was minimal. The grid fins and upgraded 'non-sticky' servos, as far as I know. The rest was already designed and built for the expendable version of F9. Add the cost of Grasshopper, the 'drone ships', landing zones, etc., and it still does not seem close to a billion dollars.

Maybe he gave an inflated price to scare away competitors.
Saying US$ 1 billion is deliberately inaccurate. The real number is neither half a billion nor 1.5 billion. Probably within 20%.
The most important effect of an imprecise number is to prevent competitors from accurately comparing their estimates with what SpaceX actually spent.
Its likely SpaceX spent less than US$ 1.5 billion in all F9 related R&D including Merlin, recovery, plus the ancillary costs like ASDS.

The math competitors should be doing right now is either follow SpaceX or go out of business for sure in 10 years.
The real scary scenario is by the time the competitor has booster reuse going on, SpaceX likely already has the whole stack reusable with total recovery+refurb costs under 10% of building a new booster+upper stage+fairing and with launch capability limited only by available pad capacity.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/06/2017 07:44 pm
Maybe he gave an inflated price to scare away competitors.
Saying US$ 1 billion is deliberately inaccurate. The real number is neither half a billion nor 1.5 billion. Probably within 20%.
The most important effect of an imprecise number is to prevent competitors from accurately comparing their estimates with what SpaceX actually spent.
Agree its hard to assess threat and scope/budget/schedule/program response.

This is a market that is used to multi-decade LV operation, so the gross competitive landscape doesn't change much.

What do you "target"? Believe that played a role in the Vulcan/ Ariane 6 decisions - they honestly didn't have any comfort in doing anything but the obvious. And, it's not gotten any clearer, as we're fast approaching a "Max-Q" of sorts with the potential for high return on reuse (24 hr, US, fairing, capsule, ...). It's not like Shuttle.

Quote
The math competitors should be doing right now is either follow SpaceX or go out of business for sure in 10 years.
They can also change business models.

Quote
The real scary scenario is by the time the competitor has booster reuse going on, SpaceX likely already has the whole stack reusable with total recovery+refurb costs under 10% of building a new booster+upper stage+fairing and with launch capability limited only by available pad capacity.
Even with all of these they'd still have launches. SX does not do everything, is not a "magic bullet".

What they'd do is steal the long term future, with limited cost recovery.

Think of it as top of the pyramid, with the bottom constantly eroding.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Coastal Ron on 05/06/2017 08:15 pm
The math competitors should be doing right now is either follow SpaceX or go out of business for sure in 10 years.

Launch customers don't want a monopoly for launch services, no matter how benign it supposedly may be.  Which means they will continue to spread around their business to a number of launch providers.

However, out of the worldwide selection of commercial launch providers, SpaceX is poised to be a low cost provider, as is Blue Origin.  ESA will likely get a steady stream of business due to it's European ownership, and ULA will likely be able to depend on a minimum amount of launch business from the U.S. Government.

But if you are a launch provider and you can't justify being either a primary or backup launch provider for a particular market segment, then your future won't look too bright.

Quote
The real scary scenario is by the time the competitor has booster reuse going on, SpaceX likely already has the whole stack reusable with total recovery+refurb costs under 10% of building a new booster+upper stage+fairing and with launch capability limited only by available pad capacity.

Blue Origin is helping to validate the reusable launch market, but it is far from proven yet.  But we do want more launch providers to follow.  So SpaceX and Blue Origin providing some market "pain" is good, because without it we won't have a complete changeover to a reusable launch future.

Which is why I'm honestly concerned about ULA, since they are at a point where they can either be the next launch provider to announce they are pursuing 1st stage reusability, or they will be vying to be one of the last to build an expendable launch system.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: docmordrid on 05/06/2017 08:22 pm
.>
Which is why I'm honestly concerned about ULA, since they are at a point where they can either be the next launch provider to announce they are pursuing 1st stage reusability, or they will be vying to be one of the last to build an expendable launch system.

Or, they could do what seems to me the bloody obvious; rebranding. Buy reusable New Glenn boosters from Blue Origin, put a Centaur or ACES on top and apply a big "VULCAN" sticker to  the side.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/06/2017 08:57 pm
Another conclusion is that If SpaceX can actually work out the recovery reuse of an US then the FH (1st Stage +US+Faring) fully reusable woulkd have an internal SpaceX cost at very close to the same as an F9 (1st Stage +Faring) partial reusable. This internal cost value would be ~$30M.

But the real kicker is the payload capability difference FH-FR payload to LEO -> 20mt and the F9-PR payload to LEO ->16mt. Also you do not have to manufacture a new US for each flight. This increases the capability to fly more often.

If both are priced the same at $50M ($20M in profit for recovery of past development spending and future R&D work) the $/kg measure of the vehicles would be FH-FR $2,500/kg and the F9-PR $3,125/kg.

If then they are able to recover an US from GTO they then have a complete replacement and fully reusable stack for 90% of all of their manifested payloads. Suddenly the bottleneck of manufacture of an US for each flight goes away enabling the possibility of flying 1 a week from each operational pad 200+ launches a year. The manufacturing facility would still be going full tilt producing 20 US (10 uses) and 20 1st stages (30 uses because less stress and there are three boosters use per every 1 US use) a year.

Now with 200  launches per year and reducing the price to only a $5M margin ->$35M/launch the profit is still very large  at $1B/yr.

Also at these rates the other costs may also reduce enabling the costs to go down another $5M to $10M to $20 or $25M making the price as low as $25M/launch with SpaceX still making a $5M profit.

Suddenly the tourist business case of 6 tourists on a reused D2 where the total price of launching 6 tourist to LEO is $40M. Less than $7M per seat.

This is if SpaceX does not develop any other game changing LV technology vehicle. A probably price for an ITS that delivers 200 tourists to LEO at $60M/launch is $300,000/person. Practically the same price as the current suborbital price/person. A factor of 20 reduction in per seat price over that of the fully reusable FH+D2.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: speedevil on 05/06/2017 09:26 pm
Launch customers don't want a monopoly for launch services, no matter how benign it supposedly may be.  Which means they will continue to spread around their business to a number of launch providers.

To go off at a tangent (through still circling around the original thread title.).

Launch vehicle reliability is accepted to be of the order of a percent.

One of the reasons a monopoly is bad is that you can be left facing a several month shutdown on accident.

Might at some point it get to the point that 'yes, a stage exploded, but this vehicle has worked just fine 20 times', and not have a shutdown?

That is - you can have confidence that launch reliability is around the same, even with a stage being lost.

(It's in principle possible it gets to where passenger plane level reliability is expected, where this question may have an obvious 'no' answer, but that seems unlikely in the near future.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/07/2017 07:58 am
If Ariane looses 2/3 of its launch volume can it still be a viable business ? Would the EU be interested in substantially increasing its subsidy to keep it afloat ?

As it stands, ULA is also at risk of going under, even with its US$ 1 billion / yr assured income. If SpaceX starts servicing more US Government launches than ULA and Blue Origin starts competing for those (that can be launched from FL), the whole rationale for the US$ 1 billion/yr payouts crumble.

Of those two, I think ULA is at much higher risk, since they already do very little commercial launches.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/07/2017 09:24 am
Another conclusion is that If SpaceX can actually work out the recovery reuse of an US then the FH (1st Stage +US+Faring) fully reusable woulkd have an internal SpaceX cost at very close to the same as an F9 (1st Stage +Faring) partial reusable. This internal cost value would be ~$30M.

But the real kicker is the payload capability difference FH-FR payload to LEO -> 20mt and the F9-PR payload to LEO ->16mt. Also you do not have to manufacture a new US for each flight. This increases the capability to fly more often.

If both are priced the same at $50M ($20M in profit for recovery of past development spending and future R&D work) the $/kg measure of the vehicles would be FH-FR $2,500/kg and the F9-PR $3,125/kg.

If then they are able to recover an US from GTO they then have a complete replacement and fully reusable stack for 90% of all of their manifested payloads. Suddenly the bottleneck of manufacture of an US for each flight goes away enabling the possibility of flying 1 a week from each operational pad 200+ launches a year. The manufacturing facility would still be going full tilt producing 20 US (10 uses) and 20 1st stages (30 uses because less stress and there are three boosters use per every 1 US use) a year.

Now with 200  launches per year and reducing the price to only a $5M margin ->$35M/launch the profit is still very large  at $1B/yr.

Also at these rates the other costs may also reduce enabling the costs to go down another $5M to $10M to $20 or $25M making the price as low as $25M/launch with SpaceX still making a $5M profit.

Suddenly the tourist business case of 6 tourists on a reused D2 where the total price of launching 6 tourist to LEO is $40M. Less than $7M per seat.

This is if SpaceX does not develop any other game changing LV technology vehicle. A probably price for an ITS that delivers 200 tourists to LEO at $60M/launch is $300,000/person. Practically the same price as the current suborbital price/person. A factor of 20 reduction in per seat price over that of the fully reusable FH+D2.

I want to understand the $30m price tag you estimated for a fully reusable FH. How is that calculated? It seems somewhat high to me, considering that Elon's goal is a price reduction of an order of magnitude or maybe even two orders of magnitude with full reusability.


By my count, to construct a FH rocket costs say $60m for the centre core, upper stage and fairing, and say another $80m for the two side boosters. So let's call that $140m. Spread that over 10 missions with only minimal refurbishment (say $1m refurbishment per mission) and you get to $150m for 10 missions.

That's $15m per launch. Add fuel, ground control costs and other peripheral launch costs and you maybe get to $20m per launch.

But that's if you spread the cost over just 10 launches.

According to Elon, Block 5 will require more extensive refurbishment after 10 launches. If you calculate the lifespan of a booster as 100 launches, with say $10m refurbishment per booster after 10 launches, that's an additional $270m refurbishment costs over the 100 launch lifespan of the 3 FH boosters. This needs to be added to the $140m initial construction cost, which gets you to just over $400m for the 100 launches.

Add the $5m fuel and peripheral launch costs per mission, and $1m minimal refurbishment cost for 90 of the 100 launches (the ones that don't get the major refurbishment) and you get to a rough estimate of around $1bn for 100 Falcon Heavy launches. That works out to around $10m per Falcon Heavy launch.

Maybe I missed some costs, but I suspect I actually erred in the other direction, with very high refurbishment costs per booster every 10 launches. That may actually be lower than I estimated.

Anyway, by my guestimate, with full reusability, we are looking at $20m per Falcon Heavy launch if it lasts 10 launches, and $10m or less if it lasts for 100 launches.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: docmordrid on 05/07/2017 09:54 am
>
I want to understand the $30m price tag you estimated for a fully reusable FH. How is that calculated? It seems somewhat high to me, considering that Elon's goal is a price reduction of an order of magnitude or maybe even two orders of magnitude with full reusability.

By my count, to construct a FH rocket costs say $60m for the centre core, upper stage and fairing, and say another $80m for the two side boosters. So let's call that $140m.
>

Except that they'll be making extensive use of flight proven  stages for the FH side boosters, throwing your numbers way off.  The FH maiden flight will use them.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/07/2017 10:00 am
>
I want to understand the $30m price tag you estimated for a fully reusable FH. How is that calculated? It seems somewhat high to me, considering that Elon's goal is a price reduction of an order of magnitude or maybe even two orders of magnitude with full reusability.

By my count, to construct a FH rocket costs say $60m for the centre core, upper stage and fairing, and say another $80m for the two side boosters. So let's call that $140m.
>

Except that they'll be making extensive use of flight proven  stages for the FH side boosters, throwing your numbers way off.  The FH maiden flight will use them.

OK. But those boosters had to be manufactured at some point, and thus would have incurred the $40m construction cost per booster originally. That cost has to be spread over the 100 launches, right?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: docmordrid on 05/07/2017 10:08 am
True, but ISTM their amortized value for any given re-launch depends on how many times they've already flown. Flight #2 being a more valuable stage than flight #8.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/07/2017 10:13 am
True, but ISTM their amortized value for any given re-launch depends on how many times they've already flown. Flight #2 being a more valuable stage than flight #8.

Taking first flight out of the equation because we don't know yet how it will be valued. But after that we must assume that the stage will not fly if it does not have 100% confidence. So flight 99 should have the same value as flight 2.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/07/2017 10:14 am
True, but ISTM their amortized value for any given re-launch depends on how many times they've already flown. Flight #2 being a more valuable stage than flight #8.

Ok, but to simplify matters, if each booster can fly 100 times, then from SpaceX's overall point of view it makes no difference whether it flies 8 times as a F9 and then 92 times as a FH side booster, or 100 times as an FH side booster only. So we might as well do the calculation as if the FH starts out with three new cores.

The cost of the new booster has to be carried by SpaceX at some point.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Kabloona on 05/07/2017 01:10 pm
Hat tip to gongora for bringing this to our attention in another thread. Interview with Gwynne Shotwell:

http://interactive.satellitetoday.com/via/april-2017/shotwell-ambitious-targets-achievable-this-year/

Quote
In terms of when we might see significant price declines, Shotwell admits “it will take a few years” for the contracts to come in. However, SpaceX has invested a lot of money in this particular area. “We want to make sure we are fair about that cost. Frankly, the final spin on Falcon 9 will be rolling out a little bit later than mid-year, and that is really the stage that rolls in all the lessons learned on reusability that we have learnt to date. Those vehicles will be highly reusable — 10 times at least. When those vehicles are flying regularly, we will start seeing more pressure around the launch price side,” she adds.

So, final version of F9 rolling out this summer, will be reusable at least 10x. But it will be a few years before SpaceX recoups their investment and can pass significant cost savings on to customers.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/07/2017 01:42 pm
Hat tip to gongora for bringing this to our attention in another thread. Interview with Gwynne Shotwell:

http://interactive.satellitetoday.com/via/april-2017/shotwell-ambitious-targets-achievable-this-year/

Quote
In terms of when we might see significant price declines, Shotwell admits “it will take a few years” for the contracts to come in. However, SpaceX has invested a lot of money in this particular area. “We want to make sure we are fair about that cost. Frankly, the final spin on Falcon 9 will be rolling out a little bit later than mid-year, and that is really the stage that rolls in all the lessons learned on reusability that we have learnt to date. Those vehicles https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/Themes/nsf2/images/bbc/underline.gifwill be highly reusable — 10 times at least. When those vehicles are flying regularly, we will start seeing more pressure around the launch price side,” she adds.

So, final version of F9 rolling out this summer, will be reusable at least 10x. But it will be a few years before SpaceX recoups their investment and can pass significant cost savings on to customers.

This (bolded) is the best part.  Doesn't seem to have affected the bottom line cost in a negative way.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: DOCinCT on 05/07/2017 04:10 pm
From the same VIA interview:
"It [reusable technology] will drive down prices but that part is not going to be that significant, I don’t think, at least not early on. We have invested heavily in this technology. It will certainly pay off in the long-term in terms of pushing prices low, but obviously we have to gain back our investment before launch prices drop crazy low."
Isn't the general consensus we are talking about 3 years (maybe less) for recouping the investment?
Will be interesting then to see what "crazy low" is.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RotoSequence on 05/07/2017 04:41 pm
From the same VIA interview:
"It [reusable technology] will drive down prices but that part is not going to be that significant, I don’t think, at least not early on. We have invested heavily in this technology. It will certainly pay off in the long-term in terms of pushing prices low, but obviously we have to gain back our investment before launch prices drop crazy low."
Isn't the general consensus we are talking about 3 years (maybe less) for recouping the investment?
Will be interesting then to see what "crazy low" is.

If a Falcon 9 first stage costs $40 million to build, $5 million to refurbish between flights, but launches ten times, the aggregate cost to SpaceX per Falcon 9 becomes $85 million for ten first stage launches, plus second stage. SpaceX could keep a guestimated margin of $10 million per launch by charging $30 million. Barring an explosion in launch customers, I don't imagine they'll necessarily get that low, let alone try to go lower, lest they leave money on the table that they need for ITS.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/07/2017 04:59 pm
From the same VIA interview:
"It [reusable technology] will drive down prices but that part is not going to be that significant, I don’t think, at least not early on. We have invested heavily in this technology. It will certainly pay off in the long-term in terms of pushing prices low, but obviously we have to gain back our investment before launch prices drop crazy low."
Isn't the general consensus we are talking about 3 years (maybe less) for recouping the investment?
Will be interesting then to see what "crazy low" is.

If a Falcon 9 first stage costs $40 million to build, $5 million to refurbish between flights, but launches ten times, the aggregate cost to SpaceX per Falcon 9 becomes $85 million for ten first stage launches, plus second stage. SpaceX could keep a guestimated margin of $10 million per launch by charging $30 million. Barring an explosion in launch customers, I don't imagine they'll necessarily get that low, let alone try to go lower, lest they leave money on the table that they need for ITS.

I was about to respond to your original post. I see you've since clarified it to cast at least a little bit of doubt over the $30m estimate, but it is still held up as a target.

And that's what I don't understand. Everyone keeps going on about how SpaceX can drop the price dramatically and still make $10m profit per launch. But that's clearly not what they're saying. Both Musk and Shotwell have now repeatedly said that the effect on launch prices will not be significant until they have recovered their investment costs.

Shotwell's latest interview above makes that even clearer.  They are not going to drop the launch price to $30m to make a $10m profit. Instead, they are clearly indicating that at least for the forseeable future they are going to do something along the lines of dropping it to $55m or maybe at best $50m, and by implication try to make $30m profit per launch, or maybe even more.

Which I think is exactly the right approach.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RotoSequence on 05/07/2017 05:06 pm
...Everyone keeps going on about how SpaceX can drop the price dramatically and still make $10m profit per launch. But that's clearly not what they're saying. Both Musk and Shotwell have now repeatedly said that the effect on launch prices will not be significant until they have recovered their investment costs.

Shotwell's latest interview above makes that even clearer.  They are not going to drop the launch price to $30m to make a $10m profit. Instead, they are clearly indicating that at least for the forseeable future they are going to do something along the lines of dropping it to $55m or maybe at best $50m, and by implication try to make $30m profit per launch, or maybe even more.

Which I think is exactly the right approach.

I agree with you. The $30 million figure is useful as a pragmatic (but unlikely to be realized) lower bound on Falcon 9 launch costs with first-stage reuse alone. It does not make sense for SpaceX to lower their prices without competitive price pressure.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/07/2017 05:12 pm
From the same VIA interview:
"It [reusable technology] will drive down prices but that part is not going to be that significant, I don’t think, at least not early on. We have invested heavily in this technology. It will certainly pay off in the long-term in terms of pushing prices low, but obviously we have to gain back our investment before launch prices drop crazy low."
Isn't the general consensus we are talking about 3 years (maybe less) for recouping the investment?
Will be interesting then to see what "crazy low" is.

If a Falcon 9 first stage costs $40 million to build, $5 million to refurbish between flights, but launches ten times, the aggregate cost to SpaceX per Falcon 9 becomes $85 million for ten first stage launches, plus second stage. SpaceX could keep a guestimated margin of $10 million per launch by charging $30 million. Barring an explosion in launch customers, I don't imagine they'll necessarily get that low, let alone try to go lower, lest they leave money on the table that they need for ITS.

I was about to respond to your original post. I see you've since clarified it to cast at least a little bit of doubt over the $30m estimate, but it is still held up as a target.

And that's what I don't understand. Everyone keeps going on about how SpaceX can drop the price dramatically and still make $10m profit per launch. But that's clearly not what they're saying. Both Musk and Shotwell have now repeatedly said that the effect on launch prices will not be significant until they have recovered their investment costs.

Shotwell's latest interview above makes that even clearer.  They are not going to drop the launch price to $30m to make a $10m profit. Instead, they are clearly indicating that at least for the forseeable future they are going to do something along the lines of dropping it to $55m or maybe at best $50m, and by implication try to make $30m profit per launch, or maybe even more.

Which I think is exactly the right approach.

The $30 million figure is useful as a pragmatic (but unlikely to be realized) lower bound on Falcon 9 launch costs with first-stage reuse alone.

Ah. Ok. It's basically the cost of the $5m fairing, the estimated $10m cost of the upper stage, plus some refurbishment and peripheral launch related costs which brings internal cost to SpaceX to around $20m per launch.

With fairing recovery - which now seems possible, they could drop that by maybe another $4m to the region of maybe $16m, without upper stage recovery. So yes, that would seem the lower cost bound without upper stage recovery.

But in terms of what SpaceX will charge, I don't see them cutting their profits to as low as $10m per launch for quite some time.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/07/2017 07:39 pm
They don't have to. They have enough of a manifest to satisfy.

It's really good to be under the cost curve and building launch frequency gradually.

The key win here is to move the market into your direction. As has been done.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/07/2017 09:09 pm
$30M in costs for a fully reusable FH or a partial reusable F9 (that is costs internal to SpaceX no profit added).
NOTE the cost of the 1st stage manufacture is estimated at $25M.
Also the all up costs (no profit) no reuse for an F9 is $53M add $9M for profit resulting in a price of $62M.

F9 Partial reusable

$15M for new US
$4M for the refurbishment ($2M), recovery costs ($.5M), and amortization costs ($1.5M) over average of 20 flights for the stage's manufacture.
$7M for the launch processing and launch. This includes mate and checkout, payload handling, operations, range fees, and prop. (NOTE this value comes from Ms Shotwell herself in a statement made a few years ago)
$2M for the recovery and refurbishment of faring which includes the amortization of the faring cost manufacture.
$2M slush margin for unexpected costs such as weather delays or other scrubs.
Total Costs $30M


FH Fully Reusable
$5M for US refurbishment($3M), recovery ($.5M) and amoritization over 10 flights ($1.5M)
$12M 3X for the refurbishment ($2M), recovery costs ($.5M), and amortization costs ($1.5M) over average of 20 flights for the stage's manufacture.
$9M for the launch processing and launch. ($1M each extra for the two additioanal boosters). This includes mate and checkout, payload handling, operations, range fees, and prop. (NOTE this value comes from Ms Shotwell herself in a statement made a few years ago)
$2M for the recovery and refurbishment of faring which includes the amortization of the faring cost manufacture.
$2M slush margin for unexpected costs such as weather delays or other scrubs.
Total Costs $30M

Over time and at higher flight rates the Launch processing, refurbishment costs, and slush margin may be reduced for a reduction of almost up to $10M for fully reusable FH but only $5M for a partial reusable F9. Possibly getting the costs per flight to as low as $20M in 7 years from now 2024/25. This then would also make the use of the fully reusable FH cheaper per flight than the partial reusable F9: FH $20M vs F9 $25M.

If you then add profit margin of only $5M to these high volume launches of the fully reusable FH, then the price per flight of up to 20mt to LEO becomes $25M or just $1,250/kg->$568/lb.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/07/2017 09:26 pm
They don't have to. They have enough of a manifest to satisfy.

Do they?  According to Salo's launch schedule, Falcon 9 has 42 flights left for 2017 and 2018.  That's quite a lot for any expendable launcher, but if SpaceX hits its reusable stride, it would seem that 2018 might still have some manifest availability.

Maybe the price drop to $55 million or whatever it is will fill their manifest.

2019 looks pretty crazy, what with the LEO constellation starting to go up.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/07/2017 10:13 pm
So WRT to the thread title reusability will probably increase SX profits by lowering their costs.

Reusability should improve reliability as SX now know how close to their designed operating limits various components have been.

If they deliver full reusability including the US then they will be in a position to save a lot of money.

But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

My main interest is in lowering the mission price to the end user both on a $/lb and an overall mission price basis (Pegasus is cheaper than an F9 flight, but it's also less than 1/20 the payload).

This does not sound like it's going to move the market forward very much. The market is what it is because of the price of launch for the size of payload. If that does not change radically there is absolutely no reason why any new customers will enter the market who wouldn't have done so anyway. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/07/2017 10:18 pm
So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

According to Shotwell, they are selling 7+ tons to subsync GTO on the Falcon 9.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/07/2017 10:28 pm
$30M in costs for a fully reusable FH or a partial reusable F9 (that is costs internal to SpaceX no profit added).
NOTE the cost of the 1st stage manufacture is estimated at $25M.
Also the all up costs (no profit) no reuse for an F9 is $53M add $9M for profit resulting in a price of $62M.

F9 Partial reusable

$15M for new US
$4M for the refurbishment ($2M), recovery costs ($.5M), and amortization costs ($1.5M) over average of 20 flights for the stage's manufacture.
$7M for the launch processing and launch. This includes mate and checkout, payload handling, operations, range fees, and prop. (NOTE this value comes from Ms Shotwell herself in a statement made a few years ago)
$2M for the recovery and refurbishment of faring which includes the amortization of the faring cost manufacture.
$2M slush margin for unexpected costs such as weather delays or other scrubs.
Total Costs $30M


FH Fully Reusable
$5M for US refurbishment($3M), recovery ($.5M) and amoritization over 10 flights ($1.5M)
$12M 3X for the refurbishment ($2M), recovery costs ($.5M), and amortization costs ($1.5M) over average of 20 flights for the stage's manufacture.
$9M for the launch processing and launch. ($1M each extra for the two additioanal boosters). This includes mate and checkout, payload handling, operations, range fees, and prop. (NOTE this value comes from Ms Shotwell herself in a statement made a few years ago)
$2M for the recovery and refurbishment of faring which includes the amortization of the faring cost manufacture.
$2M slush margin for unexpected costs such as weather delays or other scrubs.
Total Costs $30M

Over time and at higher flight rates the Launch processing, refurbishment costs, and slush margin may be reduced for a reduction of almost up to $10M for fully reusable FH but only $5M for a partial reusable F9. Possibly getting the costs per flight to as low as $20M in 7 years from now 2024/25. This then would also make the use of the fully reusable FH cheaper per flight than the partial reusable F9: FH $20M vs F9 $25M.

If you then add profit margin of only $5M to these high volume launches of the fully reusable FH, then the price per flight of up to 20mt to LEO becomes $25M or just $1,250/kg->$568/lb.

Is that really the case?

We don't actually need a complicated calculation to estimate the savings associated with booster reusability. We simply need to know what an F9 launch actually costs SpaceX currently. I see you estimated $53m, with $9m profit added to that. I'm not sure what you base that on. Elon seemed to refer to the $60m figure as the cost of a rocket. I question whether they are even making a significant profit on their launches currently, as they have been in a market capture phase until now, trying to undercut their rivals to entice customers to take a risk with the newcomer instead.

So, if $60m is the cost of a launch, and Elon stated that 70% of that is the cost of the booster, then the booster costs around $42m. Even if a launch only costs SpaceX $53m as you suggest, then 70% of that still comes to $37m, not $25m as in your formula.

So, that means the savings from reusing a booster are actually much bigger the more a booster costs to construct. 

If we go with your $53m total cost estimate, then 30% of that (the non-booster cost) is $15.9m. If we assume 10 launches per booster only, then the $37m booster cost can be divided by 10 for each launch, so that's $3.7m. Add $1m refurbishment cost per launch, and you get to a total of $15.9m + $3.7m + $1m = $20.6m.

If, however, we go with a current launch cost of $60m, then the 30% non-booster related costs equal $18m. Over 10 launches, the $42m booster cost can be divided by 10, giving us $4.2m per launch. Add the $1m refurbishment cost and that gives you $18m + $4.2m + $1m = $23.2m

In both cases, we get to the low twenties, and that is assuming only 10 launches per booster. If we get to much higher reuse numbers, the cost will drop below $20m. And note that in both cases I built no fairing reuse in yet. That will drop it even further.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: John Alan on 05/07/2017 11:25 pm
So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

According to Shotwell, they are selling 7+ tons to subsync GTO on the Falcon 9.

Put another way (my take on that quote)...  ;)
Sat designers ran the numbers... and decided a 3rd stage of sorts built into their bird (dual usage) lets them go to SpaceX asking for say 7500kg to GTO-3000 m/s (WAG #'s) and SpaceX says they can do that with a ASDS landing and decent fuel margins... for a lower cost then any other provider...

S2 drag re-enters within days (cleanup of space mess made) or maybe can be refired to deorbit post sep (if fuel allows)
Only thing is.. Sat Bird has to fire it's booster sooner then later to avoid the same fate...

End result is... the Sat Bird designers are maximizing actual working mass to orbit to fit what F9 can do with available  proven recovery throw weight of available block version of S1...
They may even be over sizing the Sat fuel tanks as designed to allow loading max prop for whatever rocket it does end up on (partial loading)...

That's an interesting turn of events in "how they do this business"...  ???

On edit...
Point being made is... the GTO-1800 m/s "standard" may be headed for the trash bin...
The Sat Bird designers may be thinking... "we can get our birds to automatically fly after separation (with no ground support/uplink) and boost themselves at least enough on their own to enter a stable orbit and then contact ground stations for further instructions"...
This ability lets them put heavier working payloads in orbit... 
 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/08/2017 12:19 am
They don't have to. They have enough of a manifest to satisfy.

Do they?  According to Salo's launch schedule, Falcon 9 has 42 flights left for 2017 and 2018.  That's quite a lot for any expendable launcher, but if SpaceX hits its reusable stride, it would seem that 2018 might still have some manifest availability.

As a business, they already have addressed customer need to the extent that they can ramp to a major fraction of global launch demand in their payload/services category.

The second priority is not growth but to manage customer expectations, i.e. reliable outcomes.

The third would be to manage production lines and stage qualification to meet launch service rate.

These sit in front of manifest/demand.

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

According to Shotwell, they are selling 7+ tons to subsync GTO on the Falcon 9.

What that suggests is that sat vendors want to maximize what they can get out of a F9 launch, that they can use over the on orbit lifetime. That cost and time to launch matters most.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/08/2017 07:06 am
So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

According to Shotwell, they are selling 7+ tons to subsync GTO on the Falcon 9.
http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

Shows 5.5mT to GTO for $62m. I'm sure they will sell higher but I doubt they will sell at that price and I would be interested in finding out what that price is.

[EDIT. I note from Shotwell interviews their near term goal is a 2 week launch cadence ]
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/08/2017 10:48 am
...

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

...

If you were a for-profit business, you'd be weighing the cost of that 3% success rate increment (97% on launch attempts) plus the cost of insurance versus the increased tens of millions of corporate dollars to purchase that increment (not spent like government dollars because they have to make a profit/stay in business).  You'd also see that insurance rates are essentially identical between the alternatives, meaning insurance companies who do this calculation for a living don't see a success rate difference worth reflecting in rates. 

There are probably some comm sats that make the launch decision for you, but that is something chosen when picking a sat design that went beyond anything but Ariane capability (before FH arrives on the market).  You can, likewise, chose a sat design that hits the sweet spot of reusable launchers...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/08/2017 12:04 pm
But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

Atlas V is $180m at best.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ictogan on 05/08/2017 01:12 pm
But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

Atlas V is $180m at best.
So you are saying that ULA is lying when listing the Atlas V base price at $109m?
https://www.rocketbuilder.com/
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: cppetrie on 05/08/2017 01:27 pm
But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

Atlas V is $180m at best.
So you are saying that ULA is lying when listing the Atlas V base price at $109m?
https://www.rocketbuilder.com/
A base price doesn't launch a 5.5mT satellite to GEO-1800m/s. That runs $137 million for a Q4/2018 launch. And that's just at their core services level. Want more service, tack on many more millions.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/08/2017 01:35 pm
But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

Atlas V is $180m at best.
So you are saying that ULA is lying when listing the Atlas V base price at $109m?
https://www.rocketbuilder.com/

I was not aware ULA started to publicly announce their prices. This is progress.

I would like to compare prices mentioned on website to the actual prices paid. US Govt missions tend to cost more (because more oversight and more paperwork), so lets look at commercial and foreign launches.

Anyone knows how much was paid for EchoStar 19 launch? For WorldView-4? WorldView-3? MEXSAT-2?
(This list of 4 non-US-govt launches goes back to 2013).

I see only one "sort-of" non-govt launch on the manifest, Solar Orbiter aka "SolO" (it's an ESA mission). How much will it cost for ESA?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/08/2017 02:03 pm
So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

According to Shotwell, they are selling 7+ tons to subsync GTO on the Falcon 9.
http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

Shows 5.5mT to GTO for $62m. I'm sure they will sell higher but I doubt they will sell at that price and I would be interested in finding out what that price is.

[EDIT. I note from Shotwell interviews their near term goal is a 2 week launch cadence ]

Those prices on SpaceX's web site do not yet appear to reflect the reusability discount.  I would expect an update to those numbers at some point.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: abaddon on 05/08/2017 02:05 pm
But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"
You're not a customer.  An actual customer recently said:
Quote
Maxim Zayakov, chief executive of BulgariaSat, said the use of a reused first stage lowers the launch price and “makes it possible for smaller countries and companies to launch their own satellites.” [...]The satellite is a major undertaking for BulgariaSat, which has been working on the project for nearly 12 years. “Elon Musk and his SpaceX team have convinced me that people like them bring us closer to a new quality of life through providing access to cutting-edge technology,” Zayakov said in a statement. “This is a chance for Bulgaria to join the efforts to develop these new aspects of [the] space industry.”

Link: http://spacenews.com/bulgarian-satellite-to-launch-on-reused-falcon-9-in-june
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ictogan on 05/08/2017 02:22 pm
But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

Atlas V is $180m at best.
So you are saying that ULA is lying when listing the Atlas V base price at $109m?
https://www.rocketbuilder.com/

I was not aware ULA started to publicly announce their prices. This is progress.

I would like to compare prices mentioned on website to the actual prices paid. US Govt missions tend to cost more (because more oversight and more paperwork), so lets look at commercial and foreign launches.

Anyone knows how much was paid for EchoStar 19 launch? For WorldView-4? WorldView-3? MEXSAT-2?
(This list of 4 non-US-govt launches goes back to 2013).

I see only one "sort-of" non-govt launch on the manifest, Solar Orbiter aka "SolO" (it's an ESA mission). How much will it cost for ESA?
Apparently NASA is providing that launch to ESA, so it might still have the usual government prices:
"The launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida will be aboard a NASA-provided launch vehicle."
- http://sci.esa.int/solar-orbiter/55772-solar-orbiter-launch-moved-to-2018/
NASA lists the cost to them for that launch as $172.7m:
https://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/march/nasa-awards-launch-services-contract-for-solar-orbiter-mission/
However this was 3 years back and ULA is known to have dropped their prices in the recent years. Their website shows a price of $136-138m(depending on fairing length) for an Atlas V 411 launch with all the services except for marketing, so given that it's still at least sort of a government launch and the prices may have dropped since then, the prices on their website sound reasonable.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/08/2017 02:27 pm
So WRT to the thread title reusability will probably increase SX profits by lowering their costs.

Reusability should improve reliability as SX now know how close to their designed operating limits various components have been.

If they deliver full reusability including the US then they will be in a position to save a lot of money.

But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

My main interest is in lowering the mission price to the end user both on a $/lb and an overall mission price basis (Pegasus is cheaper than an F9 flight, but it's also less than 1/20 the payload).

This does not sound like it's going to move the market forward very much. The market is what it is because of the price of launch for the size of payload. If that does not change radically there is absolutely no reason why any new customers will enter the market who wouldn't have done so anyway.

I doubt a F9 expendable launch is $100M. Back when SpaceX was pricing full-capability launches, they were about 16% more than an 80% capability launch, which puts an expendable mission at about $72M. And soon, you might be able to buy an expendable mission on a used booster for a discount. If the discount is 10% for reuse then up to 8.3 tonnes to GTO-1800 could be as low as $65M (FH RTLS could also be similar).

And the sticker price of $62.2M is ONLY for missions that require a new booster, but are under 5.5 tonnes to GTO-1800. If you can live with a used booster you can get the same service for at least 10% less than $62.2M, which is $56M or about half the cost of an Ariane launch.

Most commercial customers don't assume a lot of risk for launch failures. The payload and its first year revenue are typically insured, so as long as insurance is comparable then schedule reliability is the biggest factor. With reuse and more pads this could quickly become a factor strongly in SpaceX's favor, especially since they don't have to line up two payloads for a launch like Ariane.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/08/2017 03:06 pm
Apparently NASA is providing that launch to ESA, so it might still have the usual government prices:
"The launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida will be aboard a NASA-provided launch vehicle."
- http://sci.esa.int/solar-orbiter/55772-solar-orbiter-launch-moved-to-2018/
NASA lists the cost to them for that launch as $172.7m:
https://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/march/nasa-awards-launch-services-contract-for-solar-orbiter-mission/
However this was 3 years back and ULA is known to have dropped their prices in the recent years. Their website shows a price of $136-138m(depending on fairing length) for an Atlas V 411 launch with all the services except for marketing, so given that it's still at least sort of a government launch and the prices may have dropped since then, the prices on their website sound reasonable.

IOW, we don't know any Atlas V launch which was less than $172m for the customer.
So, I was wrong, Atlas V is not $180m, it's $170m. ;)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: ethan829 on 05/08/2017 03:57 pm
IOW, we don't know any Atlas V launch which was less than $172m for the customer.
So, I was wrong, Atlas V is not $180m, it's $170m. ;)

Orbital ATK paid "closer to $100 million" for their Cygnus flights on Atlas V:

http://spacenews.com/atlas-price-cut-helps-orbital-atk-shake-off-antares-failure/ (http://spacenews.com/atlas-price-cut-helps-orbital-atk-shake-off-antares-failure/)
Quote
Orbital Chief Executive David W. Thompson declined to detail the reductions the company was able to secure for the launch but said ULA’s announced effort to bring Atlas 5 prices down from $150 million to something closer to $100 million was confirmed with the new contract.

Centennial, Colorado-based ULA is “serious about getting Atlas down to [those] levels. … We certainly saw some of that” in booking the March 2016 flight, Thompson said in a conference call with investors.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: DOCinCT on 05/08/2017 04:09 pm
So WRT to the thread title reusability will probably increase SX profits by lowering their costs.

Reusability should improve reliability as SX now know how close to their designed operating limits various components have been.

If they deliver full reusability including the US then they will be in a position to save a lot of money.

But as a customer I find myself saying "so what?"

So far I'd be booking on an LV with a 93% success rate that's has 33 launch attempts and 2 explosions.
I also know that if my comm sat goes above about 5.6 tonnes I won't get the sticker price of $62m but more like the regular Ariane price of $100m with a 100% success rate over the last 70+ launches or an Atlas V if I have to use a US launcher with a 100% success rate over 50+ launches.

My main interest is in lowering the mission price to the end user both on a $/lb and an overall mission price basis (Pegasus is cheaper than an F9 flight, but it's also less than 1/20 the payload).

This does not sound like it's going to move the market forward very much. The market is what it is because of the price of launch for the size of payload. If that does not change radically there is absolutely no reason why any new customers will enter the market who wouldn't have done so anyway.

I doubt a F9 expendable launch is $100M. Back when SpaceX was pricing full-capability launches, they were about 16% more than an 80% capability launch, which puts an expendable mission at about $72M. And soon, you might be able to buy an expendable mission on a used booster for a discount. If the discount is 10% for reuse then up to 8.3 tonnes to GTO-1800 could be as low as $65M (FH RTLS could also be similar).

And the sticker price of $62.2M is ONLY for missions that require a new booster, but are under 5.5 tonnes to GTO-1800. If you can live with a used booster you can get the same service for at least 10% less than $62.2M, which is $56M or about half the cost of an Ariane launch.

Most commercial customers don't assume a lot of risk for launch failures. The payload and its first year revenue are typically insured, so as long as insurance is comparable then schedule reliability is the biggest factor. With reuse and more pads this could quickly become a factor strongly in SpaceX's favor, especially since they don't have to line up two payloads for a launch like Ariane.
NASA pays more for a Commercial Cargo launch from SpaceX than your quoted figures.  Original contract was about $133M per launch; most recent contract is about the same by some estimates.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rockets4life97 on 05/08/2017 04:50 pm
NASA's commercial Cargo contracts with SpaceX include dragon.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/08/2017 05:12 pm
I doubt a F9 expendable launch is $100M. Back when SpaceX was pricing full-capability launches, they were about 16% more than an 80% capability launch, which puts an expendable mission at about $72M. And soon, you might be able to buy an expendable mission on a used booster for a discount. If the discount is 10% for reuse then up to 8.3 tonnes to GTO-1800 could be as low as $65M (FH RTLS could also be similar).

And the sticker price of $62.2M is ONLY for missions that require a new booster, but are under 5.5 tonnes to GTO-1800. If you can live with a used booster you can get the same service for at least 10% less than $62.2M, which is $56M or about half the cost of an Ariane launch.

Most commercial customers don't assume a lot of risk for launch failures. The payload and its first year revenue are typically insured, so as long as insurance is comparable then schedule reliability is the biggest factor. With reuse and more pads this could quickly become a factor strongly in SpaceX's favor, especially since they don't have to line up two payloads for a launch like Ariane.
NASA pays more for a Commercial Cargo launch from SpaceX than your quoted figures.  Original contract was about $133M per launch; most recent contract is about the same by some estimates.

The payment structure and service rendered for CRS is a lot different than commercial commsats.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/08/2017 05:54 pm
The real item for this thread is that:

The reusability effect on costs is here!

It is no longer a theoretical discussion it is now a discussion on how large and fast will this effect be on the launch/space industry.

Side discussions on current pricing of more expensive providers only shows how much potential this effect has on the industry. SpaceX has announced that initially the discount for reusability (used boosters) will start out being a modest value with in about 3 years going to significant value. I see this as initial "discount" being $10M and then in 3 years the "discount" being $20M. So Prices now of $50-55M and later prices of $40-45M for same size payloads.

But what if for FH SpaceX can reuse the US including for GTO missions. A fully reusable FH could price out to the same as a partial reusable F9 but have a larger payload capability. LEO FH 20mt to F9 16mt. GTO FH 8mt vs F9 5.5mt.

This basically shows that reusability costs trumps performance. A much larger rocket with only slightly more payload that is fully reusable costs the same or even possibly less than a partial reusable smaller rocket.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: BobHk on 05/09/2017 12:02 am
Elon and Shotwell made it clear they were intent on making back the investment in the rockets.  I'm sure it'll be a few years before the prices drop a 'lot', need to make the money back, at least that is what they emphasized.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/09/2017 12:07 am
Several interesting effects on costs:
1) customers with existing commercial contracts are switching over to a less-proven (even acknowledging the flight-proven sales line) vehicle for a sum of a couple tens of $Millions, so market is price-sensitive at that level,
2) real savings below the price of the market leading (existing F9) price has made both the NASA and USAF take notice and begin to scramble to find a way to qualify themselves for the discount,
3) strategic realignments are up-welling in the NSS payload planning arena which may move the procurements away from hugely expensive (and highly vulnerable) 'Big Boy' payloads, and
4) the advent of reusability reductions on top of the market leading low F9 price has improved the quality of discounts customers are getting even if they choose the statistically more reliable established launchers.
 
These movements are a nice windfall for customers, both public sector and private, but something of a cost challenge for launch providers.  If movement to take advantage of these discounts gains momentum, we'll see tightening bottom lines for launch vendors due to deep price cuts and lost launch opportunities and the continued retirement of launch vehicles with incredibly long strings of successful launches.  Delta IV-M is first, Ariane 5 or Delta Heavy will follow... other established launchers such as Proton and Atlas V will be discarded or 'evolved'.  The entire composition of the launch world could be rearranged over the next decade, despite the howls of protest* from those rooted in the status quo.

* Past, present, and future. Guaranteed.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/09/2017 10:00 am
These movements are a nice windfall for customers, both public sector and private, but something of a cost challenge for launch providers.  If movement to take advantage of these discounts gains momentum, we'll see tightening bottom lines for launch vendors due to deep price cuts and lost launch opportunities and the continued retirement of launch vehicles with incredibly long strings of successful launches.  Delta IV-M is first, Ariane 5 or Delta Heavy will follow... other established launchers such as Proton and Atlas V will be discarded or 'evolved'.  The entire composition of the launch world could be rearranged over the next decade, despite the howls of protest* from those rooted in the status quo.

* Past, present, and future. Guaranteed.
But SpaceX needs an explosion in launch volume to truly justify eventually reducing launch contracts by over 60 or 70% (perhaps even more). Its not enough to save a bundle on boosters and upper stages being reused. 6000 employees (and rising) require a lot of revenue just to make payroll and other bills.
Furthermore, I believe the real massive reduction in access to Space costs will come when SpaceX has a rocket that can to for GEO what it can already to for LEO constellations (like Orbcomm and Iridium) deliver payloads by the half dozen to a dozen per launch.
Unlike LEO where launches are pretty much all to different inclinations, orbit altitudes, ... GEO is all target inclination zero, same altitude, only differs by longitude of the slot.
This upper stage must have the ability to operate for several days while keeping their payload batteries trickle charged.
This makes either brute force reduction of inclination or dropping payloads on super sync trajectories a thing of the past.
The upper stage itself would enter a slightly super sync orbit, and perform several inclination reduction and perigee rising burns, dropping their payloads perhaps on GEO-500 m/s or even better, then RTLS. Taking several orbits to accomplish that.
The sole reason I'm not mentioning GSO injection is that requires targeting one specific orbital slot, but mass delivery needs to target an orbit far enough from GEO to allow payloads to still play the timing game to get to their specific slots directly.
At the same time, payloads would be delivered to orbits close enough to GEO that chemical propulsion could be abandoned altogether, reducing average payload mass.
This produces a win-win-win scenario:
- The delivery point is far more valuable to customers on a per ton basis, customers can either give their satellites more transponders/solar panels or opt for a lighter launch mass
- SpaceX can justify much higher margins as a % of costs vs today. Hypothetically, they could deliver to GEO-500 the same per ton prices SpaceX is offering today for reuse flights to GEO-1800, just the longer station keeping fuel alone makes all the different for customers, with the much shorter transit time (vs an all electric transit time from GEO-1500 to GSO) an added bonus
- Total revenue per flight would be massive, quad manifest launches even at half the current prices could bring in US$ 150-200 million per launch total !

This brings in an interesting opportunity for NRO too. How about they invest on a cheaper, mass ish produced line of combined optics/radar/sigint birds and launch them in much denser coverage than today ?
USAF could move from a few huge GEO comm birds to a MEO combined comm/GPS mission, providing much higher global bandwidth. As long as they can drift within an orbital plane by themselves, SpaceX could deliver a whole orbits worth on a single launch. Increase the number of satellites to provide twice the number of satellites vs required, making it much harder for Russia/China to destroy their constellation with ASAT weapons

The main issue against adoption is quite simple, customers would be marrying themselves to SpaceX as their launch provider, if they design payloads optimized to SpaceX bulk delivery, using other providers might create huge disadvantages if SpaceX doesn't deliver, but the much lower costs could justify the risk.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/09/2017 11:10 am
An actual customer recently said:
Quote
Maxim Zayakov, chief executive of BulgariaSat, said the use of a reused first stage lowers the launch price and “makes it possible for smaller countries and companies to launch their own satellites.” [...]The satellite is a major undertaking for BulgariaSat, which has been working on the project for nearly 12 years. “Elon Musk and his SpaceX team have convinced me that people like them bring us closer to a new quality of life through providing access to cutting-edge technology,” Zayakov said in a statement. “This is a chance for Bulgaria to join the efforts to develop these new aspects of [the] space industry.”

Link: http://spacenews.com/bulgarian-satellite-to-launch-on-reused-falcon-9-in-june
Surrey Satellite Technology have been helping "small countries" put significant missions together and fly them as secondaries for decades. this sounds like a payload that's been a long time in building and had borderline funding to begin with.

I don't see one flight, that would have flown on the lowest cost launch opportunity they could get (probably F9 anyway) being statistically significant.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/09/2017 11:15 am
But SpaceX needs an explosion in launch volume to truly justify eventually reducing launch contracts by over 60 or 70% (perhaps even more). Its not enough to save a bundle on boosters and upper stages being reused. 6000 employees (and rising) require a lot of revenue just to make payroll and other bills.
True. In fact for that kind of price reduction you need full reusability. But with massive price reduction you have a massive fall in per launch revenue, unless you have an (equally) massive rise in launch numbers. [EDIT but the conventional ELV launch model ("here's your ticket. Have your payload ready in 2 years") may not be enough for this to happen. The ability to recover payloads (so designs can be corrected and iterated) seems equally important, on a cycle of months, not years. Like booking flights for sounding rockets, or zero g simulator aircraft ]

These facts have been known for decades by LV mfgs and are a key brake on changes to the one mfg/one operator business model.  :(
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/09/2017 11:41 am
But SpaceX needs an explosion in launch volume to truly justify eventually reducing launch contracts by over 60 or 70% (perhaps even more). Its not enough to save a bundle on boosters and upper stages being reused. 6000 employees (and rising) require a lot of revenue just to make payroll and other bills.
True. In fact for that kind of price reduction you need full reusability. But with massive price reduction you have a massive fall in per launch revenue, unless you have an (equally) massive rise in launch numbers.

These facts have been known for decades by LV mfgs and are a key brake on changes to the one mfg/one operator business model.  :(
Actually... A properly sized 9 raptor first stage with a single raptor upper stage can also deliver hugely even if the upper stage is expendable, if each launch could be worth US$ 150-200 million like I suggested. In such a scenario, as long as the upper stage costs up to US$ 30 million, and can be mass produced efficiently, such a scenario could be far more economical than using FH to launch modest mass payloads in order to get the upper stage back. It really depends on how much performance reusing the F9/FH upper stage would take.
You need to keep in mind that if each Raptor 9 launch delivers up to a half a dozen 4-7 ton class satellites to GEO-500 m/s, each expended upper stage and reused booster is doing the job of a bunch of F9 boosters and upper stages. Booster low refurb is perhaps already within reach, but upper stage low refurb cost is still a big if. It might be cheaper to expend one Raptor 9 upper stage than refurb a FH upper stage 6x plus lets assume upper stages can only fly for a dozen times. The fully reusable F9/FH solution might not be better.
The main cost item that goes against my idea is the R&D and tooling cost to design a brand new rocket.

But if it could have a 100% common booster with mini ITS, that would change everything.

Of course, in the long run, we all want fully reusable rockets, but a full raptor rocket with double FH payload but F9 economics could be the more logical next step.
It would replace 100% of FH needs and move F9 launches that can be converted to triple or more manifest missions.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/09/2017 11:46 am
Well, again, you can reduce prices significantly without reducing profit significantly, as long as you have a monopoly on reusability. Spacex can simply stick to charging say $45m per launch, even if it costs them just $20m. Until someone else also masters reusability. Then they just start undercutting the newcomer as required.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/09/2017 11:55 am
Well, again, you can reduce prices significantly without reducing profit significantly, as long as you have a monopoly on reusability. Spacex can simply stick to charging say $45m per launch, even if it costs them just $20m. Until someone else also masters reusability. Then they just start undercutting the newcomer as required.
Except in my idea GEO customers are getting a much, much, much better bang for their buck, and SpaceX is getting better return per payload delivered to orbit.
And the national security side would absolutely love this. GSO delivery of up to 20 ton satellites becomes... STANDARD !
And such a rocket could throw a super sized Dragon to Mars loaded the extreme...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: John Alan on 05/09/2017 02:52 pm
SpaceX has absolutely no reason to charge much less then the market will bear... from a business standpoint.

As long as the COST (all in) of a launch is less then the PRICE agreed to in the contract = PROFIT

My opinion... the "market" thinks about $10 million profit is about right per launch...

And SpaceX (rightly so) has clearly put out there...
"Hey, we spent $1 billion R&D on this and we want to recoup that over the next few years"

That statement justifies them charging well above market perceived cost for the next few years...  ;)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/09/2017 03:09 pm
SpaceX has absolutely no reason to charge much less then the market will bear... from a business standpoint.

As long as the COST (all in) of a launch is less then the PRICE agreed to in the contract = PROFIT

My opinion... the "market" thinks about $10 million profit is about right per launch...

And SpaceX (rightly so) has clearly put out there...
"Hey, we spent $1 billion R&D on this and we want to recoup that over the next few years"

That statement justifies them charging well above market perceived cost for the next few years...  ;)
Except Elon Musk has a solid track record of caring more about growth than profit.
The valuations SpaceX has already achieved in successive investments (Google, Fidelity, ...) is huge.
Investors care far, far, far more about 20+% yearly sales growth than profits. Specially if growth is accompanied by cost reductions.
In essence you're thinking like ULA/Ariane, not like Elon Musk.
SpaceX certainly will seek profitability, but absolutely not "sell at the highest prices the market will bear" profitability.
Perhaps you haven't heard about the US$ 1 billion/yr losses Tesla is incurring. At the same time they're growing at over 50% per year. An excellent investment of those US$ 1 billion/yr if you ask me. This year they might have a US$ 2+billion loss, as they spend a lot of money to tool for half a million cars/yr production.
Please, lets not start a Tesla discussion here.
Like I said before, if you don't understand how EM thinks, your predictions will be wrong. Mine could be wrong too, but I'm trying hard to think like he does. In fact I think my predictions will be wrong, because I'm thinking too small, rather than too big.

Your focus on short term profits is even smaller thinking !
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: VIY on 05/09/2017 03:13 pm
An actual customer recently said:
Quote
Maxim Zayakov, chief executive of BulgariaSat, said the use of a reused first stage lowers the launch price and “makes it possible for smaller countries and companies to launch their own satellites.” [...]The satellite is a major undertaking for BulgariaSat, which has been working on the project for nearly 12 years. “Elon Musk and his SpaceX team have convinced me that people like them bring us closer to a new quality of life through providing access to cutting-edge technology,” Zayakov said in a statement. “This is a chance for Bulgaria to join the efforts to develop these new aspects of [the] space industry.”

Link: http://spacenews.com/bulgarian-satellite-to-launch-on-reused-falcon-9-in-june
Surrey Satellite Technology have been helping "small countries" put significant missions together and fly them as secondaries for decades. this sounds like a payload that's been a long time in building and had borderline funding to begin with.

I don't see one flight, that would have flown on the lowest cost launch opportunity they could get (probably F9 anyway) being statistically significant.

True, but the expected market elasticity will be to a large extend due to those kind of "borderline funded" customers. So they will not be statistically insignificant.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/09/2017 03:14 pm
SpaceX has absolutely no reason to charge much less then the market will bear... from a business standpoint....

Except Elon Musk has a solid track record of caring more about growth than profit.

Right now, Elon can't get more market share by lowering prices - his manifest is already full for the next few years. In this situation, lowering costs even more would be ridiculous.
Elon needs to launch faster (of course, he knows that), and _then_, when he has free slots in the manifest, he can lower prices to attract more customers.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/09/2017 03:23 pm
Right now, Elon can't get more market share by lowering prices - his manifest is already full for the next few years. In this situation, lowering costs even more would be ridiculous.
Elon needs to launch faster (of course, he knows that), and _then_, when he has free slots in the manifest, he can lower prices to attract more customers.
Full manifest vs what launch capacity ?
Are you saying LC40 isn't coming up this year ?
Are you saying more customers aren't going to sign up for re used boosters (dramatically reducing Hawthorne and McGregor bottlenecks) ?
Or are you pretending orders are signed for launch next month ?
SpaceX is aiming for a launch per week perhaps still this year once LC40 is up.
And don't forget Boca Chica.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/09/2017 03:39 pm
Right now, Elon can't get more market share by lowering prices - his manifest is already full for the next few years. In this situation, lowering costs even more would be ridiculous.
Elon needs to launch faster (of course, he knows that), and _then_, when he has free slots in the manifest, he can lower prices to attract more customers.
Full manifest vs what launch capacity ?
Are you saying LC40 isn't coming up this year ?
Are you saying more customers aren't going to sign up for re used boosters (dramatically reducing Hawthorne and McGregor bottlenecks)?

More customers can't sign up for a launch in 2017 or 2018 - SpaceX is fully booked. The best you can get is a launch somewhere in 2019. It's as simple as that.

Quote
SpaceX is aiming for a launch per week perhaps still this year once LC40 is up.
And don't forget Boca Chica.

"Aiming", yes. That's the word. It's quite different from actually managing to do it.
I very much want SpaceX to launch once a week, or even more often.
But it will take time to be a reality. I estimate no less than one year. So far they are launching four times slower, about once per month.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/09/2017 03:42 pm
The constraint to the development of Spacex's next generation of vehicles is not volume related. It is cash related. If Musk had Bezos's financial resources he would have a full team working on ITS already. Instead he has to pace his progress against the need to have the company not go bankrupt.

SpaceX needs quick cash more than it needs to grow its manifest right now. Extra billions earned in the short term will speed up a lot of development.

Musk is not following the loss making Tesla route with SpaceX, because too much is at stake.  The Tesla approach is a gamble that may well implode. The SpaceX approach is a far more incremental one, based on step by step progress while maintaining healthy cash reserves.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 05/09/2017 04:20 pm
An actual customer recently said:
Quote
Maxim Zayakov, chief executive of BulgariaSat, said the use of a reused first stage lowers the launch price and “makes it possible for smaller countries and companies to launch their own satellites.” [...]The satellite is a major undertaking for BulgariaSat, which has been working on the project for nearly 12 years. “Elon Musk and his SpaceX team have convinced me that people like them bring us closer to a new quality of life through providing access to cutting-edge technology,” Zayakov said in a statement. “This is a chance for Bulgaria to join the efforts to develop these new aspects of [the] space industry.”

Link: http://spacenews.com/bulgarian-satellite-to-launch-on-reused-falcon-9-in-june
Surrey Satellite Technology have been helping "small countries" put significant missions together and fly them as secondaries for decades. this sounds like a payload that's been a long time in building and had borderline funding to begin with.

I don't see one flight, that would have flown on the lowest cost launch opportunity they could get (probably F9 anyway) being statistically significant.

It may not be statistically significant in many ways, but one way it is significant is in that it shows there are customers out there who are waiting for cheap launch, because current prices are too high for them. That is a relatively untapped/unserviced market. How many? Who knows, but I expect you could find a lot of scientists out there with ideas for craft that are desparately waiting for prices to drop to they can build and launch.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 05/09/2017 04:22 pm
Except Elon Musk has a solid track record of caring more about growth than profit.

If he had unlimited funds he could do this, but he doesn't. he needs to strike a happy balance between growth and profit to ensure the companies survival, but also to ensure he stays in charge (i.e. he cannot risk a float to gain funding)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/09/2017 05:36 pm
Right now, Elon can't get more market share by lowering prices - his manifest is already full for the next few years. In this situation, lowering costs even more would be ridiculous.
Elon needs to launch faster (of course, he knows that), and _then_, when he has free slots in the manifest, he can lower prices to attract more customers.
Full manifest vs what launch capacity ?
Are you saying LC40 isn't coming up this year ?
Are you saying more customers aren't going to sign up for re used boosters (dramatically reducing Hawthorne and McGregor bottlenecks)?

More customers can't sign up for a launch in 2017 or 2018 - SpaceX is fully booked. The best you can get is a launch somewhere in 2019. It's as simple as that.

...

If you are buying a comm sat today, is there a vendor on the planet that can deliver it before 2019 (19 months)?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/09/2017 09:03 pm
True, but the expected market elasticity will be to a large extend due to those kind of "borderline funded" customers. So they will not be statistically insignificant.
The difference between $55m and $62m is simply not big enough to get a lot of new developers thinking "Yes now I can close a business case for this."

AFAIK this project would have happened anyway, it's brought their timetable forward a bit.

For serious market growth you have to get to a price point where people who've had ideas sitting in the bottom of desk drawers for decades (because you can't sell the product they make no matter how good it it at a price that can make a profit and cover all the launch, and re-launch costs) start pulling them out and talking to VC's.

I'm sure SX can recover their development budget. The question becomes what happens to their prices then?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/09/2017 09:19 pm
It may not be statistically significant in many ways, but one way it is significant is in that it shows there are customers out there who are waiting for cheap launch, because current prices are too high for them.
Current prices are probably too high for 90% of the people who would like to launch a payload into space (including humans).
Quote from: JamesH65
That is a relatively untapped/unserviced market. How many? Who knows, but I expect you could find a lot of scientists out there with ideas for craft that are desparately waiting for prices to drop to they can build and launch.
Historically the funding for the satellite or probe is separate from the that of the LV. The theory behind large probes is economies of scale but personally I think there's a lot to be said for building probes around secondary payload adaptors, with one or two instruments going than a dozen that have taken a decade to get ready.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/09/2017 09:56 pm
If you are buying a comm sat today, is there a vendor on the planet that can deliver it before 2019 (19 months)?
True in general, but a customer might have a satellite that was ordered already and finds out they can save money and launch sooner if they switch to SpaceX.
Perhaps the satellite production schedule didn't match the other launch provider schedule.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/10/2017 12:18 am
True, but the expected market elasticity will be to a large extend due to those kind of "borderline funded" customers. So they will not be statistically insignificant.
The difference between $55m and $62m is simply not big enough to get a lot of new developers thinking "Yes now I can close a business case for this."

AFAIK this project would have happened anyway, it's brought their timetable forward a bit.

For serious market growth you have to get to a price point where people who've had ideas sitting in the bottom of desk drawers for decades (because you can't sell the product they make no matter how good it it at a price that can make a profit and cover all the launch, and re-launch costs) start pulling them out and talking to VC's.

I'm sure SX can recover their development budget. The question becomes what happens to their prices then?

This project certainly did happen without reuse being a factor... it started 11 years ago.  But it does sound like the SpaceX pricing was a factor in the decision to do this first comm sat. 

$55M vs $62M isn't the issue -- it is $62M (instead of $100-150M) is here to stay and maybe get much better.  Planning for edge-case customers involves how far can one stretch, and the worst that can happen is cost escalation after decisions start to be made.  If the long term price ceiling is now $60M, then many more edge-case customers can afford to investigate and eventually buy their first (or second, third, ...) launch.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 05/10/2017 05:34 am
There is also Ariane 6, Vulcan and the yet unknown New Glenn pricing. Highly likely at least one of those will succeed (hopefully all three) so that means launch pricing more generally is decreasing. Should again increase confidence for planning future missions/assessing business cases.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/10/2017 07:31 am
This project certainly did happen without reuse being a factor... it started 11 years ago.  But it does sound like the SpaceX pricing was a factor in the decision to do this first comm sat. 
IOW it's a slight move of the launch timetable to the right, not something that would have never happened if SX was not flying. So not an addition to the launch market.
Quote from: AncientU
$55M vs $62M isn't the issue -- it is $62M (instead of $100-150M) is here to stay and maybe get much better.  Planning for edge-case customers involves how far can one stretch, and the worst that can happen is cost escalation after decisions start to be made. 
Given the large proportion of government payloads (any government) launch price inflation has not historically been that big a concern for a substantial portion of the market in any significant practical way.  :(
Quote from: AncientU
If the long term price ceiling is now $60M, then many more edge-case customers can afford to investigate and eventually buy their first (or second, third, ...) launch.
I'd like to hear from people who've actually had to do it how much easier raising $60m+ is than raising $100m+. I note that is for payloads below 5.5mT to GTO.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 05/10/2017 08:08 am
Given the large proportion of government payloads (any government) launch price inflation has not historically been that big a concern for a substantial portion of the market in any significant practical way.  :(

But isn't that just a consequence that launch prices meant that few business cases, beyond comms sats, national security and govt funded research, could close?

Of course we don't yet know if ~$60M per launch will make much difference to market size, but at least it looks like there's likely to be a sustained trend of reduced pricing.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: corneliussulla on 05/10/2017 08:32 am
Except Elon Musk has a solid track record of caring more about growth than profit.

If he had unlimited funds he could do this, but he doesn't. he needs to strike a happy balance between growth and profit to ensure the companies survival, but also to ensure he stays in charge (i.e. he cannot risk a float to gain funding)

All he needs is free cashflow. Profit is accounting event which can be adjusted by assumptions around all sorts of things. If the company was quoted on the stock market it would be more important from an investor point of view as it helps define the value of the stock. But any company can survive if it produces free cash each year, profitably or unprofitably
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: mme on 05/10/2017 01:49 pm
Except Elon Musk has a solid track record of caring more about growth than profit.

If he had unlimited funds he could do this, but he doesn't. he needs to strike a happy balance between growth and profit to ensure the companies survival, but also to ensure he stays in charge (i.e. he cannot risk a float to gain funding)

All he needs is free cashflow. Profit is accounting event which can be adjusted by assumptions around all sorts of things. If the company was quoted on the stock market it would be more important from an investor point of view as it helps define the value of the stock. But any company can survive if it produces free cash each year, profitably or unprofitably
They need positive (or at least neutral) cashflow.  They have a large engineering team and ambitions far beyond survival.  I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/10/2017 03:53 pm
  I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
Historically LV suppliers have basically said "this is what it costs, pay us."

Musk has pushed prices lower. The question is will he continue to do so once the development costs of partial reuse are recovered?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: speedevil on 05/10/2017 06:46 pm
Musk has pushed prices lower. The question is will he continue to do so once the development costs of partial reuse are recovered?

I don't think this has a meaning.
Development costs were somewhat higher due to reuse. There is no notional lender who lent them this money.
They are not going to transfer into a 'normal' space company.

There will always be a new project to take the money, that you might consider as now going into 'paying back the development cost', whether it's Red Dragon, FH, Dragon 2-moon, Raptor, bbootstrapping CommX, ITS, mars-ISRU, mars-boring, ...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/11/2017 03:49 pm
Musk has pushed prices lower. The question is will he continue to do so once the development costs of partial reuse are recovered?

I don't think this has a meaning.
Development costs were somewhat higher due to reuse. There is no notional lender who lent them this money.
They are not going to transfer into a 'normal' space company.

There will always be a new project to take the money, that you might consider as now going into 'paying back the development cost', whether it's Red Dragon, FH, Dragon 2-moon, Raptor, bbootstrapping CommX, ITS, mars-ISRU, mars-boring, ...
Yes there are a lot of projects all needing cash.

The estimate of the cash produced through reuse of at 70% reuse flight rate and a 25 flights per year is $.5B cash above costs. For just the years of 2018 through 2020 this will produce $1.5B in funds for these projects. At SpaceX usual more development for less money that kind of funds without any government looking over your shoulder on these projects results in a lot of work completed. If SpaceX had to coordinate all of these projects with the government that adds a 25% overhead due to the time it takes writing reports, going to meetings, presentations, briefing government technical evaluation staff, etc.

I think they still may have almost $.5B saved from that $1B investment still. So for this year there is up to $.5B available making the total of funds through EOY 2020 at $2B.  If they spend the $.5B in manufacturing sats an launchof  7 FH with 50 CommX sats per launch each year starting in 2019 then by sometime 2021 there will be an initially operating constellation. At that point the constellation revenues pay for additional sats deployment and no longer would be using the R&D pool.

But SpaceX's own goals for it's constellation is a driving force for reducing cost of launch, higher flight rate, faster turn around of assets (pads, boosters, and farings), and higher reuse numbers (increasing the reuse of the flight assets reuse beyond 10).

Reuse is an enabler for SpaceX itself to achieve its own goals. It needs the above reduced cost, high flight rate, quick turn around, and high reuse all of which is achieved through reuse such that a possible slow but steady new cost model that reduces flight costs as flight rates increase and systems mature even more.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/11/2017 05:26 pm
  I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
Historically LV suppliers have basically said "this is what it costs, pay us."

Musk has pushed prices lower. The question is will he continue to do so once the development costs of partial reuse are recovered?
They haven't borrowed money to do reuse.
They don't have a running account that they need to put back on.
Their concern is far more in the lines of replenishing every cent of cash they burned after AMOS-6 until they returned to flight. And put aside the mountain of cash they'll need to manufacture the first batch of CommX satellites, the first large Raptor rockets and the large list of upcoming plans SpaceX has.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/11/2017 07:45 pm
  I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
Historically LV suppliers have basically said "this is what it costs, pay us."

Musk has pushed prices lower. The question is will he continue to do so once the development costs of partial reuse are recovered?
They haven't borrowed money to do reuse.
They don't have a running account that they need to put back on.
Their concern is far more in the lines of replenishing every cent of cash they burned after AMOS-6 until they returned to flight. And put aside the mountain of cash they'll need to manufacture the first batch of CommX satellites, the first large Raptor rockets and the large list of upcoming plans SpaceX has.

I agree that the latter two items (CommX and 'Raptor rockets') being developed simultaneously are the financial challenge, not paying back the $1B invested in reuse.  Once CommX starts returning revenue -- maybe 2021-2022 -- they should get financially healthy quickly... then on to Mars.  Someone dropping another $Billion investment in their laps in the next year or two should help improve cash flow.  I think GS doesn't want to be dependent* on outside investment or loans.  Smart Lady!

* That said, there will probably be investors camped on their doorstep when the constellation deployment becomes imminent.

Also, pushing prices lower should be a piece of cake when they have an internal 'block buy' of hundreds of launches, and customers' marginal cost becomes insignificant.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/11/2017 09:19 pm
They haven't borrowed money to do reuse.
They don't have a running account that they need to put back on.
Their concern is far more in the lines of replenishing every cent of cash they burned after AMOS-6 until they returned to flight. And put aside the mountain of cash they'll need to manufacture the first batch of CommX satellites, the first large Raptor rockets and the large list of upcoming plans SpaceX has.
That's not really an argument for SX to continue to lower their prices (prices to customers, not costs to themselves) though, is it? :(
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Joffan on 05/12/2017 09:12 pm
I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
I was thinking about this; if Musk pushes prices too low (too quickly), could it actually deter others from entering the market?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/12/2017 09:22 pm
I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
I was thinking about this; if Musk pushes prices too low (too quickly), could it actually deter others from entering the market?
Markets are interesting creatures. If someone can do it cheaper then others will push to undercut fighting for market share.

So going cheaper is actually good for the market.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/12/2017 09:25 pm
I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
I was thinking about this; if Musk pushes prices too low (too quickly), could it actually deter others from entering the market?
I am neither arguing for just a 5/10% discount neither passing through their entire savings. Probably 1/3 of the savings at first, eventually half.
When second stage reuse is working, assuming SpaceX full costs drop by 80%, give customers up to a 50% discount.
Larger discounts depend on either moving to multi manifest on larger vehicles or large launch contracts.

There's a flaw in those that think that SpaceX must first give customer huge discounts, hoping volumes will go up. NO. Give customers enough discount to prove SpaceX has lower costs, and set a progression of discounts based on volume, with the really juicy discounts only available at something like several times the size of the Orbcomm or Iridium contract.
Then wait for customers to bite the bullet.
The whole launch volume up mostly depends on the known bottleneck of the satellite production industry. If they can't increase their volume at least 5x by streamlining their production lines and reducing costs substantially, then SpaceX might find itself with only CommX and perhaps space tourism as high volume customers.

SpaceX lower prices are likely already in the Blue Origin business plan. SpaceX will never be the sole provider. There are national interests.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: wannamoonbase on 05/12/2017 09:51 pm
I hope once CommX comes on line they will reduce prices more as a continued forcing functioning for the rest of the industry.
I was thinking about this; if Musk pushes prices too low (too quickly), could it actually deter others from entering the market?
Markets are interesting creatures. If someone can do it cheaper then others will push to undercut fighting for market share.

So going cheaper is actually good for the market.

As long as they aren't leaving money on the table.  Even if they can be very cheap, it'd be a shame to go any lower than needed to sweep the market place.

In order to dominate the commercial market, flight rate, allowing customers to get into the queue when desired, maybe equally important as cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Dao Angkan on 05/12/2017 10:20 pm
Operators are already putting pressure on satellite manufacturers and launch operators to reduce costs so that they can make the same % from lower priced emerging market transponders. SES said in their earnings call that whilst overall income from emerging markets might be less, they expect the percentage to be the same as they are pressuring launch providers and satellite providers to cut costs .... which leads to why SES was the first to try out a reusable launcher .... they need cheap as possible launches for emerging markets.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/12/2017 10:23 pm
With reusability SpaceX could create a supply of up to 60 East launches (48 from LC-40/LC-39A and 12 more from BC). Price is a compromise between actual costs/supply and demand in a free market. Unfortunately the market is far from being a free market.

Currently globally there is a total of 80 to 100 launches to orbit of everything per year. SpaceX providing such a supply would make it such that schedule would no longer be a concern since demand would be a long way behind the supply. Making the Prices for the launch the deciding factor for just about any customer commercial  or government, even foreign governments. The following could be a consideration for foreign governments: If the "In-House" provider can't launch when desired they will  contract out to SpaceX.

SpaceX launch rate of 25 possible just this year represents 25% of the global launches. SpaceX's market share of the global launch could reach 50% by 2020 with even the total global launches increasing to 150/yr.

Prices are going down and will likely continue to decrease year over year. As SpaceX develops additional tech increaseing performance/decreasing costs this yearly decrease is not likely to halt. If each year has a 10% reduction then if there is no big step function this model would have a 20mt payload to orbit price of $15M by 2030. But SpaceX is planning a big step function in the mid 2020s. So in mid 2020s the Price for 20mt would be with this 10% yearly reduction model of $27M.

If something similar happens to CC then by 2025 the price could be $60M for 6 passengers.

Reusability is in the drivers seat. It is now a question of how heavy of a foot SpaceX will have on Pricing.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Dao Angkan on 05/12/2017 10:30 pm
Arianespace had the whole market .... instead of innovating for cheaper prices for their customers, they relied on government subsidies in order to push out competitors .... will anyone apart from the French really miss Arianespace?

And as an ESA taxpayer, why should we pay ludicrous prices for Arianespace launches just because they're in France?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/12/2017 10:36 pm
A BTW looking at 2016 launch statistics by country if SpaceX for 2017 is considered it's own country it would be the #1 launcher compared to any country.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/12/2017 11:34 pm
A BTW looking at 2016 launch statistics by country if SpaceX for 2017 is considered it's own country it would be the #1 launcher compared to any country.

For all intents and purposes of the market - it is its own country. Any surprise it wants ... its own dedicated launch facility?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/13/2017 12:41 am
This year if SpaceX actually does 25 could be the highest number of launches in 1 year for quite some time. Since 2000 the highest has been 92. This year the number could be as high as 100 with the US double what it did last year with ~40 vs it's 22 for 2016. 22 tied US with China last year with 22 each for first place.

In 1990 there was 114 launches but the rate was on a steady decline after that until 2004 at only 50 launches before starting to increase again in rate. The highest amount ever was was in 1968 of 120 successes out of 135 attempts.

Although I don't like wiki this graph is instructional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight)

Using data and doing some curve fitting to an exponential model by 2025 the launches could be 150. But the real instructional item is that launch rate is going up significantly and has been for the last 13 years. All the industry information says it is about to explode. So an estimate of 150 in 8 years is actual conservative if the proposed constellations get deployed.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Mader Levap on 05/13/2017 10:04 am
This year if SpaceX actually does 25
SpaceX won't launch 25 times in 2017. Why in every year SpaceX amazing peoples insist on ridiculous numbers that never happen?

in my opinion, SpaceX won't launch 25 times in 2017. Why do some people continue making projections that I feel are difficult or impossible to achieve even after previous year projections don't come to pass?

Edit/Lar: Soften. Try it yourself.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/13/2017 10:41 am
Currently globally there is a total of 80 to 100 launches to orbit of everything per year. SpaceX providing such a supply would make it such that schedule would no longer be a concern since demand would be a long way behind the supply.
But the odds of that actually happening are pretty long.  :(
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy
Making the Prices for the launch the deciding factor for just about any customer commercial  or government, even foreign governments. The following could be a consideration for foreign governments: If the "In-House" provider can't launch when desired they will  contract out to SpaceX.
There is also the issue that some payloads remain too big to launch on F9 and FH is a long way from first launch.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy
SpaceX launch rate of 25 possible just this year represents 25% of the global launches. SpaceX's market share of the global launch could reach 50% by 2020 with even the total global launches increasing to 150/yr.
It's mid May already and SX have done 5 launches. SX may have a manifest of 25 but I wonder how often they've launched as many as they have manifested?
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy
Prices are going down and will likely continue to decrease year over year. As SpaceX develops additional tech increaseing performance/decreasing costs this yearly decrease is not likely to halt. If each year has a 10% reduction then if there is no big step function this model would have a 20mt payload to orbit price of $15M by 2030. But SpaceX is planning a big step function in the mid 2020s. So in mid 2020s the Price for 20mt would be with this 10% yearly reduction model of $27M.
I think we all hope so but while SX has a monopoly on even partial reusability those prices will only fall as far as they want them to.

In the long run monopoly in any market is only really good for the monopolist.  :(
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/13/2017 11:31 am
This year if SpaceX actually does 25
SpaceX won't launch 25 times in 2017. Why in every year SpaceX amazing peoples insist on ridiculous numbers that never happen?
Actually that's another 25 for the remainder of the year.

So far they've launched 5 so they can do a 1 a month cadence. In fact Echostar 23 and SES 10 were launched from SLC 39 on the 16th and 30th of March, so they can refurb a pad in 2 weeks. That is now a known fact.

8 of those launches are from VAFB, the rest from KSC. At a bit better than 1 launch a month VAFB can meet it's quota.

The remaining 17 are a bit more doubtful.
SLC 40 is not expected to be back on till November. Between now and then SLC39 has to do 11 launches. That is about a launch every 2 weeks from SLC39, which has been demonstrated to be possible.  The remaining 6 are possible assuming SLC 40 comes back on line in time and can match the 2 week cadence.

As usual with SX it is just about possible if everything runs like clockwork. The big issues are
1)There are no launch mishaps. FH is probably the highest risk item in this regard because of both the pad changes (before and after) and its newness. But AMOS 6 showed even apparently minor changes can have serious consequences.
2)All payloads are ready to launch when their LVs are. Not always the case.
3)SX maintains 2 week cadence on SLC39. They've done it once but keeping it up over the long haul?
4)SX manages 3 week or better cadence on VAFB. Seems feasible given KSC can do 2 week launches.
5)SLC 40 comes back into use by the start of November. Does anyone know how work is going?

IMHO 1 or 3 are the most serious because they have the greatest potential for knock on effects.  Stage reuse should reduce the risk of 1 but I don't know if anyone has worked a pad and its crew that hard before.

IIRC someone (Ed Kyle?) said NASA was able to keep up a high flight rate in the 60's because they had a huge number of pads (7? 14?) they could use more or less simultaneously.

In principle 2 can be coped with by re-scheduling till later but that implies either
a)One of the later payloads can step into the open slot or
b)SX operates some kind of "standby" arrangement that lets customers fly sooner if a gap opens up that aren't even formally listed yet (do LV companies even do this?)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lars-J on 05/13/2017 02:33 pm
This year if SpaceX actually does 25
SpaceX won't launch 25 times in 2017. Why in every year SpaceX amazing peoples insist on ridiculous numbers that never happen?

Care to specify your less ridiculous prediction? For academic purposes...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/13/2017 03:09 pm
This isn't a launch projection count thread. We have one of those elsewhere.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/13/2017 03:50 pm
.....
In principle 2 can be coped with by re-scheduling till later but that implies either
a)One of the later payloads can step into the open slot or
b)SX operates some kind of "standby" arrangement that lets customers fly sooner if a gap opens up that aren't even formally listed yet (do LV companies even do this?)

This brings up an interesting effect on costs(Prices) or the costs for a customer in that he has traditional had to pay up front from 18 months to 3 years in advance for the flight. This costs money in funds used not making revenue or haveing to pay interest on loans etc for the customer.

As far as has it happened that a new customer has contracted and stepped in the shoes for available booster the answer is yes. But interestingly it was ULA that did this. One of ULA's goals is a contract and go scenario for customers. Instead of 3 years the timeline would be 3 months. Boosters are manufactured without a contract and are sold like any other retail item taken off the shelf and transferred to the customer. The incidents that I am referring to is between ULA and Orbital ATK Cygnus flights which were contracted and flown in one year or less. This was only possible because boosters had been partially completed that payloads (Gov) that had slipped significantly out in schedule freeing up these boosters to be reassigned allowing a latter started booster to be assigned to these late payloads.

Now the effect that reusability could have in this. The major costs for a launch are the booster and those funds spent during the last few months for payload and LV processing at the site plus the payload analysis/flight profile. All SpaceX has to do is to self fund the manufacture of the Upper Stages which is less that $15M for the sell of reflights of boosters to customers such that 3 months occurs between contract and flight.

What is going on is a complete change in the way LV construction is funded and purchased. For customers they  wait until their sat is almost finished they select and purchase a ride and 3 months later fly. It could save them millions in the "cost of money". For those not familiar with what the term "cost of money" means it is associated with funds from loans or investment that sits idle without any revenue because of the long time between expenditure and revenue generating operation. The longer the period the higher the associated additional costs in interest or expectations of returns on investment (ROI) from the investor. The difference between even 18 months and 3 months is significant, as much as 10% of the cost of the purchased LV flight.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: edkyle99 on 05/13/2017 04:35 pm
IIRC someone (Ed Kyle?) said NASA was able to keep up a high flight rate in the 60's because they had a huge number of pads (7? 14?) they could use more or less simultaneously.
Take Atlas for an example.  In 1966, the U.S. Air Force and NASA launched 47 Atlas missiles or space launch vehicles.  33 were orbital launches.  These were performed from 12 launch pads - 5 pads at the Cape and 7 at VAFB.  All of the Cape pads, and 2 of the West Coast pads, were dedicated to orbital launches.  VAFB SLC 4E (previously Pt. Arguello LC 2-4) was the busiest, handling nine launches, mostly Gambit film return missions (pads tended to be assigned to specific programs back then).

Although quick turnarounds are impressive, what really matters is sustainable launch pace over the long run.  A pad may be able to turn around quickly for one or two launches, but it will periodically have to be taken out of service for a few weeks for more substantial maintenance.  Payload issues and bad weather (hurricane season looms) can affect schedules.  Then there is the Falcon Heavy launch.  LC 39A will screech to a dead stop for weeks while that campaign runs its course.

 - Ed Kyle
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/13/2017 05:23 pm
Please at least tie it into costs. Is it your premise that additional launch cadence requires more pads?

Well SpaceX believes so with a soon to exist 2 and then in a couple of years ~2018 probably late 2018 or even 2019 BC operations making it 3 East facing launch sites. Even at a sedate 1 a month which even the current history of 5 soon to be 6 launches in 5 months states that they can sustain at least 1 a month for a pad. Such that with 3 pads that equates to 36 a year to low <60 degree inclinations. With 1 pad to high inclinations >60 degrees for a value of 48 launch capability per year.

What my premise was about was the supply that this represents vs the demand. That a launch of 25 this year represents a 1/4 of all launches globally and that demand is likely to lag significantly behind SpaceX's capability. What this means is that reusability impact on supply and demand equation for the market will make the prices fall in the market because of an over abundance of supply. SpaceX will have much more supply capability than demand, increases the likelyhood of the ULA goal of launch on demand.  Where boosters are sitting in a warehouse waiting for use. The booster manufacturer manages the booster build rate based on his projection of the demand not the practically custom build on contract model that is currently in use. A shortened contract to fly periiod will also force more pressure on sat builders to follow suit. To having sat busses manufactured ahead of contracts existing where a contract adds the customer specific parts over a shorter period.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 05/13/2017 05:31 pm
So what you're argument seems to suggest is that the booster business (if separable) is "commoditizing" (to the degree anything in aerospace could become "off the shelf") as an economic trend.

And that the US/payload/"anything above booster separation" ... still retains its traditional nature, and that this "high ground" is where the competition moves to. Whoever moves fast in serving the need, controls where the market heads.

Does this mean we can have new business models that can take advantage of this? Or is that a pipe dream?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/13/2017 06:00 pm
So what you're argument seems to suggest is that the booster business (if separable) is "commoditizing" (to the degree anything in aerospace could become "off the shelf") as an economic trend.

And that the US/payload/"anything above booster separation" ... still retains its traditional nature, and that this "high ground" is where the competition moves to. Whoever moves fast in serving the need, controls where the market heads.

Does this mean we can have new business models that can take advantage of this? Or is that a pipe dream?

Two possible business offshoots:
1) upper stages go through a similar part-reusable cycle, so equivalent pressure is planed above the sep line, and
2) boosters become commoditized and payload integrators/second stage builders market payloads and build/buy second stages (plus boosters) to optimize launch for clients.  Centaur (or Centaur/ACES-like) uppers could fly on NG reusable boosters, for instance.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/13/2017 06:24 pm
Does this mean we can have new business models that can take advantage of this? Or is that a pipe dream?

When thinking about reusability driving the cost (ie: expense) of launch lower and rapid reuse driving it down drastically, the question that arises in my mind is how creative SpaceX can get with the cost (ie: price) of launch to customers based on the nature of the payload rather than simply its mass.

Can you set a price for customers with revenue producing payloads differently from a price for payloads that would otherwise never be able to justify launch at the price that maximizes SpaceX benefit (encompassing all its goals) from the revenue-producing-payloads market?  I tend to think you can but I'm just a layman and not sure how the industry would react.

I guess what I'm driving at is this:

Were SpaceX to achieve the vision of reliable, rapid reuse as they have envisioned with the corresponding reduction in launch expense, it seems to me that it's (in theory) possible (from an economic perspective) to bring some payloads into the market that would drive an enormous number of launches such that SpaceX could launch as often as their facilities and turnaround cadence permits.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: docmordrid on 05/13/2017 06:41 pm
Does this mean we can have new business models that can take advantage of this? Or is that a pipe dream?
>
Were SpaceX to achieve the vision of reliable, rapid reuse as they have envisioned with the corresponding reduction in launch expense, it seems to me that it's (in theory) possible (from an economic perspective) to bring some payloads into the market that would drive an enormous number of launches such that SpaceX could launch as often as their facilities and turnaround cadence permits.

That'll happen just launching their internet constellations, unless they go the route of tasking a mini-ITS variant to deploy them by the hundreds.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/13/2017 07:01 pm
That'll happen just launching their internet constellations, unless they go the route of tasking a mini-ITS variant to deploy them by the hundreds.

The thing I have in the back of my mind if the economics (easy part) and ancillary issues (big ask) could be reconciled would drive 300 Full-Size ITS Mars-class Payloads at minimum as well as additional ongoing demand.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MP99 on 05/14/2017 07:33 am


What this means is that reusability impact on supply and demand equation for the market will make the prices fall in the market because of an over abundance of supply. SpaceX will have much more supply capability than demand, increases the likelyhood of the ULA goal of launch on demand.  Where boosters are sitting in a warehouse waiting for use. The booster manufacturer manages the booster build rate based on his projection of the demand not the practically custom build on contract model that is currently in use. A shortened contract to fly periiod will also force more pressure on sat builders to follow suit. To having sat busses manufactured ahead of contracts existing where a contract adds the customer specific parts over a shorter period.

If the launch provider is amortising the build cost of a booster across multiple launches, they then need that demand to show up, otherwise they are left shouldering the bill for it.

Basically, this moves the risk and cost of money onto the launch provider.

That may be OK for a provider with an up to date product in a mature expanded market with a lot of demand. May be tricky in the transition period. If this is happening, SpaceX are managing the transition by keeping prices high for now.

Cheers, Martin
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/14/2017 08:35 pm

Now the effect that reusability could have in this. The major costs for a launch are the booster and those funds spent during the last few months for payload and LV processing at the site plus the payload analysis/flight profile. All SpaceX has to do is to self fund the manufacture of the Upper Stages which is less that $15M for the sell of reflights of boosters to customers such that 3 months occurs between contract and flight.

What is going on is a complete change in the way LV construction is funded and purchased. For customers they  wait until their sat is almost finished they select and purchase a ride and 3 months later fly. It could save them millions in the "cost of money". For those not familiar with what the term "cost of money" means it is associated with funds from loans or investment that sits idle without any revenue because of the long time between expenditure and revenue generating operation. The longer the period the higher the associated additional costs in interest or expectations of returns on investment (ROI) from the investor. The difference between even 18 months and 3 months is significant, as much as 10% of the cost of the purchased LV flight.
I know it as the "time value of money" but yes the reduction in time scale from 1 1/2 years to maybe a 1/4 of a year, and the interest payments on that money should indeed be significant, even given the fairly low interest rate period we are in at present.
Take Atlas for an example.  In 1966, the U.S. Air Force and NASA launched 47 Atlas missiles or space launch vehicles.  33 were orbital launches.  These were performed from 12 launch pads - 5 pads at the Cape and 7 at VAFB.  All of the Cape pads, and 2 of the West Coast pads, were dedicated to orbital launches.  VAFB SLC 4E (previously Pt. Arguello LC 2-4) was the busiest, handling nine launches, mostly Gambit film return missions (pads tended to be assigned to specific programs back then).
Oh dear, my memory for details.  :(

But OMG 12 pads. 47 Atlas launches a year. The 1960's were just a different world. I think today 14 Atlas launches a year off 2 pads would be viewed as quite hectic.

Quote from: edkyle99
Although quick turnarounds are impressive, what really matters is sustainable launch pace over the long run.  A pad may be able to turn around quickly for one or two launches, but it will periodically have to be taken out of service for a few weeks for more substantial maintenance.  Payload issues and bad weather (hurricane season looms) can affect schedules.  Then there is the Falcon Heavy launch.  LC 39A will screech to a dead stop for weeks while that campaign runs its course.
That's the question. Can SX keep up the pace of 1 launch every 2 weeks off the same pad over a 7 month period? I've no feel for how exhausting the process is.

IDK. Maybe in 2018 we'll look back and wonder what all the fuss was about and why no one thought to run with fewer pads decades ago.  :(
The thing I have in the back of my mind if the economics (easy part) and ancillary issues (big ask) could be reconciled would drive 300 Full-Size ITS Mars-class Payloads at minimum as well as additional ongoing demand.
There is nothing simple about the economics of space launch, let alone transitioning a business built on a fully expendable design to a semi reusable one.  :(
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: deruch on 05/14/2017 09:23 pm
If this is happening, SpaceX are managing the transition by keeping prices high for now.
And working on creating their own internal demand that will take up any slack-- the satellite constellation.  I have from the beginning seen that project as a hedge against any shortfall in future launch demand by the rest of the market.  Of course, it has the added benefit of being possibly a larger revenue source than their primary business (assuming it all works out as they hope).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/14/2017 10:01 pm
The thing I have in the back of my mind if the economics (easy part) and ancillary issues (big ask) could be reconciled would drive 300 Full-Size ITS Mars-class Payloads at minimum as well as additional ongoing demand.
There is nothing simple about the economics of space launch, let alone transitioning a business built on a fully expendable design to a semi reusable one.  :(
It's simple when the conjecture is premised on the ITS Architecture and Economics having been proved out.   :o ;D
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/14/2017 10:24 pm
The first generation "CommX" constellation sats will be deployed by the F9/FH. That is if it is ever deployed in the current scheduled timeframe of initial operation 2020/21 of 800 sats. ITS use for sat deployment would not be a factor till mid 2020's if its development is on track. In time for the deployment of the next generation design sats possibly as much as 10X larger and 20X more capably for 1/4th the cost/sat as the first gen sats. This enables a $/bit price decrease of factor of 40 while doubling the yearly profit from the constellation. Suddenly SpaceX could be the primary backbone of most of the global internet traffic.

Now all of this is conjecture on where reusability is sending the cost of access to space and what SpaceX is planning to use it for and to make "gobs" of money to fund other activities that may never see a profit: Mars colonization.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/15/2017 02:53 am
On a different tack about reusability effect on costs. In-space industrilization: made-In-Space believes it has come up with a significant money making in-space industrialization business case for the manufacture of ZBLAM in zero G. With low cost access to space making even the profitable business case with current space access costs the business could become even more significant. See this thread http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35889.40 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35889.40)

But the amounts and number of flights could be only a dozen a year. But its largest impact is not on launch but on space station utilization where cost of supply and personnel transport could be reduced due to the demand for more traffic.

This would drive the use of reusable spacecraft to lower costs: Dragon2, DreamChaser, ...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/15/2017 07:31 am
On a different tack about reusability effect on costs. In-space industrilization: made-In-Space believes it has come up with a significant money making in-space industrialization business case for the manufacture of ZBLAM in zero G. With low cost access to space making even the profitable business case with current space access costs the business could become even more significant. See this thread http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35889.40 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35889.40)

But the amounts and number of flights could be only a dozen a year.
Perhaps, but these are a dozen launches that would not take place otherwise. IOW New Business.

If we want to see $/lb to orbit go down this is the market that has to expand to a point where SX can see a revenue rise despite a price drop.

Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy

 But its largest impact is not on launch but on space station utilization where cost of supply and personnel transport could be reduced due to the demand for more traffic.
Won't that all be on NASA contracts, which are well above basic prices to LEO?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/15/2017 03:31 pm
On a different tack about reusability effect on costs. In-space industrilization: made-In-Space believes it has come up with a significant money making in-space industrialization business case for the manufacture of ZBLAM in zero G. With low cost access to space making even the profitable business case with current space access costs the business could become even more significant. See this thread http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35889.40 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35889.40)

But the amounts and number of flights could be only a dozen a year.
Perhaps, but these are a dozen launches that would not take place otherwise. IOW New Business.

If we want to see $/lb to orbit go down this is the market that has to expand to a point where SX can see a revenue rise despite a price drop.

Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy

 But its largest impact is not on launch but on space station utilization where cost of supply and personnel transport could be reduced due to the demand for more traffic.
Won't that all be on NASA contracts, which are well above basic prices to LEO?
Initially Yes.

Which says a lot about the the strength of the business case.

As their access to space costs drop so will their volume of manufacturing increase due to the lower cost of product having more terrestrial business case applications. This is not a linear expansion but a logarithmic one. such that costs drop in half volume increases by 4.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/15/2017 11:36 pm
Initially Yes.

Which says a lot about the the strength of the business case.
I think it says as much about the cost of putting a lb of mass in orbit.

If space access had freight costs anywhere like every other transport modes (even if it was the cost of basically sending a package 1/2 way round the world and back on a freighter) this would have been tried years ago, along with a slew of other potential applications that are unusual but still don't have the USP of a geosynchronous commsat.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy
As their access to space costs drop so will their volume of manufacturing increase due to the lower cost of product having more terrestrial business case applications. This is not a linear expansion but a logarithmic one. such that costs drop in half volume increases by 4.
I don't know it will go that well but if it makes a profit and they stay in business I hope it will be enough to encourage other companies into the business, although the most likely ones would be to compete with them, on the old Hollywood adage that "Everyone wants to be the second person to have the brilliant idea."  :(
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/17/2017 04:15 pm
Ok.

Lets say you have a fully reusable ITS that can get to LEO for $60M.

It can bring up 50mt of rods and take back to Earth 50mt of fiber rolls. The 50mt value is 1/4 the max of the ITS 200mt. The assumption is that landing weight on Earth is 1/4 the max payload. See the ITS thread if you want more discussion and info about possible payloads up and down. On the way up it could also transport expendable supplies and other items that stay in orbit reducing the cost of fiber material transport. For each kg 3km of fiber is created. The current price of silicon based optical fiber with casing (10Gbit multimode) is $1.64/m. If ZBLAM fiber finished into a cased ready to bury form for $5.00/m (100Gbit multimode) which is actually worth and can replace existing bundle of 10 fibers valued at $16/m. Now that $5/m ZBLAM *3000m/kg *50,000kg = $750M.

How much fiber do you think the world would want at that price. BTW a single load of 50mt is only 150,000km of fiber. The ZBLAM in $/bit costs would be 1/3 that of silicon fiber. Which one would new or replacement cables emplacement use?

The current fiber market is growing at a rate of 10+% per year. In 2016 the market size was $2B in cable sales. At 10% anual growth the Market in 2025 would be ~$5B. If ZBLAM captures 50% of the market by 2025 then they would need 2 to 4 ITS flights per year to LEO for the transport of 50mt each time of blanks up and 50mt of fiber down. The number of ITS flights is dependent on the pricing per m of the fiber. Prices could be as high as $15/m as still be cheaper than the bundle of 10 silicon fibers. At $15/m the value of the 50mt of fiber is $2.25B. That is still enough revenue to pay for a very expensive ITS flight at almost $1B per flight.

This is to show just how strong of a business case this is and what the potential size of this market is.

Now reusability is key in making additional business cases close but there may be others that simply waiting on capability since the current world down mass capability is only ~$12mt/yr. (4 Dragon flights) With 4 ITS flights/yr that down mass would increase to ~200mt/yr.
 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/17/2017 09:42 pm
Ok.

Lets say you have a fully reusable ITS that can get to LEO for $60M.

If ZBLAM fiber finished into a cased ready to bury form for $5.00/m (100Gbit multimode) which is actually worth and can replace existing bundle of 10 fibers valued at $16/m. Now that $5/m ZBLAM *3000m/kg *50,000kg = $750M.

I've long thought that "cheap launch" is not going to be enough to bring about the revolution in the use of space. At a minimum you need down mass, ideally on a regular schedule.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RDMM2081 on 05/17/2017 10:20 pm
It can bring up 50mt of rods and take back to Earth 50mt of fiber rolls. The 50mt value is 1/4 the max of the ITS 200mt. The assumption is that landing weight on Earth is 1/4 the max payload.

Absolutely fascinating idea, however I think you'll need to subtract some amount from the landed payload mass for the factory/equipment to process the material, or would the ITS capsule dock to another orbited "factory module" of some type?  Ideally the "factory" bit could launch once and stay in orbit indefinitely (needs some pretty honkin huge solar arrays too I'd assume?) to be used multiple times.  A wonderful investment opportunity! :)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/17/2017 11:02 pm
It can bring up 50mt of rods and take back to Earth 50mt of fiber rolls. The 50mt value is 1/4 the max of the ITS 200mt. The assumption is that landing weight on Earth is 1/4 the max payload.

Absolutely fascinating idea, however I think you'll need to subtract some amount from the landed payload mass for the factory/equipment to process the material, or would the ITS capsule dock to another orbited "factory module" of some type?  Ideally the "factory" bit could launch once and stay in orbit indefinitely (needs some pretty honkin huge solar arrays too I'd assume?) to be used multiple times.  A wonderful investment opportunity! :)
I was thinking to doc it to a factory that had 100-200mt of factory equipment. Say several BA2100s. Each ITS could take up 200mt but only bring back 50mt. At least in all the information that I have seen on the system capability design. If it was upgraded to be able to land/deorbit and reenter with full 200mt then the costs decrease by a factor 4. Makeing ZBLAM finished cables about the same price as that of regular silicon cable.

But the other item that reusability will probably make a big splash is in downmass. Currently it stands at just 12mt/yr. For a space based industry selling products to Earth it needs at the start it needs 10X times the current. There is not much expansion planned for downmass until ITS. Until then it could be doubled but probably not much more than 3X.  3X represents 12 current sized cargo flights that can return downmass ~ total 36mt/yr. 12 cargo flights and 6 CC flights /yr is a significant flight rate increase over the 4 and 2.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/17/2017 11:30 pm
I've long thought that "cheap launch" is not going to be enough to bring about the revolution in the use of space. At a minimum you need down mass, ideally on a regular schedule.

I definitely see why you think that and there is some picking of nits to debate where the line is drawn.  However, I've been noodling some ideas that I think fit existing Musk-related paradigms that I could flesh-out to get your revolution solely from up-mass.  It feels a little on the crazy-end of the speculation spectrum but I occasionally run some back-of-the-napkin calculations as a sanity check.  The search feature isn't easy to confirm whether everyone has already hashed all this out before.  But if anyone is interested, I could sketch out an up-mass approach to the "revolution".  Sorry for playing coy.  I'm an enthusiastic layman and think it makes sense but don't want to embarrass myself.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/18/2017 12:06 am
Interesting discussion. 
Someone should start a thread on the downmass challenge.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/18/2017 01:01 am
Interesting discussion. 
Someone should start a thread on the downmass challenge.
Started.
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42960.new#new (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42960.new#new)

So please take the downmass and its effects on in-space business and other in-space activities like scientific research that produces specimens that require Earth lab work to this new thread.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 05/18/2017 10:29 am
I was thinking to doc it to a factory that had 100-200mt of factory equipment. Say several BA2100s. Each ITS could take up 200mt but only bring back 50mt. At least in all the information that I have seen on the system capability design. If it was upgraded to be able to land/deorbit and reenter with full 200mt then the costs decrease by a factor 4. Makeing ZBLAM finished cables about the same price as that of regular silicon cable.



I did a google search and I can't find any info on zblam. What does it stand for? Any links? I am sure someplace upthread the answer lies...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 05/18/2017 11:29 am
I was thinking to doc it to a factory that had 100-200mt of factory equipment. Say several BA2100s. Each ITS could take up 200mt but only bring back 50mt. At least in all the information that I have seen on the system capability design. If it was upgraded to be able to land/deorbit and reenter with full 200mt then the costs decrease by a factor 4. Makeing ZBLAM finished cables about the same price as that of regular silicon cable.



I did a google search and I can't find any info on zblam. What does it stand for? Any links? I am sure someplace upthread the answer lies...

Search for `zblam fibre`...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rsdavis9 on 05/18/2017 12:03 pm
I was thinking to doc it to a factory that had 100-200mt of factory equipment. Say several BA2100s. Each ITS could take up 200mt but only bring back 50mt. At least in all the information that I have seen on the system capability design. If it was upgraded to be able to land/deorbit and reenter with full 200mt then the costs decrease by a factor 4. Makeing ZBLAM finished cables about the same price as that of regular silicon cable.



I did a google search and I can't find any info on zblam. What does it stand for? Any links? I am sure someplace upthread the answer lies...

Search for `zblam fibre`...

it looks like it is zblan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBLAN

Zr Ba La Al Na Floride

The one line says that air convection is the confounding problem.
How about vacuum on earth to reduce the problem.

I think most "discoveries" of zero g benefits are once it has been researched and engineered(possibly in orbit) it is easier to manufacture  on earth.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/18/2017 02:04 pm
Here's an official Russian view of reusability's effect on costs...

Quote
Will the medium launch vehicle proposed by RSC Energia within the framework of the R&D project Phoenix be expendable or have some reusable elements (what exactly will be reusable)? Is it going to have, like the Zenit launch vehicle, an automatic prelaunch processing system unique to Soviet/Russian launch vehicles? What are the facilities where this rocket is going to be assembled? What will be the differences between the versions of this rocket for different launch sites - Vostochny, Baiterek and Sea Launch?

The launch vehicle will be expendable, at least in the initial phase. The architecture of the suite of automated systems for controlling the prelaunch processing and launch will be similar to what was used for Zenit. The launch vehicle is going to be assembled at Progress plant in Samara. The launch vehicles are to be the same for all launch sites.

The reusability of rocket stages needs to be additionally justified. To assure precise landing and subsequent re-use of the first stage, you need to install special controls, including rocket thrusters, onboard computers, a navigation system, and expend additional propellant. As a result, the savings here are minimal, or none at all. We believe that what we need to strive for is reducing impact areas for jettisonable elements by converging them towards a single point. The expenditures here are low, and the gain is obvious. It’s unrealistic to think of re-using the second stage, which returns to Earth with a velocity that is close to the orbital velocity. Without a proper thermal shield capable of withstanding the heat of up to 3000 degrees Centigrade, the only pieces that will reach the ground will be thick metal frames.

http://www.energia.ru/en/news/news-2017/news_05-02_1.html
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/18/2017 02:17 pm
Here's an official Russian view of reusability's effect on costs...

Quote
Will the medium launch vehicle proposed by RSC Energia within the framework of the R&D project Phoenix be expendable or have some reusable elements (what exactly will be reusable)? Is it going to have, like the Zenit launch vehicle, an automatic prelaunch processing system unique to Soviet/Russian launch vehicles? What are the facilities where this rocket is going to be assembled? What will be the differences between the versions of this rocket for different launch sites - Vostochny, Baiterek and Sea Launch?

The launch vehicle will be expendable, at least in the initial phase. The architecture of the suite of automated systems for controlling the prelaunch processing and launch will be similar to what was used for Zenit. The launch vehicle is going to be assembled at Progress plant in Samara. The launch vehicles are to be the same for all launch sites.

The reusability of rocket stages needs to be additionally justified. To assure precise landing and subsequent re-use of the first stage, you need to install special controls, including rocket thrusters, onboard computers, a navigation system, and expend additional propellant. As a result, the savings here are minimal, or none at all. We believe that what we need to strive for is reducing impact areas for jettisonable elements by converging them towards a single point. The expenditures here are low, and the gain is obvious. It’s unrealistic to think of re-using the second stage, which returns to Earth with a velocity that is close to the orbital velocity. Without a proper thermal shield capable of withstanding the heat of up to 3000 degrees Centigrade, the only pieces that will reach the ground will be thick metal frames.

http://www.energia.ru/en/news/news-2017/news_05-02_1.html

Heads still firmly planted in the sand.

And they already have reuseable high performance kerolox engines and can do downrange landings on solid ground.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/18/2017 02:29 pm
They also have kleptocratic political system, where money directed to state projects tend to "evaporate" with no trace. And Putin knows it - for one, he is one of the people who built it that way.
He knows that directing Roscosmos to make a reusable system will result in a long program fraught with cost overruns, underperformance, very likely a number of embarrassing failures, and possibly in final system which will still be not competitive.
In these conditions, "ignoring the problem" might be in fact an optimal course (least bad).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/18/2017 09:42 pm
The difference in a reusability solution/program lowering cost is the efficient and qualified managers managing the program. SpaceX had/has Musk as the technical driver for the decisions to the goal post of lower operational costs with a reusable system. It has some additional development costs but in the end much more in savings both in costs but also in turnaround time between launches, the true measure of the forcefulness of a reusability design.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: WmThomas on 05/18/2017 10:50 pm
We need to recognize that SpaceX stumbled on to its current re-usability system. That system is possible because Merlin-1 is a small engine by EELV-class rocket standards. So SpaceX had to use nine of them on the Falcon-9 first stage.  After planning to recover the first stage with parachutes, and failing, SpaceX shifted plans and adapted Falcon-9's engine layout (and much else) to allow retro-rocket landings using a central M1D. Mind you, even those landings are hover-slams.

Is there any other EELV-class rocket in the world that can be adapted this way? Atlas V can't. Arianne-5 can't. Delta-IV can't. None of the Russian rockets can. None of the Chinese can. No one else was so "idiotic" to build a big launcher with lots of weak engines.

So we can't assume it is easy to catch up with SpaceX. Or that ULA is dumb for pursuing a different re-use strategy. They don't have any easy path to reuse. 

For any other company, reuse requires a clean-sheet rocket and probably a new engine. Blue Origin will get reuse by making their New Glenn super-huge, while using the big BE-4. Other companies would need a complete re-work, too.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/19/2017 12:30 am
BO engineers are no fool. They saw that the SpaceX many engines paradigm worked using center to hover slam and came up with their own version of 7 BE-4's which should be able to deep throttle making it possible to do a similar landing profile with 7 large engines vs 9 on an even larger tank/rocket. Someone else may come up with something else but the die may be cast for some time in the 1st stage reusability designs for the next few decades.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/19/2017 01:43 am
BO engineers are no fool. They saw that the SpaceX many engines paradigm worked using center to hover slam and came up with their own version of 7 BE-4's which should be able to deep throttle making it possible to do a similar landing profile with 7 large engines vs 9 on an even larger tank/rocket. Someone else may come up with something else but the die may be cast for some time in the 1st stage reusability designs for the next few decades.
They had already been doing clustered engine VTVL tests by the time Grasshopper was announced. Blue Origin had basically the right idea about VTVL /before/ SpaceX did, it's just that Blue Origin messed around for a long time while SpaceX was actually building a business and doing useful stuff.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: WmThomas on 05/19/2017 02:23 am
They had already been doing clustered engine VTVL tests by the time Grasshopper was announced. Blue Origin had basically the right idea about VTVL /before/ SpaceX did, it's just that Blue Origin messed around for a long time while SpaceX was actually building a business and doing useful stuff.

Correct on all points.

Does anyone know if Blue's success with VTVL was one reason SpaceX decided to pursue it?

Edit/Lar: fix quotes. Please use the reply function, don't try to make quotes by hand...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/19/2017 02:36 am
Quote from: robotbeat
They had already been doing clustered engine VTVL tests by the time Grasshopper was announced. Blue Origin had basically the right idea about VTVL /before/ SpaceX did, it's just that Blue Origin messed around for a long time while SpaceX was actually building a business and doing useful stuff.

Correct on all points.

Does anyone know if Blue's success with VTVL was one reason SpaceX decided to pursue it?
Not really. It was Masten's success that did it. Guys "in a garage" doing it convinced Elon that SpaceX could do it.

But it could've contributed, I suppose.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 05/19/2017 10:16 am
Quote from: robotbeat
They had already been doing clustered engine VTVL tests by the time Grasshopper was announced. Blue Origin had basically the right idea about VTVL /before/ SpaceX did, it's just that Blue Origin messed around for a long time while SpaceX was actually building a business and doing useful stuff.

Correct on all points.

Does anyone know if Blue's success with VTVL was one reason SpaceX decided to pursue it?
Not really. It was Masten's success that did it. Guys "in a garage" doing it convinced Elon that SpaceX could do it.

But it could've contributed, I suppose.

Don't forget Armadillo Areospace, didn't their first flight predate Mastens?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/19/2017 01:45 pm
We need to recognize that SpaceX stumbled on to its current re-usability system. That system is possible because Merlin-1 is a small engine by EELV-class rocket standards. So SpaceX had to use nine of them on the Falcon-9 first stage.  After planning to recover the first stage with parachutes, and failing, SpaceX shifted plans and adapted Falcon-9's engine layout (and much else) to allow retro-rocket landings using a central M1D. Mind you, even those landings are hover-slams.

Is there any other EELV-class rocket in the world that can be adapted this way? Atlas V can't. Arianne-5 can't. Delta-IV can't. None of the Russian rockets can. None of the Chinese can. No one else was so "idiotic" to build a big launcher with lots of weak engines.

So we can't assume it is easy to catch up with SpaceX. Or that ULA is dumb for pursuing a different re-use strategy. They don't have any easy path to reuse. 

For any other company, reuse requires a clean-sheet rocket and probably a new engine. Blue Origin will get reuse by making their New Glenn super-huge, while using the big BE-4. Other companies would need a complete re-work, too.

No need for many engines or new main engines if using dedicated landing engines, similar to Soyuz vernier engines for thrust vectoring.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/19/2017 03:36 pm
The Atlas D,E,F,G, and H all used pressure fed vernier engines for steering. They put out a few thousand pounds total per rocket. The Atlas stage without booster engines and only sustainer engine weighed just  5,174 lb (2,347 kg) dry. Use of vernier engines was the engineering method for controlling the rocket in the late 1950's early 1960's. Later in early 1960's stronger and faster systems for steering a main engine was developed and became the standard engineering method. These old designs though continued to fly into the 1990's for the US and are still flying for Russia.

The Atlas vernier engines produced 2,000lbs thrust each. And had the option for its own small shared turbo pump for independent operation after SECO (sustainer engine shutdown).

A modified Atlas design with 4 verniers landing legs and some areosurface controls could have in the 1960's done a VTVL. BTW it was radio controlled steering and used an onboard analog computer for rate stabilization. So it could have been done then. But the engines would not have been reusable only the tank. The tank was the cheapest part of the vehicle.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/19/2017 08:33 pm
Some RD-170 derivatives are designed to be reusable. The landing engines could be in strap-on booster pods with their own fuel and LOX that "pull their own weight", so to speak, by lighting at liftoff and helping boost downrange. That way there is no performance reduction for reuse, just the added cost of the boosters. The landing legs could also be integrated to the strap-on boosters.

Angara A3 would need 6 landing boosters to recover the 3 cores. Angara A5 would need 8 to recover the 4 main boosters, and could expend the central core for better performance.

Angara is a bit undersized for recovery this way, but a Zenit-like booster with a RD-171 could function in the same fashion.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: cppetrie on 05/20/2017 11:46 pm
Cross-posting:

These seem to say there is a contract for SpaceX to launch Telkom 4 around June 2018 (although I can never be completely sure with Google Translate).

https://inet.detik.com/telecommunication/d-3424084/spacex-masih-dipercaya-luncurkan-satelit-telkom-4 (https://inet.detik.com/telecommunication/d-3424084/spacex-masih-dipercaya-luncurkan-satelit-telkom-4)
http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170417152745-213-208098/telkom-bakal-lebih-hemat-berkat-roket-spacex/ (http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170417152745-213-208098/telkom-bakal-lebih-hemat-berkat-roket-spacex/)
http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170130174006-213-190081/satelit-telkom-berikutnya-bakal-gandeng-spacex/ (http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170130174006-213-190081/satelit-telkom-berikutnya-bakal-gandeng-spacex/)
https://seasia.co/2017/05/01/indonesia-to-use-spacex-to-launch-next-satellite
http://www.satellitetoday.com/telecom/2015/12/30/ssl-to-provide-next-satellite-for-telkom-indonesia/
Nice find! So not only is this a new launch contract, but it will also be on a flight-proven booster.
Quote
President Director of Telkom, Alex J. Sinaga mentioned to CNN, “Investment in Telkom-4 [satellite] will be cheaper as we use a reusable orbital rocket from SpaceX, so it will be cheaper as much as 40 percent.”
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tvg98 on 05/21/2017 12:02 am
Cross-posting:

These seem to say there is a contract for SpaceX to launch Telkom 4 around June 2018 (although I can never be completely sure with Google Translate).

https://inet.detik.com/telecommunication/d-3424084/spacex-masih-dipercaya-luncurkan-satelit-telkom-4 (https://inet.detik.com/telecommunication/d-3424084/spacex-masih-dipercaya-luncurkan-satelit-telkom-4)
http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170417152745-213-208098/telkom-bakal-lebih-hemat-berkat-roket-spacex/ (http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170417152745-213-208098/telkom-bakal-lebih-hemat-berkat-roket-spacex/)
http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170130174006-213-190081/satelit-telkom-berikutnya-bakal-gandeng-spacex/ (http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170130174006-213-190081/satelit-telkom-berikutnya-bakal-gandeng-spacex/)
https://seasia.co/2017/05/01/indonesia-to-use-spacex-to-launch-next-satellite
http://www.satellitetoday.com/telecom/2015/12/30/ssl-to-provide-next-satellite-for-telkom-indonesia/
Nice find! So not only is this a new launch contract, but it will also be on a flight-proven booster.
Quote
President Director of Telkom, Alex J. Sinaga mentioned to CNN, “Investment in Telkom-4 [satellite] will be cheaper as we use a reusable orbital rocket from SpaceX, so it will be cheaper as much as 40 percent.”

So, when they say "total investment", does that include the cost of launching the satellite as well? Assuming that it does , and that they pay around $40M for the flight, that would mean that the cost of insurance would be around 9% of the cost of the payload, assuming that the ~116M left (126-10) is the cost of the satellite. Does that not seem a bit high?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/21/2017 01:09 am
Any word on which will be the 3rd reuse flight ?
Title: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: cppetrie on 05/21/2017 01:16 am
2nd (next) is known to be BulgariaSat. For the third, whichever comes first of either FH demo or the SES launch after the next one would be my guess. The combo SES/Echostar bird is said to be confirmed as flying on a new bird since it isn't a solo SES launch.

Edit: revised wording for clarity
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Rebel44 on 05/21/2017 12:09 pm
Cross-posting:

These seem to say there is a contract for SpaceX to launch Telkom 4 around June 2018 (although I can never be completely sure with Google Translate).

https://inet.detik.com/telecommunication/d-3424084/spacex-masih-dipercaya-luncurkan-satelit-telkom-4 (https://inet.detik.com/telecommunication/d-3424084/spacex-masih-dipercaya-luncurkan-satelit-telkom-4)
http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170417152745-213-208098/telkom-bakal-lebih-hemat-berkat-roket-spacex/ (http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170417152745-213-208098/telkom-bakal-lebih-hemat-berkat-roket-spacex/)
http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170130174006-213-190081/satelit-telkom-berikutnya-bakal-gandeng-spacex/ (http://www.cnnindonesia.com/teknologi/20170130174006-213-190081/satelit-telkom-berikutnya-bakal-gandeng-spacex/)
https://seasia.co/2017/05/01/indonesia-to-use-spacex-to-launch-next-satellite
http://www.satellitetoday.com/telecom/2015/12/30/ssl-to-provide-next-satellite-for-telkom-indonesia/
Nice find! So not only is this a new launch contract, but it will also be on a flight-proven booster.
Quote
President Director of Telkom, Alex J. Sinaga mentioned to CNN, “Investment in Telkom-4 [satellite] will be cheaper as we use a reusable orbital rocket from SpaceX, so it will be cheaper as much as 40 percent.”

So, when they say "total investment", does that include the cost of launching the satellite as well? Assuming that it does , and that they pay around $40M for the flight, that would mean that the cost of insurance would be around 9% of the cost of the payload, assuming that the ~116M left (126-10) is the cost of the satellite. Does that not seem a bit high?

Cost of insurance has quite a few variables - like if you want to include expected revenue to be covered in case of failure and if so for how long.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/21/2017 01:41 pm
The Atlas D,E,F,G, and H all used pressure fed vernier engines for steering. They put out a few thousand pounds total per rocket. The Atlas stage without booster engines and only sustainer engine weighed just  5,174 lb (2,347 kg) dry. Use of vernier engines was the engineering method for controlling the rocket in the late 1950's early 1960's. Later in early 1960's stronger and faster systems for steering a main engine was developed and became the standard engineering method. These old designs though continued to fly into the 1990's for the US and are still flying for Russia.

The Atlas vernier engines produced 2,000lbs thrust each. And had the option for its own small shared turbo pump for independent operation after SECO (sustainer engine shutdown).

A modified Atlas design with 4 verniers landing legs and some areosurface controls could have in the 1960's done a VTVL. BTW it was radio controlled steering and used an onboard analog computer for rate stabilization. So it could have been done then. But the engines would not have been reusable only the tank. The tank was the cheapest part of the vehicle.
That's an interesting piece of rocket history. I think the joker in the pack though would have been that AFAIK until SX no one seemed to realize you needed aerosurfaces on the top end to give adequate control. I'm not sure a human operator would have had good enough reaction times to handle the task. OTOH I suspect had it been attempted the engineers of the time would have gone with a hybrid solution of on board analog control loops for the fast response phenomena and left the operator (pilot?) for the gross guidance changes.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: watermod on 05/21/2017 04:02 pm
Any whispering about when SpaceX will be flying a booster for the 3rd or more time?
(I know they have a few waiting for 2nd flight but I got to wondering about multiple reuse time frame.)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ictogan on 05/21/2017 04:45 pm
Any whispering about when SpaceX will be flying a booster for the 3rd or more time?
(I know they have a few waiting for 2nd flight but I got to wondering about multiple reuse time frame.)

Not as far as I've seen. Currently they would likely still need several months for refurbishing and checking a core, so the earliest we could see a third flight would probably be Q4 2017 if SpaceX decide to fly the Iridium-1/BulgariaSat-1 booster for a third time.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/21/2017 05:14 pm
The Atlas D,E,F,G, and H all used pressure fed vernier engines for steering. They put out a few thousand pounds total per rocket. The Atlas stage without booster engines and only sustainer engine weighed just  5,174 lb (2,347 kg) dry. Use of vernier engines was the engineering method for controlling the rocket in the late 1950's early 1960's. Later in early 1960's stronger and faster systems for steering a main engine was developed and became the standard engineering method. These old designs though continued to fly into the 1990's for the US and are still flying for Russia.

The Atlas vernier engines produced 2,000lbs thrust each. And had the option for its own small shared turbo pump for independent operation after SECO (sustainer engine shutdown).

A modified Atlas design with 4 verniers landing legs and some areosurface controls could have in the 1960's done a VTVL. BTW it was radio controlled steering and used an onboard analog computer for rate stabilization. So it could have been done then. But the engines would not have been reusable only the tank. The tank was the cheapest part of the vehicle.
That's an interesting piece of rocket history. I think the joker in the pack though would have been that AFAIK until SX no one seemed to realize you needed aerosurfaces on the top end to give adequate control. I'm not sure a human operator would have had good enough reaction times to handle the task. OTOH I suspect had it been attempted the engineers of the time would have gone with a hybrid solution of on board analog control loops for the fast response phenomena and left the operator (pilot?) for the gross guidance changes.
No Human operator. It was a big computer sitting on the ground. Something that was way to heavy for a rocket to lift but was fast enough to do high accuracy navigation steering and engine cutoff timing. It could have been sufficient for a computer controlled landing on a landing pad. This accuracy was why it was still in use up to the 1990's.

The ICBM version was designed such that the X band tracker up-link would capture the Atlas in-flight during the sustainer phase and issue SECO that would then result in the warhead hitting the specified target. The Atlas's were launched at ~1min intervals to be able to give the shared guidance station the ability to acquire and guide each of several missiles.

The main reason that Atlas was not made into a reusable LV was that it was a throw away weapon system. That after they were launch there was no reason to recover and use then again. Possibly even the probable no facilities left standing either.

One of the first engines the F-1 was so good that it could have been reused. Also the RL-10 was so good as well that it could have done a dozen restarts in-space if they could figure out how to get a dozen restart cartridges on the engine. The RL-10 actually has 4 cartridge start ports for use and has been used for 4 in-space starts. So there were engines in the mid to late 1960's that could have been used to create fully reusable LV's. In fact they were almost used on shuttle. But because development funding was limited the cost of operations was sacrificed for lower development costs.

Added:
Now back from history to the effect of reusability on costs. Reusability has been the goal since the 1960's but has been only partially successful if even that until now. SpaceX tells us that their solution will lower their costs and has offered customers a lower price for use of used boosters. But only once their use of used booster exceeds that of new ones can it be said that their reusability solution has become successful.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/21/2017 06:15 pm
Any whispering about when SpaceX will be flying a booster for the 3rd or more time?
(I know they have a few waiting for 2nd flight but I got to wondering about multiple reuse time frame.)

Not as far as I've seen. Currently they would likely still need several months for refurbishing and checking a core, so the earliest we could see a third flight would probably be Q4 2017 if SpaceX decide to fly the Iridium-1/BulgariaSat-1 booster for a third time.
I expect the first half a dozen reflights will be boosters flown once on a LEO mission. No third flights. Perhaps one reflight of a GTO launch that had the most margins and could do a little longer re-entry burn.
By the time SpaceX comes around to maybe start doing third and fourth flights, Block V is already available.
Lots of landed boosters will be remanufactured into FH side boosters, which is akin to an super duper careful refurb.
The current stage is getting customer's confidence on reflight. Those signing up will be picky of what they'll be riding on.

Think about this for a second... CRS-11/Iridium-2 booster. That's what customers will ask for.
As long as 75+% of launches are new boosters there's a massive surplus of first flow boosters. Customers get their pick. Even with 50/50%, doesn't change much.

Eventually with most customers accepting reflights, then boosters from first GTO flights will launch again.

Just saying... I'd rather let time go by and prove/disprove me.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/21/2017 06:34 pm
Any whispering about when SpaceX will be flying a booster for the 3rd or more time?
(I know they have a few waiting for 2nd flight but I got to wondering about multiple reuse time frame.)

Not as far as I've seen. Currently they would likely still need several months for refurbishing and checking a core, so the earliest we could see a third flight would probably be Q4 2017 if SpaceX decide to fly the Iridium-1/BulgariaSat-1 booster for a third time.

Dubious that they will " likely still need several months" as they have said they are already reducing cycle times.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ictogan on 05/21/2017 06:39 pm
Any whispering about when SpaceX will be flying a booster for the 3rd or more time?
(I know they have a few waiting for 2nd flight but I got to wondering about multiple reuse time frame.)

Not as far as I've seen. Currently they would likely still need several months for refurbishing and checking a core, so the earliest we could see a third flight would probably be Q4 2017 if SpaceX decide to fly the Iridium-1/BulgariaSat-1 booster for a third time.

Dubious that they will " likely still need several months" as they have said they are already reducing cycle times.
Well, two out of two reused boosters have taken several months to refurbish so far. And I'd imagine that SpaceX is going to reduce those times gradually, not suddenly.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/21/2017 07:06 pm
Any whispering about when SpaceX will be flying a booster for the 3rd or more time?
(I know they have a few waiting for 2nd flight but I got to wondering about multiple reuse time frame.)

Not as far as I've seen. Currently they would likely still need several months for refurbishing and checking a core, so the earliest we could see a third flight would probably be Q4 2017 if SpaceX decide to fly the Iridium-1/BulgariaSat-1 booster for a third time.

Dubious that they will " likely still need several months" as they have said they are already reducing cycle times.

This is someting I've been pondering on. Specifically, the difficult decision of when to stop reusing Block 3 and 4 boosters because Block 5 is available. On the one hand, just throwing away a perfectly reusable booster seems a waste of tens of millions of dollars. On the other hand, they cost more and take longer to refurbish than the Block 5 with its optimized reusability features.

So come next year, they will have a dozen or so Block 5's in operation, but also have maybe a dozen or more Block 3 and 4 landed cores still sitting in storage, some of which have been reflown once, and some which haven't been reflown at all.

So how to decide when to stop using pre-Block 5 cores that are still available?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/21/2017 07:27 pm
So how to decide when to stop using pre-Block 5 cores that are still available?

Block 5 is one day refurbishment, at least once they get into the rythm. Pre-block 5 maybe 2 weeks. I think they will stop using them immediately.

If there are major components unchanged, like the tanks and thrust structure they still can strip them down and make them new block 5. It seems the COPV are new already so they can reuse those, too.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/21/2017 07:31 pm
So how to decide when to stop using pre-Block 5 cores that are still available?

Block 5 is one day refurbishment, at least once they get into the rythm. Pre-block 5 maybe 2 weeks. I think they will stop using them immediately.

If there are major components unchanged, like the tanks and thrust structure they still can strip them down and make them new block 5. It seems the COPV are new already so they can reuse those, too.

OK. So basically, most of the current cores won't be reflown. Because if they don't refly before the end of this year, they will be replaced by Block 5's. So they become spare parts after December?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 05/21/2017 07:47 pm
Well, two out of two reused boosters have taken several months to refurbish so far. And I'd imagine that SpaceX is going to reduce those times gradually, not suddenly.

Don't confuse time to re-fly with time to refurbish. The booster can't re-fly until there's a customer willing to re-use. It doesn't mean it's spent all the waiting time bring refurbished. Gwynne Shotwell was pretty clear that SpaceX had already significantly reduced refurbishment time from first re-used booster.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Mongo62 on 05/21/2017 07:53 pm
So how to decide when to stop using pre-Block 5 cores that are still available?

Block 5 is one day refurbishment, at least once they get into the rythm. Pre-block 5 maybe 2 weeks. I think they will stop using them immediately.

If there are major components unchanged, like the tanks and thrust structure they still can strip them down and make them new block 5. It seems the COPV are new already so they can reuse those, too.

Block 3/4 boosters sound like candidates for expendable launches. The marginal cost of a couple of weeks refurbishment of a single core would very low, even if they have been written off for regular relaunches. Of course block 5 FH refurbishment costs would presumably be even lower, but using an expendable block 3/4 core would save one flight's portion of lifetime on three FH cores.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/21/2017 08:13 pm
Well, two out of two reused boosters have taken several months to refurbish so far. And I'd imagine that SpaceX is going to reduce those times gradually, not suddenly.

Don't confuse time to re-fly with time to refurbish. The booster can't re-fly until there's a customer willing to re-use.

At some point, SpaceX might simply stop giving customers a choice.

The contract is to deliver payload to a specified orbit. Such factors as paint color on the rocket, composition of the tank wall alloy, prop load mass, etc, is up to SpaceX and not something customer particularly cares about. Whether this booster is new or reused (and how many times reused) may become similar.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/21/2017 08:17 pm
Block 3/4 boosters sound like candidates for expendable launches. The marginal cost of a couple of weeks refurbishment of a single core would very low, even if they have been written off for regular relaunches. Of course block 5 FH refurbishment costs would presumably be even lower, but using an expendable block 3/4 core would save one flight's portion of lifetime on three FH cores.

I see your argument about expendable flights. But those will not be many.

Assume only 10 block 5 cores built before reuse becomes standard. Assume only 10 reflights per core. Assume there will still be a few customers like NASA and DoD who want new cores for a while. They will soon have 20 cores worth 200 flights. That is enough to last them well into beginning to launch the constellation in 2019.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 05/21/2017 08:26 pm
Block 3/4 boosters sound like candidates for expendable launches. The marginal cost of a couple of weeks refurbishment of a single core would very low, even if they have been written off for regular relaunches. Of course block 5 FH refurbishment costs would presumably be even lower, but using an expendable block 3/4 core would save one flight's portion of lifetime on three FH cores.

I see your argument about expendable flights. But those will not be many.

Assume only 10 block 5 cores built before reuse becomes standard. Assume only 10 reflights per core. Assume there will still be a few customers like NASA and DoD who want new cores for a while. They will soon have 20 cores worth 200 flights. That is enough to last them well into beginning to launch the constellation in 2019.

There is always the possibility that the 100 flight target proves optimistic. Look, even 10 reflights mean a revolution in the cost of access to space, so that would not be a disaster. But I can see a scenario where cores get reflown 10 times, or maybe 20 o 30 times, rather than 100 times.

That still is a huge achievement. But would require the manufacture of more cores than just 10.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 05/21/2017 08:49 pm
I was talking about 10 reflights only per core. The most conservative of all guesses. Very soon 10 cores with 10 flights each makes 100 available flights.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 05/21/2017 09:25 pm
There is always the possibility that the 100 flight target proves optimistic. Look, even 10 reflights mean a revolution in the cost of access to space, so that would not be a disaster. But I can see a scenario where cores get reflown 10 times, or maybe 20 o 30 times, rather than 100 times.

After you learn which part of the booster wears off faster than others after 10 flights, you redesign and strengthen it (or have a planned R&R for it). Thus, you gradually make boosters have more reuses.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/21/2017 10:09 pm
This is someting I've been pondering on. Specifically, the difficult decision of when to stop reusing Block 3 and 4 boosters because Block 5 is available. On the one hand, just throwing away a perfectly reusable booster seems a waste of tens of millions of dollars. On the other hand, they cost more and take longer to refurbish than the Block 5 with its optimized reusability features.

So come next year, they will have a dozen or so Block 5's in operation, but also have maybe a dozen or more Block 3 and 4 landed cores still sitting in storage, some of which have been reflown once, and some which haven't been reflown at all.

So how to decide when to stop using pre-Block 5 cores that are still available?
Remanufacture those into FH side boosters. Its been done already. At the factory they should be able to fully upgrade to the latest specs being produced.
But several of those will instead be used for max performance Inmarsat like expendable launches.
Want a new booster, unless you pay a lot more, its limited to ASDS recovery performance.
A used booster is ok, you can give up your reused discount for an expendable ride with max performance.
Several dozen new F9 boosters will still be made. The ones in the barn right now are just for immediate needs.
In the short term, SpaceX priority is to sign as many reuse customers as possible, even if the reflight is in itself expendable.

The move from M1C to M1D wasn't just about performance. SpaceX managed to get more performance out of that upgrade, while making the engine less expensive.
SpaceX ended up with a beast of a rocket with quite low cost.
Reuse just once or twice is already a economic great deal for a F9 Block II/III/IV. Because they are so cheap to make to begin with.
The big deal about reuse is to free up limited Hawthorne production capability and the ability of McGregor to test new stages. Refurb booster stages apparently are only going to be static fired. That is already expected to take place with the upcoming BulgariaSat launch.
Before a new F9 booster is test fired as a complete unit, each engine must be tested individually. A F9/FH US only needs a single M1Dvac to be tested. Are M1Dvac tested outside their stages ?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 05/21/2017 10:27 pm
No Human operator. It was a big computer sitting on the ground. Something that was way to heavy for a rocket to lift but was fast enough to do high accuracy navigation steering and engine cutoff timing. It could have been sufficient for a computer controlled landing on a landing pad. This accuracy was why it was still in use up to the 1990's.
That's odd. I thought the only ICBM system that used a guidance computer based on the ground was the Titan 1,after which digital IC's meant you could build them small enough to put on board.

Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy
The ICBM version was designed such that the X band tracker up-link would capture the Atlas in-flight during the sustainer phase and issue SECO that would then result in the warhead hitting the specified target. The Atlas's were launched at ~1min intervals to be able to give the shared guidance station the ability to acquire and guide each of several missiles.

The main reason that Atlas was not made into a reusable LV was that it was a throw away weapon system. That after they were launch there was no reason to recover and use then again. Possibly even the probable no facilities left standing either.

One of the first engines the F-1 was so good that it could have been reused. Also the RL-10 was so good as well that it could have done a dozen restarts in-space if they could figure out how to get a dozen restart cartridges on the engine. The RL-10 actually has 4 cartridge start ports for use and has been used for 4 in-space starts. So there were engines in the mid to late 1960's that could have been used to create fully reusable LV's. In fact they were almost used on shuttle. But because development funding was limited the cost of operations was sacrificed for lower development costs.

Added:
Now back from history to the effect of reusability on costs. Reusability has been the goal since the 1960's but has been only partially successful if even that until now. SpaceX tells us that their solution will lower their costs and has offered customers a lower price for use of used boosters. But only once their use of used booster exceeds that of new ones can it be said that their reusability solution has become successful.
Odd I though the RL10 had gone to some kind of augmented spark ignitor, but that's more recently.  IIRC the J2-S went to a cartridge start system from the (complex) tank head start tanks. I didn't think it was ever deployed. IIRC they had gone further and worked out how to spin up the turbines without starter cartridges, leading to unlimited starts.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: WmThomas on 05/21/2017 11:43 pm
The Atlas D,E,F,G, and H all used pressure fed vernier engines for steering. ,,,

The Atlas vernier engines produced 2,000lbs thrust each. And had the option for its own small shared turbo pump for independent operation after SECO (sustainer engine shutdown).

A modified Atlas design with 4 verniers landing legs and some areosurface controls could have in the 1960's done a VTVL. ...

Thanks for the information. I suppose the other companies could develop some kind of strap-on landing rockets. That's a good idea.

But would the mass penalty be too great? The strap-ons could have worse ISP than Merlin1-D and they would add weight all on their own, meaning their mass penalty would be greater than  SpaceX's for the same recovery profile.

Also, using weak engines could allow hover, but wouldn't they waste more fuel on descent than the powerful Merlin1-D hoverslam?

I'm just wondering why we haven't seen any proposals of this sort from the rocket companies.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/22/2017 02:28 am
There seems to be a certain amount of "reusability hasn't been proven to work until Thing X happens" with a shift over time of what X is. While that's perhaps interesting to some folks, I'm not sure it's on topic here... not completely. If you can't tie back to costs, it's not.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/23/2017 03:14 pm
The following post on the Bulgariasat Update thread implies great reduction in cost of refurbishment.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42913.msg1681755#msg1681755 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42913.msg1681755#msg1681755)

This is that between these two that the refurbishment costs reduced by ~factor of 4. If the SES-10 refurbishment cost 50% that of a new booster, the Bulgariasat-1 cost ~12% that of a new booster. Even if a new booster cost $30M (this is actually the highest estimate for what a new booster cost to manufacture) then the refurbishment cost is <$4M. If the cost of a new booster is $20M (this is the low end for the estimated cost to manufacture) then the refurbishment cost would be <$3M. This puts the savings of at least $17M up to as much as $26M for this launch.

Even if the reduction factor is only ~3 then the savings become from $16M to $25M. Only a variation of $1M from the higher reduction factor.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tvg98 on 05/23/2017 03:40 pm
The following post on the Bulgariasat Update thread implies great reduction in cost of refurbishment.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42913.msg1681755#msg1681755 (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42913.msg1681755#msg1681755)

This is that between these two that the refurbishment costs reduced by ~factor of 4. If the SES-10 refurbishment cost 50% that of a new booster, the Bulgariasat-1 cost ~12% that of a new booster. Even if a new booster cost $30M (this is actually the highest estimate for what a new booster cost to manufacture) then the refurbishment cost is <$4M. If the cost of a new booster is $20M (this is the low end for the estimated cost to manufacture) then the refurbishment cost would be <$3M. This puts the savings of at least $17M up to as much as $26M for this launch.

Even if the reduction factor is only ~3 then the savings become from $16M to $25M. Only a variation of $1M from the higher reduction factor.

I thought that SES-10 was supposed to fly in October before the Amos mishap? That would make it around five months from landing and relaunch, or 4 months to refurbish the core (according to Gwynne Shotwel). Since this launch would be roughly five months from first flight, would it be reasonable to assume that they're not yet at the point of rapid reusability, and that there hasn't been such a change in cost savings compared to the last reused core? Don't get me wrong, they've saved a lot of money already, but I don't think they're quite there yet.   
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/23/2017 03:48 pm
Don't confuse elapsed time with effort required.... that 4 months go by between flight and reflight doesn't imply that there was 4 months of continuous effort. (much less if it was one person or a standing army of 1000... )

When we see SpaceX say "we can't reuse on this flight, we don't have a booster ready" then we'd know that they don't have effort down low yet....
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tvg98 on 05/23/2017 04:02 pm
Don't confuse elapsed time with effort required.... that 4 months go by between flight and reflight doesn't imply that there was 4 months of continuous effort. (much less if it was one person or a standing army of 1000... )

When we see SpaceX say "we can't reuse on this flight, we don't have a booster ready" then we'd know that they don't have effort down low yet....

I guess I didn't think of it that way. Although, I'm assuming that similarly with airplanes, they technically "lose" (not really) money by having the core on a hangar and not helping to deliver a payload into orbit, which is what I was thinking about. So at this point, they could have greatly reduced how much it costs to refurbish a core because it takes less effort do so presumably, and now they're going to aim to maximise the revenue that they get from each core. This will done by reducing the turn around time by making refurbishment quick and cheap (or eliminating it altogether), and by ensuring the core has high durability.

Cue in block V...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/23/2017 04:11 pm
Don't confuse elapsed time with effort required.... that 4 months go by between flight and reflight doesn't imply that there was 4 months of continuous effort. (much less if it was one person or a standing army of 1000... )

When we see SpaceX say "we can't reuse on this flight, we don't have a booster ready" then we'd know that they don't have effort down low yet....

I guess I didn't think of it that way. Although, I'm assuming that similarly with airplanes, they technically "lose" (not really) money by having the core on a hangar and not helping to deliver a payload into orbit, which is what I was thinking about. So at this point, they could have greatly reduced how much it costs to refurbish a core because it takes less effort do so presumably, and now they're going to aim to maximise the revenue that they get from each core. This will done by reducing the turn around time by making refurbishment quick and cheap (or eliminating it altogether), and by ensuring the core has high durability.

Cue in block V...

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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tvg98 on 05/23/2017 04:20 pm
Don't confuse elapsed time with effort required.... that 4 months go by between flight and reflight doesn't imply that there was 4 months of continuous effort. (much less if it was one person or a standing army of 1000... )

When we see SpaceX say "we can't reuse on this flight, we don't have a booster ready" then we'd know that they don't have effort down low yet....

I guess I didn't think of it that way. Although, I'm assuming that similarly with airplanes, they technically "lose" (not really) money by having the core on a hangar and not helping to deliver a payload into orbit, which is what I was thinking about. So at this point, they could have greatly reduced how much it costs to refurbish a core because it takes less effort do so presumably, and now they're going to aim to maximise the revenue that they get from each core. This will done by reducing the turn around time by making refurbishment quick and cheap (or eliminating it altogether), and by ensuring the core has high durability.

Cue in block V...

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.

I agree, there is much change needed before this model even comes close to being realistic for this market. Would one of the main drivers of rapid reusability then simply be that (assuming that labour costs are the main costs for SpaceX) you are spreading those costs over dozens flights instead of just a couple? You'll still be paying roughly the same (as in wages don't decrease), but since you're getting more revenue for the same costs, you're better off right?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/23/2017 05:55 pm
Launch cadence.

One of the biggest impacts to per launch costs is the crew at the launch site. If there is not a launch they do not have much work to do. Their time (from the standpoint of the company) is being wasted. Also for a flow not everyone is involved with every step of the process. So unless there is an assembly line setup to LV processing at the launch site, again wasted manpower. If SpaceX with 2 pads can launch a little less than every 2 weeks, they can share personnel between pads too as long as the launches are staggered (about one a week) between the two pads. So at a rate of 1 a week (once every 2 weeks per pad) SpaceX would be spending almost the same in labor as they would be to launch off of 1 pad every 2 weeks.

But this higher cadence and assembly line like launch processing is a result of rapid reusability. If spaceX can get there. There will be several costs savings in various other places than just in refurbishment costs. Generally the cost of launch (even for a new booster) will decrease because of higher cadence.

Now as far as my estimates on the relative costs of refurbish ment between SES-10 and Bugariasat-1 is that SpaceX stated the cost of refurbishment for the SES-10 booster was 50% that of a new booster. The next item is statements that refurbishment on later vehicles would be 1/8 the the cost of the SES-10. What I was showing is that it seems that Bulgarisat-1 shows that SpaceX has yet to reach that 1/8 the cost of SES-10. But as Lar states we do not know if they are simply counting time (a mixture of storage and active work) or the work of a certain size crew or crews for a period.

But the costs have gone down. The exact amount is not known but even just cutting the costs in half from that of SES-10 is significant ($5M or more in additional savings).

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tvg98 on 05/23/2017 06:10 pm
Launch cadence.

One of the biggest impacts to per launch costs is the crew at the launch site. If there is not a launch they do not have much work to do. Their time (from the standpoint of the company) is being wasted. Also for a flow not everyone is involved with every step of the process. So unless there is an assembly line setup to LV processing at the launch site, again wasted manpower. If SpaceX with 2 pads can launch a little less than every 2 weeks, they can share personnel between pads too as long as the launches are staggered (about one a week) between the two pads. So at a rate of 1 a week (once every 2 weeks per pad) SpaceX would be spending almost the same in labor as they would be to launch off of 1 pad every 2 weeks.

But this higher cadence and assembly line like launch processing is a result of rapid reusability. If spaceX can get there. There will be several costs savings in various other places than just in refurbishment costs. Generally the cost of launch (even for a new booster) will decrease because of higher cadence.

Now as far as my estimates on the relative costs of refurbish ment between SES-10 and Bugariasat-1 is that SpaceX stated the cost of refurbishment for the SES-10 booster was 50% that of a new booster. The next item is statements that refurbishment on later vehicles would be 1/8 the the cost of the SES-10. What I was showing is that it seems that Bulgarisat-1 shows that SpaceX has yet to reach that 1/8 the cost of SES-10. But as Lar states we do not know if they are simply counting time (a mixture of storage and active work) or the work of a certain size crew or crews for a period.

But the costs have gone down. The exact amount is not known but even just cutting the costs in half from that of SES-10 is significant ($5M or more in additional savings).

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.

(Slightly OT) 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/23/2017 06:17 pm
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.

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.

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.

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...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tvg98 on 05/23/2017 06:26 pm
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)

Is it true that the Mvac is significantly more complex than its sea level counterpart? There's going to be people who are probably going to know how to manufacture and assemble most version, but do we have any idea on how easy or hard it is to train those people to build second stages? I know that they've made a couple of design choices specifically to make both as cheap as possible by using similar engines, same diameter, etc.

(Lar, I realise I'm getting slightly off topic, so move this comment to an appropriate thread if I'm too far off.)   

Edit/Lar: fix quotes. And fine so far I think...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/23/2017 06:39 pm
From now to the 3rd Block IV refurb it should drop to about 2 weeks refurb. This is likely to happen still in 2017.
Not trying to start a discussion about this opinion. Just staking my claim and we'll see in Dec/17 or Jan/18 what happens, when I think at least the 6th total refurb and 3rd Block IV refurb will take place.
Reuse is already economical for SpaceX, even with 2 months refurb.
Bringing it down to 2 weeks will make it very economical.

With 3 refurbs, the workers taking care of it will likely have a lot of practice. From then on its eliminating replacement of parts that were being replaced just in case and that with more data can be ruled out as safe to reuse. Plus Block IV will make more parts robust enough to aim for at least a few reflights without replacement. Block IV might still not be ready for 10 reflights with modest refurb. Even if it can only do 3 or 4 with a 1-2 week refurb will be already ultra economical even compared with a 2 month refurb.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/23/2017 07:35 pm
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.

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.

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.

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...
Yes at 50+ launches total per year multiple savings from multiple sources show up reducing cost per flight still more than those just directly related to reusability. Indirect cost savings because reusability has made it easier and cheaper for customers to "Fly SpaceX" may result in as much as another 10% or more cost reduction (up to another $5M in cost savings). This could eventually lead to in the early 2020's a price for a F9 flight of $30M. Reusibility savings: $20M for the booster + $5M for the faring+ $5M for increased economies of scale because of higher flight rate = $30M price reduction possibility.

Once refurbishment costs go below 10% that of a new booster additional savings on refurbishment do not make much of an impact (maximum of $3M if no refurbishment is done at all "gas and go"). But the biggest impact is time interval and inventory required on hand to service a specific launch rate. A gas and go scenario would need at most 2 vehicles only to do almost 6 months of launches. Less assets, less storage, and less work space means lower costs. Another of those indirect costs related to reusability.

Another indirect costs is commoditized payloads or common multiple payloads (large constellations). The elimination of payload analysis from launch costs represents $Ms in cost/flight. By eliminating this cost more cost savings occur.

The key here is that in the 50+ launches/yr scenario of large sat constellations SpaceX could get the cost of an F9 internal to SpaceX to under $20M. The cost of manufacture of the US, the launch processing flow and launch costs/fees. Recovery/Refurbishment/reuse costs of the booster and faring would be less than 10% of all costs.

Added:
The corollary here is that costs of an FH launch becomes little more than $5M more than an F9 launch. So if you could also reuse the US the cost of an FH with also reusing the US could be equal of less than the cost of a partial reusable F9 but also able to do more payload per flight. FH in this scenario would be able to do more for less cost than the F9. 25+mt to LEO for less than $30M /flight price.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/24/2017 02:35 pm
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.

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.

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.

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...

Hawthorne will be starting an assembly line for Raptors one of these days.  That plus extra second stages should keep all available personnel quite busy.  They may be refurbing Vandy stages there, too... and maybe making ConnX dispensers.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/25/2017 06:30 pm
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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tvg98 on 05/25/2017 06:53 pm
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.

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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/25/2017 07:40 pm
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.

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.
That is the real speculative question.

The other is that Boeing would then be in competition with itself (50% ownership of ULA). What would Boeing need ULA for then?

In all this is again more push toward reusability and rapid reusability as an answer to many current constraints that include costs and launch availability. Launch on 24hr notice (if the weather cooperates).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 05/25/2017 07:45 pm
General discussion of the Boeing announcement and other DARPA/XS-1 stuff belongs in this thread

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32829

Keep posts here focused on the cost aspects, please.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: jpo234 on 05/25/2017 10:56 pm
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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/26/2017 12:22 am
How much does Centaur cost? A single SSME booster is well sized to use Centaur to deliver 5 tonnes to SSO while riding the booster. But you have to expend a Centaur, which could preclude it from competing with F9 RTLS.

Lower cost options are an AJ-10 powered stage similar to Delta K. That would be cheaper than Centaur and competitive with F9R on cost but not performance. That might be able to hit $5m per launch.

Vector is supposedly building the upper stage propulsion. That could end up being cheap enough to expend and competitive with rocket lab...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/26/2017 01:42 am
My point was how rapid reusability (24hr turnaround) is no longer something extolled only by SpaceX, but by BO and now by Boeing. Institutionally DARPA is of the opinion that rapid reusability is one of those key items for LV systems in the future to meet the expanded needs of the DOD for launch on demand and significantly lower costs.

But these three are orbital launchers. There are suborbital LV systems designed around the same policy of using rapid reusability to greatly lower costs.

Rapid reusability for orbital launch has been one of those items that seemingly was always on the horizon. Now it has moved to the near future, by 2020 at the latest. With acceptance that rapid reusability can be accomplished, this then also influences all new design projects where costs of the new system is evaluated with respect to systems that it could be competing against that would use rapid reusability.

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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: LouScheffer on 05/26/2017 01:55 am
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.
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. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/26/2017 02:06 am
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.
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.
You hit the main item on the head.

Cost is now the most important item because if you cannot control the costs, the same fate will happen as happens in other markets when management fails to control costs for a new product. THE PRODUCT FAILS.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: deruch on 05/26/2017 02:59 am
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. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: jpo234 on 05/26/2017 10:21 am
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.

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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/26/2017 12:23 pm
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.

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 remarkable thing is that five years ago, USAF was talking about prices rising and being 'unsustainable.'
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/26/2017 03:48 pm
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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: jpo234 on 05/26/2017 06:48 pm
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.
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.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/26/2017 08:23 pm
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.
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.

It seems unwise to use those BFR cost estimates today.  Lots of work went into getting the F9 where it is, and the impact it is having on the market is profound even before reusability discounts take hold.  A couple years back, SpaceX advertised $5-7M flight costs for reusable Falcon 9 -- seems a long way off still.

Using the current advancements, I can see three potentially important impacts to market:
1. Current F9 prices ($62M-ish for 5-6t to GTO) are now a ceiling, so satellite operators can evaluate short term and mid term expansions with some certainty on costs;
2. Prices are potentially falling by several 10s of percent in next few years, so strategies that take advantage of this can be included in business strategy; and
3. Launch availability is soon to out-pace demand, so time from order to orbit can potentially drop drastically from industry norms which might also be of strategic advantage to some.
There are already several business models taking advantage of this new environment, and hopefully more on the drawing boards.

The multi-hundred tonne payload for whatever price (recall recently when head of ULA called a class of today's NSS payloads 'heavy') is far enough into the future that it is rally OT for this thread.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/26/2017 08:29 pm
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.

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 described (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=41560.msg1679711#msg1679711)d 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.

 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/27/2017 08:53 pm
I was gaming out an elastic price ($/kg) to tonnage model.

I set the values such that for a 25% price reduction a tonnage increase of 35% occurred. This tonnage increase can be accomplished by using bigger rockets or just more of the same size as previously used. The side effect to these values is that the model shows that outlays, spending by customers for all that additional launch tonnage, only increased by 7%. So though prices are going down rapidly and tonnage going up rapidly the revenue is only going up modestly.

For SpaceX this I think is what they would like to see happen. The actual rates of price decrease and tonnage increase are an unknown. But for this to expand the business the tonnage rate increase has to be larger than the price decrease. If that does not happen then the revenue will shrink for the company and there is little incentive to keep dropping prices.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/27/2017 10:52 pm
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.

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 described (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=41560.msg1679711#msg1679711)d 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.

Stop for a moment and consider what you are proposing...

Let's say price is $10M for that payload.  To get $T's of revenue (say $2T in a year?), it would take 200,000 launches -- one every other minute or so, 24-7, 365 days per year.

At 380t/launch, that's 76,000,000 tonnes of something into LEO.  Annually.  About 10x what FedX and UPS combined haul by ground and air in the US.  (Also about 380,000x what is currently launched annually in the World.)

You are proposing one big mess in LEO...

So, can we stick to something remotely plausible?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/27/2017 11:01 pm
The trillions of revenue won't be on the launch side but the telecomms side. That much is already well established. And this is why SpaceX is building a Megaconstellation rather than just focusing on launch.

There's one possible exception: high hypersonic (i.e. Near orbital) point to point travel. Likely to be held back by safety and other practical considerations, however it COULD have sufficient volume globally.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/27/2017 11:20 pm
The trillions of revenue won't be on the launch side but the telecomms side. That much is already well established.

There's one possible exception: high hypersonic (i.e. Near orbital) point to point travel. Likely to be held back by safety and other practical considerations, however it COULD have sufficient volume globally.
The rocket equation makes this uneconomical. Please do the actual math to understand.
But as a simplistic end conclusion:
An full A380 costs just US$ 30000 / hour (including pilots/flight attendants/maintenance, I think only the initial acquisition costs are out of this number).
So a 15 hour trip = US$ 450k
How much will a full sized ITS launch cost, just in fuel ? 10x as much.
And the A380 can fly for at least 2 decades.
Even if ITS refurb is affordable, the upper stage is gone in a year of daily flights. That's another few million USD per flight to replace the spaceship once its no longer air worthy.

The only planned solution that carries realistic hope of achieving viable $$$ hypersonic intra planetary is lapcat. And even that's just a hope. Please let's not start a skylon/lapcat discussion here. I'm just trying to pull your head that's stuck in the clouds and at least get one of your feet back on the ground. I'm sorry to burst your bubble.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/27/2017 11:27 pm
A full ITS optimized for point to point transport could send thousands of people per flight. You'd want a smaller vehicle, like something the size of the spaceship, for just A380 sized. Then the costs are similar. Full ITS is $3 million per launch (tanker flights) including propellant and amortization and fees. So a BFS sized vehicle would be about half a million, similar to an A380. Musk sees it as possible, though not necessarily likely.

The rocket equation doesn't actually preclude it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: macpacheco on 05/28/2017 12:04 am
A full ITS optimized for point to point transport could send thousands of people per flight. You'd want a smaller vehicle, like something the size of the spaceship, for just A380 sized. Then the costs are similar. Full ITS is $3 million per launch (tanker flights) including propellant and amortization and fees. So a BFS sized vehicle would be about half a million, similar to an A380. Musk sees it as possible, though not necessarily likely.

The rocket equation doesn't actually preclude it.
I misspoke, I should have said the ISP of raptor isn't high enough. The ISP of rocket engines carrying their own LOX onboard that is the problem.
And like you said, revenue passenger flight will require FAA approval, which expectedly would be very resistant to certify rockets for Part 121 certification (same as airliners).
Here's perhaps the other reason an air breathing hypersonic rocket plane would make much more sense, since it avoids the thermal inferno of re-entry.

I'd love to be proven wrong though !
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/28/2017 12:47 am
Rocket engines carrying their own oxygen isn't really that much of a problem. Air breathers have to do the same thing essentially by accelerating oxygen AND nitrogen up to their flight speed before they can burn it for thrust. The total amount of mass accelerated to flight speed (including that nitrogen mass) is actually GREATER for an air breather for an around the world flight.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rakaydos on 05/28/2017 05:49 am
How hard would it be to land an ITS upperstage on a barge in international waters, with speedboat service to, say, LA, New York, Tokyo, and so on?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: docmordrid on 05/28/2017 06:10 am
Why use a barge? A refurbished oil platform would be better, especially for hosting a commuter ferry service back to dry land.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lars-J on 05/28/2017 07:51 am
I've long thought that an off-shore launch and landing platform makes the most sense for ITS operations.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 05/28/2017 10:11 am
The trillions of revenue won't be on the launch side but the telecomms side. That much is already well established. And this is why SpaceX is building a Megaconstellation rather than just focusing on launch.

...

Correct.  But gross tonnage (frequent 380t/launch*) is not needed to reap that revenue. 
Leveraging existing F9 Block 5 is sufficient as launch costs are a tiny fraction of revenue; improvements such as a reusable upper stage will improve margin, but not substantially.

* Approximately 1,000 ConnX sats by mass.  2,000 per year needed to sustain 12,000 sat LEO +VLEO constellation.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/28/2017 01:32 pm
Block 5 Falcon 9 would have an expendable upper stage, expendable payload deployer, and complicated recovery of fairings plus non-ideal sooty kerolox engines, helium, etc. on the order of 100-200 launches per year. At a cost of about $4-6 billion per year. That's a lot of cash spent on a suboptimal solution. A couple of years of launches is the same price as just developing even full ITS (let alone a more economically sized vehicle).

An ITS or an intermediate ITS could do it in like 10-40 launches, with easier and faster turnaround, no expendable stages, no complicated fairing recovery. The cost per year could actually be much less than Falcon 9, plus would allow much larger and more capable satellites. Plus SpaceX wants it for Mars. They could use the (possibly subscaled) ITS for constellation launches in between planetary windows, and so get the reusable Mars launch architecture bought and paid for by the Constellation business.

Expensive operations, limited lift mass, and only partially reusable, and no Mars. Or low cost operations, far greater lift capability, and fully reusable, and almost free Mars logistics capability. Pretty obvious which direction they'll go.

By the way, don't make the mistake of thinking SpaceX won't face competition, either. If SpaceX stood still with Block 5, New Glenn could end up eating their lunch by launching the other constellations for just as low of a price (or lower, as it will eventually be fully reusable).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 05/28/2017 01:35 pm
...
Here's perhaps the other reason an air breathing hypersonic rocket plane would make much more sense, since it avoids the thermal inferno of re-entry.

Suborbital reentry is much easier than orbital, and orbital reentry is much easier than interplanetary entry - which is what the ITS ship is designed for.

Hypersonic air breathing vehicles still operate in a very tough thermal environment, and do so continuously instead of merely at entry.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/28/2017 03:33 pm
Back to Reusability effect on costs.

There are two elements to reusability effect on costs.

1) This is the direct element of cost of manufacture of the stage vs the cost of recovery/refurbishment/inspections and additional hardware to make recovery/reuse possible.

2) This is the indirect element of cost which is launch availability. For customers with a ready payload, waiting is costing them money. Increasing cadence due to more LV launch capability above that of demand makes those wait times between the payload ready and the payload launch much less. This is where ULA has been lately extolling its on-time launch and its available launch slots over that of its competitors. Even though most do not equate a cost value to this, but there really is one.

SpaceX will need both effects to compete and continue to gain in number of payload contracts: Lower PRICE and better availability of launch.

Several notes is that SpaceX will not be in this reusability competitive position alone for very long. BO wants to make that period short. Not more than 3 years. So SpaceX only has that period "to milk the market for profit" to fund additional R&D prior to decreasing prices in a peer competitor environment. This also makes the expectation that Prices would show a steady yr-to-yr  decline over that period and then continue that decline afterward. The yr-to-yr decline rate would be such that it predicts the Prices that competitors would be offering at the 3 year point to be able to successfully compete against them. So the analysis of what the SpaceX Prices would be in 2020 depend on what the analysis says that the competitors Prices will be in 2020. The decline has started with a offering of what appears to be a 10% reduction for launches this year and next. A possible additional reduction would be made this time next year as reuse becomes more common and costs become more clear.

Hopefully their "CommX" constellation will return revenue and profit by then to provide the funds for the continuation of R&D. But "CommX" will face stiff competition before it is even deployed. So the profits may not be as grand as some would believe. Lowering launch costs as much as possible will increase those profits in that highly competitive market. The first generation constellation would be deployed using F9 or FH. It would be over a period of 5 to 7 years (2019 to 2026). A second generation would be much larger sats possible 4 times heavier with 16 times the throughput. If launch on F9 or FH this is an increase in launches by as much as a factor of 4. Most of the estimates on deployment of the constellation show that launch cost will be about 50% of the cost of deployment (sat manufacture and launch) even with reuse of the first stage to lower launch costs. Launch cost is a major component of the constellation's base cost. If the launch cost could dramatically drop through use of a fully reusable vehicle by a factor of 5 (ITS also has much larger volume and payload mass capability) the costs of deployment drop by 40%. That cost savings could be profit generated over the next period of 5 to 7 years on the order of an additional several $B  in profit or the price competitive position to maintain or grow market share of the world wide data communication market. Even against terrestrial fiber.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/28/2017 05:31 pm
I bet they plan on starting to launch the Constellation on ITS-based rockets well before 2027. Especially with notes about how to make ITS economic.

As soon as 2020 (or earlier for an intermediate ITS), actually, as part of ITS's orbital testing phase mentioned in the IAC speech.
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/mars_presentation.pdf

This will have a much greater impact on costs than partial reuse on Falcon 9. Especially combined with an operational New Glenn.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/28/2017 05:57 pm
The relationship of reusability and cost goes both ways.

There is an incentive if you need lower cost's of launch to fund reusability (we have seen this first phase of reusable boosters) development. We are talking about really needing it for a business case to stay competitive with competitors. Not just having reusability which will then lower costs. The incentives for doing more  reusability R&D has increased.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AC in NC on 05/29/2017 02:03 am
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.

Let's say price is $10M for that payload.  To get $T's of revenue (say $2T in a year?), it would take 200,000 launches -- one every other minute or so, 24-7, 365 days per year.  At 380t/launch, that's 76,000,000 tonnes of something into LEO.  Annually.  About 10x what FedX and UPS combined haul by ground and air in the US.  (Also about 380,000x what is currently launched annually in the World.)

You are proposing one big mess in LEO...

Your dismissal suffers two flaws:

1)  Nowhere did I say annually.
2)  Nowhere did I indicate leaving anything in LEO.

There are practical impediments but the back of the napkin numbers do work.  It's nice to have something to do with the hardware when it's not staging Mars transits.  Gas-n-Go launch costs enable opportunity on the order I stated.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/29/2017 02:41 pm
Yes,
I understand that SpaceX is planning a fully reusable "Interplanatary Class" LV.
{I categorize the term Interplanetary Class as being >=200mt to LEO} Examples ITS
{I categorize the term Exploration Class as being >=100mt to LEO} Examples SLS and New Armstrong (this one could end up being a ILV-no actual payload size has been stated yet)

But,
These fully reusable ELV and ILV class LVs are about 10 years away (although SLS is an ELV class it will never be even partially reusable without a great deal of redesign and spending) before they are in general operation. Any cost estimation, market sizes, launch rates, etc are pure speculation and can vary the revenue values by a factor of 100 to even 1000. We do not know what the Price/Cost/Profit of these launches will be, the number of pads, the number of launches per week per pad, the actual payload weight launched, etc. So any cost estimation, revenue estimation, etc is just pure speculation and is not founded on enough facts to be used in arguments. Our belief is that full reusability and larger payload size will greatly reduce the $/kg to LEO from that of even a fully reusable FH's possible $/kg value of <$1,000/kg. But we only hope that this will be the case at this point based on Elon Musk's whole drive to decrease the price $/kg to LEO by at least a factor 10 and up to a factor of 100 from the best that can be done with a fully reusable FH.

Reusable and fully reusable LVs have been the holy grail for fast pace growing (like the computer electronics industry) for decades. The current information has only validated that the economics for a partial reusable vehicle results in a reduction of the $/kg value. But this reduction is not the big factor of 10 or 100 as of yet. So far it may yield a factor of 2 for the same vehicle operated as a expendable vs operated as a "rapid reusable". For the rapid reusable F9 to drop the $/kg price by a factor of 2 it has to get to a price per flight of <$22.5M/launch. This is a long way from the current prices but is a possibility if launch rate significantly increases (by a factor of 10), multiple savings from economies of scale, and other cost savings are implemented during the recovery, refurbishment, launch processing and launch as well as it's manufacture and initial acceptance testing.

One of those indirect cost lowering items is the fact that recovered hardware is inspectable and can be upgraded to remove weaknesses and low reliability items, thereby lowering the operating costs because less items are replaced, less LOV events occur, and more flights can be accomplished by a hardware set (specific LV).


Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 05/29/2017 02:48 pm
Wait, who says ITS is ten years away? SpaceX's timeline shows orbital testing in 2020. This should be feasible if SpaceX descopes ITS slightly so it can actually launch from LC39a.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/29/2017 04:54 pm
Wait, who says ITS is ten years away? SpaceX's timeline shows orbital testing in 2020. This should be feasible if SpaceX descopes ITS slightly so it can actually launch from LC39a.
Their intention is to upgrade LC39A to be able to launch the full sized BFR/ITS.

But this thread is not the ITS discussion thread.

Also at this point without more information we only know the NET dates for the schedule for ITS. Not the most likely dates. The next update from SpaceX/Musk on the progress and new projected schedule (hopefully they give an update to the scheduled events) will give a good look at how well the projected dates match reality.
The other point was that we have insufficient substantiated information to do projections of any level of real meaning other than the belief in that Musk would not make the system unless it was capable of lowering the cost $/kg to LEO significantly for the amount of development funds he is putting forward on the project. He believes it and so must we because so far he has delivered. But the actual factor of lower $/kg to LEO is a wide level of speculation and is also tied as we have seen with F9 to be associated with design and operations maturity. This suggests that ITS will not reach it's target costs and significant operation tempos for as much as a decade after first flight. F9 may not reach its best per flight possible price until 2020, possibly as low as $25M, which is half it's current price. Alot has to happen to enable such low prices. Faring reuse, a gas and go booster, reduced timeline/processes for launch/recovery of used boosters, more pads, and stable configuration must be done successfully to reduce the Price this much.

As I mentioned before as reusability creates the promise of cheaper $/kg so will the demand for cheaper $/kg spur investments in reusability as the market expands slowly at first and accelerates the expansion as time proceeds with new business cases becomeing viable with the lower $/kg.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 06/01/2017 01:40 am
With the upcoming reuse of a Dragon, what are the implications of this reuse for lowering costs of such services?

The SpaceX statements sound similar to those about the booster used on SES-10. This would indicate the used Dragon probably cost >=50% as much as a new one. That would put savings on this ~$50-60M cost for Dragon of up to $30M.

If that is the best possible for Dragon even D2 then a Dragon flight on a used booster could have a cost (not price) of just $60M. This could lead to a price for D2 flights using a used D2 and used booster at a price of almost half that of current.

But it also is a pathfinder and like SES-10 booster will be recovered and be able to be studied to see the difference between one use and two uses which will inform just haw much of a usable life these vehicles actually have.

The remaining item not covered is just how much of that $50-60M cost of a new Dragon does the trunk cost?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: deruch on 06/01/2017 02:46 am
With the upcoming reuse of a Dragon, what are the implications of this reuse for lowering costs of such services?

The SpaceX statements sound similar to those about the booster used on SES-10. This would indicate the used Dragon probably cost >=50% as much as a new one. That would put savings on this ~$50-60M cost for Dragon of up to $30M.

If that is the best possible for Dragon even D2 then a Dragon flight on a used booster could have a cost (not price) of just $60M. This could lead to a price for D2 flights using a used D2 and used booster at a price of almost half that of current.

But it also is a pathfinder and like SES-10 booster will be recovered and be able to be studied to see the difference between one use and two uses which will inform just haw much of a usable life these vehicles actually have.

The remaining item not covered is just how much of that $50-60M cost of a new Dragon does the trunk cost?
To my mind, Dragon 2 reuse isn't so much about direct cost savings but about new potential mission options.  Red Dragons, Lunar Flybys, etc. are all pretty much dependent on reused Dragon 2 capsules right now.  They could do those without reuse, but it would significantly stretch out their timeline or necessitate a higher production rate on D2 capsules.  So, in order to make such mission affordable either in terms of production costs or mission opportunity costs (i.e. lose out on using the capsule to fulfill a NASA mission, either CRS2 or Commercial Crew) it's going to require reuse and re-purposing of prior flown capsules.  Initially, most likely cargo D2s that are landed on dry land until NASA gets on board with land-landing crewed capsules.  Or, it will go the other way.  Reuse of CRS2 cargo D2 capsules will allow bespoke capsules to be built for other mission profiles. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Jcc on 06/02/2017 11:34 pm
Rocket engines carrying their own oxygen isn't really that much of a problem. Air breathers have to do the same thing essentially by accelerating oxygen AND nitrogen up to their flight speed before they can burn it for thrust. The total amount of mass accelerated to flight speed (including that nitrogen mass) is actually GREATER for an air breather for an around the world flight.

The advantage of an air breather is not so much the velocity but work done against gravity to reach altitude, and they do not need to lift the mass of O2 and N2 to altitude, it is already there. I'd does need to do work to compress the gasses, and reject heat, plus more work against friction with the wing surface to achieve high velocity. That's why air launch rockets like Pegasus don't launch at supersonic speeds, but I should think there are net fuel savings during air breathing phase.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 06/03/2017 12:29 am
It's true you get some benefit from the gravitational potential energy of the oxygen being higher for an air breather, but consider that is a very small proportion of the energy of orbit or for hypersonic point to point transport.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 06/22/2017 05:45 am
New article attempting to analyse reusability savings, with a particular focus on how long it might take SpaceX to recoup their investment so far in re-use:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/spacex-reusable-rocket-launch-costs-profits-2017-6 (http://uk.businessinsider.com/spacex-reusable-rocket-launch-costs-profits-2017-6)

Their model is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TgkiKHRNll3XhhYCZnmbJpL941cxGd5isMHIFFIpaG0/edit?usp=sharing (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TgkiKHRNll3XhhYCZnmbJpL941cxGd5isMHIFFIpaG0/edit?usp=sharing)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 06/22/2017 07:10 am
New article attempting to analyse reusability savings, with a particular focus on how long it might take SpaceX to recoup their investment so far in re-use:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/spacex-reusable-rocket-launch-costs-profits-2017-6 (http://uk.businessinsider.com/spacex-reusable-rocket-launch-costs-profits-2017-6)

Their model is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TgkiKHRNll3XhhYCZnmbJpL941cxGd5isMHIFFIpaG0/edit?usp=sharing (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TgkiKHRNll3XhhYCZnmbJpL941cxGd5isMHIFFIpaG0/edit?usp=sharing)

Where I think a lot of these estimates may miss the boat is in the high gross profit margin they assume SpaceX is currently achieving - prior to reuse. Generally, in the articles I have read on this topic, the 40% gross margin is traced back to a single source estimate, done some time ago to estimate SpaceX's value should they announce an IPO.

To me this is however applying traditional thinking to this problem. There have been a number of alternative suggestions that SpaceX is in fact operating very close to breakeven on their launches, in order to gain market share. And this distinction is important for purposes of calculating reuse investment recovery, for the simple reason that if the booster costs you 70% of your total launch costs, then saving 70% of $62m means you will profit a lot more from reuse than if you are saving 70% of 60% of $62m.

Basically, if you push SpaceX's launch costs closer to $62m, rather than assuming a 40% gross profit margin built into the $62m, then you increase your reuse savings, and reduce the payback period of the R&D.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 06/22/2017 03:10 pm
Looks like the Europeans are getting more serious about reusable rocketry (and costs):
Quote
Europe Sets Sights on Cheap Rocket Engine by 2030s
Quote

PARIS (Reuters) - Europe aims to develop a low-cost, reusable rocket engine for use after 2030 under a deal between Airbus Safran Launchers and the European Space Agency (ESA).

They signed a development contract at the Paris Airshow on Thursday to develop a demonstrator engine, powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

Airbus Safran said it would use new manufacturing techniques, including the use of 3D printers, to keep the engine's cost down to around 1 million euros ($1.1 million).

"The commercial market - at least the European one - is asking for reliability, on-time delivery and cost, and we have to find the best way to answer these market expectations," its CEO, Alain Charmeau, told Reuters.

The firm, a joint venture between Airbus and Safran that will become ArianeGroup on July 1, currently powers the rockets it uses to launch satellites for commercial clients with Vulcain 2 engines costing around 10 million euros each.

But not all in on reusable rockets yet...

Quote

"We need, and will have Ariane 6 in 2020, but we also have to prepare for the future ...and that is why this (Prometheus) program is important," he said.

The jury was still out on the issue of reusability, however.

California-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) earlier this year achieved what it called "a huge revolution in spaceflight" by reusing part of one of its Falcon 9 rocket on a subsequent launch.

Charmeau said Prometheus would include work on reusability. "(But) the market is not asking for reusability... As long as we have a limited number of institutional launches it's difficult to bet on reusability."

https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2017-06-22/europe-sets-sights-on-cheap-rocket-engine-by-2030s
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 06/22/2017 04:05 pm
Sounds like Ariane is more or less ceding the field to SpaceX and perhaps Blue Origin for a decade or more.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 06/22/2017 04:41 pm
Everyone goes for methane these days... Very happy to see that! Never understood why this wasn't done decades ago.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 06/22/2017 10:30 pm
Sounds like Ariane is more or less ceding the field to SpaceX and perhaps Blue Origin for a decade or more.

Two years ago, they were referring to reusable rockets as fantasy, and four years ago, they were planning on expensive upgrades of Ariane 5.  Now it's Ariane 6 and low cost methlox engines, with reuse on the horizon.   They've come long, long way.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lars-J on 06/22/2017 11:31 pm
Sounds like Ariane is more or less ceding the field to SpaceX and perhaps Blue Origin for a decade or more.

Two years ago, they were referring to reusable rockets as fantasy, and four years ago, they were planning on expensive upgrades of Ariane 5.  Now it's Ariane 6 and low cost methlox engines, with reuse on the horizon.   They've come long, long way.

But they have a very long way to go still... Ariane 6 could be already be outdated by its first flight.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: ulm_atms on 06/22/2017 11:53 pm
Quote
Charmeau said Prometheus would include work on reusability. "(But) the market is not asking for reusability... As long as we have a limited number of institutional launches it's difficult to bet on reusability."

Does this basically say "We don't fly often enough so that the ROI of reusability R&D isn't worth it at the moment?"

Also, they are correct that the market is not asking for reusability...the market is however asking for a cheaper price per launch as that makes them more money.  The only thing, barring a major discovery in physics that would allow Star Trek like changes to mass/gravity equations(subspace fields to lower mass of object and all that) is to not throw away the rocket after each use.  You can do things like find ways to build a part cheaper to a degree...but rockets already push material science to it's limit as it is so you can only cut costs to a point before it just won't work reliably anymore.  I would be surprised if you could build a rocket like the F9 much cheaper without sacrificing something.  There is a performance to cost floor.  That's true on everything made everywhere.

So yea...I don't buy the "market is not asking for it" comment.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 06/23/2017 12:00 am
The market is asking for schedule, reliability, and cost. All things that rapid reuse, if you could perfect it, would give you in spades. So it's BS to say the market isn't "asking for reusability."
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 06/23/2017 06:05 am
The market is asking for schedule, reliability, and cost. All things that rapid reuse, if you could perfect it, would give you in spades. So it's BS to say the market isn't "asking for reusability."

Reusability is the solution to the demand, one of potentially many solutions. So the statement is quite correct.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 06/23/2017 06:08 am
The market is asking for schedule, reliability, and cost. All things that rapid reuse, if you could perfect it, would give you in spades. So it's BS to say the market isn't "asking for reusability."

Reusability is the solution to the demand, one of potentially many solutions. So the statement is quite correct.
Okay, then the statement is disingenuous. Might as well say that the market isn't asking for any kind of rocket, as the customer just wants their payload in orbit.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 06/23/2017 06:10 am
The market is asking for schedule, reliability, and cost. All things that rapid reuse, if you could perfect it, would give you in spades. So it's BS to say the market isn't "asking for reusability."

Reusability is the solution to the demand, one of potentially many solutions. So the statement is quite correct.
Okay, then the statement is disingenuous. Might as well say that the market isn't asking for any kind of rocket, as the customer just wants their payload in orbit.

I would say that's a very accurate statement.  Like a good mathematician would do it. Absolutely correct and equally useless ;-) what was the topic again? Let's get back to it.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 06/23/2017 09:43 am
Part of what may be holding the Europeans back is the jobs issue.  Low cost, reusable rockets remove the revenue stream that is produced by relatively expensive, expendable Ariane.  Same resistance is seen on multiple fronts in USA...  low cost is not the friend of launch service providers.

The question is whether they can survive on in-house government payloads only, or agree to 'force' -- as much as is practical -- domestic satellite fabricators and operators to use the local launch systems.

Edit: Added this cross-reference as example.  Haven't had time to watch...

As written crosspost from the discussion topic.
Today at the ESA pavilion at the Paris Airshow, there was a live roundtable discussion about the fixed institutional procurement of launches from Arianespace. Link to video (http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2017/06/Round_table_on_the_role_of_European_institutions_in_the_exploitation_of_Ariane_6_and_Vega-C)
The participents were representatives of: the EU, ESA, France, Germany & Italy, EUMETSAT and Arianespace.

Discussions belong in the discussion threat.
bold mine
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: ZachF on 06/26/2017 03:27 pm
Sounds like Ariane is more or less ceding the field to SpaceX and perhaps Blue Origin for a decade or more.

Two years ago, they were referring to reusable rockets as fantasy, and four years ago, they were planning on expensive upgrades of Ariane 5.  Now it's Ariane 6 and low cost methlox engines, with reuse on the horizon.   They've come long, long way.

But they have a very long way to go still... Ariane 6 could be already be outdated by its first flight.

It probably arguable that Ariane 6 would be obsolete now nevermind in 2020 when it does fly. In 2020 SpaceX's internal costs to launch Falcon 9 will probably be lower than the cost of Ariane 6's SRBs.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 06/26/2017 04:04 pm
Where I think a lot of these estimates may miss the boat is in the high gross profit margin they assume SpaceX is currently achieving - prior to reuse. Generally, in the articles I have read on this topic, the 40% gross margin is traced back to a single source estimate, done some time ago to estimate SpaceX's value should they announce an IPO.

To be clear for everyone in case it is not generally known, gross margins are before R&D costs (and sales/general/admin costs) are accounted.  It's probably a good bet that SpaceX breaks even after those costs are accounted.  SpaceX has a lot of development engineers.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: toren on 06/26/2017 04:33 pm
Where I think a lot of these estimates may miss the boat is in the high gross profit margin they assume SpaceX is currently achieving - prior to reuse. Generally, in the articles I have read on this topic, the 40% gross margin is traced back to a single source estimate, done some time ago to estimate SpaceX's value should they announce an IPO.

To be clear for everyone in case it is not generally known, gross margins are before R&D costs (and sales/general/admin costs) are accounted.  It's probably a good bet that SpaceX breaks even after those costs are accounted.  SpaceX has a lot of development engineers.

That's a good bet.  Elon's and SpaceX' MO is to convert internal cash flow into assets, and he has a commendable discipline re building and sticking to general platforms versus one-off, opportunistic projects.  This whole thread is about whether those notional assets actually amount to something.  The pain from ULA and Arianespace suggests that they do. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 07/03/2017 08:01 am
Despite my excitement about the increased access to space thanks to reusability, I am still struggling to fully reconcile myself with the Business Case for full reusability, from a launch provider point of view.

Basically, if you take it to its logical conclusion where launch costs indeed drop to say 1% of their current level as per Elon's dream, you will end up with a tremendously high ratio between the initial cost of the asset (the reusable rocket) and the revenue earned per each individual launch.

So any payback calculation from a launch provider's point of view, for building or buying a single launch vehicle, will run into the hundreds of launches just to break even.

And that's before you even buy/construct a second or third vehicle to serve as backup in case of inevitable failure or repair requirements. Then you may be talking about a thousand launches just to earn back the initial cost of the asset.

And if you then factor in the inevitable loss of a launch vehicle at some point, this high asset cost/revenue ratio means the loss hits you much harder than a loss in the current launch environment would, from a financial point of view.

Anyway, it is exciting times for space enthusiasts like us, but it seems almost like Elon's greater goal of lowering the cost of access to space is killing the very golden goose that his company is earning its revenue from. Now, he can do that because he is the first in this space, but as I said before, unless you suddenly have tens of thousands of launches  per year - which seems a century away at least - the low margin high volume nature of the business model seems to discourage more entrants into this market. And seems to make profit prospects based on being purely a launch provider rather gloomy, in my view.

No doubt a lot of unexpected and exciting stuff will happen, but as it stands I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 07/03/2017 10:28 am
Launch has always been a terrible way to make money. Reuse doesn't change that equation.

But there's lots of other ways to make money. Commsats are much more effective.

...which is why SpaceX is entering the commsat market.

...and SpaceX does envision increased launch.

And I think you left out one part of your calculation: more total payload per launch. That's part of how SpaceX intends to lower the cost by a factor of >100x.

SpaceX's constellation would require thousands of satellites to be launched per year. And Mueller envisions them eventually growing very large (meaning you're not going to be cluster launching them much). So SpaceX most certainly envisions thousands of launches in far less than a century.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 07/03/2017 11:15 am
Launch has always been a terrible way to make money. Reuse doesn't change that equation.

But there's lots of other ways to make money. Commsats are much more effective.

...which is why SpaceX is entering the commsat market.

...and SpaceX does envision increased launch.

And I think you left out one part of your calculation: more total payload per launch. That's part of how SpaceX intends to lower the cost by a factor of >100x.

SpaceX's constellation would require thousands of satellites to be launched per year. And Mueller envisions them eventually growing very large (meaning you're not going to be cluster launching them much). So SpaceX most certainly envisions thousands of launches in far less than a century.

Yes. I guess it's the sheer scope of the vision that makes it challenging to conceptualize at times. One can assess the impact of reducing launch revenue to $30m or $10m per launch fairly easily, but it is more difficult to envisage how the myriad of other changes to the industry will impact the overall model.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 07/03/2017 12:47 pm
Despite my excitement about the increased access to space thanks to reusability, I am still struggling to fully reconcile myself with the Business Case for full reusability, from a launch provider point of view.

Basically, if you take it to its logical conclusion where launch costs indeed drop to say 1% of their current level as per Elon's dream, you will end up with a tremendously high ratio between the initial cost of the asset (the reusable rocket) and the revenue earned per each individual launch.

So any payback calculation from a launch provider's point of view, for building or buying a single launch vehicle, will run into the hundreds of launches just to break even.

And that's before you even buy/construct a second or third vehicle to serve as backup in case of inevitable failure or repair requirements. Then you may be talking about a thousand launches just to earn back the initial cost of the asset.

And if you then factor in the inevitable loss of a launch vehicle at some point, this high asset cost/revenue ratio means the loss hits you much harder than a loss in the current launch environment would, from a financial point of view.

Anyway, it is exciting times for space enthusiasts like us, but it seems almost like Elon's greater goal of lowering the cost of access to space is killing the very golden goose that his company is earning its revenue from. Now, he can do that because he is the first in this space, but as I said before, unless you suddenly have tens of thousands of launches  per year - which seems a century away at least - the low margin high volume nature of the business model seems to discourage more entrants into this market. And seems to make profit prospects based on being purely a launch provider rather gloomy, in my view.

No doubt a lot of unexpected and exciting stuff will happen, but as it stands I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

No different than any other form of transportation. Trucks, ships, trains, and planes are very expensive relative the cost of a single trip on them. They simple are used very often for a long time and fail very rarely.

So for a 100x reduction in launch cost, there needs to be a 100x increase in launch rate assuming the same profit margin. Also a 100x improvement in reliability, so the cost of failure does not change relative to the amount of revenue.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 07/03/2017 01:13 pm
I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

I am at a loss trying to imagine the failure mode you are afraid of. The starting part is clear:

(1) Launch becomes cheaper
(2) Now every launch brings in much less revenue, and every launch failure is more painful than before

but then what? "Therefore launch providers operate at a loss and go bankrupt?" Why would that happen?

Are all low-cost airlines bankrupt now, and we are back to the days where taking a flight was a bit of a luxury? No, of course. _Some_ do go bankrupt, but those who find the right balance between "minimize prices" and "be profitable" survive. Overall, it results in more efficient passenger air transport. Yes, this means that being an airline is not easy, but the goal of economy is not to make airlines lives easy - its goal is to optimize all kinds of economic activity.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 07/03/2017 01:42 pm
I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

I am at a loss trying to imagine the failure mode you are afraid of. The starting part is clear:

(1) Launch becomes cheaper
(2) Now every launch brings in much less revenue, and every launch failure is more painful than before

but then what? "Therefore launch providers operate at a loss and go bankrupt?" Why would that happen?

Are all low-cost airlines bankrupt now, and we are back to the days where taking a flight was a bit of a luxury? No, of course. _Some_ do go bankrupt, but those who find the right balance between "minimize prices" and "be profitable" survive. Overall, it results in more efficient passenger air transport. Yes, this means that being an airline is not easy, but the goal of economy is not to make airlines lives easy - its goal is to optimize all kinds of economic activity.

Good question. I guess it's the difficulty in seeing the type of volumes in orbital launches that we see in air travel. It is easy to talk about 10,000 orbital launches a year, but it just seems to boggle the mind thinking about all the technological and regulatory hurdles that will have to be cleared to get there.

I'm sure it will happen. I'm just pointing out that I find it difficult to connect all the dots yet.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 07/03/2017 01:53 pm
Lower launch cost also means you can drive the reliability up much higher by exercising your capability a lot.

There's no law of physics that says launch can't get to 99.999% reliability or higher.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: HIP2BSQRE on 07/03/2017 01:56 pm
I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

I am at a loss trying to imagine the failure mode you are afraid of. The starting part is clear:

(1) Launch becomes cheaper
(2) Now every launch brings in much less revenue, and every launch failure is more painful than before

but then what? "Therefore launch providers operate at a loss and go bankrupt?" Why would that happen?

Are all low-cost airlines bankrupt now, and we are back to the days where taking a flight was a bit of a luxury? No, of course. _Some_ do go bankrupt, but those who find the right balance between "minimize prices" and "be profitable" survive. Overall, it results in more efficient passenger air transport. Yes, this means that being an airline is not easy, but the goal of economy is not to make airlines lives easy - its goal is to optimize all kinds of economic activity.

Good question. I guess it's the difficulty in seeing the type of volumes in orbital launches that we see in air travel. It is easy to talk about 10,000 orbital launches a year, but it just seems to boggle the mind thinking about all the technological and regulatory hurdles that will have to be cleared to get there.

I'm sure it will happen. I'm just pointing out that I find it difficult to connect all the dots yet.

Just go back to 1940 and think of the number of airline flights.  Then move 30 years to 1970 and tell me about the number of commercial flights.  Now if we would have told someone in 1930 on the number of flights in today they would have said impossible.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 07/03/2017 01:57 pm
Tell someone in 1910 or 1890. Or 1917.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 07/03/2017 02:00 pm
I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

I am at a loss trying to imagine the failure mode you are afraid of. The starting part is clear:

(1) Launch becomes cheaper
(2) Now every launch brings in much less revenue, and every launch failure is more painful than before

but then what? "Therefore launch providers operate at a loss and go bankrupt?" Why would that happen?

Are all low-cost airlines bankrupt now, and we are back to the days where taking a flight was a bit of a luxury? No, of course. _Some_ do go bankrupt, but those who find the right balance between "minimize prices" and "be profitable" survive. Overall, it results in more efficient passenger air transport. Yes, this means that being an airline is not easy, but the goal of economy is not to make airlines lives easy - its goal is to optimize all kinds of economic activity.

Good question. I guess it's the difficulty in seeing the type of volumes in orbital launches that we see in air travel. It is easy to talk about 10,000 orbital launches a year, but it just seems to boggle the mind thinking about all the technological and regulatory hurdles that will have to be cleared to get there.

Lower launch costs don't need dramatic increases in launch volume (although it should lead to an  increase, economics 101). Elon demonstrates this experimentally right now: "merely" by making the rocket "the right way" and optimizing his operations for cost, he steals market from existing players. It works even with current volume, because all pre-existing players were inefficient (they were either government programs or monopolies).
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: M.E.T. on 07/03/2017 02:35 pm
I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

I am at a loss trying to imagine the failure mode you are afraid of. The starting part is clear:

(1) Launch becomes cheaper
(2) Now every launch brings in much less revenue, and every launch failure is more painful than before

but then what? "Therefore launch providers operate at a loss and go bankrupt?" Why would that happen?

Are all low-cost airlines bankrupt now, and we are back to the days where taking a flight was a bit of a luxury? No, of course. _Some_ do go bankrupt, but those who find the right balance between "minimize prices" and "be profitable" survive. Overall, it results in more efficient passenger air transport. Yes, this means that being an airline is not easy, but the goal of economy is not to make airlines lives easy - its goal is to optimize all kinds of economic activity.

Good question. I guess it's the difficulty in seeing the type of volumes in orbital launches that we see in air travel. It is easy to talk about 10,000 orbital launches a year, but it just seems to boggle the mind thinking about all the technological and regulatory hurdles that will have to be cleared to get there.

Lower launch costs don't need dramatic increases in launch volume (although it should lead to an  increase, economics 101). Elon demonstrates this experimentally right now: "merely" by making the rocket "the right way" and optimizing his operations for cost, he steals market from existing players. It works even with current volume, because all pre-existing players were inefficient (they were either government programs or monopolies).

Sure. I agree. I fully understand why being able to launch for $50m, while having a partially reusable F9 that costs you only $25m, makes for a fantastic business model. It's when those revenues drop to only $1m per launch on a BFR costing $500m to construct, that the required volumes start bothering me a bit.

But it is exciting stuff. I'm just trying to understand it properly.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/03/2017 02:48 pm
The one item that reusability has an effect on that is often overlooked is vehicle availability to be able to do a higher launch rate without a much higher manufacturing infrastructure. A very high (100+ vehicles a year) would require a very large amount of capital equipment, buildings, and other suppliers certification of parts to be done all requiring a large capital investment expenditure. Reuse allows the capability to greatly expand the launch rate without the large capital expenditure on the supply chain. This in itself is a very large savings of capital for the reusable rocket manufacturer.

Then there is this item that SpaceX just demonstrated as a possibility. They showed that if the 35e launch could be done without a hotfire then the interval would have been 6 days on the LC-39A pad. That is a demonstrated minimum interval between been full engine pad ignitions and pad refurbishment of 6 days. At that interval the launch rate just from 39A could be as high as 60 launches per year. Now add LC-40, Boca Chica and SLC-4E and the max launch rate could be easily above 200.

In order to reach such high launch rates without a very large expansion of manufacturing infrastructure and supply chain requires reusability to be economically successful.

This financial direction frees up capital for R&D to make the vehicle or new vehicle design even more efficient and reliable in the reusable domain. This is what is currently happening at SpaceX. This bootstrapping method is very traditional in commercial businesses. Get a first product out that sells then expand its availability (Supply) while using profits to develop its replacement or making significant improvements to the product at a much higher level of supply at a much lower unit cost to maintain the position in the competitive market.

The current orbital launch rate for the world id 80-100 launches. This is with SpaceX doing about 18-22 launches in one year. An increase in launches by SpaceX to 50 to launch LEO constellations (a new payload customer not a stealing of the existing market) brings the world total to 110 to 130. But this also changes SpaceX % of the world launch market from the current 22% of to 38% up to 45%. Now if the world launch rate because of the great expansion of LEO constellations deployments increases the world launch rate to 200 and SpceX is doing 100 of that total with a new provider (BO) doing the other 30 to 50 additional launches to get the totals up that high then SpaceX would be 50% of all the world launches with the second reusable launch provider at as high as 25% of the world launches. bringing the total of reusable launches to 75% of all the world orbital launches. This scenario is not that far away. It could happen by the early 2020's.

Added: A BTW Robotbeat talks of the threshold of used boosters to total boosters launched 25% of creating a significant turnover point for booster developers to only develop reusable boosters because anything else just will not compete in the world market. If SpaceX expands its launch rate to just 50 and only 70% (35 launches) of those are used boosters then the used boosters to total launches world wide (130 launches) is 27%. This condition could exist as early as 2020.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: spacenut on 07/03/2017 03:11 pm
I read somewhere that it is cheaper per passenger/mile to fly a 747 than an old 1920's-1930's Ford tri-motor.  If launch rates increase to a certain point, larger rockets will be cheaper to operate than smaller rockets. 

Say the Irridium satellites.  F9 can do 10 per launch.  An ITS could do say 100.  If F9 costs $30 million per launch and there is $30 million in profit, ITS could cost  say $200 million per launch and $400 in profits.  That would be a higher profit margin, but only one launch.  SpaceX could lower launch costs $100 million and still get the same profits.  ITS would have an even greater effect on launch costs. 

Seems like the more you reuse a F9 the more profits SpaceX makes.  Then if ITS is cheaper per/lb or kg, then reuse of ITS becomes even more cheaper. 

Like you say, with New Glenn coming on line, and even Vulcan, launch costs should begin to come down when reusability and more competitors get in the game. 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: BrightLight on 07/03/2017 03:31 pm
Between 1950 and 2017 the cost of an airline ticket has dropped by a factor of 10, the aircraft technology has gone through 3 or 4 generations of improved reliability. SpaceX (and I suspect Blue Origin) are second generation reusable launch vehicles. A cost of 30 million per flight - or less - with very high reliability should be within reach within the next decade if not now.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/03/2017 04:25 pm
STS at $500M per launch with a LEO payload capability of 25mt max is $20,000/kg.

SpaceX's F9 at $50M per launch of a used booster and recovery ASDS with a LEO payload capability of 15mt max is $3,333/kg.

That is a reduction between first and second generation reusable vehicles of a factor of 6.

If the next generation reusable LV can match the reduction factor then the price per kg drops to about $500/kg.

Also that in ticket price for passengers goes from the F9/D2 of $20M/passenger to $3.4M/passenger.

A forth generation reusable LV would then drop the passenger ticket price to orbit to just $500K.

The fifth generation would then get down to $80K per passenger.

The timeline is that in 5 years the 3rd generation reusable vehicles would start flying. 2022
4th - 2027
5th - 2032

At the 5th generation prices the tourist alone would be in the high hundreds to a few thousand. Now add the capability to visit the Lunar surface at $400K or go to Mars at $500 to $1M. And the volume of persons going into orbit will be very large >100X compared to our current 12/year rate (which just dropped to 10 because of high costs).

An FH with reusing the US and faring and able to recover the boosters too could come down to a Price of $30M and deliver to LEO 20mt  is $1,500/kg a factor of 2 reduction which could happen in 3 years or less. In actauality that reduction could be here almost immediately with FH without reusing the US because a all used booster FH at a price <$80M (possibly as low as $60M) could deliver that $2,000 to $1,500/kg as still part of the 2nd gen vehicle. This would be a reduction of a factor of 10 between it and STS.

If this is achieved then the 4th generation reusable LV would achieve the very large passenger counts and bulk to orbit payload tonnage for $20K to orbit for passengers and $20/kg for cargo.

4th generation reusable vehicles could be as little as 10 years into the future.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: BrightLight on 07/03/2017 04:51 pm

That is a reduction between first and second generation reusable vehicles of a factor of 6.
If the next generation reusable LV can match the reduction factor then the price per kg drops to about $500/kg.
The difference between the DC-3 and the Constellation was reliability and improved payload.  The 707 brought a step change in lower maintenance costs and fast turnaround times. It appears to me that SpaceX Falcon is in that region where reliability is being evaluated - and if proven cost-effective, the next iteration of Falcon - supposedly the last - will see lower launch costs.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/03/2017 05:00 pm

That is a reduction between first and second generation reusable vehicles of a factor of 6.
If the next generation reusable LV can match the reduction factor then the price per kg drops to about $500/kg.
The difference between the DC-3 and the Constellation was reliability and improved payload.  The 707 brought a step change in lower maintenance costs and fast turnaround times. It appears to me that SpaceX Falcon is in that region where reliability is being evaluated - and if proven cost-effective, the next iteration of Falcon - supposedly the last - will see lower launch costs.
The F9 is going through improvements but at the same level of generation which is about basic design and that design's basic limitations. The limitations can be stretched just like there were improvements over the operational life's of the DC-3 Constellation and 707 but still within each's generation.

Generations represent a new design like full resuability vs the F9's partial. A much larger full reusable LV than the FH that is just a 2 stage vehicle having a lot less complexity and also a lot less costs in handling would represent a new generation.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Eerie on 07/03/2017 06:49 pm
Despite my excitement about the increased access to space thanks to reusability, I am still struggling to fully reconcile myself with the Business Case for full reusability, from a launch provider point of view.

[rest of the post omitted]

Your mistake is not taking the reliability of the launch vehicle into account.

If you have a 500M$ reusable BFR rocket, you are not going to sell a launch for a 1M$, unless you know that the rocket has less than 1/500 chance of failure. Preferably much less. Otherwise you will lose money. It's just plain statistics.

What you are going to do instead is start with a price slightly lower than an expendable launch, and slowly push it down as you go, while you figure out the reliability of your launch vehicle.

Which is exactly what SpaceX are doing.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: TrevorMonty on 07/03/2017 07:32 pm
STS at $500M per launch with a LEO payload capability of 25mt max is $20,000/kg.

SpaceX's F9 at $50M per launch of a used booster and recovery ASDS with a LEO payload capability of 15mt max is $3,333/kg.

That is a reduction between first and second generation reusable vehicles of a factor of 6.

If the next generation reusable LV can match the reduction factor then the price per kg drops to about $500/kg.

Also that in ticket price for passengers goes from the F9/D2 of $20M/passenger to $3.4M/passenger.

A forth generation reusable LV would then drop the passenger ticket price to orbit to just $500K.

The fifth generation would then get down to $80K per passenger.

The timeline is that in 5 years the 3rd generation reusable vehicles would start flying. 2022
4th - 2027
5th - 2032

At the 5th generation prices the tourist alone would be in the high hundreds to a few thousand. Now add the capability to visit the Lunar surface at $400K or go to Mars at $500 to $1M. And the volume of persons going into orbit will be very large >100X compared to our current 12/year rate (which just dropped to 10 because of high costs).

An FH with reusing the US and faring and able to recover the boosters too could come down to a Price of $30M and deliver to LEO 20mt  is $1,500/kg a factor of 2 reduction which could happen in 3 years or less. In actauality that reduction could be here almost immediately with FH without reusing the US because a all used booster FH at a price <$80M (possibly as low as $60M) could deliver that $2,000 to $1,500/kg as still part of the 2nd gen vehicle. This would be a reduction of a factor of 10 between it and STS.

If this is achieved then the 4th generation reusable LV would achieve the very large passenger counts and bulk to orbit payload tonnage for $20K to orbit for passengers and $20/kg for cargo.

4th generation reusable vehicles could be as little as 10 years into the future.
BLEO seat prices may not much more than 2-3 times LEO if low cost lunar and asteriod fuel becomes available. Cheaper it is access space, cheaper it is to build and maintain ISRU making BLEO space even cheaper.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rakaydos on 07/03/2017 11:26 pm
STS at $500M per launch with a LEO payload capability of 25mt max is $20,000/kg.

SpaceX's F9 at $50M per launch of a used booster and recovery ASDS with a LEO payload capability of 15mt max is $3,333/kg.

That is a reduction between first and second generation reusable vehicles of a factor of 6.

If the next generation reusable LV can match the reduction factor then the price per kg drops to about $500/kg.

Also that in ticket price for passengers goes from the F9/D2 of $20M/passenger to $3.4M/passenger.

A forth generation reusable LV would then drop the passenger ticket price to orbit to just $500K.

The fifth generation would then get down to $80K per passenger.

The timeline is that in 5 years the 3rd generation reusable vehicles would start flying. 2022
4th - 2027
5th - 2032

At the 5th generation prices the tourist alone would be in the high hundreds to a few thousand. Now add the capability to visit the Lunar surface at $400K or go to Mars at $500 to $1M. And the volume of persons going into orbit will be very large >100X compared to our current 12/year rate (which just dropped to 10 because of high costs).

An FH with reusing the US and faring and able to recover the boosters too could come down to a Price of $30M and deliver to LEO 20mt  is $1,500/kg a factor of 2 reduction which could happen in 3 years or less. In actauality that reduction could be here almost immediately with FH without reusing the US because a all used booster FH at a price <$80M (possibly as low as $60M) could deliver that $2,000 to $1,500/kg as still part of the 2nd gen vehicle. This would be a reduction of a factor of 10 between it and STS.

If this is achieved then the 4th generation reusable LV would achieve the very large passenger counts and bulk to orbit payload tonnage for $20K to orbit for passengers and $20/kg for cargo.

4th generation reusable vehicles could be as little as 10 years into the future.
If the shuttle for 1st generation reusable and Falcon 9 2nd gen, introducing cost effective rapid reuse, I assume BFR would be 3rd gen, introducing bulk transport efficencies to spaceflight. What would 4th gen be, to get a 6-fold reduction in cost over BFR?

There would have to be some new technoligy to pull off gen 4. Perhaps some kind of practical fusion pulse drive, taking the Orion NPP concept for superheavy lift in a more enviromentally friendly direction?

In any case, I dont see gen 4 happening anywhere near as fast as gen 2 and gen 3, since gen 2 could have happened as early as the Delta Clipper days and gan 3 just relies on launch market expansion from gen 2.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: meekGee on 07/04/2017 05:51 pm
Despite my excitement about the increased access to space thanks to reusability, I am still struggling to fully reconcile myself with the Business Case for full reusability, from a launch provider point of view.

Basically, if you take it to its logical conclusion where launch costs indeed drop to say 1% of their current level as per Elon's dream, you will end up with a tremendously high ratio between the initial cost of the asset (the reusable rocket) and the revenue earned per each individual launch.

So any payback calculation from a launch provider's point of view, for building or buying a single launch vehicle, will run into the hundreds of launches just to break even.

And that's before you even buy/construct a second or third vehicle to serve as backup in case of inevitable failure or repair requirements. Then you may be talking about a thousand launches just to earn back the initial cost of the asset.

And if you then factor in the inevitable loss of a launch vehicle at some point, this high asset cost/revenue ratio means the loss hits you much harder than a loss in the current launch environment would, from a financial point of view.

Anyway, it is exciting times for space enthusiasts like us, but it seems almost like Elon's greater goal of lowering the cost of access to space is killing the very golden goose that his company is earning its revenue from. Now, he can do that because he is the first in this space, but as I said before, unless you suddenly have tens of thousands of launches  per year - which seems a century away at least - the low margin high volume nature of the business model seems to discourage more entrants into this market. And seems to make profit prospects based on being purely a launch provider rather gloomy, in my view.

No doubt a lot of unexpected and exciting stuff will happen, but as it stands I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

Inadvertently, you're treading awfully close to an airplane analogy...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/04/2017 07:44 pm
STS at $500M per launch with a LEO payload capability of 25mt max is $20,000/kg.

SpaceX's F9 at $50M per launch of a used booster and recovery ASDS with a LEO payload capability of 15mt max is $3,333/kg.

That is a reduction between first and second generation reusable vehicles of a factor of 6.

If the next generation reusable LV can match the reduction factor then the price per kg drops to about $500/kg.

Also that in ticket price for passengers goes from the F9/D2 of $20M/passenger to $3.4M/passenger.

A forth generation reusable LV would then drop the passenger ticket price to orbit to just $500K.

The fifth generation would then get down to $80K per passenger.

The timeline is that in 5 years the 3rd generation reusable vehicles would start flying. 2022
4th - 2027
5th - 2032

At the 5th generation prices the tourist alone would be in the high hundreds to a few thousand. Now add the capability to visit the Lunar surface at $400K or go to Mars at $500 to $1M. And the volume of persons going into orbit will be very large >100X compared to our current 12/year rate (which just dropped to 10 because of high costs).

An FH with reusing the US and faring and able to recover the boosters too could come down to a Price of $30M and deliver to LEO 20mt  is $1,500/kg a factor of 2 reduction which could happen in 3 years or less. In actauality that reduction could be here almost immediately with FH without reusing the US because a all used booster FH at a price <$80M (possibly as low as $60M) could deliver that $2,000 to $1,500/kg as still part of the 2nd gen vehicle. This would be a reduction of a factor of 10 between it and STS.

If this is achieved then the 4th generation reusable LV would achieve the very large passenger counts and bulk to orbit payload tonnage for $20K to orbit for passengers and $20/kg for cargo.

4th generation reusable vehicles could be as little as 10 years into the future.
If the shuttle for 1st generation reusable and Falcon 9 2nd gen, introducing cost effective rapid reuse, I assume BFR would be 3rd gen, introducing bulk transport efficencies to spaceflight. What would 4th gen be, to get a 6-fold reduction in cost over BFR?

There would have to be some new technoligy to pull off gen 4. Perhaps some kind of practical fusion pulse drive, taking the Orion NPP concept for superheavy lift in a more enviromentally friendly direction?

In any case, I dont see gen 4 happening anywhere near as fast as gen 2 and gen 3, since gen 2 could have happened as early as the Delta Clipper days and gan 3 just relies on launch market expansion from gen 2.
Currently it looks to be an intermediary design between the F9/FH and BFR/BFS that will be the 3rd generation. It would be a full reusable SHLV (50+mt to LEO as a full reusable payload [12-25 persons crew capability to LEO]). This vehicle would also because of its smaller size would have about the same costs to operate as a vehicle BFR/BFS of 6 times larger. But it would also because of rapid resuablility higher reliability and other advances would reduce the $/kg etc from F9/FH by factor of 6 or more. BFR/BFS would then be the 4th generation just due to its size and further technological improvements over that of the intermediate.

Each generation the intermediate occurring in ~5 years and then the BFR/BFS being about 10 years out. The intermediate may be able the perform a scaled back Mars mission in the mid 2020s.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 07/05/2017 06:32 pm
Despite my excitement about the increased access to space thanks to reusability, I am still struggling to fully reconcile myself with the Business Case for full reusability, from a launch provider point of view.

Basically, if you take it to its logical conclusion where launch costs indeed drop to say 1% of their current level as per Elon's dream, you will end up with a tremendously high ratio between the initial cost of the asset (the reusable rocket) and the revenue earned per each individual launch.

So any payback calculation from a launch provider's point of view, for building or buying a single launch vehicle, will run into the hundreds of launches just to break even.

And that's before you even buy/construct a second or third vehicle to serve as backup in case of inevitable failure or repair requirements. Then you may be talking about a thousand launches just to earn back the initial cost of the asset.

And if you then factor in the inevitable loss of a launch vehicle at some point, this high asset cost/revenue ratio means the loss hits you much harder than a loss in the current launch environment would, from a financial point of view.

Anyway, it is exciting times for space enthusiasts like us, but it seems almost like Elon's greater goal of lowering the cost of access to space is killing the very golden goose that his company is earning its revenue from. Now, he can do that because he is the first in this space, but as I said before, unless you suddenly have tens of thousands of launches  per year - which seems a century away at least - the low margin high volume nature of the business model seems to discourage more entrants into this market. And seems to make profit prospects based on being purely a launch provider rather gloomy, in my view.

No doubt a lot of unexpected and exciting stuff will happen, but as it stands I am struggling to figure out the working business model for the end state that Elon has in mind.

If launch costs drop to zero, launch prices don't need to follow. 

Launch vendor has the opportunity to charge whatever the market will bear... in SpaceX's case, whatever an expanding market will bear.  Pragmatic pricing to achieve long term goals --> exactly what they are practicing today with a 10% discount while costs are dropping up to 90% for the booster (at 70% of the vehicle cost, this allows a 63% reduction in price if just breaking even at $62M-ish per launch).

...at the same time, launching ConnX at cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 07/05/2017 06:50 pm
...

4th generation reusable vehicles could be as little as 10 years into the future.

If the shuttle for 1st generation reusable and Falcon 9 2nd gen, introducing cost effective rapid reuse, I assume BFR would be 3rd gen, introducing bulk transport efficencies to spaceflight. What would 4th gen be, to get a 6-fold reduction in cost over BFR?

There would have to be some new technoligy to pull off gen 4. Perhaps some kind of practical fusion pulse drive, taking the Orion NPP concept for superheavy lift in a more enviromentally friendly direction?

In any case, I dont see gen 4 happening anywhere near as fast as gen 2 and gen 3, since gen 2 could have happened as early as the Delta Clipper days and gan 3 just relies on launch market expansion from gen 2.

4th generation could be where many launch service suppliers across the globe adopt BFR-like technology, and market expansion makes room for all of them.  Competition among the suppliers would keep prices falling and convenience/opportunity expanding.

Currently, SpaceX is the sole vendor for Gen 2 and will also start out that way for Gen 3 -- until Blue and others join the party.  If this doesn't light a fire under the demand side, then Gen 4 and subsequent become unlikely. 

New technology beyond chemical rocketry may follow exponential growth on demand side... no one will invest in it until then.  Physics will likely play a deciding role on getting out of the gravity well, though in-space options are much more viable.

Edit: Fixed quotes
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: rakaydos on 07/07/2017 10:33 am
...

4th generation reusable vehicles could be as little as 10 years into the future.

If the shuttle for 1st generation reusable and Falcon 9 2nd gen, introducing cost effective rapid reuse, I assume BFR would be 3rd gen, introducing bulk transport efficencies to spaceflight. What would 4th gen be, to get a 6-fold reduction in cost over BFR?

There would have to be some new technoligy to pull off gen 4. Perhaps some kind of practical fusion pulse drive, taking the Orion NPP concept for superheavy lift in a more enviromentally friendly direction?

In any case, I dont see gen 4 happening anywhere near as fast as gen 2 and gen 3, since gen 2 could have happened as early as the Delta Clipper days and gan 3 just relies on launch market expansion from gen 2.

4th generation could be where many launch service suppliers across the globe adopt BFR-like technology, and market expansion makes room for all of them.  Competition among the suppliers would keep prices falling and convenience/opportunity expanding.

Currently, SpaceX is the sole vendor for Gen 2 and will also start out that way for Gen 3 -- until Blue and others join the party.  If this doesn't light a fire under the demand side, then Gen 4 and subsequent become unlikely. 

New technology beyond chemical rocketry may follow exponential growth on demand side... no one will invest in it until then.  Physics will likely play a deciding role on getting out of the gravity well, though in-space options are much more viable.

Edit: Fixed quotes
While we dont know what or when gen 4 is, though, we know what gen 5 or 6 will be- Space Elevators and other launch megastructures.

Because that's what expansion of the launch market and development of better launch systems is leading toward- creating a market for and investment opportunity in bulk, low cost access to space. We all know the problems with building a space elevator now, but in 50 years or so, we may be building a Launch loop to service a growing lunar and martian service industry.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: QuantumG on 07/08/2017 01:04 am
Launch vendor has the opportunity to charge whatever the market will bear... in SpaceX's case, whatever an expanding market will bear.

For a while, sure. There's a limited window though. Eventually your market will just look at how you're doing it and do it themselves. If not them, won't your competitors?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 07/08/2017 02:46 am
Launch vendor has the opportunity to charge whatever the market will bear... in SpaceX's case, whatever an expanding market will bear.

For a while, sure. There's a limited window though. Eventually your market will just look at how you're doing it and do it themselves. If not them, won't your competitors?


Buffett talks about a moat. Others talk about "secret sauce"... different buzzwords, same or similar concepts. Doing something that can't be easily exactly replicated. If reuse were easy, everyone would already be doing it. The SpaceX secret sauce may in fact be that they don't have to answer to investors, and the SpaceX moat may be how far ahead they are, as AncientU related in the "who wil compete" thread, they have a triple squeeze going.

Will it last forever? Of course not. And Bezos, in particular, excels at "fast follower" so SpaceX had better not rest on their laurels. But their reach always exceeds their grasp, so no danger of that any time soon. As long as Elon isn't hit by a bus.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MP99 on 07/08/2017 11:56 am


Despite my excitement about the increased access to space thanks to reusability, I am still struggling to fully reconcile myself with the Business Case for full reusability, from a launch provider point of view.

[rest of the post omitted]

Your mistake is not taking the reliability of the launch vehicle into account.

If you have a 500M$ reusable BFR rocket, you are not going to sell a launch for a 1M$, unless you know that the rocket has less than 1/500 chance of failure. Preferably much less. Otherwise you will lose money. It's just plain statistics.

What you are going to do instead is start with a price slightly lower than an expendable launch, and slowly push it down as you go, while you figure out the reliability of your launch vehicle.

Which is exactly what SpaceX are doing.

This is a passive strategy. "I'll reduce my prices a bit, assuming the market continues much as today."

A more active strategy would be do as you suggest for the existing market, whilst trying to drive changes to the market. Once (assuming) block 5 is hitting 10+ flights per core without much maintenance, and fairings are being reused OK. Then perhaps offer 50-75% discounts for a minimum of 100 flights over five years if it offers the chance for them to get upper-stage reuse working.

Cheers, Martin

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MP99 on 07/08/2017 12:10 pm


While we dont know what or when gen 4 is, though, we know what gen 5 or 6 will be- Space Elevators and other launch megastructures.

Because that's what expansion of the launch market and development of better launch systems is leading toward- creating a market for and investment opportunity in bulk, low cost access to space. We all know the problems with building a space elevator now, but in 50 years or so, we may be building a Launch loop to service a growing lunar and martian service industry.

50 years out is very tricky to predict.

It's conceivable that by that time you'll just electronically upload your personality into a 3D printed android body (from local resources) on the planetary surface of your choice. Just need to get a small amount of hardware onto the surface to bootstrap the process.

Heinlein liked to use the analogy of buggy whip manufacturers. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10digi.html IE, planning to solve a problem that might not exist. These would also be the sorts of technologies that would have spacecraft assembled in orbit from EG asteroid resources.

Cheers, Martin
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 07/08/2017 01:16 pm
Launch vendor has the opportunity to charge whatever the market will bear... in SpaceX's case, whatever an expanding market will bear.

For a while, sure. There's a limited window though. Eventually your market will just look at how you're doing it and do it themselves. If not them, won't your competitors?

How to combat this: two months before the first competitor's first flight, you drop your prices 40% below theirs.
There is no need to dramatically lower prices *today* when your nearest realistic competitor on your current price is at least 2 years away from flying.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Mader Levap on 07/08/2017 01:58 pm
It's conceivable that by that time you'll just electronically upload your personality into a 3D printed android body (from local resources) on the planetary surface of your choice. Just need to get a small amount of hardware onto the surface to bootstrap the process.

First, "3D printed android body (from local resources) on the planetary surface of your choice" most probably won't be possible in 50 years. I guess last few centuries of failed predictions from futurologists and futurists will not teach anything for certain people. Technological progress is unpredictable in long term.

Take computers. No one at beginning predicted advent and permeating presence of small personal computers, including one in your pocket. There were visions of planet-sized (or at least city-sized) supercomputers. Always bigger, not smaller.

Predicting something more than few decades in future is always crapshoot, fuelled by dreams and wishful thinking. It is indeed very tricky, but there is difference between "conceivable" and something that may actually happen.

Second, there is no "upload". You can, at most, create copy of you. You yourself will be still here in meatspace.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 07/08/2017 02:08 pm
Launch vendor has the opportunity to charge whatever the market will bear... in SpaceX's case, whatever an expanding market will bear.

For a while, sure. There's a limited window though. Eventually your market will just look at how you're doing it and do it themselves. If not them, won't your competitors?


Buffett talks about a moat. Others talk about "secret sauce"... different buzzwords, same or similar concepts. Doing something that can't be easily exactly replicated. If reuse were easy, everyone would already be doing it. The SpaceX secret sauce may in fact be that they don't have to answer to investors, and the SpaceX moat may be how far ahead they are, as AncientU related in the "who wil compete" thread, they have a triple squeeze going.

Will it last forever? Of course not. And Bezos, in particular, excels at "fast follower" so SpaceX had better not rest on their laurels. But their reach always exceeds their grasp, so no danger of that any time soon. As long as Elon isn't hit by a bus.
I object to Blue Origin being a "fast follower." They started earlier and were working on VTVL back when SpaceX still thought parachutes were the answer.

Blue Origin is a "slow starter" not a "fast follower."

Of course, they also have a billion or so of free investment money every year, so they're not going anywhere and will almost certainly succeed. Eventually.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/08/2017 04:36 pm
Reusability is the pushing of costs all to the front of the line into development and manufacture of hardware and reduction of costs of operation. This requires a lot of early funding to accomplish. Which SpaceX has managed to do and BO certainly will be able to do. But others are limiting their funds during these phases, both commercial and government LV projects funding. Which will limit the effectiveness of the LV's to compete in a free market against SpaceX's and BO's developed LV's.

This is another element of reusability effect on costs is where and when the costs for an reusable LV system is spent vs an expendable system.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: TrevorMonty on 07/08/2017 09:17 pm
Reusability is the pushing of costs all to the front of the line into development and manufacture of hardware and reduction of costs of operation. This requires a lot of early funding to accomplish. Which SpaceX has managed to do and BO certainly will be able to do. But others are limiting their funds during these phases, both commercial and government LV projects funding. Which will limit the effectiveness of the LV's to compete in a free market against SpaceX's and BO's developed LV's.

This is another element of reusability effect on costs is where and when the costs for an reusable LV system is spent vs an expendable system.
The large development costs upfront for RLV are why ULA are going for SMART partial reuse. Lower development costs, good chance of it working first time. While it may not be able to match F9R for price it should be competitive against Ariane 6, Proton and OA NGLV.





Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: butters on 07/08/2017 10:21 pm
Reusability is the pushing of costs all to the front of the line into development and manufacture of hardware and reduction of costs of operation. This requires a lot of early funding to accomplish. Which SpaceX has managed to do and BO certainly will be able to do. But others are limiting their funds during these phases, both commercial and government LV projects funding. Which will limit the effectiveness of the LV's to compete in a free market against SpaceX's and BO's developed LV's.

This is another element of reusability effect on costs is where and when the costs for an reusable LV system is spent vs an expendable system.
The large development costs upfront for RLV are why ULA are going for SMART partial reuse. Lower development costs, good chance of it working first time. While it may not be able to match F9R for price it should be competitive against Ariane 6, Proton and OA NGLV.

The problem is, SpaceX and Blue Origin could easily become like Boeing and Airbus in the airline industry. In an industry where flight rate amortization dominates unit cost calculations, how many RLV competitors are economically sustainable? SpaceX and Blue will exploit their first-mover advantage to aggressively gobble up market share because they know that flight rate will drive down their unit costs while starving out their legacy rivals.

SpaceX enjoyed the luxury of iterating toward reusability while still undercutting their competition. Others will not be so fortunate. ULA plans (hopes?) to develop a rocket with substantially less performance than New Glenn, based on the same booster engine, and they only aspire to recover the engines, whereas Blue will recover the whole booster stage. Smart? More like the art of the possible, where the possible is clearly not sufficient.

Enter this industry with a willingness to burn billions of dollars or don't even bother. The short history of spaceflight is littered with projects which tried and failed to do reusable spaceflight on a modest development budget. Musk was willing to bankrupt himself and nearly did. Bezos is comfortable spending a billion dollars, year after year. They're the ones who are succeeding.

As long as there was nobody willing to make this kind of massive upfront investment, others were free to dip their toes in the water and "invest responsibly." But now there are two entrepreneurs who have anted up in a big way. Two strong rivals can be enough remake an entire industry.  Does anybody else have the money and ambition to buy in?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: gospacex on 07/08/2017 11:18 pm
ULA plans (hopes?) to develop a rocket with substantially less performance than New Glenn, based on the same booster engine, and they only aspire to recover the engines, whereas Blue will recover the whole booster stage. Smart? More like the art of the possible, where the possible is clearly not sufficient.

I actually don't understand what ULA is doing. Using an engine from BO plain does not make sense.

When BO starts reliably launching their own LV, why on Earth would they continue to sell their engine to a competitor? Out of their heart goodness? Surely not. At best (for ULA), they would continue to sell it at a premium, much above their internal cost. At "not best", they just sink ULA whenever they want by simply refusing to prolong the contract.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 07/09/2017 07:28 pm
ULA plans (hopes?) to develop a rocket with substantially less performance than New Glenn, based on the same booster engine, and they only aspire to recover the engines, whereas Blue will recover the whole booster stage. Smart? More like the art of the possible, where the possible is clearly not sufficient.

I actually don't understand what ULA is doing. Using an engine from BO plain does not make sense.

When BO starts reliably launching their own LV, why on Earth would they continue to sell their engine to a competitor? Out of their heart goodness? Surely not. At best (for ULA), they would continue to sell it at a premium, much above their internal cost. At "not best", they just sink ULA whenever they want by simply refusing to prolong the contract.
This engine contract from BO to ULA is beginning to be OT for this thread. The general point is that BO's sell of BE-4's to ULA gives them economic and political advantages. Engines revenue predates launches by easily 2 years. So as soon as the BE-4 goes into production BO will start receiving revenue for then 2 years prior to Vulcan or NG ever doing a first flight.

As far as NG vs Vulcan. Vulcan will be certified nearly right out of the blocks for DOD contract awards. Would just need to show the vehicle works as advertised. NG would have to take the longer road up to as much as 4 years after its first flight to be able to be awarded DOD contracts. So NG would not be in direct competition to Vulcan for up to 4 years. At that time BO would have sold to ULA >$200M in engines. If once NG is certified to fly DOD missions ULA goes Chapter 7 then BO could then purchases ULA assets on pennies on the dollar (no one else would probably even be interested in the assets). These assets would be as many as 32 BE-4 engines and possibly 10-16 ACES US that could be flown on top of NG. These ACES stages could even be using the BE3U. If not then BO conversion of the ACES to use the BE3U would give BO a high performance US at reasonable possibly even eventually at low manufacture cost. Because the makeup of ACES lends itself to mass production economies of scale.manufacture costs.

So the cases that have been discussed are not likely to take place for up to 6-8 years from now. But the general item is that without putting the money now into the development of systems that can compete in the LV price market 6-8 years from now the entity will go bankrupt from lack of sales.

Ultimately the Market even as dysfunctional as it is for the LV industry will determine the successful LV designs not the current self serving political goals pushing certain designs. Currently that market looks to be turning toward the complete reuse of boosters, not some part of the booster, and a a gas and go scenario for booster use.

In the world where boosters are rapid reusable but US are mostly expended, ULA could then become a supplier of ACES stages to BO for use on NG and NA.  They would no longer be a competitor LV but simply a "parts" supplier.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 07/10/2017 07:32 am
I am quite interested in the threads topic but it seems to find little to no bases for discussion. Can we have some hard numbers please?

I would like to know what a flight of the F9 costs, including all launch fees and payments by the customer. I think I have seen something similar in the past, but can't remember where or the details. We know:

Cost of F9 S1 is 70% of the hardware
Cost of F9 Fairing is 10% of the hardware
Cost of F9 S2 is 20% of the hardware (by deduction)

But thats just the hardware and not the entire cost of a flight to the customer. There are lots of fees and processes involved that are not the booster hardware and I dont know them all. Once we have settled down these numbers and maybe can predict the true cost to a customer of an F9 Bock 5 with 10 reuses each booster (lets be conservative), we can deduce what reduction in price is possible. Once we have that we can answer the threads question what the effect truely is. And also we can predict what a fully reusable system will be able to do.

For each reusable launch we have (please complete the list!):
* F9 throwaway hardware cost
* F9 reusable hardware amortization cost
* F9 refurbishment cost
* Launch fees (Range, FAA, Launch site services, etc.)
* Insurance fees
* Payload processing
* SpaceX Profit

Once this all is settled and numbered, we can see how low a price SpaceX can push the F9 / FH architecture.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 07/10/2017 02:32 pm
I am quite interested in the threads topic but it seems to find little to no bases for discussion. Can we have some hard numbers please?

I would like to know what a flight of the F9 costs, including all launch fees and payments by the customer. I think I have seen something similar in the past, but can't remember where or the details. We know:

Cost of F9 S1 is 70% of the hardware
Cost of F9 Fairing is 10% of the hardware
Cost of F9 S2 is 20% of the hardware (by deduction)

But thats just the hardware and not the entire cost of a flight to the customer. There are lots of fees and processes involved that are not the booster hardware and I dont know them all. Once we have settled down these numbers and maybe can predict the true cost to a customer of an F9 Bock 5 with 10 reuses each booster (lets be conservative), we can deduce what reduction in price is possible. Once we have that we can answer the threads question what the effect truely is. And also we can predict what a fully reusable system will be able to do.

For each reusable launch we have (please complete the list!):
* F9 throwaway hardware cost
* F9 reusable hardware amortization cost
* F9 refurbishment cost
* Launch fees (Range, FAA, Launch site services, etc.)
* Insurance fees
* Payload processing
* SpaceX Profit

Once this all is settled and numbered, we can see how low a price SpaceX can push the F9 / FH architecture.

Musk did say the booster was up to 70% of the cost (not price) of a "flight", not the "rocket" or the "hardware":

Quote
The most expensive part of a whole mission from a launch standpoint is the boost stage. It represents, depending on how you count it, up to 70% of the cost of the flight.

https://github.com/robbak/SES10-post-launch-conference/blob/master/SES10-press-transcript.txt

From the same source, the fairing (internal cost?) is about $6m:
Quote
I was like, "Guys, imagine you had 6 million dollars in cash in a pallet flying through the air

And he threw out some round numbers in the same conference:
Quote
So you can imagine that if the cost of the rocket is say 60 million dollars - really we're not re-using the whole thing, but - with the fairing, assuming fairing reuse works out, and as we optimise the cost of the reuse of the booster, really looking at maybe 3/4 of the rocket cost dropping by an order of magnitude, maybe more.

Now I don't think the F9 internal marginal cost to SpaceX is $60M, that has to include overhead for all their operating costs and profits for a no-frills launch for the list price of $62M to be realistic. But his does suggest that the fairing+booster is in the neighborhood of $46M. So if fairing cost is $6M, that puts the booster cost at $40M, which correlates with "up to" 70% of a ~$60M flight cost.

Edit: My take on each of these numbers:
These only apply to reused flights with a discount, not recovered flights at full price:
* F9 throwaway hardware cost - $10m/flight, fixed cost of upper stage only
* F9 reusable hardware amortization cost - $20M, goes away in 2 years
* F9 refurbishment cost - $2M/flight, will drop to $50k/flight

These are current costs which we know add up to about $7M for a basic launch:
* Launch fees (Range, FAA, Launch site services, etc.) -
* Insurance fees -
* Payload processing -
* SpaceX Profit -

And don't forget fuel, which is $200k per launch.

They will all drop per launch as reliability and volume improve, but for now let's assume they are constant. This gives a hardware cost of $16.6M/flight including refurb and a new upper stage every time: [(40+6)/10+10+2]. Add in the $20M profit SpaceX needs to recoup development of reuse, and the fixed $7M in fees and processing, and fuel and you get a total of $43.8M/flight over the next 2 years.

Over the next couple years, the cost of development will be paid off (it might be already, depending how they accounted for it). The cost of refurbishment will drop dramatically, so hardware costs would be $14.7M [(40+6)/10+10+0.05]. The fees, processing, and profit will probably decline, but that might take more than 2 years Let's figure that's still $7M, and fuel is $200k. So by mid-2019, the price of a launch could be as low as $21.9M.

But the eventual goal for F9 is hundreds of launches per booster, and hundreds of launches per year. Fees and processing will be streamlined and cost-reduced though volume, I'd estimate by half to $3.5M. Profits per launch will be much lower, though total revenues will be much higher due to higher flight rates. So we're looking at hardware costs of $10.5M/flight [(40+6)/100+10+0.05], and total per flight costs of $14.2M. I think that's the ultimate limit of F9 without upper stage reuse.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 07/11/2017 01:59 pm
On Quora Jim Cantrell claims F9 booster re-use is primarily about increasing launch frequency to improve cash flow, as well as perfecting re-use technology for Mars:

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket# (https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket#)

Claims very few boosters will re-used more than '3 or so' times, so seems to be ignoring (or doesn't believe?) SpaceX's claims about block 5 aim of 10 uses without refurbishment.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RotoSequence on 07/11/2017 02:10 pm
On Quora Jim Cantrell claims F9 booster re-use is primarily about increasing launch frequency to improve cash flow, as well as perfecting re-use technology for Mars:

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket# (https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket#)

Claims very few boosters will re-used more than '3 or so' times, so seems to be ignoring (or doesn't believe?) SpaceX's claims about block 5 aim of 10 uses without refurbishment.

As a SpaceX fan, I don't know if I believe them either. Those landing legs have to deal with severely off nominal landing conditions and they're only afforded one consumable component.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Coastal Ron on 07/11/2017 02:20 pm
On Quora Jim Cantrell claims F9 booster re-use is primarily about increasing launch frequency to improve cash flow, as well as perfecting re-use technology for Mars:

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket# (https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket#)

Claims very few boosters will re-used more than '3 or so' times, so seems to be ignoring (or doesn't believe?) SpaceX's claims about block 5 aim of 10 uses without refurbishment.

As a reference, Jim Cantrell was one of the original SpaceX employees, but left in September of 2002 - so well before even the Falcon 1 was finished. So he would not have any inside, first-hand knowledge about what SpaceX is doing wrt reusability.

What we have been hearing is that the current Block 3/4 would only be capable of '3 or so' reuses, but that Block 5 of the Falcon 9 should be capable of more than 10 reuses without refurbishment.

So I'm not sure what to make of his viewpoints...
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: RedLineTrain on 07/11/2017 02:39 pm
Those views don't seem to match up with SpaceX's stated annual manufacturing rate -- Cantrell suggests 10-12 while Shotwell states 20+.  Reusability with Blocks 3 and 4 would seem to allow a launch rate that is 2x or 3x 20+.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 07/11/2017 02:44 pm
On Quora Jim Cantrell claims F9 booster re-use is primarily about increasing launch frequency to improve cash flow, as well as perfecting re-use technology for Mars:

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket# (https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-SpaceX-save-by-reusing-a-Falcon-rocket#)

Claims very few boosters will re-used more than '3 or so' times, so seems to be ignoring (or doesn't believe?) SpaceX's claims about block 5 aim of 10 uses without refurbishment.

Here's the crux of his argument:

Quote from: Jim Cantrell
If you go through the R&D costs of developing a reusable launch vehicle, the opportunity costs (in terms of fuel used for return and the lost revenue opportunity for more payload to orbit) of returning the launcher first stage, and the costs of refurbishment between flights, generally accepted practice shows that you have to re-use the booster or launch vehicle 5–10 times before you make your money back if you account for all the costs.

So he's citing three reasons why they have to fly 5-10 times before saving any money:

1) R&D cost of developing reuse
2) Opportunity cost of the extra fuel and lower payload to orbit
3) Refurbishment cost between flights.

In the particular case of SpaceX, these arguments have been rebutted many times.

1) The R&D cost is a) already paid and b) can be recovered over the entire operational life of the rocket family. For a company that has already developed reusability, that's not an ongoing cost and doesn't factor into the cost differential between reusing and expending a rocket. The actual recovery of the cost depends on many future launches, so it's impossible to strictly ascribe a segment of the cost to a particular launch - it depends on the financial model used.

2) Pure $/kg to orbit comparisons are fundamentally flawed because payloads aren't fungible. The majority of payloads are sized so that SpaceX can launch them and recover the rocket, and so the payload reduction is completely irrelevant. The cost of fuel is negligible, and SpaceX can still launch large payloads expendable. (There is a similar argument that a smaller cheaper expendable rocket could launch the same payload to the same orbit, but this ignores the fact that such a rocket doesn't exist and actually does have a real payload reduction - it can't use recovery margins in an off-nominal mission or to lift a bigger payload).

3) Refurbishment is a real problem for many reusable systems, both real and proposed. It was the single biggest issue keeping the Shuttle from reaching it's initial goals. But SpaceX is working towards reducing refurbishment to being less than fuel costs, and even if they only get within 10x fuel costs there is potential for very significant savings, 50 to 70% of per-flight costs.

His arguments are somewhat applicable to investment-limited companies that have to show a profit in the near term while attempting to develop reuse. They are much less applicable to a privately company that has a solid financial standing and is willing to put both all its profits and some investment money into developing something with a long-term payoff.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ludus on 07/14/2017 03:25 am
ULA plans (hopes?) to develop a rocket with substantially less performance than New Glenn, based on the same booster engine, and they only aspire to recover the engines, whereas Blue will recover the whole booster stage. Smart? More like the art of the possible, where the possible is clearly not sufficient.

I actually don't understand what ULA is doing. Using an engine from BO plain does not make sense.

When BO starts reliably launching their own LV, why on Earth would they continue to sell their engine to a competitor? Out of their heart goodness? Surely not. At best (for ULA), they would continue to sell it at a premium, much above their internal cost. At "not best", they just sink ULA whenever they want by simply refusing to prolong the contract.

ULA needs the engine as a replacement for the RD-180 on Vulcan and in that role it can't be part of a fully reusable Booster. ULA doesn't even plan to try their "smart" reuse of just the engines until years after they start flying them expendable. So Blue Origin gets to make money much sooner than flying New Glenn, scale their engine production up more, and embed themselves in the conventional Space Industry with an Alabama factory and consequent political support. ULA will just throw away the engines with each use for years. When it does eventually attempt reuse it will be a partial and unproven method. Meanwhile Blue Origin will apply the same engines that are partially subsidized by ULA to its own fully reusable New Glenn, years before, while ULA is still throwing them away with no prospect of really competing on cost.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MikeAtkinson on 07/14/2017 05:06 am
(There is a similar argument that a smaller cheaper expendable rocket could launch the same payload to the same orbit, but this ignores the fact that such a rocket doesn't exist and actually does have a real payload reduction - it can't use recovery margins in an off-nominal mission or to lift a bigger payload).

A smaller cheap launcher does/did exist. F9 v1.1, in a apples to apples comparison SpaceX determined that going reusable reduced costs.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 07/14/2017 05:19 am
A smaller cheap launcher does/did exist. F9 v1.1, in a apples to apples comparison SpaceX determined that going reusable reduced costs.

How do you know the 1.1 was cheaper? I think it was said that production became more efficient with design changes.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 07/14/2017 01:00 pm
(There is a similar argument that a smaller cheaper expendable rocket could launch the same payload to the same orbit, but this ignores the fact that such a rocket doesn't exist and actually does have a real payload reduction - it can't use recovery margins in an off-nominal mission or to lift a bigger payload).

A smaller cheap launcher does/did exist. F9 v1.1, in a apples to apples comparison SpaceX determined that going reusable reduced costs.

I doubt that v1.1 was cheaper per launch to build or operate. The booster is almost identically sized, and the rocket uses the same engines throughout. The second stage was slightly smaller, but I doubt that the tank stretch added a significant cost to v1.2. And subcooling probably didn't add much in terms of marginal hardware cost (it mostly added development cost).

v1.0 might have been lower marginal cost, as it was about half the size and was initially priced cheaper. But v1.0 payload to GTO was about 30% less the v1.2 with ASDS recovery and less than half of v1.2 Block 5 fully expendable. v1.0 fully expended was sub 4 tonnes and not in a sweet spot for GTO launches, while v1.2 with recovery is in at good performance level of 5.0 to 5.5 tonnes.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: MikeAtkinson on 07/14/2017 01:34 pm
A smaller cheap launcher does/did exist. F9 v1.1, in a apples to apples comparison SpaceX determined that going reusable reduced costs.

How do you know the 1.1 was cheaper? I think it was said that production became more efficient with design changes.

I never said it was cheaper, just cheap.

The point I was making is that the argument, that you could produce a smaller, cheaper non-reusable launcher, is directly contradicted by SpaceX. When they wanted to enhance F9 v1.1 they had three options,
1. basically leave it as is, just try and make it cheaper.
2. improve performance, but  leave as a non-reusable (thus saving a lot of money getting reusability working).
3. the path they have taken.

SpaceX with full access to cost, performance and reliability data decided that reusability was the lowest cost solution. So a direct apples to apples comparison shows that it is not possible to have a cheaper expendable rocket that can launch equivalent payloads, at least not in a design similar to F9.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: envy887 on 07/14/2017 02:21 pm
A smaller cheap launcher does/did exist. F9 v1.1, in a apples to apples comparison SpaceX determined that going reusable reduced costs.

How do you know the 1.1 was cheaper? I think it was said that production became more efficient with design changes.

I never said it was cheaper, just cheap.

The point I was making is that the argument, that you could produce a smaller, cheaper non-reusable launcher, is directly contradicted by SpaceX. When they wanted to enhance F9 v1.1 they had three options,
1. basically leave it as is, just try and make it cheaper.
2. improve performance, but  leave as a non-reusable (thus saving a lot of money getting reusability working).
3. the path they have taken.

SpaceX with full access to cost, performance and reliability data decided that reusability was the lowest cost solution. So a direct apples to apples comparison shows that it is not possible to have a cheaper expendable rocket that can launch equivalent payloads, at least not in a design similar to F9.

v1.1 was already reusable, but I think your point applies just as well to v1.0 vs v1.1.

 The v1.0 was already small, and cheap enough as an expendable. SpaceX decided it would be cheaper per flight to make it bigger and reusable in v1.1, and they doubled down on that move with v1.2.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lar on 07/14/2017 03:17 pm
1.0 Didn't serve the market though. Not enough payload to GTO.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Lars-J on 07/14/2017 04:11 pm
The v1.0 was already small, and cheap enough as an expendable. SpaceX decided it would be cheaper per flight to make it bigger and reusable in v1.1, and they doubled down on that move with v1.2.

The v1.0 was very complex to build (they only ever built and launched two in a year - a total of 5 over three years), and had not so great performance. With the experience they now had, they went back to the drawing board and redesigned it from the ground up - v1.1.

This is one of the bravest and best decisions SpaceX ever did. The v1.1 was simpler and more reliable, easier to build, and had double the performance of the v1.0. (and even more now with v1.2/FT) Their launch cadence immediately jumped much higher. AND as a bonus... It also added re-usability features. (although not realized until v1.2)

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: sanman on 08/23/2017 09:46 pm
So I'd like to know how many times will the typical Falcon booster stage get re-used? How many flights in total can we expect from a typical Falcon booster? That's obviously going to be the biggest determinant on cost.


So far I've heard people here say that a booster would likely only be re-flown a couple of times max - so basically 3 flights total for a booster.
Musk and Bezos have thrown around the 747 analogy, saying that plane tickets would be a lot more expensive if you had to throw away the plane after each flight. Well, they'd still be pretty darn expensive if you have to throw away the plane after just 3 flights.

Are there any plans to go beyond just a couple of re-flights, and have something that can fly, say 10 times?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Ictogan on 08/23/2017 09:55 pm
So I'd like to know how many times will the typical Falcon booster stage get re-used? How many flights in total can we expect from a typical Falcon booster? That's obviously going to be the biggest determinant on cost.


So far I've heard people here say that a booster would likely only be re-flown a couple of times max - so basically 3 flights total for a booster.
Musk and Bezos have thrown around the 747 analogy, saying that plane tickets would be a lot more expensive if you had to throw away the plane after each flight. Well, they'd still be pretty darn expensive if you have to throw away the plane after just 3 flights.

Are there any plans to go beyond just a couple of re-flights, and have something that can fly, say 10 times?
I think someone from SX said that it would be max 3 flights for block 3 cores and about 10 flights(without major refurbishment) for block 5 cores.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oiorionsbelt on 08/23/2017 11:05 pm

I think someone from SX said that it would be max 3 flights for block 3 cores and about 10 flights(without major refurbishment) for block 5 cores.
It was Gwynne Shotwell on the Space Show and she said, it was more like inspection than refurbishment and then go fly and they hope to re fly the block 5's a dozen or so times.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 08/24/2017 04:27 pm
After a while the biggest costs in refurbishment will not be labor but the building to store the boosters awaiting launch. 1 day of one person is ~$500 including overhead costs (management, support, benefits, etc.). Even at a crew of 10 for 1 week the total labor costs would be only $25,000. A crew of 20 for 2 weeks is just $100,000.

Added:
The estimate for floor-space costs is ~$5,000/month per booster for storage or work-space. A 6 months of storage could end being more than all total labor in "refurbishment".
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: sanman on 08/26/2017 10:30 pm
How do the costs go up when making the vehicle more and more reusable (ie. increasing the re-flight capability)?

Is there some magic number with an asymptote line, so that the costs skyrocket dramatically as you try to push the reusability (number of re-flights) beyond a certain point?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 08/26/2017 11:00 pm
How do the costs go up when making the vehicle more and more reusable (ie. increasing the re-flight capability)?

Is there some magic number with an asymptote line, so that the costs skyrocket dramatically as you try to push the reusability (number of re-flights) beyond a certain point?

I imagine that would be very dependant on the rocket design. We know that Elon's original target for a 12 hour turnaround time between launches of the same booster would have required a fundamental redesign, whereas 24 hours didn't. I would expect a correlation between turnaround time and number of reflights.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 08/28/2017 06:46 am
SpaceX with full access to cost, performance and reliability data decided that reusability was the lowest cost solution. So a direct apples to apples comparison shows that it is not possible to have a cheaper expendable rocket that can launch equivalent payloads, at least not in a design similar to F9.
That's one explanation of their behavior.

Another is that the market for that size of LV and the rate at which launches in that market were sold is too small for them to carry the expense of a 2nd production line (even a partial one, sharing as many parts as possible with F9).

Had someone come along and said "We'll buy your whole F1 mfg line, and all the R&D data" that would have put someone into the launch services business without the R&D costs and at a point in the market SX were no longer planning to compete in.  :(

IRL that didn't happen because AFAIK a)No such company contacted them and b) Even if they had so much of the F1 mfg hardware was re-assigned to F9 they would have stripped a fair bit of the factory. Nothing they couldn't have replaced, but at considerable cost and time.  :( 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: mvpel on 08/31/2017 06:56 pm
Their long-term aim is at least 100 reflights of each booster core, and I heard this directly from the SpaceX VP of business development at the CRS-8 launch viewing on the OMB-II verandah.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 08/31/2017 10:24 pm
Their long-term aim is at least 100 reflights of each booster core, and I heard this directly from the SpaceX VP of business development at the CRS-8 launch viewing on the OMB-II verandah.
Well so far they Shotwell on the Space Show said they are looking to do 3 launches off a booster and V5 will be good for 10 without major work.

So either V5 will do that with a lot of refurb work above "inspection" or they are at least another generation to go from 10 to 100.  :(

TBH I think there will be at least 1, and possible 2 generations of F9 before they achieve that, possibly including another upgrade of the PICAX ablative, although apparently previous upgrades have focused on lowering the unit cost of the material. [EDIT rather than lowering erosion rates or density. The former is always good, the latter normally lowers heat conduction into the structure you're trying to protect. Unfortunately they tend to conflict, making ablative development tricky ]

Frankly I don't care what the reusability effects on costs are for SX. :(

I care on what the reusability effects on customers prices will be instead.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: JamesH65 on 09/01/2017 02:30 pm
Their long-term aim is at least 100 reflights of each booster core, and I heard this directly from the SpaceX VP of business development at the CRS-8 launch viewing on the OMB-II verandah.
Well so far they Shotwell on the Space Show said they are looking to do 3 launches off a booster and V5 will be good for 10 without major

So either V5 will do that with a lot of refurb work above "inspection" or they are at least another generation to go from 10 to 100.  :(

I expect refurb after each ten, retirement after 100. No-one (except SpaceX) has ANY idea of the refurb costs after each ten flights. Forgive another car analogy, but I'd expect the refurb to be on the order of a new set of brake pads. Not an every day occurrence, but certainly not a transmission rebuild which is often not cost effective.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/01/2017 02:54 pm
I expect refurb after each ten, retirement after 100.
Both Shotwell and Musk have been very quiet on refurb procedures. SX spent a very long time getting the first couple of boosters ready for re-flight. I'm not sure they actually have any refurb procedures worked out for this generation, although I'm sure they learned all (nearly all?) they need to ensure the next generation can be done fairly straightforwardly.

Quote from: JamesH65
No-one (except SpaceX) has ANY idea of the refurb costs after each ten flights.
True, and that represents a significant (but difficult to value) piece of IP for SX. Although I suspect the technicians involved could give a fair guestimate.

Quote from: JamesH65
Forgive another car analogy, but I'd expect the refurb to be on the order of a new set of brake pads. Not an every day occurrence, but certainly not a transmission rebuild which is often not cost effective.
I suspect more like what happens if there are a dozen brake pads and they are all glued in and you have to scrape them off before re-gluing the new set.  :(

Time will tell if the current, or the next, or the next, or the next generation of F9 will deliver that 100 reuse target. If the current hardware can already deliver it I'd expected a much more positive presentation by now.

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 09/01/2017 08:12 pm
Their long-term aim is at least 100 reflights of each booster core, and I heard this directly from the SpaceX VP of business development at the CRS-8 launch viewing on the OMB-II verandah.
Well so far they Shotwell on the Space Show said they are looking to do 3 launches off a booster and V5 will be good for 10 without major

So either V5 will do that with a lot of refurb work above "inspection" or they are at least another generation to go from 10 to 100.  :(

I expect refurb after each ten, retirement after 100. No-one (except SpaceX) has ANY idea of the refurb costs after each ten flights. Forgive another car analogy, but I'd expect the refurb to be on the order of a new set of brake pads. Not an every day occurrence, but certainly not a transmission rebuild which is often not cost effective.
Going with the brake pad analogy the items that are the ones receiving the most degradation from use are the engines, grid fins, and landing legs. I would expect significant replacement (re-manufacturing) of these parts. Basically replace all the engines, the grid fins and legs. Send them off for evaluation to determine if they can be individually refurbished or just cheaper to scrap. The then refurbished stage has new or like new engines, grid fins and legs. The other item the tank and avionics are such that failed avionics are replaced as needed regardless of what the flight number. The tank if down checked, then the stage is basically scrapped by removing all the usable parts putting them back into inventory. That can also happen at anytime or even the stage (tank) could fly more than 100 times. The real nature of re-flying tanks multiple times is not well known (except for the the two flights is almost completely unknown).

There is just a lot of unknowns.
Info is such that F9 can reliably do at least 2 flights. The refurb time from info on last re-flight was 2 months with new info that should be forthcoming on the next that give light of whether the time and manpower/ related costs are leveled out or continue to decline.
This then represents that the cost/flight for the 1st stage is currently at ~60% of the manufacturing cost of a new stage. Once stages fly 3 times that could lower to ~35%. At 5 times <25%. At 10 times <15%. At 20 times <10% (including extensive refurbish work at 10 flights). Past 20 flights there will not be much lowering of the costs. Just the logistical availability of stages to support higher flight rates
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/02/2017 09:57 am
Going with the brake pad analogy the items that are the ones receiving the most degradation from use are the engines, grid fins, and landing legs. I would expect significant replacement (re-manufacturing) of these parts. Basically replace all the engines, the grid fins and legs. Send them off for evaluation to determine if they can be individually refurbished or just cheaper to scrap. The then refurbished stage has new or like new engines, grid fins and legs. The other item the tank and avionics are such that failed avionics are replaced as needed regardless of what the flight number. The tank if down checked, then the stage is basically scrapped by removing all the usable parts putting them back into inventory. That can also happen at anytime or even the stage (tank) could fly more than 100 times. The real nature of re-flying tanks multiple times is not well known (except for the the two flights is almost completely unknown).
That sounds about right. One thing you may not have factored in is how much data the avionics can collect. In aircraft the addition of maintenance data recorders, capturing many more channels than the crash rated "black boxes," shifted the whole basis of maintenance from scheduled to "when necessary" or "when predicted" once data patterns showing impending faults started to be recognized.

I think the subtle point is in recognizing which sensors you can afford to remove from the stage because they are not improving your ability to predict its reliability and are therefor redundant excess mass.

I'd expect SX have done a lot of work on this. I presume they continuously monitor the stage till it lands but I don't think this has near the bandwidth to transmit in real time all the data they are collecting.

Little by little they should be building a minimal list of sensors (above what are already needed) that predict stage and engine health with high accuracy, although I suspect this is still a "work in progress,"  and will continue to be for some time.

Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy
There is just a lot of unknowns.
Info is such that F9 can reliably do at least 2 flights. The refurb time from info on last re-flight was 2 months with new info that should be forthcoming on the next that give light of whether the time and manpower/ related costs are leveled out or continue to decline.
True, and SX is currently the only company in the world with any actual data on what the real issues are, in the same way that Air France and British Airways were the only airlines that acquired actual data on what it takes to really operate a large M2.2 passenger aircraft over decades.

It's difficult to put a price on the data, but it's very hard to acquire.

I think you're spot on with replacing what can be replaced or if the structure is gone then salvaging everything that can for refurbishment and reinstallation on the next one.

My instinct with refurbishment is the problem areas are the ones you can't easily remove. The structure itself and any TPS tha's been directly bonded to it.

Ideally SX have identified the main areas of TPS erosion. The really simple answer is "let it happen." IOW put on enough to survive X flights and when it's too eroded the stage is scrapped.
Option 2 is put it on removable panels. Literally like a brake pad.

But that adds weight and they may be in awkward corners. Historically the X-15 programme did some tests with repairing the spray-on ablator they used for some of the higher speed flights (M6.15 IIRC). Rather than strip right back to the bare metal they were able to strip to virgin ablator and roughen the surface well enough that a fresh layer would key into it and bond well, but the ablator was a PITA to use.  :(

Today, given all the geometry is in a big CAD model, I'd guess some kind of machine with one or more router heads and sensors to scan the surface, find the damage layer depth and machine it off, or all the way down to the metal.

The other biggie has got to be the structure, especially what the landing does to it. 
In principal all landings (sea or land, calm sea or rough weather) are the same , but IRL that's simply not true. The legs can only damp so much of the loads and over time some members of the "fleet" (of boosters) will have had an easier time of it than others.

AFAIK outside of SX I don't think anyone has any idea of what that does to the structural integrity of the stage. I'm pretty sure that a barge landing is even worse than a combat aircraft landing on a carrier.

I don't know of any other situation where people slam large partially filled light weight tanks (at quite high speed) into a fixed stop.
I have a dim recollection (from Clarkes "Ignition" ?) about a suspected slosh induced explosion which was simulated by using an instrumented,  partly loaded tanker car and driving it into a set of buffers.  Full tanks were no problem, but the partly filled ones had the liquid compress the vapour to ignition point. The air in the car did the rest.
LOX and RP1 are much more tolerant of such behavior, but I don't think anyone really checked what happens to the tanks.  :(

personally I'd also love to know what happens to the engines.

The gas generator normally runs highly fuel rich to keep the temperatures down and pictures I've seen of old GG rocket engines suggest it's pretty smoky. OK for a few test firings and then one shot use but what does that do to the turbine blades over many test and operating runs? Pretty much what a car with an oil leak into the  cylinders does to the pistons?
AFAIK SOP is LRE turbine blades are uncooled, but all big gas turbine blades are cooled, certainly anything as high a thrust as a Merlin would be. This is legacy of the missile/ICBM design process.  My instinct is cool the blades and run leaner with less fouling.

The other big (potential) issue with the engines is the fuel baking onto the insides of the cooling channels, sapping power (the pumps have to work harder as the channels are narrower) and cutting heat flow from the inside surface of the combustion chamber, potentially leading to catastrophic failure when there's a burn through.
RP1 was partly developed to counter this (let's hear it for the worlds first Low Sulfur kerosene  :) ) and I think there have been programmes to develop cleaning procedures to deal with this but I suspect they are a PITA to apply.  :(
As per the thread title unless this is automated that's likely to burn a lot of technician time, raising costs.

If  you're not using LH2 but you do want reusability I find it very hard to understand why you would not use LOX cooling. AFAIK all other LRE's use the oxidizer for the cooling, some of which are very nasty.
Both Rotary Rocket and NASA ran LOX cooling tests in the early 90's, without mishap, including deliberate leaks into the CC, but the folklore around this subject is very tenacious and the facts difficult to get hold of.  :(
BTW thanks for that figure of $500/day for staff costs.
With fairing reuse on the verge of happening it might time for a new version of my cost modelling game.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Krankenhausen on 09/07/2017 10:35 am
If  you're not using LH2 but you do want reusability I find it very hard to understand why you would not use LOX cooling. AFAIK all other LRE's use the oxidizer for the cooling, some of which are very nasty.
Both Rotary Rocket and NASA ran LOX cooling tests in the early 90's, without mishap, including deliberate leaks into the CC, but the folklore around this subject is very tenacious and the facts difficult to get hold of.  :(
BTW thanks for that figure of $500/day for staff costs.
With fairing reuse on the verge of happening it might time for a new version of my cost modelling game.

Quite interesting post. But isn't the lack of use of LOX cooling quite easily explained if you take into consideration that the Merlin engine was designed by a start-up and that it is also designed to be affordable in expendable mode. If you look at it that way LOX cooling would have added significant development risk. Furthermore the Raptor engine uses Methane which does not have the disadvantages of RP-1. Methane should contain (almost) no sulfer and deposit much less carbon.

And how does LOX cooling affect TWR?

Edit: Fixed broken quote
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: livingjw on 09/08/2017 12:47 am
The norm for LREs is to use the fuel for cooling the CC, not LOX.

John
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/08/2017 04:34 pm
The norm for LREs is to use the fuel for cooling the CC, not LOX.

John
When I posted
Quote
AFAIK all other LRE's use the oxidizer for the cooling, some of which are very nasty.
I meant all other LRE's that do not use LOX as an oxidizer.
AFAIK all stages of the Titan used NTO (the oxidizer) for chamber cooling. The Russians did the same for their ICBMS I think. The British used HTP for the Gamma rocket engines on Black Arrow.


My apologies for not being clearer
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/08/2017 04:55 pm
If  you're not using LH2 but you do want reusability I find it very hard to understand why you would not use LOX cooling. AFAIK all other LRE's use the oxidizer for the cooling, some of which are very nasty.
Both Rotary Rocket and NASA ran LOX cooling tests in the early 90's, without mishap, including deliberate leaks into the CC, but the folklore around this subject is very tenacious and the facts difficult to get hold of.  :(
BTW thanks for that figure of $500/day for staff costs.
With fairing reuse on the verge of happening it might time for a new version of my cost modelling game.
Quite interesting post. But isn't the lack of use of LOX cooling quite easily explained if you take into consideration that the Merlin engine was designed by a start-up and that it is also designed to be affordable in expendable mode.
In fact the first Merlin was ablatively cooled. Which is an even odder choice for a design if you're planning to make reusable, which has always been Musks goal.  :(

Quote from: Krankenhausen
If you look at it that way LOX cooling would have added significant development risk.
It certainly would have added significant fear of a development risk.  :(
Quote from: Krankenhausen
Furthermore the Raptor engine uses Methane which does not have the disadvantages of RP-1. Methane should contain (almost) no sulfer and deposit much less carbon.
I guess that will depend on where they source it from and wheather it's doses with Mercaptans to give a clearly detectable odor, and how well they remove it.

Carbon can be a remarkably temperature resistant element. Metal balls with a thin carbon film hung from a wire survived a nuclear explosion by the carbon being ablated by the blast (it was an early test of the theory behind the "Orion" nuclear explosion powered space ship). 

Carbons thermal conductivity can also vary substantially between through and across crystal layers, something like 3:1 IIRC. So combustion heat goes through the metal wall and spreads out through the layer of carbon deposited in a cooling channel, rather than into the Methane. Time will tell how big a problem that turns out to be.
Quote from: Krankenhausen
And how does LOX cooling affect TWR?

Edit: Fixed broken quote
Ask HMX. His company built a test engine to do this.  :)

However slightly more helpfully.
Obvious parameters are:
Density and change of density with temperature
SHC and change of SHC with temperature
Viscosity and change of viscosity with temperature  and cooling channel layout.

A study during the SSME program found a revised cooling channel layout could cut pump power (for the same wall temperature) by about 50%, needing less gas flow to drive the pump or (for an SC design) causing less obstruction to the flow into the Main Combustion Chamber (US terminology) or "afterburner" (Russian usage).

Personally when I looked at the MCC of the SSME I thought "That is the mother of all afterburners," but that is not common US usage. :)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 09/09/2017 04:09 am
 :) :) :) :) :)
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: tdperk on 09/11/2017 12:07 am
If  you're not using LH2 but you do want reusability I find it very hard to understand why you would not use LOX cooling. AFAIK all other LRE's use the oxidizer for the cooling, some of which are very nasty.
Both Rotary Rocket and NASA ran LOX cooling tests in the early 90's, without mishap, including deliberate leaks into the CC, but the folklore around this subject is very tenacious and the facts difficult to get hold of.  :(
BTW thanks for that figure of $500/day for staff costs.
With fairing reuse on the verge of happening it might time for a new version of my cost modelling game.
Quite interesting post. But isn't the lack of use of LOX cooling quite easily explained if you take into consideration that the Merlin engine was designed by a start-up and that it is also designed to be affordable in expendable mode.
In fact the first Merlin was ablatively cooled. Which is an even odder choice for a design if you're planning to make reusable, which has always been Musks goal.  :(

I think not in light of the fact his overarching goal is to lower space access costs until he can settle Mars/make humanity a multi-planet species.

He was at the point he needed launch history to inform the lean decision making tree, and possibly needed assurance of success towards future income.  So he launched with what was ready.

As long as you are alive, improvement can come later.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 09/11/2017 12:14 am
His first goal was to lower the cost of access to space.

His zeroth goal was go get to space...

Pragmatism is his mantra.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: speedevil on 09/14/2017 12:56 pm
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816
Quote
Long road to reusabity of Falcon 9 primary boost stage…When upper stage & fairing also reusable, costs will drop by a factor >100.

This seems considerably more certain than prior pronouncements.
And clearly means that upper/lower/fairing each can't have >100K spent on them to refurb and get back to the launch site. (counting fuel)

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: AncientU on 09/14/2017 02:54 pm
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816
Quote
Long road to reusabity of Falcon 9 primary boost stage…When upper stage & fairing also reusable, costs will drop by a factor >100.

This seems considerably more certain than prior pronouncements.
And clearly means that upper/lower/fairing each can't have >100K spent on them to refurb and get back to the launch site. (counting fuel)

Yup... when, not if.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/16/2017 09:14 am
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816
Quote
Long road to reusabity of Falcon 9 primary boost stage…When upper stage & fairing also reusable, costs will drop by a factor >100.

This seems considerably more certain than prior pronouncements.
And clearly means that upper/lower/fairing each can't have >100K spent on them to refurb and get back to the launch site. (counting fuel)
It's a truism of launch vehicle economics.

If I were guessing I'd say the team have a firmer handle on the physics of US reentry and they are ready to give it a serious try. But we've been here before. Let's see how they handle the 26x bigger energy dissipation problem that orbital entry has over booster recovery.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: livingjw on 09/16/2017 05:13 pm
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/908254079092002816
Quote
Long road to reusabity of Falcon 9 primary boost stage…When upper stage & fairing also reusable, costs will drop by a factor >100.

This seems considerably more certain than prior pronouncements.
And clearly means that upper/lower/fairing each can't have >100K spent on them to refurb and get back to the launch site. (counting fuel)

It's a truism of launch vehicle economics.

If I were guessing I'd say the team have a firmer handle on the physics of US reentry and they are ready to give it a serious try. But we've been here before. Let's see how they handle the 26x bigger energy dissipation problem that orbital entry has over booster recovery.

Same way the Space Shuttle, Buran, X-37B and Dream Chaser does it, with some type of reusable TPS. Its not like we haven't done this before. It is different in that it is more of lifting body (smaller aero-surfaces).

John
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Robotbeat on 09/16/2017 06:12 pm
And Dragon.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 09/16/2017 06:16 pm
And Dragon.
Yes all reentry vehicles past and present have been lifting bodies of various shapes. The near future ones will continue with tryout of new shapes and new TPS. Looking for that combination that enables good payload capability and lower costs/launch.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: Semmel on 09/16/2017 07:49 pm
I also dont see the problem in the heat shield material. There is not much magic involved. What has not been done before is: A second stage with 7000+ m/s dV that has a shape and structural strength which allows it to reenter. When you compare all reentry vehicles done so far, all of them were relatively compact structures with aerodynamic shape optimized for reentry. The F9 second stage is neither rigid nor compact. I dont believe that just slamming some TPS on the outside would work. I think S2 would have to be completely redesigned. Basically what SpaceX does (presumably) with ITSy.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/16/2017 09:28 pm
Same way the Space Shuttle, Buran, X-37B and Dream Chaser does it, with some type of reusable TPS. Its not like we haven't done this before. It is different in that it is more of lifting body (smaller aero-surfaces).
All of which have several things in common.

They were all designed to reenter. No US has ever been designed that way.

Their payload to structure ratio is much lower. Suttle was 20% payload, 80% structure. This makes them much stiffer than the US, which is what 3-5% structure?

Because of their VTOHL they are all strong in 2 main axes, which partly explains their weight.

All are glide landings. None have significant propellant on board, so no major slosh issues.

Only DC is an actual lifting body, the other have defined wings. All are "lifting" reentries, as is Dragon.

It comes down to this. All the other designs have very much lower ballistic coefficients (or wing loading as it's usually called when things have wings). All the other designs executed (or will execute for DC) high angles of attack entries to lose speed. This has never been a design case for any US, which would probably crumple like an empty soda can that's been slapped on the side. Between minimal changes to the stage to make it survive those side loads, understanding and controlling those propellant slosh loads and generally coping with a PE and KE load 26x bigger than the equivalent for booster stage it's not surprising that SX have not been able to make this work yet.

However ultimately this is OT for the thread title. 

Yes reusability will lower costs, as always with the caveat that the  refurb costs are not too high.  If a US costs around $15-17m reusing it twice means it costs SX $7.5-8.5m. For n reuses the cost is roughly 1/n +nX, where X is the refurb cost.

The question is how much of those cost reductions will appear as price reductions to SX customers. 



 
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: guckyfan on 09/16/2017 09:52 pm
The second stage can be pressurized which gives cheap rigidity. The Shuttle and the capsules don't have that option.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: livingjw on 09/16/2017 11:48 pm
Wingless reentry vehicle designs exist, including quite large and long ones. Slosh baffles exist. Pressurized tanks are rigid. Payload bay with doors will be a little heavier than F9's carbon composite inter-stage. Windward TPS will weigh no more than 10 kg/m^2. SuperDracos exist for landing. Lots of work, but nothing way out. I have attached a Russian reusable vehicle similar in shape to what we might expect for a reusable S2. This is not that different from BFS.

John
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: OneSpeed on 09/17/2017 03:36 am
... Let's see how they handle the 26x bigger energy dissipation problem that orbital entry has over booster recovery.

The highest Falcon S1 velocity so far is BulgariaSat-1, which was doing 2389 m/s at the start of its entry burn.
FWIW, here is a table comparing BulgariaSat-1 with some values taken from sims of Falcon S2 EDL from LEO and GTO.

StageMassVelocityEnergyEnergy per mTPeak heatingAltitudeVelocityAcceleration
S1 BulgariaSat-149 mT2,384 m/s139 MJ2.84 MJ116 kW/m^225kms1,656 m/s3.5 g
S2 LEO6 mT7,400 m/s164 MJ27.3 MJ732 kW/m^252 kms6,135 m/s2.2 g
S2 GTO6 mT9,600 m/s276 MJ46 MJ1,836 kW/m^255 kms8,744 m/s3.1 g

From these figures S2-GTO needs to dissipate 46/2.84 = 16.2 times more energy/tonne than BulgariaSat-1.
S2-GTO would have 1,836/116 = 15.8 times more peak heating.

In my sims, I'm assuming S2 doesn't need landing engines, and hence fuel (except for nitrogen). If it did, then both energy to dissipate and peak heating would be a little higher.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: hkultala on 09/17/2017 05:51 am
... Let's see how they handle the 26x bigger energy dissipation problem that orbital entry has over booster recovery.

The highest Falcon S1 velocity so far is BulgariaSat-1, which was doing 2389 m/s at the start of its entry burn.
FWIW, here is a table comparing BulgariaSat-1 with some values taken from sims of Falcon S2 EDL from LEO and GTO.

StageMassVelocityEnergyEnergy per mTPeak heatingAltitudeVelocityAcceleration
S1 BulgariaSat-149 mT2,384 m/s139 MJ2.84 MJ116 kW/m^225kms1,656 m/s3.5 g
S2 LEO6 mT7,400 m/s164 MJ27.3 MJ732 kW/m^252 kms6,135 m/s2.2 g
S2 GTO6 mT9,600 m/s276 MJ46 MJ1,836 kW/m^255 kms8,744 m/s3.1 g

From these figures S2-GTO needs to dissipate 46/2.84 = 16.2 times more energy/tonne than BulgariaSat-1.
S2-GTO would have 1,836/116 = 15.8 times more peak heating.


Where are those "peak heating" and "altitude" numbers from/how are they calculated?

Shouldn't S2 GTO be able to aerobrake into LEO before the final re-entry?

Quote
In my sims, I'm assuming S2 doesn't need landing engines, and hence fuel (except for nitrogen). If it did, then both energy to dissipate and peak heating would be a little higher.

No, not "little higher" but "much higher".
Almost half of your 1st stage weight is landing fuel but you totally ignore it for 2nd stage?

Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: OneSpeed on 09/17/2017 07:31 am
Where are those "peak heating" and "altitude" numbers from/how are they calculated?

The values are taken from sims of Falcon S2 EDL, e.g. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42389.msg1723803#msg1723803

Shouldn't S2 GTO be able to aerobrake into LEO before the final re-entry?

It should. It would be interesting to see how much it would reduce the size of the energy dissipation requirement.

In my sims, I'm assuming S2 doesn't need landing engines, and hence fuel (except for nitrogen). If it did, then both energy to dissipate and peak heating would be a little higher.

No, not "little higher" but "much higher".
Almost half of your 1st stage weight is landing fuel but you totally ignore it for 2nd stage?

Because the re-useable S2 would be configured for side entry, it could slow to a much lower velocity than S1 just using aerodynamic drag and lift. It would not need retro-propulsive or entry burns. By the time it came to perform a landing burn, the fuel (and thrust) requirement would be much less than half S2 mass.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/17/2017 12:22 pm
Wingless reentry vehicle designs exist, including quite large and long ones. Slosh baffles exist. Pressurized tanks are rigid. Payload bay with doors will be a little heavier than F9's carbon composite inter-stage. Windward TPS will weigh no more than 10 kg/m^2. SuperDracos exist for landing. Lots of work, but nothing way out. I have attached a Russian reusable vehicle similar in shape to what we might expect for a reusable S2. This is not that different from BFS.
What you're missing is you have to have all of these things together, and you're grossly underestimating any kind of payload bay mass. The Shuttle payload bay was not a pressure stabilized design so the doors (or their frames) had to be load carrying.

All of these features multiply together to make the problem very much harder. You're trying to cram the requirements of an orbiter into the payload fraction of a stage and wishing something will turn up.

As for the Russian concept. I learned a long time ago that in CAD anything is possible.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/17/2017 12:23 pm
In my sims, I'm assuming S2 doesn't need landing engines, and hence fuel (except for nitrogen). If it did, then both energy to dissipate and peak heating would be a little higher.
So how does it land?
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: OneSpeed on 09/17/2017 12:44 pm
In my sims, I'm assuming S2 doesn't need landing engines, and hence fuel (except for nitrogen). If it did, then both energy to dissipate and peak heating would be a little higher.
So how does it land?

If it does not require landing engines or fuel, the terminal velocity of the reusable Falcon S2 would be very low, around 50m/s. At those speeds, a drogue chute / parafoil combination begins to look feasible. I've modelled it at https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42389.msg1723803#msg1723803
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: livingjw on 09/17/2017 07:13 pm
Wingless reentry vehicle designs exist, including quite large and long ones. Slosh baffles exist. Pressurized tanks are rigid. Payload bay with doors will be a little heavier than F9's carbon composite inter-stage. Windward TPS will weigh no more than 10 kg/m^2. SuperDracos exist for landing. Lots of work, but nothing way out. I have attached a Russian reusable vehicle similar in shape to what we might expect for a reusable S2. This is not that different from BFS.
What you're missing is you have to have all of these things together, and you're grossly underestimating any kind of payload bay mass. The Shuttle payload bay was not a pressure stabilized design so the doors (or their frames) had to be load carrying.

All of these features multiply together to make the problem very much harder. You're trying to cram the requirements of an orbiter into the payload fraction of a stage and wishing something will turn up.

As for the Russian concept. I learned a long time ago that in CAD anything is possible.

I am not saying that there wouldn't be a very large payload hit, there will be. Pessimistically, remaining payload capacity may be as low as 5000 kg to ISS. I understand that the payload bay and doors need to be load carrying similar to an inter-stage but worse. On top of this you need either parachutes, or landing propellant. Ballistic Coefficient will be somewhere around 150- 160 kg/m^2 (30-33 lb/ft^2). I think a good way of thinking about the problem is to start by thinking how you would integrate a Dragon 2 with its second stage into a single recoverable vehicle. It would be about 26 M long.

John
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: john smith 19 on 09/23/2017 07:18 am
I am not saying that there wouldn't be a very large payload hit, there will be. Pessimistically, remaining payload capacity may be as low as 5000 kg to ISS.
And you got that number how exactly?
Quote from: livingjw
I understand that the payload bay and doors need to be load carrying similar to an inter-stage but worse.
I don't think you do. Shuttle weighed around 200Kb to carry 65Klb to orbit. It never achieved that and managed about 55Klb. IOW it was 72.5% structure. the S2 is is more in the 3-5% range.
Quote from: livingjw
On top of this you need either parachutes, or landing propellant. Ballistic Coefficient will be somewhere around 150- 160 kg/m^2 (30-33 lb/ft^2).
Derived how?
Quote from: livingjw
I think a good way of thinking about the problem is to start by thinking how you would integrate a Dragon 2 with its second stage into a single recoverable vehicle. It would be about 26 M long.
I'll leave others to decide if they agree with that plan.
Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
Post by: calapine on 10/12/2017 12:40 pm
I hope this is the right thread for this:

SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

  • Falcon 9 is here to stay longer Quote:
  • Quote
    "I can see how people might take it that we are going to shut down and transfer. This is not the case. We’ll continue to produce Falcon, then develop BFR and then offer it to the market and see what the market chooses."

  • Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out
  • Currently there is no need for the Texas launch sites.
  • Falcon Heavy is still planned and fly this year.
  • Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 10/12/2017 02:42 pm
    @calapine --  Most relevant for this thread, insurance rates for reused boosters aren't higher than new boosters.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/12/2017 03:25 pm
    I hope this is the right thread for this:

    SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

    Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

    Quote
    Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out

    This thread's title is not very helpful.

    The "cost" to SX is unknown. The development budget is stated to be circa $1Bn

    What matters is the "cost" to customers for access to space.

    Or price as most people call it.

    And the answer to the difference reusability is going to make to price is now clear.

    Nothing

    If you could get into orbit at 10s of $m price you still can.

    If you can't. You still can't.  :(

    This was always one of the options of pricing reusable stages. The even worse option would be they started charging a premium for pre-flown boosters as they were known to work.

    "Profit" may not be Musks ultimate goal but development cost recovery ASAP certainly does.

    But not to worry $5m a launch will be here when BFS finally starts flying.

    Right?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 10/12/2017 03:38 pm
    I hope this is the right thread for this:

    SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

    Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

    Quote
    Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out

    This thread's title is not very helpful.

    The "cost" to SX is unknown. The development budget is stated to be circa $1Bn

    What matters is the "cost" to customers for access to space.

    Or price as most people call it.

    And the answer to the difference reusability is going to make to price is now clear.

    Nothing

    If you could get into orbit at 10s of $m price you still can.

    If you can't. You still can't.  :(

    This was always one of the options of pricing reusable stages. The even worse option would be they started charging a premium for pre-flown boosters as they were known to work.

    "Profit" may not be Musks ultimate goal but development cost recovery ASAP certainly does.

    But not to worry $5m a launch will be here when BFS finally starts flying.

    Right?

    SpaceX can't launch fast enough right now to satisfy existing demand. SES stated that they are going with used boosted because SpaceX can fly them sooner... which is a different kind of value. Even with a used booster they can't fly till January. Upper stage production, pad availability, payload processing, vehicle testing, etc are limiting.

    Maybe at 30 launches per year they will have some slack. Or it might take 50, if they start launching for Starlink.

    But don't expect to see the price go down any more until supply catches up with demand. Econ 101.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 10/12/2017 03:39 pm
    I hope this is the right thread for this:

    SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

    Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

  • Falcon 9 is here to stay longer Quote:
  • Quote
    "I can see how people might take it that we are going to shut down and transfer. This is not the case. We’ll continue to produce Falcon, then develop BFR and then offer it to the market and see what the market chooses."

  • Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out
  • Currently there is no need for the Texas launch sites.
  • Falcon Heavy is still planned and fly this year.
  • The previous statements are key context for that quote, and indicate that they know that what the market will choose is obvious. He had repeated about there being a "stable" of F9 rockets by then. What he says doesn't conflict with anything Musk said at IAC, but clarifies it. Rather than shut down F9 production while BFR is in development and cross their fingers that nothing goes wrong, they will wait until BFR is flying and they are not getting more F9 orders so they can be certain that their stockpile is large enough to cover the remaining F9 contracts.

    He also reiterated the roughly $1 billion figure for reusability development, and stated that they won't try to get it all back with Falcon 9 since that would take 10 years or more. At a rate of 30 launches per year, this means a net of $3 million per flight. This means that average reusability cost reduction would be about $3 million more than what they pass on to customers. Tons of assumptions in this though.

    He also mentions that "the economics are not quite that simple." I am guessing that refers to the fact that any increase in contracts won due to lower prices would have to be factored in, plus internal launches for the constellation will have interesting accounting. Also as I see it, the $1 billion is a sunk cost at this point, so it doesn't truly matter, and in an analysis of "was it worth it" you have to account for the fact that it got them the experience they need to design BFR, so in some difficult to account for way BFR can pay this off.

    "Profit" may not be Musks ultimate goal but development cost recovery ASAP certainly does.
    You clearly didn't actually read the link (it is not that long) since the part I referenced above directly contradicts this.

    Also, the price difference will not be 0, he said the difference in price between new and reused will go away, this does not mean that they will charge current new prices for everything, just the same price for everything. And the rough analysis I did above indicates we can know something about costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: yokem55 on 10/12/2017 03:51 pm
    What it comes to is that the money spent on reusability development was money from selling equity in the company and not bonds that have a fixed repayment schedule. The way you 'pay back' equity investors is to increase the value of what they own by increasing the value of the company. They are doing exactly that. They have a solid (knock on wood) product that is attracting a large manifest of customers that they can profitably serve, and thus use those profits to fund other R&D ventures that will likely be more profitable. Unless the equity holders start begging for dividends (and until Musk has less than a 50% stake in the company there won't be any) those profits will be rolled into making the company more valuable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 10/12/2017 08:14 pm
    I hope this is the right thread for this:

    SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

    Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

    Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out
    So no discount.  If SpaceX had not spent the $1 billion for reuse development, it could be charging less, flying smaller rockets to get the same capability, etc.?

     - Ed Kyle

    Perhaps. Perhaps not.

    But they would certainly not be closer to a vehicle than can get affordably anyone Mars.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Cherokee43v6 on 10/12/2017 08:18 pm
    Actually, it sounds more like they feel like they have now proven that 'flight proven' boosters are as reliable as new builds, thus the 'first adopter encouragement' discounts are being discontinued.  Kinda like the government phasing out tax breaks on electric cars after a certain volume is achieved.

    The discounts were not structured to say reuse is cheaper... they were done to convince a skeptical customer base to accept the reflight risk.  Reuse is still new enough that proving savings is not yet possible as they are still learning what they have to do and what they don't have to do when refurbishing for the next flight.

    First you prove reflight. Then you streamline the processes to achieve the savings.  Then you evaluate to see if you gain, lose or break even.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: CuddlyRocket on 10/12/2017 08:26 pm
    So no discount.  If SpaceX had not spent the $1 billion for reuse development, it could be charging less, flying smaller rockets to get the same capability, etc.?

    Yes, but with nowhere to go from there. Reusability enables the future.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 10/12/2017 08:29 pm
    So no discount.  If SpaceX had not spent the $1 billion for reuse development, it could be charging less, flying smaller rockets to get the same capability, etc.?

    A couple of possible implications:  (1) SpaceX will charge less for both the reuse and non-reuse payloads on new contracts; and (2) SpaceX will disallow the non-reuse payloads on new contracts.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rockets4life97 on 10/12/2017 08:40 pm
    The issue now is SpaceX is spending heavily on BFR and Starlink. They need all the profit they can get in the near term. These priorities are higher then their desire to reduce the cost of launch (although BFR promises to do that indirectly) -- which must be noted in an altruistic goal. Most every other company operates on profit maximization.

    Reusability should lower costs for SpaceX, but prices will probably remain stable until they face increased competition. I could also see there being a lower price tier in the future for science payloads, while keeping the commercial satellite price stable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: yokem55 on 10/12/2017 08:47 pm


    I hope this is the right thread for this:

    SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

    Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

    Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out
    So no discount.  If SpaceX had not spent the $1 billion for reuse development, it could be charging less, flying smaller rockets to get the same capability, etc.?

     - Ed Kyle

    They still would have needed the 1.1 upgrade to complete the CRS contract. The 1.2 performance upgrades were needed for the larger GTO contracts unless they were faster about developing FH. In the meantime they've cut their manufacturing costs with production improvements (some of Merlin is printed, bolted octoweb, etc.)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/12/2017 09:34 pm
    He also mentions that "the economics are not quite that simple." I am guessing that refers to the fact that any increase in contracts won due to lower prices would have to be factored in, plus internal launches for the constellation will have interesting accounting. Also as I see it, the $1 billion is a sunk cost at this point, so it doesn't truly matter, and in an analysis of "was it worth it" you have to account for the fact that it got them the experience they need to design BFR, so in some difficult to account for way BFR can pay this off.
    But let's start with the chunk of cost (to SX) that not building a booster saves them.
    Quote from: meberbs
    "Profit" may not be Musks ultimate goal but development cost recovery ASAP certainly does.
    You clearly didn't actually read the link (it is not that long) since the part I referenced above directly contradicts this.
    And you'd be wrong, however what I didn't do was include the word "partial" in my comment.
    My mistake.  :( It should have read.

    ' "Profit" may not be Musks ultimate goal but partial development cost recovery ASAP certainly does. '

    Since it was obvious that even with a very large profit margin per flight it would 50-100 launches to recover the whole (stated) development cost.

    And with BFR/BFS expected to be in the $4-5Bn minimum it'll be interesting to see what SX's prices really turn out to be.

    Quote from: meberbs
    Also, the price difference will not be 0, he said the difference in price between new and reused will go away, this does not mean that they will charge current new prices for everything, just the same price for everything. And the rough analysis I did above indicates we can know something about costs.
    That is certainly an option.

    Time will tell if it's an option they choose to take.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 10/12/2017 09:36 pm
    It's hard to have a discussion just centered on costs. Because the assumption is that all else is the same. That's not always true.

    Immediately we see this with the reflight of boosters. There are payloads jumping ahead in the manifest, usually because of booster availability. The closest, imperfect analog for ULA is "Quick Launch" of Cygnus to "catch up" CRS given Antares RTF. Different.

    A more critical difference is how the market changes for payloads/providers. Or ... how the future is formed, one step at a time.

    Also, examine competitive response (including "Quick Launch") as providers react to the future being formed. Perhaps the need for more RD-180's, deadlines for BE-4, shifting off commercial payloads from Angara, plans for Ariane "next", changes in Centaur/ACES rollout ... are ways to interpet how providers see "reusability effects on costs" longterm?

    If Musk is losing his shirt on reusability, all the other providers would likely "go slower" and "change less", because they'd not care to risk more, to no advantage. You'd want to amortize gains of your current outlays as long as possible, and not "borrow more".

    For me, the whole effect narrowly is that of how the provider with reuse grows global market share of annual launches, as an aggregate sum, where the net profit growth year over year (or "run rate") tells the story of cost reduction.

    For an expendable vehicle strategy is optimum for an inflexible, low/no growth industry. Cost containment like ULA does is perfect for such.

    But its not if you've changed the industry to depend on reuse to be the key stimulus for growth.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/12/2017 10:33 pm
    It's hard to have a discussion just centered on costs. Because the assumption is that all else is the same. That's not always true.

    But its not if you've changed the industry to depend on reuse to be the key stimulus for growth.
    Indeed.
     
    Long ago I read a fable of the "Connecticut Buggy whip Company," who in the late 19th century was a major supplier of buggy whips.

    There productivity and innovation in mfg methods and cost reductions were a legend. Their staff were carefully selected, well trained and well paid.

    There was really only one thing wrong with the company.

    They believed "horseless carriages" were a passing fad.

    And that was the end of the "Connecticut Buggy whip Company,"  :(

    Time will tell who turns out to be the "Ford" (or Boeing) of 21st century launch and who turns out to be the "Buggy whip mfgs"
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 10/12/2017 11:35 pm
    Re. whether the $1B spent on reuse was a good investment... SpaceX didn't borrow the $1B to fund reuse to pay it back with interest, or spent $1B of their own cash that they could have used for something more profitable.

    SpaceX was able to raise money because their value after creating a reusable system is higher than without it. Now they have to operate the system at a profit to maintain the revenue that is the reason for that value. Or they can turn over that investment into a more efficient system that's potentially far more profitable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 10/13/2017 01:28 am
    For current market SpaceX don't need to lower their launch prices as they are competitive enough. Having room to move is nice if competition starts dropping prices.

    The big unknown is if launch prices drop dramatically (eg $30m) what new markets would develop. Hopefully driving high demand resulting in double or triple launches. Space tourism is one market that would benefit from lower launch prices.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/13/2017 03:20 am
    I hope this is the right thread for this:

    SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

    Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

    Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out
    So no discount.  If SpaceX had not spent the $1 billion for reuse development, it could be charging less, flying smaller rockets to get the same capability, etc.?

     - Ed Kyle
    I straight up don't believe Ochinero; I think he's covering for the fact that SpaceX is phasing out the reuse discount.

    SpaceX plans 30-40 flights per year. If vast majority of them are reused with block 5 with same current price but the significantly lower (~$30 million less) internal costs, then they can pay back that $1 billion in a single year, not 10.

    So I think SpaceX just wants to keep the costs higher for as long as the market will bear so they can pay for BFR with the profits.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Geron on 10/13/2017 06:46 am
    I think we can all agree that more r and d money for spacex is money well spent.

    Also, as spacex is poised to enter satellite telecom industry offering clients low costs partially eliminates their hard earned vertical integration advantage if they successfully go from launcher to launcher and operated.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 10/13/2017 07:05 am
    I hope this is the right thread for this:

    SpaceX reassures commercial satellite market: Falcon 9 won’t soon be scrapped for BFR (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/spacex-reassures-commercial-satellite-market-falcon-9-wont-soon-scrapped-bfr/)

    Peter B. de Selding reports the remarks by SpaceX Sr. Director Tom Ochinero. Some key points are:

    Discount for Falcon 9 with re-used first stage will be phased out
    So no discount.  If SpaceX had not spent the $1 billion for reuse development, it could be charging less, flying smaller rockets to get the same capability, etc.?

     - Ed Kyle

    Perhaps. Perhaps not.

    But they would certainly not be closer to a vehicle than can get affordably anyone Mars.
    This.
    Falcon 9 REALLY is there to do just two things:
    1. Provide revenue to finance the Mars plan.
    2. Provide a platform to develop the most critical of the new technology needed to execute the Mars plan.

    Add. 1 - Providing revenue: This is being done in a beautifully elegant way: Drive down the cost far enough to be highly competitive while maximizing revenue. Hence the price difference between new and flown booster stages going away. All of them will be priced similar, with the caveat being that flown boosters will be available sooner. SpaceX customers will have a choice between flying earlier on a previously flown booster or fly (much) later on an all-new booster. So, the incentive to use a previously flown booster is changing from a monetary discount to a time-discount. A big factor that is helping SpaceX to do business this way is that launch insurancy companies no longer distinguish between new and previously flown boosters. Insurance for both is equally expensive and might even shift towards insurance for missions on previously flown boosters becoming less expensive than for missions on new boosters.

    Add. 2 - Technology platform: A fine example of this we have seen on the last 3 missions. On every single one of those last 3 missions SpaceX has been slowly increasing the angle-of-attack of the re-entering booster stage. This is yet another phase of R&D applicable to BFR's EDL profile. If SpaceX pushes too far and loses a booster stage in the process it is not a loss to them. They will have gained all the knowledge (from telemetry) they need. The lost booster hardware is really no loss because SpaceX currently has more recovered booster stages than they have reflights for. Naturally, that will change once Block 5 comes online so that is why SpaceX is performing the ELD experiments now, while the "more expendable" Block 3 and Block 4 boosters are still available.
    The upcoming re-entry experiments using the second stage will expand the SpaceX knowledge-base in several areas, not the least of which will concern (improved) TPS materials.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/13/2017 07:31 am
    I straight up don't believe Ochinero; I think he's covering for the fact that SpaceX is phasing out the reuse discount.
    Not really a cover up. More a simple statement of what SX are going to do. Because they can.
    Quote from: Robotbeat
    SpaceX plans 30-40 flights per year. If vast majority of them are reused with block 5 with same current price but the significantly lower (~$30 million less) internal costs, then they can pay back that $1 billion in a single year, not 10.
    OTOH if  you're right (given his comments about it "Taking 10 years to recover the $1Bn spent" would seem a bit deceptive.
    Quote from: Robotbeat
    So I think SpaceX just wants to keep the costs higher for as long as the market will bear so they can pay for BFR with the profits.
    Should this come as a surprise to anyone?

    However for those of us think any serious expansion of the use of space (IE on orbit mfg or settlement, holidays to orbit or the Moon etc) will need a serious (1-2 orders of magnitude) reduction in price that's not good news.

    But not really a surprise to anyone familiar with the classic economics of the sole mfg/sole operator model.  :(

    Musk comes from the IT industry. It's a business with a long history  of viewing competition as good, but monopoly (NCR, IBM, Microsoft) as much better. :(  Something to keep in mind.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Geron on 10/13/2017 07:51 am
    When it comes to "recovering the billion spent on reuse" you have to keep in mind the opportunity cost of selling 10% of spacex to fidelity/google at a valuation of 10 billion.

    Now spacex is valued at 50-125 billion. This means reusability investment of 1 billion cost not 1 but 5 billion.

    It is not dishonest to consider the fact that 1 billion dollars in 2014 is more than a billion dollars in 2018.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 10/13/2017 09:07 am

    Now spacex is valued at 50-125 billion. This means reusability investment of 1 billion cost not 1 but 5 billion.

    Wrong take away. The actual investment, in real dollars, is $1 billion. The value of that investment is now estimated at $5 billion.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/13/2017 12:55 pm

    Now spacex is valued at 50-125 billion. This means reusability investment of 1 billion cost not 1 but 5 billion.

    Wrong take away. The actual investment, in real dollars, is $1 billion. The value of that investment is now estimated at $5 billion.
    This is one way of reconciling Ochinero's comments: if you invest $1 billion in a very risky bet, you'll need much more than 1:1 return to justify the risk of the original investment.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/13/2017 12:58 pm
    I straight up don't believe Ochinero; I think he's covering for the fact that SpaceX is phasing out the reuse discount.
    Not really a cover up. More a simple statement of what SX are going to do. Because they can.
    Quote from: Robotbeat
    SpaceX plans 30-40 flights per year. If vast majority of them are reused with block 5 with same current price but the significantly lower (~$30 million less) internal costs, then they can pay back that $1 billion in a single year, not 10.
    OTOH if  you're right (given his comments about it "Taking 10 years to recover the $1Bn spent" would seem a bit deceptive.
    Quote from: Robotbeat
    So I think SpaceX just wants to keep the costs higher for as long as the market will bear so they can pay for BFR with the profits.
    Should this come as a surprise to anyone?

    However for those of us think any serious expansion of the use of space (IE on orbit mfg or settlement, holidays to orbit or the Moon etc) will need a serious (1-2 orders of magnitude) reduction in price that's not good news.

    But not really a surprise to anyone familiar with the classic economics of the sole mfg/sole operator model.  :(

    Musk comes from the IT industry. It's a business with a long history  of viewing competition as good, but monopoly (NCR, IBM, Microsoft) as much better. :(  Something to keep in mind.
    Don't worry too much about it. Blue Origin can compete, and even China and Europe have F9-like recovery of boosters in the conceptual design stage. SpaceX just has to make hay while the Sun shines in order to pay for the next big step.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Geron on 10/13/2017 06:10 pm
    On a personal note, if a rocket price is 40 million vs 63 million, I still can't afford one seat.

    If they charge 63 million for more R and D money and get a larger rocket, fully reusable, such that launch cost is 1-2 million for 100 people, then I can buy myself a ticket.

    This is why I am all for Elon Musk keeping prices stable and if anything raising prices to whatever the market will bear as his rockets are now probably classed as more reliable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 10/13/2017 06:56 pm
    I would like to see them move the price down a bit to demonstrate to the market that lower prices are coming.  It should increase launch demand at the margins.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rockets4life97 on 10/13/2017 07:40 pm
    I would like to see them move the price down a bit to demonstrate to the market that lower prices are coming.  It should increase launch demand at the margins.

    I think SpaceX will if they see themselves not having enough payloads to fly the rate they want. I'm not sure what that rate. 2018 is 30 a year. Do you think SpaceX is aiming for 50 a year or more?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Geron on 10/14/2017 02:59 am
    More isn't allways better, sometimes its just more.

    Space Launch is essentially an oligopoly with at times monopoly like behaviors.
    In this type of environment, in order to maximize profit,
    (which is ideal for SpaceX as they are able to use that as BFR money),
    Launch rate should be set to maximize revenue to whatever extent marginal cost does not exceed marginal revenue.
    The only other aside is that given there are competitors in a relatively small industry you have abnormal behavior, for example when Orbital booked a ULA bird at a much higher price, after their RUD; or when OneWeb booked a rocket that hasn't been launched yet or even close for their satellite constellation.

    When Iridium put up their first constellation it cost about 5 billion dollars. If SpaceX started offering super low cost launches they would not be in a position to maximize revenue on their satelite internet business.

    If I were chief economic advisor to Elon, I would counsel him to maximize revenue on the Satellite internet business by keeping launch prices high, to keep out competitors such that SpaceX can offer the fastest and cheapest space based internet on the market. If successful, Mars colony money should be readily available.

    Why maximize revenue of a 10 billion dollar per year launch business, when a 1 trillion dollar per year space based ISP business is on the line.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Geron on 10/14/2017 03:00 am
    My point is, that as reusability is no doubt lowering internal costs for SpaceX, I am not sure that lowering launch costs is the best move right now.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: guckyfan on 10/14/2017 03:42 am
    My point is, that as reusability is no doubt lowering internal costs for SpaceX, I am not sure that lowering launch costs is the best move right now.

    I think after talking so much about reducing cost they should reduce their prices just a little, say below the $ 60 million threshold. No reason to go to $ 40 million or less, even if they could.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/14/2017 04:02 am
    My point is, that as reusability is no doubt lowering internal costs for SpaceX, I am not sure that lowering launch costs is the best move right now.

    I think after talking so much about reducing cost they should reduce their prices just a little, say below the $ 60 million threshold. No reason to go to $ 40 million or less, even if they could.
    Not until their manifest is burned down. Maybe next year.

    But another thing they could do to attempt to stimulate more demand (on an IMLEO basis) through larger payloads is to keep per-launch prices about the same but offer much more payload on BFR.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 10/14/2017 08:59 am
    Some speculation based in real numbers.

    The nominal profit margin for launch in the US has been about 20% for many years.

    If SpaceX has been operating with this margin in their pricing then for a F9 that is ~$12M. So the reduction of price by $12M even though costs drop more than the $12M on average for the multiple launch of a single booster, allows for SpaceX to break even if on the first launch of a new booster that booster failed to be recovered. No loss but no profit. If the actual cost reduction on a reuse flight vs a new one is $20M then the profit from 2 launches with the same booster is $20M. If the booster is used 3 times then SpaceX profit is $40M. If it is used 5 times the profit is $80M ($16M per flight average). If it is used 10 times the profit is $180M ($18M per flight average). But in no case would SpaceX ever loose money. Just have the possibility to make a lot of money if the booster is successful and is recovered on every flight.

    With the case of 10 uses the profit per flight average actually increases by $6M even though the Price has been decreased by $12M to a price of $50M per launch. So if only that $6M is considered the payback it would take at 30 flights per year 5.5 years to make $1B. But if the complete profit is considered then it would take less than 2 years to reach $1B or ~$540M per year in profits to be reinvested into the constellation and into BFR. In 5 years that comes to internally raised cash of $2.5B.

    This is the kind of realization that reuse will cause on costs and the ultimate item of Prices for Launch.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 10/14/2017 11:03 am
    Even by keeping their price at $60m per launch, they would effectively be lowering it in real terms, if annual inflation is taken into account. I think that is the course they should follow.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 10/14/2017 04:38 pm
    If I were chief economic advisor to Elon, I would counsel him to maximize revenue on the Satellite internet business by keeping launch prices high, to keep out competitors such that SpaceX can offer the fastest and cheapest space based internet on the market. If successful, Mars colony money should be readily available.
    Would invite antitrust trouble, if not in the U.S. than certainly in Europe, given what's happened there to U.S. companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.
    http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/antitrust.asp

     - Ed Kyle
    In most of the possible Antitrust application cases against US LV industry providers, National Security interests would squash any FTC actions. These are primarily about mergers into a monopolistic situation and price fixing at artificially higher values by conspiring with other providers. Actually since this already had happened by the creation of ULA and the merger creation of a monopoly was allowed for NS interests, any FTC legal action against US LV providers for such antitrust actions is unlikely to occur.

    The only exception would probably be the case of "Dumping". But SpaceX wants to make extra cash to further and fund their Mars campaign so they are very unlikely to ever do this action even though the prices may have the effect, they would not be guilty of dumping because they are making a profit on the Prices given and at a high margin at or higher than industry average.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/14/2017 05:03 pm
    I would like to see them move the price down a bit to demonstrate to the market that lower prices are coming.  It should increase launch demand at the margins.
    what you're talking about is called "price elasticity."

    Unfortunately in the launch services business the prices are so unbelievably high (by the standards of every other transportation system) that they'd have to drop by a very large amount to stimulate market growth.

    Did cutting launch prices on flight proven stages by 30% increase the number of contracts SX picked up?

    AFAIK, no.

    The truth is SX Launch Vehicle Mfg has 1 customer, SX Launch Services. Unlike say Boeing they carry all the costs of R&DDTE for all the SX launch vehicles. Sole mfg/sole operator.  So the costs aren't really being spread in the same way (and they never will with this architecture).

    According to Musk lower $/lb will have to wait till BFS is flying.

    We'll see if that turns out to be the case.
    I think after talking so much about reducing cost they should reduce their prices just a little, say below the $ 60 million threshold. No reason to go to $ 40 million or less, even if they could.
    Why?

    Their headline prices are the lowest in the industry and they know to get any serious growth they'd need to lower them a lot (IE 90%)

    However they've said when BFS comes in costs will drop a very great deal (or is it prices?)

    Remember when Musk said if they launched 4 FH's a year (fully loaded) they could get to <$1000s/lb?

    This is how real launch service economics, built around semi reusable TSTO vehicle works.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 10/14/2017 07:28 pm
    Did cutting launch prices on flight proven stages by 30% increase the number of contracts SX picked up?

    I don't know that SpaceX cut the prices by 30% on flight proven stages.  In fact, I seriously doubt that is true.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 10/14/2017 10:31 pm
    Did cutting launch prices on flight proven stages by 30% increase the number of contracts SX picked up?

    I don't know that SpaceX cut the prices by 30% on flight proven stages.  In fact, I seriously doubt that is true.

    They didn't.  The 30% number was tossed around before rebuilding LC-40 became a thing.  Actual cut is of order 10% for now.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/15/2017 11:12 am
    Did cutting launch prices on flight proven stages by 30% increase the number of contracts SX picked up?

    I don't know that SpaceX cut the prices by 30% on flight proven stages.  In fact, I seriously doubt that is true.

    They didn't.  The 30% number was tossed around before rebuilding LC-40 became a thing.  Actual cut is of order 10% for now.
    And now looking to be 0 %.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/15/2017 02:29 pm
    This is a thread about costs. Not pricing.

    Nor is it a thread about national security. Or antitrust. Focus on cost, and not on anything else. Thank you.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: francesco nicoli on 10/15/2017 02:37 pm
    quick observation- there is no reason why, with 1 single provider with reusability in a market, the price should go much down. Assuming that the provider is led by profit maximisation and not by charity/ideology, the price will decrease enough for the more competitive provider to eat out all possible contracts, but not an inch more. it COULD decrease further, but it would make no sense for the launch provider. You need at least 2 providers with reusability (and strong anti-cartel oversight!) to ensure that costs reduction are transmitted in structural terms into the pricing. Otherwise, cost reductions only increase profit margins.

    market structure of reference:Bertrand-Edgeworth oligopolitstic competition model with constraints on individual firms' capacity of absorbing all market demand.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%E2%80%93Edgeworth_model
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/15/2017 05:47 pm
    quick observation- there is no reason why, with 1 single provider with reusability in a market, the price should go much down. Assuming that the provider is led by profit maximisation and not by charity/ideology, the price will decrease enough for the more competitive provider to eat out all possible contracts, but not an inch more. it COULD decrease further, but it would make no sense for the launch provider. You need at least 2 providers with reusability (and strong anti-cartel oversight!) to ensure that costs reduction are transmitted in structural terms into the pricing. Otherwise, cost reductions only increase profit margins.

    market structure of reference:Bertrand-Edgeworth oligopolitstic competition model with constraints on individual firms' capacity of absorbing all market demand.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand%E2%80%93Edgeworth_model
    Indeed.  With no effective competition  why should they?

    As for the title of this thread, WRT to costs (rather than prices) the next new thing in the near term is likely to be  Fairing recovery (and reuse).

    Musk is saying this is a $5M item.  Is there any feel for refurb cost and number of reuses?  I'm guessing 5-10% of original cost  but how many re-uses?  As many as the Block 5 F9, so booster and fairings as reusable package?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Space Ghost 1962 on 10/18/2017 01:44 am
    It occurs to me that few here understand the differences between providers costs and costing models.

    So when we discuss the effects of reusability, costs do not map one-to-one and onto with, say expendable vehicles, or even entirely map in the comparison of partially reusable vehicles of different providers, which may be the closest to evaluate.

    To many, cost is cost, but even in the simplest comparison of, say, fasteners, costs are very different when considered in the context of volume and total absorption on a specific bulk scale.

    In like kind, reuse with costs depends on a financial model with variable "horizons" for absorption. Most aerospace costing depends too much on total absorption in fixed programs with limited extensions, because you cannot know the applicability of a vehicle's use over which to span with. (Exceptions to this come in commercial aircraft and related vehicles, because service use and incremental costs have a history, including consecutive/derivative vehicles.)

    Have noticed that costing in space systems is poorly understood for this reason. Little to no experience with reuse means that economics devolve always to an expendable retrospective view, where even with Shuttle (not the best example of reuse economics due to its limited scope with Taos) its cost structure had selective advantages over equivalent scale/scope vehicles.

    The key to space/launch vehicle reuse costing is where agile development in effect moves the goalposts to adapt costing to what it needs to be, to meet achievable goals for a given design (this fights the system engineering view by not preserving a common design methodology/progression). And this is not without risk - as we saw with Falcon's move to chilled propellant, or with proving a land-able booster.  The basic "units" of development costs are considerably different for reuse.

    As to the costing models, you usually cycle through various technologies/subsystems and adapt/discard/reselect to suite, where there's a high cost increment for each but a limited run until something "fits". If you have a vertical cost integration, you quickly "own" the ones that "fit".
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/18/2017 01:59 am
    Do aerospace companies do ABC (Activity Based Costing) or are they still using fixed/variable with direct/indirect/overhead/burden ?  I'm guessing on what SG just said, maybe not really big ABC users?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Dante2121 on 10/21/2017 09:10 pm
    Time is money.  Previously SpaceX offered cheaper rockets (62 million) but you had to wait months if not years to launch.  That negated much of the cost savings vis a vis their competition. 

    Now you can launch immediately for 62 million or wait many months and pay more for a competitor's rocket. SpaceX is now winning on two fronts.  Because of this you could legitimately argue that SpaceX should be charging even more than 62 million for this promptness and they still would be reducing costs for their customers due to earlier received revenues from faster satellite launches.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 10/23/2017 01:21 am
    Time is money.  Previously SpaceX offered cheaper rockets (62 million) but you had to wait months if not years to launch.  That negated much of the cost savings vis a vis their competition. 

    Now you can launch immediately for 62 million or wait many months and pay more for a competitor's rocket. SpaceX is now winning on two fronts.  Because of this you could legitimately argue that SpaceX should be charging even more than 62 million for this promptness and they still would be reducing costs for their customers due to earlier received revenues from faster satellite launches.

    ULA's Rocket Builder places a definite price advantage on Atlas V for not getting delayed; seems more than reasonable to decrease the Falcon cost by similar amount for moving up in the queue.  Their default value for 'schedule certainty' is $23M, so this is of order the price reduction realized by early adoptors for flight-proven vehicles... plus the 10%-ish price reduction, of course.

    SpaceX doesn't need to reduce prices yet as the growing list of customers for reflown boosters demonstrates -- since their costs for reflights have dropped considerably, their margin should be growing nicely.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: deruch on 10/24/2017 04:06 am
    Time is money.  Previously SpaceX offered cheaper rockets (62 million) but you had to wait months if not years to launch.  That negated much of the cost savings vis a vis their competition. 

    Now you can launch immediately for 62 million or wait many months and pay more for a competitor's rocket. SpaceX is now winning on two fronts.  Because of this you could legitimately argue that SpaceX should be charging even more than 62 million for this promptness and they still would be reducing costs for their customers due to earlier received revenues from faster satellite launches.

    If you're talking about being able to move up the queue through accepting a pre-flown booster, that advantage is going to soon disappear.  Moving up the launch queue is only an option right now because SpaceX has pre-flown boosters to use that are sitting idle.  Once there is widespread adoption of reused boosters by the satellite industry, your place in the queue will just be your place in the queue.    With both SES's and Iridium's adoption, plus their imminent usage on NASA's CRS launches, that day will very soon be at hand.  Of course, SpaceX being able to reuse boosters is vital to their strategy of raising their launch rate.  So, they'll be able to burn down their backlog much more quickly.  But, very soon there won't be any line jumping because pretty much everyone will accept a reused booster.

    If you're talking about general lead time from contract agreement to launch, then SpaceX is still only selling launches for 2 years in the future.  Though they may offer shorter lead times for government launches and/or higher prices.  There's really not much demand for anything else because, except in the event of a customer swapping launchers, no customers are stockpiling satellites to launch when launchers are available.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: raketa on 10/24/2017 09:57 pm
    Time is money.  Previously SpaceX offered cheaper rockets (62 million) but you had to wait months if not years to launch.  That negated much of the cost savings vis a vis their competition. 

    Now you can launch immediately for 62 million or wait many months and pay more for a competitor's rocket. SpaceX is now winning on two fronts.  Because of this you could legitimately argue that SpaceX should be charging even more than 62 million for this promptness and they still would be reducing costs for their customers due to earlier received revenues from faster satellite launches.

    If you're talking about being able to move up the queue through accepting a pre-flown booster, that advantage is going to soon disappear.  Moving up the launch queue is only an option right now because SpaceX has pre-flown boosters to use that are sitting idle.  Once there is widespread adoption of reused boosters by the satellite industry, your place in the queue will just be your place in the queue.    With both SES's and Iridium's adoption, plus their imminent usage on NASA's CRS launches, that day will very soon be at hand.  Of course, SpaceX being able to reuse boosters is vital to their strategy of raising their launch rate.  So, they'll be able to burn down their backlog much more quickly.  But, very soon there won't be any line jumping because pretty much everyone will accept a reused booster.

    If you're talking about general lead time from contract agreement to launch, then SpaceX is still only selling launches for 2 years in the future.  Though they may offer shorter lead times for government launches and/or higher prices.  There's really not much demand for anything else because, except in the event of a customer swapping launchers, no customers are stockpiling satellites to launch when launchers are available.
    I am guessing  in 2 years, rocket will be not limiting factor, but range availability for Spacex. Rocket will be waiting for Satellite. They will no queue.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: swervin on 10/27/2017 10:00 pm
    Quite a billion posts to filter through, so apologies if already asked/answered:

    Any ideas when the first time attempt at a 3-time flown booster will occur?

    Cheers,
    Nick
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ClayJar on 10/27/2017 10:59 pm
    Quite a billion posts to filter through, so apologies if already asked/answered:

    Any ideas when the first time attempt at a 3-time flown booster will occur?

    Asked many times and guessed at many times over.  ;D  The general consensus seems to be, approximately, that with Block 5 coming soon and a good stable of landed boosters, there's likely no reason for SpaceX to fly any of their pre-Block 5 boosters a third time.  Obviously, being outside the know, we can't say whether or not they could or couldn't fly a booster a third time (or, to put it with more finesse, how much additional refurbishment and testing may be required to do so).  It just seems logical to assume they wouldn't as long as there isn't a pressing need (and "because we can" doesn't rise to that level... at least not at this point... regardless of how cool it'd be to see).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/28/2017 01:58 am
    I suspect SpaceX is warehousing the pre-5 landed boosters as a way to get a jump on stockpiling F9 cores as a risk-reduction measure so they can switch the line to BFR as early as possible.

    So even if they never fly them post-5: It's an insurance policy. They can still refly those recovered cores (or part them out) in case BFR has teething problems and is delayed after they shut down the F9 booster line.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 10/28/2017 02:04 am
    So even if they never fly them post-5: It's an insurance policy. They can still refly those recovered cores (or part them out) in case BFR has teething problems and is delayed after they shut down the F9 booster line.

    Ugh. That would seem to be a rather ugly option, since by the time the BFR comes online they will be, what, no younger than 5 years old?

    I'd have to think that building a few extra Block 5 would make better sense, but then we're still left with the mystery of what they will do with the leftover Block 3&4.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/28/2017 02:09 am
    So even if they never fly them post-5: It's an insurance policy. They can still refly those recovered cores (or part them out) in case BFR has teething problems and is delayed after they shut down the F9 booster line.

    Ugh. That would seem to be a rather ugly option, since by the time the BFR comes online they will be, what, no younger than 5 years old?

    I'd have to think that building a few extra Block 5 would make better sense, but then we're still left with the mystery of what they will do with the leftover Block 3&4.
    It means you need to stockpile fewer Block 5s "just in case" since you have a whole bunch of warehoused recovered pre5s. You can switch over a few months earlier.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/28/2017 04:31 am
    I wonder about the component parts. What is best speculation about the reusability of engines on stages that might not be worth upgrading. Were the engines reused from the one they scrapped?

    Is it even worth it to tear down a stage to tankage and build a new block 5 around the old tankage? or are the tanks different enough (fill drain points, inspection hatches, whatever) that this is not cost effective. SpaceX know but we can only guess.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: IntoTheVoid on 10/28/2017 04:06 pm
    I wonder about the component parts. What is best speculation about the reusability of engines on stages that might not be worth upgrading. Were the engines reused from the one they scrapped?

    Is it even worth it to tear down a stage to tankage and build a new block 5 around the old tankage? or are the tanks different enough (fill drain points, inspection hatches, whatever) that this is not cost effective. SpaceX know but we can only guess.

    It's funny to consider that once customers stop being concerned with new vs pre-flown that SpaceX could have a warehouse of 150-200 block 3/4 engines to mate with otherwise new boosters. If they can be uprated to block 5 great. If not, and they can only use them on lower energy missions, it still seems like a boon.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 10/28/2017 06:23 pm
    It's funny to consider that once customers stop being concerned with new vs pre-flown that SpaceX could have a warehouse of 150-200 block 3/4 engines to mate with otherwise new boosters. If they can be uprated to block 5 great. If not, and they can only use them on lower energy missions, it still seems like a boon.

    Interesting possibility - rebuilding some (or all) of the Block 3/4 engines to the latest version.

    We do know via the Commercial Crew program updates that SpaceX is instituting a new "blisk", which is a combination of a blade and disk in one single forging - cutting edge technology that is supposed to address cracks in the current engines that are a concern for human-rating, and no doubt for reuse too.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/28/2017 07:46 pm
    I wonder about the component parts. What is best speculation about the reusability of engines on stages that might not be worth upgrading. Were the engines reused from the one they scrapped?

    Is it even worth it to tear down a stage to tankage and build a new block 5 around the old tankage? or are the tanks different enough (fill drain points, inspection hatches, whatever) that this is not cost effective. SpaceX know but we can only guess.
    It's a fair question. Obviously the design has certain major sub divisions. It depends on how they are joined together. If they those joints can be broken and re-made cleanly then reuse at that level should be possible, and you'd like to go at the highest level possible.

    On that basis you'd like to dismount a whole Octaweb of engines intact, then bolt it to the next tank block. Same applies to other big blocks.

    As always, if planned for in design perfectly possible. IRL rocket engines (except solids) have always been test fired. They've always been "reusable," in that sense. It's simply that until the SSME no one did once they'd flown their core mission once.

    It's funny to consider that once customers stop being concerned with new vs pre-flown that SpaceX could have a warehouse of 150-200 block 3/4 engines to mate with otherwise new boosters. If they can be uprated to block 5 great. If not, and they can only use them on lower energy missions, it still seems like a boon.

    Interesting possibility - rebuilding some (or all) of the Block 3/4 engines to the latest version.

    We do know via the Commercial Crew program updates that SpaceX is instituting a new "blisk", which is a combination of a blade and disk in one single forging - cutting edge technology that is supposed to address cracks in the current engines that are a concern for human-rating, and no doubt for reuse too.
    TBH I'm amazed this was not designed in from day one, given the substantial amount of touch labor involved in assembling all those blades on a disk.

    Interesting also that close to a century after the first use of turbines in a rocket turbo pump they are still getting cracking issues.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/28/2017 08:04 pm
    Since this is a thread on costs and reusability I realized I should have put a copy of my latest version of my LV costing game here.

    This version focuses on F9 and splits out fairing costs (both new and refurb) as separate items you can change.

    The layout has also been slightly de-cluttered. As always Blue boxes are values that can be changed, in the units listed in the labels.  "Red dot" cells have additional notes in the comments.

    Any suggestions or comments welcome as always.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: speedevil on 10/29/2017 04:54 am
    <snip - of blisks>
    TBH I'm amazed this was not designed in from day one, given the substantial amount of touch labor involved in assembling all those blades on a disk.

    Interesting also that close to a century after the first use of turbines in a rocket turbo pump they are still getting cracking issues.

    Designing is easy.
    Manufacturing is not.
    It is very easy to design an unmanufacturable object, and if you do it can be hugely expensive to find that out. It's also going to be more expensive to get it working, which is important at the beginning of a design cycle.

    'Touch labour is bad'. Well, that depends on if it takes a hundred or ten thousand hours to assemble and inspect.
    If it's a hundred, even at $100/hr, that may be quite negligible.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/29/2017 12:00 pm
    <snip - of blisks>
    TBH I'm amazed this was not designed in from day one, given the substantial amount of touch labor involved in assembling all those blades on a disk.

    Interesting also that close to a century after the first use of turbines in a rocket turbo pump they are still getting cracking issues.
    Designing is easy.
    Manufacturing is not.
    Which is why historically turbine mfgs have gone with making the disks out of one alloy and the blades out of another, allowing them to use the optimal choice of both material properties and grain growth direction for optimum performance. This is the "high performance" option.

    The joker in the pack is the large number of blade/disk interfaces, which can act as stress concentrators if not properly designed.

    Blisk or Bling designs are always a compromise in material properties and crystal growth axis. Given SX has always been strongly cost driven I was surprised they went for the high cost/high performance option.
    Quote from: speedevil
    It is very easy to design an unmanufacturable object, and if you do it can be hugely expensive to find that out. It's also going to be more expensive to get it working, which is important at the beginning of a design cycle.
    A subject stressed in Production Engineering Degrees as this problem has been extensively studied. CAD systems can do automatic "fit and clearance" checking and In principle any machining cycle can by tested by a dry run with a block of foam.

    People forget the real purpose of an aircraft "roll out" was not a photo op for journalists but to do an "all up" assembly of every part, in order to find which parts didn't fit and needed to be re-designed, or in some cases hadn't been made in the first place. Read the description of the 707 roll out in "Widebody."
    Quote from: speedevil
    'Touch labour is bad'. Well, that depends on if it takes a hundred or ten thousand hours to assemble and inspect.
    If it's a hundred, even at $100/hr, that may be quite negligible.
    SX were saying they were moving to "explosive forming" to make combustion chambers.  That suggests they value operator time very highly, given they are prepared to move to a pretty exotic mfg method.
    CC's have a long history of being CNC machined or spun reliably, but it seems neither was fast enough or low enough in staff time for SX.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Mader Levap on 10/29/2017 10:14 pm
    I suspect SpaceX is warehousing the pre-5 landed boosters as a way to get a jump on stockpiling F9 cores as a risk-reduction measure so they can switch the line to BFR as early as possible.

    So even if they never fly them post-5: It's an insurance policy. They can still refly those recovered cores (or part them out) in case BFR has teething problems and is delayed after they shut down the F9 booster line.
    It does not make any sense whatsoever.

    First, as others noted, it will be many years before BFR flies (and it will not fly in 2022, forget it). It is utter waste of space and resources storing them.

    Second, if you want to store cores for whatever reason, block 5 is type of core to store, not pre-block 5. Why you would store worse version when better one is avaliable?

    Third, shutting down F9 production before BFR is flying would be very stupid thing to do. While I can imagine downsizing their production before BFR, complete shutdown will happen after BFR is proven and flying regularly (some time before 2030). Assuming it is really that cheap - and that's risky assumption.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/29/2017 10:50 pm
    They're going to start building the prototype BFR/BFS in a few months. BFR will fly before 2022, most likely.

    Why would you store the older one? So you don't need to make as many of the new ones.

    You know, if people started actually believing that SpaceX is serious about their announcements, everything else will make sense. Doesn't mean they'll succeed, but you have to believe they're serious.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/29/2017 11:00 pm
    If they build 30 block 5 cores, that will do them for a decade of launches at least (and if you believe the 100 reuse number, for a century). The dozen or so other cores will act as a further insurance policy. I'm pretty sure a decade is long enough to get BFR working.

    Really, if Block 5 is so reusable, it makes zero sense to keep the line open. We shut down the Shuttle Orbiter line after a few years. It'd just waste money to keep it open.

    Part of the effect of reuse is that it allows you to shut down your production line after a while.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/29/2017 11:09 pm
     

    First, as others noted, it will be many years before BFR flies (and it will not fly in 2022, forget it)..
    Really? An assertion backed by ZERO evidence. In bold, too!

    Okay. Let's bet on it. If you're so confident it won't happen, you should be willing to take 4:1 odds against it happening. 4 beverages of my choice (value of each not to exceed $5) to your 1 beverage ($5) if BFR successfully launches to orbit by the end of 2022 UTC. Deal?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 10/29/2017 11:53 pm
     

    First, as others noted, it will be many years before BFR flies (and it will not fly in 2022, forget it)..
    Really? An assertion backed by ZERO evidence. In bold, too!

    Okay. Let's bet on it. If you're so confident it won't happen, you should be willing to take 4:1 odds against it happening. 4 beverages of my choice (value of each not to exceed $5) to your 1 beverage ($5) if BFR successfully launches to orbit by the end of 2022 UTC. Deal?

    If you are going to bet like that, I suggest you need to be more specific. What would qualify as a "BFR flying"?
    A) BFS test hop
    B) BFS to space but suborbital
    C) BFS to orbits (SSTO test)
    D) BFR (booster) suborbital test
    D) BFR/BFS full stack flight

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/29/2017 11:58 pm
    I said BFR orbits. I was clear.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/30/2017 12:40 am
    I said BFR orbits. I was clear.

    TBH you didn't say that, you said BFR launches to orbit. Which is good because except in very rare edge cases, BFR won't orbit, since it is not really SSTO, it will launch BFS and RTLS, while BFS goes on to orbit. That's how I read what you said and what the bet was to be.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Mader Levap on 10/30/2017 01:12 am
     
    First, as others noted, it will be many years before BFR flies (and it will not fly in 2022, forget it).
    Really? An assertion backed by ZERO evidence. In bold, too!

    Past history of SpaceX's performance deadline-wise is zero evidence, got it.

    Hell, even Musk himself, very well known for his optimism in timeline matters, said that date is merely "aspirational". In other words, it is never going to launch in 2022.

    EDIT: I forgot he was talking about Mars in this context. Still I find it extremely unlikely SpaceX for once will do everything on time. That would be pretty much miracle.

    Okay. Let's bet on it. If you're so confident it won't happen, you should be willing to take 4:1 odds against it happening. 4 beverages of my choice (value of each not to exceed $5) to your 1 beverage ($5) if BFR successfully launches to orbit by the end of 2022 UTC. Deal?
    I am not betting man, bragging rights are enough for me.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 10/30/2017 01:19 am
    They could be saving the block 3's and 4's for expendables for heavy high GTO or GSO orbits to avoid using a FH or for side boosters for FH's since they would be return to launch site.  They could also use them for LEO with low payloads for an easier return.  Lots of reasons to save them. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: cppetrie on 10/30/2017 01:19 am
    Just for clarity, Musk said launches to Mars were in 2022, aspirationally. Seems unlikely that those launches to Mars would be maiden flights, so that aspirational timeline has various test launches of sorts prior to 2022. Even if the first to Mars are in 2024 there is a decent chance the first test flights could be in 2022.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/30/2017 07:20 am
    Part of the effect of reuse is that it allows you to shut down your production line after a while.
    With the caveat that the number of reuses has to be high enough or the number of systems built is high enough and the systems have to be fully reusable.

    And of course what do you do when those numbers run out?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/30/2017 09:39 am
    I am not betting man, bragging rights are enough for me.

    Nobody can force you to bet if you don't want to, but not being willing to put up or shut up dilutes your credibility to some of us. Stridency and profanity don't help either. Nor does a sneering tone. Points to ponder.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/30/2017 09:54 am
     
    First, as others noted, it will be many years before BFR flies (and it will not fly in 2022, forget it).
    Really? An assertion backed by ZERO evidence. In bold, too!

    Past history of SpaceX's performance deadline-wise is zero evidence, got it.

    Hell, even Musk himself, very well known for his optimism in timeline matters, said that date is merely "aspirational". In other words, it is never going to launch in 2022.

    EDIT: I forgot he was talking about Mars in this context. Still I find it extremely unlikely SpaceX for once will do everything on time. That would be pretty much miracle.

    Okay. Let's bet on it. If you're so confident it won't happen, you should be willing to take 4:1 odds against it happening. 4 beverages of my choice (value of each not to exceed $5) to your 1 beverage ($5) if BFR successfully launches to orbit by the end of 2022 UTC. Deal?
    I am not betting man, bragging rights are enough for me.
    Okay! So you acknowledge they have at least a 20% chance that they'll accomplish BFR to orbit by 2022. Glad we have that settled!
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Mader Levap on 10/30/2017 10:49 am
    I am not betting man, bragging rights are enough for me.
    Okay! So you acknowledge they have at least a 20% chance that they'll accomplish BFR to orbit by 2022. Glad we have that settled!

    Sure, sure, only reason that I wouldn't bet 5$ is that I cannot afford losing that kind of money in case I lose that bet.  ::)

     
    First, as others noted, it will be many years before BFR flies (and it will not fly in 2022, forget it).
    Really? An assertion backed by ZERO evidence. In bold, too!
    Past history of SpaceX's performance deadline-wise is zero evidence, got it.
    Okay! Guessing by your lack of answer you acknowledge that there is, in fact, evidence for claim that they are very unlikely to meet that deadline. Glad we have that settled!
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Rebel44 on 10/30/2017 10:59 am
    <snip - of blisks>
    TBH I'm amazed this was not designed in from day one, given the substantial amount of touch labor involved in assembling all those blades on a disk.

    Interesting also that close to a century after the first use of turbines in a rocket turbo pump they are still getting cracking issues.
    Designing is easy.
    Manufacturing is not.
    Which is why historically turbine mfgs have gone with making the disks out of one alloy and the blades out of another, allowing them to use the optimal choice of both material properties and grain growth direction for optimum performance. This is the "high performance" option.

    The joker in the pack is the large number of blade/disk interfaces, which can act as stress concentrators if not properly designed.

    Blisk or Bling designs are always a compromise in material properties and crystal growth axis. Given SX has always been strongly cost driven I was surprised they went for the high cost/high performance option.
    ............

    Its quite possible that SpaceX considers more expensive material/parts OK, when used on 1st stage that is designed/expected to fly 10+ times
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 10/30/2017 12:07 pm
    Part of the effect of reuse is that it allows you to shut down your production line after a while.
    With the caveat that the number of reuses has to be high enough or the number of systems built is high enough and the systems have to be fully reusable.

    And of course what do you do when those numbers run out?

    I highly doubt they are going to completely shut down F9 production before BFR is flying, just slow it down a lot. BFR needs new floor space and new tooling anyway, so the only major manufacturing resource conflict is for labor hours, which are reasonably easy to draw down without cutting off completely. They need to keep making F9 upper stages for a while, so it won't be that difficult to turn out a new booster once in a while.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/30/2017 01:14 pm
    I wasn't helping (sadly) but we probably are a bit off topic. Let's see what we can do to move from SpaceX credibility to the effect that reusability has on costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 10/30/2017 01:30 pm
    Does anyone know if NASA is getting a price break for agreeing to fly CRS-13 on a used booster? Is there anything in the CRS contract that would allow this?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 10/30/2017 01:49 pm
    Does anyone know if NASA is getting a price break for agreeing to fly CRS-13 on a used booster? Is there anything in the CRS contract that would allow this?

    I would assume there is something, since it is the service provider NASA is paying (i.e. SpaceX) that wants to change the service offering (i.e. reflown rocket and spacecraft vs new for both). I would not be surprised if we can't see the info though...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 10/30/2017 01:59 pm
    Does anyone know if NASA is getting a price break for agreeing to fly CRS-13 on a used booster? Is there anything in the CRS contract that would allow this?

    I would assume there is something, since it is the service provider NASA is paying (i.e. SpaceX) that wants to change the service offering (i.e. reflown rocket and spacecraft vs new for both). I would not be surprised if we can't see the info though...
    Disagree; SpaceX isn't changing the service, they are offering the same payload to the same orbit for the same price (meaning, not increasing the price).  If they could use a magic carpet to do it for free they still would be offering the same service.

    Also, I think that's about price and not cost and is therefore slightly off-topic, although it is at least close to the mark.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 10/30/2017 03:25 pm
    Part of the effect of reuse is that it allows you to shut down your production line after a while.
    With the caveat that the number of reuses has to be high enough or the number of systems built is high enough and the systems have to be fully reusable.

    And of course what do you do when those numbers run out?

    I highly doubt they are going to completely shut down F9 production before BFR is flying, just slow it down a lot. BFR needs new floor space and new tooling anyway, so the only major manufacturing resource conflict is for labor hours, which are reasonably easy to draw down without cutting off completely. They need to keep making F9 upper stages for a while, so it won't be that difficult to turn out a new booster once in a while.

    This, and by the time the BFR is flying, they will have built a lot of Block 5 boosters, so really, no need at all to retain any of the older blocks. I'd scrap them and sell the bits off as souvenirs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: IntoTheVoid on 10/30/2017 06:08 pm
    I'd scrap them and sell the bits off as souvenirs.

    Can't do this. The Chinese would probably drive the price up out of the reach of common folks, and then a year later we'd be seeing an F9 rocket mosaic in Beijing.  :o
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: llanitedave on 10/30/2017 06:26 pm
     
    First, as others noted, it will be many years before BFR flies (and it will not fly in 2022, forget it).
    Really? An assertion backed by ZERO evidence. In bold, too!

    Past history of SpaceX's performance deadline-wise is zero evidence, got it.

    Hell, even Musk himself, very well known for his optimism in timeline matters, said that date is merely "aspirational". In other words, it is never going to launch in 2022.

    EDIT: I forgot he was talking about Mars in this context. Still I find it extremely unlikely SpaceX for once will do everything on time. That would be pretty much miracle.

    Okay. Let's bet on it. If you're so confident it won't happen, you should be willing to take 4:1 odds against it happening. 4 beverages of my choice (value of each not to exceed $5) to your 1 beverage ($5) if BFR successfully launches to orbit by the end of 2022 UTC. Deal?
    I am not betting man, bragging rights are enough for me.


    I'm also rather doubtful that BFR will launch before 2022, but certainly not stridently so.  And if they don't make it, I'll consider it a minor disappointment, not something to brag about.


    I don't even understand the concept of bragging over someone else's failures.  Seems to me to be of rather dubious taste, at a minimum.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: llanitedave on 10/30/2017 06:28 pm
    I'd scrap them and sell the bits off as souvenirs.

    Can't do this. The Chinese would probably drive the price up out of the reach of common folks, and then a year later we'd be seeing an F9 rocket mosaic in Beijing.  :o


    I wouldn't be surprised to see a Chinese Falconoid rocket in a few years as it is.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/30/2017 06:30 pm
    I highly doubt they are going to completely shut down F9 production before BFR is flying, just slow it down a lot.
    Me either.  It depends. If they run 3 shifts they could move to 2 or 1, but if they already run 1 anyway..
    Quote from: envy887
    BFR needs new floor space and new tooling anyway, so the only major manufacturing resource conflict is for labor hours, which are reasonably easy to draw down without cutting off completely.
    Hasn't Musk said it's getting a new factory with water access? I'm sure this has been mentioned. If they can retain the staff but relocate and retrain them that would be the ideal approach. Head count remains the same but different use of resources.
    Quote from: envy887
    They need to keep making F9 upper stages for a while, so it won't be that difficult to turn out a new booster once in a while.
    Until BFS is proved out SX will have to keep mfg upper stages, unless the FH test flight produces absolutely astonishing results in this area. Time will tell if it does.

    How many F9 boosters you need depends on how many re-flights you get out of them and how fast the BFR is flight ready. We know Musks "aspirations" but IRL this is a "How long is a piece of string" question.  :(

    What's F9 Blk 5 meant to do? 5? 10? 100? If it's a 100 and they build 10 of them that's a 1000 launches (provided there are [EDIT no]  losses). No problem.

    Time will tell if SX can manage to deliver that.   
    Its quite possible that SpaceX considers more expensive material/parts OK, when used on 1st stage that is designed/expected to fly 10+ times
    You have it backwards.

    SX are already using the high performance design.

    Blings/Blisks (it depends if the object is mostly disk with little blades or mostly blades with little disk) reduce design flexibility (all made of one alloy. No choice on blade mounting. No ability to replace blades) but reduce assembly time to zero (1 single part) at the risk of having to scrap the whole unit if there are mistakes in machining and/or casting.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 10/31/2017 01:45 am
    Part of the effect of reuse is that it allows you to shut down your production line after a while.
    With the caveat that the number of reuses has to be high enough or the number of systems built is high enough and the systems have to be fully reusable.

    And of course what do you do when those numbers run out?

    I highly doubt they are going to completely shut down F9 production before BFR is flying, just slow it down a lot. BFR needs new floor space and new tooling anyway, so the only major manufacturing resource conflict is for labor hours, which are reasonably easy to draw down without cutting off completely. They need to keep making F9 upper stages for a while, so it won't be that difficult to turn out a new booster once in a while.
    I don't think it will take BFR long to fly.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/31/2017 07:31 am
    I don't think it will take BFR long to fly.
    Unfortunately that's only half a vehicle.  :(

    SX could do the old Saturn 1/Saturn V trick of sticking the F9 US on top of a BFR as a stop gap but that would be so far below its design goals I think half the first stage engines would have to stay off at launch not to destroy it.  :(

    BFR does not need a full spec, Mars ready, human capable BFS, but it does need something more or less that size and shape sitting on top of it.

    Testing that out will be quite tough.


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 10/31/2017 07:36 am
    Part of the effect of reuse is that it allows you to shut down your production line after a while.
    With the caveat that the number of reuses has to be high enough or the number of systems built is high enough and the systems have to be fully reusable.

    And of course what do you do when those numbers run out?

    I highly doubt they are going to completely shut down F9 production before BFR is flying, just slow it down a lot. BFR needs new floor space and new tooling anyway, so the only major manufacturing resource conflict is for labor hours, which are reasonably easy to draw down without cutting off completely. They need to keep making F9 upper stages for a while, so it won't be that difficult to turn out a new booster once in a while.
    I don't think it will take BFR long to fly.


    Optimism is great.

    I'm optimistic, I see a prototype  flying in 4 years. But only a prototype. More years after that before its reliable enough to stop building/using F9.


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: macpacheco on 10/31/2017 01:32 pm
    I suspect SpaceX is warehousing the pre-5 landed boosters as a way to get a jump on stockpiling F9 cores as a risk-reduction measure so they can switch the line to BFR as early as possible.

    So even if they never fly them post-5: It's an insurance policy. They can still refly those recovered cores (or part them out) in case BFR has teething problems and is delayed after they shut down the F9 booster line.
    SpaceX is stockpiling boosters because they don't have anything to use them for right now. Specially those that have been to GTO trajectories.
    Customers so far are only ok with reflying on boosters that only did CRS/Iridium launches (LEO/Polar).
    There are still boosters left that only been to LEO once.
    Customers aren't signing open reflight contracts that let SpaceX choose any booster they want, they're hand picking them.
    With Iridium officially on board and NASA apparently on board now we have the chance of LEO-LEO-GTO and LEO-LEO-LEO reuse sequences.
    The boosters that have been to GTO once or LEO-GTO will likely be remanufactured into FH side boosters like its been done already, except SpaceX needs customers being OK with that before tying up the factory and testing assets for that effort. And that depends on a few successful FH launches.

    So far there has been less reflight opportunities than boosters landed from low energy trajectories.

    Once enough customers are onboard, reflying on a once flown CRS/Iridium booster becomes the norm and in order to jump the line customers will have to sign up for 3rd (used to low energy only flights) or to re-fly on boosters that been to GTO trajectories before.

    Come to think of it, this next FH launch is super duper important, because if it succeeds it could create a business case for SpaceX to make Block V F9 boosters with aggressive reuse of parts from landed Block III boosters (remanufacture). Depending on how much factory time that saves, it could be a great deal to increase Block V F9 booster production rate in 2018.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RDMM2081 on 10/31/2017 03:31 pm
    I don't recall seeing anything about how many times it may be possible to reuse the FH side boosters.

    Making a couple assumptions about the flight profile and stresses involved and why they chose GTO cores in the first place, might these be the first cores to see their third liftoff?

    And following that, if they can in fact reuse the side boosters more than a first stage core, this makes the current stockpile even more attractive.  ;)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: guckyfan on 10/31/2017 03:42 pm
    I am convinced that they will drop all older stages including block 4 once the first block 5 has been checked and reflown. They will not want a mix of different hardware in the inventory.

    I could imagine that they can upgrade block 4 to block 5. If possible they may do that. But not flying a mix.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: speedevil on 10/31/2017 04:31 pm
    I am convinced that they will drop all older stages including block 4 once the first block 5 has been checked and reflown. They will not want a mix of different hardware in the inventory.
    Dry storage of rockets is nearly free compared with making them.
    It is not quite impossible there may be a problem with block 5, for example.
    Being in a position after an accident to be able to say 'or, you can fly a block 4 that has flown before' might considerably speed return to flight.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 10/31/2017 06:41 pm
    I am convinced that they will drop all older stages including block 4 once the first block 5 has been checked and reflown. They will not want a mix of different hardware in the inventory.
    Dry storage of rockets is nearly free compared with making them.
    It is not quite impossible there may be a problem with block 5, for example.
    Being in a position after an accident to be able to say 'or, you can fly a block 4 that has flown before' might considerably speed return to flight.

    I would expect the Block 5s to gradually displace earlier versions, starting with the least-reusable at each storage site.  May take a year or more to refill available storage slots with Block 5s... only a few will be needed per pad to keep launch cadence going, and a few being refurbished at any time (assuming ten uses between refurbishments as they have advertised).

    More interesting will be where, when, and in what quantity they start storing the eventual overbuild.  The number of customers 'insisting' on paying for new cores may drop rapidly when these customers realize that they are subsidizing the competition and SpaceX itself (which is a competitor as Starlink begins to fly).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/31/2017 06:58 pm
    More interesting will be where, when, and in what quantity they start storing the eventual overbuild.  The number of customers 'insisting' on paying for new cores may drop rapidly when these customers realize that they are subsidizing the competition and SpaceX itself (which is a competitor as Starlink begins to fly).

    Tucson. There are a lot of aircraft stored there because of the climate.

    But I think they will start to skew the S2:S1 ratio before there is a glut of block 5 S1s...  Not sure what effect that has on cost.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 10/31/2017 07:45 pm
    Customers aren't signing open reflight contracts that let SpaceX choose any booster they want, they're hand picking them.
    Do you have a link to support that assertion?  Seems quite possible SpaceX is the one choosing what boosters to offer to the customer, and it is SpaceX that is being conservative by only offering the more lightly used boosters.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: macpacheco on 10/31/2017 10:13 pm
    Customers aren't signing open reflight contracts that let SpaceX choose any booster they want, they're hand picking them.
    Do you have a link to support that assertion?  Seems quite possible SpaceX is the one choosing what boosters to offer to the customer, and it is SpaceX that is being conservative by only offering the more lightly used boosters.
    Customers choose which booster to fly, SpaceX accepts.
    SpaceX choose which booster to fly, customer must agree.
    To me its potato, potato, same net result.
    It would be different if SpaceX took any of its GTO recoveries and asked the customer to use that.
    Wouldn't it be SpaceX's interest to at least re-fly one of those GTO recoveries, the booster that landed on the very best shape at least once to prove that's safe too ?
    The key is there isn't a long enough line of customers willing to re-fly, so the customer is the chooser, SpaceX is the beggar.
    SpaceX has a lot of interest in opening up that re-use envelope and showing their process is safe.
    Some GTO recoveries clearly aren't in good shape enough for refurb, but many are, unless there's something SpaceX isn't telling us.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: QuantumG on 10/31/2017 10:31 pm
    Well... at first you'd get a discount if you flew on the reused booster. That's gone now. Soon you'll pay extra to fly on a fresh booster. Then you'll pay (a lot) extra to fly on Falcon instead of BFR. Then you'll fly on BFR or go elsewhere.


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: speedevil on 10/31/2017 11:59 pm
    Some GTO recoveries clearly aren't in good shape enough for refurb, but many are, unless there's something SpaceX isn't telling us.

    Or just take a leaf out of ULAs book, and treat the returned stage as a source for engines.
    (yes, they are older engines).
    Has anything been said about the cost of the engines as a fraction of the stage (and presumably the octoweb) cost?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 11/01/2017 12:24 am
    Customers aren't signing open reflight contracts that let SpaceX choose any booster they want, they're hand picking them.
    Do you have a link to support that assertion?  Seems quite possible SpaceX is the one choosing what boosters to offer to the customer, and it is SpaceX that is being conservative by only offering the more lightly used boosters.
    Customers choose which booster to fly, SpaceX accepts.
    SpaceX choose which booster to fly, customer must agree.
    To me its potato, potato, same net result.
    It would be different if SpaceX took any of its GTO recoveries and asked the customer to use that.
    Wouldn't it be SpaceX's interest to at least re-fly one of those GTO recoveries, the booster that landed on the very best shape at least once to prove that's safe too ?
    The key is there isn't a long enough line of customers willing to re-fly, so the customer is the chooser, SpaceX is the beggar.
    SpaceX has a lot of interest in opening up that re-use envelope and showing their process is safe.
    Some GTO recoveries clearly aren't in good shape enough for refurb, but many are, unless there's something SpaceX isn't telling us.

    SpaceX has stated that it is their future intent that the customer pays for a launch but doesn't choose whether it is on a new booster or a previously flown one. Maybe launch contracts they are signing for a couple of years from now are that way, but it seemed to me that it was the intent of SpaceX to not implement that strategy until Block 5 was proven.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 11/01/2017 12:43 am
    ...
    Wouldn't it be SpaceX's interest to at least re-fly one of those GTO recoveries, the booster that landed on the very best shape at least once to prove that's safe too ?
    They did run a GTO stage that came back very hot through at least 8 full duration static fires.

    But Block 5 is right around the corner, and they probably have enough LEO stages to use for reflights until Block 5 is available.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: GWH on 11/01/2017 12:58 am
    One of the GTO boosters is getting reflown... just as a side booster to Falcon Heavy.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/01/2017 11:07 am
    Well... at first you'd get a discount if you flew on the reused booster. That's gone now. Soon you'll pay extra to fly on a fresh booster. Then you'll pay (a lot) extra to fly on Falcon instead of BFR. Then you'll fly on BFR or go elsewhere.
    Indeed. It will be their way, or the highway.

    Just like any monopoly supplier's operation.

    One of the GTO boosters is getting reflown... just as a side booster to Falcon Heavy.
    That should provide some very interesting data
    More interesting will be where, when, and in what quantity they start storing the eventual overbuild.  The number of customers 'insisting' on paying for new cores may drop rapidly when these customers realize that they are subsidizing the competition and SpaceX itself (which is a competitor as Starlink begins to fly).

    Tucson. There are a lot of aircraft stored there because of the climate.

    But I think they will start to skew the S2:S1 ratio before there is a glut of block 5 S1s...  Not sure what effect that has on cost.
    That's one option. It depends how many shifts they run to make an F9. If mfg is running 3 shifts they can drop that to 2, and/or reassign people to the BFR factory.
    I am convinced that they will drop all older stages including block 4 once the first block 5 has been checked and reflown. They will not want a mix of different hardware in the inventory.

    I could imagine that they can upgrade block 4 to block 5. If possible they may do that. But not flying a mix.
    I can see your PoV.  AFAIK there are no F1's in the back of a hanger "just in case."

    The question is how big a difference is Block 5 from earlier blocks?

    I guess SX would like to fly out the earlier blocks on expendable maximum payload launches, but those would be GEO or GTO, just the ones where you don't want a failure.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 11/01/2017 11:27 am
    SpaceX isn't a monopoly, not even close.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 11/01/2017 12:29 pm
    Wouldn't it be SpaceX's interest to at least re-fly one of those GTO recoveries, the booster that landed on the very best shape at least once to prove that's safe too ?
    SpaceX will be doing that themselves when FH launches, as one of the boosters was previously used on a GTO mission.
    Quote
    The key is there isn't a long enough line of customers willing to re-fly, so the customer is the chooser, SpaceX is the beggar.
    Again, the same assertion without evidence.  Then when challenged you say "it doesn't matter".  If it doesn't matter why do you keep saying it?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 11/01/2017 05:21 pm
    ...

    I guess SX would like to fly out the earlier blocks on expendable maximum payload launches, but those would be GEO or GTO, just the ones where you don't want a failure.

    Which are the ones where you do want a failure?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/01/2017 07:32 pm
    ...

    I guess SX would like to fly out the earlier blocks on expendable maximum payload launches, but those would be GEO or GTO, just the ones where you don't want a failure.

    Which are the ones where you do want a failure?
    In an ideal world there are no failures, but that's not the world SX lives in. So I say that's the worst case of fail because they are the core business of SX and would suggest SX had under designed the vehicle.

    My apologies for not making that suitably explicit for you.

    SpaceX isn't a monopoly, not even close.
    How many other even partly reusable LV's are flying other than F9 at this time? Or what about "lowering launch prices to less than $1000/lb" ?

    I think this thread was always mis-named as customers don't pay "costs" they pay "prices" and while they have cut the "floor price" for medium launch it doesn't look like they are going to go on cutting it.
    That's their choice, but it's prices that matter to customers, not costs.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 11/01/2017 07:40 pm
    SpaceX isn't a monopoly, not even close.
    How many other even partly reusable LV's are flying other than F9 at this time? Or what about "lowering launch prices to less than $1000/lb" ?

    While SpaceX offers the lowest price, commercial customers are choosing not to depend solely on SpaceX, but are using SpaceX to lower the overall average cost of launching their products into space. So all SpaceX has done is replaced a higher priced alternative, but there are still at least two higher priced alternatives (i.e. Ariane 5 and Proton) that the market is still willing to purchase. Which is very smart.

    When Blue Origin launches their reusable launcher service they will likely replace one of the top three incumbents, but I think SpaceX will be the least affected.

    Quote
    I think this thread was always mis-named as customers don't pay "costs" they pay "prices" and while they have cut the "floor price" for medium launch it doesn't look like they are going to go on cutting it.
    That's their choice, but it's prices that matter to customers, not costs.

    SpaceX offers a price, but to customers it's a transportation cost. So it depends on who we're talking about.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 11/01/2017 11:12 pm
    The fact that SpaceX offers a service cheaper than their competitors does not make them a monopoly.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: QuantumG on 11/01/2017 11:18 pm
    Most everyone uses a stupid definition of "monopoly". Let's not get hung up on it.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 11/01/2017 11:21 pm
    ...

    I guess SX would like to fly out the earlier blocks on expendable maximum payload launches, but those would be GEO or GTO, just the ones where you don't want a failure.

    Which are the ones where you do want a failure?
    In an ideal world there are no failures, but that's not the world SX lives in. So I say that's the worst case of fail because they are the core business of SX and would suggest SX had under designed the vehicle.

    My apologies for not making that suitably explicit for you.

    SpaceX isn't a monopoly, not even close.
    How many other even partly reusable LV's are flying other than F9 at this time? Or what about "lowering launch prices to less than $1000/lb" ?

    I think this thread was always mis-named as customers don't pay "costs" they pay "prices" and while they have cut the "floor price" for medium launch it doesn't look like they are going to go on cutting it.
    That's their choice, but it's prices that matter to customers, not costs.
    Thread is properly named, because it's a huge bonus to SpaceX if they can charge the same or similar price but have lower costs. Otherwise reuse isn't very profitable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 11/02/2017 03:27 pm
    Costs are much more fundamental than prices, so thread gets to the heart of reusability 'economics.'  What trickles down to the buyers of these launch services can only stem from positive cost impact of reuse within SpaceX.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: deruch on 11/02/2017 09:16 pm
    One of the major challenges of staying on topic in this thread is that we have at least moderate insight to the prices offered to customers by SpaceX but almost zero insight to the actual costs borne by SpaceX.  So we are often arguing from deduction or somewhat obscure/ambiguous comments from those with a clear view.  That said, it was always intended that this thread focus on discussing the impact of reuse on SpaceX and not on the industry in general (via launch prices, except as a secondary effect because lower costs allow a provider to remain profitable at lower prices).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/02/2017 10:32 pm
      That said, it was always intended that this thread focus on discussing the impact of reuse on SpaceX and not on the industry in general (via launch prices, except as a secondary effect because lower costs allow a provider to remain profitable at lower prices).
    And the answer is "It depends."

    On how much each refurb costs.
    On how many refurbs you can get out of a booster stage (ans soon the payload fairing as well)
    On how those costs compare against a new build stage.

    Personally I just take any set of estimates and put them in my cost modelling game spreadsheet to see the results.

    Reuse (at the right price) enables substantial increases in gross profits. If you don't have to hire new staff to do the refurb your staff costs have not risen so its down to the cost of specialist equipment needed and any new hardware that has to be fitted. IOW most of the increase of gross profit will transfer over to an increase in net (bottom line) profit as well.

    With enough reuses the booster stage part of the price drops to a very small amount and the rest is the refurb cost and the US cost, leaving a very significant net profit for SX. 

    BTW I found the reaction to my last post most interesting.

    The fact remains there is a cost for reusability progress and its in the failure rate of the vehicle. As long as there are people who feel the risk is not worth the lower price, and when they can choose which LV they use they will go with something with a longer continuous list of successful launches.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 11/02/2017 10:43 pm
    No. Reuse is likely to reduce failure rate.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 11/02/2017 10:58 pm
    The fact remains there is a cost for reusability progress and its in the failure rate of the vehicle. As long as there are people who feel the risk is not worth the lower price, and when they can choose which LV they use they will go with something with a longer continuous list of successful launches.

    I don't understand that reasoning.

    If anything the first use of something has the potential for "infant mortality", whereas the longer something is used the more dependable it's use is. I found this chart on Wikipedia that addresses this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve):

    (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Bathtub_curve.svg/1236px-Bathtub_curve.svg.png)

    No doubt SpaceX has to understand when things will wear out, both for moving machinery and for structures, but they have done a lot of that work already.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/03/2017 06:28 am

    I don't understand that reasoning.

    If anything the first use of something has the potential for "infant mortality", whereas the longer something is used the more dependable it's use is. I found this chart on Wikipedia that addresses this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve):

    No doubt SpaceX has to understand when things will wear out, both for moving machinery and for structures, but they have done a lot of that work already.
    I'm quite aware of "bathtub" curves for infant mortality, along with the idea of "burn in" testing for electronics.

    The fact remains you can have an F9 (15+ flights from RTF) or an Ariane 5 (78+ flights from RTF). All we can really say (statistically) is that one has a < 1 in 78 chance of going bang and one has a < 1 in 15 chance of going bang. 

    I'd agree, re-flown boosters should be more reliable, but the simple statistics say that hasn't happened yet.
    Yes I'm aware of every ELV is a first of its kind/last of its kind event for that particular vehicle. And yet at present it seems design stability is trumping ability to see actual flight damage, rather than suspect it from telemetry.

    I await the first booster to fly for its 3rd time with great interest.   
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 11/03/2017 05:11 pm

    The fact remains you can have an F9 (15+ flights from RTF) or an Ariane 5 (78+ flights from RTF). All we can really say (statistically) is that one has a < 1 in 78 chance of going bang and one has a < 1 in 15 chance of going bang. 

    Absent inclusion of confidence levels, I'm not sure that's a statistically valid statement.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: tdperk on 11/03/2017 07:51 pm

    I don't understand that reasoning.

    If anything the first use of something has the potential for "infant mortality", whereas the longer something is used the more dependable it's use is. I found this chart on Wikipedia that addresses this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve):

    No doubt SpaceX has to understand when things will wear out, both for moving machinery and for structures, but they have done a lot of that work already.
    All we can really say (statistically) is that one has a < 1 in 78 chance of going bang and one has a < 1 in 15 chance of going bang.

    Seems fatuous to claim that.  We can say previous builds of it had a 1 in 8 (roughly) failure rate.  This says nothing at all about the most current, and still less the Block 5 build.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/03/2017 10:12 pm
    Seems fatuous to claim that.  We can say previous builds of it had a 1 in 8 (roughly) failure rate.  This says nothing at all about the most current, and still less the Block 5 build.
    I'm merely pointing out that empirically that is what has happened.

    Yes being able to inspect and measure actual damage (and conversely what parts are over built for their task) should improve reliability. We will see in the long term if it does, as we all hope it will. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: tdperk on 11/03/2017 11:04 pm
    Seems fatuous to claim that.  We can say previous builds of it had a 1 in 8 (roughly) failure rate.  This says nothing at all about the most current, and still less the Block 5 build.
    I'm merely pointing out that empirically that is what has happened.

    Yes being able to inspect and measure actual damage (and conversely what parts are over built for their task) should improve reliability. We will see in the long term if it does, as we all hope it will.

    If they were the same rocket you would be pointing it out.  Yet, they are not.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Radical_Ignorant on 11/10/2017 11:49 am

    I think this thread was always mis-named as customers don't pay "costs" they pay "prices" and while they have cut the "floor price" for medium launch it doesn't look like they are going to go on cutting it.
    That's their choice, but it's prices that matter to customers, not costs.

    Yeah - those are two separate discussions. But there is no point in discussing price. This is not technical thing and depends on will of SpaceX, so it's pure guessing without any interesting insight. Just business model in quite slow moving market... Question then would be more about: how low launch prices will affect space industry. If it doesn't change, then price stays the same. We don't know that. Closest discussion to that is in thread about new big constellations of satellites.

    General intention of this thread was to define what "cost" does mean for highly vertically integrated company. What reusability changes if there isn't much more customer payloads, if they can do more with the same. And I think we got answer in Elon presentation about BFR.

    SpaceX costs are rather fixed: manufacturing space, tooling amortisation, and most important workforce. Reusability allows to move those "costs" to some different use. There were two options really:
    1 - cut workforce down -> cut costs -> cut prices/increase profits
    2 - keep prices -> have free workforce which can be assigned to something different.
    3 - market expands greatly, but that requires 1(cutting price) or is done in house (Starlink)

    So IMHO and how I understand Elon talk:
    option 2: Reusability effect on costs = BFR is possible

    Without reusable F9 way to BFR would be much harder. So IMHO discussion about BFR and amount and schedule of shifting resources from F9 to next big thing is what this thread is really about.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Norm38 on 11/10/2017 09:24 pm
    The fact remains you can have an F9 (15+ flights from RTF) or an Ariane 5 (78+ flights from RTF). All we can really say (statistically) is that one has a < 1 in 78 chance of going bang and one has a < 1 in 15 chance of going bang. 

    The only F9 failure that occurred on the first stage is the loss of a Merlin 1C engine.  That flight made orbit and the 1C engine is now out of service.  From the point of view of the first stage, success rate for (primary) payloads is 100% and the first stage is 44/44. (I'm giving the first stage CRS-7).
    So from the view of the booster, Ariane is 78+ from RTF, F9 S1 is 44+ from first flight.

    And both second stages that failed were brand new, so I fail to see how their failures hurt the case for booster reuse.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 11/11/2017 08:12 pm

    The fact remains you can have an F9 (15+ flights from RTF) or an Ariane 5 (78+ flights from RTF). All we can really say (statistically) is that one has a < 1 in 78 chance of going bang and one has a < 1 in 15 chance of going bang. 

    Absent inclusion of confidence levels, I'm not sure that's a statistically valid statement.

    Ed's recent clarification is best statistical treatment.
    (Sorry, cannot locate his treatment of risk intervals)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/11/2017 09:01 pm
    The only F9 failure that occurred on the first stage is the loss of a Merlin 1C engine.  That flight made orbit and the 1C engine is now out of service.  From the point of view of the first stage, success rate for (primary) payloads is 100% and the first stage is 44/44. (I'm giving the first stage CRS-7).
    So from the view of the booster, Ariane is 78+ from RTF, F9 S1 is 44+ from first flight.
    If they suspended launches pending the results of an investigation the next launch after that is a "return to flight." 15 is how far away the f9 is from the last time it failed badly enough to need an RTF.

    Quote from: Norm38
    And both second stages that failed were brand new, so I fail to see how their failures hurt the case for booster reuse.
    It doesn't. If anything it's exactly the place you would expect a design to fail. In the expendable parts you can't study on return.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Norm38 on 11/12/2017 11:34 pm
    You said "reflown boosters should be more reliable but that hasn't happened yet".

    Yet it is the reusable part that hasn't caused loss of mission, while the expendable part has, twice.  Whatever the true reliability of reuse is, it's performing better than expendable right now.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 11/13/2017 10:32 am
    You said "reflown boosters should be more reliable but that hasn't happened yet".

    Yet it is the reusable part that hasn't caused loss of mission, while the expendable part has, twice.  Whatever the true reliability of reuse is, it's performing better than expendable right now.

    Given the craven misuse of statistics above, I'm going to join in and go with reflown boosters being 100% reliable.

    Which is absolutely and incontrovertible true. According to the latest data....
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: speedevil on 11/13/2017 11:45 am

    Given the craven misuse of statistics above, I'm going to join in and go with reflown boosters being 100% reliable.

    Which is absolutely and incontrovertible true. According to the latest data....

    This seems conservative.
    Surely they're 200% reliable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ZachF on 11/13/2017 03:16 pm
    No. Reuse is likely to reduce failure rate.


    Being able to inspect your boosters after flight is a gigantic advantage to SpaceX that I do not think gets enough credit here. It allows your to retire low probability failure modes before they happen.

    With an expendable booster, if you had a low probability (say 0.1%) failure mode that can't show up in tests, the only way to find it is to wait for it to happen. If you can inspect your boosters you are likely able to find the weak areas before they fail and fix the problem beforehand.

    Re-usability will also increase cadence, which is a pathway to improved reliability itself. Part of the reason air travel is so safe is because we have thousands of flights a day, so even 1 in a million failure modes become visible in reasonable timeframes. That previously mentioned 0.1% failure mode on an expendable LV may never show up in a ~100 launch lifetime, but it's still there lurking under the surface... Nobody would fly an airplane with a 0.1% failure probability.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/13/2017 07:14 pm
    Being able to inspect your boosters after flight is a gigantic advantage to SpaceX that I do not think gets enough credit here. It allows your to retire low probability failure modes before they happen.

    With an expendable booster, if you had a low probability (say 0.1%) failure mode that can't show up in tests, the only way to find it is to wait for it to happen. If you can inspect your boosters you are likely able to find the weak areas before they fail and fix the problem beforehand.
    True. Likewise you can assess actual damage versus expected damage and (over time) relax some of the margins you built into the design.
    Quote from: ZachF
    Re-usability will also increase cadence, which is a pathway to improved reliability itself. Part of the reason air travel is so safe is because we have thousands of flights a day, so even 1 in a million failure modes become visible in reasonable timeframes. That previously mentioned 0.1% failure mode on an expendable LV may never show up in a ~100 launch lifetime, but it's still there lurking under the surface... Nobody would fly an airplane with a 0.1% failure probability.
    Quite correct. LV safety records are another area that, when compared to all other transport systems, is phenomenally bad.  :(

    [EDIT. Once you realize how bad the flight record of any VTO LV is you realize a crew escape system is a necessity, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.  :( ]
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/13/2017 07:20 pm
    You said "reflown boosters should be more reliable but that hasn't happened yet".

    Yet it is the reusable part that hasn't caused loss of mission, while the expendable part has, twice.  Whatever the true reliability of reuse is, it's performing better than expendable right now.
    Which should come as no surprise.

    The Shuttle never failed in the orbiter. The failures in the mfg and/or design of the expendable parts destroyed them, the second failure being due to the "minor" redesign of the ET's spray on foam insulation being (in fact) not so minor.  :(

    The question is at what point does a semi reusable design become stable enough that the benefits of reuse in terms of reliability start to show themselves? Empirically the answer is "not yet."
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 11/13/2017 08:09 pm
    You said "reflown boosters should be more reliable but that hasn't happened yet".

    Yet it is the reusable part that hasn't caused loss of mission, while the expendable part has, twice.  Whatever the true reliability of reuse is, it's performing better than expendable right now.
    Which should come as no surprise.

    The Shuttle never failed in the orbiter. The failures in the mfg and/or design of the expendable parts destroyed them, the second failure being due to the "minor" redesign of the ET's spray on foam insulation being (in fact) not so minor.  :(

    The question is at what point does a semi reusable design become stable enough that the benefits of reuse in terms of reliability start to show themselves? Empirically the answer is "not yet."

    The Shuttle never had a LOM failure in the orbiter, but parts of the orbiter failed rather frequently. Some of them came pretty close to causing LOM.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 11/14/2017 02:19 pm

    The Shuttle never had a LOM failure in the orbiter, but parts of the orbiter failed rather frequently. Some of them came pretty close to causing LOM.
    I hate to sound callus but close does not count. The vehicle completed its mission and the part was either repaired or replaced, which is what you'd expect to be able to do on a reusable vehicle.

    Of course if that did happen often enough you'd expect either the part to be redesigned or replaced with a different system, but I don't think that was done often.  As others have noted had all the lessons learned flying Shuttle been incorporated in a new vehicle "OV201" would have been very impressive.

    WRT to this thread of course the question is "was Shuttle cheaper?", and I think the consensus was not only "no," but by quite a long margin, and for multiple systemic reasons.  :(
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 11/16/2017 08:06 am
    Quote
    [Karim Michel] Sabbagh [SES]: have seen launch costs for a 3.5-ton satellite go from more than $100M to closer to $60M now, and expect to drop to half that. #NewSpaceEurope

    https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/931079161573146625
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 11/27/2017 10:55 pm
    Quote
    EU governments’ indecision on SpaceX challenge seen as threat to Ariane system’s survival
    by Peter B. de Selding | Nov 27, 2017

    https://www.spaceintelreport.com/eu-governments-indecision-spacex-challenge-seen-threat-ariane-systems-survival/ (https://www.spaceintelreport.com/eu-governments-indecision-spacex-challenge-seen-threat-ariane-systems-survival/)

    Article includes:

    Quote
    United Launch Alliance thinks SpaceX’s reuse of the Falcon 9 first stage makes no economic sense unless each stage is used at least 10 times. Germany’s DLR disagrees, and says SpaceX’s new launch cadence puts it within reach of making reusability pay. [Attached slide Credit: ULA]

    DLR’s analysis suggesting 20 - 25 flights per year are enough for significant savings.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 11/27/2017 11:38 pm
    DLR’s analysis suggesting 20 - 25 flights per year are enough for significant savings.

    To be clear, the image is ULA's well-discussed Dr. Sowers analysis, not DLR's.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/01/2018 07:16 pm
    Lots of good stuff in this article on benefits of reuseability especially in regards to making more reliable LV.

    spaceflightnow.com/2018/12/01/spacex-launch-sunday-will-signify-a-new-advance-in-reusing-rockets/

    “There’s an additional benefit or side effect in addition to just the economics of reusability,” Koenigsmann said. “And that’s, basically, you look at the booster after the flight, and you can find things you wouldn’t see otherwise. You may see where stuff leaks or where heat comes through, or something like that. You might find loose joints that were tight before that you need to protect more. This kind of thing is actually incredibly valuable to make a more reliable rocket. You can actually inspect it.

    “If you don’t know what’s happening you can just put a GoPro on the place and watch it during launch. That’s what we do, we just pull it out and watch it and go, OK, that seems to be OK, or we figure out this is something that needs to be reinforced. Telemetry is typically limited by bandwidth. We just log the telemetry locally, just in case, and we get all the high-speed data right there from a solid state basically on the vehicle, and use that to look at all the loads that the vehicle sees, all the data that are important to us, and try to improve the vehicle based on those data.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/02/2018 08:48 am
    I've seen discussion about this spread around multiple topics. Please kill this topic if there is already one but I couldn't find it on my phone browser.

    So there are various guesses but often vehicle price is guessed as 70% first stage, 30% upper stage. So initial impression is that flying reused booster can reduce launch cost by 70%. Of course that's not true, because there is refrubrishment cost, launch operation cost,  payload integration cost etc. Still it sounds like if reusing 1st stage could reduce cost by about 50%. And we still are not talking about price as it makes no sense for Space X to reduce their profit from service provided so it is about cost reduction which is different from price reduction.
    Let's assume that this 50% cost price is good enough to include price of stage if split among multiple launches so it's 50% cost reduction for all launches.

    Is that the case? No. Because building stage is only part of it's cost. There is also R&D cost per stage which is independent from if stage is build or not. There are for sure people here who know how  big part is this. But please keep in mind it's not development of Falcon9 cost. It's quite pernament cost of keeping engineering department in house. Which is used to improve technology continuesly. And I believe it's quite a cost. So Space X needs to earn enough by their services to pay for it. Since they are continuesly innovating this can be treated as kind of fixed cost indendent from if rockets are build or not. This cost could be reduced once tech is developed but nobody (except some imaginary investors and short sighted clients) really want Space X to be scalled down.

    Finally there is keeping production line cost. Those are employees which are not hired by temporary work agency. Nobody want SpaceX to lose higly qualified work force.

    So finally my reasoning is that reusing (in short term) saves very little. Some raw materials and outsorced parts, but those are not many.

    What reusability allows is to use resurces currently engaged in building stages to be used for other purposes. If there is market increase  some of those can be transferred to build more second stages. Now for the same operational cost there can be more launches and there ara real savings.

    But if launch rate doesn't grow enough or SpaceX doesn't  scale down there is only limited saving.

    So assuming reusability is given and SpaceX won't scale down, which I believe are true assumtions, cost reduction allowed by this humongous achievement is dependent from demand side and can be very small if there is no increase in launch rate.

    Space X has some backlog so some increase is possible. But how big is that?

    And am I missing something? Maybe raw materials and outsorced parts are really costly? Or my reasoning is flawed?
    Yes. It's called BFR.

    Reuse let's they gain more profit from the same price to customers, which reduces their need for external investors. Cancelling work on US reuse (which has proved staggeringly difficult to make work economically) frees their R&D people to work on BFR. It also frees production workers to work on BFR.

    Note reuse cuts down the booster mfg line. Every flight still needs an US which is thrown away. But once you've got 2 flights then you've halved the production rate, but beyond that the effects are rather less dramatic. You need to get 4 flights out of every booster (and all you customers have to be happy to fly reflown) before you can half that line again.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: PM3 on 02/10/2019 11:49 pm
    From another thread:

    Elon said that each drone recovery costs a couple of million dollars,

    How can it be that expensive? An autonomous ship, a support ship and a tug ship operating for two (?) days; then lift the stage to land by two cranes - how does that add up to several million dollars?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: matthewkantar on 02/10/2019 11:55 pm
    They don't lease the barge for a day or two, they lease it for a year. There are dozen or so barge landings a year, so the barge cost per landing is approximately X/12. Then here are the chase boats, the tugs, the lease at dockside, the crane, the personnel, the fuel, etc etc. Seems like no problem to have it add up to millions per flight.

    Matthew
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: PM3 on 02/11/2019 12:39 am
    Ok. The original discussion and my question was about the additional costs for additional landings, e.g. for Starlink launches. Could that be millions for each additional sea landing?

    Maybe someone knows the context of that Elon quote or has a link to it? (Nomadd suggested to ask in the forum ...)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: PM3 on 02/11/2019 01:11 am
    Found it: https://spacenews.com/spacex-targeting-24-hour-turnaround-in-2019-full-reusability-still-in-the-works/
    11 May 2018

    Quote
    Musk said SpaceX lowered prices from “about $60 million to about $50 million for a reflown booster,” and expects “to see a steady reduction in prices” going forward. He cautioned though that SpaceX has lots of fixed costs, its future Starlink satellite internet constellation and development of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) that require revenue from launches, meaning prices can only go so low. Ocean recoveries, which require sending drone ships out to sea for landing Falcon 9 first stages, also cost “a few million dollars,” he said.

    Speaking of "future Starlink", this seems to refer to today's launch frequency, i.e. confirms what matthewkantar wrote.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Rondaz on 02/12/2019 02:44 pm
    SpaceX rival’s answer to reusable Falcon 9 “too cautious”, says French auditor

    By Eric Ralph  Posted on February 12, 2019

    https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-competitor-arianespace-critique-unsustainable-falcon-9-response/?mc_cid=db8b0d5a12&mc_eid=60eb267dc3
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: raketa on 02/20/2019 12:38 am
    Spacex reusability shaking launch market so much, that even if it will get all available launch opportunities, it will becoming just way to pay for bottom part of the company expenses.
    Lowering launch price will not bring in short term new customers and even if Spacex to lower true cost with 10% markup, it will take time for new customers show and drain money for SS and SH development.
    Article about Arianne give me such inside to dilemma that Boeing,Lockheed and other company dealing with, reusability mean lest rockets and less jobs for near future.
    Spacex Starlink project is answer to go over this period(beside be revenue for future Mars base), before new customers show up because launch price is lowered.
    I admire how thoughtful in long term Spacex is, seeing future issue 4 years ago and looking for solution and building new markets.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 02/22/2019 02:44 am
    Elon’s view on number of re-uses per F9 booster:

    Not expecting a B1048.5:

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1098771535588777986

    Quote
    High probability of this particular rocket getting destroyed by Dragon supersonic abort test. Otherwise, at least 20 or 30 missions for Falcon 9. Starship will take over before the F9 fleet reaches end of life.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: theinternetftw on 03/13/2019 10:48 pm
    On internal labor costs, schedule, and the possible ability to fast-track production.

    Quote
    If you want to look at the current Falcon Heavy as a strong bit of evidence, what I can say for sure is that the three new boosters (prob four, actually) went from nothing to completed and in FL in less than 12 months. Prob more like 6-9, given production of B1046-B1051 & B1054

    Now that doesn't necessarily translate into "lead time" per se, but it gives a good idea. SpaceX is actually allowing production workforce to cut weeks to 40 hours (!!!) because they're finishing everything on Friday and have nothing to do on Sat.

    Which is to say that Block 5's reusability has produced more than a little slack in the Falcon production system. Priority production could probably be expedited immediately with minimal impact to the launch business, much like the latest FH was effectively built all at once.

    from: https://twitter.com/13ericralph31/status/1105951398842109952
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 04/12/2019 10:50 am
    There's a 'flight proven' one available in a month or so. 
    'New' isn't a thing any more.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Slarty1080 on 04/12/2019 01:18 pm
    So far this thread has concentrated on economic cost which is the primary factor for any traditional company. If the objective of the company is to make as much money as possible then it is rationale to do calculations comparing the overall projected cost with reuse and without reuse to see which is most profitable. In this view the market is considered as entirely external to the company.

    But SpaceX is not a traditional company and its overall objective is not to make as much money as possible. For SpaceX the overall objective is to make humanity multi-planetary. Money is very important, but is ultimately only a means to an end not an end in itself as far as SpaceX is concerned.

    Seen from this perspective ensuring that spacecraft can be reused will ultimately pay dividends. If reusability only becomes profitable with a high flight rate SpaceX stand to “profit” from it because they will be using their own rocket for their own purposes pushing the flight rate way up with things like Starlink and the Mars program. In the end reuse will be profitable for the purpose of making life multi-planetary, because making life multi-planetary will require a very large number of flights.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AncientU on 04/12/2019 05:40 pm
    Eric Berger seemed to be asking about FH and DH availability in the context of NASA going back to the Moon.  He should have asked a less old paradigm question such as, 'Can FH or DH be ready to supply a flight a month in 2020'... for $1-2B for the dozen flights. 

    The effect of reusability on costs would then highlight both mass to orbit and bottom line cost -- both of which we need to drive in new directions.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 12/04/2019 03:04 pm
    Experience with F9R is consistent with what Stéphane Israël CEO of Arianespace said five years ago. That any significant cost savings of 1st booster reuse, can be achieved only with high flight rates about 40,50 flights per year and market for this can be only in big countries like USA or China, but not in EU.

    So they will not try 1st booster reuse unless flight rates become much higher.

    He also said, that reuse F9R 1st booster with 9 engines will be harder, than Ariane 5 boosters with just 1 liquid engine, as was planned in late 1990s DLR study, and probably (same like T.Bruno) consider glide back approach easier than propulsive flyback landing ( he spoke extensively about DLR study in that interview ).

    SpaceX first price for comsat. was about 4200 $ per kilogram to LEO. Now it is about 5000 $ per kilogram to LEO (more than twice to GTO). Partially because inflation , but also bc. those original prices were artificially low ( they wanted buy confidence of costumers ). F9R full trust, block 5 have about 20-25% more payload available, bc. it use subcooled LOX, cooled propellant and also improve Merlin engines with more trust.

    If they use it as reusable, cost per flight could be 20% lower, but if they used it as expendable they can put 20-25% more payload on it , so cost per kilogram is the same. They throw away 6-8 cores, bc payload was too heavy, some even after FH debut, so F9,F9R cost must be similar.

    So if they could use F9R block 5 as expendable, but at full capacity, they can keep same prices like today.

    Using F9R as expend. at full capacity for GTO mission can be difficult. Ariane 5 have cap. 10,5 ton to GTO an always launch 2 big comsats. with one mission. F9R as expendable have cap. 8,3 t to GTO so launch 2 big comsat. with one flight, it will need high performance upper stage. Or they could launch one big comsat. with bunch of smaller satel., if there will be demand. Use F9R as expend. at full capacity for Starlink to LEO missions shouldn't be big problem.   

    F9R, FH profit margins could be about 10% or below. Both T.Bruno or S.Israel said 5 years ago that both SX F9 and ILS Proton pushes prices to breakeven point ( which mean price is very close to cost) and E.Musk always denied that NASA, military launches are overpriced. Shotwell itself said that only way to finance Starship/Superheavy is through Starling profit or human crew flight. Also in some CNBC article was said, that their profit margins for comsat. launches are very tight.

    Since F9R is frozen design I don't expect this ( it reusability cost savings ) ever change. Any progress with AI or 3D printing, which can make manufacturing costs cheaper, can be applied on every expendable or reusable rocket, not just F9R.   

    With 40,50 flights per year, F9R should bring some significant cost savings, but that can be also said, about Vulcan with SMART and ACES, or Ariane 6 with potentially reusable Prometheus engine and just Adeline engine glide back reuse. With 40,50 flights per year fully expendable rocket could itself be significantly cheaper than reusable, so if you speak about cost savings, you should always compare expandable and reusable with same flight rates.

    Lets hope that with Starship and New Glenn we learn how to reuse entire booster and big second stage and have significant cost savings, because full reusability and powered landing are much cooler, than expendable rocket or just component reuse like SMART or Adeline.

     
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 12/04/2019 03:15 pm
    Experience with F9R is consistent with what Stéphane Israël CEO of Arianespace said five years ago. That any significant cost savings of 1st booster reuse, can be achieved only with high flight rates about 40,50 flights per year and market for this can be only in big countries like USA or China, but not in EU.

    He's welcome to that view, and maybe it applies to him but it pretty clearly does not apply to SpaceX. This canard about high flight rates just won't go away.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 12/04/2019 03:26 pm
    Experience with F9R is consistent with what Stéphane Israël CEO of Arianespace said five years ago. That any significant cost savings of 1st booster reuse, can be achieved only with high flight rates about 40,50 flights per year and market for this can be only in big countries like USA or China, but not in EU.

    He's welcome to that view, and maybe it applies to him but it pretty clearly does not apply to SpaceX. This canard about high flight rates just won't go away.
    You don't know if it is canard/rumor. S.Israel knows very well how to predict, how high refurbishment costs and overall fixed costs will any partially or fully reusable rockets have and how high flight rates they will need to have some significant cost savings. You don't know even SpaceX own F9R data about this.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/04/2019 05:38 pm
    You don't know if it is canard/rumor.
    We do know that Arianespace, somewhat like ULA, is fighting to retain its market share. His opinion is that it would need that flight rate.

    If we are being really honest he should also call out the fact SX have the COTS contract with NASA as well as the commercial crew contract. While both are smaller than their competitors it is pretty clear they make a very substantial contribution to SX's bottom line. 

    Arianspace should point that out, as well as what developing (or rather having ESA develop, then transfer to them, as Arianespace does no development work) a crew launch and return capability.
    Quote from: darkmelmet
    S.Israel knows very well how to predict, how high refurbishment costs and overall fixed costs will any partially or fully reusable rockets have and how high flight rates they will need to have some significant cost savings. You don't know even SpaceX own F9R data about this.
    He can make a prediction, as can anyone else.
    But the only people who know the real numbers, and the real failure modes, are inside SX.

    Everyone else is guessing.

    It is a simple fact that recovering, and reusing a whole stage, rather than engine recovery, eliminates a shedload of new construction work. SX suggest an F9 booster costs about $36m to build in total. IOW even if it cost 50% of that to refurbish, re-test and rebuild that would add $18m to (whatever) the profit on the 2nd launch.

    WRT to the title of the thread the effect of reusability on costs is that they can reduce them substantially, for the mfg. 

    As a customer I couldn't care less.  :( My interest is on the price I have to pay to get a service at a level of reliability I'm comfortable with. Both Arianspace and ULA have very good safety records but there is a significant premium for that if you buy ULA, which is why so few people do.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 12/04/2019 06:06 pm
    SpaceX first price for comsat. was about 4200 $ per kilogram to LEO. Now it is about 5000 $ per kilogram to LEO (more than twice to GTO).
    Completely wrong. Payload capacity has increased from less than 11 tons to LEO (before reuse developed) to a demonstrated 16 tons to LEO reusable. The nominal price for a falcon 9 has dropped from ~$60 million to ~$50 million. That shows <$3200 per kg to LEO. SpaceX bid around $40 million for the IXPE launch (we got to see the breakdown for a change, the total cost to NASA is closer to $50 million from paperwork and such, the $40 million is what should be compared to a commercial launch price)

    This is despite things you mentioned like inflation.

    They throw away 6-8 cores, bc payload was too heavy, some even after FH debut, so F9,F9R cost must be similar.
    Your logic doesn't work when contracts were signed before reuse was demonstrated, and customers had no obligation to accept modifications. They were making profit on the expendable missions anyway, so this does not support your claim that they don't make significantly more profit with reuse.

    As is common with your posts, you don't have your basic facts straight, making your conclusions nonsensical.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 12/04/2019 08:15 pm
    S.Israel knows very well how to predict, how high refurbishment costs and overall fixed costs will any partially or fully reusable rockets

    How on earth would he be able to predict that better than SpaceX? He doesn't have a partially or fully reusable rocket! Where would he get the data to support his predictions?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/04/2019 09:11 pm
    S.Israel knows very well how to predict, how high refurbishment costs and overall fixed costs will any partially or fully reusable rockets have and how high flight rates they will need to have some significant cost savings. You don't know even SpaceX own F9R data about this.
    Highly doubtful.

    That would start by needing a full thrust, full duration Vulcain 2 test run to identify most of the damage.
    AFAIK this has never been done.
    I don't think landing on a barge down range has ever been considered by ESA or Arianspace so that would require ground up cost modeling.  AFAIK that has never been either funded or done.

    The big issue is that the F9 booster MECO is around M6. The usual rule of thumb for TSTO ELV's is that each stage delivers roughly half the delta V. I'm not sure of the split on the A5 SRB/booster/US but I think the core goes much faster at separation, making the core recovery much  harder (especially if you assume RTLS, which is the most performance sapping landing mode)  Likewise I doubt they've modelled the forces on a flip over, deceleration burn and flip back, especially in terms of damage done to the structure, or the landing.

    Note that SRB's do incorporate recovery hardware and were recovered early in the programme for study of flight damage

    So no, I don't think Arianespace has anything other than a very sketchy outline of the damage caused or the efforts involved for their own launcher to execute what the F9 booster executes, let alone what the F9 booster goes through.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 12/04/2019 09:13 pm
    Experience with F9R is consistent with ....

    Experience with F9R is consistent with ... what Gwynne Shotwell has said as far back as April 5, 2017:

    https://spacenews.com/spacex-gaining-substantial-cost-savings-from-reused-falcon-9/
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TorenAltair on 12/05/2019 02:22 am
    One thing to mention: Stéphane Israël's position is somewhat like the NASA Adminstrator, it is a political one. Additionally he is no engineer, actually he studied history.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: magnemoe on 12/06/2019 05:08 pm
    Experience with F9R is consistent with what Stéphane Israël CEO of Arianespace said five years ago. That any significant cost savings of 1st booster reuse, can be achieved only with high flight rates about 40,50 flights per year and market for this can be only in big countries like USA or China, but not in EU.

    He's welcome to that view, and maybe it applies to him but it pretty clearly does not apply to SpaceX. This canard about high flight rates just won't go away.
    He is probably correct for Arianespace, Ariane 5 uses an 2.5 stages setup with SRB, this is very popular as its very efficient for han heavy lift rocket, especially for GTO. However its not suitable for reuse as core will be fly very fast at burnout, even worse than Atlas as the SRB are larger and upper stage is smaller.
    In short they will need to design at totally different rocket who is expensive.

    Falcon 9 on the other hand works well for reuse. 2 stages with an heavy upper stage so first is barely hypersonic at separation.
    Yes falcon 9 has its downsides, performance to GTO is far worse than Ariane or Atlas compared to LEO because the heavy second stage burning lower ISP fuel.

    Still SpaceX was extremely lucky with the design, no falcon 9 was not designed to do powered landings. 
    But 9 engines who was designed for reuse so they could test them easy, and with 1 of 9 engines lit it make the landing burn manageable. Add cold gas thrusters to the first stage and upgrade the software, now test this, add some thermal protection.
    Test this while launching rockets.
    Then the first stage managed to slow down over the ocean at the right position add legs and try to land it.
    Make it an routine.
    In short spaceX managed reuse very cheaply by luck.

    However both spaceX and Blue Origin are different, their goal is not to support national security interests or maximize profit but to colonize space there reuse is essensiell.

    And second stage reuse is coming, starship plan for full reuse and with the 40 ton to LEO New Glen should be able to do second stage reuse on most missions.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/06/2019 06:06 pm
     After Electron successful flight 10 and reentry of booster it looks like recovery of Electron booster is possible.

    Up and coming small LV providers entry into market just become harder.  Not only will they need to match Electron's excellent flight record but also lower cost and shorter lead times reuseability will give RL.


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: LouScheffer on 12/06/2019 08:36 pm
    [...] any significant cost savings of 1st booster reuse, can be achieved only with high flight rates about 40,50 flights per year
     
    How can this possibly be true?  Suppose you build one booster, and re-use it once, the minimum possible re-use.  Where would the money go to make this as expensive as two boosters?   SpaceX has turned several boosters around in 3 months.   If they had 100 people, full time, working on inspection and refurbishment, that's still only 25 person-years.  If this costs $150,000 US per employee per year, that's only $3.75 million dollars, far below the cost of a new booster.   This savings is available even on the second flight.

    Now you can claim that on the first flight, you could have made it expendable, and launched perhaps 30% more and charged a correspondingly higher price.  But if you are re-using your booster only once, you can do this on the second flight.  So I can't see any way that at the lowest conceivable rate (2 launches) you can avoid saving money with re-use.

    Could you explain where you think the money goes, if you cannot save money on the second launch of the same booster?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 12/06/2019 09:28 pm
    [...] any significant cost savings of 1st booster reuse, can be achieved only with high flight rates about 40,50 flights per year
     
    How can this possibly be true?

    It's not.  It's really best not to engage.  It's not a serious articulation of anything.  There's a long series of unstated counterfactural premises on which the contention is based that have nothing to do with the reality at SX.  You are going to have to think along the lines of profit margins, discounted ROI on developement expense, irrelevent statistics like $/capacity-kg, and assumptions of unnecessary price-reductions.

    It's not exactly that this couldn't be an interesting discussion worth pursuing but just that it's obvious in this case it won't be when particluar folks with hobby-horses start hand-waving about how SX is doing it all wrong.

    That's my advice FWIW.  Y'all can try if you want but that will be my last on those silly criticisms of reuse.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ericgu on 12/07/2019 02:58 am

    It's not.  It's really best not to engage.  It's not a serious articulation of anything.  There's a long series of unstated counterfactural premises on which the contention is based that have nothing to do with the reality at SX.  You are going to have to think along the lines of profit margins, discounted ROI on developement expense, irrelevent statistics like $/capacity-kg, and assumptions of unnecessary price-reductions.


    This is very reminiscent of when ULA first published their paper on SMART reuse and people were using it to proclaim that it proved that Falcon 9 reuse would not be economical.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 12/07/2019 03:05 am
    Could you explain where you think the money goes, if you cannot save money on the second launch of the same booster?

    There're definitely ways to justify the 50 flights per year conclusion if you play with assumptions, here's an example: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160013370.pdf

    Quote
    The example in the Figure plots the flight rate per year which a reusable system must attain in order to
    pass hurdle rates of 20% and 30%. The assumed time horizon is 10 years, with 5 years of development
    followed by 5 years of revenue-generating operations. The assumed ROS (profit margins) are 25% and
    15% on an assumed price per flight of $80M for each of the 20% and 30% scenarios. Total investment is
    assumed to range from $500M to $2B. As can be seen in the Figure, the number of flights required for
    the investment to be deemed “worth it” ranges from 15 to 18 per year for the most favorable set of
    assumed circumstances ($500M investment, 20% hurdle rate and 25% ROS) to over 100 flights per year
    for the least favorable ($2B investment, 30% hurdle rate and 15% ROS). The most flights flown by a single
    ETO system in 2015 was 17 by the Chinese Long March family of expendable systems and 16 by the Russian
    family of Soyuz expendable systems (see Figure 6). Accordingly, for a reusable system to be found worthy
    of investment within even the most favorable assumptions of the example, the system would have to
    enter the competitive market with a flight rate essentially matching the current market share leaders and
    an investment at a level historically associated with prototype systems.

    Basically you can get high flight rate requirement if you assume:
    1. Need to pay back investment in a fairly short time
    2. The investment has to generate significant amount of return to offset the risk

    I'm not a finance person, as I understand it, the "hurdle rate" is the annual return from investment, adjusted for risk. Setting a high hurdle rate would really hurt the economic case of reusability, and how high this rate goes is sort of a value judgement, essentially the people arguing they need 50 flights per year is saying: While reusability can save money, the money saved at lower flight rate is not enough to justify the risk of development, I'd rather invest the money in other ventures (for example S&P 500 returns 10% per year or so).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 12/07/2019 05:58 am
    Could you explain where you think the money goes, if you cannot save money on the second launch of the same booster?

    There're definitely ways to justify the 50 flights per year conclusion if you play with assumptions, here's an example: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160013370.pdf

    Quote
    The example in the Figure plots the flight rate per year which a reusable system must attain in order to
    pass hurdle rates of 20% and 30%. The assumed time horizon is 10 years, with 5 years of development
    followed by 5 years of revenue-generating operations. The assumed ROS (profit margins) are 25% and
    15% on an assumed price per flight of $80M for each of the 20% and 30% scenarios. Total investment is
    assumed to range from $500M to $2B. As can be seen in the Figure, the number of flights required for
    the investment to be deemed “worth it” ranges from 15 to 18 per year for the most favorable set of
    assumed circumstances ($500M investment, 20% hurdle rate and 25% ROS) to over 100 flights per year
    for the least favorable ($2B investment, 30% hurdle rate and 15% ROS). The most flights flown by a single
    ETO system in 2015 was 17 by the Chinese Long March family of expendable systems and 16 by the Russian
    family of Soyuz expendable systems (see Figure 6). Accordingly, for a reusable system to be found worthy
    of investment within even the most favorable assumptions of the example, the system would have to
    enter the competitive market with a flight rate essentially matching the current market share leaders and
    an investment at a level historically associated with prototype systems.

    Basically you can get high flight rate requirement if you assume:
    1. Need to pay back investment in a fairly short time
    2. The investment has to generate significant amount of return to offset the risk

    I'm not a finance person, as I understand it, the "hurdle rate" is the annual return from investment, adjusted for risk. Setting a high hurdle rate would really hurt the economic case of reusability, and how high this rate goes is sort of a value judgement, essentially the people arguing they need 50 flights per year is saying: While reusability can save money, the money saved at lower flight rate is not enough to justify the risk of development, I'd rather invest the money in other ventures (for example S&P 500 returns 10% per year or so).

    Maybe i’m remembering wrong, but did Ariane not also have the requirement of not cutting any jobs? If you need to retain your full workforce then the only way that reusability saves you money is if the same workforce now allows you to launch more rockets - hence increased flight rate.

    Because the alternative - same flight rate with smaller workforce due to reusability - is unpalatable to them.

    That’s not a weakness of reusability, it is a weakness of the politics behind their organisation.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/08/2019 09:03 am
    Maybe i’m remembering wrong, but did Ariane not also have the requirement of not cutting any jobs? If you need to retain your full workforce then the only way that reusability saves you money is if the same workforce now allows you to launch more rockets - hence increased flight rate.

    Because the alternative - same flight rate with smaller workforce due to reusability - is unpalatable to them.

    That’s not a weakness of reusability, it is a weakness of the politics behind their organisation.
    That's quite a bold claim. Where did you see it?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/08/2019 09:14 am
    It's not.  It's really best not to engage.  It's not a serious articulation of anything.  There's a long series of unstated counterfactural premises on which the contention is based that have nothing to do with the reality at SX. 
    I can certainly understand your PoV.

    Quote from: AC in NC
    You are going to have to think along the lines of profit margins, discounted ROI on developement expense, irrelevent statistics like $/capacity-kg, and assumptions of unnecessary price-reductions.
    Except if you don't have a billionaire angel investor those "irrelevent" statistics become quite important if you want to raise funds for a design.

    There's at least one person on this site who's had experience of trying to raise funds for a design and I think they'd say such numbers are far from irrelevant . They are much less relevant to SX due to it's launch funding and the substantial funding NASA has supplied over the years.

    Quote from: AC in NC
    It's not exactly that this couldn't be an interesting discussion worth pursuing but just that it's obvious in this case it won't be when particluar folks with hobby-horses start hand-waving about how SX is doing it all wrong.

    That's my advice FWIW.  Y'all can try if you want but that will be my last on those silly criticisms of reuse.
    Fair point.

    TBH I find reusability arguments in the context of sole mfg/operator business models to be a bit sterile. OTOH I'm more interested in the effects on prices rather than costs.

    [EDIT IMHO fairly straight forward cost modelling shows that for large rockets 1st stage reuse can substantially improve costs provided the stage damage is not too severe (set by separation velocity) and recovery and refurb costs are not too high.

    The trouble is that recovery and reusability are "investments in the future" to coin a phrase. They appear to increase the risk of a design and delay the point where for-profit investors start to see a payback.
    The delay makes them a difficult sell to government funding bodies (who want space access ASAP or with minimal gap in existing launch capability) and the risk a difficult sell to for-profit investors ("You want how much more, and it might not even work?  ::) )

    I believe the cost benefits to an LV mfg are so great that any new vehicle should have at least an outline  booster stage recovery/refurbishment plan in its business case. The break even point shifts so much (potentially 10x from an ELV) ]
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/08/2019 10:05 am
    Let me see if I can sum up a few thoughts on this thread from different posters.

    Different people hold different PoV's on first stage reusability (and full reusability). To understand why you need to dig into the company design approaches about sizing the vehicle and why

    ULA has to get it's money from its parents and the USG. So it went with a core sized to the bare minimum. Above that it adds SRB's. As the DoD de facto design bureau it had to cover the full range of DoD orbits and payloads. I'm guessing it also followed the rule of that has the delta v needed split roughly in halve between booster and US.

    SX ruled out SRB's from day one and sized (AFAIK) to meet a payload and delta v that they reckoned would cover most of the market, recognizing they couldn't win everything (but with FH down the line).

    ULA's approach penalizes the addition of any non core equipment or propellant. The implication is that most of the time it triggers the need to add an additional SRB, whose cost is born by the customer but whose benefit would be for ULA.  If I'm right booster MECO for the Vulcan booster occurs around M12, making recovery much harder. That implies that only the most valuable parts of the stage should be considered to be recovered and only if that doesn't  push performance over the line of needing another SRB.

    SX do not split delta V evenly between booster and US. They have resized their rocket and upgraded their engines on several occasions to move toward a design that can now be recovered and reused.   

    ULA maintain booster reuse is uneconomic below 7 flights (IE 1st mission then 6 reflights). Given their design assumptions that may well be true for them. The costs of developing engine recovery. The costs of doing so. Acquiring the know how to refurb the engine.  The lost revenue they could not send to their parents.

    The different PoV's seen on wheather or not reuse is economic are basically down to
    a)Who funds you and what they are willing to afford (or forego while you are developing your type of reuse)
    b) The high level design decisions (SRB's or not. Delta V split) made from day one of a project, and wheather or not you can change them in the light of new information.

    The exact assumptions you design to matter.
    They shape your world view as to what is possible and what is not possible. Likewise the organizational environment you operate in allows some freedoms and constrains others, again shaping what you think is possible and impossible.

    Once you know this background you can see how Musk, Bruno and Israel can make the statements they do. They can all be right WRT to the context each is operating in.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ericgu on 12/08/2019 03:04 pm
    The exact assumptions you design to matter.
    They shape your world view as to what is possible and what is not possible. Likewise the organizational environment you operate in allows some freedoms and constrains others, again shaping what you think is possible and impossible.

    Once you know this background you can see how Musk, Bruno and Israel can make the statements they do. They can all be right WRT to the context each is operating in.

    This is a nice summary; I'd like to add two points...

    The first is engines.

    If you want to do propulsive landing, you need to be able to have a landing thrust that's a small fraction of your takeoff thrust. You can get there with either a lot of engines that throttle pretty low, or you can get there with (2-3?) dedicated landing engines.

    In either case, you need engines that work and are cheap enough, and I think that may mean you need to make your own engines; if you buy them the economic incentives are all wrong as your engine builder wants to sell you engines that are as expensive as possible. I think it's no coincidence that the two companies either doing or planning propulsive landing make their own engines.

    The second is $/kg as a measure of cost, and this is where I think the ULA analysis is flawed. $/kg is not what launch customers buy, they buy on overall price (among other factors) for a specific payload. That means if you have an extra capacity for a given launch, there is absolutely no penalty for spending that extra on reuse. From a market perspective, that allows you cover most of the market with your cheaper reusable solution and still cover the top with an expendable solution.

    I agree that this doesn't work for the ULA approach of a small launcher that is augmented with expensive SRBs to cover the target market, which I think brings us back to engines again; for something like Vulcan you could upsize the rocket and add engines, but that bumps up your engine cost for all of your flights.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: pathfinder_01 on 12/09/2019 06:14 am

    In either case, you need engines that work and are cheap enough, and I think that may mean you need to make your own engines; if you buy them the economic incentives are all wrong as your engine builder wants to sell you engines that are as expensive as possible. I think it's no coincidence that the two companies either doing or planning propulsive landing make their own engines.


    More than just that. If you buy your engines from someone else they have to spread their fixed costs over the engines you purchased from them and so consequently the price per engine could climb as fewer engines are being produced due to reuse. In addition lacking in house expertise on how to inspect and service said reused engines you are going to have to contract with the company that build them and of course they have to change an amount that includes a profit. Not to mention you will have little leverage to get this price down since you can not go to a different company for this service.  It is going to cost a company like ULA or Arianspace more than it would Space X or Blue Origin here.

    Space X can directly profit by reusing engines because less engines made equals less labor and less materials with no effect on the part of the business that brings in revenue(flights). They don't need to send the engine out to be inspected and recertified as they can do it at cost. They can change engine design and procedures as needed to facilitate cost effective reuse with relatively little interference(other than maybe NASA\DOD for certain flights) where as aerojet would want payment to develop any changes in it's engines and ULA might be weary of changing a procedure for reuse. Also having commercial customers with a wider taste for risk certainly helps. ULA is mostly government flights.

    Now maybe in some future world of really massive flight rates this could change(i.e. you can send the engine out to a number of other companies to be serviced like a car engine) but not at this time period.
     
    Quote
    I agree that this doesn't work for the ULA approach of a small launcher that is augmented with expensive SRBs to cover the target market, which I think brings us back to engines again; for something like Vulcan you could upsize the rocket and add engines, but that bumps up your engine cost for all of your flights.

    ULA's approach doesn't work to well for reuse too. You either have to expend SRB's on every flight or design SRB's that are reusable and in the case of the Shuttle Reusing the SRB's was break even at best, involved transporting toxic and explosive materials around and likely could never be made to easily fly back and land like F9/FH.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/12/2019 07:31 am
    WRT to the thread title can we agree?

    1) Re-usability can benefit in lower costs.

    2) Key high level design decisions can make gaining those benefits very hard.

    3) Retro fitting reuse to a nearly complete design is virtually impossible.

    4) Given the scale of those benefits it is very unlikely that any new LV (starting now) would not include at least  booster reuse in its business plan and factor that into its engineering development plan to ensure that could be achieved.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ericgu on 12/12/2019 06:16 pm
    WRT to the thread title can we agree?

    1) Re-usability can benefit in lower costs.

    2) Key high level design decisions can make gaining those benefits very hard.

    3) Retro fitting reuse to a nearly complete design is virtually impossible.

    4) Given the scale of those benefits it is very unlikely that any new LV (starting now) would not include at least  booster reuse in its business plan and factor that into its engineering development plan to ensure that could be achieved.

    1) Yes

    2) Yes.

    3) Yes

    4) Vulcan is arguably a counter-example to this; what SpaceX was doing was pretty clear to ULA and they've chosen to go with what is at best a poorly-reusable design. Though you can argue that Vulcan is only designed for NSSL and not to be commercially competitive.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/12/2019 06:43 pm
    4) Vulcan is arguably a counter-example to this; what SpaceX was doing was pretty clear to ULA and they've chosen to go with what is at best a poorly-reusable design. Though you can argue that Vulcan is only designed for NSSL and not to be commercially competitive.

    Yes, that seems to be the case. How else to explain ULA's parents lack of interest in competing directly with SpaceX and Blue Origin in the commercial launch market?

    No doubt financial analysts at one or both of ULA's parents determined that the near-term ROI for reusable vehicle development would be more of a drag financially than the near-term profitability for the NSSL program using non-reusable launch vehicles.

    And developing reusable rockets is NOT cheap, plus it requires long-term investment in reusable engine development, so ULA has multiple barriers to entry to overcome if they wanted to build a reusable launch vehicle.

    To me the discussion about recovering the engine compartment of Vulcan is just CYA PR spin, since by the time SpaceX actually showed that recovering rockets was repeatable, it was too late for ULA to commit to reusable vehicle on the schedule to replace Atlas V and Delta IV.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: raketa on 12/12/2019 07:13 pm
    Spacex by lowering price of engine  to several 100k, destroy ULA premise to save Vulcan engine as path to re-usability.
    Sapcex showing the true path to  re-usability is very fast turn around of the complete system
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/12/2019 08:49 pm
    4) Vulcan is arguably a counter-example to this; what SpaceX was doing was pretty clear to ULA and they've chosen to go with what is at best a poorly-reusable design. Though you can argue that Vulcan is only designed for NSSL and not to be commercially competitive.
    Actually debatable. It all depends on when ULA started developing the-LV-to-be-known-as-Vulcan Vs where SX was at with stage recovery.

    People forget it was Dec 2015 before SX made a first successful landing of booster in one piece.

    That's just 4 years ago.

    How long has it taken ULA just to select its booster engine?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/12/2019 09:27 pm
    ULA would need RLV like NG to cover all their customer missions, in some cases a 3rd stage. They would be starting from scratch, need new factories to build 7m core, new transport systems and launch pads. We are talking few $B. Also need to factor in losing few early boosters. Unlike Blue they don't have NS to test out propulsive landing.

    Vulcan can use all existing facilities including lot of existing LV systems. Compared to NG equivalent Vulcan with SMART may cost them $10-20m more per launch. Going to need few 100 launches to recover the outlay for RLV.

    Blue have luxury of owner with very deep pockets who does need a RTOI anytime soon, if ever.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/12/2019 09:51 pm
    Blue have luxury of owner with very deep pockets who does need a RTOI anytime soon, if ever.

    ULA is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who collectively generated over $150B in revenue in 2018. They have plenty of money to invest in reusability.

    However SpaceX showed that you didn't need a massively big wad of cash in order to build a successful launch company that was testing reusability with every revenue launch.

    A reusable engine, properly sized for the needs of landing on Earth, is the key asset that ULA needs to build a reusable rocket - they have everything else they need (i.e. engineers, facilities, launch pads, etc.). So it's really a matter of whether their agreement with Blue Origin for the BE-4 allows them to build a competing reusable launcher.

    But without a reusable engine that can throttle for landing, you can't build a reusable rocket. That is the reality that the rest of the expendable launch world faces too.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/13/2019 06:47 am
    ULA is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who collectively generated over $150B in revenue in 2018. They have plenty of money to invest in reusability.

    What you need to realize is that ULA's relationship to its parents is surprisingly like that of a state owned business to its government.

    Yes the government has vast resources it could put into such a business.

    But what has tended to happen is that they have been run as instruments of social policy (like train services) or as "cash cows" to put money into the countries Treasury (like coal, oil and gas companies), potentially avoiding raising higher direct taxes to citizens.

    The parents attitude to ULA seems to be IMHO "Yeah, we hear the odd bleat about our prices but we tell them (our customers) that's the price for a 100% track record and they shut right up."

    No they don't want to invest in reusability. No they won't invest in reusability until their main customer (the USG) asks them to (and by that I mean puts some money on the table).

    Look at the corporate structures of Boeing, LM, SNC and SX.

    Now look at which ones have pushed hardest for innovation and delivered

    It's not the publicly traded joint stock ones.  :( In fact they look like the ones that have fought hardest to preserve BAU with BAU pricing.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/13/2019 06:04 pm
    ULA is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who collectively generated over $150B in revenue in 2018. They have plenty of money to invest in reusability.

    What you need to realize is that ULA's relationship to its parents is surprisingly like that of a state owned business to its government.

    Yes the government has vast resources it could put into such a business.

    But what has tended to happen is that they have been run as instruments of social policy (like train services) or as "cash cows" to put money into the countries Treasury (like coal, oil and gas companies), potentially avoiding raising higher direct taxes to citizens.

    The parents attitude to ULA seems to be IMHO "Yeah, we hear the odd bleat about our prices but we tell them (our customers) that's the price for a 100% track record and they shut right up."

    No they don't want to invest in reusability. No they won't invest in reusability until their main customer (the USG) asks them to (and by that I mean puts some money on the table).

    Look at the corporate structures of Boeing, LM, SNC and SX.

    Now look at which ones have pushed hardest for innovation and delivered

    It's not the publicly traded joint stock ones.  :( In fact they look like the ones that have fought hardest to preserve BAU with BAU pricing.
    LM and Boeing have been burnt before developing LVs for market that didn't happen, which is how we ended up with ULA. They won't build a RLV unless there is proven launch market to justify large outlay required. If Blue and SpaceX RLVs can help create that market then all better. Being late to party can work in their favor, as there will be large pool of RLV expertise to hire from if they do develop an RLV.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/14/2019 02:33 pm
    They won't build a RLV unless there is proven launch market to justify large outlay required.
    Wrong.

    They won't build anything unless there is a big USG support contract in there first.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 12/14/2019 05:53 pm
    They won't build a RLV unless there is proven launch market to justify large outlay required.
    Wrong.

    They won't build anything unless there is a big USG support contract in there first.

    Once there are multiple providers of low cost commercial delivery of 100+mt to practically any surface in the solar system, the US government would definitely be prohibited from funding the development of a new competitor. The only way someone might get funded is if a military only special designed vehicle was wanted. But then the likely is that one of the existing manufacturer of such RLVs would get the contract since anything but a source selection with multiple bidders would end in the courts possibly for years as unfair or illegal contracting practices.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/14/2019 06:46 pm
    ULA is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who collectively generated over $150B in revenue in 2018. They have plenty of money to invest in reusability.

    What you need to realize is that ULA's relationship to its parents is surprisingly like that of a state owned business to its government.

    Yes the government has vast resources it could put into such a business.

    Quite aware of how ULA is structured, and my point was that ULA doesn't lack the access to sufficient funds in order to develop their own reusable launch vehicle. ULA's parents have made the calculation that they can better profit from being limited to pretty much U.S. Government only high-end launch services.

    Which is low risk for them, since they already own that market, and we should have no doubt that overall it is very profitable for them.

    But since they are not the first mover in reusable launch vehicles, for them to get into the market they would be competing in what could be a very competitive commercial market, and that is NOT something that Lockheed Martin or Boeing excel at. Sure, Boeing sells commercial aircraft, but they only do that in a mature market, not an emerging one like reusable launch vehicles, and Boeing has no current expertise on being 3rd or 4th entering a market.

    Usually when large companies want to enter new markets they buy an existing company that has a presence in the market and the expertise to grow the market given more resources. That is what Northrop Grumman has done with Orbital ATK, and it would not surprise me if Northrop Grumman makes a play for ULA at some point in the future.

    FYI, I know someone that is a worker at Northrop Grumman (NG), who has no special knowledge about their launch division. But they said it is common knowledge within the company that NG wants to expand their presence in the launch business, and they even said NG would want to buy SpaceX. Obviously that unlikely to happen, but to me that tells me that employees within NG are excited about the possibilities. Please take this as one data point, not a trend, but the person I know knew nothing about the launch business, and I was quite surprised by the depth of the conversation.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/14/2019 07:28 pm
    ULA is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who collectively generated over $150B in revenue in 2018. They have plenty of money to invest in reusability.

    What you need to realize is that ULA's relationship to its parents is surprisingly like that of a state owned business to its government.

    Yes the government has vast resources it could put into such a business.

    Quite aware of how ULA is structured, and my point was that ULA doesn't lack the access to sufficient funds in order to develop their own reusable launch vehicle. ULA's parents have made the calculation that they can better profit from being limited to pretty much U.S. Government only high-end launch services.

    Which is low risk for them, since they already own that market, and we should have no doubt that overall it is very profitable for them.

    But since they are not the first mover in reusable launch vehicles, for them to get into the market they would be competing in what could be a very competitive commercial market, and that is NOT something that Lockheed Martin or Boeing excel at. Sure, Boeing sells commercial aircraft, but they only do that in a mature market, not an emerging one like reusable launch vehicles, and Boeing has no current expertise on being 3rd or 4th entering a market.

    Usually when large companies want to enter new markets they buy an existing company that has a presence in the market and the expertise to grow the market given more resources. That is what Northrop Grumman has done with Orbital ATK, and it would not surprise me if Northrop Grumman makes a play for ULA at some point in the future.

    FYI, I know someone that is a worker at Northrop Grumman (NG), who has no special knowledge about their launch division. But they said it is common knowledge within the company that NG wants to expand their presence in the launch business, and they even said NG would want to buy SpaceX. Obviously that unlikely to happen, but to me that tells me that employees within NG are excited about the possibilities. Please take this as one data point, not a trend, but the person I know knew nothing about the launch business, and I was quite surprised by the depth of the conversation.
    NG has LV expertise just need the engines.
    They could buy one of new small LV companies and grow their engine development team. Alternatively buy off shelf engines eg Be4 or AR1.

    AJR tried buying ULA and failed now partnering with Firefly..
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/14/2019 07:47 pm
    NG has LV expertise just need the engines.

    Throttable, reusable engines are not easy to build, and take a lot of years and investment.

    Quote
    They could buy one of new small LV companies and grow their engine development team.

    Sure, take the SpaceX Falcon 1 route. But that takes a lot of time, and the team you have for your small engine may not be the right one to build your ultimate engine.

    Quote
    Alternatively buy off shelf engines eg Be4 or AR1.

    AR1 is likely not a candidate, but I could see Blue Origin selling BE-4 to whoever wants them.

    Quote
    AJR tried buying ULA and failed now partnering with Firefly..

    AJR lacked the vision to pursue the reusable launch market, and now they don't have anything to offer. Sure, they could buy their way into the market by buying up a smaller player, but as the history of SpaceX shows that can take a long time.

    Any new entrant in the reusable launch vehicle market doesn't have to start from scratch, they can learn from what SpaceX and Blue Origin have done and are doing. But engine development is the key, everything else about the rocket is more achievable once you have the engine.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: testguy on 12/15/2019 12:14 am
    ULA is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who collectively generated over $150B in revenue in 2018. They have plenty of money to invest in reusability.

    What you need to realize is that ULA's relationship to its parents is surprisingly like that of a state owned business to its government.

    Yes the government has vast resources it could put into such a business.

    Quite aware of how ULA is structured, and my point was that ULA doesn't lack the access to sufficient funds in order to develop their own reusable launch vehicle. ULA's parents have made the calculation that they can better profit from being limited to pretty much U.S. Government only high-end launch services.

    Which is low risk for them, since they already own that market, and we should have no doubt that overall it is very profitable for them.

    But since they are not the first mover in reusable launch vehicles, for them to get into the market they would be competing in what could be a very competitive commercial market, and that is NOT something that Lockheed Martin or Boeing excel at. Sure, Boeing sells commercial aircraft, but they only do that in a mature market, not an emerging one like reusable launch vehicles, and Boeing has no current expertise on being 3rd or 4th entering a market.

    Usually when large companies want to enter new markets they buy an existing company that has a presence in the market and the expertise to grow the market given more resources. That is what Northrop Grumman has done with Orbital ATK, and it would not surprise me if Northrop Grumman makes a play for ULA at some point in the future.

    FYI, I know someone that is a worker at Northrop Grumman (NG), who has no special knowledge about their launch division. But they said it is common knowledge within the company that NG wants to expand their presence in the launch business, and they even said NG would want to buy SpaceX. Obviously that unlikely to happen, but to me that tells me that employees within NG are excited about the possibilities. Please take this as one data point, not a trend, but the person I know knew nothing about the launch business, and I was quite surprised by the depth of the conversation.

    Thank goodness that the sale of SX to NG is very unlikely to happen.  The sale of SX to any public company in the very long term would destroy the innovation, progress and investment we are witnessing today.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/15/2019 08:52 am
    Any new entrant in the reusable launch vehicle market doesn't have to start from scratch, they can learn from what SpaceX and Blue Origin have done and are doing. But engine development is the key, everything else about the rocket is more achievable once you have the engine.
    Quite true. As RL did and Isar are doing by the looks of things.

    But higher Isp let's you afford more robust structures and allows you to look at other shapes than the super efficient (but super fragile) "soda can" architecture.

    Pure rocket engines have very well defined limits on their performance. They were the only tool to reach orbit in 1956.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/15/2019 01:16 pm
    Any new entrant in the reusable launch vehicle market doesn't have to start from scratch, they can learn from what SpaceX and Blue Origin have done and are doing. But engine development is the key, everything else about the rocket is more achievable once you have the engine.
    Quite true. As RL did and Isar are doing by the looks of things.

    But higher Isp let's you afford more robust structures and allows you to look at other shapes than the super efficient (but super fragile) "soda can" architecture.

    Pure rocket engines have very well defined limits on their performance. They were the only tool to reach orbit in 1956.
    Only way to dramatically improve engine designs and RLV performance is to reduce LOX mass. Air breathing engines is one way ie Reaction Engines. The other is using external power source eg nuclear,  beamed power.

    In near term its current engines using LOX + LH or RP1 or Methane with slight improvements in ISP and weight reduction.
    There is lot that can be done to lower operational costs of RLVs, no short cuts here its just incremental improvements over time.
    This is where small LVs have an advantage, quicker and cheaper to apply these incremental improvements.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/15/2019 06:22 pm
    Only way to dramatically improve engine designs and RLV performance is to reduce LOX mass. Air breathing engines is one way ie Reaction Engines. The other is using external power source eg nuclear,  beamed power.
    True.
    Quote from: TrevorMonty
    In near term its current engines using LOX + LH or RP1 or Methane with slight improvements in ISP and weight reduction.
    Well using a strained ring HC instead of Methane could add a few secs to the Isp. Likewise the target for pumps based on microfabrication technology was a T/W of 1000:1. This was never achieved but it still seems possible.
    Quote from: TrevorMonty
    There is lot that can be done to lower operational costs of RLVs, no short cuts here its just incremental improvements over time.
    Bearing in mind there are no fully RLV's in existence. The F9 booster is a semi- reusable system
    at best
    Quote from: TrevorMonty
    This is where small LVs have an advantage, quicker and cheaper to apply these incremental improvements.
    Provided they can get to a launching a full RLV in the first place.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/15/2019 06:55 pm
    Reuseable boosters is best small LVs could hope for now. In theory 2nd stage could be returned to earth inside likes of SS cargo hold or do a propulsive reentry if it could be refuelled in space, eg lunar fuel.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: testguy on 12/15/2019 09:16 pm
    Just to add to the conversation:

    1.    Lithium/Florine/Hydrogen will yield an ISP of 542.  This is really a mute point because it is so dangerous to use and to build a practical launch vehicle.

    2.    On paper air breathing looks good but has its challenges.  Look at NASP as an example.  The current public technology shows it to be only useful of a limited Mach # range and still requires a conventional rocket to achieve the Mach #'s necessary for orbit.

    3.    Combined cycle air breathers are coming along and should help.  They are great for in atmosphere flight but I'm not sure how well they would trade for a launch vehicle.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: QuantumG on 12/16/2019 02:48 am
    1.    Lithium/Florine/Hydrogen will yield an ISP of 542.  This is really a mute point because it is so dangerous to use and to build a practical launch vehicle.

    Quitter  ;)

    Lithium and fluorine rich ores are expected to be abundant on the lunar surface...

     :P

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 12/16/2019 06:59 am
    ULA is owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, who collectively generated over $150B in revenue in 2018. They have plenty of money to invest in reusability.

    What you need to realize is that ULA's relationship to its parents is surprisingly like that of a state owned business to its government.

    Yes the government has vast resources it could put into such a business.

    Quite aware of how ULA is structured, and my point was that ULA doesn't lack the access to sufficient funds in order to develop their own reusable launch vehicle. ULA's parents have made the calculation that they can better profit from being limited to pretty much U.S. Government only high-end launch services.

    Which is low risk for them, since they already own that market, and we should have no doubt that overall it is very profitable for them.

    But since they are not the first mover in reusable launch vehicles, for them to get into the market they would be competing in what could be a very competitive commercial market, and that is NOT something that Lockheed Martin or Boeing excel at. Sure, Boeing sells commercial aircraft, but they only do that in a mature market, not an emerging one like reusable launch vehicles, and Boeing has no current expertise on being 3rd or 4th entering a market.

    Usually when large companies want to enter new markets they buy an existing company that has a presence in the market and the expertise to grow the market given more resources. That is what Northrop Grumman has done with Orbital ATK, and it would not surprise me if Northrop Grumman makes a play for ULA at some point in the future.

    FYI, I know someone that is a worker at Northrop Grumman (NG), who has no special knowledge about their launch division. But they said it is common knowledge within the company that NG wants to expand their presence in the launch business, and they even said NG would want to buy SpaceX. Obviously that unlikely to happen, but to me that tells me that employees within NG are excited about the possibilities. Please take this as one data point, not a trend, but the person I know knew nothing about the launch business, and I was quite surprised by the depth of the conversation.

    Thank goodness that the sale of SX to NG is very unlikely to happen.  The sale of SX to any public company in the very long term would destroy the innovation, progress and investment we are witnessing today.

    NG's willingness to buy SpaceX also shows that NG utterly and completely fails to understand why SpaceX even exists.

    NG is thinking: SpaceX will ad to our portfolio so we can make even more money for our shareholders.

    SpaceX is thinking: Mars or bust.

    You can't have a more fundamentally different attitude towards being present in the aerospace industry.
    Which is why SpaceX is leading in reusability efforts and all the rest is either failing of extremely slow to follow.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/16/2019 02:55 pm
    NG's willingness to buy SpaceX also shows that NG utterly and completely fails to understand why SpaceX even exists.

    To be clear, this was a low-level employee relating factory floor company chatter, and NOT official policy.

    Quote
    NG is thinking: SpaceX will ad to our portfolio so we can make even more money for our shareholders.

    SpaceX is thinking: Mars or bust.

    Yes, which is why Elon Musk has said that he doesn't want to take SpaceX private public until after they have reached Mars, since public markets won't have the same goals as Elon Musk and the employees of SpaceX.

    Quote
    You can't have a more fundamentally different attitude towards being present in the aerospace industry.
    Which is why SpaceX is leading in reusability efforts and all the rest is either failing of extremely slow to follow.

    Big companies are good at "sustaining innovation", which is where you know your market and know your customer, and you know how to execute to be successful.

    SpaceX (and Blue Origin too) are focused on "disruptive innovation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation)", which requires creating new innovations to create new markets. And to be clear, it is not clear that fully reusable rockets will ultimately be successful, but if they are then that will change the launch market completely.

    And when the NG worker made that comment, I laughed...  ;)

    Edit: Fixed typo
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 12/16/2019 04:21 pm
    it is not clear that fully reusable rockets will ultimately be successful, but if they are then that will change the launch market completely.

    And when the NG worker made that comment, I laughed...  ;)

    If I read this correctly, this quote was the NG guy talking, right?

    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.   SX hasn't gotten there yet, but it's just a matter of time at this point.    F9 isn't large enough to add in all the necessary S2 hardware to make the stage fully reusable and still have a payload size that serves the market.    SS and SH will get there.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Rismagi on 12/17/2019 02:41 am
    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.

    Fully reusable Kistler K-1 failed, while it's main competitors - expendable F9 1.0 and Antares succeeded. History knows of plenety of fully resusable rockets that did not come to fruition: X-30, Delta Cliper, Roton. Reusability is not a magic.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 12/17/2019 03:51 am
    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.

    Fully reusable Kistler K-1 failed, while it's main competitors - expendable F9 1.0 and Antares succeeded. History knows of plenety of fully resusable rockets that did not come to fruition: X-30, Delta Cliper, Roton. Reusability is not a magic.

    It is certainly true there have been a few attempts along the way that haven't resulted in a complete, successful reusable rocket.   To be fair, most of these were not really trying to hit that goal (some of them were barely funded and just trying to bootstrap themselves up...) , others were managed not so well.   Even so, these "failures" illustrated the point pretty well that rocket reusability was technically possible, given the money and interest in developing it and the right team to make it happen.

    SX has taken close to 2 decades (and billions of dollars of business and gov't contracts) to get this far ... and they still aren't quite there yet.

    The reason that I imagine that fully reusable rockets will be ultimately successful is observing the track record and stated intentions of SX. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/17/2019 09:05 am



    The reason rarbg.com I imagine that fully reusable rockets will be ultimately successful is observing the track record and stated intentions of SX.

    Don't expect to fully RLV for small -medium LVs any time soon. The best they can hope for is reuseable boosters.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 12/17/2019 03:41 pm
    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.

    Fully reusable Kistler K-1 failed, while it's main competitors - expendable F9 1.0 and Antares succeeded. History knows of plenety of fully resusable rockets that did not come to fruition: X-30, Delta Cliper, Roton. Reusability is not a magic.

    Those examples only show that developing reusable rockets is more expensive and more technically difficult than a comparable expendable rocket (which is shocking, right? :D ). Because they failed in development, they say nothing about operational costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/17/2019 04:13 pm
    Those examples only show that developing reusable rockets is more expensive and more technically difficult than a comparable expendable rocket (which is shocking, right? :D ). Because they failed in development, they say nothing about operational costs.
    Correct.

    There are expectations it is impossible to develop a full RLV for the same price as VTO TSTO ELV.

    What if they are wrong as well?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/17/2019 04:28 pm
    it is not clear that fully reusable rockets will ultimately be successful, but if they are then that will change the launch market completely.

    And when the NG worker made that comment, I laughed...  ;)

    If I read this correctly, this quote was the NG guy talking, right?

    No, I laughed when the NG worker told me that NG wanted to buy SpaceX.

    I was making the comment that it's not yet clear that reusable rocket will ultimately be successful, though count me as a 100% supporter of the concept and Elon Musk's engineering abilities. But we haven't reached proof of concept yet for fully reusable rockets, and there is always the (hopefully slim) possibility that something will stop SpaceX from getting to that proof of concept.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 12/17/2019 05:03 pm
    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.

    Fully reusable Kistler K-1 failed, while it's main competitors - expendable F9 1.0 and Antares succeeded. History knows of plenety of fully resusable rockets that did not come to fruition: X-30, Delta Cliper, Roton. Reusability is not a magic.

    Reusability IS magic. But funding the required development efforts is more expensive than funding development of expendable rockets:

    - Rocketplane Kistler didn't have deep enough pockets.
    - X-30 was axed as a result of a wave of US government budget cuts during the early 1990's
    - Delta Clipper fell victim to the fact that it was competing with VentureStar (which was also designed to be fully reusable)
    - Roton fell victim to the financially difficult period the US spaceflight industry was having in late 1990's and early 2000's.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 12/17/2019 05:47 pm
    Those examples only show that developing reusable rockets is more expensive and more technically difficult than a comparable expendable rocket (which is shocking, right? :D ). Because they failed in development, they say nothing about operational costs.
    Correct.

    There are expectations it is impossible to develop a full RLV for the same price as VTO TSTO ELV.

    What if they are wrong as well?


    I'm not surprized that RLV development costs a bit more than expendable development.   

    Watching ULA and NG develop launch vehicles I notice the following:

    * The goals appear to be to build an expendable that is very inexpensive to develop, and employs few new technologies. 

    * High value placed on using existing engines, manufacturing techniques, and legacy hardware

    * Operational costs are secondary.  Operational costs are rarely if ever part of the original spec.    They are never part of the business proposition.   Sticking to the expendable paradigm shows that other considerations clearly dominate.

    * Avoidance of using any private capital; maximum utilization of public funding.  This is not surprising, but it's a factor that discourages innovation.

    With that set of assumptions, old space could go on forever and not even try to make anything reusable.   If NASA or the AF put out contracts for a reusable vehicle, old space would certainly build it.  But, since they don't really gain in any way by designing a vehicle with efficient operational costs, that is not ever baked in  (Shuttle, Venture Star, etc, etc).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 12/17/2019 05:52 pm

    I was making the comment that it's not yet clear that reusable rocket will ultimately be successful, though count me as a 100% supporter of the concept and Elon Musk's engineering abilities. But we haven't reached proof of concept yet for fully reusable rockets, and there is always the (hopefully slim) possibility that something will stop SpaceX from getting to that proof of concept.

    Out of curiosity, what part of a fully reusable rocket do you think hasn't been demonstrated at the proof of concept level?

    IMHO, stage 1 is well demonstrated by Falcon 9.

    A reusable Stage 2 hasn't been built yet, but:

    * The shuttle and X-37B shows reusability up to and down from orbit.
    * Engines are demonstrated by F9 and shuttle
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/17/2019 05:54 pm
    For startup RLV is too big a step for first LV,
    They are better off cutting their teeth on ELV and prove themselves. Delivering payloads reliabily to space is first priority of a launch company.

    In case of SpaceX F9 if a ELV is done right it can still evolve into RLV that can help refine RLV systems. Then develop clean sheet design which will contain lot of flight proven systems.

    Blue is exception but they aren't exactly startup and don't funding issues of startup.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 12/17/2019 05:59 pm
    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.

    Fully reusable Kistler K-1 failed, while it's main competitors - expendable F9 1.0 and Antares succeeded. History knows of plenety of fully resusable rockets that did not come to fruition: X-30, Delta Cliper, Roton. Reusability is not a magic.

    Those examples only show that developing reusable rockets is more expensive and more technically difficult than a comparable expendable rocket (which is shocking, right? :D ). Because they failed in development, they say nothing about operational costs.

    Ah yes, refurbishment costs.   Granted, this is not yet fully, publicly documented to be less than the cost to build disposable rockets.   

    You are correct, previous examples didn't convincingly prove low operational costs

    I'd argue that SX is demonstrating proof right now that reused F9S1 operations are cheaper than building new rockets.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ericgu on 12/17/2019 06:09 pm

    A reusable Stage 2 hasn't been built yet, but:

    * The shuttle and X-37B shows reusability up to and down from orbit.
    * Engines are demonstrated by F9 and shuttle

    X-37B is just a payload that can return. Shuttle Orbiter was a payload + engines that could return. So those are really demonstrations of reusable reentry vehicles. It's not clear how reusable the X-37B is, but the orbiter was more "rebuildable" than "reusable" for both the orbiter itself and the engines.

    The orbiter also cheats pretty significantly by stuff all of its propellant in the external tank.

    I don't see any "laws of physics" reasons you can't build a reusable orbital stage, but the engineering challenges are significant and there's can be a huge gap between "feasible", "practical", and "economical". The shuttle was feasible, but it wasn't really practical and it was far from economical. I feel similarly about Skylon; it looks "feasible", but I'm skeptical about practical or economical.

    I do think that SpaceX is taking a reasonable approach with Starship development and it certainly seems feasible, and given their history with Falcon 9, I willing to perhaps grant "practical", but "economical" is going to have to wait for actual orbital flights.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 12/17/2019 06:26 pm

    A reusable Stage 2 hasn't been built yet, but:

    * The shuttle and X-37B shows reusability up to and down from orbit.
    * Engines are demonstrated by F9 and shuttle

    X-37B is just a payload that can return. Shuttle Orbiter was a payload + engines that could return. So those are really demonstrations of reusable reentry vehicles. It's not clear how reusable the X-37B is, but the orbiter was more "rebuildable" than "reusable" for both the orbiter itself and the engines.

    The orbiter also cheats pretty significantly by stuff all of its propellant in the external tank.

    I don't see any "laws of physics" reasons you can't build a reusable orbital stage, but the engineering challenges are significant and there's can be a huge gap between "feasible", "practical", and "economical". The shuttle was feasible, but it wasn't really practical and it was far from economical. I feel similarly about Skylon; it looks "feasible", but I'm skeptical about practical or economical.

    I do think that SpaceX is taking a reasonable approach with Starship development and it certainly seems feasible, and given their history with Falcon 9, I willing to perhaps grant "practical", but "economical" is going to have to wait for actual orbital flights.

    Reentering with internal propellant tanks is not harder than without. In fact, it's somewhat easier, since the lighter tanks tend reduce the ballistic coefficient, which reduces TPS heat loading requirements.

    The challenge with a Shuttle with internal tankage was that with hydrolox the tank was huge and too draggy for horizontal landing, but Starship neatly sidesteps that issue by using vertical landing. Shuttle with internal tankage also would have had issues meeting the crossrange requirement, but Starship doesn't need much crossrange.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/17/2019 06:57 pm

    I was making the comment that it's not yet clear that reusable rocket will ultimately be successful, though count me as a 100% supporter of the concept and Elon Musk's engineering abilities. But we haven't reached proof of concept yet for fully reusable rockets, and there is always the (hopefully slim) possibility that something will stop SpaceX from getting to that proof of concept.

    Out of curiosity, what part of a fully reusable rocket do you think hasn't been demonstrated at the proof of concept level?

    We haven't see a FULLY reusable rocket demonstrated.

    Quote
    IMHO, stage 1 is well demonstrated by Falcon 9.

    A reusable Stage 2 hasn't been built yet, but:

    * The shuttle and X-37B shows reusability up to and down from orbit.
    * Engines are demonstrated by F9 and shuttle

    Yes, pieces and parts of a fully reusable rocket have been developed, tested, and in some case operational, but a FULLY reusable rocket has yet to be demonstrated.

    And just to be clear, I think it can work technically, but there is more to solving this challenge than just the technical part, it's also the financial and management part. SpaceX is best positioned to be the complete solution while trailblazing, but there is still a level of risk that they may not be able to get to the finish line. For instance, if something happens to Elon Musk then what would the future of SpaceX be? We would hope it wouldn't be the same fate as Stratolaunch when Paul Allen died, but we don't know.

    BUT, once demonstrated, I think the "genie is out of the bottle", and more and more companies and entities will pursue it. But getting to the first successful demonstration is the challenge we're watching in real time today.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/17/2019 09:12 pm
    For startup RLV is too big a step for first LV,
    Perhaps you should prefix that with an "IMHO"?

    Quote from: TrevorMonty
    They are better off cutting their teeth on ELV and prove themselves. Delivering payloads reliabily to space is first priority of a launch company.
    It's fascinating to what people "discover" these apparent "laws of nature" once a single company demonstrates at least one path that can work.  :)
     
    Quote from: TrevorMonty
    In case of SpaceX F9 if a ELV is done right it can still evolve into RLV that can help refine RLV systems. Then develop clean sheet design which will contain lot of flight proven systems.

    No, it was hoped it could evolve into a full RLV but then it seems they realized just how much harder US reuse is than booster, IE about 11.6x the energy per unit mass has to be dissipated.

    That will be a valuable lesson future VTO TSTO designers will be aware of before they draw a single line in their CAD system.  :(
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/17/2019 09:24 pm
    X-37B is just a payload that can return. Shuttle Orbiter was a payload + engines that could return.
    Shuttle was the US. The SRB's were the boosters.
    Quote from: ericgu
    So those are really demonstrations of reusable reentry vehicles. It's not clear how reusable the X-37B is, but the orbiter was more "rebuildable" than "reusable" for both the orbiter itself and the engines.
    Shuttle was the only vehicle that
    a) Had its main engines firing from takeoff to orbit.
    b) Demonstrated payload carriage, payload deployment, payload recovery and crew life support.

    While its architecture was far from ideal it's the closest to a reusable vehicle (not a payload, like the X37b) that's actually flown.
    Quote from: ericgu
    The orbiter also cheats pretty significantly by stuff all of its propellant in the external tank.
    All "launch assist" devices are means to "cheat" the limitations of straight rocket cycles.
    IRL engineering is not a math test. You don't lose  points for "cheating." You gain points for making an apparently impossible mission possible.
    Quote from: ericgu
    I don't see any "laws of physics" reasons you can't build a reusable orbital stage, but the engineering challenges are significant and there's can be a huge gap between "feasible", "practical", and "economical". The shuttle was feasible, but it wasn't really practical and it was far from economical.
    It all depends on exactly what assumptions start with. Since so many people who discuss this don't even realize they have such assumptions to begin with they come to irrational conclusions.
    Quote from: ericgu
    I feel similarly about Skylon; it looks "feasible", but I'm skeptical about practical or economical.
    A vehicle that can be used for 200 uses and be bought and sold like any normal transportation system is indeed so far outside the understanding of most people steeped in ELV's I can understand why they wouldn't think it practical.
    Quote from: ericgu
    I do think that SpaceX is taking a reasonable approach with Starship development and it certainly seems feasible, and given their history with Falcon 9, I willing to perhaps grant "practical", but "economical" is going to have to wait for actual orbital flights.
    Sooner or later we'll find out.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/17/2019 09:27 pm
    BUT, once demonstrated, I think the "genie is out of the bottle", and more and more companies and entities will pursue it. But getting to the first successful demonstration is the challenge we're watching in real time today.
    An observation that could be made about several LV technologies.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 12/18/2019 01:10 am
    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.

    Fully reusable Kistler K-1 failed, while it's main competitors - expendable F9 1.0 and Antares succeeded.

    Kistler K-1 failed, but it wasn't really a competitor to Falcon 9 and Antares.  Nearly all the work on Kistler K-1 was done in the 1990s, long before Falcon 9 or Antares existed.  Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on it in the 1990s.

    The K-1 that got a COTS grant was Rocketplane Kistler's claim that they were reviving the K-1 program.  They never really got any serious amount of the private financing that they needed, so they lost their COTS award without doing much.

    Really, lots and lots of private attempts to create new launch vehicles failed, both for reusable and expendable vehicles.  This is not really evidence that reusable vehicles can't lower costs so much as it's evidence that creating a new launch vehicle of any kind is really, really expensive and investors haven't been willing to pour enough money into most of the new launch vehicle programs to see how they would fare operationally.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 12/19/2019 03:50 am
    I can't imagine how fully reusable rockets can be anything but ultimately successful.

    Fully reusable Kistler K-1 failed, while it's main competitors - expendable F9 1.0 and Antares succeeded.

    Kistler K-1 failed, but it wasn't really a competitor to Falcon 9 and Antares.  Nearly all the work on Kistler K-1 was done in the 1990s, long before Falcon 9 or Antares existed.  Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on it in the 1990s.

    The K-1 that got a COTS grant was Rocketplane Kistler's claim that they were reviving the K-1 program.  They never really got any serious amount of the private financing that they needed, so they lost their COTS award without doing much.

    Really, lots and lots of private attempts to create new launch vehicles failed, both for reusable and expendable vehicles.  This is not really evidence that reusable vehicles can't lower costs so much as it's evidence that creating a new launch vehicle of any kind is really, really expensive and investors haven't been willing to pour enough money into most of the new launch vehicle programs to see how they would fare operationally.


    Here's the thing though and the genius of Elon Musk in all his endeavors.  Relentless iteration.

    K-1 was an all or nothing effort.  They had to do all the work to get to first flight.  Elon did Falcon 1, then abandoned Falcon 5, then 4 or 5 or 10 versions of F9 and change Merlin relentlessly.

    SpaceX had to win customers, provide a service and develop capabilities on those funds or on residual assets, like a spent booster.  What we are seeing too is that the more they fly the faster they get better.

    I think there are some similarities between SpaceX and Tesla.  There is some competition, but they are aiming for what they think they see now, but Elon is already 3-5 years down the road.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/19/2019 04:38 am
    Really, lots and lots of private attempts to create new launch vehicles failed, both for reusable and expendable vehicles.  This is not really evidence that reusable vehicles can't lower costs so much as it's evidence that creating a new launch vehicle of any kind is really, really expensive and investors haven't been willing to pour enough money into most of the new launch vehicle programs to see how they would fare operationally.

    Here's the thing though and the genius of Elon Musk in all his endeavors.  Relentless iteration.

    A good point. While rockets like the SLS and Vulcan will have upgrade paths, otherwise they won't be iterated in their initial configuration. SpaceX iterated the Falcon 9 many times, but the first one was their minimal viable rocket, one that could deliver customer value while buying time for iteration to better versions.

    Quote
    SpaceX had to win customers, provide a service and develop capabilities on those funds or on residual assets, like a spent booster.

    Besides the hardware, what people need to realize is the business model that SpaceX has used is just as innovative. How many companies (besides Tesla) are doing tests on the customer dime.

    Quote
    What we are seeing too is that the more they fly the faster they get better.

    Which is only possible if your customers are OK with their flights incorporating some level of testing - and so far SpaceX customers have been VERY accommodating.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ericgu on 12/19/2019 02:41 pm

    Which is only possible if your customers are OK with their flights incorporating some level of testing - and so far SpaceX customers have been VERY accommodating.

    Which brings up one of the deficiencies of the ULA reusability analysis; their paper focuses on $/kg as the meaningful metric for cost.

    But SpaceX has demonstrated very clearly that if your rocket is reliable and can put a payload into a specific orbit, the customers don't care at all what happens after that; you can use any extra margin to do whatever you want.

    Though to be fair, that only works if you have a base launcher that is oversized; if your design uses SRBs you would have to pay extra to generate that margin.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/19/2019 03:42 pm

    Which is only possible if your customers are OK with their flights incorporating some level of testing - and so far SpaceX customers have been VERY accommodating.

    Which brings up one of the deficiencies of the ULA reusability analysis; their paper focuses on $/kg as the meaningful metric for cost.

    Not sure about that, since Falcon 9 beats everyone on a $/kg basis. Maybe you meant gross payload to orbit?

    Quote
    But SpaceX has demonstrated very clearly that if your rocket is reliable and can put a payload into a specific orbit, the customers don't care at all what happens after that; you can use any extra margin to do whatever you want.

    Agreed. It seems like a simple concept, but it had never been tested as extensively as SpaceX needed to do.

    Quote
    Though to be fair, that only works if you have a base launcher that is oversized; if your design uses SRBs you would have to pay extra to generate that margin.

    Many debates have been had over whether Falcon 9 is oversized or undersized. My opinion is that it is the right size for the market they are going after, which is the broad middle. And in that broad middle most of their customers only need the reusable version of Falcon 9, and a smaller percentage require the expendable version.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ericgu on 12/19/2019 04:28 pm

    Which brings up one of the deficiencies of the ULA reusability analysis; their paper focuses on $/kg as the meaningful metric for cost.

    Not sure about that, since Falcon 9 beats everyone on a $/kg basis. Maybe you meant gross payload to orbit?

    need the reusable version of Falcon 9, and a smaller percentage require the expendable version.

    I'll try to be clearer...

    The ULA paper https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/supporting-technologies/launch-vehicle-recovery-and-reuse-(aiaa-space-2015).pdf (https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/supporting-technologies/launch-vehicle-recovery-and-reuse-(aiaa-space-2015).pdf) says this:

    The parameter most often used as an objective measure of launch service cost is the cost
    orbit or “$/Kg”.


    ...

    Figure 10 shows the results for SMART vs Booster Fly Back using retro-propulsion. The former becomes profitable
    after a couple of uses while the latter requires ten uses to become profitable. The difference is mainly because of the 30 per cent performance loss to land the booster downrange on a barge. Using the same rationale, equation and input data, booster fly back is never profitable in a return to launch site scenario.


    I am by no means a rocket expert, but this analysis is very obviously flawed. Customers do not buy launches based on $/Kg and with a liquid-fueled rocket, lighter payloads do not cost less than heavier ones (SRBs change that), so for the class of payloads that have enough margin, there is no performance cost of booster fly back and therefore the analysis is wrong.

    To put it in terms that the paper uses, for those flights p = 1.

    Then the question just becomes one of market coverage or launcher sizing; you want your reusable solution to cover the bulk of the market so that you get the benefits of reuse most of the time. Which Falcon 9 Block 5 does.

    And then if you have a *ton* of leftover margin - like on CRS launches - then you can to RTLS.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: John Alan on 12/19/2019 04:38 pm
    My guess is F9 expendable will be very rare going forward on all contracts signed 2019 and later...  ;)

    FH for about the same price... two ASDS's and soon three landing pads coming online in FL...

    So all the possible FH missions and payloads from lightest (3 cores all RTLS) and up can be flown and now bid for...

    Obviously (to me) the payload designers have figured out F9R today is best suited for about 7 tonnes max to GTO with ~2400 m/s delta V of included payload's own booster ability to finish getting it to GSO.
    (reference the several ~2000+ remaining DV launches for SSL and now Boeing flown)

    What we need to watch for now...  ???
    ....is who is designing a payload today... to take advantage of a FH flight with 3 cores recovered (in one of several known ways and places) and the fairings also recovered...

    It's published @SpaceX that sides RTLS and center on ASDS is 8 tonnes... for $90mil
    My guess, is using the same trick (more Delta V on Sat) then the 1800 m/s "standard"...  ::)
    That ~10 tonnes to GTO-2400 on FH for $90mil US is just one of many price points available to designers...
    And up to 26+ tonnes to GTO is available for those with deeper pockets if needed... (FH expended)

    In summary...
    The market is not dumb... they will figure out how to take full advantage of FH (and it's price points) given a few years...
    AND IMHO... F9R expendable will be rare (ASDS/weather issues may force losses)

    SO... SpaceX should be able to bid on and underbid all other launch providers for any payload and mission they offer currently.
    Vulcan, A6, Omega... they all are obsolete before they fly, based solely on cost and price IMHO...

    And the F9 system is rapidly about to pass all others flying today, on number of reliable and successful flights in a row to date...
     :o
    Now.. I will add that the US needs more then one provider flying to assure access to space...
    SpaceX and who else will be left standing... THAT is the question...  ;)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/19/2019 04:52 pm

    Which brings up one of the deficiencies of the ULA reusability analysis; their paper focuses on $/kg as the meaningful metric for cost.

    Not sure about that, since Falcon 9 beats everyone on a $/kg basis. Maybe you meant gross payload to orbit?

    need the reusable version of Falcon 9, and a smaller percentage require the expendable version.

    I'll try to be clearer...

    The ULA paper https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/supporting-technologies/launch-vehicle-recovery-and-reuse-(aiaa-space-2015).pdf (https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/supporting-technologies/launch-vehicle-recovery-and-reuse-(aiaa-space-2015).pdf) says this:

    ...

    I am by no means a rocket expert, but this analysis is very obviously flawed. Customers do not buy launches based on $/Kg and with a liquid-fueled rocket, lighter payloads do not cost less than heavier ones (SRBs change that), so for the class of payloads that have enough margin, there is no performance cost of booster fly back and therefore the analysis is wrong.

    Yes, ULA's analysis is obviously flawed, and that was likely the source of the confusion. And I agree with your conclusion.

    Quote
    Then the question just becomes one of market coverage or launcher sizing; you want your reusable solution to cover the bulk of the market so that you get the benefits of reuse most of the time. Which Falcon 9 Block 5 does.

    Right, and either through happy circumstances, or great engineering (or both), the Falcon 9 does cover most of the market. And actually the Falcon series of rockets, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, can really cover the vast range of the commercial market, since Falcon 9 reusable can launch small payloads economically, and Falcon Heavy can launch the biggest commercial payloads when the only other option is Falcon 9 expendable.

    The key is not to try and build a rocket that does everything, since the broader the capability the less efficient you become. That is why picking the sweet spot was so important for SpaceX.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/19/2019 04:53 pm
    My guess is F9 expendable will be very rare going forward on all contracts signed 2019 and later...  ;)

    FH for about the same price... two ASDS's and soon three landing pads coming online in FL...

    So all the possible FH missions and payloads from lightest (3 cores all RTLS) and up can be flown and now bid for...

    Obviously (to me) the payload designers have figured out F9R today is best suited for about 7 tonnes max to GTO with ~2400 m/s delta V of included payload's own booster ability to finish getting it to GSO.
    (reference the several ~2000+ remaining DV launches for SSL and now Boeing flown)

    What we need to watch for now...  ???
    ....is who is designing a payload today... to take advantage of a FH flight with 3 cores recovered (in one of several known ways and places) and the fairings also recovered...

    It's published @SpaceX that sides RTLS and center on ASDS is 8 tonnes... for $90mil
    My guess, is using the same trick (more Delta V on Sat) then the 1800 m/s "standard"...  ::)
    That ~10 tonnes to GTO-2400 on FH for $90mil US is just one of many price points available to designers...
    And up to 26+ tonnes to GTO is available for those with deeper pockets if needed... (FH expended)

    In summary...
    The market is not dumb... they will figure out how to take full advantage of FH (and it's price points) given a few years...
    AND IMHO... F9R expendable will be rare (ASDS/weather issues may force losses)
    While customer may plan to use FH they would design payload to be launch by choice of launchers.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: John Alan on 12/19/2019 05:17 pm
    My guess is F9 expendable will be very rare going forward on all contracts signed 2019 and later...  ;)

    FH for about the same price... two ASDS's and soon three landing pads coming online in FL...

    So all the possible FH missions and payloads from lightest (3 cores all RTLS) and up can be flown and now bid for...

    Obviously (to me) the payload designers have figured out F9R today is best suited for about 7 tonnes max to GTO with ~2400 m/s delta V of included payload's own booster ability to finish getting it to GSO.
    (reference the several ~2000+ remaining DV launches for SSL and now Boeing flown)

    What we need to watch for now...  ???
    ....is who is designing a payload today... to take advantage of a FH flight with 3 cores recovered (in one of several known ways and places) and the fairings also recovered...

    It's published @SpaceX that sides RTLS and center on ASDS is 8 tonnes... for $90mil
    My guess, is using the same trick (more Delta V on Sat) then the 1800 m/s "standard"...  ::)
    That ~10 tonnes to GTO-2400 on FH for $90mil US is just one of many price points available to designers...
    And up to 26+ tonnes to GTO is available for those with deeper pockets if needed... (FH expended)

    In summary...
    The market is not dumb... they will figure out how to take full advantage of FH (and it's price points) given a few years...
    AND IMHO... F9R expendable will be rare (ASDS/weather issues may force losses)
    While customer may plan to use FH they would design payload to be launch by choice of launchers.
    Agreed... in fact I went back and added the following to my above quoted post... while you were posting
    Quote
    SO... SpaceX should be able to bid on and underbid all other launch providers for any payload and mission they offer currently.
    Vulcan, A6, Omega... they all are obsolete before they fly, based solely on cost and price IMHO...

    And the F9 system is rapidly about to pass all others flying today, on number of reliable and successful flights in a row to date...
     :o
    Now.. I will add that the US needs more then one provider flying to assure access to space...
    SpaceX and who else will be left standing... THAT is the question...  ;)
    The market AND the US government will keep more then one provider in business...
    Vulcan, Omega and FH all will play in this same market space... BUT for what price point...
    I'm saying SpaceX is offering today, multiple choices at likely below the others price points...
    Reusable side boosters verses 2 to 6 Gem-63XL boasters... HA!... the cost difference is likely staggering... IMHO
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 12/19/2019 05:44 pm
    If you look at how many launches FHR has and is likely to do annually its a very expensive RLV to develop for very few missions. Without F9 it wouldn't have been worth developing. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Draggendrop on 12/19/2019 07:54 pm
    If you look at how many launches FHR has and is likely to do annually its a very expensive RLV to develop for very few missions. Without F9 it wouldn't have been worth developing.

    Just my opinion, but FH was developed for full lift capability...with government heavy lift in mind.

    As far as costs...seriously...for the launch cost of approx 2.5 Delta IV heavies...they developed a heavy booster. With reuse, they will have an easier time on paying down development costs. The capability is a big deal....

    Sometimes one has to spend money to make money (future income)...examples such as EELV, commercial lift and future NASA options. This was money well spent and will eventually be recovered, not just by launching it.

    my 2 cents

    //edit :typo's and insertion of last sentence
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/19/2019 08:20 pm
    Besides the hardware, what people need to realize is the business model that SpaceX has used is just as innovative. How many companies (besides Tesla) are doing tests on the customer dime.
    Not really. 

    Look under the surface of any modern complex product (especially one that has a spare parts market around it or gets software updates) and you are likely to fine there have been multiple versions of the design, wheather the customer was aware of them or not. Those changes were either to fix deficiencies in the original design, lower the cost of mfg for the supplier or (possibly) trial elements in some for that they want to include in later models.

    Quote from: Coastal Ron
    Which is only possible if your customers are OK with their flights incorporating some level of testing - and so far SpaceX customers have been VERY accommodating.
    They have been very lucky in this regard but they are not alone as an LV mfg in doing this.

    LM have run various data collection studies on the Centaur stage over the years to find out how long it can last, ways to settle propellant using less MMH etc.

    Like SX these were normally run when the stage had carried out its primary function.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/19/2019 08:28 pm
    But SpaceX has demonstrated very clearly that if your rocket is reliable and can put a payload into a specific orbit, the customers don't care at all what happens after that; you can use any extra margin to do whatever you want.
    Correct
    Quote from: ericgu
    Though to be fair, that only works if you have a base launcher that is oversized; if your design uses SRBs you would have to pay extra to generate that margin.
    Which is the exact point of their analysis. That F9 is so much bigger than it needs to be.

    Whenever people do cost analysis on different designs of LV's you must always find out what assumptions they are making, and what their agenda is.

    ULA is very far from being a disinterested observer in this debate.

    An interesting point would be exactly what is meant by "oversized."

    How many extra feet of tank length does this "excess" performance cost?

    How many extra gallons of Lox (IIRC about $0.15/lb) or RP1 (IIRC about $0.60/lb) does it take?

    My guess is roughly "not that much" and "a damm sight less than an extra SRB."
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/19/2019 08:32 pm
    The key is not to try and build a rocket that does everything, since the broader the capability the less efficient you become. That is why picking the sweet spot was so important for SpaceX.
    WRT to this thread title the same could (should) be said of any LV that wants to raise anything close to commercial finance.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ericgu on 12/19/2019 08:54 pm
    If you look at how many launches FHR has and is likely to do annually its a very expensive RLV to develop for very few missions. Without F9 it wouldn't have been worth developing.

    In my mind FH was "plan B"; when they were first launching F9V1.0, they really couldn't cover the market that they wanted to cover and FH was one way to do that.

    And then they were wildly successful in uprating Merlin, going to subchilled prop, and expanding F9, and that gave the FT variant the ability to do lots of missions that would have required FH otherwise. And pushed FH up into a very high payload range.

    It's not actually clear to me that it was worth developing at all and we know that Musk wanted to cancel it multiple times.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Draggendrop on 12/19/2019 09:03 pm
    If you look at how many launches FHR has and is likely to do annually its a very expensive RLV to develop for very few missions. Without F9 it wouldn't have been worth developing.

    In my mind FH was "plan B"; when they were first launching F9V1.0, they really couldn't cover the market that they wanted to cover and FH was one way to do that.

    And then they were wildly successful in uprating Merlin, going to subchilled prop, and expanding F9, and that gave the FT variant the ability to do lots of missions that would have required FH otherwise. And pushed FH up into a very high payload range.

    It's not actually clear to me that it was worth developing at all and we know that Musk wanted to cancel it multiple times.

    Hind sight is always 50/50 and ..yes, Elon wanted to cancel it's development several times...until Gwynne Shotwell had to remind him of an AF commitment. With that in the past...FH is a real important asset in several venues...till SH/SS come online.

    What has happened in the past...is history. What counts today for the customer is...What can you do for me today with what you have?...SpaceX can have a favorable answer to this...and have reuse to help pay down the outlay.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: LouScheffer on 12/19/2019 11:27 pm
    Could you explain where you think the money goes, if you cannot save money on the second launch of the same booster?

    There're definitely ways to justify the 50 flights per year conclusion if you play with assumptions, here's an example: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160013370.pdf
    [...]
    Basically you can get high flight rate requirement if you assume:
    1. Need to pay back investment in a fairly short time
    2. The investment has to generate significant amount of return to offset the risk
    That analysis makes sense as far as it goes.  If you want venture capital types of returns (30%) over a short amount of time, you'll need lots of launches.   Or alternatively, if it costs you $2B to develop, but saves only $10M per mission, it takes you at least 200 flights to make your money back.

    But you can run this analysis backwards to find out how much you *can* invest.  Let's guess that SpaceX saves $30M on each recovered booster.  (Musk stated that the first stage was 60% of the $60M cost, or $36M, originally.  For reuse, 3 months of 100 people to refurbish would be $3.75M.  The other $2.25M could go for barge rental, cranes, storage, etc., for $6M total)  Say, like Ariane, you are launching 12 times per year, and say you want a 10% rate of return over 5 years (after all, Ariane does not have venture capital alternatives in which to invest their money).   Then they could afford to invest about $1.5B to create a reusable booster.

    Now this would rule out developing entirely new engines for the task, which would eat up the whole budget.  Likewise flyback, with lots of hypersonic aerodynamics of odd shaped objects, seems like it could be too expensive.  But a SpaceX type booster landing, or perhaps a SMART type engine recovery, would seem to fit the budget.   After all, $1.5B is about 10,000 engineer-years, which should be enough to master a technology that's already shown to be possible.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Draggendrop on 12/20/2019 12:07 am
    "Reusability effect on costs"

    Today, after 44 pages here and years of following the spaceflight community, I am still of the same mindset that I was back then...reusability, when properly implemented, can reduce the cost of doing business. By how much depends on how well it is implemented, to which we are privy to scraps of info.

    For SpaceX, the long game being Mars, reusability is key. The cost to exit this gravity well must be reduced and as such, is of strategic importance.

    With the investment in reuse, SpaceX has lowered launch cost for new and used boosters, something that has been partially displayed within contractual releases. With lower launch costs in mind, in house manufacturing has also been of advantage. Limitations have been revealed and new iterations have followed. If all goes well, SH/SS may be the breakthrough for Mars and be quite instrumental locally, again while paying down development costs.

    SpaceX has gone through various iterations of launcher/propulsion designs all while being able to offer a service to customers at a reasonable fee and still be able to partially recoup development costs via reuse..an ability unavailable to disposable launchers.

    A thosand people will have a thousand opinions but as a prior business owner...IMHO, I see it just as common sense that the idea of properly orchestrated reuse can not only reduce the cost of doing business, but is also a strategic weapon against competitors as well.

    Reuse may not make financial sense to some competitors because their long term goals and business priorities may be drastically different from one another. That is a pricing issue for competitors. Reuse is pivotal to SpaceX and its plans for Mars which is the only justification it needs.

    Just my opinion...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Asteroza on 12/20/2019 12:13 am
    The interesting thing here, is the ULA SRB argument itself. It's not an apples to apples comparison, but doing a straight SRB to FH side booster dev/ops cost comparison might be interesting, assuming long term FHR. There is that interesting data point of Delta-IV, which has common core allowing a three stick configuration like FH, as well as single stick with SRB's so it technically is bridging the argument.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/20/2019 02:24 am
    Besides the hardware, what people need to realize is the business model that SpaceX has used is just as innovative. How many companies (besides Tesla) are doing tests on the customer dime.
    Not really. 

    Look under the surface of any modern complex product (especially one that has a spare parts market around it or gets software updates) and you are likely to fine there have been multiple versions of the design, wheather the customer was aware of them or not. Those changes were either to fix deficiencies in the original design, lower the cost of mfg for the supplier or (possibly) trial elements in some for that they want to include in later models.

    I've worked for commercial and government product manufacturers, and most of the time the department I managed was in control of telling manufacturing what product configuration to build, so I had direct knowledge about how products were iterated and changed.

    What SpaceX does is significantly different than pretty much everyone else. Also, most products are sold, whereas SpaceX offers a service, and it is very difficult to run experiments on a product a customer has bought AND get reliable feedback. Tesla can only do it because EVERY Tesla car is online and Tesla monitors and adjusts the software of each car. They are the exception, not the rule.

    Starting in the early days of Falcon 9 SpaceX was running specific experiments with every launch, some very significant. I don't know any other aerospace company that has done the same.

    Quote
    Quote from: Coastal Ron
    Which is only possible if your customers are OK with their flights incorporating some level of testing - and so far SpaceX customers have been VERY accommodating.
    They have been very lucky in this regard but they are not alone as an LV mfg in doing this.

    It is the scale that they do it. SpaceX is not tinkering around the edges, they are going beyond the performance envelope and are OK with failure. Unfortunately that is not the culture that exists at "Old Space" companies.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 12/20/2019 07:25 pm
    If you look at how many launches FHR has and is likely to do annually its a very expensive RLV to develop for very few missions. Without F9 it wouldn't have been worth developing.

    Falcon Heavy was necessary for SpaceX to even be allowed to bid on dozens of national security payloads.  The payloads would almost all fly on Falcon 9, but the Air Force required bidders to have a solution for the small number of very heavy payloads that require Falcon Heavy.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/21/2019 10:25 am
    What SpaceX does is significantly different than pretty much everyone else. Also, most products are sold, whereas SpaceX offers a service, and it is very difficult to run experiments on a product a customer has bought AND get reliable feedback. Tesla can only do it because EVERY Tesla car is online and Tesla monitors and adjusts the software of each car. They are the exception, not the rule.
    I would have said that since it is a service SX sell (you cannot buy and launch an F9 yourself, just like every current ELV or semi ELV) collecting whatever data they wanted is quite straightforward.
    Quote from: Coastal Ron
    Starting in the early days of Falcon 9 SpaceX was running specific experiments with every launch, some very significant. I don't know any other aerospace company that has done the same.
    Nor do it. But it's what you should be doing if you have a longer term goal and you need to learn a great deal about it before proceeding. I don't know what the issues of re-starting a rocket engine in hypersonic flow are but SX do. They solved that problem years ago and provide NASA with enough data for them to radically lower the budget they were planning to commit to find out that information.

    Quote from: Coastal Ron
    Which is only possible if your customers are OK with their flights incorporating some level of testing - and so far SpaceX customers have been VERY accommodating.
    It is the scale that they do it. SpaceX is not tinkering around the edges, they are going beyond the performance envelope and are OK with failure. Unfortunately that is not the culture that exists at "Old Space" companies.
    True.  But note also it is always after performance of core duties of the stage. That is a common theme of such testing.

    And you've hit the nail right on the head. It's the SX culture that is different because it is driven by something more than "This quarter we must do better by X% than last quarters figures."

    Unless they are getting a performance bonus most people's reaction to such a demand is "So what?"
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 01/24/2020 02:06 am
    Cnes Future Launcher Roadmap - Ariane Next the European Falcon 9 in 2030 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49940.0) thread has a presentation from CNES about future launcher roadmap, slide 31 has an estimate of refurbishments costs (I assume the estimate is performed by CNES): "A refursbished stage costs between 6% and 40% of a new one"

    This sounds reasonable to me, much more honest than ULA's lines (need 10 reuses to break even)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 01/24/2020 03:02 am
    Cnes Future Launcher Roadmap - Ariane Next the European Falcon 9 in 2030 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49940.0) thread has a presentation from CNES about future launcher roadmap, slide 31 has an estimate of refurbishments costs (I assume the estimate is performed by CNES): "A refursbished stage costs between 6% and 40% of a new one"

    This sounds reasonable to me, much more honest than ULA's lines (need 10 reuses to break even)
    ULA will also be including development costs in that "break even". CNES don't state what development costs are, which are separate from refurbishment.

    What would be nice from CNES is estimated development costs and recovery cost over X number of launches.
    ULA have done this business analysis and concluded SMART is best option for them and their market.








    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 01/24/2020 03:11 am
    Cnes Future Launcher Roadmap - Ariane Next the European Falcon 9 in 2030 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49940.0) thread has a presentation from CNES about future launcher roadmap, slide 31 has an estimate of refurbishments costs (I assume the estimate is performed by CNES): "A refursbished stage costs between 6% and 40% of a new one"

    This sounds reasonable to me, much more honest than ULA's lines (need 10 reuses to break even)
    ULA will also be including development costs in that "break even". CNES don't state what development costs are, which are separate from refurbishment.

    I don't think that's correct, if you check the ULA SMART reuse paper (https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/supporting-technologies/launch-vehicle-recovery-and-reuse-(aiaa-space-2015).pdf) or George Sowers' excel, development cost is not part of the equation.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 01/24/2020 03:26 am
    Cnes Future Launcher Roadmap - Ariane Next the European Falcon 9 in 2030 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49940.0) thread has a presentation from CNES about future launcher roadmap, slide 31 has an estimate of refurbishments costs (I assume the estimate is performed by CNES): "A refursbished stage costs between 6% and 40% of a new one"

    This sounds reasonable to me, much more honest than ULA's lines (need 10 reuses to break even)
    ULA will also be including development costs in that "break even". CNES don't state what development costs are, which are separate from refurbishment.

    I don't think that's correct, if you check the ULA SMART reuse paper (https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/supporting-technologies/launch-vehicle-recovery-and-reuse-(aiaa-space-2015).pdf) or George Sowers' excel, development cost is not part of the equation.

    That's right, development costs are not included in the 10 refurbishments claim from ULA.  Instead, it's based on an obviously incorrect analysis.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: jpo234 on 02/02/2020 08:45 am
    Capture from this presentation: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43154.msg2041522#msg2041522

    The capture in the second image still talks about F9 despite the Starship in the background.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: DistantTemple on 02/02/2020 09:20 am
    $28M I assume is as said - the cost of the rocket launche(d) ie including fuel and launch and NEW STAGE 2 and as of this date, likely new fairings. (since recovery and commercial re-use is still just around the corner)
    Therefore the cost of the re-used F9 stage 1 is well down. "Refurbishment" turn-around is quoted at 30 days in the same speech.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: scdavis on 02/02/2020 04:25 pm
    $28M I assume is as said - the cost of the rocket launche(d) ie including fuel and launch and NEW STAGE 2 and as of this date, likely new fairings. (since recovery and commercial re-use is still just around the corner)
    Therefore the cost of the re-used F9 stage 1 is well down. "Refurbishment" turn-around is quoted at 30 days in the same speech.
    Yes, he was speaking quickly but I think he said $28M was the “all up” cost of the reusable launch, which I would expect to include at least refurbishment costs and and all standard ground operations.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: joek on 02/02/2020 06:58 pm
    Cnes Future Launcher Roadmap - Ariane Next the European Falcon 9 in 2030 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49940.0) thread has a presentation from CNES about future launcher roadmap, slide 31 has an estimate of refurbishments costs (I assume the estimate is performed by CNES): "A refursbished stage costs between 6% and 40% of a new one"

    This sounds reasonable to me, much more honest than ULA's lines (need 10 reuses to break even)

    Assuming all-up costs, even if 99% cost of a new stage, game over--and I would hope and expect that the numbers will only get better with experience.  Unclear if that includes initial increased RDT&E/amortization or reduced cost of manufacturing new stages and related opportunity costs?


    edit: by "reduced cost of manufacturing new stages and related opportunity costs", I mean assets required for manufacturing new stages which could be re-purposed to more profitable activities.  Doubt the analysis addresses that; very difficult and would need have deep insight into SpaceX's plans and financials.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 02/03/2020 02:58 am
    Want to address Ed's comment in this locked thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50029.msg2041622#msg2041622

    Quote
    Without first-hand knowledge of the actual launch vehicle costs, we only have launch totals to provide a clue for relative launch vehicle "competitiveness".  Totals from the past five years (2015-2019) show that "Falcon 9R" (Falcon 9 launches that have seen first stage recoveries) are, in that sense, very "competitive", but not utterly dominant as one might expect if booster reuse truly undercut the competition in pricing.  Falcon 9R is very strong in LEO mission totals, but trails Ariane and Soyuz Fregat and Proton and even Atlas 5 in "beyond LEO" missions.  Ariane 5 ECA, of course, remains competitive because it can boost almost two Falcon 9R's worth of payload to GTO per mission.  Proton still ranks in beyond-LEO.  DF-5 and R-7 still dominate the raw numbers, so surely must be cost-effective for their users.

             2015-2019
       Ranked by >LEO Totals
                   LEO     >LEO
    ---------------------------
    DF-5 CZ       56(3)   48(1)
    Ariane 5 ECA    -     26(1)
    Atlas 5        8(0)   22(0)
    Proton          -     22(1)
    R-7/Fregat    11(1)   19(0)
    Falcon 9R     24(0)   15(0)
    Falcon 9X     12(1)   13(0)
    H2A            8(0)    6(0)
    PSLV          16(0)    6(1)
    Falcon Heavy    -      3(0)
    R-7           44(3)     -
    ---------------------------

        2015-2019
       Ranked by LEO Totals
                   LEO     >LEO
    ---------------------------
    DF-5 CZ       56(3)   48(1)
    R-7           44(3)     -
    Falcon 9R     24(0)   15(0)
    PSLV          16(0)    6(1)
    Falcon 9X     12(1)   13(0)
    R-7/Fregat    11(1)   19(0)
    Atlas 5        8(0)   22(0)
    H2A            8(0)    6(0)
    Ariane 5 ECA    -     26(1)
    Proton          -     22(1)
    Falcon Heavy    -      3(0)
    ---------------------------

     - Ed Kyle

    The problem with using total # of launches to assess "competitiveness" is that the majority of the launches are not commercially competed, for example China and Russia would never use F9R for their internal launches no matter how competitive it is. So it's misleading to compare total # of launches, what should be compared is the # of competitively awarded commercial launches. This latter number is not easy to get, since sometimes it's not clear whether a contract is competed, for example Viasat-3 was awarded to ULA, but both SpaceX and Ariane said it's not competed.

    Another issue when it comes to F9R is that Block 5 didn't enter service until mid 2018, and 2nd reuse (3rd flight) didn't occur until end of 2018, so if SpaceX is being cautious, they wouldn't reduce the price based on Block 5's effectiveness until 2019, and that's just for contracts, the actually launch would be ~2 years after that. So the cost competitiveness won't appear in # of competed launches until 2021 at the earliest.

    It would be interesting to see 2019 GTO launch contract results though, since GTO market is warming up again so we have more samples, but it looks like a lot of them haven't disclosed the LV used yet.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 02/03/2020 05:41 am
    Want to address Ed's comment in this locked thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50029.msg2041622#msg2041622

    The problem with using total # of launches to assess "competitiveness" is that the majority of the launches are not commercially competed, for example China and Russia would never use F9R for their internal launches no matter how competitive it is.
    Quite true. Just as the USG will never compete its NSS launches to anyone but a US based LV mfg.

    Quote from: su27k
    So it's misleading to compare total # of launches, what should be compared is the # of competitively awarded commercial launches. This latter number is not easy to get, since sometimes it's not clear whether a contract is competed, for example Viasat-3 was awarded to ULA, but both SpaceX and Ariane said it's not competed.
    Also quite true.

    Here's the thing.

    The launch market will always be fragmented like this. Nations want a full launch capability they control and run and that they don't have to replace major parts for after every launch. At present all any customer gets is a ticket to ride.

    This will continue while launch systems
    a) Remain too complex to routinely launch without a small army of highly specialized staff who do nothing else but look after the it a
    b) Operate a great deal like ICBMs and can be turned back into one fairly readily.
    c) Discard major chunks of their structure after each launch.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: edkyle99 on 02/03/2020 01:13 pm
    Want to address Ed's comment in this locked thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50029.msg2041622#msg2041622

    The problem with using total # of launches to assess "competitiveness" is that the majority of the launches are not commercially competed, for example China and Russia would never use F9R for their internal launches no matter how competitive it is.
    Quite true. Just as the USG will never compete its NSS launches to anyone but a US based LV mfg.
    The same is true of Europe, Russia, China, Japan, India, etc.  So it all kinds of washes out, perhaps.  Keep in mind also that many of the recent SpaceX launches have been for its own satellite service, for which it may not be profiting much if at all.

    I do agree that trends going forward are going to be of interest.  For example, SpaceX recently signed a contract for Nilesat, a service that previously only launched via. Arianespace.  But I also believe the evidence so far shows Falcon 9 more competitive in LEO than in Beyond LEO.

     - Ed Kyle

       
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 02/03/2020 01:21 pm
    Want to address Ed's comment in this locked thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50029.msg2041622#msg2041622

    The problem with using total # of launches to assess "competitiveness" is that the majority of the launches are not commercially competed, for example China and Russia would never use F9R for their internal launches no matter how competitive it is.
    Quite true. Just as the USG will never compete its NSS launches to anyone but a US based LV mfg.
    The same is true of Europe, Russia, China, Japan, India, etc.  So it all kinds of washes out, perhaps.

    I do agree that trends going forward are going to be of interest.  For example, SpaceX recently signed a contract for Nilesat, a service that previously only launched via. Arianespace.  But I also believe the evidence so far shows Falcon 9 more competitive in LEO than in Beyond LEO.

     - Ed Kyle

    SpaceX only started reusing boosters in 2017. If you look at BLEO launches since the beginning of 2018, Ariane 5 has 10, F9 with used boosters has 7, and Atlas V has 6, I think.

    A number of SpaceX's customers (USAF, LSP) have not accepted used boosters, or have accepted them but not yet flown on them.  Commercial launch is a very dynamic market right now, and I don't think the 5-year baseline tells us much at all about the next 2-3 years, or anything at all beyond that. Examining the 2-3 year trends would be more useful as a predictor.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 02/03/2020 02:40 pm
    Keep in mind also that many of the recent SpaceX launches have been for its own satellite service, for which it may not be profiting much if at all.

    Arguing that Starlink launches weren't competed is fair.  But arguing that they might not be profitable is not a good argument.  Any profits will come in the future and nobody can guarantee profits for such a new venture.  But the important thing is whether the customer, SpaceX believes they will be profitable.  And the answer to that is, without a doubt, yes.  SpaceX believes these launches will be wildly profitable.  They are counting on them to raise billions to go to Mars.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rsdavis9 on 02/03/2020 02:45 pm
    I find it interesting that the increase of launch rate from starlink may not provide much financial benefit to spacex immediately but the mere fact of tripling launch rate will cause a per unit reduction in cost to the commercial launches because of economy of scale.
    Said another way. Launching more often reduces per unit cost because fixed costs get distributed over a larger number of units.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 02/03/2020 04:37 pm
    Keep in mind also that many of the recent SpaceX launches have been for its own satellite service, for which it may not be profiting much if at all.
    Arguing that Starlink launches weren't competed is fair.

    Perhaps it's fair, but I don't think it's relevant to this discussion.

    Starlink launches might not have been offered to other LSPs. But does anyone really think that if another LSP were able to beat SpaceX's entire value proposition for launching Starlink, that LSP would not have gotten at least some of the business?

    Part of that value proposition, of course, is that Starlink leverages SpaceX's considerable investment in launch services, allows them to improve their launch business, and allows them to develop and implement tech they need for Mars.

    But Starlink offers a path to an order of magnitude more revenue than launch does. Maybe 2 orders of magnitude. If outsourcing some launch capacity would have saved some time or money in the process of getting it up and running, you know Musk would be pinching those pennies.

    Most captured launches are captured for political or legal reasons, with economics having close to zero effect on the choice of LSP. For example, USAF will not even consider Ariane for launches, because they are prohibited by law from buying Ariane's services. Conversely, I'd argue that Starlink is captured almost entirely for economic reasons. And that is direct and strong evidence concerning the effect of reuse on costs - aka, What This Thread Is About.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: tbellman on 02/03/2020 05:10 pm
    Most captured launches are captured for political or legal reasons, with economics having close to zero effect on the choice of LSP. For example, USAF will not even consider Ariane for launches, because they are prohibited by law from buying Ariane's services. Conversely, I'd argue that Starlink is captured almost entirely for economic reasons. And that is direct and strong evidence concerning the effect of reuse on costs - aka, What This Thread Is About.

    Playing a bit of Devil's advocate here...

    Even if some other launch provider were cheaper, it would look bad for SpaceX to not use their own launch vehicle.  It would be admitting that their own launch service was actually not very cost effective.  Thus, as long as they thought the profits from Starlink would still be greater than the costs of launching it on F9R, it could still make sense to take the more expensive route, in order to preserve their reputation and whatever profit they have from selling launches to others.

    I don't actually believe this to be the case.  For one, I doubt Elon would be able to keep himself silent about that. :D  But in general, people and organizations sometimes do things that are not economic just to save their face.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: joek on 02/03/2020 10:11 pm
    Playing a bit of Devil's advocate here...

    Even if some other launch provider were cheaper, it would look bad for SpaceX to not use their own launch vehicle.  It would be admitting that their own launch service was actually not very cost effective.  Thus, as long as they thought the profits from Starlink would still be greater than the costs of launching it on F9R, it could still make sense to take the more expensive route, in order to preserve their reputation and whatever profit they have from selling launches to others.

    I don't actually believe this to be the case.  For one, I doubt Elon would be able to keep himself silent about that. :D  But in general, people and organizations sometimes do things that are not economic just to save their face.

    That also assumes a competitive provider could or would progress SpaceX's broader agenda--which includes not just Starlink but reusability of F9, both technical and operational, and obtaining information likely to help progress Starship.  What is that worth to SpaceX?  Likely infinitely more than to a competitor.

    Even if a competitor could potentially provide SpaceX a few points lower cost per launch (which I seriously doubt), do not think SpaceX would take it--they have bigger fish to fry; has nothing to do with SpaceX preserving their reputation or saving face.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 02/04/2020 01:31 am
    Keep in mind also that many of the recent SpaceX launches have been for its own satellite service, for which it may not be profiting much if at all.
    Arguing that Starlink launches weren't competed is fair.

    Perhaps it's fair, but I don't think it's relevant to this discussion.

    Starlink launches might not have been offered to other LSPs. But does anyone really think that if another LSP were able to beat SpaceX's entire value proposition for launching Starlink, that LSP would not have gotten at least some of the business?

    Part of that value proposition, of course, is that Starlink leverages SpaceX's considerable investment in launch services, allows them to improve their launch business, and allows them to develop and implement tech they need for Mars.

    But Starlink offers a path to an order of magnitude more revenue than launch does. Maybe 2 orders of magnitude. If outsourcing some launch capacity would have saved some time or money in the process of getting it up and running, you know Musk would be pinching those pennies.

    Most captured launches are captured for political or legal reasons, with economics having close to zero effect on the choice of LSP. For example, USAF will not even consider Ariane for launches, because they are prohibited by law from buying Ariane's services. Conversely, I'd argue that Starlink is captured almost entirely for economic reasons. And that is direct and strong evidence concerning the effect of reuse on costs - aka, What This Thread Is About.

    I agree that Starlink was captured for economic reasons.

    I happen to believe that Elon Musk figured that if he could provide cheap bulk launch it would incentivize others to create new businesses to take advantage of that.  When he did and those businesses didn't materialize to take advantage of cheap launch in the way he thought they should, he said to himself, "Well, if nobody else is going to take advantage of the opportunity SpaceX is providing for new businesses from cheap launch, we'll do it ourselves."  Starlink only exists to take advantage of the cheap launch SpaceX believes only it currently offers or will offer in the near future.

    The reason I said I think it's fair to point out that Starlink launches weren't competed is that I think it requires additional evidence to claim that Starlink shows that SpaceX is competitive.  I think that additional evidence exists and is pretty strong, it's just I wouldn't out-of-hand dismiss the fact that Starlink launches weren't competed.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 02/04/2020 09:12 pm
    I agree that Starlink was captured for economic reasons.

    I happen to believe that Elon Musk figured that if he could provide cheap bulk launch it would incentivize others to create new businesses to take advantage of that.  When he did and those businesses didn't materialize to take advantage of cheap launch in the way he thought they should, he said to himself, "Well, if nobody else is going to take advantage of the opportunity SpaceX is providing for new businesses from cheap launch, we'll do it ourselves."  Starlink only exists to take advantage of the cheap launch SpaceX believes only it currently offers or will offer in the near future.

    The reason I said I think it's fair to point out that Starlink launches weren't competed is that I think it requires additional evidence to claim that Starlink shows that SpaceX is competitive.  I think that additional evidence exists and is pretty strong, it's just I wouldn't out-of-hand dismiss the fact that Starlink launches weren't competed.

    I've been thinking this since Starlink was announced.  F9 needs to fly a lot of make reuse work economically. 

    Flying Starlink makes all the other launches more affordable.

    I think SpaceX would launch Starlink competitor satellites in a heart beat.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 02/06/2020 12:35 pm
    (1) F9 needs to fly a lot of make reuse work economically. 

    (2) Flying Starlink makes all the other launches more affordable.

    (3) I think SpaceX would launch Starlink competitor satellites in a heart beat.

    Disagree strongly with (1) and (2).  (3) I do agree with.

    (1)  Reuse working economically means, in my opinion, something on the order of "on a cash flow basis".   SpaceX, especially as a private entity, doesn't need F9 cadence to include reuse that pays of F9-reuse development costs.  It just needs reuse to be cheaper than new fabs and I think we have all the evidence/testimony we need to that and therefore F9 Reuse Works Economically (period, end of sentence).

    (2)  I don't really think increased flight rate does much of anything for the affordability of other launches.  Affordability is one of those words that needs to be defined.  But except with respect to higher-flight rate leading to marginal savings in processings, I don't see Starlink affectiing "affordability" however you define it.

    (3)  Yes.  Elon will do just about anything reasonable to further exploitation of Space.  Profit is not his primary master.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 02/07/2020 05:44 am

    (2)  I don't really think increased flight rate does much of anything for the affordability of other launches.  Affordability is one of those words that needs to be defined.  But except with respect to higher-flight rate leading to marginal savings in processings, I don't see Starlink affectiing "affordability" however you define it.

    Well technically it allows the staff costs entirely associated with launch to be spread over more launches to be paid for by Starlink

    How big a difference depends on wheather or not Starlink is a separate company from SX. If so then SX can claim Starlink launches are lowering their costs.

    Of course ultimately SX is basically paying itself, so what it lowers in one account it raises in another.
    Real money doesn't start coming into the company until Starlink starts signing up actual customers and starts delivering some kind of service to them, be they end subscribers or ISP or phone companies.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 02/07/2020 08:05 pm

    (2)  I don't really think increased flight rate does much of anything for the affordability of other launches.  Affordability is one of those words that needs to be defined.  But except with respect to higher-flight rate leading to marginal savings in processings, I don't see Starlink affectiing "affordability" however you define it.

    Well technically it allows the staff costs entirely associated with launch to be spread over more launches to be paid for by Starlink

    Totally get it.  Sort of hate these discussions with squishy words used imprecisely.  Makes it hard to pin things down.

    Not sure I have anything at all to base this on but I just sort of don't see SpaceX trying to count their fixed costs divided over launches to such a precise degree that Starlink launches cause them to change their price structure.  I've always been of the opinion that they are just funding Starlink launches at cost and "charging" Starlink full-freight rates through equity.  As such, nothing Starlink does would be much of an incentive to change prices.  Let commercial customers cover your fixed costs and account for Starlink launches as internal R&D and/or Equity Bookkeeping Entries.

    So, yeah ... increased cadence can do some things to improve .... let's say "profitability" ...

    but with respect to how Launch Cadence affects "Costs" vs. Reusability itself, feels pretty marginal to my gut feel, nice to have but not terribly important.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 02/07/2020 08:16 pm
    I know this seems counter-intuitive to most people, but any company that considers its fixed costs when setting its prices is irrational and not making the best decisions for its shareholders.

    A company should only consider its marginal costs when setting prices.  The trade-off is lower marginal profit but higher volumes.  Find the point on the curve that maximizes total marginal profit.

    Then, if they find that doesn't cover the fixed costs, exit that business, or don't go into it in the first place if they're doing the analysis before entering the business.

    What this means for SpaceX is that the idea that SpaceX would change their prices because they can spread their fixed R&D costs over more Starlink launches is irrational.  But it might mean that they would stay in the business where they wouldn't otherwise because they would lose money.

    There are also issues of economies of scale unrelated to fixed costs, and those could plausibly be a real reason for SpaceX to lower costs for other launch customers.  But it won't be for fixed costs that can be considered spread over Starlink launches.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 02/07/2020 08:44 pm
    SpaceNews with a very well-written (and timely) Op-Ed about SpaceX, reuse, and the space marketplace: https://spacenews.com/op-ed-spacexs-adaptation-to-market-changes/.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TorenAltair on 04/16/2020 04:04 am
    April 16th Updates 2020:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1250590613096914944

    Tweet Contents:
    Eric Berger
    @SciGuySpace
    This article is well reported, but let's be real. Vertical rocket reuse is all of three years old. SpaceX is surely saving money on launches, and if the Falcon 9 weren't already insanely cheaper than everyone else, the company could cut prices substantially.
    Aviation Week
    @AviationWeek
    The technical risks of landing and reflying rockets have been resolved, but the business case seems far from closed.

    Elon Musk
    @elonmusk
    True. Only reason other medium & heavy lift rocket companies are winning any missions at all is due to govt intervention. Otherwise, they’d be as defunct as expendable airplane companies. ULA is powered by lobbying.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1250594559286849539

    Tweet Contents:
    Elon Musk
    @elonmusk
    Also, it costs less $ to insure a Falcon 9 mission. That’s the acid test.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1250595473716506624

    Tweet Contents:
    Michael Sheetz
    How much less?

    Elon Musk
    @elonmusk
    Last I checked, over a million dollars less. Moreover, F9 is launching far more often & is only rocket fully NASA-approved for launching astronauts, so that gap is increasing.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/16/2020 07:46 am
    Elon is of course over-stating his case as ULA currently can do things SpaceX can’t (vertical integration, larger fairing) that explains some of ULA’s launch wins.

    Cheaper insurance is interesting. When Elon says ‘Falcon 9 mission’ I assume he means successful deployment of payload(s) into correct orbit(s)? In particular, not including the LV? With ULA so focussed on government missions, how many ULA missions are insured?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TorenAltair on 04/16/2020 08:12 am
    Elon is of course over-stating his case as ULA currently can do things SpaceX can’t (vertical integration, larger fairing) that explains some of ULA’s launch wins.

    Cheaper insurance is interesting. When Elon says ‘Falcon 9 mission’ I assume he means successful deployment of payload(s) into correct orbit(s)? In particular, not including the LV? With ULA so focussed on government missions, how many ULA missions are insured?

    With his switching of context (US only <-> general), it was not clear as well if insurance cost is also lower than Ariane 5 for example that "historically" had the lowest insurance cost.
    And of course others win launches because the sat industry don't want a monopoly due to future prices and the possibility to switch launchers (for example due to grounding)

    Edit: Regarding ULA and commercial launches: German Wikipedia states 15 commercial launches until 2015. If I counted the commercial launches since then correctly, there were 2 Atlas V and none for the Deltas.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/16/2020 12:22 pm
    Elon is of course over-stating his case as ULA currently can do things SpaceX can’t (vertical integration, larger fairing) that explains some of ULA’s launch wins.

    Elon's statement doesn't say as much about the state of the launch market as one might thing. Assured access is a form of government intervention, and it means ULA can't go defunct until SpaceX is operating 2 redundant LVs or there is a cheaper competitor like Blue.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/16/2020 03:01 pm
    https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/1250796692133339146

    Quote
    Space insurers to Elon Musk: No Elon, @SpaceX Falcon 9 does not get better rates @Arianespace Ariane 5 or @ulalaunch Atlas 5. bit.ly/2VwX00V
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ZChris13 on 04/16/2020 03:50 pm
    Quote
    Space insurers to Elon Musk: No Elon, @SpaceX Falcon 9 does not get better rates @Arianespace Ariane 5 or @ulalaunch Atlas 5. bit.ly/2VwX00V
    The meat of this content is paywalled.
    EDIT: rephrased to make more clear
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/16/2020 04:03 pm
    This is clearer but is explicitly about LV cost to insure (which, everything else being equal, you’d expect to be lower for a rocket that’s cheaper to build):

    Quote
    Elon Musk touts low cost to insure SpaceX rockets as edge over competitors
    PUBLISHED THU, APR 16 2020 11:52 AM EDT
    Michael Sheetz
    @THESHEETZTWEETZ


    KEY POINTS

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk touted low insurance costs as proof of the improving reliability of his company's Falcon 9 rockets.

    "Last I checked, over a million dollars less ... to insure a Falcon 9 mission," Musk said in tweets Wednesday evening.

    A top space insurance underwriter explained that Musk's reference is true for insurance premiums, which are based on the rocket's price tag, but not for the insurance rate, which is based on the market's perceived reliability of the rocket

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/16/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-over-a-million-dollars-less-to-insure.html
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/16/2020 04:20 pm
    This is clearer but is explicitly about LV cost to insure (which, everything else being equal, you’d expect to be lower for a rocket that’s cheaper to build):

    Quote
    Elon Musk touts low cost to insure SpaceX rockets as edge over competitors
    PUBLISHED THU, APR 16 2020 11:52 AM EDT
    Michael Sheetz
    @THESHEETZTWEETZ


    KEY POINTS

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk touted low insurance costs as proof of the improving reliability of his company's Falcon 9 rockets.

    "Last I checked, over a million dollars less ... to insure a Falcon 9 mission," Musk said in tweets Wednesday evening.

    A top space insurance underwriter explained that Musk's reference is true for insurance premiums, which are based on the rocket's price tag, but not for the insurance rate, which is based on the market's perceived reliability of the rocket

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/16/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-over-a-million-dollars-less-to-insure.html

    That article states that insurance rates are 4% for F9, Atlas and Ariane. If true, that torpedoes the supposed “ULA reliability advantage” justification for higher launch prices, as from an insurer’s point of view the calculated risk is the same for all three rockets.

    So that should put an end to that false narrative. Guess all that’s left is “government must subsidize assured access to space by propping up a non-competitive competitor to SpaceX.”
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: anof on 04/16/2020 04:38 pm
    I thought I remember the rates being the same even several years ago.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/16/2020 07:33 pm
    This is clearer but is explicitly about LV cost to insure (which, everything else being equal, you’d expect to be lower for a rocket that’s cheaper to build):

    Quote
    Elon Musk touts low cost to insure SpaceX rockets as edge over competitors
    PUBLISHED THU, APR 16 2020 11:52 AM EDT
    Michael Sheetz
    @THESHEETZTWEETZ


    KEY POINTS

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk touted low insurance costs as proof of the improving reliability of his company's Falcon 9 rockets.

    "Last I checked, over a million dollars less ... to insure a Falcon 9 mission," Musk said in tweets Wednesday evening.

    A top space insurance underwriter explained that Musk's reference is true for insurance premiums, which are based on the rocket's price tag, but not for the insurance rate, which is based on the market's perceived reliability of the rocket

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/16/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-over-a-million-dollars-less-to-insure.html

    That article states that insurance rates are 4% for F9, Atlas and Ariane. If true, that torpedoes the supposed “ULA reliability advantage” justification for higher launch prices, as from an insurer’s point of view the calculated risk is the same for all three rockets.

    So that should put an end to that false narrative. Guess all that’s left is “government must subsidize assured access to space by propping up a non-competitive competitor to SpaceX.”
    Government self insures and given how much some of their payloads cost ($B+), I can see why they use most reliable and accurate LV for more expensive missions.

    For NASA planetary missions it is also scheduling, some can't afford to miss their launch windows. Mars is good example where it is 2 years wait for next one, that will cost mission a small fortune.
    Edit. Just show tweet about this, $500m if 2020 Mars window missed.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 04/16/2020 09:12 pm
    This is clearer but is explicitly about LV cost to insure (which, everything else being equal, you’d expect to be lower for a rocket that’s cheaper to build):

    Quote
    Elon Musk touts low cost to insure SpaceX rockets as edge over competitors
    PUBLISHED THU, APR 16 2020 11:52 AM EDT
    Michael Sheetz
    @THESHEETZTWEETZ


    KEY POINTS

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk touted low insurance costs as proof of the improving reliability of his company's Falcon 9 rockets.

    "Last I checked, over a million dollars less ... to insure a Falcon 9 mission," Musk said in tweets Wednesday evening.

    A top space insurance underwriter explained that Musk's reference is true for insurance premiums, which are based on the rocket's price tag, but not for the insurance rate, which is based on the market's perceived reliability of the rocket

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/16/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-over-a-million-dollars-less-to-insure.html

    That article states that insurance rates are 4% for F9, Atlas and Ariane. If true, that torpedoes the supposed “ULA reliability advantage” justification for higher launch prices, as from an insurer’s point of view the calculated risk is the same for all three rockets.

    So that should put an end to that false narrative. Guess all that’s left is “government must subsidize assured access to space by propping up a non-competitive competitor to SpaceX.”
    Government self insures and given how much some of their payloads cost ($B+), I can see why they use most reliable and accurate LV for more expensive missions.

    For NASA planetary missions it is also scheduling, some can't afford to miss their launch windows. Mars is good example where it is 2 years wait for next one, that will cost mission a small fortune.
    Edit. Just show tweet about this, $500m if 2020 Mars window missed.

    Sounds like you are implying that SX Falcon 9 have frequent and long schedule delays (or more so than Atlas).    I don't think this assertion is supportable with data.

    Atlas V and Falcon 9 have statistically similar failure probabilities.   Perception favors Atlas V.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/17/2020 10:53 am
    This is clearer but is explicitly about LV cost to insure (which, everything else being equal, you’d expect to be lower for a rocket that’s cheaper to build):

    Quote
    Elon Musk touts low cost to insure SpaceX rockets as edge over competitors
    PUBLISHED THU, APR 16 2020 11:52 AM EDT
    Michael Sheetz
    @THESHEETZTWEETZ


    KEY POINTS

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk touted low insurance costs as proof of the improving reliability of his company's Falcon 9 rockets.

    "Last I checked, over a million dollars less ... to insure a Falcon 9 mission," Musk said in tweets Wednesday evening.

    A top space insurance underwriter explained that Musk's reference is true for insurance premiums, which are based on the rocket's price tag, but not for the insurance rate, which is based on the market's perceived reliability of the rocket

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/16/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-over-a-million-dollars-less-to-insure.html

    That article states that insurance rates are 4% for F9, Atlas and Ariane. If true, that torpedoes the supposed “ULA reliability advantage” justification for higher launch prices, as from an insurer’s point of view the calculated risk is the same for all three rockets.

    So that should put an end to that false narrative. Guess all that’s left is “government must subsidize assured access to space by propping up a non-competitive competitor to SpaceX.”
    Government self insures and given how much some of their payloads cost ($B+), I can see why they use most reliable and accurate LV for more expensive missions.

    For NASA planetary missions it is also scheduling, some can't afford to miss their launch windows. Mars is good example where it is 2 years wait for next one, that will cost mission a small fortune.
    Edit. Just show tweet about this, $500m if 2020 Mars window missed.

    Sounds like you are implying that SX Falcon 9 have frequent and long schedule delays (or more so than Atlas).    I don't think this assertion is supportable with data.

    Atlas V and Falcon 9 have statistically similar failure probabilities.   Perception favors Atlas V.
    Your assuming F9 can do mission, if FH is needed then statistics favor Atlas and D4H.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: r8ix on 04/17/2020 02:20 pm
    Your assuming F9 can do mission, if FH is needed then statistics favor Atlas and D4H.
    Falcon Heavy is at 100% success so far…
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/17/2020 03:23 pm
    Tory Bruno clearly hasn’t changed his view:

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251155738421899273

    Quote
    ULA CEO Tory Bruno's view on the economics of reusing rockets by propulsive flyback (the way SpaceX does):

    "Our estimate remains around 10 flights as a fleet average to achieve a consistent breakeven point ... and that no one has come anywhere close."
    https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/ftstmv/tony_on_reusability_one_would_want_a_fleet/
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: jpo234 on 04/17/2020 03:30 pm
    Tory Bruno clearly hasn’t changed his view:

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251155738421899273

    Quote
    ULA CEO Tory Bruno's view on the economics of reusing rockets by propulsive flyback (the way SpaceX does):

    "Our estimate remains around 10 flights as a fleet average to achieve a consistent breakeven point ... and that no one has come anywhere close."
    https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/ftstmv/tony_on_reusability_one_would_want_a_fleet/

    Just posted a link to Tory's Reddit post here: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39416.msg2069807#msg2069807
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 04/17/2020 04:59 pm
    Looks like ULA hasn't spent much time refining Sowers's model and are still relying on it.

    In any event, this is two ships passing in the night.  ULA doesn't know how to make full-booster reusability work economically.  SpaceX doesn't know how to build a $400 million rocket.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 04/17/2020 05:24 pm
    Tory Bruno clearly hasn’t changed his view:
    I am starting to lose a lot of respect for him on this. He is beyond stretching here, mixing and confusing one time costs (which only affect total flights per payback on investment) with recurring costs. The second is the only one that is relevant when calculating per booster flybacks required to break even.

    Some of the listed stuff is just absurd. The initial cost of a circular bit of cement to land on is trivial, let alone the recurring costs, and again only the 2nd matters for this. He talks about "returning to the factory for refurbishment transportation" as an extra cost but unless I completely lost track, some of the Falcon 9 boosters have not done so. So even if this is non-negligible cost this value would then go in the "savings" column.

    And of course he provides no numbers to go with any of this, other than the "10 for break even" which as far as I know only comes from that old spreadsheet which has long since been torn to shreds, due to its high sensitivity to changes and bad assumptions in general. (Not that it is completely useless, but it is entirely invalid to assert "10 reuses required" based on it.)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/17/2020 06:01 pm
    ULA business case for RLVs is still valid. To support their current range of missions they would need NG class RLV with expendable 2nd and 3rd stage for some missions. For others reuseable 2nd stage would work. That is 3 different upper stages to design and manufacture in small quantities. They would also need to recover booster every time given how expensive it is compared to F9.

    SpaceX can't even support ULA range missions with single LV, they need FH for occasional high energy mission. FH is expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9 will be doing most launches.

    When there is market for 50-100 missions a year to LEO for same payload range,  then ULA will have case for fully reuseable RLV.


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 04/17/2020 06:40 pm
    ULA can be right for their business model.

    That doesn't mean that SpaceX won't put them out of business as they add more capabilities and take away ULA's last unique advantages.

    Then there are vehicles like Omega. 

    Legacy style vehicles with huge per flight cost won't be around long.  SpaceX, Rocket Lab and Blue will replace them.

    SLS won't last long either, once similar upmass is available at a small fraction of the price the political reality will end SLS.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 04/17/2020 08:22 pm
    Tory is completely correct that there is a breakeven point, and that the breakeven point is a function of a bunch of different variables.    These variables are quite different for different rocket designs.   Just one particular example is the use/absence of solid rocket boosters.

    He also correctly cites the very strong effect of total number of flights as an important determinant of the profitability of reusability.   Flights rates of roughly 5-7 per year favor expendable operations (and ULA firmly fits here).

    SX seems to have done a couple of things:

    * Managed to find a market for 15+ flights per year
    * Managed to design a reusable rocket that isn't very expensive to manufacture, maintain and refurbish.

    and therefore created the conditions so that they can fly rockets well past the financial breakeven point.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/17/2020 08:48 pm
    Tory Bruno tends to ignore the initial cost of the rocket in his justifications for reuse payback.

    For instance, if the initial cost of an expendable rocket (tanks, engines, electronics, etc.) is $50M, then adding $10M worth of expendable hardware and services makes sense, since the net result salvages at least $50M worth of assets if recovery is successful. If recovery is not successful, then you lost $10M above and beyond what you normally would have spent anyways.

    These are made up numbers, but I wouldn't think they are too far off of the ratio SpaceX experiences with Falcon 9, and as they recover more and more stages their fixed costs get amortized.

    There are too many forms of reusable transportation that rebut what Tory Bruno is trying to say...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/17/2020 09:00 pm
    Tory Bruno clearly hasn’t changed his view:

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251155738421899273
    His entire view is based on a single assumption.

    The core LV to carry out a range of missions is sized to carry out the minimum mission of the range. The minimum viable product.

    Anything bigger needs launch assistance of some kind. In Atlas V and Vulcan's case this is be SRBs, which the customer pays for.

    IOW this is how accountants design rockets in a big corporation whose core interest is not space launch.  :(
    The implication of this is of course that any additional equipment (like for recovery) also probably needs an additional SRB since your core ELV is super lean.

    But if your interest (from day one) is to get to a reusable design you know
    a) Below the maximum capacity of your mfg machines the cost penalty to making a substantially bigger rocket is minor. So you might as well max out your design to what the machines can make (IIRC there were going to be a couple of other sizes below F9. They were simply cancelled. Just put less propellant in an F9 tank instead).

    b)What actually kills you is the design costs for the X number of variants. Analyzing their structural response for each payload class x each set of orbital parameters x each set of day-of-launch conditions (and then fixing the design if it fails and reiterating it again). Note those X multiply complexity, not add to it.

    I also suspect ULA don't fully appreciate the extent to which stuff at SX is either designed, built and tested in house or designed in house, mfg under commercial sub contract and tested in their test facilities.  This delivers huge savings in schedule and cost.

    One other thing that's struck me about the ULA view is that they never seem to appreciate that if they have to max out on performance they simply don't install that recovery hardware (legs, grid fins, GNC, batteries)  to begin with.  ???
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/17/2020 09:40 pm
    Tory Bruno tends to ignore the initial cost of the rocket in his justifications for reuse payback.

    For instance, if the initial cost of an expendable rocket (tanks, engines, electronics, etc.) is $50M, then adding $10M worth of expendable hardware and services makes sense, since the net result salvages at least $50M worth of assets if recovery is successful. If recovery is not successful, then you lost $10M above and beyond what you normally would have spent anyways.

    These are made up numbers, but I wouldn't think they are too far off of the ratio SpaceX experiences with Falcon 9, and as they recover more and more stages their fixed costs get amortized.

    There are too many forms of reusable transportation that rebut what Tory Bruno is trying to say...
    Why are you quoting F9R when it doesn't have performance to cover ULA range of missions. Even as ELV F9 can't do some of their missions.  If you want to justify your argument come up with single RLV specification that will cover their full range of missions. Then itemize costs associated with designing building and maintaining it.

    Once built going to need to find enough paying customers to support 20-30 flights a year.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/17/2020 11:32 pm
    Tory Bruno tends to ignore the initial cost of the rocket in his justifications for reuse payback.

    For instance, if the initial cost of an expendable rocket (tanks, engines, electronics, etc.) is $50M, then adding $10M worth of expendable hardware and services makes sense, since the net result salvages at least $50M worth of assets if recovery is successful. If recovery is not successful, then you lost $10M above and beyond what you normally would have spent anyways.

    These are made up numbers, but I wouldn't think they are too far off of the ratio SpaceX experiences with Falcon 9, and as they recover more and more stages their fixed costs get amortized.

    There are too many forms of reusable transportation that rebut what Tory Bruno is trying to say...
    Why are you quoting F9R when it doesn't have performance to cover ULA range of missions.

    I didn't quote Falcon 9 Reusable. In fact I didn't mention any rocket. I only mentioned made up cost numbers, and said I didn't think they would too far off from Falcon 9.

    Quote
    Even as ELV F9 can't do some of their missions.

    Two points:

    1. The majority of Atlas V launches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches_(2010–2019)) for the U.S. Government were Atlas V 401, the smallest Atlas V.

    2. Atlas V is too expensive for the broad commercial market, so Falcon 9 is able to launch payloads on recoverable Falcon 9's that Atlas V is not able to launch because of its high price.

    Quote
    If you want to justify your argument come up with single RLV specification that will cover their full range of missions. Then itemize costs associated with designing building and maintaining it.

    Sounds like you are trying to justify ULA's math for U.S. Government payloads.

    This is not a debate about SpaceX competing 1:1 with ULA, because SpaceX is wildly successful without having to compete 1:1 with ULA. SpaceX is getting customers to change their payloads for reusable rockets, whereas ULA builds launchers that can have non-reusable elements added to accommodate customers. It is a debate about philosophy, not rockets.

    Besides, for those missions where a customer has a heavy payload SpaceX offers Falcon Heavy.

    Quote
    Once built going to need to find enough paying customers to support 20-30 flights a year.

    I think you are parroting Tory Bruno in your assumptions, but nevertheless SpaceX is planning 35-38 flights for 2020...  :D
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rockets4life97 on 04/17/2020 11:48 pm
    This debate about the cost of reusability is limited by the fact that the launch market is not particularly competitive. It is balkanized by nation-state and military interests and the size of the commercial launches is limited. There simply won't be enough data to make a judgment outside of the particular use cases of particular launch companies.

    SpaceX has created their own demand with Starlink. From ULA's perspective there is no desirable commercial market and they are (not yet) at risk of losing out in the U.S. government launch market.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: friendly3 on 04/17/2020 11:51 pm
    SpaceX can't even support ULA range missions with single LV, they need FH for occasional high energy mission. FH is expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9 will be doing most launches.

    ULA can't neither support ULA range missions with single LV, they need Delta IV-H for occasional high energy mission. Delta IV-H is a much more expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9, FH and Atlas V will be doing most launches.

    When there is market for 50-100 missions a year to LEO for same payload range,  then ULA will have case for fully reuseable RLV.

    Which means never.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/18/2020 02:09 am
    Well, SpaceX is eating everyone’s lunch, from Ariane to Russia to ULA by providing significantly cheaper launch services. So if reuse is not financially beneficial they sure are doing a good job absorbing this supposedly “more expensive” approach.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/18/2020 03:49 am
    This debate about the cost of reusability is limited by the fact that the launch market is not particularly competitive. It is balkanized by nation-state and military interests and the size of the commercial launches is limited. There simply won't be enough data to make a judgment outside of the particular use cases of particular launch companies.

    In our modern world, reusability has worked best when there has been standardization. Train cars have standard sizes, shipping containers have standard sizes, truck trailers have standard sizes, air cargo containers have standard sizes, etc.

    We did't have that in the launch market.

    What Elon Musk has done with reusable rockets is force the market to change to reusable rockets, not have reusable rockets have multiple versions to fit customers like ULA does. Even the USAF sees the benefit of changing their payloads to fit on low cost rockets, and those low cost rockets are that way because of reusability.

    Quote
    SpaceX has created their own demand with Starlink. From ULA's perspective there is no desirable commercial market and they are (not yet) at risk of losing out in the U.S. government launch market.

    ULA's parents dictate ULA's business plans - and what Tory Bruno cares about. Their business case has always been focused on Cost Plus contracting, and it would have continued that way if they weren't forced to give up their U.S. Government launch monopoly.

    So I don't think they are excited about becoming a commodity launch provider and competing on qualities they don't have any institutional experience with.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/18/2020 04:31 am
    SpaceX can't even support ULA range missions with single LV, they need FH for occasional high energy mission. FH is expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9 will be doing most launches.

    ULA can't neither support ULA range missions with single LV, they need Delta IV-H for occasional high energy mission. Delta IV-H is a much more expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9, FH and Atlas V will be doing most launches.

    When there is market for 50-100 missions a year to LEO for same payload range,  then ULA will have case for fully reuseable RLV.

    Which means never.
    DoD want the two preferred launch providers to cover full range of missions.
    There is no cherry picking lower performance missions with RLV and not competing for high performance ones as you don't have HLV.

    The Vulcan will cover full range of missions and to do so it will need to be ELV.

    SpaceX can't cover full range of government missions with single ELV or RLV, they need two with FH doing higher performing missions. At current flight rate FH will be years paying for its development. What makes FH affordable is it allows SpaceX to compete for high value DoD missions.

    ULA could build lower cost medium class RLV to cover majority missions but would still need HLV to cover few high performance missions that DoD require.
    A F9R equivalent flown as ELV with SRBs for high performance missions, might cover full range of missions.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/18/2020 04:40 am



    I think you are parroting Tory Bruno in your assumptions, but nevertheless SpaceX is planning 35-38 flights for 2020...  :D

    How many are those commercially competed missions?. Internal Starlink missions don't count in regards to missions ULA could compete for.

    We can also remove Dragon missions from list as ULA couldn't compete for them.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/18/2020 05:02 am
    SpaceX can't even support ULA range missions with single LV, they need FH for occasional high energy mission. FH is expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9 will be doing most launches.

    ULA can't neither support ULA range missions with single LV, they need Delta IV-H for occasional high energy mission. Delta IV-H is a much more expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9, FH and Atlas V will be doing most launches.

    When there is market for 50-100 missions a year to LEO for same payload range,  then ULA will have case for fully reuseable RLV.

    Which means never.
    DoD want the two preferred launch providers to cover full range of missions.
    There is no cherry picking lower performance missions with RLV and not competing for high performance ones as you don't have HLV.

    The Vulcan will cover full range of missions and to do so it will need to be ELV.

    SpaceX can't cover full range of government missions with single ELV or RLV, they need two with FH doing higher performing missions. At current flight rate FH will be years paying for its development. What makes FH affordable is it allows SpaceX to compete for high value DoD missions.

    ULA could build lower cost medium class RLV to cover majority missions but would still need HLV to cover few high performance missions that DoD require.
    A F9R equivalent flown as ELV with SRBs for high performance missions, might cover full range of missions.

    Just for my own understanding, which DoD missions can FH not cover - especially after they enlarge their fairing as is now apparently in the pipeline?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 04/18/2020 06:35 am

    DoD want the two preferred launch providers to cover full range of missions.
    There is no cherry picking lower performance missions with RLV and not competing for high performance ones as you don't have HLV.


    Granted, that's how the DOD are running things.   

    Does that even make any sense?   Why not have a SX deliver 1/2 the missions, and have ULA deliver 1/2 the missions including the very high energy ones?   

    To me, it's just putting rather arbitrary requirements together such that ULA can look good in it's current state, and competitors have to spend large amounts of capital to measure up.

    It's the same thing with the long time frame bids; it's highly advantageous to existing providers, and disadvantages any new entrants.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/18/2020 11:03 am
    Right or wrong its DoDs requirements and ULA need to meet them to be a launch provider.

    Its a subject that is best discussed on different thread.

    On plus side DoDs requirement for HLVs means we now have commercial HLVs that can support Artemis program.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/18/2020 03:25 pm
    I think you are parroting Tory Bruno in your assumptions, but nevertheless SpaceX is planning 35-38 flights for 2020...  :D
    How many are those commercially competed missions?. Internal Starlink missions don't count in regards to missions ULA could compete for.

    We can also remove Dragon missions from list as ULA couldn't compete for them.

    I think you are missing the reusable rocket related point here - Starlink may not have been possible unless SpaceX had perfected reusability. They are using a competitive advantage to expand into in a new area of business that they otherwise would not have had an advantage.

    That is the whole point of Disruptive Innovation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation) (i.e. reusable rockets), to open up new opportunities. In fact this description of disruptive innovation on Wikipedia describes what is happening with reusable rockets very well:
    Quote
    Disruptive innovations tend to be produced by outsiders and entrepreneurs in startups, rather than existing market-leading companies. The business environment of market leaders does not allow them to pursue disruptive innovations when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition).

    That describes ULA's inability to respond to SpaceX with reusable rockets of their own in the near-term.

    ULA has used competitive advantages for their own benefit too, especially the fact that ULA's parents are the #1 & #2 largest defense contractors. No one can argue they don't benefit from that arrangement, so why is it bad that SpaceX is benefiting from utilizing their own reusable rockets?

    As for Commercial Cargo missions, yes, ULA did compete for COTS but lost as part of the proposals Lockheed Martin and Boeing had submitted. ULA won as part of the Boeing team for Commercial Crew, though Boeing's bid was $4.2B vs $2.6B for SpaceX, and I would imagine ULA's launch costs are part of that difference.

    Bottom line is that lower launch costs through reusability allows for new business opportunities that no one else can pursue, which creates a Blue Ocean strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy) effect.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Hog on 04/18/2020 03:35 pm
    This debate about the cost of reusability is limited by the fact that the launch market is not particularly competitive. It is balkanized by nation-state and military interests and the size of the commercial launches is limited. There simply won't be enough data to make a judgment outside of the particular use cases of particular launch companies.

    In our modern world, reusability has worked best when there has been standardization. Train cars have standard sizes, shipping containers have standard sizes, truck trailers have standard sizes, air cargo containers have standard sizes, etc.

    We did't have that in the launch market.

    What Elon Musk has done with reusable rockets is force the market to change to reusable rockets, not have reusable rockets have multiple versions to fit customers like ULA does. Even the USAF sees the benefit of changing their payloads to fit on low cost rockets, and those low cost rockets are that way because of reusability.

    Quote
    SpaceX has created their own demand with Starlink. From ULA's perspective there is no desirable commercial market and they are (not yet) at risk of losing out in the U.S. government launch market.

    ULA's parents dictate ULA's business plans - and what Tory Bruno cares about. Their business case has always been focused on Cost Plus contracting, and it would have continued that way if they weren't forced to give up their U.S. Government launch monopoly.

    So I don't think they are excited about becoming a commodity launch provider and competing on qualities they don't have any institutional experience with.
    There was a Space Shuttle payload bay that was THE standard for a few years to get into orbit.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/18/2020 03:36 pm
    SpaceX can't cover full range of government missions with single ELV or RLV

    Since FH is considerably cheaper than Atlas V 401, it seems to me that SpaceX could indeed cover the full range of government missions with only FH, even with competitive bids.

    This is the effect of reusability on costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: friendly3 on 04/18/2020 03:42 pm
    DoD want the two preferred launch providers to cover full range of missions.
    There is no cherry picking lower performance missions with RLV and not competing for high performance ones as you don't have HLV.

    The Vulcan will cover full range of missions and to do so it will need to be ELV.

    SpaceX can't cover full range of government missions with single ELV or RLV, they need two with FH doing higher performing missions. At current flight rate FH will be years paying for its development. What makes FH affordable is it allows SpaceX to compete for high value DoD missions.

    ULA could build lower cost medium class RLV to cover majority missions but would still need HLV to cover few high performance missions that DoD require.
    A F9R equivalent flown as ELV with SRBs for high performance missions, might cover full range of missions.

    I agree with Coastal Ron that you are simply parroting Tory Bruno in your assumptions. I don't know why but that's irrelevant.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 04/18/2020 05:32 pm
    SpaceX can't even support ULA range missions with single LV, they need FH for occasional high energy mission. FH is expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9 will be doing most launches.

    ULA can't neither support ULA range missions with single LV, they need Delta IV-H for occasional high energy mission. Delta IV-H is a &lt;u&gt;much more&lt;/u&gt; expensive LV to develop and maintain for small part of market especially when F9, FH and Atlas V will be doing most launches.

    When there is market for 50-100 missions a year to LEO for same payload range,  then ULA will have case for fully reuseable RLV.

    Which means never.
    DoD want the two preferred launch providers to cover full range of missions.
    There is no cherry picking lower performance missions with RLV and not competing for high performance ones as you don't have HLV.

    The Vulcan will cover full range of missions and to do so it will need to be ELV.

    SpaceX can't cover full range of government missions with single ELV or RLV, they need two with FH doing higher performing missions.


    It’s cute how some insist on classifying F9 and FH as separate launch vehicles, when I doubt ULA considered Delta IV medium and Heavy as separate launch vehicles. (Or would have called Atlas V heavy a different launch vehicle)

    And you say Vulcan can cover all the DoD missions. Technically true, but it is only one vehicle if you consider all the variants as one. They have to mix two different upper stages, 0-6 add on SRBs, and several fairing sizes to do this.

    There are more variant of Vulcan than there are of the F9/FH family. Even when the extended fairing is added.

    At current flight rate FH will be years paying for its development. What makes FH affordable is it allows SpaceX to compete for high value DoD missions.

    A bizarre non-sequitur if I’ve ever read one. Do you think Vulcan development is paid off? And do you hold it against ULA as well that they go for high value DoD missions to recoup development costs?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/18/2020 05:54 pm
    This debate about the cost of reusability is limited by the fact that the launch market is not particularly competitive. It is balkanized by nation-state and military interests and the size of the commercial launches is limited. There simply won't be enough data to make a judgment outside of the particular use cases of particular launch companies.

    In our modern world, reusability has worked best when there has been standardization. Train cars have standard sizes, shipping containers have standard sizes, truck trailers have standard sizes, air cargo containers have standard sizes, etc.

    We did't have that in the launch market.

    What Elon Musk has done with reusable rockets is force the market to change to reusable rockets, not have reusable rockets have multiple versions to fit customers like ULA does. Even the USAF sees the benefit of changing their payloads to fit on low cost rockets, and those low cost rockets are that way because of reusability.

    There was a Space Shuttle payload bay that was THE standard for a few years to get into orbit.

    It was a standard, but unfortunately it was oversized for the broad market.

    The payload bay was 4.6m wide by 18m long, which was great for lofting space station modules, but significantly too large for being a general purpose launcher. Kind of like using a tractor trailer as a local delivery vehicle - you can, but it's impractical for small packages.

    The reusable Falcon 9 addresses the broad middle part of the launch market, with a price that can also compete with smaller launchers. And for larger than average payloads the reusable Falcon Heavy is a good value too since it leverages the same reusable Falcon 9 ecosystem.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/18/2020 06:06 pm



    Bottom line is that lower launch costs through reusability allows for new business opportunities that no one else can pursue, which creates a Blue Ocean strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy) effect.

    Just because RLV works for SpaceX and allows them to do Starlink, still doesn"t justify ULA building RLV. They or their owners won't be creating new business that would give RLV high flight rate it needs.

    The debate is not whether RLV is working or not working for SpaceX but if ULA can justify development cost for their perceived market.

    ULA parents were burnt before building LVs to service satellite consolations that never materialised. History is repeating its self with OneWeb going under and taking its dozens of launch contracts with it.

    I'm of option that RLVs and new LEO activities will create new launch markets, but we've yet to see those increases.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: schaban on 04/18/2020 07:27 pm



    Bottom line is that lower launch costs through reusability allows for new business opportunities that no one else can pursue, which creates a Blue Ocean strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy) effect.

    Just because RLV works for SpaceX and allows them to do Starlink, still doesn"t justify ULA building RLV. They or their owners won't be creating new business that would give RLV high flight rate it needs.

    Right now is a great opportunity for ULA owners to buy oneweb and

    1. validate that expandable is cheaper than reusable
    or
    2. Create opportunity for ULA to make reusable feasible

    However I do not see any attempt so far to do so. Now, why is that?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/18/2020 10:12 pm



    Bottom line is that lower launch costs through reusability allows for new business opportunities that no one else can pursue, which creates a Blue Ocean strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy) effect.

    Just because RLV works for SpaceX and allows them to do Starlink, still doesn"t justify ULA building RLV. They or their owners won't be creating new business that would give RLV high flight rate it needs.

    The debate is not whether RLV is working or not working for SpaceX but if ULA can justify development cost for their perceived market.

    ULA parents were burnt before building LVs to service satellite consolations that never materialised. History is repeating its self with OneWeb going under and taking its dozens of launch contracts with it.

    I'm of option that RLVs and new LEO activities will create new launch markets, but we've yet to see those increases.
    To be brutally honest, I kind of doubt ULA is viable *period*, let alone reuse. The financially smart move may be to just fly Atlas V as long as they can.

    Think about it. Vulcan is a big development cost, it depends on engines from a competitor, AND it resets the reliability counter to zero.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/18/2020 10:16 pm
    A different data point on reuse economics:

    https://twitter.com/peter_j_beck/status/1251627739821441024

    Quote
    It is true that you have to add a lot of extra hardware to recover a complete stage but as long as you get it back.... it’s kind of free every time thereafter. Economics for us are compelling, but we do have a different approach.

    twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251628668495048709

    Quote
    I know for Electron it’s more about easing your production demand (vs lowering launch prices) but what do you think your “breakeven point” is then, in terms of the fleet average reuse that Tory’s talking about here?

    https://twitter.com/peter_j_beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Quote
    We are spending all our effort to limit the heat flux/ loads the stage experiences during descent. If our techniques are successfully rework is very minimal. In this case N=2 Payload hit is currently sitting at 10% with the current design.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/18/2020 10:41 pm
    It’s cute how some insist on classifying F9 and FH as separate launch vehicles, when I doubt ULA considered Delta IV medium and Heavy as separate launch vehicles. (Or would have called Atlas V heavy a different launch vehicle)
    It's not "cute." It's simply a statement of fact.

    The "Common Booster Core" is common to the D IV medium range missions butthe core of the DIVH is a special build exactly like the core on an FH is a special build.

    Both need to be specially scheduled on their production lines, although AFAIK the only DIVH cores left are in storage.

    Quote from: Lars-J
    At current flight rate FH will be years paying for its development. What makes FH affordable is it allows SpaceX to compete for high value DoD missions.

    A bizarre non-sequitur if I’ve ever read one. Do you think Vulcan development is paid off? And do you hold it against ULA as well that they go for high value DoD missions to recoup development costs?
    As a commercial business SX have to fund LV developments from income, with the exception of the revenues they've gotten from COTS of course, which are considerably above any plausible profit margin from standard F9 launches.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/18/2020 10:54 pm
    The future AND the present is reuse. SpaceX and Blue are fully committed to it and are well on their way (especially SpaceX which is dominating the US launch market using reuse operationally already), and Vulcan relies fully on Blue’s engines. Eventually Blue will be joining SpaceX. ULA was FORMED because there wasn’t room for two launch providers in the US, but suddenly there’s Going to be room for at least 3, with one such company having higher marginal costs because they’re using expendable rockets?

    If ULA’s business plan can’t justify reuse, then maybe ULA’s continued existence can’t be justified and they should just shut down everything except Atlas V and just fly that out until they close up shop.

    Or... ULA finds a way to invest in reuse anyway and thus remains relevant to the future.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/18/2020 10:57 pm
    To be brutally honest, I kind of doubt ULA is viable *period*, let alone reuse. The financially smart move may be to just fly Atlas V as long as they can.

    Think about it. Vulcan is a big development cost, it depends on engines from a competitor, AND it resets the reliability counter to zero.
    This is one of those superficially sensible arguments that doesn't actually stand up.

    It was made when Arianespace shifted from the hypergolic A4 to A5 and when LM went from the pressure stabilized Atlas III to Atlas V and when Boeing went from the kerolox Delta II to the LO2/LH2 Delta IV

    In reality each provider was able to preserve it's successful flight record.

    Suggesting that the process of mfg and operating the vehicle is much more important (to delivering consistent performance) than most laymen think.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/18/2020 11:04 pm
    To be brutally honest, I kind of doubt ULA is viable *period*, let alone reuse. The financially smart move may be to just fly Atlas V as long as they can.

    Think about it. Vulcan is a big development cost, it depends on engines from a competitor, AND it resets the reliability counter to zero.
    This is one of those superficially sensible arguments that doesn't actually stand up.

    It was made when Arianespace shifted from the hypergolic A4 to A5 and when LM went from the pressure stabilized Atlas III to Atlas V and when Boeing went from the kerolox Delta II to the LO2/LH2 Delta IV

    In reality each provider was able to preserve it's successful flight record.

    Suggesting that the process of mfg and operating the vehicle is much more important (to delivering consistent performance) than most laymen think.
    Sorry, but it’s you who have a superficial understanding, here. Ariane 5 had multiple launch failures early in its flight history, so Ariane backs up my argument.

    And even if somehow the new rocket DOES avoid early failures, epistemologically you cannot know that, so you can’t statistically count on it. There’s a history of new launch vehicles having poorer flight reliability.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/19/2020 01:23 am
    A different data point on reuse economics:

    https://twitter.com/peter_j_beck/status/1251627739821441024

    Quote
    It is true that you have to add a lot of extra hardware to recover a complete stage but as long as you get it back.... it’s kind of free every time thereafter. Economics for us are compelling, but we do have a different approach.

    twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251628668495048709

    Quote
    I know for Electron it’s more about easing your production demand (vs lowering launch prices) but what do you think your “breakeven point” is then, in terms of the fleet average reuse that Tory’s talking about here?

    https://twitter.com/peter_j_beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Quote
    We are spending all our effort to limit the heat flux/ loads the stage experiences during descent. If our techniques are successfully rework is very minimal. In this case N=2 Payload hit is currently sitting at 10% with the current design.
    At N=2 probably not going see much of launch price reduce but they can dramatically increase launch rate.
    N=3-5 and we should see launch price reduction.

    The smallsat market is more elastic than GEO market, reduce launch price and demand should go up.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/19/2020 02:24 am
    Other than due to sheer frustration at people rejecting the bleeding obvious, Elon should really not be trying overly hard to convince the critics of the value of reuse. It’s their own loss if they refuse to accept it.

    His competitors are free to continue with their outdated business models while SpaceX takes ever greater strides into the future. Win-win for them.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: anof on 04/19/2020 02:58 am



    Bottom line is that lower launch costs through reusability allows for new business opportunities that no one else can pursue, which creates a Blue Ocean strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy) effect.

    Just because RLV works for SpaceX and allows them to do Starlink, still doesn"t justify ULA building RLV. They or their owners won't be creating new business that would give RLV high flight rate it needs.

    The debate is not whether RLV is working or not working for SpaceX but if ULA can justify development cost for their perceived market.

    ULA parents were burnt before building LVs to service satellite consolations that never materialised. History is repeating its self with OneWeb going under and taking its dozens of launch contracts with it.

    I'm of option that RLVs and new LEO activities will create new launch markets, but we've yet to see those increases.
    To be brutally honest, I kind of doubt ULA is viable *period*, let alone reuse. The financially smart move may be to just fly Atlas V as long as they can.

    Think about it. Vulcan is a big development cost, it depends on engines from a competitor, AND it resets the reliability counter to zero.

    ULA isn't funding Vulcan by itself. They received quite a bit of money from the Air Force.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/19/2020 04:30 am
    Bottom line is that lower launch costs through reusability allows for new business opportunities that no one else can pursue, which creates a Blue Ocean strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy) effect.

    Just because RLV works for SpaceX and allows them to do Starlink, still doesn"t justify ULA building RLV. They or their owners won't be creating new business that would give RLV high flight rate it needs.

    The debate is not whether RLV is working or not working for SpaceX but if ULA can justify development cost for their perceived market.

    ULA doesn't have a choice in how the launch market evolves, and they don't have a choice (legally/morally) concerning who they will compete with. There is an old business saying "evolve or die". Which means if the market is changing ULA (and ULA's parents) can't expect to compete in the same way.

    There is already one launch provider ULA competes with that uses vertical integration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration) to significantly lower costs (i.e. SpaceX), and ULA lost market share in the launch market against them prior to them perfecting partial reusability. And there is a second launch provider that will also have the advantage of vertical integration whose partially reusable launcher will be debuting around the same time that ULA's new launcher will debut - Blue Origin.

    ULA is now fighting a war of attrition without two significant capabilities - vertical integration and reusability. Doing nothing is not a long term option for ULA.

    Quote
    ULA parents were burnt before building LVs to service satellite consolations that never materialised. History is repeating its self with OneWeb going under and taking its dozens of launch contracts with it.

    OneWeb proves nothing. You need to look at the entire market to see who is leveraging the lower costs SpaceX offers - who is launching on SpaceX that may not have been able to afford to launch at all. Iridium one example, and their CEO just said recently that without the low cost launch costs SpaceX offered Iridium may not have been able to close their business case. From the Iridium CEO (https://aviationweek.com/shows-events/space-symposium/four-bidders-square-over-two-coveted-us-air-force-contracts):
    Quote
    SpaceX’s bid for the Iridium Next launch campaign—which consisted of eight flights from January 2017 to January 2019 from Vandenberg AFB in California—was $500 million. “My next price from there was $1.2 billion to launch the same 75 satellites,” says Iridium CEO Matt Desch. “Thank God for SpaceX . . . . I’m not sure I could have afforded the second-best price.”

    Vertical integration allowed SpaceX to get the Iridium contract, and it is unlikely that ULA was ever in the competition. That contract helped SpaceX to fund their reusability efforts, and perfect the final version of Falcon 9.

    Quote
    I'm of option that RLVs and new LEO activities will create new launch markets, but we've yet to see those increases.

    If you look at the business world today, and who the top companies are, none of them waited for business to drop into their laps. The top companies of today went out and created new markets, which is what reusability allows launch providers to do when most of the market is still using expendable launchers.

    ULA, as currently constituted and run by it's two government contractor parents, is not built to create new markets. They are built to satisfy one main customer - the U.S. Government. Which means their future depends on how well they can compete with other launch providers for U.S. Government business.

    SpaceX has already enabled businesses to experiment due to the low launch costs reusability provides, and SpaceX is hard at work lowering launch costs even more - which will spur even more business case experimentation.

    Reusability is the key to lowering the costs to move mass to space, that is clear. Those that are not focused on reusability will eventually go out of business. That is clear too.
    Title: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 04/19/2020 04:57 am
    It’s cute how some insist on classifying F9 and FH as separate launch vehicles, when I doubt ULA considered Delta IV medium and Heavy as separate launch vehicles. (Or would have called Atlas V heavy a different launch vehicle)
    It's not "cute." It's simply a statement of fact.

    The "Common Booster Core" is common to the D IV medium range missions butthe core of the DIVH is a special build exactly like the core on an FH is a special build.

    Both need to be specially scheduled on their production lines, although AFAIK the only DIVH cores left are in storage.

    FYI - Delta IV-H actually consist of THREE unique cores (left, center, and right) which are not interchangeable.

    But if your argument - that FH center cores are unique builds that have to be scheduled therefore they are unique vehicles - still doesn’t offer a distinction between it and Vulcan. The heavy version of the Centaur V upper stage (4 engines and more propellant) certainly needs to be scheduled on the production line.

    Surely that means - according to your logic - that this version of Vulcan (“Vulcan Heavy” as ULA calls it) should be classed as a separate LV, assuming you have any interest in being logically consistent.

    You see, THAT is my point. People are shifting goalposts left and right to fit their agendas.

    Quote from: Lars-J
    At current flight rate FH will be years paying for its development. What makes FH affordable is it allows SpaceX to compete for high value DoD missions.

    A bizarre non-sequitur if I’ve ever read one. Do you think Vulcan development is paid off? And do you hold it against ULA as well that they go for high value DoD missions to recoup development costs?
    As a commercial business SX have to fund LV developments from income, with the exception of the revenues they've gotten from COTS of course, which are considerably above any plausible profit margin from standard F9 launches.

    And ULA is different how? I wasn’t stating it was a wrong statement, just it was a non-sequitur because the implication was it was a unique situation for FH. Vulcan won’t be paid off with its first contract - assuming it gets one.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/19/2020 07:37 am
    https://twitter.com/peter_j_beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Quote
    We are spending all our effort to limit the heat flux/ loads the stage experiences during descent. If our techniques are successfully rework is very minimal. In this case N=2 Payload hit is currently sitting at 10% with the current design.

    twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1251671676179279873

    Quote
    10% would be impressive. Anything below a 20% payload hit would be outstanding.

    https://twitter.com/peter_j_beck/status/1251696596208594944

    Quote
    10% is only possible if you let the atmosphere do all the work and don’t  need to carry any propellant. But you trade a whole lot of other things and end up paying for it operationally and logistically. Hence plucking things out of the sky with a helicopter down range.....
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/19/2020 08:49 am
    ULA isn't funding Vulcan by itself. They received quite a bit of money from the Air Force.
    That's what I thought, but I wasn't sure if I was confusing that with the USAF's support for the new NG launcher.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/19/2020 08:55 am
    This debate about the cost of reusability is limited by the fact that the launch market is not particularly competitive. It is balkanized by nation-state and military interests and the size of the commercial launches is limited. There simply won't be enough data to make a judgment outside of the particular use cases of particular launch companies.

    SpaceX has created their own demand with Starlink. From ULA's perspective there is no desirable commercial market and they are (not yet) at risk of losing out in the U.S. government launch market.
    Quite correct.

    And as long as the business model is essentially a "ticket to ride" rather than being able to purchase a fully reusable launch vehicle that you can use as and when the customer wants that doesn't look like an ICBM taking off each time it's used it always will be.  :(
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/19/2020 09:22 am
    FYI - Delta IV-H actually consist of THREE unique cores (left, center, and right) which are not interchangeable.
    But if your argument - that FH center cores are unique builds that have to be scheduled therefore they are unique vehicles - still doesn’t offer a distinction between it and Vulcan.
    I never said it did. F9 and FH are different vehicles and yes Vulcan with a 4 engine centaur will be a different vehicle, wheather or not it's labelled as such by ULA.

    Quote from: Lars-J
    You see, THAT is my point. People are shifting goalposts left and right to fit their agendas.
    That's something I can definitely agree with you on on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE)

    Of course that was before I saw Dan Rasky's video on his experience of working with SX and the "51% rule."

    Quote from: Lars-J
    And ULA is different how? I wasn’t stating it was a wrong statement, just it was a non-sequitur because the implication was it was a unique situation for FH. Vulcan won’t be paid off with its first contract - assuming it gets one.
    As I thought I recalled, and another poster confirmed, ULA did get a bag of cash from the USAF to develop Vulcan and given their very long standing relationship with the USAF they will win launches.

    You can bet that bag of cash would have been substantially reduced (or not handed over) if ULA didn't guarantee they would supply a design that could meet all reference orbits and payloads, not cherry pick for payload mass orbit as SX were able to do.

    If anything demonstrate the real differences between being essentially a US government contractor and a normal business this would be it.  :( A product developed to satisfy the USG regardless of how practical or necessary any of its criteria are, and regardless of wheather those criteria miss any important features (The B2 only flies from US bases for missions world wide yet didn't have a toilet installed. No doubt the contractor said "We can fix that for a small fee"  ;) ).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/19/2020 09:49 am
    Tory Bruno clearly hasn’t changed his view:

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251155738421899273
    His entire view is based on a single assumption.

    The core LV to carry out a range of missions is sized to carry out the minimum mission of the range. The minimum viable product.
    And once a LV mfg paints themselves into a corner that tight it's very difficult to get out of.  :(

    It moves the question from "Do we have enough spare capacity on this launch to install recovery equipment" Mostly (but not universally) true for SX to "Do we have enough spare capacity on this launch to install recovery equipment without adding an additional SRB (which the customer has to pay for)"

    But as you pared your initial design to the bone for the minimum reference profile (because that saved you X feet of tank length and as we know aluminum is so expensive) most of the time the answer will be "no."  :(

    That mass limit (I'm guessing the landing propellant in particular) is believed to make stage recovery a non starter, hence their focus on engine bay recovery.

    OTOH if ULA could achieve full first stage recovery within such a phenomenally tight mass budget they might (given LH2 as their US fuel) be able to achieve US recovery as well.

    To do so would be akin to IBM's taming the use of copper on semiconductors, where the sole researcher left on the project ultimately succeeded in making the process work.

    That would change ULA's cost base quite a bit....
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Arb on 04/19/2020 11:39 am
    This must have been posted but I can't find it, even with Google search.

    Reusability halves the cost to launch relative to list price (not quite apples to apples but still...).

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/19/2020 02:11 pm
    This must have been posted but I can't find it, even with Google search.

    Reusability halves the cost to launch relative to list price (not quite apples to apples but still...).

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700
    You probably can't because it's not true.

    However if you're claiming that it cost less than 1/2 the cost of a new stage that was easy to find.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/spacex-spent-less-than-half-the-cost-of-a-new-first-stage-on-falcon-9-relaunch/
    Quote
    But SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told the Space Symposium conference that the cost of refurbishing the Falcon 9 rocket that originally flew the CRS-8 Space Station resupply mission last year for SES-10 was “substantially less than half” what it would have cost to build a brand new one.

    If the booster is 70% of the hardware and allowing a 20% gross profit margin that's an additional $18m in profit even assuming 50% of the cost of the booster is spent in refurb costs.

    So in principle SC could cut their price by a further $18m to $44m and still make a profit, but not to $31m a lauch which would be a full 50% cut in price.

    Would you like to reconsider your claim?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/19/2020 02:23 pm
    No, it’s the full vehicle cost, fairing (reused), upper stage (new), everything.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/19/2020 02:46 pm
    This must have been posted but I can't find it, even with Google search.

    Reusability halves the cost to launch relative to list price (not quite apples to apples but still...).

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700
    You probably can't because it's not true.

    However if you're claiming that it cost less than 1/2 the cost of a new stage that was easy to find.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/spacex-spent-less-than-half-the-cost-of-a-new-first-stage-on-falcon-9-relaunch/
    Quote
    But SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told the Space Symposium conference that the cost of refurbishing the Falcon 9 rocket that originally flew the CRS-8 Space Station resupply mission last year for SES-10 was “substantially less than half” what it would have cost to build a brand new one.

    If the booster is 70% of the hardware and allowing a 20% gross profit margin that's an additional $18m in profit even assuming 50% of the cost of the booster is spent in refurb costs.

    So in principle SC could cut their price by a further $18m to $44m and still make a profit, but not to $31m a lauch which would be a full 50% cut in price.

    Would you like to reconsider your claim?

    Not quite.

    Shotwell's comment above referred to the very first re-used F9. So let's assume she was referring to just the first stage, which is 70% of the total cost. Going with your 20% profit margin on a $60m launch price, that means the cost of the rocket is $50m, and the first stage cost is then $35m.

    We also know that the fairing cost is $6m. So for a new rocket, that gives us:

    First Stage - $35m
    Fairing - $6m.
    2nd Stage+fuel+launch operations - $9m
    Total = $50m

    "Substantially less than half" surely cannot be more than 40-45% at most, which gives you maximum $15m to refurbish the first stage. Add $6m for the fairing and $9m for the rest and you get to $30m.

    But that was for the very first refurbished rocket. Since then they have gotten a lot better. That original 40-45% refurbishment cost will now be significantly improved. 33% is probably quite reasonable by now. Meaning $12m. Additionally, they are reusing the fairings. Let's assume refurbishing a water landed fairing is still reasonably costly, and still costs $3m (half the original fairing price).

    So now we have:

    Refurbished first stage cost: $12m
    Refurbished fairing cost: $3m
    2nd Stage plus launch costs: $9m.
    Total: $24m

    That's the marginal launch cost of a refurbished rocket. To get the lifetime costs, we then need to add the portion of the original manufacturing cost amortized over the number of launches. Currently that record is 5 launches. So $35m/5 = $7m.

    Without any preconceived intention, I have arrived at a total liftetime rocket cost of $24m+$7m = $31m. Once we spread the manufacturing cost over 10 launches, it comes down to about $28m. This is a rough estimate, but clearly around $30m seems to increasingly look like the ballpark figure. With a downward trend over time as they get better at it.

    EDIT

    Edited to correct some basic calculation errors.

     
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/19/2020 02:53 pm
    This must have been posted but I can't find it, even with Google search.

    Reusability halves the cost to launch relative to list price (not quite apples to apples but still...).

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700
    You probably can't because it's not true.

    However if you're claiming that it cost less than 1/2 the cost of a new stage that was easy to find.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/spacex-spent-less-than-half-the-cost-of-a-new-first-stage-on-falcon-9-relaunch/
    Quote
    But SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told the Space Symposium conference that the cost of refurbishing the Falcon 9 rocket that originally flew the CRS-8 Space Station resupply mission last year for SES-10 was “substantially less than half” what it would have cost to build a brand new one.

    If the booster is 70% of the hardware and allowing a 20% gross profit margin that's an additional $18m in profit even assuming 50% of the cost of the booster is spent in refurb costs.

    So in principle SC could cut their price by a further $18m to $44m and still make a profit, but not to $31m a lauch which would be a full 50% cut in price.

    Would you like to reconsider your claim?
    The launch price is made up of vehicle build cost (booster +US +fairing), launch costs (transporting LV, launch crew fuel, payload integration, range fees etc) and profit . The only thing recovery will do is reduce booster cost, but that now has additional recovery costs associated with it ie maintaining recovery marine fleet and refurbishment costs.

    Unless SpaceX  want to reduce profit in $ per launch, I can't see it dropping much lower than $50m. That $50m RLV launch has 30-50% lower performance.

    Same applies to RL Electron recovery. That is why don't see them dramatically reducing Electron list price. Most likely keep it at $5m mark which it has creeped up from. What RLV gives them is more responsive launch as they have spare boosters ready to go.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/19/2020 02:57 pm
    This must have been posted but I can't find it, even with Google search.

    Reusability halves the cost to launch relative to list price (not quite apples to apples but still...).

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700
    You probably can't because it's not true.

    However if you're claiming that it cost less than 1/2 the cost of a new stage that was easy to find.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/spacex-spent-less-than-half-the-cost-of-a-new-first-stage-on-falcon-9-relaunch/
    Quote
    But SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told the Space Symposium conference that the cost of refurbishing the Falcon 9 rocket that originally flew the CRS-8 Space Station resupply mission last year for SES-10 was “substantially less than half” what it would have cost to build a brand new one.

    If the booster is 70% of the hardware and allowing a 20% gross profit margin that's an additional $18m in profit even assuming 50% of the cost of the booster is spent in refurb costs.

    So in principle SC could cut their price by a further $18m to $44m and still make a profit, but not to $31m a lauch which would be a full 50% cut in price.

    Would you like to reconsider your claim?
    The launch price is made up of vehicle build cost (booster +US +fairing), launch costs (transporting LV, launch crew fuel, payload integration, range fees etc) and profit . The only thing recovery will do is reduce booster cost, but that now has additional recovery costs associated with it ie maintaining recovery marine fleet and refurbishment costs.

    Unless SpaceX  want to reduce profit in $ per launch, I can't see it dropping much lower than $50m. That $50m RLV launch has 30-50% lower performance.

    Same applies to RL Electron recovery. That is why don't see them dramatically reducing Electron list price. Most likely keep it at $5m mark which it has creeped up from. What RLV gives them is more responsive launch as they have spare boosters ready to go.

    I don't understand the reduced performance argument.  They still have access to an expendable F9 - at full performance, should they need it. They just don't have to throw the rocket away for the majority of launches that don't require that full performance.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/19/2020 03:07 pm
    This must have been posted but I can't find it, even with Google search.

    Reusability halves the cost to launch relative to list price (not quite apples to apples but still...).

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700
    You probably can't because it's not true.

    However if you're claiming that it cost less than 1/2 the cost of a new stage that was easy to find.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/spacex-spent-less-than-half-the-cost-of-a-new-first-stage-on-falcon-9-relaunch/
    Quote
    But SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told the Space Symposium conference that the cost of refurbishing the Falcon 9 rocket that originally flew the CRS-8 Space Station resupply mission last year for SES-10 was “substantially less than half” what it would have cost to build a brand new one.

    If the booster is 70% of the hardware and allowing a 20% gross profit margin that's an additional $18m in profit even assuming 50% of the cost of the booster is spent in refurb costs.

    So in principle SC could cut their price by a further $18m to $44m and still make a profit, but not to $31m a lauch which would be a full 50% cut in price.

    Would you like to reconsider your claim?

    Not quite.

    Shotwell's comment above referred to the very first re-used F9. So let's assume she was referring to just the first stage, which is 70% of the total cost. Going with your 20% profit margin on a $60m launch price, that means the cost of the rocket is $50m, and the first stage cost is then $35m.

    We also know that the fairing cost is $6m. So for a new rocket, that gives us:

    First Stage - $35m
    Fairing - $6m.
    2nd Stage+fuel+launch operations - $9m
    Total = $50m

    "Substantially less than half" surely cannot be more than 40-45% at most, which gives you maximum $15m to refurbish the first stage. Add $6m for the fairing and $9m for the rest and you get to $30m.

    But that was for the very first refurbished rocket. Since then they have gotten a lot better. That original 40-45% refurbishment cost will now be significantly improved. 33% is probably quite reasonable by now. Meaning $12m. Additionally, they are reusing the fairings. Let's assume refurbishing a water landed fairing is still reasonably costly, and still costs $3m (half the original fairing price).

    So now we have:

    Refurbished first stage cost: $12m
    Refurbished fairing cost: $3m
    2nd Stage plus launch costs: $9m.
    Total: $24m

    That's the marginal launch cost of a refurbished rocket. To get the lifetime costs, we then need to add the portion of the original manufacturing cost amortized over the number of launches. Currently that record is 5 launches. So $35m/5 = $7m.

    Without any preconceived intention, I have arrived at a total liftetime rocket cost of $24m+$7m = $31m. Once we spread the manufacturing cost over 10 launches, it comes down to about $28m. This is a rough estimate, but clearly around $30m seems to increasingly look like the ballpark figure. With a downward trend over time as they get better at it.

    EDIT

    Edited to correct some basic calculation errors.
    I wouldn't include fairing reuse in there, their recovery method is far from perfected.
    Not sure what your final $28m figure is for.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/19/2020 03:12 pm
    Unless SpaceX  want to reduce profit in $ per launch, I can't see it dropping much lower than $50m. That $50m RLV launch has 30-50% lower performance.

    That is the first time I've heard such a claim, that a reused booster has less performance.

    Where is your documentation for that?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/19/2020 03:15 pm
    This must have been posted but I can't find it, even with Google search.

    Reusability halves the cost to launch relative to list price (not quite apples to apples but still...).

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700
    You probably can't because it's not true.

    However if you're claiming that it cost less than 1/2 the cost of a new stage that was easy to find.

    https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/spacex-spent-less-than-half-the-cost-of-a-new-first-stage-on-falcon-9-relaunch/
    Quote
    But SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told the Space Symposium conference that the cost of refurbishing the Falcon 9 rocket that originally flew the CRS-8 Space Station resupply mission last year for SES-10 was “substantially less than half” what it would have cost to build a brand new one.

    If the booster is 70% of the hardware and allowing a 20% gross profit margin that's an additional $18m in profit even assuming 50% of the cost of the booster is spent in refurb costs.

    So in principle SC could cut their price by a further $18m to $44m and still make a profit, but not to $31m a lauch which would be a full 50% cut in price.

    Would you like to reconsider your claim?

    Not quite.

    Shotwell's comment above referred to the very first re-used F9. So let's assume she was referring to just the first stage, which is 70% of the total cost. Going with your 20% profit margin on a $60m launch price, that means the cost of the rocket is $50m, and the first stage cost is then $35m.

    We also know that the fairing cost is $6m. So for a new rocket, that gives us:

    First Stage - $35m
    Fairing - $6m.
    2nd Stage+fuel+launch operations - $9m
    Total = $50m

    "Substantially less than half" surely cannot be more than 40-45% at most, which gives you maximum $15m to refurbish the first stage. Add $6m for the fairing and $9m for the rest and you get to $30m.

    But that was for the very first refurbished rocket. Since then they have gotten a lot better. That original 40-45% refurbishment cost will now be significantly improved. 33% is probably quite reasonable by now. Meaning $12m. Additionally, they are reusing the fairings. Let's assume refurbishing a water landed fairing is still reasonably costly, and still costs $3m (half the original fairing price).

    So now we have:

    Refurbished first stage cost: $12m
    Refurbished fairing cost: $3m
    2nd Stage plus launch costs: $9m.
    Total: $24m

    That's the marginal launch cost of a refurbished rocket. To get the lifetime costs, we then need to add the portion of the original manufacturing cost amortized over the number of launches. Currently that record is 5 launches. So $35m/5 = $7m.

    Without any preconceived intention, I have arrived at a total liftetime rocket cost of $24m+$7m = $31m. Once we spread the manufacturing cost over 10 launches, it comes down to about $28m. This is a rough estimate, but clearly around $30m seems to increasingly look like the ballpark figure. With a downward trend over time as they get better at it.

    EDIT

    Edited to correct some basic calculation errors.
    I wouldn't include fairing reuse in there, their recovery method is far from perfected.
    Not sure what your final $28m figure is for.

    The marginal cost of launch comes to around $24m by my calculation. It is when we add the amortized manufacturing cost of the original rocket over the total lifetime launches to come to an estimated total cost per launch, that the number of reflights come into play. If we spread the original $35m over 5 launches - which is currently the record - it means we need to add 35/5 = $7m to each launch, leading me to around $31m.

    However, if we spread the original $35m over 10 launches - as is their intention - then it only adds $3.5m to the $24m marginal cost, giving me $27.5m total cost per launch. Call it $28m.

    As for reusing the fairings - Musk just said a F9 is 80% reused. That clearly includes the fairing, as the first stage only accounts for about 70% of the total. And fairings are being reused, even after being fished out of the water. They would not be doing that if there was not a cost saving involved.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/19/2020 03:16 pm
    Unless SpaceX  want to reduce profit in $ per launch, I can't see it dropping much lower than $50m. That $50m RLV launch has 30-50% lower performance.

    That is the first time I've heard such a claim, that a reused booster has less performance.

    Where is your documentation for that?

    I think he means compared to an expendable vehicle.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/19/2020 05:58 pm
    I think people underestimate how powerful Falcon 9 is. It has a 22.8 ton payload in single-stick expendable mode, which is within about 10% of the most powerful non-SpaceX launch vehicle currently flying (and almost the same as what the original Falcon 9 Heavy was supposed to be), qualifying even in single-stick mode as a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Almost no payloads need that LEO performance, so a reduction in performance to "merely" 16.8 tons is really only a drawback on a fraction of LEO launches.

    Same is true (but to a lesser extent) to higher energy trajectories.

    It really is a pretty optimized situation that breaks a lot of the naive(ly pessimistic) reusability economic comparison models, particularly when combined with the fact that the reuse development flights were mostly done on operational, profitable flights.


    What I mean to say is: a performance "reduction" is irrelevant if your launch vehicle already had much more performance than it needed for the payload.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/19/2020 07:20 pm
    What I mean to say is: a performance "reduction" is irrelevant if your launch vehicle already had much more performance than it needed for the payload.

    THIS!

    That is why so many people seem to be confused about the Falcon 9, is that they see the reusable performance as a REDUCTION, whereas the expendable performance is actually an ADDITION.

    The broad market SpaceX built Falcon 9 to serve is within the capabilities of the reusable version of Falcon 9, and we see this in their launch/landing history over the past couple of years, where the majority of customer launches allowed for booster recovery.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/19/2020 07:35 pm
    What I mean to say is: a performance "reduction" is irrelevant if your launch vehicle already had much more performance than it needed for the payload.

    THIS!

    That is why so many people seem to be confused about the Falcon 9, is that they see the reusable performance as a REDUCTION, whereas the expendable performance is actually an ADDITION.

    The broad market SpaceX built Falcon 9 to serve is within the capabilities of the reusable version of Falcon 9, and we see this in their launch/landing history over the past couple of years, where the majority of customer launches allowed for booster recovery.
    Right. And Expendable Falcon 9 served as a placeholder for reusable Falcon Heavy, so the fact FH was delayed just wasn't that big of a priority until SpaceX was shooting for the highest margin DoD type launches.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/20/2020 06:10 am
    I wouldn't include fairing reuse in there, their recovery method is far from perfected.
    Not sure what your final $28m figure is for.
    True, but I think there's no doubt SX will continue to refine their process and improve their success rate.

    Factoring fairing recovery (and assuming fairing refurb is half or less than new build cost) I now accept that SX's costs could well be below half their expendable asking price.

    Wheather any of that cost reduction is seen in end user pricing remains to be seen.  :(

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 06:33 am
    I wouldn't include fairing reuse in there, their recovery method is far from perfected.
    Not sure what your final $28m figure is for.
    True, but I think there's no doubt SX will continue to refine their process and improve their success rate.

    Factoring fairing recovery (and assuming fairing refurb is half or less than new build cost) I now accept that SX's costs could well be below half their expendable asking price.

    Wheather any of that cost reduction is seen in end user pricing remains to be seen.  :(

    Sure. But since every dollar of profit goes into developing Starship, rather than into some shareholder’s pockets, I hope they don’t get competition from a pricing point of view for years to come - at least until Starship is operational.

    Making $25m profit per launch means Starship’s arrival date is that much closer than if they had to drop their profit by half.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/20/2020 07:05 am
    I think people underestimate how powerful Falcon 9 is. It has a 22.8 ton payload in single-stick expendable mode, which is within about 10% of the most powerful non-SpaceX launch vehicle currently flying (and almost the same as what the original Falcon 9 Heavy was supposed to be), qualifying even in single-stick mode as a heavy-lift launch vehicle. Almost no payloads need that LEO performance, so a reduction in performance to "merely" 16.8 tons is really only a drawback on a fraction of LEO launches.

    Same is true (but to a lesser extent) to higher energy trajectories.

    It really is a pretty optimized situation that breaks a lot of the naive(ly pessimistic) reusability economic comparison models, particularly when combined with the fact that the reuse development flights were mostly done on operational, profitable flights.


    What I mean to say is: a performance "reduction" is irrelevant if your launch vehicle already had much more performance than it needed for the payload.
    So 5 days ago Tory Bruno posted some long posts on REDDIT about propulsive flyback reuse.

    My summary :

    1. He know exactly what hardware you must add to booster to make it reusable and how much this hardware costs ?

    2. He double down on 1st stage being just 25 %, maximum 35 % of total cost of launch.

    3. He double down that you need at least 10 reuse for you fleet in average to breakeven and that nobody ( SX ) came ever close to  making of propulsive flyback economically sustainable.

    4. He suggest that SX has lot of outside investments and private money lenders, which bring total disconnect between actual prices and costs or actual prices and positive cash flow financial situation.


    So lets talk about TB 4th point especially SX capital raises and cash flow.

    1. I read that SX got 1 billion$ investment from Google in 2013 and raised 1.3 billion$ for Starlink last year. But Tory Bruno corrected me on Twitter and said more. So how much SX exactly raised last year ?

    2. Between Google and last year, there should be large investment from Fidelity inc., but I don't know how much exactly ?

    3. Tory Bruno also suggested twice on Reddit or Twitter, that SX could have private money lenders like TESLA, which have about 4-6 billion$ of debt, that EM secured with his Tesla shares. So does SX have also some loans from private money lenders, secured by SX shareowners and how much exactly ?

    4. EM has Larry Ellison on Tesla board and Google founders as Tesla investors, so could there be a large investments into SX we don't know about ?

    5. What is unit cost for one Starlink satellite and what was SX overall investment into Starlink development so far together ( even with cost of all Starlink launches ) ? Could you give at least some good wild guess ?

    6. What was SX overall investment into Raptor development and into Starship/SH development together so far. Try to give at least some good wild guess ?

    I read that F9 development cost was 900 ml$, F9R block 5 development cost was at least 900 ml$ and FH development cost was at least 500 ml$. After Jim Bridenstine criticism of SX for Crew Dragon explosion, EM said that SX use only 5 % of it workforce/ investment for Starship/SH development so far. Not sure if it was meant also for Raptor development.

    7. I heard that USAF also contributed to Raptor development. Did we know how much ? 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RotoSequence on 04/20/2020 07:51 am
    ULA's Atlas cost distribution across the vehicle is representative of the industry as a whole, and SpaceX is straight up lying about its financials? ???
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/20/2020 07:57 am
    ULA's Atlas cost distribution across the vehicle is representative of the industry as a whole, and SpaceX is straight up lying about its financials? ???
    Try to answer at least one from 7 questions I asked ? :)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: pathfinder_01 on 04/20/2020 08:01 am
    Quote
    So 5 days ago Tory Bruno posted some long posts on REDDIT about propulsive flyback reuse.

    My summary :

    1. He know exactly what hardware you must add to booster to make it reusable and how much this hardware costs ?
    err no he does not. He knows what it costs for ULA to do so but does not know the cost for Space X to do so. In terms of real life, a trained mechanic could keep an old car running for less cash than some else. They have the skills and tools to do the theme selves while other car owners don't.  He has got no insight into the cost to make the F9 reusable or how much Space X spends on hardware.
    Quote
    2. He double down on 1st stage being just 25 %, maximum 35 % of total cost of launch.

    The total cost of launch includes things that are not hardware. Elon stated that for the FI9 the first stage was 80% of hardware costs. The total cost of launch includes things like licenses, analysis for the trajectory and the payload, propellant and so on. 80% of a something that can cost millions is nothing to sneeze at.
    Quote
    3. He double down that you need at 10 reuse for you fleet in average to breakeven and that nobody ( SX ) came ever close to  making of propulsive flyback economically sustainable.
    For ULA it might make sense for ten reuses, but there are clear reasons why it could take Space X less than that.
    Quote
    4. He suggest that SX has lot of outside investments and private money lenders, which bring total disconnect between actual prices and costs or actual prices and positive cash flow financial situation.
    Desperation it sounds like. Outside investors would want to take a very close look at Elon's books before investing. If they feel comfortable investing then they have kicked the tires far harder than joe on the street.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 04/20/2020 08:08 am
    I read that F9 development cost was 900 ml$, F9R block 5 development cost was at least 900 ml$ and FH development cost was at least 500 ml$.

    Development of Falcon v1.0, including LC-40, was $400 million.

    Development of F9 v1.1 up to and including F9R Block 5, including development of recovery-and-reuse assets such as the ASDS vehicles, as well as re-development of LC-40 after AMOS-6, and development of Merlin 1D, was ~ $1.5 billion.

    Development of FH was $500 million, including FH specific GSE and launch infrastructure at LC-39A.

    Other modifications to LC-39A were specific to Crew Dragon and were covered by the CCP contract (think demolition of the shuttle-era RSS, installation of Crew Access Arm, Crew Escape Systems, Reinforcing the FSS, Closing up the FSS, etc.)


    7. I heard that USAF also contributed to Raptor development. Did we know how much ? 

    $95 million.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 08:11 am
    ULA's Atlas cost distribution across the vehicle is representative of the industry as a whole, and SpaceX is straight up lying about its financials? ???
    Try to answer at least one from 7 questions I asked ? :)

    Without responding to every individual point, the one relevant issue you raised is the development cost of reuse, which rightly should be added to the cost per launch. But that can be spread over the lifetime of F9R. So if that was $900m as you say (no idea if  that is accurate), then over a lifetime of say 300 F9R launches that would equate to about $3m/launch.

    But I would argue that it is a massively beneficial investment opening up a new paradigm in space launches for generations to come, and no doubt should be partially amortized over all future Starship flights as well, given that it served as vital foundational research to underpin future Starship development as well.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 08:22 am
    I read that F9 development cost was 900 ml$, F9R block 5 development cost was at least 900 ml$ and FH development cost was at least 500 ml$.

    Development of Falcon v1.0, including LC-40, was $400 million.

    Development of F9 v1.1 up to and including F9R Block 5, including development of recovery-and-reuse assets such as the ASDS vehicles, as well as re-development of LC-40 after AMOS-6, and development of Merlin 1D, was ~ $1.5 billion.

    Development of FH was $500 million, including FH specific GSE and launch infrastructure at LC-39A.

    Other modifications to LC-39A were specific to Crew Dragon and were covered by the CCP contract (think demolition of the shuttle-era RSS, installation of Crew Access Arm, Crew Escape Systems, Reinforcing the FSS, Closing up the FSS, etc.)


    7. I heard that USAF also contributed to Raptor development. Did we know how much ? 

    $95 million.

    As I mentioned earlier. Elon should not feel a particular incentive to publicly correct these statements. The longer competitors stay in the past, the bigger SpaceX’s head start and the longer they can milk the cash cow of massive profits against expensive alternative launch providers.

    Other than through sheer frustration at their obviously flawed logic, there is no need for Elon to help them see the light. Customers will vote with their feet. Figuratively speaking.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RotoSequence on 04/20/2020 08:44 am
    ULA's Atlas cost distribution across the vehicle is representative of the industry as a whole, and SpaceX is straight up lying about its financials? ???
    Try to answer at least one from 7 questions I asked ? :)

    I'm not very motivated to hypothesize where dark investment money is supposedly coming from to buoy the argument that SpaceX has never been profitable, which is directly contravened by statements given by Elon and by at least one of the company's investors.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/20/2020 10:02 am
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.




    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/20/2020 10:19 am


    I read that F9 development cost was 900 ml$, F9R block 5 development cost was at least 900 ml$ and FH development cost was at least 500 ml$.

    Development of Falcon v1.0, including LC-40, was $400 million.

    Development of F9 v1.1 up to and including F9R Block 5, including development of recovery-and-reuse assets such as the ASDS vehicles, as well as re-development of LC-40 after AMOS-6, and development of Merlin 1D, was ~ $1.5 billion.

    Development of FH was $500 million, including FH specific GSE and launch infrastructure at LC-39A.


    Investment in FH may pay for its self in near term if it means SpaceX becomes one of DoD preferred launch providers. Without they would've won Gateway supply contract.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 10:41 am
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/20/2020 10:51 am
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.

    8.5 m$ per reused booster launch saving on a 62 m$ tagged launch it makes 13% saving, it's not negligable but still not a revolution.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 10:57 am
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.

    8.5 m$ per reused booster launch saving on a 62 m$ tagged launch it makes 13% saving, it's not negligable but still not a revolution.

    My question was do you believe SpaceX had a 77% profit margin built into their original $62m price for an expendable launch? If not, your calculation doesn’t hold water, as your first stage production cost is way too low.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/20/2020 11:11 am
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.

    8.5 m$ per reused booster launch saving on a 62 m$ tagged launch it makes 13% saving, it's not negligable but still not a revolution.

    My question was do you believe SpaceX had a 77% profit margin built into their original $62m price for an expendable launch? If not, your calculation doesn’t hold water, as your first stage production cost is way too low.

    It's highly propable that they can get 77% profit margin per (reused booster) launch but this margin doesn't include others year long overhead expenses, depending on the number of launches per year, financial costs, R&d.......etc.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 11:14 am
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.

    8.5 m$ per reused booster launch saving on a 62 m$ tagged launch it makes 13% saving, it's not negligable but still not a revolution.

    My question was do you believe SpaceX had a 77% profit margin built into their original $62m price for an expendable launch? If not, your calculation doesn’t hold water, as your first stage production cost is way too low.

    It's highly propable that they can get 77% profit margin per (reused booster) launch but this margin doesn't include others year long overhead expenses, the number of launches per year, financial costs, R&d.......etc.

    At issue is the $25m full production cost you estimate for a new booster. Because that only translates to a $35m total cost for a new, EXPENDABLE rocket. That’s not with any reuse. That’s for one time use only, based on your $25m production cost estimate for the first stage, which is 70% of the total rocket cost. That’s our point of contention. I’m saying production cost of a new booster has to be $35m.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/20/2020 11:57 am
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.

    8.5 m$ per reused booster launch saving on a 62 m$ tagged launch it makes 13% saving, it's not negligable but still not a revolution.

    My question was do you believe SpaceX had a 77% profit margin built into their original $62m price for an expendable launch? If not, your calculation doesn’t hold water, as your first stage production cost is way too low.

    It's highly propable that they can get 77% profit margin per (reused booster) launch but this margin doesn't include others year long overhead expenses, the number of launches per year, financial costs, R&d.......etc.

    At issue is the $25m full production cost you estimate for a new booster. Because that only translates to a $35m total cost for a new, EXPENDABLE rocket. That’s not with any reuse. That’s for one time use only, based on your $25m production cost estimate for the first stage, which is 70% of the total rocket cost. That’s our point of contention. I’m saying production cost of a new booster has to be $35m.

    Sorry I didn't got you at first,  my calculation are  based on Shotwell declaration that first stage booster is 70% of falcon9 cost of prodution not overall cost like R&D, fuel, operating expense which can't be retrieved on each succeful landing so for me the real cost of a brand new  F9 hardware (drymass) is = 35m$. (with first stage 21.5m$, second stage + fairing 13.5 m$)

    R&D (83 launchs) = 5m$.
    Fuel and others operating expenses = 10m$
    Total = 50 m$ cost of a ready to launch brand new F9. 42 m$ per launch for reused booster with new fairing.


    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin. based on tagged price per launch by SX 62 m$.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: niwax on 04/20/2020 12:17 pm
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.

    8.5 m$ per reused booster launch saving on a 62 m$ tagged launch it makes 13% saving, it's not negligable but still not a revolution.

    My question was do you believe SpaceX had a 77% profit margin built into their original $62m price for an expendable launch? If not, your calculation doesn’t hold water, as your first stage production cost is way too low.

    It's highly propable that they can get 77% profit margin per (reused booster) launch but this margin doesn't include others year long overhead expenses, the number of launches per year, financial costs, R&d.......etc.

    At issue is the $25m full production cost you estimate for a new booster. Because that only translates to a $35m total cost for a new, EXPENDABLE rocket. That’s not with any reuse. That’s for one time use only, based on your $25m production cost estimate for the first stage, which is 70% of the total rocket cost. That’s our point of contention. I’m saying production cost of a new booster has to be $35m.

    Sorry I didn't got you at first,  my calculation are  based on Shotwell declaration that first stage booster is 70% of falcon9 cost of prodution not overall cost like R&D, fuel, operating expense which can't be retrieved on each succeful landing so for me the real cost of a brand new  F9 hardware (drymass) is = 35m$. (with first stage 21.5m$, second stage + fairing 13.5 m$)

    R&D (83 launchs) = 5m$.
    Fuel and others operating expenses = 10m$
    Total = 50 m$ cost of a ready to launch brand new F9. 42 m$ per launch for reused booster with new fairing.

    Simply assuming those costs (no comment on how correct they are), this highlights another advantage of reuse: SpaceX was able to bid for launches like IXPE which simply wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Their potential without reuse would not be more or less, but $0. For these additional launches, R&D amortisation also doesn't matter because even $1 in margin on an additional launch is better than not launching at all.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/20/2020 12:56 pm


    My point is that SpaceX has been very aggressive on costs reduction even without reusability and they did want to go the extra mile by doing so, now that Elon want to swithch to the stainless steel and others  genius production technics idea that could reduce even more the costs, it must be some diverging point where the price reduction could kill the reusability it's like the alluminium can that killed the reusable glass bottle.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 01:04 pm
    To make it simple SX is saving on each reusable launch the cost of a new first stage less refrubishment costs, now if the the first stage production cost is 25 m$ less 12 millions  refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    Personnelly I dont think the first stage production cost is  25m $  because that figure include the R&D costs.

    According to wikipedia F1+ F9 R&D cost is 490 m$ with a total of 83 launches which makes 5 m$ per launch almost 10% of the overall cost of a launch.

    if we deduce 70%  of 5 m$ it makes 3.5 m$ that could not be saved by spacex on each reusable launch which makes 8.5 m$ saved per reused booster launch.

    I counted 20 reused booster (block5) launchs which makes 20x8.5 = 170 m$ saved.

    At just $25m first stage production cost you seem to be assuming a massive profit margin in the expendable F9 $62m price tag. Because if $25m = 70% of the cost, then total expendable launch cost is only $35m, implying a massive 77% profit margin. That is highly unlikely. Around $50m as the internal cost of an expendable launch seems more likely.

    8.5 m$ per reused booster launch saving on a 62 m$ tagged launch it makes 13% saving, it's not negligable but still not a revolution.

    My question was do you believe SpaceX had a 77% profit margin built into their original $62m price for an expendable launch? If not, your calculation doesn’t hold water, as your first stage production cost is way too low.

    It's highly propable that they can get 77% profit margin per (reused booster) launch but this margin doesn't include others year long overhead expenses, the number of launches per year, financial costs, R&d.......etc.

    At issue is the $25m full production cost you estimate for a new booster. Because that only translates to a $35m total cost for a new, EXPENDABLE rocket. That’s not with any reuse. That’s for one time use only, based on your $25m production cost estimate for the first stage, which is 70% of the total rocket cost. That’s our point of contention. I’m saying production cost of a new booster has to be $35m.

    Sorry I didn't got you at first,  my calculation are  based on Shotwell declaration that first stage booster is 70% of falcon9 cost of prodution not overall cost like R&D, fuel, operating expense which can't be retrieved on each succeful landing so for me the real cost of a brand new  F9 hardware (drymass) is = 35m$. (with first stage 21.5m$, second stage + fairing 13.5 m$)

    R&D (83 launchs) = 5m$.
    Fuel and others operating expenses = 10m$
    Total = 50 m$ cost of a ready to launch brand new F9. 42 m$ per launch for reused booster with new fairing.


    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin.

    Elon is aiming for something like $3m per Starship launch. Even if Starship itself costs zero, that is clearly not possible if fuel and launch operations for the much smaller F9 costs $10m. So I think you severely overestimate launch operations costs. It is probably below $3m.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Earendil on 04/20/2020 01:17 pm
    ... refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    ...

    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin.

    Sorry guys, but aren't you just throwing random numbers here.. I don't thnik there's any source about the cost of booster refubrishment.. could be also as low as  4-5m$ ..
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/20/2020 01:19 pm
    Quote
    Elon is aiming for something like $3m per Starship launch. Even if Starship itself costs zero, that is clearly not possible if fuel and launch operations for the much smaller F9 costs $10m. So I think you severely overestimate launch operations costs. It is probably below $3m.


    I do love Elon but sometimes someone must sort out his statements, I think my operations costs are based on a still low rate of launching with only 10 launches in 2019. this figures may be lower if the rate goes up.


    ... refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    ...

    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin.

    Sorry guys, but aren't you just throwing random numbers here.. I don't thnik there's any source about the cost of booster refubrishment.. could be also as low as  4-5m$ ..

    This are simply assumptions based on declarations and data available this not an absolute truth it's just to get an idea on how much does it cost and where some money could be saved.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/20/2020 01:23 pm
    I wouldn't include fairing reuse in there, their recovery method is far from perfected.
    Not sure what your final $28m figure is for.
    True, but I think there's no doubt SX will continue to refine their process and improve their success rate.

    Factoring fairing recovery (and assuming fairing refurb is half or less than new build cost) I now accept that SX's costs could well be below half their expendable asking price.

    Wheather any of that cost reduction is seen in end user pricing remains to be seen.  :(
    We've already seen lower prices offered, starting at $50 million (and that without a fully net-recovered fairing... Starlink satellites can launch with a splashed fairings tho).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 04/20/2020 01:47 pm
    ... refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    ...

    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin.

    Sorry guys, but aren't you just throwing random numbers here.. I don't thnik there's any source about the cost of booster refubrishment.. could be also as low as  4-5m$ ..

    You make a correct observation.

    The only number that was once thrown around publically was from Gwynne. She stated after the first re-flight that the refurbishment cost of that very first re-flown booster had been "significantly less than half the cost of building a new booster".

    I'll add some source information to put Gwynne's statement from 2017 in context with the here-and-now (now that we are 3 years beyond that first re-flight):

    That number from Gwynne applied to the early days of reuse. When the definitive heat-shielding and titanium grid fins were still being developed. These first reused boosters required significant refurbisment of the aft heatshield and complete replacement of the flexible heatshielding around the engines. As well as having the grid fins replaced or completely refurbished. And refurbishment of engines due to the soft shields failing to do their job.

    Not so with the current iteration of F9 first stages. The aft heat shield now requires very little refurbishment. The flexible shield around the engines has been replaced with a much more resilient shifting shield. This requires much less refurbishment. Aluminium grid fins have been replaced with near-impervious titanium grid fins. The booster wall insulation has been evolved to the point that it requires basically no attention between flights.
    The early re-flights saw massive inspections of the shape of the tanks as well as extensive inspections of the welds. As well as NDE methods for searching for cracks in the stage structure. Those early inspections confirmed that the stage structure and stage design was sound, and good to go without massive inspections in-between flight. The bolted octaweb also proved to be an improvement over the earlier welded octaweb.

    Efforts to clear the engines for re-flight have also decreased significantly, based upon experience with reuse. Doing away with the highly polished engine bells was one improvement.
    Leg design also evolved to the point that the legs now require very little refurbishment between flights.

    All in all the cost of preparing a F9 first stage for another flight has dropped very significantly. It is now nowhere near where it was when that first re-flight took place.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/20/2020 01:54 pm
    Did you incorporate cost of drone ship acquisition and O&M and others transportations fees?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 04/20/2020 02:00 pm
    Did you incorporate cost of drone ship acquisition and O&M and others transportations fees?

    Your question is aimed at who?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: tbellman on 04/20/2020 02:01 pm
    We've already seen lower prices offered, starting at $50 million (and that without a fully net-recovered fairing... Starlink satellites can launch with a splashed fairings tho).

    We have even seen a price of $42M.  To NASA, including five mission-unique services, for the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission.
    https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48510.msg1967914#msg1967914
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 04/20/2020 02:10 pm


    I read that F9 development cost was 900 ml$, F9R block 5 development cost was at least 900 ml$ and FH development cost was at least 500 ml$.

    Development of Falcon v1.0, including LC-40, was $400 million.

    Development of F9 v1.1 up to and including F9R Block 5, including development of recovery-and-reuse assets such as the ASDS vehicles, as well as re-development of LC-40 after AMOS-6, and development of Merlin 1D, was ~ $1.5 billion.

    Development of FH was $500 million, including FH specific GSE and launch infrastructure at LC-39A.


    Investment in FH may pay for its self in near term if it means SpaceX becomes one of DoD preferred launch providers. Without they would've won Gateway supply contract.

    Agreed, FH paid for itself with the Dragon XL selection.

    The reusability financial discussion about whether F9 and FH have paid for themselves is missing the point.

    If it wasn't for reuse Starlink wouldn't be happening, SS and SH wouldn't be getting built. 

    The value of reuse is further down the road than today or this year.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 02:14 pm
    ... refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    ...

    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin.

    Sorry guys, but aren't you just throwing random numbers here.. I don't thnik there's any source about the cost of booster refubrishment.. could be also as low as  4-5m$ ..

    You make a correct observation.

    The only number that was once thrown around publically was from Gwynne. She stated after the first re-flight that the refurbishment cost of that very first re-flown booster had been "significantly less than half the cost of building a new booster".

    I'll add some source information to put Gwynne's statement from 2017 in context with the here-and-now (now that we are 3 years beyond that first re-flight):

    That number from Gwynne applied to the early days of reuse. When the definitive heat-shielding and titanium grid fins were still being developed. These first reused boosters required significant refurbisment of the aft heatshield and complete replacement of the flexible heatshielding around the engines. As well as having the grid fins replaced or completely refurbished. And refurbishment of engines due to the soft shields failing to do their job.

    Not so with the current iteration of F9 first stages. The aft heat shield now requires very little refurbishment. The flexible shield around the engines has been replaced with a much more resilient shifting shield. This requires much less refurbishment. Aluminium grid fins have been replaced with near-impervious titanium grid fins. The booster wall insulation has been evolved to the point that it requires basically no attention between flights.
    The early re-flights saw massive inspections of the shape of the tanks as well as extensive inspections of the welds. As well as NDE methods for searching for cracks in the stage structure. Those early inspections confirmed that the stage structure and stage design was sound, and good to go without massive inspections in-between flight. The bolted octaweb also proved to be an improvement over the earlier welded octaweb.

    Efforts to clear the engines for re-flight have also decreased significantly, based upon experience with reuse. Doing away with the highly polished engine bells was one improvement.
    Leg design also evolved to the point that the legs now require very little refurbishment between flights.

    All in all the cost of preparing a F9 first stage for another flight has dropped very significantly. It is now nowhere near where it was when that first re-flight took place.

    We have more data points than that, though.

    We know Elon said a booster was 70% of the cost of the entire rocket.

    And we know Elon said that the fairings cost $6m.

    He also said that the fuel costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight.

    And we know that the full price charged to customers - before reuse was developed - was $62m.

    And as you highlighted above, we know that refurbishment will now cost far less than half the original booster cost.

    Those are the numbers we have. From that, we can narrow things down significantly. I've done that upthread, but anyone who uses these parameters will come to a very similar figure of around $30m cost for a reusable F9.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/20/2020 02:15 pm
    You make a correct observation.

    The only number that was once thrown around publically was from Gwynne. She stated after the first re-flight that the refurbishment cost of that very first re-flown booster had been "significantly less than half the cost of building a new booster".

    ....

    All in all the cost of preparing a F9 first stage for another flight has dropped very significantly. It is now nowhere near where it was when that first re-flight took place.
    So TBH all we can really say about booster refurbishment is

    1) Ist refubishment cost was <50% of new build
    2) Current refurbishment cost < Ist refubishment cost  :(

    Which of course begs the question what is "significantly less" ?

    I think everyone here will have their own opinion of that but we can at least agree that (per launch) they are making substantially more than their competitors in profit (and a great deal more when you consider how much ULA hands over to its parents).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 04/20/2020 02:16 pm
    We've already seen lower prices offered, starting at $50 million (and that without a fully net-recovered fairing... Starlink satellites can launch with a splashed fairings tho).

    We have even seen a price of $42M.  To NASA, including five mission-unique services, for the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission.
    https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48510.msg1967914#msg1967914

    Yes, and so far that mission has NOT been identified as a ride-share mission.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Earendil on 04/20/2020 02:21 pm
    ... refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    ...

    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin.

    Sorry guys, but aren't you just throwing random numbers here.. I don't thnik there's any source about the cost of booster refubrishment.. could be also as low as  4-5m$ ..

    You make a correct observation.

    The only number that was once thrown around publically was from Gwynne. She stated after the first re-flight that the refurbishment cost of that very first re-flown booster had been "significantly less than half the cost of building a new booster".

    I'll add some source information to put Gwynne's statement from 2017 in context with the here-and-now (now that we are 3 years beyond that first re-flight):

    That number from Gwynne applied to the early days of reuse. When the definitive heat-shielding and titanium grid fins were still being developed. These first reused boosters required significant refurbisment of the aft heatshield and complete replacement of the flexible heatshielding around the engines. As well as having the grid fins replaced or completely refurbished. And refurbishment of engines due to the soft shields failing to do their job.

    Not so with the current iteration of F9 first stages. The aft heat shield now requires very little refurbishment. The flexible shield around the engines has been replaced with a much more resilient shifting shield. This requires much less refurbishment. Aluminium grid fins have been replaced with near-impervious titanium grid fins. The booster wall insulation has been evolved to the point that it requires basically no attention between flights.
    The early re-flights saw massive inspections of the shape of the tanks as well as extensive inspections of the welds. As well as NDE methods for searching for cracks in the stage structure. Those early inspections confirmed that the stage structure and stage design was sound, and good to go without massive inspections in-between flight. The bolted octaweb also proved to be an improvement over the earlier welded octaweb.

    Efforts to clear the engines for re-flight have also decreased significantly, based upon experience with reuse. Doing away with the highly polished engine bells was one improvement.
    Leg design also evolved to the point that the legs now require very little refurbishment between flights.

    All in all the cost of preparing a F9 first stage for another flight has dropped very significantly. It is now nowhere near where it was when that first re-flight took place.

    We have more data points than that, though.

    We know Elon said a booster was 70% of the cost of the entire rocket.

    And we know Elon said that the fairings cost $6m.

    He also said that the fuel costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight.

    And we know that the full price charged to customers - before reuse was developed - was $62m.

    And as you highlighted above, we know that refurbishment will now cost far less than half the original booster cost.

    Those are the numbers we have. From that, we can narrow things down significantly. I've done that upthread, but anyone who uses these parameters will come to a very similar figure of around $30m cost for a reusable F9.
    I get that, but they could have lowered the reusable F9 price and at the same time increased their profit margin. I would. It is not necessarily at all to forward all your benefits to to customers.. From a business perspective I would forward maybe 50% to increase competitiveness and save the other % for profit - &gt;meaning other R&amp;D /starship/ in this case

    Sent from my BLA-L29 using Tapatalk

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 02:31 pm
    ... refrubishment cost (50%), still it makes a fixed 13 m$ saving for each fligh with a reusable booster.

    ...

    12 m$ margin on a brand new F9 = 20% margin.
    20 m$ margin reused booster = 32% margin.

    Sorry guys, but aren't you just throwing random numbers here.. I don't thnik there's any source about the cost of booster refubrishment.. could be also as low as  4-5m$ ..

    You make a correct observation.

    The only number that was once thrown around publically was from Gwynne. She stated after the first re-flight that the refurbishment cost of that very first re-flown booster had been "significantly less than half the cost of building a new booster".

    I'll add some source information to put Gwynne's statement from 2017 in context with the here-and-now (now that we are 3 years beyond that first re-flight):

    That number from Gwynne applied to the early days of reuse. When the definitive heat-shielding and titanium grid fins were still being developed. These first reused boosters required significant refurbisment of the aft heatshield and complete replacement of the flexible heatshielding around the engines. As well as having the grid fins replaced or completely refurbished. And refurbishment of engines due to the soft shields failing to do their job.

    Not so with the current iteration of F9 first stages. The aft heat shield now requires very little refurbishment. The flexible shield around the engines has been replaced with a much more resilient shifting shield. This requires much less refurbishment. Aluminium grid fins have been replaced with near-impervious titanium grid fins. The booster wall insulation has been evolved to the point that it requires basically no attention between flights.
    The early re-flights saw massive inspections of the shape of the tanks as well as extensive inspections of the welds. As well as NDE methods for searching for cracks in the stage structure. Those early inspections confirmed that the stage structure and stage design was sound, and good to go without massive inspections in-between flight. The bolted octaweb also proved to be an improvement over the earlier welded octaweb.

    Efforts to clear the engines for re-flight have also decreased significantly, based upon experience with reuse. Doing away with the highly polished engine bells was one improvement.
    Leg design also evolved to the point that the legs now require very little refurbishment between flights.

    All in all the cost of preparing a F9 first stage for another flight has dropped very significantly. It is now nowhere near where it was when that first re-flight took place.

    We have more data points than that, though.

    We know Elon said a booster was 70% of the cost of the entire rocket.

    And we know Elon said that the fairings cost $6m.

    He also said that the fuel costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight.

    And we know that the full price charged to customers - before reuse was developed - was $62m.

    And as you highlighted above, we know that refurbishment will now cost far less than half the original booster cost.

    Those are the numbers we have. From that, we can narrow things down significantly. I've done that upthread, but anyone who uses these parameters will come to a very similar figure of around $30m cost for a reusable F9.
    I get that, but they could have lowered the reusable F9 price and at the same time increased their profit margin. I would. It is not necessarily at all to forward all your benefits to to customers.. From a business perspective I would forward maybe 50% to increase competitiveness and save the other % for profit - &gt;meaning other R&amp;D /starship/ in this case

    Sent from my BLA-L29 using Tapatalk

    Absolutely agree. That is in fact what I have been stating all along. The original $62m is used as a starting point to estimate what the full production cost was prior to reuse. So if you assume a roughly 20% profit margin, that gives you a roughly $50m cost for the original rocket. From there you take Elon's 70% estimate for the cost of the first stage. And that leads you down the path to arrive at the approximate cost of $30m per reusable F9.

    Shotwell said they charge slightly less than $62m now for reused rockets, but that they certainly aren't conveying all the cost savings to the customer as "development costs are still being recouped". So let's assume they dropped it just a bit to around $55m. If the rocket costs around $30m, that allows them a healthy $25m profit per launch.

    Which I think is the ballpark situation at the moment.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Hog on 04/20/2020 03:04 pm
    This debate about the cost of reusability is limited by the fact that the launch market is not particularly competitive. It is balkanized by nation-state and military interests and the size of the commercial launches is limited. There simply won't be enough data to make a judgment outside of the particular use cases of particular launch companies.

    In our modern world, reusability has worked best when there has been standardization. Train cars have standard sizes, shipping containers have standard sizes, truck trailers have standard sizes, air cargo containers have standard sizes, etc.

    We did't have that in the launch market.

    What Elon Musk has done with reusable rockets is force the market to change to reusable rockets, not have reusable rockets have multiple versions to fit customers like ULA does. Even the USAF sees the benefit of changing their payloads to fit on low cost rockets, and those low cost rockets are that way because of reusability.

    There was a Space Shuttle payload bay that was THE standard for a few years to get into orbit.

    It was a standard, but unfortunately it was oversized for the broad market.

    The payload bay was 4.6m wide by 18m long, which was great for lofting space station modules, but significantly too large for being a general purpose launcher. Kind of like using a tractor trailer as a local delivery vehicle - you can, but it's impractical for small packages.

    The reusable Falcon 9 addresses the broad middle part of the launch market, with a price that can also compete with smaller launchers. And for larger than average payloads the reusable Falcon Heavy is a good value too since it leverages the same reusable Falcon 9 ecosystem.
    I was thinking more about Hubble and the classified missions, the whole reason why the Orbiter Vehicles PLB was so "yuge".
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/20/2020 03:07 pm
    We've already seen lower prices offered, starting at $50 million (and that without a fully net-recovered fairing... Starlink satellites can launch with a splashed fairings tho).

    We have even seen a price of $42M.  To NASA, including five mission-unique services, for the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission.
    https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48510.msg1967914#msg1967914

    Yes, and so far that mission has NOT been identified as a ride-share mission.
    That validates the idea that the base, no-frills-at-all price of reusable (and reused) Falcon 9 is probably around $30 million, half the price of a new expendable (but otherwise base and no-frills) Falcon 9.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/20/2020 03:18 pm
    Did you incorporate cost of drone ship acquisition and O&M and others transportations fees?
    Mr. Steven (now Ms. Tree) has a lease rate on the order of $7500 per day. Probably similar to the lease rate of a barge and tug together. So I suspect the lease price of the SpaceX flotilla (one Ms. Tree sized vehicle for each fairing half, plus a barge and tug, plus one additional support ship) to be about $10-11 million per year, perhaps much less (if SpaceX bought them and/or was able to cut a deal, like they often do). And if the support ships can do other missions in between flights, even less. Add in the price for another barge (say about $3000/day), and we're at $12 million. One-time cost of, say, a couple million per Azipod and ancillary equipment, and we're looking at about $16 million for equipping the two barges total.

    For about 24 launches per year, that works out to about $500,000 per launch on average (not all will need the barges, though), plus the one-time cost of about $16 million for barge fit-out, split over several years. Pretty small compared to everything else. Let's call it $1 million added to the price of each launch to recover the booster at sea and attempt recovery of both fairing halves. The cost of the whole flotilla is MORE than paid for if all they do is recover a single fairing half.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Arb on 04/20/2020 03:31 pm
    One other consideration specific to SpaceX (does not apply to ULA).

    Both stages, booster and second, are mostly built on the same production line; presumably by the same personnel.

    This means that for every booster that does not have to be built (because a previous is reused) one or more additional second stages can be constructed.

    This is a huge gain in production efficiency (the machine that makes the machine); it makes many more launches possible with that one single production line than would be the case without reuse.

    It'd be interesting to guesstimate how many more. Twice? Three times?

    The same notion applies to fairing production.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/20/2020 03:34 pm
    Did you incorporate cost of drone ship acquisition and O&M and others transportations fees?
    Mr. Steven (now Ms. Tree) has a lease rate on the order of $7500 per day. Probably similar to the lease rate of a barge and tug together. So I suspect the lease price of the SpaceX flotilla (one Ms. Tree sized vehicle for each fairing half, plus a barge and tug, plus one additional support ship) to be about $10-11 million per year, perhaps much less (if SpaceX bought them and/or was able to cut a deal, like they often do). And if the support ships can do other missions in between flights, even less. Add in the price for another barge (say about $3000/day), and we're at $12 million. One-time cost of, say, a couple million per Azipod and ancillary equipment, and we're looking at about $16 million for equipping the two barges total.

    For about 24 launches per year, that works out to about $500,000 per launch on average (not all will need the barges, though), plus the one-time cost of about $16 million for barge fit-out, split over several years. Pretty small compared to everything else. Let's call it $1 million added to the price of each launch to recover the booster at sea and attempt recovery of both fairing halves. The cost of the whole flotilla is MORE than paid for if all they do is recover a single fairing half.

    So to put it in context, for internal launches like Starlink, SpaceX has succeeded in dropping the cost/kg to LEO below $2000, assuming a roughly 15 ton payload for about $30m. This is down from typical prices around $10,000/kg before SpaceX arrived on the scene.

    Might be lower if the real cost is $28m as rumoured and the payload weight is closer to 17 tons than 15 tons.

    And if they succeed with catching the fairings and drop the launch cost to around $25m, the per kg cost to orbit will be around $1500.

    Would be good to know what the cost/kg was that Russia charged Oneweb to loft their satellites into orbit by comparison.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/20/2020 04:08 pm
    We've already seen lower prices offered, starting at $50 million (and that without a fully net-recovered fairing... Starlink satellites can launch with a splashed fairings tho).

    We have even seen a price of $42M.  To NASA, including five mission-unique services, for the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission.
    https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48510.msg1967914#msg1967914

    U.S. Government pricing will vary from commercial pricing for the basic launch services due to the lag time in the NASA Launch Services II (NLS II) contract.

    NLS II was originally issued in 2009, and has awarded Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts to NGIS, SpaceX, and ULA. Those contracts are for specific rocket configurations, and have pre-negotiated pricing, so a government customer like NASA just selects what they need and there is no price negotiation for the basic launch service (unique services are negotiated separately).

    Once a year (or more if needed) the government accepts proposals for new launch providers and modifications from existing providers. This is how New Glenn and OmegA will onramp onto the contract, and also how lower priced launch options can be added onto the menu of launch options too.

    The last contract mod was NASA Launch Services II 2019 On-Ramp, RFP-10-99-0021-Rev-N.

    So I would imagine for the IXPE mission mentioned above, that NASA assessed the menu options provided by SpaceX on the NLS II contract, which may have included previously flown Falcon 9 and new Falcon 9, and they chose what they wanted.

    In this way NASA can easily determine on their own how to evaluate reusability, since they will know what the costs are in advance for previously flown rockets vs new ones, and they can use that to assess how that affects their mission budget. In other words, if they fly on a used rocket, how much more "stuff" can the add to the payload - assuming the launch is a success.

    This is what commercial customers have been doing since SES became the first commercial customer to fly on a previously flown Falcon 9, and they need ways to experiment without fully committing in advance. Which is why the method SpaceX uses to perfect reusability, by experimenting using customer flights, has been so important. It would be unaffordable to do it without customers paying for the tests.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/20/2020 04:22 pm
    We've already seen lower prices offered, starting at $50 million (and that without a fully net-recovered fairing... Starlink satellites can launch with a splashed fairings tho).

    We have even seen a price of $42M.  To NASA, including five mission-unique services, for the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission.
    https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48510.msg1967914#msg1967914

    Yes, and so far that mission has NOT been identified as a ride-share mission.
    That validates the idea that the base, no-frills-at-all price of reusable (and reused) Falcon 9 is probably around $30 million, half the price of a new expendable (but otherwise base and no-frills) Falcon 9.

    And a SpaceX exec recently said they can launch F9 for $28M

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1250820281536413700.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/20/2020 07:31 pm
    twitter.com/sapienlaz/status/1251675839487447040

    Quote
    Do you dislike SpaceX’ aproach to reusability?

    https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1252317040783896581

    Quote
    No, I do not. We have simply chosen a starting point with a lower economic hurdle.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rakaydos on 04/20/2020 07:54 pm
    ...and so are stuck in a lower local maxima.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 04/20/2020 09:52 pm
    I do find it curious how much some people seem to take Tory Bruno's twitter as gospel... No better than some taking Musks's tweets as gospel, I suppose...

    But consider this - who is more credible?
    - Person A who has not done something as says is it not economically feasible
    - Person B who HAS done something and says it IS economically feasible

    One seems more credible than the other. Am I wrong? But there certainly is a bit of confirmation bias involved, no doubt.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/20/2020 10:34 pm
    Tory’s probably not wrong about whether or not it’s viable *for ULA*. But that shouldn’t necessarily be generalized.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: whitelancer64 on 04/20/2020 11:15 pm
    Tory isn't wrong, either way. It IS a waste to make a rocket so much bigger than it needs to be to launch a payload. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is NOT efficient when it comes to putting something into orbit, since it carries far more fuel than it needs just to do that. Of course, that excess fuel is then used to land the rocket. SpaceX has spent an awful lot of time, money, and energy into NOT launching things into space, but returning back to the Earth.

    ULA in comparison devotes just about every ounce of rocket and fuel to delivering its payloads to orbit. They devote almost all their time, money, and energy into maximizing the amount of value they can give to their customers.

    Final take - I'd say that neither side is wrong to look at their rockets / businesses the way they do.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/20/2020 11:29 pm
    Tory isn't wrong, either way. It IS a waste to make a rocket so much bigger than it needs to be to launch a payload. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is NOT efficient when it comes to putting something into orbit, since it carries far more fuel than it needs just to do that. Of course, that excess fuel is then used to land the rocket. SpaceX has spent an awful lot of time, money, and energy into NOT launching things into space, but returning back to the Earth.

    ULA in comparison devotes just about every ounce of rocket and fuel to delivering its payloads to orbit. They devote almost all their time, money, and energy into maximizing the amount of value they can give to their customers.

    Final take - I'd say that neither side is wrong to look at their rockets / businesses the way they do.
    I disagree. Falcon 9, since it can cheaply be launched as a powerful expendable rocket as well, it not inefficient. It can adjust the amount of performance devoted to recovery to the size of the payload. With a regular expendable, anything less than full performance is wasted. Additionally, because Falcon 9 is clustered (Which is almost required for orbital VTVL) and with similar stages the reduction in manufacturing needed due to reuse doesn’t have nearly as much of a negative impact on the cost-per-engine (and stage) as it would be if you had one single engine.

    Atlas V gets around this a little bit by undersizing the single stick performance a bit so it’s about equal to the median payload, then using boosters to compensate, but that means there are a bunch more configurations to keep track of and your higher performance missions have the most complexity (and thus things that can go wrong), necessitating higher mission assurance costs. And even still, most atlas v launches don’t even use the full single-stick performance, so they’re STILL wasting a bunch.

    It doesn’t make sense to say these two approaches are equal. Falcon 9, by winning in the market place, has shown that the business case for clustered-engine, (optional) reuse is better than the pure expendable rocket route.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/20/2020 11:36 pm
    Yes F9 is less mass efficient for a given launch, if there’s excess payload capacity. But to my mind that’s insignificant compared to the waste of throwing away the first stage on every launch.

    I get that low launch rates means it may be hard to justify the investment in reusability. But for me the question is whether reuse can lower launch costs enough to open new markets and increase flight rates. I don’t think current F9 booster reuse will do it, but full reuse on Starship might (if it works as advertised).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 04/20/2020 11:36 pm
    Tory isn't wrong, either way. It IS a waste to make a rocket so much bigger than it needs to be to launch a payload.

    Bigger does not mean more expensive. And is it a waste that a car is made heavier because it can be reused? Or an aircraft?

    SpaceX's Falcon 9 is NOT efficient when it comes to putting something into orbit, since it carries far more fuel than it needs just to do that. Of course, that excess fuel is then used to land the rocket.

    Falcon 9 is not efficient? That's quite the statement. Just because it isn't the *most* efficient does not make it not efficient. A single stick F9 outperforms some launch vehicles with hydrogen upper stages - yes even in your category of % of liftoff mass delivered to orbit.

    SpaceX has spent an awful lot of time, money, and energy into NOT launching things into space, but returning back to the Earth.

    Here's a newsflash for you: Things that come back from space actually still went into space.

    ULA in comparison devotes just about every ounce of rocket and fuel to delivering its payloads to orbit. They devote almost all their time, money, and energy into maximizing the amount of value they can give to their customers. 

    "Value" is a concept with many components but you interpretation misses the most obvious part of value - cost.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ulm_atms on 04/21/2020 12:31 am
    Tory isn't wrong, either way. It IS a waste to make a rocket so much bigger than it needs to be to launch a payload. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is NOT efficient when it comes to putting something into orbit, since it carries far more fuel than it needs just to do that. Of course, that excess fuel is then used to land the rocket. SpaceX has spent an awful lot of time, money, and energy into NOT launching things into space, but returning back to the Earth.

    I'm a little confused in the current conversation.  This seems like a chicken or egg issue.

    If they only have enough for payload...you really have no way to get it back for reuse.  But the only way to get it back is to have more payload ability to have the margins to get it back for reuse.  How would you do reuse without what you consider "waste"??  The only thing I see wasted is a few tons of fuel...which is cheap...and keeps you from having to build a new S1...which is $$$

    And to F9's efficiency....what metric are you using?  From a cost perspective...Atlas is inefficient.  From a S1 to S1 comparison...Atlas is inefficient due to SRB needs.  From a S2 to S2 comparison...F9 if inefficient on the ISP side.

    Quote
    ULA in comparison devotes just about every ounce of rocket and fuel to delivering its payloads to orbit. They devote almost all their time, money, and energy into maximizing the amount of value they can give to their customers.

    The customers really only cares about what it costs in the grand scheme of things.  If you have a 5,000kg payload and you want GTO-1800...but one ride costs $75M and the other ride cost $150M...how is the $150M ride giving the customer more value?  Both rides put the payload in the same place.  The only other metric customers really seem to care about is that the rocket won't go boom often.  Atlas has the edge but the statistical difference is getting smaller and smaller with the flight rates.

    Quote
    Final take - I'd say that neither side is wrong to look at their rockets / businesses the way they do.

    One is old school and one is new school...only history will tell who is wrong/right in the end.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RotoSequence on 04/21/2020 01:27 am
    Tory isn't wrong, either way. It IS a waste to make a rocket so much bigger than it needs to be to launch a payload. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is NOT efficient when it comes to putting something into orbit, since it carries far more fuel than it needs just to do that. Of course, that excess fuel is then used to land the rocket. SpaceX has spent an awful lot of time, money, and energy into NOT launching things into space, but returning back to the Earth.

    ULA in comparison devotes just about every ounce of rocket and fuel to delivering its payloads to orbit. They devote almost all their time, money, and energy into maximizing the amount of value they can give to their customers.

    Final take - I'd say that neither side is wrong to look at their rockets / businesses the way they do.

    Mass efficiency of the system is an irrelevant metric when the amount of raw material in your vehicle is not the primary cost driver. Aluminum is cheap. Engines are cheap (unless you buy them from Rocketdyne, at which point you're joined at the hip to a company whose entire business portfolio leans on legacy products that they have no incentive to innovate on). Fuel is cheaper than either of those things.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/21/2020 06:18 am
    Tory isn't wrong, either way. It IS a waste to make a rocket so much bigger than it needs to be to launch a payload. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is NOT efficient when it comes to putting something into orbit, since it carries far more fuel than it needs just to do that. Of course, that excess fuel is then used to land the rocket. SpaceX has spent an awful lot of time, money, and energy into NOT launching things into space, but returning back to the Earth.
    And this matters to a customer because?

    Customers don't pay for their payload to orbit by the lb of launcher.

    They pay for it by the lb of payload.

    Apply that logic to other kinds of transportation systems and it starts looking very silly very quickly.

    Can we agree that design assumptions matter? Vulcan has a set, F9 has a set.

    They are not the same. Time will tell which has the more longevity and which are chosen by any new entrants into the market.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/21/2020 07:02 am
    Quote
    So 5 days ago Tory Bruno posted some long posts on REDDIT about propulsive flyback reuse.

    My summary :

    1. He know exactly what hardware you must add to booster to make it reusable and how much this hardware costs ?
    err no he does not. He knows what it costs for ULA to do so but does not know the cost for Space X to do so. In terms of real life, a trained mechanic could keep an old car running for less cash than some else. They have the skills and tools to do the theme selves while other car owners don't.  He has got no insight into the cost to make the F9 reusable or how much Space X spends on hardware.
    Quote
    2. He double down on 1st stage being just 25 %, maximum 35 % of total cost of launch.

    The total cost of launch includes things that are not hardware. Elon stated that for the FI9 the first stage was 80% of hardware costs. The total cost of launch includes things like licenses, analysis for the trajectory and the payload, propellant and so on. 80% of a something that can cost millions is nothing to sneeze at.
    Quote
    3. He double down that you need at 10 reuse for you fleet in average to breakeven and that nobody ( SX ) came ever close to  making of propulsive flyback economically sustainable.
    For ULA it might make sense for ten reuses, but there are clear reasons why it could take Space X less than that.
    Quote
    4. He suggest that SX has lot of outside investments and private money lenders, which bring total disconnect between actual prices and costs or actual prices and positive cash flow financial situation.
    Desperation it sounds like. Outside investors would want to take a very close look at Elon's books before investing. If they feel comfortable investing then they have kicked the tires far harder than joe on the street.
    1. I would say that for things like titanium fins, booster legs, he can predict their actual cost with accuracy of 10%. For other type of reusable hardware with accuracy of 10, 20 % (at worst 30 %).

    2. He said something like = Cost or rocket is about halve of cost of launch, cost of booster is about halve of cost of rocket. If you decrease your fixed operation costs and cost of rocket become 70% cost of launch, cost of booster could become maximum of 35% from cost of launch. "There is no credible math, where reusing 1stage booster can save 50% of ( total ) cost of launch."

    3. Question is how much less it could be for SpaceX ( if it will be less than 10 ), I would bet 7-10 for F9R, but not 5. Why SX never said their breakeven number. TB repeating his already 5 years.

    4. TB doesn't sound desperate. Quite opposite. He seems very confident, that he got everything right. How you know, that SX doesn't have billions of outside investment, private debt we don't know about. Billionaires don't want always profit for their investments. Sometimes they give money to charity. They could see investing into SX ( making humans spacefaring species ) as form of charity. EM has Larry Ellison in Tesla board, Google founders as Tesla investors, but he knows them ( tech.B) all.

    Could you give me, at least wild guess how much Raptor development costed so far ? Starship/SH development ( SN1-5 ) costed so far ?

    What could be unit cost for one Starlink satellite ? And what Starlink development ( including cost of launches ) could costed so far ? At least wild guess ?
     
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/21/2020 07:20 am
    I read that F9 development cost was 900 ml$, F9R block 5 development cost was at least 900 ml$ and FH development cost was at least 500 ml$.

    Development of Falcon v1.0, including LC-40, was $400 million.

    Development of F9 v1.1 up to and including F9R Block 5, including development of recovery-and-reuse assets such as the ASDS vehicles, as well as re-development of LC-40 after AMOS-6, and development of Merlin 1D, was ~ $1.5 billion.

    Development of FH was $500 million, including FH specific GSE and launch infrastructure at LC-39A.

    Other modifications to LC-39A were specific to Crew Dragon and were covered by the CCP contract (think demolition of the shuttle-era RSS, installation of Crew Access Arm, Crew Escape Systems, Reinforcing the FSS, Closing up the FSS, etc.)


    7. I heard that USAF also contributed to Raptor development. Did we know how much ? 

    $95 million.

    Again can anybody give at least wild guess how much

    1. Raptor development,
    2. Starship/SH development ( SN1-5 ),
    3. Starlink development ( including cost of launches ) costed so far ? What one Starlink sat. unit cost could be ? Did SX said this ?
    4. Some good estimate for outside investments into SX so far, potentially private debt if they have one ?

    When we will know all of this, we could have much better better view on SX financial situation.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/21/2020 07:45 am
    Quote
    So 5 days ago Tory Bruno posted some long posts on REDDIT about propulsive flyback reuse.

    My summary :

    1. He know exactly what hardware you must add to booster to make it reusable and how much this hardware costs ?
    err no he does not. He knows what it costs for ULA to do so but does not know the cost for Space X to do so. In terms of real life, a trained mechanic could keep an old car running for less cash than some else. They have the skills and tools to do the theme selves while other car owners don't.  He has got no insight into the cost to make the F9 reusable or how much Space X spends on hardware.
    Quote
    2. He double down on 1st stage being just 25 %, maximum 35 % of total cost of launch.

    The total cost of launch includes things that are not hardware. Elon stated that for the FI9 the first stage was 80% of hardware costs. The total cost of launch includes things like licenses, analysis for the trajectory and the payload, propellant and so on. 80% of a something that can cost millions is nothing to sneeze at.
    Quote
    3. He double down that you need at 10 reuse for you fleet in average to breakeven and that nobody ( SX ) came ever close to  making of propulsive flyback economically sustainable.
    For ULA it might make sense for ten reuses, but there are clear reasons why it could take Space X less than that.
    Quote
    4. He suggest that SX has lot of outside investments and private money lenders, which bring total disconnect between actual prices and costs or actual prices and positive cash flow financial situation.
    Desperation it sounds like. Outside investors would want to take a very close look at Elon's books before investing. If they feel comfortable investing then they have kicked the tires far harder than joe on the street.
    1. I would say that for things like titanium fins, booster legs, he can predict their actual cost with accuracy of 10%. For other type of reusable hardware with accuracy of 10, 20 % (at worst 30 %).

    2. He said something like = Cost or rocket is about halve of cost of launch, cost of booster is about halve of cost of rocket. If you decrease your fixed operation costs and cost of rocket become 70% cost of launch, cost of booster could become maximum of 35% from cost of launch. "There is no credible math, where reusing 1stage booster can save 50% of ( total ) cost of launch."

    3. Question is how much less it could be for SpaceX ( if it will be less than 10 ), I would bet 7-10 for F9R, but not 5. Why SX never said their breakeven number. TB repeating his already 5 years.

    4. TB doesn't sound desperate. Quite opposite. He seems very confident, that he got everything right. How you know, that SX doesn't have billions of outside investment, private debt we don't know about. Billionaires don't want always profit for their investments. Sometimes they give money to charity. They could see investing into SX ( making humans spacefaring species ) as form of charity. EM has Larry Ellison in Tesla board, Google founders as Tesla investors, but he knows them ( tech.B) all.

    Could you give me, at least wild guess how much Raptor development costed so far ? Starship/SH development ( SN1-5 ) costed so far ?

    What could be unit cost for one Starlink satellite ? And what Starlink development ( including cost of launches ) could costed so far ? At least wild guess ?

    What is the other half of launch cost if the rocket itself is only half?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/21/2020 10:55 am
    Quote
    So 5 days ago Tory Bruno posted some long posts on REDDIT about propulsive flyback reuse.

    My summary :

    1. He know exactly what hardware you must add to booster to make it reusable and how much this hardware costs ?
    err no he does not. He knows what it costs for ULA to do so but does not know the cost for Space X to do so. In terms of real life, a trained mechanic could keep an old car running for less cash than some else. They have the skills and tools to do the theme selves while other car owners don't.  He has got no insight into the cost to make the F9 reusable or how much Space X spends on hardware.
    Quote
    2. He double down on 1st stage being just 25 %, maximum 35 % of total cost of launch.

    The total cost of launch includes things that are not hardware. Elon stated that for the FI9 the first stage was 80% of hardware costs. The total cost of launch includes things like licenses, analysis for the trajectory and the payload, propellant and so on. 80% of a something that can cost millions is nothing to sneeze at.
    Quote
    3. He double down that you need at 10 reuse for you fleet in average to breakeven and that nobody ( SX ) came ever close to  making of propulsive flyback economically sustainable.
    For ULA it might make sense for ten reuses, but there are clear reasons why it could take Space X less than that.
    Quote
    4. He suggest that SX has lot of outside investments and private money lenders, which bring total disconnect between actual prices and costs or actual prices and positive cash flow financial situation.
    Desperation it sounds like. Outside investors would want to take a very close look at Elon's books before investing. If they feel comfortable investing then they have kicked the tires far harder than joe on the street.
    1. I would say that for things like titanium fins, booster legs, he can predict their actual cost with accuracy of 10%. For other type of reusable hardware with accuracy of 10, 20 % (at worst 30 %).

    2. He said something like = Cost or rocket is about halve of cost of launch, cost of booster is about halve of cost of rocket. If you decrease your fixed operation costs and cost of rocket become 70% cost of launch, cost of booster could become maximum of 35% from cost of launch. "There is no credible math, where reusing 1stage booster can save 50% of ( total ) cost of launch."

    3. Question is how much less it could be for SpaceX ( if it will be less than 10 ), I would bet 7-10 for F9R, but not 5. Why SX never said their breakeven number. TB repeating his already 5 years.

    4. TB doesn't sound desperate. Quite opposite. He seems very confident, that he got everything right. How you know, that SX doesn't have billions of outside investment, private debt we don't know about. Billionaires don't want always profit for their investments. Sometimes they give money to charity. They could see investing into SX ( making humans spacefaring species ) as form of charity. EM has Larry Ellison in Tesla board, Google founders as Tesla investors, but he knows them ( tech.B) all.

    Could you give me, at least wild guess how much Raptor development costed so far ? Starship/SH development ( SN1-5 ) costed so far ?

    What could be unit cost for one Starlink satellite ? And what Starlink development ( including cost of launches ) could costed so far ? At least wild guess ?

    What is the other half of launch cost if the rocket itself is only half?

    He certainly meant R&D and operations costs and by the way high margins profit.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/21/2020 11:33 am
    Quote
    So 5 days ago Tory Bruno posted some long posts on REDDIT about propulsive flyback reuse.

    My summary :

    1. He know exactly what hardware you must add to booster to make it reusable and how much this hardware costs ?
    err no he does not. He knows what it costs for ULA to do so but does not know the cost for Space X to do so. In terms of real life, a trained mechanic could keep an old car running for less cash than some else. They have the skills and tools to do the theme selves while other car owners don't.  He has got no insight into the cost to make the F9 reusable or how much Space X spends on hardware.
    Quote
    2. He double down on 1st stage being just 25 %, maximum 35 % of total cost of launch.

    The total cost of launch includes things that are not hardware. Elon stated that for the FI9 the first stage was 80% of hardware costs. The total cost of launch includes things like licenses, analysis for the trajectory and the payload, propellant and so on. 80% of a something that can cost millions is nothing to sneeze at.
    Quote
    3. He double down that you need at 10 reuse for you fleet in average to breakeven and that nobody ( SX ) came ever close to  making of propulsive flyback economically sustainable.
    For ULA it might make sense for ten reuses, but there are clear reasons why it could take Space X less than that.
    Quote
    4. He suggest that SX has lot of outside investments and private money lenders, which bring total disconnect between actual prices and costs or actual prices and positive cash flow financial situation.
    Desperation it sounds like. Outside investors would want to take a very close look at Elon's books before investing. If they feel comfortable investing then they have kicked the tires far harder than joe on the street.
    1. I would say that for things like titanium fins, booster legs, he can predict their actual cost with accuracy of 10%. For other type of reusable hardware with accuracy of 10, 20 % (at worst 30 %).

    2. He said something like = Cost or rocket is about halve of cost of launch, cost of booster is about halve of cost of rocket. If you decrease your fixed operation costs and cost of rocket become 70% cost of launch, cost of booster could become maximum of 35% from cost of launch. "There is no credible math, where reusing 1stage booster can save 50% of ( total ) cost of launch."

    3. Question is how much less it could be for SpaceX ( if it will be less than 10 ), I would bet 7-10 for F9R, but not 5. Why SX never said their breakeven number. TB repeating his already 5 years.

    4. TB doesn't sound desperate. Quite opposite. He seems very confident, that he got everything right. How you know, that SX doesn't have billions of outside investment, private debt we don't know about. Billionaires don't want always profit for their investments. Sometimes they give money to charity. They could see investing into SX ( making humans spacefaring species ) as form of charity. EM has Larry Ellison in Tesla board, Google founders as Tesla investors, but he knows them ( tech.B) all.

    Could you give me, at least wild guess how much Raptor development costed so far ? Starship/SH development ( SN1-5 ) costed so far ?

    What could be unit cost for one Starlink satellite ? And what Starlink development ( including cost of launches ) could costed so far ? At least wild guess ?

    What is the other half of launch cost if the rocket itself is only half?
    I have thread about this. Look at - " Cost of launch unrelated to cost of building the rocket " - in General discussion section.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rakaydos on 04/21/2020 12:04 pm
    SpaceX does not use SRBs. That combines cost of booster stage and first stage, while making both have the margin for reusability. That's probably where Tony Bruno's math separates from SpaceX's math.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 04/21/2020 12:52 pm
    What is the other half of launch cost if the rocket itself is only half?

    I suspect most of that half is USAF mission assurance / paperwork cost.

    I think Tory got this idea of half/half by comparing ELC cost to ELS cost. ELC is the cost-plus contract USAF used to give ULA to cover their fixed cost (i.e. non-rocket cost), ELS is the other fixed cost contract USAF used to pay for the rocket itself. If you check some recent figures like the DIVH block buy (https://spacenews.com/air-force-awards-ula-1-18-billion-contract-to-complete-five-delta-4-heavy-nro-missions/), ELC and ELS is about half/half (ELC is $1.18B, ELS is $1.01B).

    This is sort of true for F9 too, for example if you assume a $60M commercial mission has $10M non-rocket cost and $50M rocket cost, and for a USAF mission SpaceX adds $30M additional cost to deal with paperwork, then for the USAF mission, rocket cost vs non-rocket cost is 5:4, pretty close to half/half. Of course this is only true for USAF and some NASA missions, it's not true for commercial launches or CRS launches, definitely not true for Starlink launches.

    Also I imagine SpaceX has some additional cost savings in the non-rocket cost column, for example they use horizontal integration instead of vertical integration, F9 has no hypergolic onboard, no need to deal with liquid hydrogen, etc. These would further reduce the share of non-rocket cost in total launch cost.

    Finally all these discussion about share of rocket cost in total launch cost is ignoring the real problem with ULA's assessment, which is the Sowers equation itself, but that's for another post.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/21/2020 02:03 pm
    What is the other half of launch cost if the rocket itself is only half?

    I suspect most of that half is USAF mission assurance / paperwork cost.

    I think Tory got this idea of half/half by comparing ELC cost to ELS cost. ELC is the cost-plus contract USAF used to give ULA to cover their fixed cost (i.e. non-rocket cost), ELS is the other fixed cost contract USAF used to pay for the rocket itself. If you check some recent figures like the DIVH block buy (https://spacenews.com/air-force-awards-ula-1-18-billion-contract-to-complete-five-delta-4-heavy-nro-missions/), ELC and ELS is about half/half (ELC is $1.18B, ELS is $1.01B).

    This is sort of true for F9 too, for example if you assume a $60M commercial mission has $10M non-rocket cost and $50M rocket cost, and for a USAF mission SpaceX adds $30M additional cost to deal with paperwork, then for the USAF mission, rocket cost vs non-rocket cost is 5:4, pretty close to half/half. Of course this is only true for USAF and some NASA missions, it's not true for commercial launches or CRS launches, definitely not true for Starlink launches.

    Also I imagine SpaceX has some additional cost savings in the non-rocket cost column, for example they use horizontal integration instead of vertical integration, F9 has no hypergolic onboard, no need to deal with liquid hydrogen, etc. These would further reduce the share of non-rocket cost in total launch cost.

    Finally all these discussion about share of rocket cost in total launch cost is ignoring the real problem with ULA's assessment, which is the Sowers equation itself, but that's for another post.

    TB said, that they have been " watching and keeping track "​ ( on SX F9R progress )
    and their current assessment is that " 10 remains valid and that no one has come anywhere close to demonstrating these economic sustainability goals ".

    Halve of total cost of launch is unrelated to cost of building rocket, should be true also for commercial launches, not just for NASA, UASF missions. Ariane 5 fly mostly to GTO comsat missions and S.Israel said something similar. Some NASA, USAF launches have lot of added costs, so cost of rocket could be even less than 50%.

    TB quote :

    " There is no credible math that makes a reusable booster, all by itself, drop the cost of a launch service to half. "

    TB doesn't want fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it add lot of complexity and 20% increase of payload result also in 20% increase of total cost of launch. Atlas V doesn't use subcooling only F9R, so you must take it into account for F9R operational costs.

    Not sure if horizontal integration could save to much from operational costs. 5 years ago S.Israel said, that they want to do horizontal integration with Ariane 6, same like SX who learn it from Russians. But than they probable change their mind. At least I saw some VIF facility in Ariane 6 promo video. You can find it on their website.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/21/2020 02:08 pm
    What is the other half of launch cost if the rocket itself is only half?

    I suspect most of that half is USAF mission assurance / paperwork cost.

    I think Tory got this idea of half/half by comparing ELC cost to ELS cost. ELC is the cost-plus contract USAF used to give ULA to cover their fixed cost (i.e. non-rocket cost), ELS is the other fixed cost contract USAF used to pay for the rocket itself. If you check some recent figures like the DIVH block buy (https://spacenews.com/air-force-awards-ula-1-18-billion-contract-to-complete-five-delta-4-heavy-nro-missions/), ELC and ELS is about half/half (ELC is $1.18B, ELS is $1.01B).

    This is sort of true for F9 too, for example if you assume a $60M commercial mission has $10M non-rocket cost and $50M rocket cost, and for a USAF mission SpaceX adds $30M additional cost to deal with paperwork, then for the USAF mission, rocket cost vs non-rocket cost is 5:4, pretty close to half/half. Of course this is only true for USAF and some NASA missions, it's not true for commercial launches or CRS launches, definitely not true for Starlink launches.

    Also I imagine SpaceX has some additional cost savings in the non-rocket cost column, for example they use horizontal integration instead of vertical integration, F9 has no hypergolic onboard, no need to deal with liquid hydrogen, etc. These would further reduce the share of non-rocket cost in total launch cost.

    Finally all these discussion about share of rocket cost in total launch cost is ignoring the real problem with ULA's assessment, which is the Sowers equation itself, but that's for another post.

    This sounds to me like double-counting on Tory's part. For example, if you do a bunch of mission-assurance paperwork to convince the customer that you put the rocket together properly, do you really have to redo all that if it just flew successfully and you didn't take it all apart? Another example, if you're reusing boosters 5 times, your booster production factory can be much smaller and utilize fewer people, reducing those fixed overhead costs that aren't tied to a specific mission - so if you are only counting recovered value of the booster that is tied to a specific mission, then you're mission a lot of the value of reuse.

    Also, what evidence does anyone have that when Musk says something like "a Falcon costs $60M" that he's not including those fixed overhead costs spread over some baseline flight rate? It seems to me that ULA is the only LSP that does the whole ELC-thing of separating out mission-specific costs for all missions.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/21/2020 02:14 pm
    Halve of total cost of launch is unrelated to cost of building rocket, should be true also for commercial launches, not just for NASA, UASF missions.

    Why?

    NASA/USAF are self-insured and fly custom, complex missions so they demand additional work which adds non-rocket cost.

    Commercial customers generally fly the same mission over and over again with standardized interfaces and services, and they buy insurance so they don't have to get into the nuts and bolts of the rocket build and launch process. All of this is done purposefully to minimize costs, and it's all on the non-hardware side.

    So why would you assume that "non-rocket" costs are the same for all customers?

    Why do you think that non-hardware costs don't vary from customer to customer, and from provider to provider? Especially, as I pointed out above, different providers almost certainly are counting different things in the "non-rocket" costs.


    TB quote :

    " There is no credible math that makes a reusable booster, all by itself, drop the cost of a launch service to half. "


    Tory's math doesn't work because ULA's boosters are only ~30% of the launch cost.

    What if the booster is 90% of the launch cost? FH probably isn't far off that, it uses lots of boost to do high energy missions with a cheap upper stage - which means that recovering the boosters has a huge effect on the total cost.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/21/2020 03:52 pm
    TB said, that they have been " watching and keeping track "​ ( on SX F9R progress )
    and their current assessment is that " 10 remains valid and that no one has come anywhere close to demonstrating these economic sustainability goals ".

    It is fairly normal for hardware companies to compare the costs of their competitors. Car companies buy their competitors cars and tear them down all the time to see what they can glean.

    ULA can't do that with a SpaceX Falcon 9 since the rockets are either destroyed or they are recovered by SpaceX, which means that no matter how detailed ULA does their analysis they won't have the ability to validate their assumptions.

    Also, Tory Bruno reports to ULA's owners, which are Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and if ULA's owners don't want to promote reusability then Tory Bruno won't promote reusability. It is as simple as that.

    Quote
    Halve of total cost of launch is unrelated to cost of building rocket, should be true also for commercial launches, not just for NASA, UASF missions. Ariane 5 fly mostly to GTO comsat missions and S.Israel said something similar. Some NASA, USAF launches have lot of added costs, so cost of rocket could be even less than 50%.

    A good part of my career in manufacturing has been related to cost accounting, and I can tell you that while it is informative to find out the costs of things, there is no way you (or anyone else) can truly calculate the cost of a product by piecing random cost estimates together. Professionals who do that for a living have far more insight into product cost, and they don't always get it right - but when they do get it right it is because they have spent literally weeks or months doing the research.

    Which is why we have to go with what we hear from SpaceX regarding costs and prices, since no one else will actually know the facts. Certainly Tory Bruno won't.

    Quote
    TB doesn't want fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it add lot of complexity and 20% increase of payload result also in 20% increase of total cost of launch.

    Where did you get the "20% increase of total cost of launch"?? SpaceX uses sub-cooled propellants and they have not raised their launch prices in years.

    Plus ULA uses LH2, which is colder than sub-cooled LOX and RP-1, so they have the knowledge to handle that type of liquids. I'm not sure where you are getting these assumptions...

    Quote
    Atlas V doesn't use subcooling only F9R, so you must take it into account for F9R operational costs.

    Atlas V is a product at the end of its design life, why would they redesign it to use sub-cooled propellant? You're not making any sense.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/21/2020 04:18 pm
    Halve of total cost of launch is unrelated to cost of building rocket, should be true also for commercial launches, not just for NASA, UASF missions.

    Why?

    NASA/USAF are self-insured and fly custom, complex missions so they demand additional work which adds non-rocket cost.

    Commercial customers generally fly the same mission over and over again with standardized interfaces and services, and they buy insurance so they don't have to get into the nuts and bolts of the rocket build and launch process. All of this is done purposefully to minimize costs, and it's all on the non-hardware side.

    So why would you assume that "non-rocket" costs are the same for all customers?

    Why do you think that non-hardware costs don't vary from customer to customer, and from provider to provider? Especially, as I pointed out above, different providers almost certainly are counting different things in the "non-rocket" costs.


    TB quote :

    " There is no credible math that makes a reusable booster, all by itself, drop the cost of a launch service to half. "

    What if the booster is 90% of the launch cost? FH probably isn't far off that, it uses lots of boost to do high energy missions with a cheap upper stage - which means that recovering the boosters has a huge effect on the total cost.
    OK so here is whole TB post :

    " One of the elements of the Launch Industry that is not obvious to outsiders is the presence of large costs beyond the rocket hardware itself. While one might naturally zero in on the rocket, it's only a part of the cost of a launch.
    These are the standard industry rules of thumb:
    The Rocket itself is roughly half the cost of the launch service.
    The Booster is roughly half the cost of the rocket.
    Which means that the booster is only around a quarter the cost of a launch service. So, even if you could reuse them so many times, that they become essentially free, it would only take 25% off the launch service cost. (BTW; 25% is a big deal competitively)
    Now, obviously, one would want to also work hard to change the proportions above. Let's say that you are wildly successful such that the rocket becomes not 50%, but 70% of the cost of the launch service. Then, you still can only save 35% of the launch service price with a free booster...
    There is no credible math that makes a reusable booster, all by itself, drop the cost of a launch service to half.
    Why would this be true? Because Space launch involves significant infrastructure, which creates large fixed costs. These include launch sites, launch processing facilities, and rocket factories. "Fixed" means that these things cost almost as much every year whether your building and flying a lot or a little.
    Think of it like your house or apartment. The mortgage, lights, heat, insurance, and taxes, etc. are mostly the same whether you live alone or have a spouse and kids.
    The costs that are actually variable are the costs of the hardware on the rocket itself, but only some of the labor to build it, and none of the labour to fly it.
    Launch rate, on the other hand, is a really big lever on cost because it spreads out the fixed costs.
    So... Intuition can be deceptive in this situation."

    So you can see that he don't speak about ULA or SpaceX, but industry standards in general. If F9R booster is 70% percent of cost of rocket and SpaceX are " wildly successful such that the rocket becomes not 50%, but 70% of the cost of the launch service " = you still can save only 49 % cost of launch.

    But it is not industry standard right now to fly on subcooled propellant. Only SpaceX does it. If they all could increase payload by 20 %, without increasing cost by 20%, all of them will be doing it.

    So with subcooling of propellant you should save even less than 49 % ( of total cost per launch ), with 1st booster reuse.

    Yes for FH cost of 3 boosters could be 80-90 % cost of rocket, but FH could have also higher operation costs than F9R ( cost of subcooling with much more propellant, more expansive pad refurbishment after launch, stage/payload integration ).

    I am not saying that operational costs for NASA, USAF and commercial missions shouldn't be different.

    Only that even for commercial missions, cost of launch unrelated to cost of building rocket should be at best 30% = without subcooling and 50 % = with subcooling of propellant.

    At least based on TB, S.Israel statements.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/21/2020 04:30 pm
    TB said, that they have been " watching and keeping track "​ ( on SX F9R progress )
    and their current assessment is that " 10 remains valid and that no one has come anywhere close to demonstrating these economic sustainability goals ".

    It is fairly normal for hardware companies to compare the costs of their competitors. Car companies buy their competitors cars and tear them down all the time to see what they can glean.

    ULA can't do that with a SpaceX Falcon 9 since the rockets are either destroyed or they are recovered by SpaceX, which means that no matter how detailed ULA does their analysis they won't have the ability to validate their assumptions.

    Also, Tory Bruno reports to ULA's owners, which are Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and if ULA's owners don't want to promote reusability then Tory Bruno won't promote reusability. It is as simple as that.

    Quote
    Halve of total cost of launch is unrelated to cost of building rocket, should be true also for commercial launches, not just for NASA, UASF missions. Ariane 5 fly mostly to GTO comsat missions and S.Israel said something similar. Some NASA, USAF launches have lot of added costs, so cost of rocket could be even less than 50%.

    A good part of my career in manufacturing has been related to cost accounting, and I can tell you that while it is informative to find out the costs of things, there is no way you (or anyone else) can truly calculate the cost of a product by piecing random cost estimates together. Professionals who do that for a living have far more insight into product cost, and they don't always get it right - but when they do get it right it is because they have spent literally weeks or months doing the research.

    Which is why we have to go with what we hear from SpaceX regarding costs and prices, since no one else will actually know the facts. Certainly Tory Bruno won't.

    Quote
    TB doesn't want fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it add lot of complexity and 20% increase of payload result also in 20% increase of total cost of launch.

    Where did you get the "20% increase of total cost of launch"??? SpaceX uses sub-cooled propellants and they have not raised their launch prices in years.

    Plus ULA uses LH2, which is colder than sub-cooled LOX and RP-1, so they have the knowledge to handle that type of liquids. I'm not sure where you are getting these assumptions...

    Quote
    Atlas V doesn't use subcooling only F9R, so you must take it into account for F9R operational costs.

    Atlas V is a product at the end of its design life, why would they redesign it to use sub-cooled propellant? You're not making any sense.
    1. Can you rationally explain why wouldn't every launch provider, not to want fly on subcooled propellant, if they can get 20 % increase of payload without any increase of cost ? ???

    2. TB doesn't want Vulcan to fly on subcooled propellant, because it isn't worth it and it doesn't improve your cost per kilogram.

    3. My point was, that if Atlas 5 don't use subcooled propellant, but F9R use it, you must take it into account, into their ratio between cost of rocket and costs unrelated to cost of building the rocket. That make perfect sense ( maybe except for you ::) ).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: matthewkantar on 04/21/2020 05:45 pm
    The problem with Mr. Bruno's assessment is that it is is static. Even if his numbers are correct, even if the benefits of reuse are not yet there, the improvement in the last three years is likely to be matched in the next three years. "Boosters can't be reused" is now "boosters can't be reused ten times," three years from now it'll be "boosters can't be reused a hundred times."

    Meanwhile ULA is burning resources building a better expendable while crossing fingers for competitors to stumble.

    The problem with torturing numbers is that they will say anything to make it stop.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/21/2020 06:42 pm
    1. Can you rationally explain why wouldn't every launch provider, not to want fly on subcooled propellant, if they can get 20 % increase of payload without any increase of cost ??

    The business model for SpaceX is to dominate the launch market enough so that they can generate profits that allow them to invest in building the Starship, which will allow them to start the process of colonizing Mars. Colonizing Mars is why Elon Musk started SpaceX.

    ULA is owned by two large public companies, and their goal is to maximize shareholder value. Until SpaceX broke the ULA launch monopoly with the U.S. Government, ULA really didn't have an incentive to lower costs. Why would they? They had a monopoly.

    So why would ULA invest time and money to change a launch vehicle that they already plan to replace? It won't get them more sales, and it won't drive more profit. Why in the world would they change Atlas V at this point?

    Quote
    2. TB doesn't want Vulcan to fly on subcooled propellant, because it isn't worth it and it doesn't improve your cost per kilogram.

    Unless you understand ULA's business model, you won't understand their engineering choices. And I don't think you fully understand ULA's business model - how they want to make money, and where they do and don't want to compete.

    Quote
    3. My point was, that if Atlas 5 don't use subcooled propellant, but F9R use it, you must take it into account, into their ratio between cost of rocket and costs unrelated to cost of building the rocket. That make perfect sense ( maybe except for you ::) ).

    Sub-cooled propellants are not a big cost driver. The cost of the propellant itself for a Falcon 9 is about $200K, or about 0.3% of the total launch price. That is a rounding error when comparing the costs between two rockets.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 04/21/2020 07:10 pm
    OK so here is whole TB post :
    Please provide links for such things, you have blatantly misrepresented statements from him in the past.
    So you can see that he don't speak about ULA or SpaceX, but industry standards in general. If F9R booster is 70% percent of cost of rocket and SpaceX are " wildly successful such that the rocket becomes not 50%, but 70% of the cost of the launch service " = you still can save only 49 % cost of launch.
    You say one thing right, he was not talking about SpaceX. The estimates he provides are simply entirely wrong when it comes to SpaceX, because SpaceX simply is more efficient, and keeps excessive costs down, so the cost of launch is significantly closer to the cost of just building the hardware.

    Yes for FH cost of 3 boosters could be 80-90 % cost of rocket, but FH could have also higher operation costs than F9R ( cost of subcooling with much more propellant, more expansive pad refurbishment after launch, stage/payload integration ).
    Envy887 specifically said launch cost, not rocket cost. As usual, you misrepresent things to further your nonsensical assertions.  The costs you list here are in the range between trivial and nonexistent.

    I am not saying that operational costs for NASA, USAF and commercial missions shouldn't be different.

    Only that even for commercial missions, cost of launch unrelated to cost of building rocket should be at best 30% = without subcooling and 50 % = with subcooling of propellant.
    Please stop making up nonsense. It is absolutely absurd to claim that subcooling costs >$10 million dollars, the real marginal cost on a flight is negligible. Launch prices did not increase when it was introduced, on a per kg basis they decreased. There is also no evidence for the 30% number either for SpaceX, except on government missions that involve lots of extra work.

    Again can anybody give at least wild guess how much

    1. Raptor development,
    2. Starship/SH development ( SN1-5 ),
    3. Starlink development ( including cost of launches ) costed so far ? What one Starlink sat. unit cost could be ? Did SX said this ?
    4. Some good estimate for outside investments into SX so far, potentially private debt if they have one ?

    When we will know all of this, we could have much better better view on SX financial situation.
    Try asking in a thread where those numbers are actually relevant. Development cost is simply not a factor in the equations relevant to this thread (per launch cost).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/21/2020 07:21 pm
    The problem with Mr. Bruno's assessment is that it is is static. Even if his numbers are correct, even if the benefits of reuse are not yet there, the improvement in the last three years is likely to be matched in the next three years. "Boosters can't be reused" is now "boosters can't be reused ten times," three years from now it'll be "boosters can't be reused a hundred times."

    Meanwhile ULA is burning resources building a better expendable while crossing fingers for competitors to stumble.

    The problem with torturing numbers is that they will say anything to make it stop.
    They had to build Vulcan to replace Atlas due to ban on RD180. A new ELV is quickest way to achieve this and cheapest to develop with reasonable chance of staying within schedule. A RLV for ULA would've cost lot more to develop with good chance of large schedule slips.

    Any large schedule slips and they would be out of DoD competition due to ban on RD180.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/21/2020 07:31 pm
    Roscosmos have been looking at ULA’s reuse economics spreadsheet ...

    https://twitter.com/katlinegrey/status/1252677871048458240

    Quote
    4. About @elonmusk's words about 80% reusability of SpaceX rockets. Russian and American experts calculated the efficiency of the reusable stages and came to the conclusion that the profit can be reached only when the stages are used 10 times. SpaceX didn't reached this rate yet.

    From Rogozin interview

    https://twitter.com/katlinegrey/status/1252673621719425033

    Quote
    On April 19, Dmitry Rogozin gave a big interview on KP radio, and here is the quick summary of what he said. The full text of the interview is here: roscosmos.ru/28415/

    Edit to add:

    I’m not going to post other related points he made in the interview (which are clearly incorrect).

    Rogozin clearly trying to throw shade and thus try to deflect criticism
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/21/2020 07:37 pm
    The problem with Mr. Bruno's assessment is that it is is static. Even if his numbers are correct, even if the benefits of reuse are not yet there, the improvement in the last three years is likely to be matched in the next three years. "Boosters can't be reused" is now "boosters can't be reused ten times," three years from now it'll be "boosters can't be reused a hundred times."

    Meanwhile ULA is burning resources building a better expendable while crossing fingers for competitors to stumble.

    The problem with torturing numbers is that they will say anything to make it stop.
    They had to build Vulcan to replace Atlas due to ban on RD180. A new ELV is quickest way to achieve this and cheapest to develop with reasonable chance of staying within schedule. A RLV for ULA would've cost lot more to develop with good chance of large schedule slips.

    Any large schedule slips and they would be out of DoD competition due to ban on RD180.

    That sounds logical until you remember that ULA still had Delta IV. Remember how ULA was supposed to be safe for the USAF because it had redundant launchers? So ULA had an existing launcher they could have offered the U.S. Government while they built a reusable launch vehicle.

    Oh, and Blue Origin is building a reusable launch vehicle on the same time scale, so why is it that a younger (and smaller) rocket company can do something ULA can't?

    ULA saw what SpaceX was doing just like everyone else, so they had the same lead time to compete IF they wanted to take advantage of reusability. But I don't think they want to do reusability, because that means they have to compete 1:1 with everyone else that offers reusable launchers, and competition is not something ULA does well.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/21/2020 08:01 pm
    Blue is no longer smaller. And Blue is actually older than ULA...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RotoSequence on 04/21/2020 08:04 pm
    ULA saw what SpaceX was doing just like everyone else, so they had the same lead time to compete IF they wanted to take advantage of reusability. But I don't think they want to do reusability, because that means they have to compete 1:1 with everyone else that offers reusable launchers, and competition is not something ULA does well.

    I wouldn't strictly call SpaceX and Blue Origin "everyone else" on the landscape, but if the historical trend of a launch service provider duopoly holds in the big dollar DoD launch contracts, ULA's stuck hoping that SpaceX fails, because they've already joined themselves to Blue Origin, and both Blue and SpaceX are competing for the same contracts.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/21/2020 09:21 pm
    1. Can you rationally explain why wouldn't every launch provider, not to want fly on subcooled propellant, if they can get 20 % increase of payload without any increase of cost ??

    The business model for SpaceX is to dominate the launch market enough so that they can generate profits that allow them to invest in building the Starship, which will allow them to start the process of colonizing Mars. Colonizing Mars is why Elon Musk started SpaceX.

    ULA is owned by two large public companies, and their goal is to maximize shareholder value. Until SpaceX broke the ULA launch monopoly with the U.S. Government, ULA really didn't have an incentive to lower costs. Why would they? They had a monopoly.

    So why would ULA invest time and money to change a launch vehicle that they already plan to replace? It won't get them more sales, and it won't drive more profit. Why in the world would they change Atlas V at this point?

    Quote
    2. TB doesn't want Vulcan to fly on subcooled propellant, because it isn't worth it and it doesn't improve your cost per kilogram.

    Unless you understand ULA's business model, you won't understand their engineering choices. And I don't think you fully understand ULA's business model - how they want to make money, and where they do and don't want to compete.

    Quote
    3. My point was, that if Atlas 5 don't use subcooled propellant, but F9R use it, you must take it into account, into their ratio between cost of rocket and costs unrelated to cost of building the rocket. That make perfect sense ( maybe except for you ::) ).

    Sub-cooled propellants are not a big cost driver. The cost of the propellant itself for a Falcon 9 is about $200K, or about 0.3% of the total launch price. That is a rounding error when comparing the costs between two rockets.

    1. So you didn't rationally explain anything. What I know nobody from main launch providers ( ULA, Blue origin, Arianespace, Chinese, Russians, Indians ) except of SX didn't confirm, that they plan to fly their launchers on subcooled propellant. If subcooling of propellant can increase their launchers payload by 20 % without any added costs, why wouldn't they use it ?  :o

    2. Tory Bruno said, that they don't plan to fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it means lot of added complexity and payload increase is not good enough for them to be worth it. They will simple use solid rocket boosters instead. Each solid booster cost about 6 million$. 20% increase of payload for Vulcan is equal to 3 or 4 boosters so about 18 to 24 million$. So again, if they can instead of adding 3,4 boosters ( cost 18 - 24 ml$ ), use subcooled propellant, which you think is FREE  ::), why wouldn't they use it ?

    They can fly Vulcan without any subcooling and solids for smaller payloads, they can fly it with subcooling for medium - heavy payloads and for really heavy payloads, they can use both subcooling + add only two solids (instead of 6) . 

    3. Of course it is not about cost of propellant. It is about operating costs of all of this subcooling hardware, that you need for subcooling LOX on 1st stage and 2stage and cooling RP1 to about -10 Celsius. Not sure if LH2 could be subcooled, but CH4 could be and SpaceX plan subcool both CH4 and LOX for Starship/SH.
     
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/21/2020 09:38 pm
    1. So you didn't rationally explain anything. What I know nobody from main launch providers ( ULA, Blue origin, Arianespace, Chinese, Russians, Indians ) except of SX didn't confirm, that they plan to fly their launchers on subcooled propellant. If subcooling of propellant can increase their launchers payload by 20 % without any added costs, why wouldn't they use it ?  :o

    Where are you getting the reference that subcooled propellant increases payload capacity by 20%?

    Regardless, this is why I said you have to look at ULA's business model - how they make their money. Because for Atlas V and Vulcan they designed the vehicles to use Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB) to augment the core stage, and their government customers (so far) are willing to pay for that. Higher price = higher profit.

    Quote
    2. Tory Bruno said, that they don't plan to fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it means lot of added complexity and payload increase is not good enough for them to be worth it

    ULA already handles significantly colder liquids - LH2. So they have the knowledge.

    But again, why do you take the word of a SpaceX competitor over SpaceX?  ::)

    Tory Bruno's job is to make ULA profitable for its owners, so of course he will not admit publicly that a competitor is better than they are. Marketing 101.

    Quote
    3. Of course it is not about cost of propellant. It is about operating costs of all of this subcooling hardware, that you need for subcooling LOX on 1st stage and 2stage and cooling RP1 to about -10 Celsius. Not sure if LH2 could be subcooled, but CH4 could be and SpaceX plan subcool both CH4 and LOX for Starship/SH.

    Do you have any proof that subcooling is a significant cost?

    Oh, and the benefits of subcooling have been known for decades (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20180000059.pdf), its just that no one designed a rocket to use them - SpaceX felt it provided a competitive advantage and helped to enable reusability. And that seems to be the case, since Falcon 9 is so popular that in just 10 years it will have launched as many times as Atlas V has in 18 years. Can't argue with success!
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: randomly on 04/21/2020 09:53 pm
    Don't forget that SpaceX went to subcooled propellants to up the payload capacity of their existing Falcon 9 to better meet the needs of the GeoSat market and government reference orbits. They could not stretch the rocket or increase diameter anymore due to the size limits of road transportability, so they went to subcooled propellants to get the performance.

    If you are designing a new rocket then you can just size it accordingly to give you the performance required without subcooling. And if your rocket can already handle all the orbits and payloads required, there is no point in adding subcooling to increase payload when there is no need for it.

    I certainly don't remember subcooling increasing performance by 20%, that sounds way too high.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: matthewkantar on 04/21/2020 10:28 pm
    Emphasizing what CoastalRon said above: "Higher price = higher profit."

    When the deep down core of your business culture Is that you get X percent of what ever you charge, when the only way to make more money is to charge more for the same services, it is very hard to see a different world, a world with legitimate competition.

    ULA's corporate parents' goal is year on year growth of profits. Pioneering, innovating, or any good for humanity is not on the table.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: r8ix on 04/21/2020 10:33 pm
    Another factor I noticed is that Bruno is thinking of the infrastructure cost without thinking about launch cadence. SpaceX is launching 2x (or more) as often as Atlas, so their infrastructure costs (even if the same, which I doubt) would be about 1/2 or less for each launch. Add the lower costs of the booster, and yes, overall costs can be lowered by 50%+.
    Unless you're going to argue that SpaceX is losing money on commercial launch services (which a. investors would not, in real life, be happy with, and b. might be illegal), there is a lot of proof in the pricing.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 04/21/2020 10:53 pm
    1. So you didn't rationally explain anything. What I know nobody from main launch providers ( ULA, Blue origin, Arianespace, Chinese, Russians, Indians ) except of SX didn't confirm, that they plan to fly their launchers on subcooled propellant. If subcooling of propellant can increase their launchers payload by 20 % without any added costs, why wouldn't they use it ?  :o

    2. Tory Bruno said, that they don't plan to fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it means lot of added complexity and payload increase is not good enough for them to be worth it. They will simple use solid rocket boosters instead. Each solid booster cost about 6 million$. 20% increase of payload for Vulcan is equal to 3 or 4 boosters so about 18 to 24 million$. So again, if they can instead of adding 3,4 boosters ( cost 18 - 24 ml$ ), use subcooled propellant, which you think is FREE  ::), why wouldn't they use it ?

    You're really focused on this subcooled propellant thing, aren't you?  ;D

    1. Yes, using subcooled kerosene+LOX adds some complexity and some cost. But it is far less complex (and costly) than anything related to liquid hydrogen handling. As ULA are already using hydrogen on their upper stages, the benefit of adding subcooled kerolox (or methalox) on just the first stage is not as great as it was SpaceX with their all kerolox launcher.

    2. Using subcooled propellants has implications on your engine - it may require modification to use it. (dealing with the increased mass flow and cooler temperatures) SpaceX was able to modify their M1D engine to do so - doing the same modifications throughan exterior engine supplier is more costly, and there may be technical reasons why doing it with the RD-180 and BE-4 is not worth the added cost - for ULA.

    3. SpaceX is a pioneer when it comes to using subcooled propellants, so it makes sense that others have not jumped at using the idea... yet. But I would not be surprised if the next announced Chinese, Indian, or European launch vehicle will use it - if it makes sense for them.

    4. SpaceX uses subcooled propellants, and kept using it beyond their initial teething issues with it, and plan on using it with future launch vehicles, so obviously the cost/complexity/performance trade-offs makes sense for them. Either you accept that or you believe that there is some dark conspiracy where SpaceX doing it... sh*ts and giggles to waste money?  ???

    So at this point, maybe you should realize that what Tory Bruno tweets is not the absolute truth for the industry as a whole, but from his perspective at ULA?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Stan-1967 on 04/21/2020 10:55 pm
    I certainly don't remember subcooling increasing performance by 20%, that sounds way too high.

    I think I may see where this 20% number came from.  Back when RTLS was being worked on it was calculated that the boost back and landing incurred around a 20% fuel reserve penalty on RLTS & substantially less, but still very high penalty, for ASDS landing.  The existing F9 1.1 simply didn't have the margins for this type of penalty.  It was close, but they weren't yet capable.  The margins were met in upgrading the Merlin 1D to the current full thrust configuration to reduce gravity losses, & then densified propellants added even more margin.  Those upgrades enable the Block 5 configuration to put most all GEO sats into GTO-1800 and still perform an ASDS landing.  For lighter payloads going to LEO, F9 could then have the margins for RTLS. 

    The densified props were partially responsible for getting the F9 performance to the finishing line where it could service GEO & LEO with payload capability suited for the market, and still have the margin for re-use.  Recall also the famous highlight films of ASDS landing attempts running out of fuel too early and crashing spectacularly.  F9 is on the hairy edge of propellant reserves needed for re-use, even with densified props.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: tbellman on 04/21/2020 11:31 pm
    If you are designing a new rocket then you can just size it accordingly to give you the performance required without subcooling. And if your rocket can already handle all the orbits and payloads required, there is no point in adding subcooling to increase payload when there is no need for it.

    Or you can design it to take advantage of subcooling.  Starship and SuperHeavy are intended to use subcooled LOX and LCH4, since you can get away with smaller (thus lighter) tanks, and the propellant pumps in the engines can pump more (pumps are typically constant volume flow rate).

    Quote
    I certainly don't remember subcooling increasing performance by 20%, that sounds way too high.

    20% increased density seems reasonable, but that wouldn't translate directly to that much more payload.

    And you can't just subcool the propellant in any random rocket and get it to work better.  E.g, going by the figures for Atlas V on http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/atlas5.html (http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/atlas5.html), an Atlas V with no payload and no SRB:s, would mass ~330 tonnes, thus weigh ~3240 kN, and have a liftoff thrust of 3826 kN, for a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.18.  Increase the first stage propellant density by 20%, going from 284t to 340t, and you have a liftoff mass of 386t, weight 3785 kN, for a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.01.  It would hardly be able to take off.

    And you get similar results for Vulcan.  (Or even worse; with the estimates at http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/vulcan.html (http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/vulcan.html), a Centaur III-equiped Vulcan with 20% more stage 1 propellant, would have thrust-to-weight 1.00, and with Centaur V it would be something like 0.94...)

    You could get some improvement to thrust for subcooling the propellants, but probably not as much as the increase in weight.

    Falcon 9, on the other hand, has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.35 at liftoff, even with maximum payload, and that is with subcooled propellants.

    Atlas V and Vulcan are designed very differently from Falcon 9, so I doubt they could take advantage of having more propellant.  If ULA had put three or four BE-4 engines on the first stage, they would have been in another position.  But they didn't.

    (And the above is assuming that the engines don't need changes to handle colder propellants.  SpaceX was obviously in position to make sure their engines could.)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: pathfinder_01 on 04/21/2020 11:55 pm
    1. Can you rationally explain why wouldn't every launch provider, not to want fly on subcooled propellant, if they can get 20 % increase of payload without any increase of cost ??

    The business model for SpaceX is to dominate the launch market enough so that they can generate profits that allow them to invest in building the Starship, which will allow them to start the process of colonizing Mars. Colonizing Mars is why Elon Musk started SpaceX.

    ULA is owned by two large public companies, and their goal is to maximize shareholder value. Until SpaceX broke the ULA launch monopoly with the U.S. Government, ULA really didn't have an incentive to lower costs. Why would they? They had a monopoly.

    So why would ULA invest time and money to change a launch vehicle that they already plan to replace? It won't get them more sales, and it won't drive more profit. Why in the world would they change Atlas V at this point?

    Quote
    2. TB doesn't want Vulcan to fly on subcooled propellant, because it isn't worth it and it doesn't improve your cost per kilogram.

    Unless you understand ULA's business model, you won't understand their engineering choices. And I don't think you fully understand ULA's business model - how they want to make money, and where they do and don't want to compete.

    Quote
    3. My point was, that if Atlas 5 don't use subcooled propellant, but F9R use it, you must take it into account, into their ratio between cost of rocket and costs unrelated to cost of building the rocket. That make perfect sense ( maybe except for you ::) ).

    Sub-cooled propellants are not a big cost driver. The cost of the propellant itself for a Falcon 9 is about $200K, or about 0.3% of the total launch price. That is a rounding error when comparing the costs between two rockets.

    1. So you didn't rationally explain anything. What I know nobody from main launch providers ( ULA, Blue origin, Arianespace, Chinese, Russians, Indians ) except of SX didn't confirm, that they plan to fly their launchers on subcooled propellant. If subcooling of propellant can increase their launchers payload by 20 % without any added costs, why wouldn't they use it ?  :o

    2. Tory Bruno said, that they don't plan to fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it means lot of added complexity and payload increase is not good enough for them to be worth it. They will simple use solid rocket boosters instead. Each solid booster cost about 6 million$. 20% increase of payload for Vulcan is equal to 3 or 4 boosters so about 18 to 24 million$. So again, if they can instead of adding 3,4 boosters ( cost 18 - 24 ml$ ), use subcooled propellant, which you think is FREE  ::), why wouldn't they use it ?

    They can fly Vulcan without any subcooling and solids for smaller payloads, they can fly it with subcooling for medium - heavy payloads and for really heavy payloads, they can use both subcooling + add only two solids (instead of 6) . 

    3. Of course it is not about cost of propellant. It is about operating costs of all of this subcooling hardware, that you need for subcooling LOX on 1st stage and 2stage and cooling RP1 to about -10 Celsius. Not sure if LH2 could be subcooled, but CH4 could be and SpaceX plan subcool both CH4 and LOX for Starship/SH.

    1.   All things are not even here. ULA would not benefit near as much as Space X from a 20% increase in performance and Space X didn’t claim it didn’t add costs. It does it just adds costs that they are more then willing to live with.

     Atlas and Delta were built as part the EELV(evolved launch vehicle program). They had to be able to meet all USAF missions out the gate. F9 did not have to. Space X was willing to build a less powerful booster if it could be made cheaper. Even today Atlas in it’s heaviest form is more powerful than the F9 and the F9 even today can not lift the heaviest of payload(which is why the FH exists).

     For the EELV the 20% increase in performance in the core would have to be weighed against simply adding another SRB(or increasing performance of it) or adding an engine to the centaur and would be wasted on flights not requiring that performance. In addition both ULA and Orbital would have to either convince the government to pay for said improvement or pay Aerojet(and\or the Russians) to make the improvement since they don’t own the engines.

    For Space X that 20% increase in performance increased the number of missions that the F9 could compete for(both government and private) as well as increased the missions for which the F9 could be reused afterwards and Space X could do the r/d in house. Because Space X (Unlike ULA) actually regularly launches non government payloads, it could pay off this investment via the private market where a ULA would be pretty much stuck with the government and was an monopoly(there is no one to steal payloads from).

    Also cost per pound is a useless metric here. Customers don’t choose the rocket with the best cost per pound or kilo, they choose the rocket that CAN lift their payload and will do so with reasonable reliability.  They don’t care if the rocket has excess performance or is reusable. They just want to find the cheapest, safest rocket that can do the job.

    2.   TB can’t fly Vulcan on subcooled propellants without paying either Blue Origin or Aerojet and subcooled propellants help how? Vulcan is expended, he can’t use the excess performance to reuse Vulcan on more missions and it is just waste for mission not needing the extra performance. Sure using fewer solids might be a gain, but it would have to be weighed agaist higher per unit solid cost because you are ordering fewer of them and the fact that they probably can't eliminate solids on all flights and make sense without reuse or an extreme redesign.

    3.   If the cost allows the rocket to do missions it can’t do at a competitive cost, then it is worth it.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 04/22/2020 03:28 am
    1. So you didn't rationally explain anything. What I know nobody from main launch providers ( ULA, Blue origin, Arianespace, Chinese, Russians, Indians ) except of SX didn't confirm, that they plan to fly their launchers on subcooled propellant. If subcooling of propellant can increase their launchers payload by 20 % without any added costs, why wouldn't they use it ?  :o

    Any launch vehicle that uses NK-33 uses sub-cooled LOX, this include N1, original Antares and Soyuz-2-1v.

    Quote
    2. Tory Bruno said, that they don't plan to fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it means lot of added complexity and payload increase is not good enough for them to be worth it. They will simple use solid rocket boosters instead. Each solid booster cost about 6 million$. 20% increase of payload for Vulcan is equal to 3 or 4 boosters so about 18 to 24 million$. So again, if they can instead of adding 3,4 boosters ( cost 18 - 24 ml$ ), use subcooled propellant, which you think is FREE  ::), why wouldn't they use it ?

    They can fly Vulcan without any subcooling and solids for smaller payloads, they can fly it with subcooling for medium - heavy payloads and for really heavy payloads, they can use both subcooling + add only two solids (instead of 6) . 

    LEO capability for Vulcan without SRB and with 2 SRB is 10.6t and 18.5t respectively, so adding 2 SRB increases LEO payload by 75%, thus even if sub-cooled propellant can increase payload by 20%, the increase would be less than the performance increase provided by a single SRB.

    Also from Falcon 9's experience with sub-cooled propellant, you can't fly without subcooling if the vehicle is already designed for sub-cooling, so your idea that just adding sub-cooling for some missions wouldn't work.

    Quote
    3. Of course it is not about cost of propellant. It is about operating costs of all of this subcooling hardware, that you need for subcooling LOX on 1st stage and 2stage and cooling RP1 to about -10 Celsius. Not sure if LH2 could be subcooled, but CH4 could be and SpaceX plan subcool both CH4 and LOX for Starship/SH.

    What exactly is "operating"? Everything related to propellant loading would be remote controlled, you don't need extra personnel to turn a valve or some such things. There would be cost for designing/building/maintaining the sub-cooling infrastructure, but those would be amortized by all the launches, the actual operating wouldn't take much.

    Let's say for the sake of argument they add 10 technicians to do sub-cooling, each technician has fully burdened cost of $150k, and launch rate is once per month, then the cost of operating sub-cooling is only $150k * 10 / 12 = $125k, basically a rounding error in the overall launch cost.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/22/2020 06:47 am
    1. So you didn't rationally explain anything. What I know nobody from main launch providers ( ULA, Blue origin, Arianespace, Chinese, Russians, Indians ) except of SX didn't confirm, that they plan to fly their launchers on subcooled propellant. If subcooling of propellant can increase their launchers payload by 20 % without any added costs, why wouldn't they use it ?  :o

    2. Tory Bruno said, that they don't plan to fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it means lot of added complexity and payload increase is not good enough for them to be worth it. They will simple use solid rocket boosters instead. Each solid booster cost about 6 million$. 20% increase of payload for Vulcan is equal to 3 or 4 boosters so about 18 to 24 million$. So again, if they can instead of adding 3,4 boosters ( cost 18 - 24 ml$ ), use subcooled propellant, which you think is FREE  ::), why wouldn't they use it ?


    3. Of course it is not about cost of propellant. It is about operating costs of all of this subcooling hardware, that you need for subcooling LOX on 1st stage and 2stage and cooling RP1 to about -10 Celsius. Not sure if LH2 could be subcooled, but CH4 could be and SpaceX plan subcool both CH4 and LOX for Starship/SH.
    You appear to have answered your own question.

    Well done.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ulm_atms on 04/22/2020 02:41 pm
    Also from Falcon 9's experience with sub-cooled propellant, you can't fly without subcooling if the vehicle is already designed for sub-cooling, so your idea that just adding sub-cooling for some missions wouldn't work.

    Question.....

    I thought that if it wasn't designed for subcooled prop...you can't use subcooled prop due to the pump not designed to take the higher mass flow.  If it was designed for subcooled prop...you can use either...you would just have less mass flow with warmer prop and thus less thrust.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/22/2020 05:09 pm
    Question.....

    I thought that if it wasn't designed for subcooled prop...you can't use subcooled prop due to the pump not designed to take the higher mass flow.  If it was designed for subcooled prop...you can use either...you would just have less mass flow with warmer prop and thus less thrust.
    Actually the subcooling shrinks the propellant, so the pump pumps less volume than expected.

    But the use is sub cooled propellants is tricky.

    You've made your vehicle heavier

    So heavier vehicle --> lower acceleration --> longer flight --> higher gravity losses --> less delta v to payload.

    Ooops.  :(

    Like all of these "simple" design tweaks (putting a diffuser  around the tail to gain increased mass flow at launch for example) using this shifts the balance of several parameters (GTOW, acceleration etc) so you have to carry out various other design changes (EG engine and GNC mods) to re-balance the design.

    Obviously if the changes are within the stretch potential of the basic engine design (IE pump flow rate, injector capacity etc) then it's changes to the EMU parameters.  If not you're looking at an engine upgrade.

    It does mean you can carry more propellant in the same size tanks (provided their stress limits aren't exceeded by the increased static or dynamic loads, otherwise they need a redesign as well) which can come in handy for propulsive returns.

    As usual designing in for the possibility of sub cooled propellants from day one makes it considerably easier to do so down the line.

    But WRT to the thread title if you didn't plan to do so and you're design doesn't quite have the margins to accommodate it the savings you make can be wiped out by the redesign costs.

    And that's what makes LV design so much fun.  :)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: tbellman on 04/22/2020 05:47 pm
    Actually the subcooling shrinks the propellant, so the pump pumps less volume than expected.

    Pumps tend to have a constant volume flow rate, when using the same power, and that flow rate will not vary much when the density of the fluid changes.  If the viscosity of the fluid stays the same...  And chilling a fluid tends to increase its viscosity, so the volume pumped will be smaller, but often the density increase will more than counteract that, so you will pump more mass.  But not as much more as the density increased.

    Of course, you are now pumping more propellant mass into the preburner or gas generator driving the turbopump, so there will be more power available to pumping.

    Assuming that the preburner can handle that increase.  If there is more fuel and oxidizer burning in the combustion chamber, you would get increased pressure, and probably increased temperature as well...  Or maybe (pure speculation) some of it will be pushed out of the combustion chamber before it burns out fully, so there will be some combustion around the turbine instead of in the actual combustion chamber?  (And the same considerations would of course apply to the main combustion chamber as well.)

    But assuming your engine can handle it, you should be able to get more thrust from it when using subcooled propellants.

    Quote
    But the use is sub cooled propellants is tricky.

    Indeed.  :)

    Not any trickier than most other things in rocketry, though, probably less tricky in many cases, but you can't just drop it into any random rocket and expect things to magically improve.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/22/2020 08:17 pm
    ...
    Launch rate, on the other hand, is a really big lever on cost because it spreads out the fixed costs.
    So... Intuition can be deceptive in this situation."

    And how do you think one increases flight rate?

    Reuse enables a higher flight rate with the same fixed infrastructure costs, which allows spreading those costs over more flights, which lowers the price point, which allows capturing more market share, which enables a higher flight rate, which...

    It's a virtuous cycle, but you need some advantage to leverage at the beginning. SpaceX's initial advantage was actually not reuse but their very lean, vertically integrated business structure with low overhead costs. Now they have the advantages of BOTH reuse and a trim operation. Competitors can't afford to ignore reuse if they want be viable in the commercial market.

    Quote
    Only that even for commercial missions, cost of launch unrelated to cost of building rocket should be at best 30% = without subcooling and 50 % = with subcooling of propellant.

    Subcooling is an operational headache that reduces flexibility and increases the need for tight timing at launch. That's why other operators have tried it and abandoned it, or looked at it and decided against it. It has little to do with cost.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 04/23/2020 03:09 am
    Also from Falcon 9's experience with sub-cooled propellant, you can't fly without subcooling if the vehicle is already designed for sub-cooling, so your idea that just adding sub-cooling for some missions wouldn't work.

    Question.....

    I thought that if it wasn't designed for subcooled prop...you can't use subcooled prop due to the pump not designed to take the higher mass flow.  If it was designed for subcooled prop...you can use either...you would just have less mass flow with warmer prop and thus less thrust.

    I was mainly going by the launch procedure we're seeing for F9, where they couldn't postpone T-0 once propellant loading starts, because otherwise the propellant will get warm. I think they tried delay T-0 after propellant is loaded with SES-9, but it didn't work, computer auto aborted the launch after engine start.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 04/23/2020 03:29 am
    Doesn't sub-cooled propellant allow for more overall fuel to be carried so enough is left for landing the booster?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/23/2020 04:26 am
    Doesn't sub-cooled propellant allow for more overall fuel to be carried so enough is left for landing the booster?

    Since they would never launch a payload and plan to recover the stage unless they knew they would have enough propellant, I'd say the decision for this is made when SpaceX is entering into a launch contract with the payload customer.

    That is because they would know if they can use a reusable booster at that point, which tells them if the booster will have legs and expensive titanium grid fins for landing attempts.

    So I guess I would say that subcooled propellant allows for a larger payload to be delivered to space while still recovering the booster.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 04/23/2020 06:38 am
    Doesn't sub-cooled propellant allow for more overall fuel to be carried so enough is left for landing the booster?

    Sub-cooled propellant by itself does not allow that. Sub-cooled propellants would not given a performance boost without a simultaneous thrust upgrade of M1D engine. Those two factors together is what gives more performance margin for recovery.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/23/2020 12:15 pm
    1. So you didn't rationally explain anything. What I know nobody from main launch providers ( ULA, Blue origin, Arianespace, Chinese, Russians, Indians ) except of SX didn't confirm, that they plan to fly their launchers on subcooled propellant. If subcooling of propellant can increase their launchers payload by 20 % without any added costs, why wouldn't they use it ?  :o

    2. Tory Bruno said, that they don't plan to fly Vulcan on subcooled propellant, because it means lot of added complexity and payload increase is not good enough for them to be worth it. They will simple use solid rocket boosters instead. Each solid booster cost about 6 million$. 20% increase of payload for Vulcan is equal to 3 or 4 boosters so about 18 to 24 million$. So again, if they can instead of adding 3,4 boosters ( cost 18 - 24 ml$ ), use subcooled propellant, which you think is FREE  ::), why wouldn't they use it ?

    You're really focused on this subcooled propellant thing, aren't you?  ;D

    1. Yes, using subcooled kerosene+LOX adds some complexity and some cost. But it is far less complex (and costly) than anything related to liquid hydrogen handling. As ULA are already using hydrogen on their upper stages, the benefit of adding subcooled kerolox (or methalox) on just the first stage is not as great as it was SpaceX with their all kerolox launcher.

    2. Using subcooled propellants has implications on your engine - it may require modification to use it. (dealing with the increased mass flow and cooler temperatures) SpaceX was able to modify their M1D engine to do so - doing the same modifications throughan exterior engine supplier is more costly, and there may be technical reasons why doing it with the RD-180 and BE-4 is not worth the added cost - for ULA.

    3. SpaceX is a pioneer when it comes to using subcooled propellants, so it makes sense that others have not jumped at using the idea... yet. But I would not be surprised if the next announced Chinese, Indian, or European launch vehicle will use it - if it makes sense for them.

    4. SpaceX uses subcooled propellants, and kept using it beyond their initial teething issues with it, and plan on using it with future launch vehicles, so obviously the cost/complexity/performance trade-offs makes sense for them. Either you accept that or you believe that there is some dark conspiracy where SpaceX doing it... sh*ts and giggles to waste money?  ???

    So at this point, maybe you should realize that what Tory Bruno tweets is not the absolute truth for the industry as a whole, but from his perspective at ULA?


    1. Of course using hydrogen upper stage is more expansive then using kerosene upper stage. That is why SpaceX not use it. On opposite side, it allows much better orbital insertion, that is why ULA use it. Subcooling hardware can be used to subcool LOX on first stage, cooling of RP1 ( or other type of fuel ) on first stage, but also subcooling LOX and fuel on 2st stage. Not sure if LH2 could be subcooled, because problems with boiling. But LOX on Centaur upper stage could be subcooled and it could significantly improve Centaur performance.

    2. BE 4 will fly with cryogenic propellant, so it shouldn't be problem for it to fly on subcooled propellant. But no Vulcan or New Glenn are planned to fly on subcooled propellant. Same with Angara, Ariane 6, Long March 5,7 and those new Japan and Indian new rockets. That because 20 % increase of payload, result also in 20% increase of total cost per launch. F9R already proved, that fly on subcooled propellant could be done relatively save, so why wouldn't they use it  ;D

    TB said that using subcooled propellant add lot of complexity and it is not worth it for them, even with increase of payload. He spoke about raising of operational costs, not cost of rocket. I don't know exactly why ( same like all of you  ;D ). Asked him twice, he said added complexity + something I didn't understand. Obviously it is something, that is to difficult explain on Twitter. If you want have some good hint look at this thread  https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/12935/what-are-the-challenges-in-falcon-9-full-thrust-v1-2-with-densified-propella , but all of this are just speculations  ::). I will try to ask this TB on REDDIT.

    3. SX is not pioneer. Some Russians or US rockets already use it in the past. But F9R is only one using it in present. ULA said, that it will not use subcooled propellant for Vulcan, all others main launch providers so far don't plan use subcooling for their new planned launchers. They can change their minds, but trade-offs between increase of payload and increase of total costs of launch = should be similar.

    4. I never said, that using subcooled propellant isn't worth it for SX F9R. Only that trade-offs between increase of payload and increase of total costs per launch should be similar. That it doesn't really matter so much.

    Just want to repeat this twice for you. ;D

    TB never said anything otherwise too. SIMILAR, BUT NOT BETTER. Doesn't really matter. For a third time  ::)

    Edit : Original expandable F9 had payload about 17t to LEO. F9R have payload 22.8t to LEO as expendable. Mainly because it fly on subcooled propellant, but also because 2st stage Merlin has vacuum optimalize nozzle and each Merlin has about 5% increase of thrust. So yes using subcooled propellant increase your payload ( and cost ) by 20%.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Silmfeanor on 04/23/2020 12:41 pm
    So yes using subcooled propellant increase your payload ( and cost ) by 20%.

    To keep repeating something does not make it true. Please, a source for that 20%. 20% of what, by the way? fixed cost, static cost? Once the chiller is  bought you only need to pay maintenance. So it shouldnt be the static amount per rocket, or it should get lower the more you fly.

    Why 20%? Where does it come from? I highly doubt your numbers.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/23/2020 12:43 pm
    ...
    Launch rate, on the other hand, is a really big lever on cost because it spreads out the fixed costs.
    So... Intuition can be deceptive in this situation."

    And how do you think one increases flight rate?

    Reuse enables a higher flight rate with the same fixed infrastructure costs, which allows spreading those costs over more flights, which lowers the price point, which allows capturing more market share, which enables a higher flight rate, which...

    It's a virtuous cycle, but you need some advantage to leverage at the beginning. SpaceX's initial advantage was actually not reuse but their very lean, vertically integrated business structure with low overhead costs. Now they have the advantages of BOTH reuse and a trim operation. Competitors can't afford to ignore reuse if they want be viable in the commercial market.

    Quote
    Only that even for commercial missions, cost of launch unrelated to cost of building rocket should be at best 30% = without subcooling and 50 % = with subcooling of propellant.

    Subcooling is an operational headache that reduces flexibility and increases the need for tight timing at launch. That's why other operators have tried it and abandoned it, or looked at it and decided against it. It has little to do with cost.

    1. Subcooling of propellant should result in 20% increase of payload ( and total cost of launch ) for every rocket. Not sure if LH2 could be subcooled. Hydrazine also could not be. But RP1, CH4, LNG + LOX could be.

    2. If you remember my thread " Costs of launch unrelated to costs of building rocket " in General discussion section. I try to find out how rising flight rates could affect your fixed operational costs. Of course if you could launch more than 10 times = 20, 50, 100 times per year, you could decrease your fixed OCs. But probably not exponentially. Depends on how much launch pads, payload processing facilities, employees, refurbishment facilities you need if launch 10 times per year vs 50, 100 times per year.

    Without first hand experience, this is very difficult to guess correctly.  :)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/23/2020 12:49 pm
    So yes using subcooled propellant increase your payload ( and cost ) by 20%.

    To keep repeating something does not make it true. Please, a source for that 20%. 20% of what, by the way? fixed cost, static cost? Once the chiller is  bought you only need to pay maintenance. So it shouldnt be the static amount per rocket, or it should get lower the more you fly.

    Why 20%? Where does it come from? I highly doubt your numbers.

    Common sense. I explained already in detail why. Total cost of launch. 

    Said that it should be about 20, not exactly 20%. Explain why nobody except F9R don't used it and give me proof, that it is much less than 20.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 04/23/2020 12:50 pm
    @darknelnet appears to think that the cost of launch is equal to the cost of the fuel, otherwise the *20% cost figure makes literally no sense.

    Of course, that us not true, fuel cost is a tiny fraction of launch cost, even with reuse to the level SpaceX has demonstrated.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/23/2020 12:55 pm
    @darknelnet appears to think that the cost of launch is equal to the cost of the fuel, otherwise the *20% cost figure makes literally no sense.

    Of course, that us not true, fuel cost is a tiny fraction of launch cost, even with reuse to the level SpaceX has demonstrated.

    Of course it is not about cost of propellant, but about operating costs for all this subcooling hardware, which you need for subcooling LOX, cooling of RP1 on F9R 1st and 2st stage. Already said it. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Silmfeanor on 04/23/2020 01:03 pm
    So yes using subcooled propellant increase your payload ( and cost ) by 20%.

    To keep repeating something does not make it true. Please, a source for that 20%. 20% of what, by the way? fixed cost, static cost? Once the chiller is  bought you only need to pay maintenance. So it shouldnt be the static amount per rocket, or it should get lower the more you fly.

    Why 20%? Where does it come from? I highly doubt your numbers.

    Common sense. I explained already in detail why. Total cost of launch. 

    Said that it should be about 20, not exactly 20%. Explain why nobody except F9R don't used it and give me proof, that it is much less than 20.


    All engines with NK-33 used subcooling -including the original Antares rocket. So that can't be an argument. SpaceX uses it because they deem it worthwhile.
    Why 20? why not 10? It is not my role in this discussion to say whatever number it is.

    I expect it to be way, way less than 20% - possibly more around 2-3% once procedures are in place, but that is just a guess - I certainly wont use that number in argument.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 04/23/2020 01:05 pm
    Well, it’s good to know what part specifically you’re fabricating out of thin air.  At least you’re consistent in your delusions.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ulm_atms on 04/23/2020 01:31 pm
    So yes using subcooled propellant increase your payload ( and cost ) by 20%.

    To keep repeating something does not make it true. Please, a source for that 20%. 20% of what, by the way? fixed cost, static cost? Once the chiller is  bought you only need to pay maintenance. So it shouldnt be the static amount per rocket, or it should get lower the more you fly.

    Why 20%? Where does it come from? I highly doubt your numbers.

    Common sense. I explained already in detail why. Total cost of launch. 

    Said that it should be about 20, not exactly 20%. Explain why nobody except F9R don't used it and give me proof, that it is much less than 20.

    Common sense use to say the world was flat.....

    Look, we are not trying to bash you...but when you claim ~20%...please provide the documented (not your feelings, not what makes common sense) sources/methods for the numbers you used to get to that answer.  That way others can do the same calculations and the results be published here and discussed.  It IS is the scientific method after all and how discussions should work.  Going "Of course X is more expensive because common sense!" if not ever going to work here.

    I may not have a lot of posts but I have been a member here quite some time.  There are MUCH...MUCH smarter people on here then me, and I have seen some of them in this thread.  They are all saying that your numbers don't make sense and asking for the sources for your numbers.  Can you provide the sources for the numbers for your 20% claim and back them up or not?  If you cannot, this conversation is going nowhere and really should be put to rest as it's just one big mess not worth of a thread at this point.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacejulien on 04/23/2020 02:01 pm
    @darkmelmet:

    a) When making cost modelling for expendable launch vehicles you can usually neglect the propellant costs, because it is in the 1% to 2% of total costs range. If you want to have a first hand experience with (concept level) transportation system cost modelling I recommend to borrow or purchase a copy of the Transcost handbook and model [1]. Of course in everyday operations the propellant cost is measurable and non-negligible, but at best a tertiary driver for the decision-making process.

    b) Even if assuming densification increases the loaded propellant mass by 20%,  the propellant cost proportion would be just 1.2 * (1% to 2%) = 1.2 % to 2.4%).
    Let's say the Falcon 9 first stage is 70% of the hardware cost (as Elon mentioned), the rest of the hardware is 30%, plus 2% of propellant, plus 20% for the campaign = 122%, so the propellant is 2% / 122% = 1.6% of the total.
    With 5 reuses of the first stage and optimistically assuming no cost of refurbishment, the launch cost is 70%/5 + 30% +20% + 2% = 66% with the propellant being 2% / 66% = 3%.
    So you'll end up with 1.2 * 1.6% or 1.2 * 3%, which is still a very small cost fraction of the overall launch costs.

    c) For a given launch vehicle, densification of propellants *after* design freeze (or within a running series production) allows to increase LV performance. E.g. for a stage the Tsiolkovsky-Equation improves by the better ratio of wet_mass to dry_mass:

    Delta_V = exhaust_velocity * ln( (dry_mass + prop_mass + delta_prop_mass_from_densification ) / dry_mass )

    However, as the engine thrust doesn't change (much),  the overall duration of the stage burn until shutoff/depletion is longer,  thus increasing gravity losses (which means it is a case-by-case evaluation whether it makes sense to go for propellant densification).

    d) This has been done before, see e.g. [2]

    e) the major difficulty is the knowledge of the loaded propellant mass. When LOx is merrily boiling at its NBP during the waiting phase just prior to the opening of the launch window, propellant level sensors show how high the propellant level is and as the propellant density is linked to its temperature which is fixed at NPB. So you can calculate the mass of propellant in the tank and be sure you have loaded the right amount.
    With subcooling, the propellant stratifies and this relation goes away, which makes launch countdown recycles almost impossible (at best limited to very short ones) before you completely loose the knowledge of the loaded propellant mass, which sooner or later forces you into completely emptying and re-filling of the vehicle. There are stage fill and drain operations thinkable, which could avoid this, but to my knowledge these haven't ever been implemented.

    [1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/handbook-of-cost-engineering-and-design-of-space-transportation-systems-with-transcost-82-model-description-statistical-analytical-model-for-cost-estimation-and-economic-optimization-of-launch-vehicles/oclc/885383149

    [2] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2532/ariane-4-shroud-around-stage
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/23/2020 03:45 pm
    1. Subcooling of propellant should result in 20% increase of payload ( and total cost of launch ) for every rocket.

    You keep stating this like it is a fact, yet you refuse to show where your numbers come from.

    If this is your opinion then you need to be clear about that, since otherwise you appear to making this number up just to spread FUD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/23/2020 04:44 pm
    So yes using subcooled propellant increase your payload ( and cost ) by 20%.

    To keep repeating something does not make it true. Please, a source for that 20%. 20% of what, by the way? fixed cost, static cost? Once the chiller is  bought you only need to pay maintenance. So it shouldnt be the static amount per rocket, or it should get lower the more you fly.

    Why 20%? Where does it come from? I highly doubt your numbers.

    Common sense. I explained already in detail why. Total cost of launch. 

    Said that it should be about 20, not exactly 20%. Explain why nobody except F9R don't used it and give me proof, that it is much less than 20.

    Propellant subcooling is done by passing the propellants through a heat exchanger filled with a boiling refrigerant, like LN2 or liquid air. The only operational cost associated with it maintenance of chiller, which is just a tank, some valves, and a heat exchanger, plus the cost of the boiled LN2 as it's probably cheaper to vent and replace than to capture and rechill.

    LN2 or liquid air costs $0.1 to $1 per kg in bulk, and boiling 1 kg of LN2 will chill about 5 kg of kerolox, and F9 uses 500 t of kerolox per launch, so the LN2 cost is $10k to $100k. Maintaining some simple valves and tanks will not cost more than a few million per year or a ~$100k per launch. So the cost of subcooling is somewhere from around $50k to around $200k. That's at most 0.3% of the list price of an F9 launch.

    The idea that subcooling cost is 20% of the launch service has absolutely no rational basis in reality. It's off by multiple orders of magnitude.

    Subcooling is not more widely used because it imposes harsh limits (like load-and-go) on launch flexibility. Cost is not a driver.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacejulien on 04/23/2020 07:14 pm
    Propellant subcooling is done by passing the propellants through a heat exchanger filled with a boiling refrigerant, like LN2 or liquid air. The only operational cost associated with it maintenance of chiller, which is just a tank, some valves, and a heat exchanger, plus the cost of the boiled LN2 as it's probably cheaper to vent and replace than to capture and rechill.

    Yes, see e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071 (https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071)

    The other option is to pass the LOx through a reservoir where a vacuum pump sucks down the pressure in the ullage volume such that through the evaporation of a part of the LOx the remainder is subcooled through the evaporation enthalpy being taken away from the liquid phase. See e.g. the image below, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359431116328721

    If I had to bet (and without google-ing around now) I would assume SpaceX has a system akin to the vacuum pump design. It would explain the copious amount of boil-off "clouds" produced during tanking operations emanating from the launch umbilical mast.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: MoaMem on 04/23/2020 08:06 pm
    Common sense. I explained already in detail why. Total cost of launch. 

    Said that it should be about 20, not exactly 20%. Explain why nobody except F9R don't used it and give me proof, that it is much less than 20.

    Dude I don't think that you understand how logic works :

    1) The problem is not if it's exactly 20% or around 20%, the problem is where this 20% figure is coming from to begin with.

    2) The fact that nobody uses the same thing (if that's actually true) does not in any way, shape or form mean that it's expensive or anything remotely like that, it just mean that it's not popular. What you're doing is an argument from authority or maybe a black swan fallacy. And the fact that people don't give you alternative explanations does not make your unjustified one true by default. You have to prove your argument true, not merely point out that no body has any alternative (which is not true by the way)

    3) You don't understand how the burden of proof works. You're making the claim (20% increase in launch cost) therefor you have to provide the proof. People saying they don't accept your claim do not have to prove anything because they're not making any claim, just not accepting yours. It's not like anyone is saying it's NOT 20% or that it's 5.98% where they would need to provide proof. They're just saying where is you proof? In more technical terms you haven't met your burden of proof. You get this type of nonsense a lot when debating religious people.

    4) A very good case could be made about why you're probably off by a factor of ten and the launch cost increase is probably closer to 2% or 0.2% of total cost.

    5) The reason others don't use it have more to do with risk aversion (ULA and others don't like to use anything that hasn't been tested thoroughly since the 70's), the fact that a lot of trust is provided by solids so the case for densification is not that compelling (For example depending on the configuration Atlas V would get anywhere from 10% to 6% more trust if densification provided 20% more trust for the core)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/23/2020 09:03 pm
    Propellant subcooling is done by passing the propellants through a heat exchanger filled with a boiling refrigerant, like LN2 or liquid air. The only operational cost associated with it maintenance of chiller, which is just a tank, some valves, and a heat exchanger, plus the cost of the boiled LN2 as it's probably cheaper to vent and replace than to capture and rechill.

    Yes, see e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071 (https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071)

    The other option is to pass the LOx through a reservoir where a vacuum pump sucks down the pressure in the ullage volume such that through the evaporation of a part of the LOx the remainder is subcooled through the evaporation enthalpy being taken away from the liquid phase. See e.g. the image below, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359431116328721

    If I had to bet (and without google-ing around now) I would assume SpaceX has a system akin to the vacuum pump design. It would explain the copious amount of boil-off "clouds" produced during tanking operations emanating from the launch umbilical mast.

    They might use that, I haven't seen a definitive explanation of their system. The reason I suspect they use the HX is that the LOX needs to be a bit above ambient in order to get it into the Falcon, so they would need a second pump to move it from the subcooling tank . It's a bit easier to pressurize the tank to slightly above ambient
    and push the LOX out than to than it is to run a pump and suck it out. Or they could pull a vacuum for a while before launch, then repress the storage tank and push the LOX out, relying on thermal inertial to keep it subcooled.

    But any way they build it, the cost will be reasonably similar, it's just replacing the HX with a pump or two, and replacing the boiling N2 or air with boiling O2.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/23/2020 09:43 pm
    Quote
    But the use is sub cooled propellants is tricky.

    Indeed.  :)

    Not any trickier than most other things in rocketry, though, probably less tricky in many cases, but you can't just drop it into any random rocket and expect things to magically improve.
    That was my point

    LV design is all about balancing various disparate requirement.

    Change one and you will to rebalance the others in some way.

    Improvement is a possibility. It is not guaranteed
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/23/2020 10:01 pm

    Yes, see e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071 (https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071)

    The other option is to pass the LOx through a reservoir where a vacuum pump sucks down the pressure in the ullage volume such that through the evaporation of a part of the LOx the remainder is subcooled through the evaporation enthalpy being taken away from the liquid phase. See e.g. the image below, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359431116328721

    If I had to bet (and without google-ing around now) I would assume SpaceX has a system akin to the vacuum pump design. It would explain the copious amount of boil-off "clouds" produced during tanking operations emanating from the launch umbilical mast.
    Yes.  For a kerolox rocket running running the LOX through an LN2 will get it within a couple of degrees of the normal BP of LN2. It's pretty straightforward and LN2 is very cheap but IIRC SX said they go lower than this so I suspect your right they are doing it another way.

    IIRC the method developed for sub cooling LH2 for the X33 programme used an LH2/LH2 heat exchanger with a vacuum pump to suck out the boil off. Similar principle but it keeps the propellant being loaded physically separate from the propellant being cooled. that said LH2 is exceptionally tricky to deal with.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/23/2020 10:15 pm

    Yes, see e.g. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071 (https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4707071)

    The other option is to pass the LOx through a reservoir where a vacuum pump sucks down the pressure in the ullage volume such that through the evaporation of a part of the LOx the remainder is subcooled through the evaporation enthalpy being taken away from the liquid phase. See e.g. the image below, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359431116328721

    If I had to bet (and without google-ing around now) I would assume SpaceX has a system akin to the vacuum pump design. It would explain the copious amount of boil-off "clouds" produced during tanking operations emanating from the launch umbilical mast.
    Yes.  For a kerolox rocket running running the LOX through an LN2 will get it within a couple of degrees of the normal BP of LN2. It's pretty straightforward and LN2 is very cheap but IIRC SX said they go lower than this so I suspect your right they are doing it another way.

    IIRC the method developed for sub cooling LH2 for the X33 programme used an LH2/LH2 heat exchanger with a vacuum pump to suck out the boil off. Similar principle but it keeps the propellant being loaded physically separate from the propellant being cooled. that said LH2 is exceptionally tricky to deal with.

    If you pull a bit of a vacuum on the LN2 it goes colder than the normal BP, and the LOX can stay high pressure so you don't have to deal with repressurizing to get it into the rocket.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/23/2020 10:24 pm
    WRT to the thread's title.


    If designed in from day one (IOW the engine thrust is geared to life the densified mass of propellant) sub cooling lets you build a smaller rocket

    OTOH it takes additional GSE to support this and makes launch operations slightly less flexible.

    That GSE is an up front cost paid by the LV mfg, whereas delivering the same performance with SRB's means the customer pays for it.

    What sub cooling can help make possible is stage reusability, and that suggests potentially massive increases in profit per launch.

    One approach delivers maximum cost to the customer (as you might expect of a company used to working on cost plus contracts) and the other delivers maximum profit to the business

    I guess that's what happens whn you hire too many MBA's instead of actual engineers.  :(

    As for claims that subcooling adds 20% to operational costs I've got no idea where that belief comes from and I have no belief that it is credible.

    I do know that various studies on propellant densification were done for the Shuttle in the 70's and 80's including infrastructure hardware costs as well as operating costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/23/2020 10:30 pm
    If you pull a bit of a vacuum on the LN2 it goes colder than the normal BP, and the LOX can stay high pressure so you don't have to deal with repressurizing to get it into the rocket.
    Yes the same tactic the X33 programme used could just as easily be run with LN2 in the chamber and a LOX cooling coil.

    The downside is the pump power needed to exhaust the chamber below atmospheric can be quite high. On the X33 it was estimated that energy needed was 3x the energy extracted by simply boiling off a cryogen, but only LHe boils lower than LH2.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Barley on 04/24/2020 06:27 am
    They might use that, I haven't seen a definitive explanation of their system. The reason I suspect they use the HX is that the LOX needs to be a bit above ambient in order to get it into the Falcon
    Storage tank would have to be quite a bit above ambient to get propellent to the second stage tanks something like 50 m above ground level.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/28/2020 08:55 pm
    After recent Russian skepticism about SpaceX costs, this:

    https://twitter.com/gk_launch/status/1255186693667336193

    Quote
    This publication is not meant to challenge the #SpaceX achievements that we certainly recognize. We want to know more about reusability economics based on Falcon-9. We admit that our analytics may be limited and would appreciate any comments from @SpaceX and @elonmusk

    Full version from https://www.facebook.com/772317722979426/posts/1328393360705190/:

    Quote
    This publication is not meant to challenge the SpaceX achievements that we certainly recognize. We just wanted to have a better understanding, by the example of Falcon-9, how reusability economics can work. We admit that our analytics may not be quite correct and would appreciate any comments from #SpaceX and #ElonMusk on this topic.

    REUSABILITY: IS IT REALLY THAT COST EFFECTIVE?

    On March 31, 2017, SpaceX re-launched the 1st stage of the Falcon 9 rocket as part of the commercial launch of the SES-10 geostationary satellite, which had previously flown with the Dragon cargo vehicle to the ISS under SpaceX's CRS contract with NASA.

    The space community has continued to debate ever since about the real economic benefit of the re-use (and in the future- multiple use) of LV hardware.
    Let us refer to the figures that were announced by top managers of SpaceX-Gwynne Shotwell and Elon Musk. We know that:

    1. SpaceX spent at least $1 billion to develop the reusability technology.
    2. The cost of refurbishing the 1st stage after the flight is substantially less than half the cost of a new 1st stage; and the cost of the Falcon 9 payload fairing is $6 million.
    3. The 1st stage of Falcon 9 costs 70%, and the remaining 30% of the cost of all the hardware fall on the 2nd stage and payload fairing.

    The following prices are offered to a customer on the SpaceX official website: $62 million for the Falcon 9 launch and $90 million for the launch of Falcon Heavy. However, there are a couple of reservations: the payload mass to GTO for Falcon 9 shall not exceed 5.5 tons, and the mass of the Falcon Heavy payload shall not exceed 8 tons. The proposed LV configurations imply the recovery of the 1st stage units, which significantly reduces the LV performance as compared with a configuration without re-usable 1st stages (the maximum payload capacity of Falcon 9 to GTO is 8.3 tons and 26.7 tons for Falcon Heavy).

    We believe that the share of the launch support cost should not be more than 30-35% of the launch service cost, that is, the remainder falls on the Falcon 9 hardware, which cost does not exceed $40.3 million (while the launch service price is $62 million). If we return to what was said by Shotwell (The first stage accounts for roughly 70% of the hardware costs of a Falcon 9 launch), we get the cost of the Falcon 9 1st stage at the level of $28.2 million, and the cost of the 2nd stage and payload fairing combined as no more than $12.1 million. Knowing that the payload fairing cost amounts to $6 million, it turns out that no more than $6.1 million remains for the 2nd stage and the payload means of adaptation. In this case, the 2nd stage of Falcon 9 is less expensive than the payload fairing, and 30% of the cost of the 2nd stage hardware and payload fairing is almost equally divided between them, and that contradicts the Shotwell's words: the second stage and fairing split the remainder of the hardware cost, not quite even.

    All this suggests that, most likely, reusability from an economic perspective works differently.
    For a better understanding of the prices and figures, let us refer to the real value of the contracts that were signed by SpaceX with NASA and the US Air Force.

    On February 5, 2020, NASA announced a contract with SpaceX worth $80.4 million for the launch of the PACE spacecraft (launch weight - 1.7 tons, 676 km SSO) on a Falcon 9 LV using previously-flown first stage booster. If to subtract all launch related costs (35% of the launch service cost) from the total contract launch service price of $80.4 million, it turns out that, for NASA, the hardware of Falcon 9 LV with a reusable 1st stage costs $52.3 million. So how much is the reusable Falcon 9 hardware really worth: $52.3 million or $40.3 million?

    Also, on March 7, 2020, the news was published that SpaceX and the US Air Force made a deal worth $297 million for 3 missions including two Falcon 9 missions and one launch of the Falcon Heavy launcher. Reasoning about the average price of a launch service under this contract, let us refer to prices specified on the SpaceX website: Price of Falcon 9 launch service is $62 million, price of Falcon Heavy mission is $90 million. Using the proportion, we can calculate that the cost of Falcon Heavy launch service is equal to the cost of 1.5 Falcon 9 launches. We conclude that on average, within the framework of this contract, the Falcon 9 launch service costs $84.9 million, and the Falcon Heavy mission costs $127.2 million, from which applying the above logic we arrive at the Falcon 9 hardware cost of $55.2 million.

    Two questions arise: If SpaceX manufactures new LVs under this contract, is this the real cost of the new hardware of both types of LVs, respectively? If previously-flown hardware is supposed to be used for the USAF missions, then why the cost of launch services is not $62 million and $90 million, respectively?

    If we look at the reusability economy from a different angle, we will open up interesting conclusions which, in terms of price indicators and SpaceX executives’ statements, look more realistic than the prices quoted on the company's website.

    To reuse the rocket hardware, it is necessary to manufacture it at the full cost, and then sell it either for the same price, mindful of the plans to use it several times (and it’s important not to forget to recoup investments made in the rocket development, as well as costs of hardware repair and refurbishment), or apply a different pattern which is safer for business. In the second case, one of the launch customers must pay SpaceX the maximum or full price for the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy hardware, as was done in the case of the SES-10 launch. NASA paid for the delivery of cargo to the ISS aboard a new Falcon 9 LV. The first stage was returned and reused to provide a commercial launch service for the SES-10 satellite.

    How much did NASA pay for launches to the ISS? The 2018 FAA Report shows that, under CRS to ISS contracts, NASA paid SpaceX $ 3.7 billion for 23 launches to deliver cargo to the ISS up to 2024. This means that NASA pays an average of $160.9 million for the launch service. Using the same proportion as above, we conclude that the Falcon launch vehicle hardware plus a price of Dragon space vehicle costs $104.5 million. We do not know for sure how much the Dragon cargo hardware costs; but let’s suppose (by expert assessment and based on some open materials) that its price is about $40 million within one mission.

    So the conclusion we draw is that the hardware of the rocket first and second stages costs $64.5 million. If we add to this amount the cost of a payload fairing ($ 6 million) and the minimum cost of the payload adaptation system ($1 million), we arrive at the cost of the entire newly manufactured Falcon 9 launch vehicle of $71.5 million, suitable for the launch of a spacecraft. Back to Shotwell's words: The first stage accounts for roughly 70% of the hardware costs of a Falcon 9 launch. Thus, for NASA, the new first stage costs $50 million.

    So, we get the following statistics: for the domestic market, prices of the same hardware for NASA and the US Air Force are different (although they are close), while these hardware prices are significantly higher than the selling price established by SpaceX for the international market as part of commercial launch services.

    Given that NASA has funded SpaceX in total for more than $7 billion, as part of the contracts for the development of technologies and ensuring the delivery of cargo and astronauts to the ISS, it can be concluded that the reusability technology, as of today, from the perspective of economics, is justified only if there is an anchor launch services customer on the domestic market (in the case of SpaceX, these are NASA and the US Air Force), who is ready to pay the maximum or full cost for the LV hardware, part of which will then be reused as part of commercial launch services on the foreign market.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RotoSequence on 04/28/2020 09:03 pm
    After recent Russian skepticism about SpaceX costs, this:

    [...]

    If SpaceX spent $1 billion learning how to reuse rockets and their launch prices remain otherwise unaffected, the cost of developing reuse should be fully recovered inside of 34 launches, regardless of how many times a given stage can be flown.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: yoram on 04/28/2020 09:21 pm
    I assume the reuse cost went down significantly with Block 5 over when the "substantially less than half" statement was made. Last year they had a goal of a 24hour reuse. While that hasn't quite happened yet the required work for that must be low, thus it cannot be that expensive.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: whitelancer64 on 04/28/2020 09:48 pm
    Quote
    "it can be concluded that the reusability technology, as of today, from the perspective of economics, is justified only if there is an anchor launch services customer on the domestic market (in the case of SpaceX, these are NASA and the US Air Force), who is ready to pay the maximum or full cost for the LV hardware, part of which will then be reused as part of commercial launch services on the foreign market."

    Initially I feel like that's quite a bit of a stretch. Now looking over my launch spreadsheet, I don't think it holds water at all. Of the recovered Falcon 9 rockets that went on to fly again, almost exactly half have had first launches that were commercial launches: 12 NASA / govt to 11 commercial.

    The argument is further weakened by the fact that the first four launches of the Block 5 (all of which went on to fly again) were for commercial customers, not government launches, and the first flight of the Block 5 Falcon Heavy was for a commercial customer (Arabsat6A), followed up with the reuse of the side boosters on the second flight of the Falcon Heavy - for the Air Force.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/28/2020 10:55 pm
    Why do overseas operators not understand that NASA and USAF buy mission unique services that account for a significant fraction of the launch service cost? There is no adjustment in their figures for this difference between commercial and USG prices.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 04/29/2020 12:33 am
    I'm not really sure why they expect SpaceX to do their homework for them - Whatever they say will just be believed to be lies anyway.

    And as envy887 writes, there appears to be an almost intentional effort to not understand why DoD and some NASA missions have extra price tags.

    But if all you have is a hammer in your argument toolbox, you will hit everything with a hammer. And in this case the hammer is: "SpaceX is subsidized by NASA and DoD".
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: niwax on 04/29/2020 12:46 am
    I'm not really sure why they expect SpaceX to do their homework for them - Whatever they say will just be believed to be lies anyway.

    And as envy887 writes, there appears to be an almost intentional effort to not understand why DoD and some NASA missions have extra price tags.

    But if all you have is a hammer in your argument toolbox, you will hit everything with a hammer. And in this case the hammer is: "SpaceX is subsidized by NASA and DoD".

    It's not even about prices. They take the cost for a full ISS resupply mission and contrast that with the procurement cost of a first stage. That's pretty much the point in any "analysis" that ou should just stop reading and throw the whole thing in the trash.

    "I think my baker is cheating me with the $3 bread - it only has 12 cents of flour in it!"
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AndersofOz on 04/29/2020 01:03 am
    In my experience people make assertions of this kind through the filter of their own experience.  The Russians have been gouging NASA for seats on Soyuz for years to prop up their space program and therefore presume SpaceX is doing the same.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 04/29/2020 01:23 am
    After recent Russian skepticism about SpaceX costs, this:

    [...]

    If SpaceX spent $1 billion learning how to reuse rockets and their launch prices remain otherwise unaffected, the cost of developing reuse should be fully recovered inside of 34 launches, regardless of how many times a given stage can be flown.
    You need to add running costs of SpaceX Navy to reuse costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RotoSequence on 04/29/2020 02:17 am
    After recent Russian skepticism about SpaceX costs, this:

    [...]

    If SpaceX spent $1 billion learning how to reuse rockets and their launch prices remain otherwise unaffected, the cost of developing reuse should be fully recovered inside of 34 launches, regardless of how many times a given stage can be flown.
    You need to add running costs of SpaceX Navy to reuse costs.

    So a fudge factor of three or four extra launches? The point remains that recovering the costs of booster reuse end up being a simple matter of racking up a sufficient tally of reflights. SpaceX is now at 34 reflights. Presuming that only the launches from 2019 onward don't count against R&D efforts, their running tally is at 17 booster reflights.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 04/29/2020 03:56 am
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/29/2020 07:32 am
    Initially I feel like that's quite a bit of a stretch. Now looking over my launch spreadsheet, I don't think it holds water at all. Of the recovered Falcon 9 rockets that went on to fly again, almost exactly half have had first launches that were commercial launches: 12 NASA / govt to 11 commercial.
    Indeed.

    This "analysis" for a start ignores the concept of gross profit entirely

    As other have noted it also ignores the fact that the USG (in its various parts) asks for "launch assurance" services to improve the odds of a successful mission, which regular customers simply don't ask for and which SX charges substantial sums to perform. I'd also point out that SX was selling F9 launches to commercial customers long before it was accepted by the USG as a launch provider (didn't it take a court case to get on the USAF approve supplier list?)

    But they are right about one thing.

    The USG is a massive customer that completely locks foreign suppliers out. That does give SX a very substantial revenue stream where competition (except from ULA) is effectively non existent.

    That gives foreign LV mfgs an interesting choice.

    a) Find a way into that market  by establishing a US subsidiary of some kind.

    b) Mount a legal challenge about restriction to market access through the WTO for NSS launches. I don't think anyone has tried this in this context, but isn't that  exactly what SX did to get the USAF to look at them? My sense is "National Security" covers a very broad range of topics.

    c) Continue to b**ch and whine about "unfair competition."

    And on a general point without effective competition one mans "price gouging" is another mans "legitimate price increase to cover rising (but unstated) costs"

    WRT to the thread title I still don't think the full implications of NASA's detailed cost analysis of SX's budget to get to their first F9 launch have sunk in after a decade.

    NAFCOM estimated the total cost of those programes at (according to Dan Rasky in an interview) $4Bn, but NASA, with access to SX accounts reckoned it was $400m total.

    IOW the "Cost estimating tax" using the CE database is 900% * :o :o
    It had long been suspected that CE's based on historical data were very generous (but not generous enough as planners tended to allow above them, creating a positive feedback cost inflation loop). I'd call it "institutionalized mediocrity" but TBF mediocre would suggest estimates just a few 100% over actual implementation.

    This should have triggered a detailed analysis of what aspects of government contracts multiply their costs over that of commercial practice and to decide if those aspects were actually needed.

    I'd love to find out what NAFCOM would have predicted RL Electron would have cost to develop.

    *I'm not an American tax payer, but if I were I might be a bit upset about this, given those models are applied to much larger projects (like the F22 and F35).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/29/2020 07:36 am
    You need to add running costs of SpaceX Navy to reuse costs.
    I like that. Like all large aerospace companies it's already got a standing army of staff.  :)

    Just needs an air force.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/29/2020 07:57 am
    WRT to the thread title I think the real answer is "It depends."

    It depends on the sizing of the rocket Vs the target payload market wheather you have enough margin in the design to implement partial or full recovery.  SX allowed for it, ULA appears not to have.

    It could prove uneconomic because
    a) The recovery mode is unexpectedly expensive (because who would try a recovery mode they expected to make recovery and reuse uneconomic?)
    b)The level of damage sustained by the stage(s) in recovery is (unexpectedly) high and uneconomic to repair
    c) Payload loss is unexpectedly high and the size of the market the design can compete in is too small to cover expenses.

    But if you get it right you save most of the cost of each stage (and fairing) you recover, radically improving profit margin, ideally to a level that allows you to amortize your development costs in viable number of launches, at which all that profit becomes actual  profit.

    Before SX this was conjecture as no one had done it. Now booster recovery and reuse is a fact and RL are looking at a second approach, expanding the design space of known viable solutions (and which make the 60's proposals for booster recovery look like the works of fantasy they were).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/29/2020 08:55 am
    So yes using subcooled propellant increase your payload ( and cost ) by 20%.

    To keep repeating something does not make it true. Please, a source for that 20%. 20% of what, by the way? fixed cost, static cost? Once the chiller is  bought you only need to pay maintenance. So it shouldnt be the static amount per rocket, or it should get lower the more you fly.

    Why 20%? Where does it come from? I highly doubt your numbers.

    Common sense. I explained already in detail why. Total cost of launch. 

    Said that it should be about 20, not exactly 20%. Explain why nobody except F9R don't used it and give me proof, that it is much less than 20.

    Propellant subcooling is done by passing the propellants through a heat exchanger filled with a boiling refrigerant, like LN2 or liquid air. The only operational cost associated with it maintenance of chiller, which is just a tank, some valves, and a heat exchanger, plus the cost of the boiled LN2 as it's probably cheaper to vent and replace than to capture and rechill.

    LN2 or liquid air costs $0.1 to $1 per kg in bulk, and boiling 1 kg of LN2 will chill about 5 kg of kerolox, and F9 uses 500 t of kerolox per launch, so the LN2 cost is $10k to $100k. Maintaining some simple valves and tanks will not cost more than a few million per year or a ~$100k per launch. So the cost of subcooling is somewhere from around $50k to around $200k. That's at most 0.3% of the list price of an F9 launch.

    The idea that subcooling cost is 20% of the launch service has absolutely no rational basis in reality. It's off by multiple orders of magnitude.

    Subcooling is not more widely used because it imposes harsh limits (like load-and-go) on launch flexibility. Cost is not a driver.

    1. Subcooling of LOX and cooling of RP1 on F9R 1st and 2st stage should result with increase of payload by 20 %. That was confirmed also by SX. If you could increase your payload by 20%, without any increase of total cost per launch, your final cost per kilogram should become better by 20 %.

    Right know there is so competitive launch market, that even 20 % lower cost per kilogram could make big difference ( TB confirmed this on REDDIT ). Even make your commercial launch competitor goes bankrupt. ULA or others launch providers risk aversion are hardly good enough reason, not try to have 20 % decrease of cost per kilogram for free.

    I asked TB on Twitter why any from new or planned launchers don't use it :

    Question:

    Why any from new or planned launchers ( Vulcan, New Glenn, Ariane 6, Angara, Long March 7) except SX F9R or Starship/SH, don't plan to fly on subcooled propellant. Is increase of payload negated by increase of your fixed operational costs ?

    TB Answers :

    Subcooling adds complexity, so it's generally done after the fact.  If you knew you needed a few extra Kg's of propellant when you were designing the rocket, you would have made the tanks bigger to begin with.

    --------------------------------

    1. First of all, if TB said that SC adds complexity, it should have significant impact on launch provider = fixed operation costs. 0.3 % is almost negligible. The other " pseudoexpert " before you said about 2-3 %. We simply don't know, what will be fixed operation costs for all this subcooling hardware over all of its lifetime. It can be very expansive to buy at first place, SX need it for two launchpads at FL, 1 in CA and then 1 or more launchpads in Bocca Chica. After many years of using some parts of SC hardware could need replacement or expansive refurbishment. Without first hand experience, there is no way I could guess this correctly.

    I never said that 20% increase of cost must be only about servicing, maintenance or refurbishment of SC hardware. I said that 20 % increase of payload should result in 20 % increase of total cost per launch..

    Let say, that lifetime operational costs for SC hardware are 6-8 % of total cost per launch. The other big factors could be.

    2. Effect on reusability.

    EM said 4 years ago that F9R could be reused 10 times, before it need major refurbishment and than just to be retool for next 10 flights up to maybe 100. I never believed this. At best the retool after 10 flights should be as expansive as building new booster. But since even first 5th reflight of booster failed on reentry, I am not even sure now, that F9R could be reflown 10 times. I never believed that using cryogenics propellants like LH2 or CH4 must be better for reusability than RP1. They can offer better performance, but also bring worse wear and tear on reusable engines and boosters.

    So let say, that with standard temperature RP1 and LOX, F9R 1st booster could be reused 10-20 times. But with subcooled LOX and cooled RP1 on 1st stage, this F9R booster can be reused only 5-10 times. Now you must build F9R boosters more often so your fixed costs become higher.

    3. Effect on cost of reusable hardware.

    After AMOS-16 launch pad explosion, which was related to using subcooled LOX and failed helium COPVs. SpaceX must rebuild those helium COPVs and make them stronger. EM said those new helium COPVs are best COPVs ever built and that it took long time to build them. But that also mean, that they are more expansive to build as a result of F9R using of subcooled propellant. This can be truth also about other type of F9R hardware. If they take longer to build, SX fixed costs will be higher.

    If you put these 3 factors together 20 % increase of payload should result also in 20 % increase of total cost per launch.

    As I said before 1 solid booster for Vulcan cost about 6 ml $. Subcooling LOX for Vulcan 1st and 2st stage and cooling of LNG for Vulcan 1st stage could be equal to using 2 or 3 solid boosters. Other option for increase of payload is simple to make tanks much bigger at first place. But making tanks bigger or SC of propellant isn't never free. It should have always negative effect on your total cost per launch.

    Same with all new or planned launchers like New Glenn, Angara, Ariane 6, Long March 7. If they all could increase their launchers payload by 20 % = decrease their cost per kilogram by 20 %, without any significant increase of total cost per launch, they will be all doing this. There is very competitive commercial launch market right now and everyone want have part of it.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/29/2020 09:37 am
    1. Subcooling of propellant should result in 20% increase of payload ( and total cost of launch ) for every rocket.

    You keep stating this like it is a fact, yet you refuse to show where your numbers come from.

    If this is your opinion then you need to be clear about that, since otherwise you appear to making this number up just to spread FUD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt).

    Nobody is spreading FUD. It is just my opinion, but perfectly reasonable and logical. Nobody here itself, never offered any real evidence about their own opinions on F9R = business case of reusability. SpaceX never speak about this in detail and never offered real evidence, that F9R have any real cost savings so far.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/29/2020 10:18 am
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.

    Where Russians admitted that F9R 1stage booster reuse saving the money ? Can you give me a quote ? What I read, they only accused SpaceX of price dumping. Of course Ariane 5 have also ESA subsidies, ULA have USG subsidies and Soyuz maybe Roscosmos subsidies. But we don't know if it is true.

    Nobody here obviously doesn't really know about SpaceX actual financial situation. How high was outside financial investment into SX together so far ? Have SX large private debt like Tesla ? What were development costs for Starlink, Raptor, Starship/SH ( SN1-5 ) development together so far ?

    I have no reason, not to believe Tory Bruno, that SX doesn't have so far any cost savings with F9R 1st booster flyback. At least - unlike SpaceX - he explained his opinions on financial aspects of reusability in detail on REDDIT and TWITTER. Even if F9R breakeven number is lower than 10, for example 7 = SX is right now in about 3 reuses per booster in their fleet on average. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 04/29/2020 10:51 am
    SpaceX never speak about this in detail and never offered real evidence that F9R have any real cost savings so far.

    They have reduced their prices. Of course reuse is far from the only way to reduce prices, but personally I believe SpaceX when they say reuse has enabled cost (and thus price) reduction.

    On a separate point, I don’t think the recent Merlin failure due to residual cleaning fluid igniting tells us anything useful about how many flights a booster can make. They just need to take more care whenever such cleaning is required (which could be on every reuse for all we know).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/29/2020 11:54 am
    SpaceX never speak about this in detail and never offered real evidence that F9R have any real cost savings so far.

    They have reduced their prices. Of course reuse is far from the only way to reduce prices, but personally I believe SpaceX when they say reuse has enabled cost (and thus price) reduction.

    On a separate point, I don’t think the recent Merlin failure due to residual cleaning fluid igniting tells us anything useful about how many flights a booster can make. They just need to take more care whenever such cleaning is required (which could be on every reuse for all we know).

    1. How much they reduced their prices. What I read last time, their prices for big comsats are still little more than 60 ml$. Some big comsats, that flew first time on reused boosters got some discount in the past, but not now. I don't want to discuss again IXPE with halve off F9R payload capacity, only big comsats prices. 

    Of course, if they have lot of free capital from outside investment or private debt, it doesn't really matter. TB suggest this on REDDIT and said, that it bring total disconnect between real prices and costs. So why SX didn't react on this and simply clarified how much outside investments and private debt they really have ?

    2. When EM was asked on Twitter if B1048.5 engine failure could negatively affect the first planned Crew Dragon flight with humans in May. He said that no, because this flight will use brand new booster + engines, while B1048.5 ( boosters + engines ) had lot of wear and tear after 4 reflights.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 04/29/2020 12:15 pm
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.

    Where Russians admitted that F9R 1stage booster reuse saving the money ? Can you give me a quote ?

    It's just a few post above mine: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg2074403#msg2074403, I'm attaching the conclusion part here which shows by their estimate SpaceX saves up to 50% of the hardware cost when they reuse a F9 first stage from ISS cargo mission.

    But the Russians are not the only one who starts to realize reusability saves money, ESA had a similar conclusion and is designing Ariane NEXT to be similar to Falcon 9, the Japanese and Chinese are also working on reuse.

    Finally RocketLab's Peter Beck said he only need 2 launches to break even:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Given pretty much everybody is working on reuse, by your own logic it means reuse saves money, ULA is the outlier here.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 04/29/2020 12:31 pm
    1. Subcooling of LOX and cooling of RP1 on F9R 1st and 2st stage should result with increase of payload by 20 %. That was confirmed also by SX.

    Seriously? You just admitted below that the 20% number "It is just my opinion" (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg2074621#msg2074621), here you say it's confirmed by SpaceX, so which is it? Your opinion or from SpaceX?

    Quote
    If you could increase your payload by 20%, without any increase of total cost per launch, your final cost per kilogram should become better by 20 %.

    Right know there is so competitive launch market, that even 20 % lower cost per kilogram could make big difference ( TB confirmed this on REDDIT ). Even make your commercial launch competitor goes bankrupt. ULA or others launch providers risk aversion are hardly good enough reason, not try to have 20 % decrease of cost per kilogram for free.

    First of all, nobody said subcooling is free, just that the cost increase is very small. Also subcooling has drawbacks not directly related to cost, it puts severe limit on the launch window, this is something launch providers will need to consider when deciding whether to use subcooling.

    Secondly, the launch market competition is not based on cost per kilogram since customers rarely uses the maximum performance. For example:

    Rocket A: No subcooling, 10t to LEO, sell for $50M.

    Rocket B: Subcooling, 12t to LEO, sell for $50M + $0.5M for subcooling = $50.5M

    For a customer with a payload between 1 to 10t, the subcooling makes no difference to him, he'll choose Rocket A since it's cheaper, it doesn't matter Rocket B's cost per kilogram is better since that's not a metric the customer cares.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/29/2020 12:40 pm
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.

    Where Russians admitted that F9R 1stage booster reuse saving the money ? Can you give me a quote ?

    It's just a few post above mine: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg2074403#msg2074403, I'm attaching the conclusion part here which shows by their estimate SpaceX saves up to 50% of the hardware cost when they reuse a F9 first stage from ISS cargo mission.

    But the Russians are not the only one who starts to realize reusability saves money, ESA had a similar conclusion and is designing Ariane NEXT to be similar to Falcon 9, the Japanese and Chinese are also working on reuse.

    Finally RocketLab's Peter Beck said he only need 2 launches to break even:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Given pretty much everybody is working on reuse, by your own logic it means reuse saves money, ULA is the outlier here.

    1. Electron is only very small rocket and will use parachutes recovery similar to SMART. Tory Bruno said also 2, 3 for SMART reuse so it could be truth.

    2. It is great that ESA, Chinese, Japanese will try 1stage or full reusability. It is much cooler than just SMART and ACES. But that doesn't mean, that it will bring more cost savings, than component modular reuse or ACES IFV in space reuse. ULA right know, cares more only about costs savings, not a prestige. Also not sure, if Ariane next will use propulsive flyback for booster reuse or Adeline modular reuse or glide back booster reuse. They probably don't decide it yet.

    3. Ok. So they save 50% of their hardware costs, but cost of hardware could be only halve of cost of launch. You must take into account also large weight penalty ( 22.8 vs 15.6 ) and of course refurbishment costs, before you could reflight used booster. Also F9R booster could cost more to build, than original expendable F9 1st booster. You must take all this things into account.
     
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/29/2020 01:03 pm
    1. Subcooling of LOX and cooling of RP1 on F9R 1st and 2st stage should result with increase of payload by 20 %. That was confirmed also by SX.

    Seriously? You just admitted below that the 20% number "It is just my opinion" (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg2074621#msg2074621), here you say it's confirmed by SpaceX, so which is it? Your opinion or from SpaceX?

    Quote
    If you could increase your payload by 20%, without any increase of total cost per launch, your final cost per kilogram should become better by 20 %.

    Right know there is so competitive launch market, that even 20 % lower cost per kilogram could make big difference ( TB confirmed this on REDDIT ). Even make your commercial launch competitor goes bankrupt. ULA or others launch providers risk aversion are hardly good enough reason, not try to have 20 % decrease of cost per kilogram for free.

    First of all, nobody said subcooling is free, just that the cost increase is very small. Also subcooling has drawbacks not directly related to cost, it puts severe limit on the launch window, this is something launch providers will need to consider when deciding whether to use subcooling.

    Secondly, the launch market competition is not based on cost per kilogram since customers rarely uses the maximum performance. For example:

    Rocket A: No subcooling, 10t to LEO, sell for $50M.

    Rocket B: Subcooling, 12t to LEO, sell for $50M + $0.5M for subcooling = $50.5M

    For a customer with a payload between 1 to 10t, the subcooling makes no difference to him, he'll choose Rocket A since it's cheaper, it doesn't matter Rocket B's cost per kilogram is better since that's not a metric the customer cares.

    1. 20 % of increase of payload thanks to subcooling of LOX and cooling of RP1, was said also by EM, even before F9R full thrust really start flying. Before it was about 17t, than about 22t to LEO. How much you think it is 5-10 % ??? I said about 20 %, not exactly 20.

    2. In very competitive launch market cost per kilogram will matter and everybody will try to use their launchers at full capacity. Still any from new or planned launchers except F9R or SS/SH, don't plan so far use subcooling for their launchers. Not even BO with New Glenn.

    Actually drawbacks like limited launch window could have also effects on total cost per launch, because they could decrease, how many times you could launch from your launch pad in 1year and some NASA, USAF missions could need stable launch schedule.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 04/29/2020 01:07 pm
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.

    Where Russians admitted that F9R 1stage booster reuse saving the money ? Can you give me a quote ?

    It's just a few post above mine: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg2074403#msg2074403, I'm attaching the conclusion part here which shows by their estimate SpaceX saves up to 50% of the hardware cost when they reuse a F9 first stage from ISS cargo mission.

    But the Russians are not the only one who starts to realize reusability saves money, ESA had a similar conclusion and is designing Ariane NEXT to be similar to Falcon 9, the Japanese and Chinese are also working on reuse.

    Finally RocketLab's Peter Beck said he only need 2 launches to break even:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Given pretty much everybody is working on reuse, by your own logic it means reuse saves money, ULA is the outlier here.

    1. Electron is only very small rocket and will use parachutes recovery similar to SMART. Tory Bruno said also 2, 3 for SMART reuse so it could be truth.

    2. It is great that ESA, Chinese, Japanese will try 1stage or full reusability. It is much cooler than just SMART and ACES. But that doesn't mean, that it will bring more cost savings, than component modular reuse or ACES IFV in space reuse. ULA right know, cares more only about costs savings, not a prestige. Also not sure, if Ariane next will use propulsive flyback for booster reuse or Adeline modular reuse or glide back booster reuse. They probably don't decide it yet.

    3. Ok. So they save 50% of their hardware costs, but cost of hardware could be only halve of cost of launch. You must take into account also large weight penalty ( 22.8 vs 15.6 ) and of course refurbishment costs, before you could reflight used booster. Also F9R booster could cost more to build, than original expendable F9 1st booster. You must take all this things into account.
     

    Well if you’re right SpaceX will soon be found out as their current practice will clearly not be sustainable. You can only fly at a loss for so long. So any day now ULA should have their monopoly back. No need to innovate. Just need to give it a bit more time and all will be well again...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 04/29/2020 01:11 pm
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.

    Where Russians admitted that F9R 1stage booster reuse saving the money ? Can you give me a quote ?

    It's just a few post above mine: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg2074403#msg2074403, I'm attaching the conclusion part here which shows by their estimate SpaceX saves up to 50% of the hardware cost when they reuse a F9 first stage from ISS cargo mission.

    But the Russians are not the only one who starts to realize reusability saves money, ESA had a similar conclusion and is designing Ariane NEXT to be similar to Falcon 9, the Japanese and Chinese are also working on reuse.

    Finally RocketLab's Peter Beck said he only need 2 launches to break even:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Given pretty much everybody is working on reuse, by your own logic it means reuse saves money, ULA is the outlier here.

    1. Electron is only very small rocket and will use parachutes recovery similar to SMART. Tory Bruno said also 2, 3 for SMART reuse so it could be truth.

    2. It is great that ESA, Chinese, Japanese will try 1stage or full reusability. It is much cooler than just SMART and ACES. But that doesn't mean, that it will bring more cost savings, than component modular reuse or ACES IFV in space reuse. ULA right know, cares more only about costs savings, not a prestige. Also not sure, if Ariane next will use propulsive flyback for booster reuse or Adeline modular reuse or glide back booster reuse. They probably don't decide it yet.

    3. Ok. So they save 50% of their hardware costs, but cost of hardware could be only halve of cost of launch. You must take into account also large weight penalty ( 22.8 vs 15.6 ) and of course refurbishment costs, before you could reflight used booster. Also F9R booster could cost more to build, than original expendable F9 1st booster. You must take all this things into account.
     

    Well if you’re right SpaceX will soon be found out as their current practice will clearly not be sustainable. You can only fly at a loss for so long. So any day now ULA should have their monopoly back. No need to innovate. Just need to give it a bit more time and all will be well again...

    Correct. Time will prove Darkmelmet wrong.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: darkmelmet on 04/29/2020 01:16 pm
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.

    Where Russians admitted that F9R 1stage booster reuse saving the money ? Can you give me a quote ?

    It's just a few post above mine: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40377.msg2074403#msg2074403, I'm attaching the conclusion part here which shows by their estimate SpaceX saves up to 50% of the hardware cost when they reuse a F9 first stage from ISS cargo mission.

    But the Russians are not the only one who starts to realize reusability saves money, ESA had a similar conclusion and is designing Ariane NEXT to be similar to Falcon 9, the Japanese and Chinese are also working on reuse.

    Finally RocketLab's Peter Beck said he only need 2 launches to break even:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1251634905747910656

    Given pretty much everybody is working on reuse, by your own logic it means reuse saves money, ULA is the outlier here.

    1. Electron is only very small rocket and will use parachutes recovery similar to SMART. Tory Bruno said also 2, 3 for SMART reuse so it could be truth.

    2. It is great that ESA, Chinese, Japanese will try 1stage or full reusability. It is much cooler than just SMART and ACES. But that doesn't mean, that it will bring more cost savings, than component modular reuse or ACES IFV in space reuse. ULA right know, cares more only about costs savings, not a prestige. Also not sure, if Ariane next will use propulsive flyback for booster reuse or Adeline modular reuse or glide back booster reuse. They probably don't decide it yet.

    3. Ok. So they save 50% of their hardware costs, but cost of hardware could be only halve of cost of launch. You must take into account also large weight penalty ( 22.8 vs 15.6 ) and of course refurbishment costs, before you could reflight used booster. Also F9R booster could cost more to build, than original expendable F9 1st booster. You must take all this things into account.
     

    Well if you’re right SpaceX will soon be found out as their current practice will clearly not be sustainable. You can only fly at a loss for so long. So any day now ULA should have their monopoly back. No need to innovate. Just need to give it a bit more time and all will be well again...

    My prediction for F9R breakeven number was 7-10 and I never said, that they could not do this in the future. Only that I believe TB, that F9R 1st reuse didn't bring any cost savings so far. SpaceX could have enough capital, before they get there.

    I also believe that fully reusable Starship/SH, will have much better final cost per kilogram than F9R and will bring real cost savings.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Cremalera on 04/29/2020 01:27 pm
    Guys, do not pay attention.Quarantine is everywhere now.But Rogozin demands to show ebullient activity.So,here Ms. Barashkova from GK Launch Services is trying to please..In the Soviet Union, it was called "Замылить шары" (Throw dust in the eyes).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Prettz on 04/29/2020 01:33 pm
    2. In very competitive launch market cost per kilogram will matter and everybody will try to use their launchers at full capacity. Still any from new or planned launchers except F9R or SS/SH, don't plan so far use subcooling for their launchers. Not even BO with New Glenn.
    Cost per launch matters, not cost per kg.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 04/29/2020 01:37 pm
    Guys, do not pay attention.Quarantine is everywhere now.But Rogozin demands to show ebullient activity.So,here Ms. Barashkova from GK Launch Services is trying to please..In the Soviet Union, it was called "Замылить шары" (Throw dust in the eyes).

    I don't think anybody here is taking it at face value.  But sometimes you have to point out why arguments are absurd.

    We of course see several variants on the argument from Arianespace/CNES and ULA in the face of the SpaceX steamroller.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Cremalera on 04/29/2020 02:42 pm
    Quote
    But sometimes you have to point out why arguments are absurd.
    This topic is about reusability effects.At a recent press conference, one dude from SpaceX said that the production cost of Falcon-9 is lower than $ 30 million(as I heard 28 $ million).It's irrational, I'm sorry. But the whole experience of my life tells me to believe this dude and not to Ms. Barashkova from GK Launch Services .SpaceX suggests a propulsive landing. This is the right way.It's hard to improve something else here.But I remember that Elon had an extraordinary promise.After landing to the barge, the booster was supposed to refuel there and fly to the launch site on its own. ;)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/29/2020 03:20 pm
    But I remember that Elon had an extraordinary promise.After landing to the barge, the booster was supposed to refuel there and fly to the launch site on its own. ;)
    That is quite extraordinary.

    Do you recall where you saw it?

    OTOH it does take about 3 days to get the stage back to port.  That's a lot of time if you're really serious about cutting turnaround time.

    The other option is to begin inspection & refurb on route. I'd be surprised if they weren't doing some of this already.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rsdavis9 on 04/29/2020 03:23 pm
    But I remember that Elon had an extraordinary promise.After landing to the barge, the booster was supposed to refuel there and fly to the launch site on its own. ;)
    That is quite extraordinary.

    Do you recall where you saw it?

    OTOH it does take about 3 days to get the stage back to port.  That's a lot of time if you're really serious about cutting turnaround time.

    The other option is to begin inspection & refurb on route. I'd be surprised if they weren't doing some of this already.

    I remember that too.
    Probably an elon tweet.

    The real problem was having your barge(target!) filled with cryo fuel.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 04/29/2020 03:36 pm
    Quote
    But sometimes you have to point out why arguments are absurd.
    This topic is about reusability effects.At a recent press conference, one dude from SpaceX said that the production cost of Falcon-9 is lower than $ 30 million(as I heard 28 $ million).It's irrational, I'm sorry. But the whole experience of my life tells me to believe this dude and not to Ms. Barashkova from GK Launch Services .SpaceX suggests a propulsive landing. This is the right way.It's hard to improve something else here.But I remember that Elon had an extraordinary promise.After landing to the barge, the booster was supposed to refuel there and fly to the launch site on its own. ;)

    Yes, the "SpaceX dude" was Christopher Couluris, Director of Rocket and Payload Integration.  The context was an industry presentation that was not for public consumption or understanding.

    The limitations on this "$28 million" figure include:  (1) the context means that it may not have been a precise number or an aspirational number, which after all he might not be in a position to know; (2) he was unclear whether it was price or cost; and (3) he did not state whether that was (a) a marginal value of a launch on a reused booster and reused fairing, or (b) the launch of a new booster and fairing.

    We are assuming that:  (1) it is a precise number; (2) & (3) he meant marginal launch cost with reused first stage and fairing.  Like you, I believe that the $28 million figure is correct.  Sounds about right -- nothing irrational about it.  But we could be wrong.  And some here might make different assumptions.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: whitelancer64 on 04/29/2020 03:43 pm
    SpaceX never speak about this in detail and never offered real evidence that F9R have any real cost savings so far.

    They have reduced their prices. Of course reuse is far from the only way to reduce prices, but personally I believe SpaceX when they say reuse has enabled cost (and thus price) reduction.

    On a separate point, I don’t think the recent Merlin failure due to residual cleaning fluid igniting tells us anything useful about how many flights a booster can make. They just need to take more care whenever such cleaning is required (which could be on every reuse for all we know).

    1. How much they reduced their prices. What I read last time, their prices for big comsats are still little more than 60 ml$. Some big comsats, that flew first time on reused boosters got some discount in the past, but not now. I don't want to discuss again IXPE with halve off F9R payload capacity, only big comsats prices. 

    Of course, if they have lot of free capital from outside investment or private debt, it doesn't really matter. TB suggest this on REDDIT and said, that it bring total disconnect between real prices and costs. So why SX didn't react on this and simply clarified how much outside investments and private debt they really have ?

    2. When EM was asked on Twitter if B1048.5 engine failure could negatively affect the first planned Crew Dragon flight with humans in May. He said that no, because this flight will use brand new booster + engines, while B1048.5 ( boosters + engines ) had lot of wear and tear after 4 reflights.

    SpaceX recently won a NASA launch for IXPE, they specified using a previously flown booster, with a bid of $50.3 million. Emphasis, this is a NASA launch, with extra bells and whistles, and launch assurance, etc. I can see why you don't want to discuss it, since it blows a big hole in your argument. The rocket is going to cost the same to launch whether it's a lightweight payload or a super heavy comsat.

    SpaceX has no obligation to report to the public their operating costs, debts, etc. since they are a private company. They appear to not care much about idle, un-informed speculation online.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/29/2020 03:51 pm
    As I said before 1 solid booster for Vulcan cost about 6 ml $. Subcooling LOX for Vulcan 1st and 2st stage and cooling of LNG for Vulcan 1st stage could be equal to using 2 or 3 solid boosters. Other option for increase of payload is simple to make tanks much bigger at first place. But making tanks bigger or SC of propellant isn't never free. It should have always negative effect on your total cost per launch.

    Same with all new or planned launchers like New Glenn, Angara, Ariane 6, Long March 7. If they all could increase their launchers payload by 20 % = decrease their cost per kilogram by 20 %, without any significant increase of total cost per launch, they will be all doing this. There is very competitive commercial launch market right now and everyone want have part of it.

    You're conflating fixed and operational costs. Even if it would cost Ariane or ULA a NRE amounting to 20% of all operating costs over, say 5 years, to ADD subcooling, that does not mean that SpaceX would save 20% by REMOVING subcooling, or that subcooling accounts for 20% of SpaceX operational costs.

    SpaceX has spread the non-recurring investment in subcooling over a large number of missions, and tuned their entire supply chain to enable it. Other operators may not be able to do either of those things in a reasonable period of time.

    SpaceX has done the same thing for reuse. Their vehicle is optimized for it. Their supply chain is optimized for it. Their operations are optimized for it. This did not happen overnight, and represents a significant total investment... but now they have very low operational costs per mission, thanks to reuse and other operational optimizations.

    Launch vehicles are huge, complex systems. You can't just tack on a part to the system and evaluate costs without re-optimizing the rest of the system.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 04/29/2020 04:08 pm
    My prediction for F9R breakeven number was 7-10 and I never said, that they could not do this in the future. Only that I believe TB, that F9R 1st reuse didn't bring any cost savings so far. SpaceX could have enough capital, before they get there.

    You think SpaceX's launch reuse operations are not profitable right now? I'm not talking about paying back the initial development costs, those are irrelevant to them now. I mean operational revenue > operational expenses.

    The initial investment in reuse does not really matter, since it was funded with equity, not debt. As long as they can sustain cash flow and generate net operational profits, they don't have to "pay back" anything. The investors are happy because the stock value increased.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/29/2020 04:16 pm
    Well at least the Russians admit SpaceX's reuse does save money, that's progress, unlike ULA who still insists no saving until 10 reuses.

    Yes, weird times we live in.

    Quote
    And despite all its faults, I think the analysis is sort of correct in that having someone paying for the full hardware cost in the first launch does make it easier for reuse to break even, I suspect you could show this using ULA's spreadsheet. I don't think SpaceX needs this to break even, but it's a nice bonus.

    I think the real innovation is that SpaceX was able to convince all of their customers to allow SpaceX to do reusability experiments on their launches - even the U.S. Government. That allowed SpaceX to run small experiments for low costs, especially early on when they didn't have many resources. Remember they initially tried recovering Falcon 1 stages using parachutes, but the stages burned up. Invaluable information that is expensive to get.

    So I would say that a business model that supports reusability development is really the key, and that you can structure your tests so that your customers accept the risks.

    As an example, NASA was VERY interested in the data SpaceX was getting from booster re-entry, since that was related to NASA's future plans for landing larger vehicles on Mars. So NASA was far more amendable to allowing for reusability testing on their launches since they were also getting valuable information they couldn't afford to get otherwise. And commercial customers were essentially investing in the future, since reusability would eventually allow them to save money.

    Elon Musk is very good at identifying where the needs of SpaceX overlap with the needs of their customers, and with reusability there was a lot of overlap. Which meant customer were incentivized to allow for reusability experiments on the flights they bought exclusively for their own needs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 04/29/2020 04:23 pm
    1. 20 % of increase of payload thanks to subcooling of LOX and cooling of RP1, was said also by EM, even before F9R full thrust really start flying. Before it was about 17t, than about 22t to LEO. How much you think it is 5-10 % ??? I said about 20 %, not exactly 20.
    There were other changes in parallel that happened, so you can't attribute it all to the subcooling. In reality, the main improvements have been in the increased thrust. To make best use of increased thrust you want to make the rocket heavier with additional fuel. SpaceX went to subcooling when other constraints prevented simply making the rocket bigger. Many rockets would not be able to lift off if they added more fuel by subcooling.

    This number is meaningless anyway, since you are just using it to claim that subcooling must be super expensive, which makes no sense and is simply bad logic. Enginneering is not a zero sum game and improvements can be made in performance without an equal increase in costs. The fact that F9 was already so much cheaper than comparable rockets before reuse caused cost and price to drop further shows that much. When looking at actual facts, launch prices from SpaceX did not increase when this was implemented.

    My prediction for F9R breakeven number was 7-10 and I never said, that they could not do this in the future. Only that I believe TB, that F9R 1st reuse didn't bring any cost savings so far. SpaceX could have enough capital, before they get there.

    I also believe that fully reusable Starship/SH, will have much better final cost per kilogram than F9R and will bring real cost savings.
    Tory Bruno's claim is based on a long since debunked analysis. Even the recently released analysis from Russia disagrees with that claim. SpaceX has stated from the beginning that they saved money from even the very first reuse, so the only real question is how many reuses before development cost is paid back.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 04/29/2020 04:32 pm
    In my experience people make assertions of this kind through the filter of their own experience.  The Russians have been gouging NASA for seats on Soyuz for years to prop up their space program and therefore presume SpaceX is doing the same.

    I've been waiting for someone to publicly say that NASA also subsidizes Soyuz.

    I think it's very likely that Soyuz will struggle after the fat NASA money is gone, and I'm ok with that.  Should have happened years ago.

    Russia has had every opportunity to develop reuse and haven't. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/29/2020 04:50 pm
    My prediction for F9R breakeven number was 7-10 and I never said, that they could not do this in the future. Only that I believe TB...

    For some reason you choose to NOT believe Elon Musk and everyone at SpaceX that has commented publicly about reusability.

    Instead you choose to believe, WITHOUT QUESTION, a SpaceX competitor. Someone that won't have a reusable rocket, and has no reason to confirm reusability actually provides benefits. Because doing so would put them at a competitive disadvantage, which could result in the loss of new customers, new revenue, and job losses (not to mention CEO bonuses).

    I understand that SpaceX has not achieved everything they have set out to achieve, but like many others here I have looked deep into the actual numbers over these many years, and the math for reusability pencils out. And I say this as someone that used to do cost roll-ups in the manufacturing world, so I have some experience in doing this.

    I've also dug into the costs of the Shuttle and SLS programs, so it is very apparent to me what SpaceX is doing right. And that also provides a good basis of comparison when looking at the fully reusable Starship.

    Add on top of that humanities LONG history with reusable transportation systems, and it is clear that once the cost of the initial investment is amortized, that reusability is clearly cost effective. No question.

    Which is why your "opinions" are not convincing anyone. The math for reusability is very clear, and the only entities complaining about SpaceX are their competitors who have not yet embraced reusability. Which makes their motivations quite clear, so why would anyone believe them?

    Tory Bruno is knowledgeable about ULA, but he has no first hand knowledge regarding SpaceX. And Tory Bruno has no incentive to show how SpaceX is better than ULA. That should be clear to everyone.

    My $0.02
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/29/2020 06:24 pm
    I understand that SpaceX has not achieved everything they have set out to achieve, but like many others here I have looked deep into the actual numbers over these many years, and the math for reusability pencils out.
    Not yet, to be strictly accurate.

    I think we're all hoping SS/SH will finally deliver US reusability.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Cremalera on 04/29/2020 07:00 pm
    Quote
    I've been waiting for someone to publicly say that NASA also subsidizes Soyuz.
    Not directly, of course. But it's true.If there was no contract with NASA(or ISS itself)then the Russian manned program would resemble a Chinese ,with six flights in 20 years.And so, the agreement with NASA makes Roskosmos keep the brand.For that, my friends who work at the Saturn plant(in my town)and produce solar panels for Soyuz and Progress spacecraft are grateful to NASA.
    Quote
    Because doing so would put them at a competitive disadvantage, which could result in the loss of new customers, new revenue, and job losses (not to mention CEO bonuses).
    You are right in many ways, but money is not the main reason here.Money alone doesn’t mean much in Russia.
    The main reason is the ability to puff out cheeks.And the reusability (even partial) of Elon’s Falcon,s deprives them of such an opportunity.I think that in vain the skeptics are trying to stab SpaceX with numbers and charts of an economic justification.
    SpaceX gives hope for all.And hope does not have a price list.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 04/29/2020 07:15 pm
    So if re-usability isn't working, then why did SpaceX drop the cost of a F9 rocket from $62 million base price for a new rocket to around $40 million to re-use a rocket.  That says a lot.  a $20 million +/- drop in price.  It obviously cost's less to refurbish than some companies believe. 

    The problem with ULA is they buy their engines from someone else at a higher cost than SpaceX engines.  Once Blue Origin gets New Glenn up and running, and SpaceX gets Starship up and running, prices to orbit are going to drop.  Throw-a-way rockets are going to be too expensive.  Won't happen overnight, but within 5-10 years, everyone else is going to be working on reuse.  Ships, cars, trains, and planes are all re-used.  Rockets are the last hold-out for re-use. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 04/29/2020 07:51 pm
    So if re-usability isn't working, then why did SpaceX drop the cost of a F9 rocket from $62 million base price for a new rocket to around $40 million to re-use a rocket.  That says a lot.  a $20 million +/- drop in price.  It obviously cost's less to refurbish than some companies believe. 

    The problem with ULA is they buy their engines from someone else at a higher cost than SpaceX engines.  Once Blue Origin gets New Glenn up and running, and SpaceX gets Starship up and running, prices to orbit are going to drop.  Throw-a-way rockets are going to be too expensive.  Won't happen overnight, but within 5-10 years, everyone else is going to be working on reuse.  Ships, cars, trains, and planes are all re-used.  Rockets are the last hold-out for re-use. 

    Except Russia.
    I understand that SpaceX has not achieved everything they have set out to achieve, but like many others here I have looked deep into the actual numbers over these many years, and the math for reusability pencils out.
    Not yet, to be strictly accurate.

    I think we're all hoping SS/SH will finally deliver US reusability.


    Exactly, it goes against everything we've seen to date in the space age, using a super heavy for routine launch services at the lowest price per pound anyone has seen.  But if the vehicle is cheap enough and easily re-useable it will work.

    It is a big step and massive vehicle but there is no reason to not believe they will achieve it at sometime in the next few years.  Get it up and running with paying payloads then repeat the F9 model of iterate relentlessly. 

    I was extremely skeptical of SpaceX's ability to achieve reuse and the first time I saw ITS I laughed.  3.5 years later and we are seeing some decent progress and I think they are going to succeed in getting SH/SS to fly.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 04/29/2020 08:44 pm
    Quote
    I've been waiting for someone to publicly say that NASA also subsidizes Soyuz.
    Not directly, of course. But it's true.

    I'm going to answer this because it is cost related, though not reusability specific. But the topic of subsidies is.

    Due to all of the claims about NASA subsidizing SpaceX, when talking about "subsidies" I think we should stick with the dictionary definition, which according to Investopedia (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subsidy.asp) is:
    Quote
    A subsidy is a benefit given to an individual, business, or institution, usually by the government. It is usually in the form of a cash payment or a tax reduction. The subsidy is typically given to remove some type of burden, and it is often considered to be in the overall interest of the public, given to promote a social good or an economic policy.

    In other words a subsidy is money that is given to a company, with no expectation of something directly in return. Which is not the financial arrangement that NASA has with buying Soyuz flights, the U.S. Government is paying for a transportation service. So NASA does not subsidize Soyuz flights.

    And in the same light, NASA does not subsidize SpaceX either. NASA awards SpaceX contracts for services, and SpaceX is only paid when they deliver the services. So not a subsidy.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 04/29/2020 09:12 pm
    SpaceX gives hope for all.And hope does not have a price list.
    Hmmm.

    I like that.

    Tell your friends.

    The day is coming when Soyuz monopoly on human access to LEO will end. When that happens someone inside their organization had better have a Plan B at some level of development.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 04/30/2020 09:00 am
    SpaceX gives hope for all.And hope does not have a price list.
    Hmmm.

    I like that.

    Tell your friends.

    The day is coming when Soyuz monopoly on human access to LEO will end. When that happens someone inside their organization had better have a Plan B at some level of development.

    More specifically, the Soyuz monopoly will end when BOTH CCP providers are regularly flying folks to the ISS.

    In the Shuttle days you had Shuttle and Soyuz to transport people to the ISS. Soyuz was the backup for when Shuttle had to stand down.
    When Shuttle was retired in 2011 Soyuz became the primary AND only vehicle for flying people to the ISS.

    CCP is about to restore the situation of the Shuttle days: Crew Dragon and Soyuz, and they act as each others backups.
    When, about a year after that, Starliner also comes online than Crew Dragon and Starliner will be each others backups. The only customers left for Soyuz will be Russian cosmonauts and whoever the Russians can convince to fly on Soyuz.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacexfanatic on 04/30/2020 09:14 am
    SpaceX gives hope for all.And hope does not have a price list.
    Hmmm.

    I like that.

    Tell your friends.

    The day is coming when Soyuz monopoly on human access to LEO will end. When that happens someone inside their organization had better have a Plan B at some level of development.

    More specifically, the Soyuz monopoly will end when BOTH CCP providers are regularly flying folks to the ISS.

    In the Shuttle days you had Shuttle and Soyuz to transport people to the ISS. Soyuz was the backup for when Shuttle had to stand down.
    When Shuttle was retired in 2011 Soyuz became the primary AND only vehicle for flying people to the ISS.

    CCP is about to restore the situation of the Shuttle days: Crew Dragon and Soyuz, and they act as each others backups.
    When, about a year after that, Starliner also comes online than Crew Dragon and Starliner will be each others backups. The only customers left for Soyuz will be Russian cosmonauts and whoever the Russians can convince to fly on Soyuz.

    .

    I think this three companies should start think about a common space hotel (private space station) they could make a lot of mony by sending people there for one week or two in space, may be also offering possibilities for others countries non involved in the ISS program to perform scientifc experience there. anyway competition will lower prices and lower will open new markets.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rakaydos on 04/30/2020 11:48 am
    SpaceX gives hope for all.And hope does not have a price list.
    Hmmm.

    I like that.

    Tell your friends.

    The day is coming when Soyuz monopoly on human access to LEO will end. When that happens someone inside their organization had better have a Plan B at some level of development.

    More specifically, the Soyuz monopoly will end when BOTH CCP providers are regularly flying folks to the ISS.

    In the Shuttle days you had Shuttle and Soyuz to transport people to the ISS. Soyuz was the backup for when Shuttle had to stand down.
    When Shuttle was retired in 2011 Soyuz became the primary AND only vehicle for flying people to the ISS.

    CCP is about to restore the situation of the Shuttle days: Crew Dragon and Soyuz, and they act as each others backups.
    When, about a year after that, Starliner also comes online than Crew Dragon and Starliner will be each others backups. The only customers left for Soyuz will be Russian cosmonauts and whoever the Russians can convince to fly on Soyuz.

    .

    I think this three companies should start think about a common space hotel (private space station) they could make a lot of mony by sending people there for one week or two in space, may be also offering possibilities for others countries non involved in the ISS program to perform scientifc experience there. anyway competition will lower prices and lower will open new markets.
    The problem is, modern Russia has been cruising on the accomplishments of the old Soviet Union. The soyuz was the cheapest way of getting into orbit until SpaceX came around, because they weren't putting anything into r&D, and had cheap labor costs. They literally cannot afford to catch up with the falcon 9, New Glen, and whatever link space is coming up with, let alone deal with the sea change that starship is.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 04/30/2020 04:36 pm
    After recent Russian skepticism about SpaceX costs, this:

    [...]

    If SpaceX spent $1 billion learning how to reuse rockets and their launch prices remain otherwise unaffected, the cost of developing reuse should be fully recovered inside of 34 launches, regardless of how many times a given stage can be flown.
    You need to add running costs of SpaceX Navy to reuse costs.
    It’s pretty low, maybe a couple million per year.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Asteroza on 05/07/2020 08:08 am
    Not directly, of course. But it's true.If there was no contract with NASA(or ISS itself)then the Russian manned program would resemble a Chinese ,with six flights in 20 years.And so, the agreement with NASA makes Roskosmos keep the brand.For that, my friends who work at the Saturn plant(in my town)and produce solar panels for Soyuz and Progress spacecraft are grateful to NASA.

    At least Progress will need to fly regularly on a Soyuz rocket until ISS is split and/or disposed of, but after that? With Proton approaching end of life as well, the only Soyuz rockets doing regular runs will end up being for the russian military, so that's going to end up putting pressure on all those manufacturing people as the orders trend down. If anyone has experience with keeping costs down on a mass produced expendable rocket, it's the Soyuz manufacturers, but even they will be hard pressed to squeeze out more cost reductions at this point due to flight heritage concerns regarding manufacturing methods. They have several decades under their belt, and that includes costs like pensions for their employees. All these newspace entrants don't have the personnel overhead that incumbents must bear, and in many cases specifically avoid through contract employees.

    Which is an interesting point. Elon wants to go to Mars as a permanent endeavor, so he will have to face the pension overhead issue as SpaceX itself becomes a long lived incumbent company. That will weigh on costs that SpaceX currently does not shoulder. The fully burdened costs of pension liabilities for a SpaceX lifer, who came in as a college graduate, is nothing to sniff at.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 05/07/2020 12:10 pm
    After recent Russian skepticism about SpaceX costs, this:

    [...]

    If SpaceX spent $1 billion learning how to reuse rockets and their launch prices remain otherwise unaffected, the cost of developing reuse should be fully recovered inside of 34 launches, regardless of how many times a given stage can be flown.
    You need to add running costs of SpaceX Navy to reuse costs.
    It’s pretty low, maybe a couple million per year.

    It is low. But not that low. More like $35 million per year.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: r8ix on 05/07/2020 02:44 pm
    Which is an interesting point. Elon wants to go to Mars as a permanent endeavor, so he will have to face the pension overhead issue as SpaceX itself becomes a long lived incumbent company. That will weigh on costs that SpaceX currently does not shoulder. The fully burdened costs of pension liabilities for a SpaceX lifer, who came in as a college graduate, is nothing to sniff at.

    It’s unlikely that SpaceX has a pension plan, as opposed to a defined contribution plan. So there probably aren’t any future pension costs, they’re all paid up...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/26/2020 06:40 pm
    In Irene Klotz's interview of Musk in the run-up to DM-2, he puts the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 flight (1st stage and fairing reusable) at $15 million, of which $10 million is the upper stage.  Only $1 million for first stage refurbishment.

    The discussion is about 4/10ths into the interview...

    https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/podcast-interview-spacexs-elon-musk
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: jpo234 on 05/26/2020 07:16 pm
    In Irene Klotz's interview of Musk in the run-up to DM-2, he puts the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 flight (1st stage and fairing reusable) at $15 million, of which $10 million is the upper stage.  Only $1 million for first stage refurbishment.

    The discussion is about 4/10ths into the interview...

    https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/podcast-interview-spacexs-elon-musk
    With just 4 satellites in a rideshare mission they can undercut 4 equivalent Electron launches.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 05/26/2020 08:33 pm
    In Irene Klotz's interview of Musk in the run-up to DM-2, he puts the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 flight (1st stage and fairing reusable) at $15 million, of which $10 million is the upper stage.  Only $1 million for first stage refurbishment.

    The discussion is about 4/10ths into the interview...

    https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/podcast-interview-spacexs-elon-musk
    With just 4 satellites in a rideshare mission they can undercut 4 equivalent Electron launches.
    Don't forget this is only marginal cost, generally have to add in initial cost for the stage divided by number of reuses (plus profit, if that isn't included) This would add around $4 to $14 million per launch. (Assuming first stage is 0.7*$60 million, and between 3 and 10 reuses, ignoring fairing as a rounding error of <1 million per launch)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: niwax on 05/26/2020 09:01 pm
    In Irene Klotz's interview of Musk in the run-up to DM-2, he puts the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 flight (1st stage and fairing reusable) at $15 million, of which $10 million is the upper stage.  Only $1 million for first stage refurbishment.

    The discussion is about 4/10ths into the interview...

    https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/podcast-interview-spacexs-elon-musk
    With just 4 satellites in a rideshare mission they can undercut 4 equivalent Electron launches.
    Don't forget this is only marginal cost, generally have to add in initial cost for the stage divided by number of reuses (plus profit, if that isn't included) This would add around $4 to $14 million per launch. (Assuming first stage is 0.7*$60 million, and between 3 and 10 reuses, ignoring fairing as a rounding error of <1 million per launch)

    That is assuming they already use each core to the fullest and cut prices for every launch as much as possible. In reality, they have high-priced early launches, and then paying customers up to the third or fourth. Launching a booster an additional time is worth it if you only make $1.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 05/28/2020 06:53 am
    Elon’s $15m marginal cost ties back pretty well to the previously “rumoured” $28m total cost for an F9 launch. The crucial confirmation here is that the $28m was indeed the all inclusive, amortized total cost, and not the marginal cost of a launch.

    Also, the actual refurbishment cost is confirmed as being incredibly low. Someone above mentioned $1m but the audio quality wasn’t great and to me it sounded like he said a “quarter of a million” dollars. But either way, it is far, far improved from the previous estimate of “less than half the cost of a new booster” that was mentioned by Gwynne for the very first reuse. They have clearly come a long way since then.

    And it absolutely settles the question around the value of reuse, despite the objections of the naysayers.

    Great interview by Irene.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/28/2020 04:58 pm
    Starting with $15M per flight marginal cost.

    Then add 1st Stage amortized costs over 5 flights +$6M

    Then add faring amortized costs over 3 flights +$2.3M

    Then add launch processing costs $7M

    Then add profit (fixed amount) $11M

    Price = $42M.

    Max Cost to Starlink per flight (no profit) $31M.

    This is inline with the reported Starlink launch costs and the reuse pricing values.

    The profit margin on the $62M new booster launch was an estimated $11M or ~20%. But maintaining the same fixed profit amount with much lower costs the profit margin has increased to >30%.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 05/28/2020 06:41 pm
    Starting with $15M per flight marginal cost.

    Then add 1st Stage amortized costs over 5 flights +$6M

    Then add faring amortized costs over 3 flights +$2.3M

    Then add launch processing costs $7M

    Then add profit (fixed amount) $11M

    Price = $42M.

    Max Cost to Starlink per flight (no profit) $31M.

    This is inline with the reported Starlink launch costs and the reuse pricing values.

    The profit margin on the $62M new booster launch was an estimated $11M or ~20%. But maintaining the same fixed profit amount with much lower costs the profit margin has increased to >30%.

    $31M for a Starlink launch is an incredible achievement.  $2000 per KG to LEO.

    I love that the profit margin increases with reuse.  SpaceX has spent a lot of money developing this unique capability, they deserve the profit margins.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/28/2020 07:35 pm
    Then add launch processing costs $7M

    What are launch processing costs?  Setting aside the amortization of the hardware costs, the $15 million includes all of the costs for launch.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/28/2020 08:56 pm
    Then add launch processing costs $7M

    What are launch processing costs?  Setting aside the amortization of the hardware costs, the $15 million includes all of the costs for launch.

    If you are correct then the US costs are ~$6M. ($15M - $7M for process and handling [manpower+ prop+range fees+other costs like recovery fleet average costs] -$1M for 1st stage refurbish ment -$1M for faring refurbishment = $6M)

    It is possible that with the current high build rate that the US costs have gotten to be less than a new faring cost at $6-7M.


    In all if the processing costs which are more of an allocated overhead than a true marginal cost except for prop and range fees. Then cost to Starlink is closer to $25M. With profit and profit margins $17M and >60% on a price of $42M.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/28/2020 09:17 pm
    Musk said $15 million "excluding R&D and overhead," $10 million of which is upper stage and $1 million of which is first stage refurbishment.  That leaves $4 million for the fairing refurbishment (if any) and running the prep, launch and recovery operations.  "A million dollars a ton to orbit."

    It seems likely that this is for a Starlink launch, which by now they are probably pretty good at doing.

    Of course, the amortized costs are also true costs.  But the marginal costs form the basis for the pricing and service decision-making on a going-forward basis, now that Falcon 9 is operational.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: cwr on 05/28/2020 10:01 pm
    I'm just going by what Musk said.  $15 million, $10 million of which is upper stage and $1 million of which is first stage refurbishment.  That leaves $4 million for the fairing refurbishment (if any) and running the prep, launch and recovery operations.  "$1,000 a ton to orbit" was what he said.

    It seems likely that this is for a Starlink launch, which by now they are probably pretty good at doing.

    Of course, the amortized costs are also true costs.  But the marginal costs form the basis for the pricing and production decision-making on a going-forward basis, now that Falcon 9 is operational.

    I haven't heard the interview myself but if the cost of a launch is $15,000,000 and a starlink launch is
    60 * 260kg = 15,600 kg total payload
    That means $1000 per kg to orbit rather than $1000 a ton.

    Or am I misunderstanding what is being said?

    thanks

    Carl
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 05/28/2020 10:14 pm
    I haven't heard the interview myself but if the cost of a launch is $15,000,000 and a starlink launch is
    60 * 260kg = 15,600 kg total payload
    That means $1000 per kg to orbit rather than $1000 a ton.

    Or am I misunderstanding what is being said?

    Good catch.  Indeed he did say "a million dollars a ton."  Edited.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: SmallKing on 05/29/2020 01:45 am
    Musk  is not reliable source , he always say some crazy stuff on twitter . you shouldn't take his twitter seriously.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 05/29/2020 01:57 am
    Musk  is not reliable source , he always say some crazy stuff on twitter . you shouldn't take his twitter seriously.
    This was based on an interview, not tweets, and Musk is generally a very reliable source. Though it turns out from this interview he hasn't been keeping count of how many total F9s have launched.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 05/29/2020 02:33 am
    A lot of great info in that interview. Musk said $15m was the current best case marginal cost for launching 15 tonnes to LEO on an F9. So that obviously assumes fairing reuse - either after water recovery or net capture.

    The $1m/quarter of a million dollars cost of first stage refurbishment was also great info. It sounded more like a quarter of a million dollars to me, but that part was a bit difficult to hear.

    Either way, what I found interesting was what he was focusing on as the major remaining items that could reduce cost. Namely the kerosene fuel and the helium for pressurization.

    The fact that these are seen as areas of noteworthy cost reduction is remarkable, given how small they are in the bigger scheme of things. That tells me that the other costs have pretty much been reduced to being less significant than the above, and the major remaining contributors (other than the expendable upper stage) are consumables such as kerosene and helium. Truly remarkable.

    Also, I don’t see how marginal cost can exclude flight operations costs as those are not a set overhead, but will be a variable per flight cost. So the $15m likely represents all the additional costs incurred by engaging in an extra flight. Or using the correct term for it - the “marginal cost per flight” - just as Elon stated.


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: theinternetftw on 05/29/2020 05:50 am
    After listening carefully to the podcast (https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/podcast-interview-spacexs-elon-musk) (line in question is at 18:25), I'm pretty sure his words are

    "Call it a million dollars worth of refurbishment needed for the booster."

    Listening to it at speed, I could hear it either way, but slowing it down a bit and listening to a small part of the end of the clip, then slowly adding more to the front to try and avoid my brain using pattern recognition to fill in more than is actually there, I heard "million dollars", then "a million dollars", then "idda million dollars", then "allidda million dollars", then "callidda million dollars".

    Take that for what you will.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 05/29/2020 06:13 am
    After listening carefully to the podcast (https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/podcast-interview-spacexs-elon-musk) (line in question is at 18:25), I'm pretty sure his words are

    "Call it a million dollars worth of refurbishment needed for the booster."

    Listening to it at speed, I could hear it either way, but slowing it down a bit and listening to a small part of the end of the clip, then slowly adding more to the front to try and avoid my brain using pattern recognition to fill in more than is actually there, I heard "million dollars", then "a million dollars", then "idda million dollars", then "allidda million dollars", then "callidda million dollars".

    Take that for what you will.

    Thanks for confirming.

    The broader point of refurbishment costing only a million dollars - a minuscule percentage of the cost of a new booster - is the remarkable revelation. That bodes very well for the future of reuse.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 05/29/2020 06:48 am
    Musk  is not reliable source , he always say some crazy stuff on twitter . you shouldn't take his twitter seriously.

    Given that SpaceX is giving the launch folks in your part of the world a very hard time I can actually understand your prejudice against Musk.

    Having said that, your post is ridiculous and not supported by facts.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: SmallKing on 05/29/2020 09:26 am
    Facts ? musk twitter once said starlink launch is 18.5T .Which is actually 15.6T .
    And once said Falcon9 will do 24h reuse in 2018.Which is obvious false.the list just go on and on . you can fact check his twitter from past  few years, you know what I mean
    remember he is a business man first .
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 05/29/2020 02:53 pm
    Facts ? musk twitter once said starlink launch is 18.5T .Which is actually 15.6T .
    And once said Falcon9 will do 24h reuse in 2018.Which is obvious false.the list just go on and on . you can fact check his twitter from past  few years, you know what I mean
    remember he is a business man first .

    The 24 h reflight was a forward-looking statement about an aspirational goal, that's very different than looking at current operating costs.

    And Musk (maybe) being off by a few percent on the total Starlink mass hardly implies that he's off by 1000s of percent on the cost of booster refurbishment.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 05/29/2020 05:49 pm
    Facts ? musk twitter once said starlink launch is 18.5T .Which is actually 15.6T .
    And once said Falcon9 will do 24h reuse in 2018.Which is obvious false.the list just go on and on . you can fact check his twitter from past  few years, you know what I mean
    remember he is a business man first .

    The 24 h reflight was a forward-looking statement about an aspirational goal, that's very different than looking at current operating costs.

    And Musk (maybe) being off by a few percent on the total Starlink mass hardly implies that he's off by 1000s of percent on the cost of booster refurbishment.
    To add to this, anyone who claims Musk is a business man first is not familiar with his history and technical background.

    Besides his actual technical background, it is obvious listening to him such as in the interview referenced here the passion he has for his goals, which is further evidenced by the fact that he has picked terribly difficult industries to start businesses in. If he put business first rather than his goals first, he would have picked something easier.

    But this is drifting, back to the subject at hand.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: SmallKing on 05/30/2020 12:37 am
    Only sith deals in absolute .
    everybody knew he has the tech education background. but he always make exaggerated claims to promote his product.That's why I said he is a businessman first.
    so you shouldn't take his promoting seriously. he said reusability can make Falcon 9 cost about 2 million, which is not true as well. is there more example I have to list?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 05/30/2020 01:11 am
    Only sith deals in absolute .
    everybody knew he has the tech education background. but he always make exaggerated claims to promote his product.That's why I said he is a businessman first.
    so you shouldn't take his promoting seriously. he said reusability can make Falcon 9 cost about 2 million, which is not true as well. is there more example I have to list?

    So you found a few claims he did not back up? So now nothing he says is reliable? Despite what he has accomplished?  :) You can certainly think that, and I'm sure he does not mind that at all. The more people like you who don't believe, the more of a head start he gets.

    Most of us understand that he is a salesman. Yes, he exaggerates. A lot sometimes. But you have to take him seriously or you will be left behind.

    Although to be fair I'd like to see a source of the "2 million claim". No doubt that was with full reusability. But right now F9 only has first stage reusability, and full reusability is now planned for the next launch vehicle. There is a huge difference (in English) when you say that something can be done versus will be done.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 05/30/2020 01:16 am
    Only sith deals in absolute .
    everybody knew he has the tech education background. but he always make exaggerated claims to promote his product.That's why I said he is a businessman first.
    so you shouldn't take his promoting seriously. he said reusability can make Falcon 9 cost about 2 million, which is not true as well. is there more example I have to list?

    You seem to be confusing Starship’s aspirational “$20/kg to LEO” goal with F9 (which in this very interview Musk said is at $1000/kg marginal cost in the current best case scenario).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Falcon9999 on 05/30/2020 03:13 am
    Only sith deals in absolute .
    everybody knew he has the tech education background. but he always make exaggerated claims to promote his product.That's why I said he is a businessman first.
    so you shouldn't take his promoting seriously. he said reusability can make Falcon 9 cost about 2 million, which is not true as well. is there more example I have to list?

    So you found a few claims he did not back up? So now nothing he says is reliable? Despite what he has accomplished?  :) You can certainly think that, and I'm sure he does not mind that at all. The more people like you who don't believe, the more of a head start he gets.

    Most of us understand that he is a salesman. Yes, he exaggerates. A lot sometimes. But you have to take him seriously or you will be left behind.

    Although to be fair I'd like to see a source of the "2 million claim". No doubt that was with full reusability. But right now F9 only has first stage reusability, and full reusability is now planned for the next launch vehicle. There is a huge difference (in English) when you say that something can be done versus will be done.
    Musk exaggerates a lot .actually i remember a spacex personnel last years said reuse didnt save much money
    refurbish cost about 20 miliion..its seems a lecture in university but  i forgot the link.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 05/30/2020 04:52 am
    Musk exaggerates a lot .actually i remember a spacex personnel last years said reuse didnt save much money
    refurbish cost about 20 miliion..its seems a lecture in university but  i forgot the link.

    Many of us have been following SpaceX since the beginning, so we know what Elon Musk has said. And sure, sometimes he talks about aspirational goals that eventually don't work out.

    But what many people do not understand is that Elon Musk likes to share HIS goals, which are NOT the same as OUR goals. If he misses HIS goals, so what? American taxpayers don't foot the bill if the Starship is not yet flying.

    Also, quite a bit of what Elon Musk says is actually presented as facts, and we should accept them as fact since Elon Musk is actually the expert on reusable rockets. No one else in a leadership position knows more than he does, and I think we all know that he is the leading force worldwide on reusable rockets.

    So saying that you think you heard someone contradict him, but you can't remember when, and you don't have any proof, sorry, but that just doesn't pass muster here.

    I know this was your first post, but you'll have to do better than cast aspirations without any evidence.

    My $0.02
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meberbs on 05/30/2020 06:03 am
    Musk exaggerates a lot .actually i remember a spacex personnel last years said reuse didnt save much money
    refurbish cost about 20 miliion..its seems a lecture in university but  i forgot the link.
    A half remembered and incorrect statement from a vague source is not a basis on which to claim that someone was lying.

    Your statement is known to be incorrect because Shotwell said upon the first reused booster flight that refurbishment was less than half the cost of building a new stage. This means that maybe, at most the first one ever cost that much. Taking a minute to look up the quote she actually said "substantially less than half" so even the first one ever cost less than your claim, and costs are reasonably expected to significantly drop with experience as they learn what does and does not require inspection or refurbishment.

    https://spacenews.com/spacex-gaining-substantial-cost-savings-from-reused-falcon-9/
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 05/30/2020 06:43 am
    Musk exaggerates a lot .actually i remember a spacex personnel last years said reuse didnt save much money
    refurbish cost about 20 miliion..its seems a lecture in university but  i forgot the link.
    Welcome to the site and the second new member from the middle kingdom it appears.

    You might like to look into Musk's background a bit more. He holds degrees in both Physics and Economics.  In another life he'd probably be a quantitative analyst at a hedge fund.

    If you look at his personal predictions for success they are often very conservative.
    On SpaceX, "We'd probably fail" on Starlink "My first goal is not to go bankrupt"

    It should be quite obvious that booster recovery pays only if the cost of refurb and recovery costs less than 1/2 the new build cost. Worst case you only get 1 extra reuse out of the stage. If it doesn't then it's pointless.  If your alleged quote was made before a stage had been recovered then the true cost of refurb was unknown, beyond they'd done the math and concluded it could be done for less than half the new build cost.  That is not exaggeration, it's engineering conservatism. Expect the worst but hope for better, and it seems to have turned out (at $0.5m) a lot better.

    Musk does like extreme examples to illustrate a point (I really liked his "Even shipping crack from Mars won't make a profit" example)  but a lot of it is that he's done the costing from first principles (What's a rocket in terms of tonnes of aluminum? Nickel? LOX? RP1?) and left trying to solve the question "Where the hell does all the rest of the money go?"

    We look forward to your future posts, which hopefully will make a more substantial contribution to the discussion.

    BTW. Your hashtag is hilarious  :). Quite the funniest thing I've seen since this little gem. (https://www.amazon.com/Francis-Fukuyama/dp/0743284550/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+end+of+history&qid=1590819158&s=books&sr=1-1)
    .
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 05/30/2020 03:01 pm
    Musks degree and his knowledge about rocket. doesn't that change the fact he is...

    That he is smarter and more knowledgeable about reusable rockets than any of us. You need to remember that.  ;)

    Quote
    He always  post those ridiculous statement.
    For example : F9 2 stage reuse
    starship going to orbit in 6 months
    and those false statement

    You are confused. He was communicating goals that SpaceX was seeking, not making promises. There is a difference.

    Quote
    Falcon 9 can reuse ten time without furbish (we all see what happened in the last starlink launch)

    Ah, FINALLY a comment that is on topic. As Musk and Shotwell have both stated, the Falcon 9 was DESIGNED to be capable of ten flights before significant refurbishment, but as they have stated MANY times before, they are still validating that it CAN do that. Reusability is still in its infancy, and people criticizing SpaceX for not moving fast enough are hilariously wrong.

    Quote
    PS: I was going to use Capitalism must die . but I think you guys wouldn't like it😂

    I see you say you are located in China, so yes, that would be ironic on your part - especially since it is capitalism that created reusable rockets...  ;)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: zubenelgenubi on 05/30/2020 05:19 pm
    Moderator: Re-usability effects on costs is the topic.

    The propriety of capitalism is off-topic, not only for this thread, but also for this forum.  Take it elsewhere or keep it to yourself.

    I'm also reading skepticism of Elon Musk that is bordering on character assassination.  That's not allowed here on NSF.

    If you don't have anything to post of value, on-topic, and presented in a civil fashion, then don't post at all.

    EDIT: gongora deleted one post re: above criteria.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Mandella on 05/30/2020 05:21 pm

    Ah, FINALLY a comment that is on topic. As Musk and Shotwell have both stated, the Falcon 9 was DESIGNED to be capable of ten flights before significant refurbishment, but as they have stated MANY times before, they are still validating that it CAN do that. Reusability is still in its infancy, and people criticizing SpaceX for not moving fast enough are hilariously wrong.


    I found it interesting to hear John Inspruker reiterate during the leadup to the first DM-2 launch attempt the fact that Falcon 9 was designed for ten reuses with the possibility of further uses beyond that. And since John is the Principal Integration Flight Engineer I would imagine he would be up to date.

    Mentioned because I have seen speculation that SpaceX had backed off from that goal.

    Apparently not.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 05/30/2020 07:00 pm
    Ah, FINALLY a comment that is on topic. As Musk and Shotwell have both stated, the Falcon 9 was DESIGNED to be capable of ten flights before significant refurbishment, but as they have stated MANY times before, they are still validating that it CAN do that. Reusability is still in its infancy, and people criticizing SpaceX for not moving fast enough are hilariously wrong.
    Indeed.

    At a 2 month turnaround cycle the first stage to make 5 launches could make 8 by years end if it continues to launch. The comment that refurb costs about $500k suggests it's mostly more of a detailed inspection that any major parts replacement (less than the cost of a Merlin?)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/30/2020 08:50 pm
    Ah, FINALLY a comment that is on topic. As Musk and Shotwell have both stated, the Falcon 9 was DESIGNED to be capable of ten flights before significant refurbishment, but as they have stated MANY times before, they are still validating that it CAN do that. Reusability is still in its infancy, and people criticizing SpaceX for not moving fast enough are hilariously wrong.
    Indeed.

    At a 2 month turnaround cycle the first stage to make 5 launches could make 8 by years end if it continues to launch. The comment that refurb costs about $500k suggests it's mostly more of a detailed inspection that any major parts replacement (less than the cost of a Merlin?)

    A great deal of that inspection is the detailed review of the booster telemetry data looking for any slightly out of character "Family" indications to warrant further up close inspection possibly minor standalone test to confirm all is well such as pressure test for leaks or electrical power up and diagnostic run on a specific box.

    Remember this $500K value is the average. Some will cost less with nothing to look more closely at and others with several items to inspect more closely.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 05/31/2020 12:05 pm
    A great deal of that inspection is the detailed review of the booster telemetry data looking for any slightly out of character "Family" indications to warrant further up close inspection possibly minor standalone test to confirm all is well such as pressure test for leaks or electrical power up and diagnostic run on a specific box.

    Remember this $500K value is the average. Some will cost less with nothing to look more closely at and others with several items to inspect more closely.
    Obviously it's hard to know what the full story is but that sounds quite plausible.

    Processing power is cheap and NASA has done a lot of work on automating satellite telemetry monitoring so it's more "management by exception" rather than a team permanently looking at charts (on a screen or actual). You can call it AI or statistical pattern recognition. Goddard seems to be the lead center for this, with (IIRC) some work at JPL.

    That also suggests that they could turnaround a booster quite a bit faster if the demand was there to do so.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: gongora on 07/18/2020 07:09 pm
    The last week or so of posts has been moved into moderation.  Unless one of the other mods is a lot more enthusiastic about going through it than I am, I'm not sure a lot of those posts will be coming back.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 07/20/2020 06:22 am
    F9 is on the hairy edge of propellant reserves needed for re-use, even with densified props.
    I think that should be qualified by "For GTO missions with planned RTLS"

    But if for barge landings, or anything less than GTO (or escape) the margins are now more comfortable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 07/20/2020 06:09 pm
    F9 is on the hairy edge of propellant reserves needed for re-use, even with densified props.
    I think that should be qualified by "For GTO missions with planned RTLS"

    But if for barge landings, or anything less than GTO (or escape) the margins are now more comfortable.
    More to the point, there’s no good reason for Falcon 9 to leave performance on the table for no reason when they can almost always give the customer payload a higher energy to GTO. Using up propellant “reserves,” then, is just efficiency.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 07/20/2020 07:53 pm
    Relevant article today about the Anasis 2 mission, which is scheduled for launch today:

    SpaceX seeks to set turnaround record for an orbital rocket on Monday (https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/spacex-seeks-to-set-turnaround-record-for-an-orbital-rocket-on-monday/) | Ars Technica

    If it does launch today that would be just 51 days between launches. Relevant quote:
    Quote
    Ultimately, SpaceX hopes to reduce the turnaround time between launches from weeks to days, but as it is still learning from the process, extra care is being taken between launches. After a booster is returned to the company's hangar in Florida, the first stage is inspected for leaks and good welds, then the rocket's avionics are tested, plus some additional testing. This investigation takes nearly a month before a booster is put back into the processing flow for a new mission.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 07/20/2020 09:47 pm
    Based on the comment from the Ars Technica article, it sure doesn't seem like SpaceX is spending a lot of money to inspect a Falcon 9 stage after recovery. And other than consumables the actual 1s stage hardware cost for the next flight should be close to zero.

    Ignoring the cost to recover the Falcon 9 1st stage, and ignoring the cost to recover a Vulcan engine module using the 'Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology' (SMART) reuse concept, it sure seems obvious that a reusable Falcon 9 would have a significant cost advantage over a reusable Vulcan since SpaceX does not need to build a new 1st stage tank for each flight.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: matthewkantar on 07/20/2020 10:13 pm
    Based on the comment from the Ars Technica article, it sure doesn't seem like SpaceX is spending a lot of money to inspect a Falcon 9 stage after recovery. And other than consumables the actual 1s stage hardware cost for the next flight should be close to zero.

    Ignoring the cost to recover the Falcon 9 1st stage, and ignoring the cost to recover a Vulcan engine module using the 'Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology' (SMART) reuse concept, it sure seems obvious that a reusable Falcon 9 would have a significant cost advantage over a reusable Vulcan since SpaceX does not need to build a new 1st stage tank for each flight.


    Throwing out all of that beautiful, deeply machined aluminum iso-grid tankage, not cheap!
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 07/21/2020 01:18 am
    Based on the comment from the Ars Technica article, it sure doesn't seem like SpaceX is spending a lot of money to inspect a Falcon 9 stage after recovery. And other than consumables the actual 1s stage hardware cost for the next flight should be close to zero.

    Ignoring the cost to recover the Falcon 9 1st stage, and ignoring the cost to recover a Vulcan engine module using the 'Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology' (SMART) reuse concept, it sure seems obvious that a reusable Falcon 9 would have a significant cost advantage over a reusable Vulcan since SpaceX does not need to build a new 1st stage tank for each flight.


    Throwing out all of that beautiful, deeply machined aluminum iso-grid tankage, not cheap!
    Plus, even after manufacture, you STILL need to integrate it, inspect, and certify it and maybe even acceptance test it (although I don't think ULA usually does acceptance tests on new hardware like SpaceX does). A lot of the stuff needed for inspection/recert of used stages STILL needs to be done on new hardware.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 07/21/2020 01:20 am
    How many people in Florida are employed in recovering, refurbing, integrating, and launching Falcon 9s? maybe 500? (probably a LOT less are actually spending time on those tasks! So this is a very conservative estimate...)

    If their average pay is $100k/year, then their total yearly pay is $50m. To turn around a booster in 51 days takes just $7 million of their time. That has got to be much less than the manufacturing cost (and, of course, new stages still need transport, integration, and launch besides testing of components and stuff in McGregor, which isn't really needed for flight-tested stages).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 07/21/2020 03:59 am
    How many people in Florida are employed in recovering, refurbing, integrating, and launching Falcon 9s? maybe 500? (probably a LOT less are actually spending time on those tasks! So this is a very conservative estimate...)

    If their average pay is $100k/year, then their total yearly pay is $50m. To turn around a booster in 51 days takes just $7 million of their time. That has got to be much less than the manufacturing cost (and, of course, new stages still need transport, integration, and launch besides testing of components and stuff in McGregor, which isn't really needed for flight-tested stages).

    It should be even lower than that, because you're assuming the entire 500 people team works on a single booster at a time, and they can only refurbish 7 boosters per year. In reality there would be multiple teams working on multiple boosters in parallel, we've already seen them launched 9 reused boosters in just the first 6 months of this year, so they should at least be able to refurbish 18 boosters per year, which makes the cost to turn around a booster $2.8M.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 07/21/2020 04:14 am
    How many people in Florida are employed in recovering, refurbing, integrating, and launching Falcon 9s? maybe 500? (probably a LOT less are actually spending time on those tasks! So this is a very conservative estimate...)

    If their average pay is $100k/year, then their total yearly pay is $50m. To turn around a booster in 51 days takes just $7 million of their time. That has got to be much less than the manufacturing cost (and, of course, new stages still need transport, integration, and launch besides testing of components and stuff in McGregor, which isn't really needed for flight-tested stages).

    It should be even lower than that, because you're assuming the entire 500 people team works on a single booster at a time, and they can only refurbish 7 boosters per year. In reality there would be multiple teams working on multiple boosters in parallel, we've already seen them launched 9 reused boosters in just the first 6 months of this year, so they should at least be able to refurbish 18 boosters per year, which makes the cost to turn around a booster $2.8M.
    Yeah. It's pretty low. And that seems to correspond to SpaceX's $15m marginal price for Falcon 9 launches... $5m for reuse processing and launch plus $10m for the upper stage. That doesn't count the upfront cost of the new Falcon 9 ($40-50m? So maybe $10m per launch right now, that they're doing 5 total uses pretty regularly?). So this is basically the launch price SpaceX could get if they had, like, 10-100 reuses of the first stage. About $1000/kg.

    A fully reusable Falcon 9 wouldn't be much cheaper per kg. Full reuse might drop the payload from 15 tons to 10 tons. It'd probably cost on the order of $2.5m (spitballing) to refurb and process the upper stage, so say about $7.5m per flight (comparable with Gwynne's past estimates a few years ago of cost per launch of full reuse of about $7m per flight, $7.5m adjusted for inflation...).

    That'd get $750/kg and would require a lot of R&D and many flights where they could only launch 10 tons while they're still getting the kinks worked out... Makes sense to instead spend that R&D on Starship where the cost per launch could be about the same, but an order of magnitude greater payload... (plus perhaps increasing payload and reducing refurb costs over time...).

    But that's why I don't buy the "full reuse isn't feasible" line that people often repeat here... It's NOT that full reuse on Falcon 9 isn't feasible, it's that it's not really worth the upfront costs when that could instead be put into a MUCH more capable launch vehicle...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 07/21/2020 06:17 am
    Plus, even after manufacture, you STILL need to integrate it, inspect, and certify it and maybe even acceptance test it (although I don't think ULA usually does acceptance tests on new hardware like SpaceX does). A lot of the stuff needed for inspection/recert of used stages STILL needs to be done on new hardware.
    Yes, and probably one of the reasons SX decided to go with full stage recovery.

    It's looking like this is the only way engineers could find to get Vulcan, with its shaved-to-the-bone core performance to have some kind of reusability.

    Meanwhile Rocket Lab, who never considered reuse a viable option, are now looking at booster recovery.   :)

    It's a cliche that "the higher the level of design decision the greater the knock-on effects of that decision"
    In this case it's SX's (and Rocket Labs) decision to go with a bit more margin (and designs that could stretch in terms of tank sizes and engine thrusts), along with lower staging velocity, are key enablers of this. 

    It could also be said that ULA's decisions to get all thrust above core needs from SRB's and their sticking with traditional staging velocities are dis-enablers of reuse, and hence lower costs. Vulcan is what  you get when you design an ELV with accountants looking over your shoulder.  :(

    Top tip. Liquid propellants and engine clustering give you much more flexibility on vehicle sizing and staging.

    Consider what it would take for Vulcan to land on a barge. Throttle down to 5%? 10%? of full thrust for starters.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 08/19/2020 12:44 am
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 08/19/2020 06:05 am
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3
    And paradoxically both statements are true, for the specific launch vehicles they refer to.  :(

    F9 was designed from day one to be partly reusable (with a goal of full reusability) and built on the lessons learned from F1.

    Vulcan was designed to be as cheap as possible for ULA to design and build. The SMART reuse concept is what you get when you try and graft reuse onto a system that ignored any features that could help reuse.

    BTW Vulcan passed it's PDR just after SX demonstrated RTLS successful recovery by RTLS (flight 20, Dec 22nd 2015). At that point ULA would know landing to a land site was possible. At that point they would be pinning their hopes on SX a)failing to develop barge landing (so taking too big a payload hit)  b)cost effective refurb.

    TL:DR version. Assumptions matter
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 08/19/2020 09:46 am
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3

    Worth noting that the 40% payload penalty only applies to maxed out payloads - like Starlink. For the vast majority of customer launches F9 is so overpowered that in practice they experience zero payload sacrifice while still comfortably enabling reuse. In those cases the equation leans even further in favour of reuse.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: lonestriker on 08/19/2020 02:15 pm
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3

    Worth noting that the 40% payload penalty only applies to maxed out payloads - like Starlink. For the vast majority of customer launches F9 is so overpowered that in practice they experience zero payload sacrifice while still comfortably enabling reuse. In those cases the equation leans even further in favour of reuse.

    And, F9 performance almost doubled from the first version flown to today's B5.  SpaceX were able to enable reuse by adding performance margin, so reducing or eliminating the reuse penalty.  Vulcan (and New Glenn) can possibly get more margin as Blue increases BE-4 performance, but Vulcan will never do propulsive landings.  So best they can hope for is SMART, though I suspect this initiative is just a Powerpoint project and not anything actually real.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 08/20/2020 01:27 am
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3

    Worth noting that the 40% payload penalty only applies to maxed out payloads - like Starlink. For the vast majority of customer launches F9 is so overpowered that in practice they experience zero payload sacrifice while still comfortably enabling reuse. In those cases the equation leans even further in favour of reuse.
    Such a simple and obvious principle, and yet missed so often.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 08/20/2020 06:29 am
    Worth noting that the 40% payload penalty only applies to maxed out payloads - like Starlink. For the vast majority of customer launches F9 is so overpowered that in practice they experience zero payload sacrifice while still comfortably enabling reuse. In those cases the equation leans even further in favour of reuse.
    The flip side of this is unfortunately for ULA's Vulcan that is every payload.   :(

    Reusability has started to build a list of design rules and their effects which should be quite instructive to anyone planning yet another rocket startup.

    Ideally starting with "Most of the time it's not worth it." :(
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: soyuzu on 08/20/2020 06:57 am
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3

    Worth noting that the 40% payload penalty only applies to maxed out payloads - like Starlink. For the vast majority of customer launches F9 is so overpowered that in practice they experience zero payload sacrifice while still comfortably enabling reuse. In those cases the equation leans even further in favour of reuse.
    Actually for Srarlink the penalty is closer to 25%, even for demanding high energy GTO mission, the penalty is only about (8300-5500)/8300=33.7%.

    However, a counter argument about this calculation, as Dr.Sowers and others repeatedly point out while Musk seemly missed, is the fixed cost of launching a given sized rocket, like facility, staff, fuel, etc. If the cost of S2 and such fixed cost is unfortunately low, it may even not be able to break even marginally.

    My opinion is that most of this fixed costs are fixed per year, but not per launch. Thus with enough launch cadence, SpaceX, as Musk said, managed to split less than $5M to each launch.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: CJ on 08/21/2020 09:10 am
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3

    Worth noting that the 40% payload penalty only applies to maxed out payloads - like Starlink. For the vast majority of customer launches F9 is so overpowered that in practice they experience zero payload sacrifice while still comfortably enabling reuse. In those cases the equation leans even further in favour of reuse.
    Actually for Srarlink the penalty is closer to 25%, even for demanding high energy GTO mission, the penalty is only about (8300-5500)/8300=33.7%.

    However, a counter argument about this calculation, as Dr.Sowers and others repeatedly point out while Musk seemly missed, is the fixed cost of launching a given sized rocket, like facility, staff, fuel, etc. If the cost of S2 and such fixed cost is unfortunately low, it may even not be able to break even marginally.

    My opinion is that most of this fixed costs are fixed per year, but not per launch. Thus with enough launch cadence, SpaceX, as Musk said, managed to split less than $5M to each launch.

    At SpaceX's Rideshare price of 1mil minimum, then 5k$ per kg over 200kg, they are getting at least 3 mil on a 3 sat Rideshare, and maybe more, depending on mass. If their internal cost for a launch is under 5M, then the rideshares are at least coming close to paying for the Starlink mission.

    To put that in perspective, Rocketlab charges around 6M for a 300kg max payload to LEO.

    IMHO, what we see here is in large part is the effect of reuse on price cost.

    Edit: oops.   
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 08/21/2020 09:15 am
    twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1295734479814684672

    Quote
    ULA has said that you need to refly a booster ten times for the economics of reusability to make sense. SpaceX is now up to six with Falcon 9.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3

    Worth noting that the 40% payload penalty only applies to maxed out payloads - like Starlink. For the vast majority of customer launches F9 is so overpowered that in practice they experience zero payload sacrifice while still comfortably enabling reuse. In those cases the equation leans even further in favour of reuse.
    Actually for Srarlink the penalty is closer to 25%, even for demanding high energy GTO mission, the penalty is only about (8300-5500)/8300=33.7%.

    However, a counter argument about this calculation, as Dr.Sowers and others repeatedly point out while Musk seemly missed, is the fixed cost of launching a given sized rocket, like facility, staff, fuel, etc. If the cost of S2 and such fixed cost is unfortunately low, it may even not be able to break even marginally.

    My opinion is that most of this fixed costs are fixed per year, but not per launch. Thus with enough launch cadence, SpaceX, as Musk said, managed to split less than $5M to each launch.

    At SpaceX's Rideshare price of 1mil minimum, then 5k$ per kg over 200kg, they are getting at least 3 mil on a 3 sat Rideshare, and maybe more, depending on mass. If their internal cost for a launch is under 5M, then the rideshares are at least coming close to paying for the Starlink mission.

    To put that in perspective, Rocketlab charges around 6M for a 300kg max payload to LEO.

    IMHO, what we see here is in large part is the effect of reuse on price cost.

    Edit: oops.

    Their marginal cost per launch is about $15M according to Elon  -  with booster and fairing reuse. This includes fuel and other operational launch costs, but excludes R&D and general overheads.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: olemars on 08/22/2020 04:57 pm

    Their marginal cost per launch is about $15M according to Elon  -  with booster and fairing reuse. This includes fuel and other operational launch costs, but excludes R&D and general overheads.

    That puts the apparent cost of putting a kg of starlink into orbit at less than $1000, which is a nice milestone to hit.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/24/2020 12:54 pm
    1. In this quora thread https://quora.com/How-does-SpaceX-refurbish-their-Falcon-9-rockets-after-they-land-How-long-does-it-take
    Rodney Price 3th post, edit from march 2020, you can find quote supposedly of someone from SX about refurb. of used boosters now taking less than 30 days in Florida. But there is no link. Can anybody post source for this quote ?

    2. Do we have some credible source about status of F9R block 5 helium COPVs. ?

    I mean, what is their exact unit cost, how many units SX need for F9R 1stage RP1 and LOX tank and how many units are needed for upper stage RP1 and LOX tank.

    Some AS engineer said before, that those helium COPVs must be replaced after every block 4 reusable booster flight.

    Not sure, how it is with block 5 used booster helium COPVs. After Amos-6 explosion, they upgraded this COPVs. Made them stronger and more robust, but don't remember if they said what is their design life.

    They must throw away COPVs in upper stage anyway, so hard to say if they try to reuse 1stage COPVs for many flights.

    3. In this article https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-elon-musk-falcon-9-economics , you can find quote : " In an interview with Aviation Week in May, Musk listed the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 at $15 million in the best case. He also listed the cost of refurbishing a booster at $1 million."

    He probably doesn't count any recovery costs, into his 1 ml$ per one booster refurbishment cycle estimate.

    Inspecting ( scanning ) used booster hardware doesn't need cost to much. But SX VP Hans Koenigsmann said, they must also swap many parts, that are not qualified for the next flight. Cost of replacing them shouldn't be to high, but unit cost of all this parts, that must be replaced during refurb., should be also counted into overall refurbishment costs.

    Did EM counted all of this into his 1 ml$ per each refurb. cycle cost estimate ? Some parts could be replaced after every flight, some only after 3th, 5th, 8th flight. So maybe for SX, it is hard to know already.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 08/24/2020 01:13 pm
    SpaceX was initially going to go with a Falcon 5, same diameter core with 5 engines.  No reusability.  They could have evolved to a 7 engine core slightly stretched for some, but very limited reusability.  Instead, they skipped Falcon 5 and went straight to F9.  Then they improved the engines and stretched the tanks to the limits of transportability.  It works.  Oversized for some satellites, undersized for the largest.  So, they develop FH.  They can now cover all the bases of satellite launching as well as human launches.  Now small sats can hitch rideshares. 

    I don't know why, after seeing what SpaceX did, ULA decided not to go with reusability.  They could have built a larger rocket with at least 5 engines and worked from there.  Either by adding engines and stretching core, or simply expending a rocket with fewer engines, then working up.  Maybe engines being developed were too big for a 5m range rocket to have a cluster of engines, or too expensive like the H1 derived engines. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 08/24/2020 07:08 pm
    Did EM counted all of this into his 1 ml$ per each refurb. cycle cost estimate ?

    Why would you think that Elon Musk wouldn't count any such costs as part of the refurbishment costs?  If he was leaving anything like that out, he would be lying in saying it was the refurbishment costs.  Why would he lie about that?

    Some parts could be replaced after every flight, some only after 3th, 5th, 8th flight. So maybe for SX, it is hard to know already.

    They've already flown a booster 6 times.  There's nothing that is "hard to know" for SpaceX up to that point.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrML on 08/24/2020 07:12 pm
    I don't know why, after seeing what SpaceX did, ULA decided not to go with reusability.
    As a company, ULA can't go out and say publicly that they made a mistake. Obviously they are now pursuing reusability, starting with the engines. However the Vulcan architecture was planned before it became obvious for non-SpaceX-ers that reusability pays off. Reusability like SpaceX does is simply impossible for that rocket.

    SpaceX follows an agile development approach. They scrapped carbon fiber ITS over stainless steel as they found it was a better approach, ignoring sunk costs. Most "normal" companies have not yet adapted the agile approach.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 08/24/2020 07:17 pm
    Obviously they are now pursuing reusability, starting with the engines.

    It's not obvious to me that they are actually pursuing it.  They have been talking about SMART for years, but so far it's always been something that maybe they'll do someday.  They haven't committed any real resources to it or committed to any timeline at all, as far as I know.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrML on 08/24/2020 07:29 pm
    Obviously they are now pursuing reusability, starting with the engines.

    It's not obvious to me that they are actually pursuing it.  They have been talking about SMART for years, but so far it's always been something that maybe they'll do someday.  They haven't committed any real resources to it or committed to any timeline at all, as far as I know.
    Good point, didn't know the long history. Just see a more than usual talk about reusability on Tory Bruno's Twitter lately.

    EDIT: One example, there's 10-15 other tweets too. https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1296519725560799232?s=20
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 08/24/2020 09:03 pm
    I watched Kirstler K1 video on how they planned to recover 2nd stage and thought MAR would be better option than airbags, especially if helicopter is operating from land base. The economics of recovering 2nd stage to save money by reusing it is marginal. If you are using 2nd stage to return payloads from space eg ISS then economic change dramatically now get 3 points of savings or revenue.
    1) savings from reusing 2nd stage
    2) savings from having no fairing.
    3) revenue from returned payload. This being biggest earner per kg.


    This 2nd stage would be mission specfic ie supplying spacestation, it may not be economical for delivering LEO satellites if their is no return payload.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 08/24/2020 09:07 pm
    The economics of recovering 2nd stage to save money by reusing it is marginal.

    A blanket statement like that can't possibly be true.  It's going to depend on the details.

    SpaceX's Starship plans for 2nd stage reuse are entirely plausible and save a huge amount of money by reusing the second stage.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrML on 08/24/2020 09:21 pm
    The economics of recovering 2nd stage to save money by reusing it is marginal.

    A blanket statement like that can't possibly be true.  It's going to depend on the details.

    SpaceX's Starship plans for 2nd stage reuse are entirely plausible and save a huge amount of money by reusing the second stage.
    15-20% of the costs of a full new stack come from building the second stage.  It's not insignificant, but for a long time improving first stage recovery and operations will pay better off. Also the R&D for reusing the second stage will take much longer to pay down, and payload hit will be much larger.

    I'm sure the Falcon architecture would eventually have benefitted financially from a reusable second stage, however probably not before Starship takes over.

    Apparently they think fairing recovery was a lower hanging fruit, and that seems surprisingly hard.

    Starship will be a gamechanger.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 08/24/2020 11:38 pm
    The ratio for  Booster (S1) cost to US (S2) cost for various vehicle looks to average out to about 5 to 1. For Starship that ratio with a reusable S2 looks to be about 2 to 1 for a reusable US. The booster S1 costs would not change while the costs for the US depending on reuse or expendable. But the math shows that with just 3 uses a reusable US breaks even/cheaper with the cost of using a cheaper expendable US. With 6 a the Starship reusable US would be 1/2 the cost of an expendable. At 12 it is 1/4.

    EDIT: Sorry got the order of S1 to S2 messed up. FIXED.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 08/25/2020 08:00 am
    1. In this quora thread https://quora.com/How-does-SpaceX-refurbish-their-Falcon-9-rockets-after-they-land-How-long-does-it-take
    Rodney Price 3th post, edit from march 2020, you can find quote supposedly of someone from SX about refurb. of used boosters now taking less than 30 days in Florida. But there is no link. Can anybody post source for this quote ?

    It's from an unauthorized video recording of a private presentation given by Christopher Couluris, SpaceX's Director of Vehicle Integration, the video was taken down, but you can see the gist of the talk in this post: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43154.msg2041589#msg2041589
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/25/2020 09:15 am
    Did EM counted all of this into his 1 ml$ per each refurb. cycle cost estimate ?

    Why would you think that Elon Musk wouldn't count any such costs as part of the refurbishment costs?  If he was leaving anything like that out, he would be lying in saying it was the refurbishment costs.  Why would he lie about that?

    Some parts could be replaced after every flight, some only after 3th, 5th, 8th flight. So maybe for SX, it is hard to know already.

    They've already flown a booster 6 times.  There's nothing that is "hard to know" for SpaceX up to that point.
    No. It will be hard for him correctly estimate cost per 1 refurbishment cycle, even if he didn't try lie or cherry-pick any numbers. It obviously doesn't include amortized costs for reusability and probably any recovery costs. So far, SX could built 17 block 5 cores https://t.co/azCntTi4uc?amp=1 . 8 were destroyed or expanded and from those 9 which can be flown again, 2 have no missions yet. SX plan to fly all block 5 boosters at least 10 times.

    EM interview in Aviation Week was from May of this year. Before May only 1 booster flew more than 4 times.

    I would be surprised if cost of refurbishment will be always same for every refurb. cycle. Depending on exact mission and weather conditions during launch, booster could endure worse or lower wear and tear, so it refurb. cost after flight could be different.

    Many parts of hardware, that could need replacement during refurbishment ( like turbine wheels, Helium COPVs ) are build also for new upper stages and Shotwell said, that SX will build 10 new reusable boosters this year. They simply kept all production lines open and are building simultaneously similar hardware for new upper stages, new reusable boosters and used boosters, if they need swap some parts that are not qualified for next flight.

    So it could be quite hard for them already know correct numbers. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/25/2020 09:40 am
    1. In this quora thread https://quora.com/How-does-SpaceX-refurbish-their-Falcon-9-rockets-after-they-land-How-long-does-it-take
    Rodney Price 3th post, edit from march 2020, you can find quote supposedly of someone from SX about refurb. of used boosters now taking less than 30 days in Florida. But there is no link. Can anybody post source for this quote ?

    It's from an unauthorized video recording of a private presentation given by Christopher Couluris, SpaceX's Director of Vehicle Integration, the video was taken down, but you can see the gist of the talk in this post: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43154.msg2041589#msg2041589
    1. Quote from Rodney Price quora post : " SpaceX have said the inspections/processing to let a recovered booster be reused now take less than 30 days, and is done entirely by operations in Florida, ie. no shipment back to manufacturing or to be tested at McGregor. "

    Is this the same quote, that you heard from this unauthorized video recording of SX dir. of VI. From your post it is "
    at 13:20: stage refurbishment by maintenance crew, following air-plane model. Takes about 30 days to return a booster to flight."

    So it sounds like 2 different quotes. Was the 1st quote really said by someone from SX and is there source for it.

    But about 30 days ( or little above 30 days ) for one refurb. cycle could be correct, because B1058 was test fired on CC about 40 days after 1st flight. Question is, if after many reflights refurb times don't start to be little longer.

    2. Does anybody here really don't know, what can be block 5 Helium COPVs unit cost, how many units F9R need and what is their design life ( if they don't need replace them after every booster flight ).

     I would guess 3,4 COPVs are needed for 1stage RP1 and LOX tank and 1 COPV is needed for upper stage RP1 and LOX tank ( so 8 - 10 together ).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 08/26/2020 02:13 am
    Obviously they are now pursuing reusability, starting with the engines.

    It's not obvious to me that they are actually pursuing it.  They have been talking about SMART for years, but so far it's always been something that maybe they'll do someday.  They haven't committed any real resources to it or committed to any timeline at all, as far as I know.

    Agreed. I see absolutely nothing to indicate that they are actually developing "SMART" reuse. Marketing it? Oh yes. Doing it? I don't think we will ever see it on Vulcan.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 08/26/2020 03:53 am
    Did EM counted all of this into his 1 ml$ per each refurb. cycle cost estimate ?

    Why would you think that Elon Musk wouldn't count any such costs as part of the refurbishment costs?  If he was leaving anything like that out, he would be lying in saying it was the refurbishment costs.  Why would he lie about that?

    Some parts could be replaced after every flight, some only after 3th, 5th, 8th flight. So maybe for SX, it is hard to know already.

    They've already flown a booster 6 times.  There's nothing that is "hard to know" for SpaceX up to that point.
    No. It will be hard for him correctly estimate cost per 1 refurbishment cycle, even if he didn't try lie or cherry-pick any numbers. It obviously doesn't include amortized costs for reusability and probably any recovery costs. So far, SX could built 17 block 5 cores https://t.co/azCntTi4uc?amp=1 . 8 were destroyed or expanded and from those 9 which can be flown again, 2 have no missions yet. SX plan to fly all block 5 boosters at least 10 times.

    EM interview in Aviation Week was from May of this year. Before May only 1 booster flew more than 4 times.

    I would be surprised if cost of refurbishment will be always same for every refurb. cycle. Depending on exact mission and weather conditions during launch, booster could endure worse or lower wear and tear, so it refurb. cost after flight could be different.

    Many parts of hardware, that could need replacement during refurbishment ( like turbine wheels, Helium COPVs ) are build also for new upper stages and Shotwell said, that SX will build 10 new reusable boosters this year. They simply kept all production lines open and are building simultaneously similar hardware for new upper stages, new reusable boosters and used boosters, if they need swap some parts that are not qualified for next flight.

    So it could be quite hard for them already know correct numbers.

    They've been refurbishing boosters for reflight.  They've done it many times.  Unless their accounting is very, very incompetent, they know exactly what it costs.  There's nothing in your post that gives a reason to doubt that.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 08/26/2020 04:22 am
    To me the $15m marginal launch cost was kind of Elon’s best case scenario with full fairing reuse which seems close to being achieved. The whole point he was making was that this was pretty much the limit of cost reduction with partial reusability - explaining why Starship is required for the next level of cost reduction.

    So whether the exact marginal cost on one flight at the moment is $20m, and $18m on another and maybe $15m on a perfect flight where fairing catches go perfectly and the booster lands gently, the point is that to unlock a further exponential drop in cost/ton to orbit, full and rapid reusability through Starship is required. F9 is close to optimized at this point.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/26/2020 05:06 am
    Many parts of hardware, that could need replacement during refurbishment ( like turbine wheels, Helium COPVs ) are build also for new upper stages and Shotwell said, that SX will build 10 new reusable boosters this year. They simply kept all production lines open and are building simultaneously similar hardware for new upper stages, new reusable boosters and used boosters, if they need swap some parts that are not qualified for next flight.

    The Falcon product production lines have never shut down, so I'm not sure what you are talking about. Every launch requires a new 2nd stage, which is built on the same production line as the 1st stage, and likely uses a lot of the same parts. Not the engine of course, since the Merlin Vacuum is a different engine than the Merlin 1D.

    And speaking of engine production, the same engine production area builds Merlin 1D, Merlin Vacuum, and all flavors of Raptor. Likely the Draco and Super Draco too. So if they need spare parts that is not a problem since the supply chain is active.

    Quote
    So it could be quite hard for them already know correct numbers.

    They know EXACTLY what each launch has cost, and what each booster has required after recovery in order to get it ready to fly again. It is not hard to do.

    I've worked with a lot of support people over the years that ran operations like what SpaceX is doing for refurbishment, and each time they refurbish a unit that information is fed into a system so they can understand what the costs are, and what the trends are. And all of that information is fed back into the manufacturing engineering group so they can address any issues that need to be addressed.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 08/26/2020 05:17 am
    SpaceX was initially going to go with a Falcon 5, same diameter core with 5 engines.  No reusability. ...
    No, SpaceX was going for parachute + splashdown reusability with Falcon 5 (and Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, for that matter). It didn't work in F1 or F9 when they tried, so that's why they went with VTVL in Falcon 9 v1.1 and onward.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/26/2020 09:35 am
    To me the $15m marginal launch cost was kind of Elon’s best case scenario with full fairing reuse which seems close to being achieved. The whole point he was making was that this was pretty much the limit of cost reduction with partial reusability - explaining why Starship is required for the next level of cost reduction.

    So whether the exact marginal cost on one flight at the moment is $20m, and $18m on another and maybe $15m on a perfect flight where fairing catches go perfectly and the booster lands gently, the point is that to unlock a further exponential drop in cost/ton to orbit, full and rapid reusability through Starship is required. F9 is close to optimized at this point.
    1. Was any of this said also by EM or someone from SX, or are this just assumptions. I have no subscription for Aviation Week, but did EM explain there what " listed the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 at $15 million in the best case " mean. And if it is influenced by fairings recovery.

    I understand this quote from inverse article, like that SX have some internal estimates for F9R marginal cost with best case scenario and worst case scenario and EM said us the best case option.

    Did EM also explained in AW article, more in detail what exactly is included in his cost estimate of 1ml$ for booster refurbishment.

    2.  Also from inverse article https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-elon-musk-falcon-9-economics

    quote from EM :

    The boost stage, he stated, costs around 60 percent of the total costs, with the upper stage 20 percent, the fairing 10 percent, and the final 10 percent associated with the launch itself."

    Well this contradict to what T.Bruno said on REDDIT.

    TB quote : " Let's say that you are wildly successful such that the rocket becomes not 50%, but 70% of the cost of the launch service. Then, you still can only save 35% of the launch service price with a free booster... "

    TB said, that 1st stage is standardly 1/2 from cost of the rocket. EM said, that for F9R it is 2/3 from the cost of rocket, so with TB limitation it would be 46 % from total cost of launch service.

    And TB even said to this, quote : " There is no credible math that makes a reusable booster, all by itself, drop the cost of a launch service to half."

    It sounds obvious to me from this whole TB REDDIT post, that he doesn't count any additional military, NASA costs, into those 30 %, unrelated to the cost of rocket. SpaceX fly mostly commercial launches, not NASA, DoD missions, so it sound like he speak about limitations for any orbital launch provider in general.

    This is strongest contradiction between statements of T.Bruno and E.Musk. EM estimate of costs unrelated to building rocket ( or costs unrelated of refurbishing used rocket booster, 2st stage ) are much lower than even T.Bruno " wildly successful " estimates.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 08/26/2020 09:52 am
    To me the $15m marginal launch cost was kind of Elon’s best case scenario with full fairing reuse which seems close to being achieved. The whole point he was making was that this was pretty much the limit of cost reduction with partial reusability - explaining why Starship is required for the next level of cost reduction.

    So whether the exact marginal cost on one flight at the moment is $20m, and $18m on another and maybe $15m on a perfect flight where fairing catches go perfectly and the booster lands gently, the point is that to unlock a further exponential drop in cost/ton to orbit, full and rapid reusability through Starship is required. F9 is close to optimized at this point.
    1. Was any of this said also by EM or someone from SX, or are this just assumptions. I have no subscription for Aviation Week, but did EM explain there what " listed the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 at $15 million in the best case " mean. And if it is influenced by fairings recovery.

    I understand this quote from inverse article, like that SX have some internal estimates for F9R marginal cost with best case scenario and worst case scenario and EM said us the best case option.

    Did EM also explained in AW article, more in detail what exactly is included in his cost estimate of 1ml$ for booster refurbishment.

    2.  Also from inverse article https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-elon-musk-falcon-9-economics

    quote from EM :

    The boost stage, he stated, costs around 60 percent of the total costs, with the upper stage 20 percent, the fairing 10 percent, and the final 10 percent associated with the launch itself."

    Well this contradict to what T.Bruno said on REDDIT.

    TB quote : " Let's say that you are wildly successful such that the rocket becomes not 50%, but 70% of the cost of the launch service. Then, you still can only save 35% of the launch service price with a free booster... "

    TB said, that 1st stage is standardly 1/2 from cost of the rocket. EM said, that for F9R it is 2/3 from the cost of rocket, so with TB limitation it would be 46 % from total cost of launch service.

    And TB even said to this, quote : " There is no credible math that makes a reusable booster, all by itself, drop the cost of a launch service to half."

    It sounds obvious to me from this whole TB REDDIT post, that he doesn't count any additional military, NASA costs, into those 30 %, unrelated to the cost of rocket. SpaceX fly mostly commercial launches, not NASA, DoD missions, so it sound like he speak about limitations for any orbital launch provider in general.

    This is strongest contradiction between statements of T.Bruno and E.Musk. EM estimate of costs unrelated to building rocket ( or costs unrelated of refurbishing used rocket booster, 2st stage ) are much lower than even T.Bruno " wildly successful " estimates.

    It wasn’t an article written by someone else. It was an audio interview with Elon himself. So you can listen to his exact words, including the context of his statements, tone and implied meaning. Some of us have done that, and tried to give you the short version.

    But make up your own mind.

    Here you go:

    https://twitter.com/aviationweek/status/1265249834379984896?s=21
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/26/2020 10:19 am
    Many parts of hardware, that could need replacement during refurbishment ( like turbine wheels, Helium COPVs ) are build also for new upper stages and Shotwell said, that SX will build 10 new reusable boosters this year. They simply kept all production lines open and are building simultaneously similar hardware for new upper stages, new reusable boosters and used boosters, if they need swap some parts that are not qualified for next flight.

    The Falcon product production lines have never shut down, so I'm not sure what you are talking about. Every launch requires a new 2nd stage, which is built on the same production line as the 1st stage, and likely uses a lot of the same parts. Not the engine of course, since the Merlin Vacuum is a different engine than the Merlin 1D.

    And speaking of engine production, the same engine production area builds Merlin 1D, Merlin Vacuum, and all flavors of Raptor. Likely the Draco and Super Draco too. So if they need spare parts that is not a problem since the supply chain is active.

    Quote
    So it could be quite hard for them already know correct numbers.

    They know EXACTLY what each launch has cost, and what each booster has required after recovery in order to get it ready to fly again. It is not hard to do.

    I've worked with a lot of support people over the years that ran operations like what SpaceX is doing for refurbishment, and each time they refurbish a unit that information is fed into a system so they can understand what the costs are, and what the trends are. And all of that information is fed back into the manufacturing engineering group so they can address any issues that need to be addressed.
    1. Refurbishment of used booster should include inspection ( scanning ) of used hardware and manually replacing parts, that are not qualified for the next flight. EM also said - quote from above mentioned quora post : " Cleaning all nine Merlin turbines is difficult, he said. ” So it should be also included into refurb. cost.

    It is possible that EM cost estimate of 1 ml$ per one refurb. cycle include only this three factors, but not unit cost of all this hardware parts, that must be swapped ? Or EM clarified this in his AW interview ( or some other interview ) ? I just asked above.

    2. Unit cost of any hardware parts depend on production rates. Right now, they producing similar hardware for new upper stages, new reusable boosters and used boosters, if they have some parts that need to be swapped.

    In the last 2 years they produced 17 block 5 boosters, in this year they should produce 10, so their annual production rates could be very high to this point. But in 2021 they will have more than 20 boosters designed for at least 10 flights, so they could limit their annual production rates ( number of employees working on them ) and after that, their hardware unit cost could become higher.

    They will still producing upper stage hardware, but this has only 1 vacuum optimize Merlin, probably only 2 helium COPVs, and generally much less HW.

    Raptor, SH/Starship hardware should be also completely different, than any F9R hardware, so I doubt they can use it like substitute parts for used F9R booster. Can you give me one example ?


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/26/2020 11:29 am
    To me the $15m marginal launch cost was kind of Elon’s best case scenario with full fairing reuse which seems close to being achieved. The whole point he was making was that this was pretty much the limit of cost reduction with partial reusability - explaining why Starship is required for the next level of cost reduction.

    So whether the exact marginal cost on one flight at the moment is $20m, and $18m on another and maybe $15m on a perfect flight where fairing catches go perfectly and the booster lands gently, the point is that to unlock a further exponential drop in cost/ton to orbit, full and rapid reusability through Starship is required. F9 is close to optimized at this point.
    1. Was any of this said also by EM or someone from SX, or are this just assumptions. I have no subscription for Aviation Week, but did EM explain there what " listed the marginal cost of a Falcon 9 at $15 million in the best case " mean. And if it is influenced by fairings recovery.

    I understand this quote from inverse article, like that SX have some internal estimates for F9R marginal cost with best case scenario and worst case scenario and EM said us the best case option.

    Did EM also explained in AW article, more in detail what exactly is included in his cost estimate of 1ml$ for booster refurbishment.

    2.  Also from inverse article https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-elon-musk-falcon-9-economics

    quote from EM :

    The boost stage, he stated, costs around 60 percent of the total costs, with the upper stage 20 percent, the fairing 10 percent, and the final 10 percent associated with the launch itself."

    Well this contradict to what T.Bruno said on REDDIT.

    TB quote : " Let's say that you are wildly successful such that the rocket becomes not 50%, but 70% of the cost of the launch service. Then, you still can only save 35% of the launch service price with a free booster... "

    TB said, that 1st stage is standardly 1/2 from cost of the rocket. EM said, that for F9R it is 2/3 from the cost of rocket, so with TB limitation it would be 46 % from total cost of launch service.

    And TB even said to this, quote : " There is no credible math that makes a reusable booster, all by itself, drop the cost of a launch service to half."

    It sounds obvious to me from this whole TB REDDIT post, that he doesn't count any additional military, NASA costs, into those 30 %, unrelated to the cost of rocket. SpaceX fly mostly commercial launches, not NASA, DoD missions, so it sound like he speak about limitations for any orbital launch provider in general.

    This is strongest contradiction between statements of T.Bruno and E.Musk. EM estimate of costs unrelated to building rocket ( or costs unrelated of refurbishing used rocket booster, 2st stage ) are much lower than even T.Bruno " wildly successful " estimates.

    It wasn’t an article written by someone else. It was an audio interview with Elon himself. So you can listen to his exact words, including the context of his statements, tone and implied meaning. Some of us have done that, and tried to give you the short version.

    But make up your own mind.

    Here you go:

    https://twitter.com/aviationweek/status/1265249834379984896?s=21
    Very chaotic interview and bad sound quality.

    All I can hear was that " F9R marginal cost is 15 ml$ in best case scenario or 1 ml$ per ton. Second stage is 10 ml$ from this. And then fairing recovery and booster recovery add cost to operations, using helium pressurization and using kerosene as fuel also add to the cost."

    He also said that " that quarter of million$ worth of refurbishment is needed for the booster ". But inverse article about this AW interview has quote that " He also listed the cost of refurbishing a booster at $1 million." Did not hear this there, so did he really said this quote from Inverse article.

    All quotes were in exact 1/2 of the interview.

    What he could meant by helium pressurization also adds to the cost. Higher operational cost or fact that they must replace all those helium COPVs after every flight or every few flights ? What can be their design life ?

    RP1 could add the cost for F9R, because they must cleaning all 9 Merlins turbines which is difficult. But that should be counted by EM into used booster RC.

    Not sure from this interview, if he count unit cost of any hardware parts, that must be swapped during refurbishment into his 1 ml$ or 250k cost estimate for F9R booster refurbishment costs. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/26/2020 03:52 pm
    1. Refurbishment of used booster should include inspection ( scanning ) of used hardware and manually replacing parts, that are not qualified for the next flight.

    Yes, like virtually every transportation system. It just so happens that reusable rockets are a new thing, with no comparable history to rely upon (Shuttle was significantly different), so they could be over-inspecting and being overly careful about part replacement at this point, but that is OK due to the cost of potential failure.

    Remember planes, trains and automobiles have been around for longer than 100 years, but reusable rockets just a few years.

    Quote
    2. Unit cost of any hardware parts depend on production rates. Right now, they producing similar hardware for new upper stages, new reusable boosters and used boosters, if they have some parts that need to be swapped.

    OK, but so what? Why are you worried about cost, especially since you have no idea what their costs are? Literally NO ONE outside of SpaceX truly knows what their costs are, just as no one outside of ULA knows what their costs are.

    Quote
    Raptor, SH/Starship hardware should be also completely different, than any F9R hardware, so I doubt they can use it like substitute parts for used F9R booster. Can you give me one example ?

    I never said they could substitute parts between engines, my point was that they have an active supply chain and they have active production facilities. As someone who has a manufacturing background this tells me that they don't have a problem supporting Falcon 9 reusability.

    I'm not exactly sure what you are arguing for or against at this moment, do you?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Glorin on 08/27/2020 12:08 am
    I do not understand why there’s a repeated attempt to bring Tory Bruno into a conversation about SpaceX’s cost savings due to reuse. Bruno is not affiliated with SpaceX, or reuse. That alone should make it clear his statements don’t carry much weight applied to the topic at hand. It makes sense to listen to his views and apply them to ULA’s reusability plans (or lack thereof).

    There’s a pretty easy measuring stick to tell that reuse is worthwhile in SpaceX’s eyes: they keep doing it. They’ve demonstrated more than once that they’re not above dropping initiatives, even with considerable sunk cost, if they don’t work. It would be beyond belief that they’d keep going to the trouble of landing and relaunching if it were of questionable benefit.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: dondar on 08/27/2020 02:48 pm
    1. In this quora thread https://quora.com/How-does-SpaceX-refurbish-their-Falcon-9-rockets-after-they-land-How-long-does-it-take
    Rodney Price 3th post, edit from march 2020, you can find quote supposedly of someone from SX about refurb. of used boosters now taking less than 30 days in Florida. But there is no link. Can anybody post source for this quote ?

    It's from an unauthorized video recording of a private presentation given by Christopher Couluris, SpaceX's Director of Vehicle Integration, the video was taken down, but you can see the gist of the talk in this post: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43154.msg2041589#msg2041589
    1. Quote from Rodney Price quora post : " SpaceX have said the inspections/processing to let a recovered booster be reused now take less than 30 days, and is done entirely by operations in Florida, ie. no shipment back to manufacturing or to be tested at McGregor. "

    Is this the same quote, that you heard from this unauthorized video recording of SX dir. of VI. From your post it is "
    at 13:20: stage refurbishment by maintenance crew, following air-plane model. Takes about 30 days to return a booster to flight."

    So it sounds like 2 different quotes. Was the 1st quote really said by someone from SX and is there source for it.

    But about 30 days ( or little above 30 days ) for one refurb. cycle could be correct, because B1058 was test fired on CC about 40 days after 1st flight. Question is, if after many reflights refurb times don't start to be little longer.

    2. Does anybody here really don't know, what can be block 5 Helium COPVs unit cost, how many units F9R need and what is their design life ( if they don't need replace them after every booster flight ).

     I would guess 3,4 COPVs are needed for 1stage RP1 and LOX tank and 1 COPV is needed for upper stage RP1 and LOX tank ( so 8 - 10 together ).
    both "quotes" are from the same talk.

    Nobody is going to answer you the second question.
    P.S. I don't believe SpaceX know themselves  what the shelf life of B9b5 is.  According to numerous statements they have certificated "most" of the components with 10 re-flights, but apparently the tests were very conservative and not "to the destruction". i.e. 10 is not nearly the max survivable. I believe they are going to push the envelope with the Starlink  launches. (they have clearly surplus of the pizzas to do that without too much hesitation. From engineering POV this push to the limit is very important).
    P.P.S F9R is the official name of the final Falcon hopper (which blew up in mcGregor destroying McGregor developing plans as well), please use correct abbreviations.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: wannamoonbase on 08/27/2020 02:58 pm
    Nobody is going to answer you the second question.
    P.S. I don't believe SpaceX know themselves  what the shelf life of B9b5 is.  According to numerous statements they have certificated "most" of the components with 10 re-flights, but apparently the tests were very conservative and not "to the destruction". i.e. 10 is not nearly the max survivable. I believe they are going to push the envelope with the Starlink  launches. (they have clearly surplus of the pizzas to do that without too much hesitation. From engineering POV this push to the limit is very important).
    P.P.S F9R is the official name of the final Falcon hopper (which blew up in mcGregor destroying McGregor developing plans as well), please use correct abbreviations.

    We are still a little way from this, but I've been wondering if they will spend the money to recover end of live Block 5's for inspection, or if they fly the final flights as expendable.

    Strip off what you can save and let it rip.

    That would be cheaper more capable flight. 

    I don't know if they could add additional Starlinks to use up the added payload capability of an expendable flight.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 08/27/2020 03:28 pm
    We are still a little way from this, but I've been wondering if they will spend the money to recover end of live Block 5's for inspection, or if they fly the final flights as expendable.
    Back when they were first recovering cores, they took one of them to McGregor and did seven (original plan was ten?) full-duration burns to explore what kind of limits they saw there.  Maybe we'll see them take a life-leader at some point back to McGregor and put it through its paces again with multiple full-duration burns.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/27/2020 03:33 pm
    We are still a little way from this, but I've been wondering if they will spend the money to recover end of live Block 5's for inspection, or if they fly the final flights as expendable.

    What "end"? There is no definitive lifespan to the Falcon 9 1st stage that they know of. Pretty much the only component that is not replaceable on the 1st stage is the tank body itself, so as long as the body is determined to retain its design requirements they can replace other parts and keep flying.

    Quote
    I don't know if they could add additional Starlinks to use up the added payload capability of an expendable flight.

    It is clear they are OK with using Starlink launches to do their lifespan testing, but I think they are probably being very careful about their risks since each flight represents a lot of money. My guess would be that if they didn't think they could recover a stage, they wouldn't launch it.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 08/27/2020 04:54 pm
    We are still a little way from this, but I've been wondering if they will spend the money to recover end of live Block 5's for inspection, or if they fly the final flights as expendable.
    Back when they were first recovering cores, they took one of them to McGregor and did seven (original plan was ten?) full-duration burns to explore what kind of limits they saw there.  Maybe we'll see them take a life-leader at some point back to McGregor and put it through its paces again with multiple full-duration burns.

    I would agree with this except that with Starship so far along I wonder if SpaceX is really going to bother much more with Falcon 9.  Ten flights out of each of the block 5 first stages they've already built is probably more than enough to last them until Starship/Super Heavy starts taking Starlinks to orbit, even if they haven't completed development of re-entry and landing or propellant transfer.

    Once SS/SH is doing the heavy lifting for Starlink, Falcon 9 will still have some business to do, notably for the government customers who are wary of Starship.  But those more conservative customers probably aren't going to be eager to push the known limits of how many times block 5 can fly, and they're willing to pay so much that SpaceX can afford to crank out some more new block 5 stages.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/28/2020 11:19 am
    1. Refurbishment of used booster should include inspection ( scanning ) of used hardware and manually replacing parts, that are not qualified for the next flight.

    Yes, like virtually every transportation system. It just so happens that reusable rockets are a new thing, with no comparable history to rely upon (Shuttle was significantly different), so they could be over-inspecting and being overly careful about part replacement at this point, but that is OK due to the cost of potential failure.

    Remember planes, trains and automobiles have been around for longer than 100 years, but reusable rockets just a few years.

    Quote
    2. Unit cost of any hardware parts depend on production rates. Right now, they producing similar hardware for new upper stages, new reusable boosters and used boosters, if they have some parts that need to be swapped.

    OK, but so what? Why are you worried about cost, especially since you have no idea what their costs are? Literally NO ONE outside of SpaceX truly knows what their costs are, just as no one outside of ULA knows what their costs are.

    Quote
    Raptor, SH/Starship hardware should be also completely different, than any F9R hardware, so I doubt they can use it like substitute parts for used F9R booster. Can you give me one example ?

    I never said they could substitute parts between engines, my point was that they have an active supply chain and they have active production facilities. As someone who has a manufacturing background this tells me that they don't have a problem supporting Falcon 9 reusability.

    I'm not exactly sure what you are arguing for or against at this moment, do you?
    1. I am not worried about the F9R refurbishment cost, I am curious. Even in the worst case scenario its refurbishment cost should be much lower than Shuttle boosters refurbishment cost ( which was about 50 ml$ for both solids ).

    This thread is called Reusability effect on costs. It is exactly for people, who are curious about F9R profit margins, refurbishment costs, unit cost of Helium COPVs, etc. If you are not curious about those things, why do you bother posting here ?

    Nobody outside SX can know their actual costs, but SX was never shy to share many technical and financial details about F9R or Starship/SH. Even facts about what fairing halve or 1 Merlin unit cost is.

    So why some writers from NSF, ArsTechnica or Spaceflightnow can not simply ask them about the status of F9R helium COPVs ?

    What is their unit cost, how many units F9R need, if they still need to replace them after every flight and if not, what is their design life ?

    2. I was arguing that SX can not yet accurately predict unit cost of F9R hardware ( and with this related 1stage refurb. cost ), because its HW unit cost could change in the future. They can not every year produce 10 reusable boosters, designed for at least 10 flights. In the last 2 years they produced as many reusable boosters as AS made expendable ones. Once they limit production, their HW unit cost should become higher. Starship/SH production will have no effect on this.

    I am not even sure that EM counted unit cost of any HW, that must be swapped during refurbishment into his estimate. NSF writers could ask him what everything this estimate includes.
     
    --------------------------------

    Same can be said also about EM or TB breakeven estimates, which could be " very subjective ". TB could claim that you need 10 reuses per each booster on average, EM could say that 2 or 3. 

    But could EM really know, how cheap expendable booster in F9R lift category ( 15.6t to LEO ) could SX build, if they invested all their billions$ into it development instead of Starship/SH development.

    Propulsive flyback booster HW should have higher quality standards than any expendable booster HW, because it needs to endure worse wear and tear during deacceleration in vacuum, reentry and landing burn, which should make also this HW unit cost higher.

    If the difference in unit cost between the cheapest possible reusable and expendable booster in the same lift category will be a factor of 4 or more, then even with small refurb. and recovery costs breakeven number will be higher than 5. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 08/28/2020 11:33 am
    I do not understand why there’s a repeated attempt to bring Tory Bruno into a conversation about SpaceX’s cost savings due to reuse. Bruno is not affiliated with SpaceX, or reuse. That alone should make it clear his statements don’t carry much weight applied to the topic at hand. It makes sense to listen to his views and apply them to ULA’s reusability plans (or lack thereof).

    There’s a pretty easy measuring stick to tell that reuse is worthwhile in SpaceX’s eyes: they keep doing it. They’ve demonstrated more than once that they’re not above dropping initiatives, even with considerable sunk cost, if they don’t work. It would be beyond belief that they’d keep going to the trouble of landing and relaunching if it were of questionable benefit.
    This thread is called the Reusability effect on costs.  Its purpose is not only to discuss if reusability can save cost of launch, but also how much.

    T.Bruno claims that the cost of a rocket is standardly about 1/2 from the total cost of launch service.  And if you are wildly successful it could be a maximum 70 % from COL.

    That means that there is 30% from the cost of launch = which should still decrease with higher flight rates for every launch provider, but doesn't change whether you use your rocket like expendable or reusable.

    But EM claimed that for F9R it is just 10 %, which strongly contradicts even TB " wildly successful " estimates. It seems obvious from T.Bruno REDDIT post, that he didn't count any additional NASA and DoD costs into this 30 %. That they are limitations for any launch provider in general.

    It is important to know which one from them is telling the truth, so we could know how much from the cost of launch, could reusability really save.

    If you want simply dismiss what TB said, without any evidence and believe EM, it is your right.

    But I prefer to have some evidence and know how much those 10 - 30 % really cost. Obviously it should include payload integration, stage integration, launch tower refurb. after flight, annual cost of insurance, renting launch pads from USG, etc.

    And many SX and ULA payloads are integrated in Astrotech FL, so the cost of it should be similar.

    Some industry insider who understands this cost factors, should know if TB or EM is telling the truth.

    Is at least in this NSF subscription section someone from Astrotech FL, who could tell me what exact procedures for payload integration are needed and how much it could cost for 1 payload ? That would be actually some new interesting info to know.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: armchairfan on 08/28/2020 12:14 pm
    [...]
    It is important to know which one [Tory Bruno @ ULA and Elon Musk @ SpaceX] is telling the truth, so we could know how much from the cost of launch, could reusability really save.
    [...]
    Some industry insider who understands these cost factors, should know if TB or EM is telling the truth.
    Is it so hard to believe that they could both be telling the truth? They have, after all, significantly different launch vehicles. Not to mention different priorities and constraints.

    SpaceX made an investment in reuse and ULA hasn't or, more charitably, perhaps has but it's far from fruition. At this point it doesn't really matter why SpaceX did so or even if it made fiscal sense at the time. They have it now and are reaping the rewards.

    In a market, you don't just compete with a prior version of yourself, along the way convincing yourself that reuse makes no sense. You must compete against others.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 08/28/2020 03:54 pm
    1. I am not worried about the F9R refurbishment cost, I am curious. Even in the worst case scenario its refurbishment cost should be much lower than Shuttle boosters refurbishment cost ( which was about 50 ml$ for both solids ).

    We already know the refurbishment costs.  Musk has said explicitly what they are.

    You keep posting, over and over, this bizarre idea that when Musk is saying refurbishment costs he's not actually including things like replacement parts that are clearly part of refurbishment costs.

    You've already posted your theory.  Others have already posted responses that they think when he says refurbishment costs, he means refurbishment costs.  I'm not sure what value there is in continuing to go over the same territory that has already been discussed.

    So why some writers from NSF, ArsTechnica or Spaceflightnow can not simply ask them about the status of F9R helium COPVs ?

    Because none of those people thinks there's any interesting issue there.

    If you think there's something of note there, feel free to ask Musk yourself on Twitter. but don't expect others who don't share your concerns to ask Musk about them.

    2. I was arguing that SX can not yet accurately predict unit cost of F9R hardware ( and with this related 1stage refurb. cost ), because its HW unit cost could change in the future. They can not every year produce 10 reusable boosters, designed for at least 10 flights. In the last 2 years they produced as many reusable boosters as AS made expendable ones. Once they limit production, their HW unit cost should become higher. Starship/SH production will have no effect on this.

    The production lines already exist.  They're a sunk cost.  It doesn't seem to me there's any reason to believe that the costs of parts to SpaceX will be much different per part at this point if the production of those parts decreases somewhat.

    If the difference in unit cost between the cheapest possible reusable and expendable booster in the same lift category will be a factor of 4 or more, then even with small refurb. and recovery costs breakeven number will be higher than 5.

    Falcon 9, when used in reusable mode, is the cheapest launch vehicle in its payload class by a large margin.  Some hardware (most notably legs, gridfins, and some TPS around the engine bay) needs to be added to make it reusable, but all indications are that the additional cost of that hardware is moderate.  The idea that it needs to be a factor of 4 more expensive is wildly out of line with what the evidence suggests.

    You can also look at Starship/Super Heavy.  Musk's statements about projected build costs are that it will be significantly cheaper to build than Falcon 9.  That is further evidence that making a rocket reusable doesn't make it enormously more expensive than an equivalent expendable vehicle.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 08/30/2020 02:59 am
    Nobody outside SX can know their actual costs, but SX was never shy to share many technical and financial details about F9R or Starship/SH. Even facts about what fairing halve or 1 Merlin unit cost is.

    Elon Musk shares some bits and pieces, and if he states it then it is a believable number. In contrast, if Tory Bruno provides his guesses about SpaceX costs he is only making educated guesses - but still guesses like the rest of us.

    Quote
    2. I was arguing that SX can not yet accurately predict unit cost of F9R hardware ( and with this related 1stage refurb. cost ), because its HW unit cost could change in the future.

    It is a given that things change, but that doesn't mean the SpaceX Cost Accounting department can't know the PRESENT cost of each and every Falcon 9 that is built, and all of the major and minor components. It is literally built into every modern ERP system.

    Quote
    They can not every year produce 10 reusable boosters, designed for at least 10 flights.

    They obviously can build as many as they NEED.

    Quote
    Once they limit production, their HW unit cost should become higher. Starship/SH production will have no effect on this.

    Their costs depend on a lot of factors, volume is just one of them.

    For instance their electronics may be serviceable, which means that even though they are buying less of them, and the unit price is higher because of the lower volume, the amount they save by reusing each stage would more than make up for the higher purchase price.

    For the 1st stage the difference in price for the aluminum wouldn't be that much, since they are buying a stock alloy. There might be a slight increase in price overall, but insignificant compared to the labor and other components that ultimately make up the total price.

    So even if they are paying 5% more overall because of the lower volume of parts they need, that is more than made up by reuse.

    Quote
    But could EM really know, how cheap expendable booster in F9R lift category ( 15.6t to LEO ) could SX build, if they invested all their billions$ into it development instead of Starship/SH development.

    I'm not quite sure what your question is, but regarding how much things cost and how much to charge for them, all you have to do is look at the success of Tesla and SpaceX, which are both hardware companies. If he didn't understand his costs then he wouldn't have been able to build such successful companies.

    Quote
    Propulsive flyback booster HW should have higher quality standards than any expendable booster HW, because it needs to endure worse wear and tear during deacceleration in vacuum, reentry and landing burn, which should make also this HW unit cost higher.

    No, you are not understanding engineering. Reusable parts can have the same quality as expendable parts, it is just that one is designed for many uses. That doesn't mean that the expendable part is lower quality. In fact Tory Bruno would argue that ULA's quality for their expendable launch vehicles is very high - and I'm sure it is.

    Quote
    If the difference in unit cost between the cheapest possible reusable and expendable booster in the same lift category will be a factor of 4 or more, then even with small refurb. and recovery costs breakeven number will be higher than 5.

    We know the customer PRICE for an expendable Falcon 9 is $62M. Elon Musk has stated that the breakdown in cost for the Falcon 9 is:

    60% = 1st stage
    20% = 2nd stage
    10% = Fairing
    10% = Cost of launch itself

    So if they were making a profit with the expendable Falcon 9 at $62M (which they said they were), then the cost of the reusable 1st stage can't be a factor of 4X more expensive than the expendable 1st stage.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 08/31/2020 04:39 am
    Let’s take today’s SaocomB launch as an example.

    With the mission concluded SpaceX has pocketed the launch fee and is sitting with a perfectly usable booster at LZ1. (Not sure about status of the fairings yet).

    What did they supposedly have to “sacrifice” to get this free booster for future reuse?

    A bit of extra fuel (maybe $100k).

    A bit of refurbishment cost (less than $1m according to Elon).

    The payload penalty cost was non existent, as the customer payload was delivered as required, and then some.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 08/31/2020 08:50 am
    Let’s take today’s SaocomB launch as an example.

    With the mission concluded SpaceX has pocketed the launch fee and is sitting with a perfectly usable booster at LZ1. (Not sure about status of the fairings yet).

    What did they supposedly have to “sacrifice” to get this free booster for future reuse?

    A bit of extra fuel (maybe $100k).

    A bit of refurbishment cost (less than $1m according to Elon).

    The payload penalty cost was non existent, as the customer payload was delivered as required, and then some.

    Emphasis mine.

    Actually substantially less than $20k.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AJW on 08/31/2020 03:57 pm
    Let’s take today’s SaocomB launch as an example.

    With the mission concluded SpaceX has pocketed the launch fee and is sitting with a perfectly usable booster at LZ1. (Not sure about status of the fairings yet).

    What did they supposedly have to “sacrifice” to get this free booster for future reuse?

    A bit of extra fuel (maybe $100k).

    A bit of refurbishment cost (less than $1m according to Elon).

    The payload penalty cost was non existent, as the customer payload was delivered as required, and then some.

    <FUD> Don't believe your lying eyes.  It will take 10 reuses I say, 10 reuses to break even.  I've got a spreadsheet right here to prove it. </FUD>
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrML on 08/31/2020 07:51 pm
    The payload penalty cost was non existent, as the customer payload was delivered as required, and then some.
    Payload penalty is not entirely irrelevant, because to get the margin to deliver the customer payload, you need a 40% larger vehicle. And 40% more space hardware is minimum 40% more expensive to build. So I think Elon Musk's calculation factoring payload reduction into the reusability math is correct, considering your vehicle would satisfy all customers needs in expendable mode if it was 40% smaller.

    What's hard to value in $, but not insignificant is the possibility to launch 40% larger payloads in expendable mode (more market options), and the increased reliability of being able to inspect the used stages.

    Musk with these numbers is also correct that there are significant savings after 3 launches, much more at 10 launches.

    There is also an analogy that flying a Boeing 747 in reusable mode from LA to NY costs ~125 000$. While a new expended Cessna 172 flight costs 305 000$ if you crash the plane and parachute out. This still counts when there's just 1 passenger, and the Boeing 747 is x100 oversized.

    Point is, with enough reuses, the costs of a new vehicle and payload reduction is negligible, but it's a far way from now. Still, good profit from only 3 launches means they can make money while getting to that level with Starship.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 08/31/2020 07:58 pm
    And 40% more space hardware is minimum 40% more expensive to build.

    I think the evidence doesn't support that statement.

    The ratio of cost to payload is much, much lower for larger rockets.  Just compare Falcon 9 to Electron, or any other big launcher (SLS excepted) to a small launcher.

    When you scale up a rocket by a certain factor, the cost usually scales up by a smaller factor.

    There are exceptions, of course.  These tend to be when you hit certain limits such as the limit for what is road-transportable.  But there's little to no indication that Falcon 9 has hit many significant points like this where it's so big that it incurs significant additional cost.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrML on 08/31/2020 08:09 pm
    And 40% more space hardware is minimum 40% more expensive to build.

    I think the evidence doesn't support that statement.

    The ratio of cost to payload is much, much lower for larger rockets.  Just compare Falcon 9 to Electron, or any other big launcher (SLS excepted) to a small launcher.

    When you scale up a rocket by a certain factor, the cost usually scales up by a smaller factor.

    There are exceptions, of course.  These tend to be when you hit certain limits such as the limit for what is road-transportable.  But there's little to no indication that Falcon 9 has hit many significant points like this where it's so big that it incurs significant additional cost.
    I don't think it's fair to compare Falcon 9 to other smaller rockets, because SpaceX builds rockets cheaper than almost anyone else. If Falcon 9 was a Falcon 5, it would probably be cheaper. Starship can't be compared with Falcon 9 either, because if they built Starships in F9 size it would be much cheaper to build than Falcon 9.

    It'd be more reasonable to compare two rockets of similar type, from same manufacturer, different sizes. Most costs scale fairly linear with mass, such as required thrust, volume and fuel. However other costs are fixed regardless of size such as launch services, range control, administration, electronics, software, some engineering, sales etc... making smaller rockets more expensive per kg payload.

    Edit: Conclusion I can buy that a 40% smaller vehicle may be less than 40% cheaper, due to fixed costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AJW on 08/31/2020 11:30 pm
    And 40% more space hardware is minimum 40% more expensive to build.

    I think the evidence doesn't support that statement.

    The ratio of cost to payload is much, much lower for larger rockets.  Just compare Falcon 9 to Electron, or any other big launcher (SLS excepted) to a small launcher.

    When you scale up a rocket by a certain factor, the cost usually scales up by a smaller factor.

    There are exceptions, of course.  These tend to be when you hit certain limits such as the limit for what is road-transportable.  But there's little to no indication that Falcon 9 has hit many significant points like this where it's so big that it incurs significant additional cost.
    I don't think it's fair to compare Falcon 9 to other smaller rockets, because SpaceX builds rockets cheaper than almost anyone else. If Falcon 9 was a Falcon 5, it would probably be cheaper. Starship can't be compared with Falcon 9 either, because if they built Starships in F9 size it would be much cheaper to build than Falcon 9.

    It'd be more reasonable to compare two rockets of similar type, from same manufacturer, different sizes. Most costs scale fairly linear with mass, such as required thrust, volume and fuel. However other costs are fixed regardless of size such as launch services, range control, administration, electronics, software, some engineering, sales etc... making smaller rockets more expensive per kg payload.

    Edit: Conclusion I can buy that a 40% smaller vehicle may be less than 40% cheaper, due to fixed costs.

    Two rockets, similar type, same manufacturer.  Let's compare Falcon 9 V1.0 (47.8 meters tall) to Falcon 9 Block 5 (70 meters tall) so Block 5 is actually 45% larger.  V1.0 cost was $50-$56 Million in 2010 and Block 5 is currently $50 Million 10 years later.  So even without inflation, a 45% larger rocket actually appears to cost less than a smaller one and it is far more capable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oldAtlas_Eguy on 08/31/2020 11:30 pm
    And 40% more space hardware is minimum 40% more expensive to build.

    I think the evidence doesn't support that statement.

    The ratio of cost to payload is much, much lower for larger rockets.  Just compare Falcon 9 to Electron, or any other big launcher (SLS excepted) to a small launcher.

    When you scale up a rocket by a certain factor, the cost usually scales up by a smaller factor.

    There are exceptions, of course.  These tend to be when you hit certain limits such as the limit for what is road-transportable.  But there's little to no indication that Falcon 9 has hit many significant points like this where it's so big that it incurs significant additional cost.
    I don't think it's fair to compare Falcon 9 to other smaller rockets, because SpaceX builds rockets cheaper than almost anyone else. If Falcon 9 was a Falcon 5, it would probably be cheaper. Starship can't be compared with Falcon 9 either, because if they built Starships in F9 size it would be much cheaper to build than Falcon 9.

    It'd be more reasonable to compare two rockets of similar type, from same manufacturer, different sizes. Most costs scale fairly linear with mass, such as required thrust, volume and fuel. However other costs are fixed regardless of size such as launch services, range control, administration, electronics, software, some engineering, sales etc... making smaller rockets more expensive per kg payload.

    Edit: Conclusion I can buy that a 40% smaller vehicle may be less than 40% cheaper, due to fixed costs.
    To give an accurate comparison that costs for expendable non expendable is not as most think. The original F9 1.0 which had a payload capability of 9.5mt expendable cost the same for the boosters as does the F9 BLOCK 5. So the 40% statement is a fallacy.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 09/01/2020 07:45 am
    1. I am not worried about the F9R refurbishment cost, I am curious. Even in the worst case scenario its refurbishment cost should be much lower than Shuttle boosters refurbishment cost ( which was about 50 ml$ for both solids ).

    We already know the refurbishment costs.  Musk has said explicitly what they are.

    You keep posting, over and over, this bizarre idea that when Musk is saying refurbishment costs he's not actually including things like replacement parts that are clearly part of refurbishment costs.

    You've already posted your theory.  Others have already posted responses that they think when he says refurbishment costs, he means refurbishment costs.  I'm not sure what value there is in continuing to go over the same territory that has already been discussed.

    So why some writers from NSF, ArsTechnica or Spaceflightnow can not simply ask them about the status of F9R helium COPVs ?

    Because none of those people thinks there's any interesting issue there.

    If you think there's something of note there, feel free to ask Musk yourself on Twitter. but don't expect others who don't share your concerns to ask Musk about them.

    2. I was arguing that SX can not yet accurately predict unit cost of F9R hardware ( and with this related 1stage refurb. cost ), because its HW unit cost could change in the future. They can not every year produce 10 reusable boosters, designed for at least 10 flights. In the last 2 years they produced as many reusable boosters as AS made expendable ones. Once they limit production, their HW unit cost should become higher. Starship/SH production will have no effect on this.

    The production lines already exist.  They're a sunk cost.  It doesn't seem to me there's any reason to believe that the costs of parts to SpaceX will be much different per part at this point if the production of those parts decreases somewhat.

    If the difference in unit cost between the cheapest possible reusable and expendable booster in the same lift category will be a factor of 4 or more, then even with small refurb. and recovery costs breakeven number will be higher than 5.

    Falcon 9, when used in reusable mode, is the cheapest launch vehicle in its payload class by a large margin.  Some hardware (most notably legs, gridfins, and some TPS around the engine bay) needs to be added to make it reusable, but all indications are that the additional cost of that hardware is moderate.  The idea that it needs to be a factor of 4 more expensive is wildly out of line with what the evidence suggests.

    You can also look at Starship/Super Heavy.  Musk's statements about projected build costs are that it will be significantly cheaper to build than Falcon 9.  That is further evidence that making a rocket reusable doesn't make it enormously more expensive than an equivalent expendable vehicle.
    Quote 1

    " We already know the refurbishment costs.  Musk has said explicitly what they are.

    You keep posting, over and over, this bizarre idea that when Musk is saying refurbishment costs he's not actually including things like replacement parts that are clearly part of refurbishment costs.

    You've already posted your theory.  Others have already posted responses that they think when he says refurbishment costs, he means refurbishment costs.  I'm not sure what value there is in continuing to go over the same territory that has already been discussed. "


    LOL. Seriously ? All we have is one chaotic interview with terrible sound quality. He said that - quarter of million$ worth of refurbishment is still needed. He obviously didn't count any recovery costs into this, any amortized costs of reusability. It is possible that he counted only cost of inspecting of used booster, cleaning of 9Merlins ( which he said is difficult ), cost of manually replacing of some parts, but not unit cost of any HW, that needs to be swapped.

    Why not. In the same interview he said that using helium as pressurant add to the cost. What he could meant by this ? Cost of Helium ? It is relatively expansive, but F9R need only small quantity of it compare to RP1/LOX and their cost is itself only tiny part of F9R total cost per launch.

    We don't know what are helium COPVs unit costs, how many units F9R booster need and what is their design life. If they still need replace them after every flight like with block 4 and EM didn't count this into used booster refurbishment cost, it will make 1stage refurb. costs, itself much higher than 250 K.

    Since block 4 they improved significantly used booster refurbishment times, mainly time of inspecting it. And they don't send them anymore into McGregor for test-firing which also saves lot of time. But during one month of refurbishment they can still swap many parts. F9R booster was design for quick HW parts replacement, there are lot of things on booster which can be swapped during one month.

    Quote 2

    " The production lines already exist.  They're a sunk cost.  It doesn't seem to me there's any reason to believe that the costs of parts to SpaceX will be much different per part at this point if the production of those parts decreases somewhat."


    Purpose of reusability is limit number of workers, who must work on manufacturing of a new rockets. To manufacture 10  new boosters every year, you need high number of workers who can produce their HW quickly, so it unit cost could be lower. Once you limit your booster production per year and number of workers who works on their HW, time needed to produce it will be longer and it unit cost higher.

    Quote 3

    Because none of those people thinks there's any interesting issue there.

    " If you think there's something of note there, feel free to ask Musk yourself on Twitter. but don't expect others who don't share your concerns to ask Musk about them. "


    You don't speak for every NSF, ArsTechnica and Spaceflightnow writer. I doubt they care what you think.

    SX was never shy to share many technical details about F9R or Starship/SH. At least at SFN you can find many good articles.

    So if they will have next opportunity for interview with someone from SX, they should ask them about status of F9R helium COPVs. Exact questions that I ask above. It is clear they will not answer those questions somebody on Twitter.

    They should also try to make interview with someone from Astrotech FL, so we could better understand what all procedures are needed for payload integration and how much$ it could cost for one payload.

    I find it " bizarre " that you not interested to know any of this.

    EM estimates of cost to launch rocket ( unrelated to building or reusing rocket ) are much lower than even TB " wildly successful " estimates. But you decided to simply dismiss TB opinions, without having any idea how much$ payload integration could cost, what all procedures it includes and same for other cost factors, that I mentioned. 

    You decide to believe that F9R refurbishment cost are 250K based on 1quote from interview with bad sound quality and without EM even clarified what includes his estimate of refurb. cost per one cycle. It is absolutely possible that he  didn't count cost of any hardware, which they must swap during refurbishment including helium COPVs.

    Honest facts are always based on clear and undisputed evidence. If your are not interested about it at least don't discourage NSF, ArsTechnica and Spaceflightnow writers from asking SX, ULA, BO important questions.

    Then, they can always offer us some new important info from them and we can know exactly how economics of reusability works for F9R.






    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 09/01/2020 08:05 am
    Honest facts are always based on clear and undisputed evidence. If your are not interested about it at least don't discourage NSF, ArsTechnica and Spaceflightnow writers from asking SX, ULA, BO important questions.

    Then, they can always offer us some new important info from them and we can know exactly how economics of reusability works for F9R.

    You've got to be kidding.  I'm not discouraging anyone from asking anything.

    You literally asked why nobody from NSF, ArsTechnica and Spaceflightnow have been asking Musk one particular thing you think matters.  I answered your question.  That's not me discouraging anyone.  It is literally answering the question you asked.

    All the other things you said in your post are just repeats of things you said before that have already been answered, so there's no point in responding in detail to anything else.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 09/01/2020 09:15 am
    [zubenelgenubi: Please learn to use the quote function properly. Please use the preview function to read how your post will appear on-screen before you post it.]

    Nobody outside SX can know their actual costs, but SX was never shy to share many technical and financial details about F9R or Starship/SH. Even facts about what fairing halve or 1 Merlin unit cost is.

    Elon Musk shares some bits and pieces, and if he states it then it is a believable number. In contrast, if Tory Bruno provides his guesses about SpaceX costs he is only making educated guesses - but still guesses like the rest of us.

    Quote
    2. I was arguing that SX can not yet accurately predict unit cost of F9R hardware ( and with this related 1stage refurb. cost ), because its HW unit cost could change in the future.

    It is a given that things change, but that doesn't mean the SpaceX Cost Accounting department can't know the PRESENT cost of each and every Falcon 9 that is built, and all of the major and minor components. It is literally built into every modern ERP system.

    Quote
    They can not every year produce 10 reusable boosters, designed for at least 10 flights.

    They obviously can build as many as they NEED.

    Quote
    Once they limit production, their HW unit cost should become higher. Starship/SH production will have no effect on this.

    Their costs depend on a lot of factors, volume is just one of them.

    For instance their electronics may be serviceable, which means that even though they are buying less of them, and the unit price is higher because of the lower volume, the amount they save by reusing each stage would more than make up for the higher purchase price.

    For the 1st stage the difference in price for the aluminum wouldn't be that much, since they are buying a stock alloy. There might be a slight increase in price overall, but insignificant compared to the labor and other components that ultimately make up the total price.

    So even if they are paying 5% more overall because of the lower volume of parts they need, that is more than made up by reuse.

    Quote
    But could EM really know, how cheap expendable booster in F9R lift category ( 15.6t to LEO ) could SX build, if they invested all their billions$ into it development instead of Starship/SH development.

    I'm not quite sure what your question is, but regarding how much things cost and how much to charge for them, all you have to do is look at the success of Tesla and SpaceX, which are both hardware companies. If he didn't understand his costs then he wouldn't have been able to build such successful companies.

    Quote
    Propulsive flyback booster HW should have higher quality standards than any expendable booster HW, because it needs to endure worse wear and tear during deacceleration in vacuum, reentry and landing burn, which should make also this HW unit cost higher.

    No, you are not understanding engineering. Reusable parts can have the same quality as expendable parts, it is just that one is designed for many uses. That doesn't mean that the expendable part is lower quality. In fact Tory Bruno would argue that ULA's quality for their expendable launch vehicles is very high - and I'm sure it is.

    Quote
    If the difference in unit cost between the cheapest possible reusable and expendable booster in the same lift category will be a factor of 4 or more, then even with small refurb. and recovery costs breakeven number will be higher than 5.

    We know the customer PRICE for an expendable Falcon 9 is $62M. Elon Musk has stated that the breakdown in cost for the Falcon 9 is:

    60% = 1st stage
    20% = 2nd stage
    10% = Fairing
    10% = Cost of launch itself

    So if they were making a profit with the expendable Falcon 9 at $62M (which they said they were), then the cost of the reusable 1st stage can't be a factor of 4X more expensive than the expendable 1st stage.
    Quote 1

    No, you are not understanding engineering. Reusable parts can have the same quality as expendable parts, it is just that one is designed for many uses. That doesn't mean that the expendable part is lower quality. In fact Tory Bruno would argue that ULA's quality for their expendable launch vehicles is very high - and I'm sure it is.


    Quite opposite. It is you who don't understand anything about rocket engineering. Any rocket hardware that can be reused many times has better quality than HW, which can be used only once, same like car which can be used for many years has better quality than car which can be used only for 1year.

    But reusable propulsive flyback hardware always need endure higher wear and tear during deacceleration, atmospheric reentry, landing burn and landing. It must be also designed for easy inspections after the flight and for easy parts ( which are not be qualified for next flight ) replacement after the flight. Good example for this are 1stage Merlins.

    All of this additional requirements cause that time to produce one reusable Merlin is longer like for potential expendable ( single use ) Merlin and it unit cost will be higher.

    This is quite obvious. Do you seriously want to start arguing about this ?

    Quote 2

    " It is a given that things change, but that doesn't mean the SpaceX Cost Accounting department can't know the PRESENT cost of each and every Falcon 9 that is built, and all of the major and minor components. It is literally built into every modern ERP system. "


    You have no idea what information SX cost accounting department gave to EM. Maybe only separate info about cost of inspecting ( scanning of used hardware ), cleaning of 9Merlins ( which EM said is difficult ), manually replacing of parts that needs to be swapped ( including helium COPVs ). He should know unit costs of every F9R HW, but since this HW is also actively produce for new reusable boosters and for new upper stages is possible he didn't count it between used booster refurbishment costs.

    For every reflight of used booster they could need to replace very different parts, so count it into average refurbishment cost per one refurb. cycle could be very difficult.

    Quote 3

    " We know the customer PRICE for an expendable Falcon 9 is $62M. Elon Musk has stated that the breakdown in cost for the Falcon 9 is:

    60% = 1st stage
    20% = 2nd stage
    10% = Fairing
    10% = Cost of launch itself

    So if they were making a profit with the expendable Falcon 9 at $62M (which they said they were), then the cost of the reusable 1st stage can't be a factor of 4X more expensive than the expendable 1st stage. "


    EM estimates of cost to launch rocket ( unrelated to building or reusing rocket ) are much lower than even TB " wildly successful " estimates. But you decided to simply dismiss TB opinions, without having any idea how much$ payload integration could cost, what all procedures it includes and same for other cost factors, that I mentioned.

    Quote 4

    " I'm not quite sure what your question is, but regarding how much things cost and how much to charge for them, all you have to do is look at the success of Tesla and SpaceX, which are both hardware companies. If he didn't understand his costs then he wouldn't have been able to build such successful companies. "


    F9R was cheapest possible expendable rocket in it lift category with 2010s tech, that doesn't mean that it must be cheapest possible expendable rocket with 2020s and 2030s tech.

    For example ESA has goal to decrease cost of Ariane 6 by factor 2 compare to Ariane 5. Which would be close to the cost of expendable F9.

    With Ariane NEXT program, which included new CH4 Prometheus engine ESA had goal to decrease it unit cost further by factor of 10, compare to Ariane 6. Then they backtracked and said that by factor of 2, but that because ESA unlike SX always try to be conservative and not promised anything until it is granted.

    Also in time when Ariane NEXT program started ESA didn't know yet, if AN and Prometheus engine will be design like expendable or reusable.

    In each case ESA believe, that new manufacturing methods could still significantly decrease unit cost of rocket hardware even lower than F9R has right now.

    Can we sometimes in the future cheaply 3D print entire tanks or entire engines ( not just their small parts which must be later assembled together ). Maybe yes. But it could be very different for expandable or reusable HW, which are design to endure very different wear and tear during the flight. And are design for easy inspections and part replacement after the flight.

    Not you or EM could really know, what could be unit cost difference between cheapest possible reusable and expendable rocket in same lift category during 2020s or 2030s.
     
    As I said before. If difference in unit cost between cheapest possible reusable and expandable booster in same category will be factor of 4, then even with low refurb. and recovery costs your breakeven number will be higher than 5. It could be even higher for 2stage and for exotic rocket designs like Skylon. 

     


     
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/01/2020 01:56 pm
    1) modern liquid rocket engines have to be reusable ANYWAY even if for an expendable launcher. That’s because they must be able to be acceptance fired without damage. Also, able to survive on aborted liftoff without damage. No one wants an engine so fragile that it needs to be replaced after an aborted lift-off! And no one wants an engine that can’t be hot fired before flight. The first iteration of the N-1 has such engines and tested them via random batch testing (if I recall correctly), but we all know how the N-1 turned out! And also true for upper stage engines which have to fire for long duration and restart without refurb.

    So at best you save the amount of hardening to extend the life to a few more reuses. This is minuscule!

    And because SpaceX is going with a clustering approach, even with high numbers of reuse like 5 or 6, their production rate for Merlins is STILL higher than it would be if they used a larger single engine like RD-180 or RD-171 even at the same flight rate. So the cost per Merlin is super low, lower per unit thrust than any US liquid engine by far, expendable or otherwise. The insistence that it must be multiples more expensive is unfounded and the opposite of actual evidence.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AJW on 09/01/2020 02:00 pm

    F9R was cheapest possible expendable rocket in it lift category with 2010s tech, that doesn't mean that it must be cheapest possible expendable rocket with 2020s and 2030s tech.

    For example ESA has goal to decrease cost of Ariane 6 by factor 2 compare to Ariane 5. Which would be close to the cost of expendable F9.

    With Ariane NEXT program, which included new CH4 Prometheus engine ESA had goal to decrease it unit cost further by factor of 10, compare to Ariane 6. Then they backtracked and said that by factor of 2, but that because ESA unlike SX always try to be conservative and not promised anything until it is granted.

    Also in time when Ariane NEXT program started ESA didn't know yet, if AN and Prometheus engine will be design like expendable or reusable.

    In each case ESA believe, that new manufacturing methods could still significantly decrease unit cost of rocket hardware even lower than F9R has right now.

    Can we sometimes in the future cheaply 3D print entire tanks or entire engines ( not just their small parts which must be later assembled together ). Maybe yes. But it could be very different for expandable or reusable HW, which are design to endure very different wear and tear during the flight. And are design for easy inspections and part replacement after the flight.

    Not you or EM could really know, what could be unit cost difference between cheapest possible reusable and expendable rocket in same lift category during 2020s or 2030s.
     
    As I said before. If difference in unit cost between cheapest possible reusable and expandable booster in same category will be factor of 4, then even with low refurb. and recovery costs your breakeven number will be higher than 5. It could be even higher for 2stage and for exotic rocket designs like Skylon.

    Tom, I understand your frustration.  I have had the great fortune of working for multiple companies developing best of class products that were one to two years ahead of the market.  Competitors would criticize our products publicly while studying our new features to include in their future releases.  Their failure was that we were already working on the next generation of products and they were always going to be years behind.

    In this case, your current focus on costs in 2030 clearly dovetails with the timeline for Ariane Next, which has the aspirational goal of trying to achieve what SpaceX accomplished more than a decade earlier.  Meanwhile, SpaceX will have had over a decade experience with Starship, and ESA will still be a decade behind.  To their credit, at least they aren't building a 20bn boondoggle based on 1970's technology.

    Let me address your question.  Does anyone know what the unit cost difference will be in 2030?  Using the term 'cheapest possible' makes the question unanswerable even today let alone a decade from now.  I can say that for 2020, Musk and the SpaceX cost accountants certainly know their actual numbers, and with great accuracy, and that will make them the most likely candidates to predict reusability costs in 2030 as well.  As one of my previous bosses was famously quoted, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it", and I think the future is being invented right now in a field in Boca Chica.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/01/2020 03:16 pm
    Falcon 9 even as an expendable is pretty close to the cheapest possible. I've seen almost no evidence of significant cost increase from reuse other than maybe some mods to the bottom of Block 5, plus the grid fins and legs and nitrogen thrusters. I doubt it increases the cost of manufacture more than 30%, let alone 4x.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/01/2020 05:42 pm
    Tom, I would HIGHLY suggest that you learn how to use quotes properly, since you are doubling the amount of text in your posts by reposting the entire prior text, and then AGAIN reposting the text to answer it.

    Quite opposite. It is you who don't understand anything about rocket engineering.

    I'm not a rocket engineer, and I'm figuring you're not one either. Now that we got that out of the way I will say that I have decades of manufacturing experience, so I do know something about making stuff.

    The difference between expendable and reusable parts is their duty cycle - how many times they need to work. Both require the same amount of "quality", but the reusable one may be engineered with more material, or different material, so that it can last longer.

    Quote
    But reusable propulsive flyback hardware always need endure higher wear and tear during deacceleration, atmospheric reentry, landing burn and landing. It must be also designed for easy inspections after the flight and for easy parts ( which are not be qualified for next flight ) replacement after the flight.

    That is all about how parts of engineered, not the "quality" of the parts. You can design a part to last for 1,000 duty cycles, but if you have bad tolerances or poor material quality then it won't last as it is engineered to last. But use the right tolerances, and the proper material, then it will last for as long as it is engineered to last.

    Quote
    You have no idea what information SX cost accounting department gave to EM.

    It is a safe assumption that since Elon Musk is a numbers driven engineer, that he would want the details from his cost accounting department. And they would give it to him.

    I've never known a CEO that wasn't interested in the cost of their products.

    Quote
    EM estimates of cost to launch rocket ( unrelated to building or reusing rocket ) are much lower than even TB " wildly successful " estimates. But you decided to simply dismiss TB opinions, without having any idea how much$ payload integration could cost, what all procedures it includes and same for other cost factors, that I mentioned.

    If "TB" = ULA's Tory Bruno, then of course I think Elon Musk knows more about his costs than Tory Bruno. No sane person could argue otherwise.

    Quote
    F9R was cheapest possible expendable rocket in it lift category with 2010s tech, that doesn't mean that it must be cheapest possible expendable rocket with 2020s and 2030s tech.

    Rockets are big empty tanks of metal, and the price of that metal doesn't change much. Certainly the manufacturing methods for making those tanks hasn't changed much, and both SpaceX and ULA use friction stir welding (FSW), which is the latest technology for joining metal together. So if the price of the metal used for rocket tanks goes down, it goes down for everyone, and everyone uses FSW for building tanks, that price doesn't change either. So the cost of building the tank parts of stages won't change for years to come.

    As for the engines, SpaceX builds their own engines, and they designed them to be reusable like aircraft engines, so unless another rocket company learns to build their own engines, and makes them reusable too, they can never beat SpaceX on the price of engines.

    Everything else on a rocket is based on component prices that won't vary much into the future because they are commodity products, so no rocket manufacturer would be able to lower their expendable rocket COSTS below what SpaceX builds their reusable rockets.

    Quote
    For example ESA has goal to decrease cost of Ariane 6 by factor 2 compare to Ariane 5. Which would be close to the cost of expendable F9.

    I just want to point out that Ariane 5 is a poor example to use, since it loses money on every launch. And ESA has acknowledged that they can't beat SpaceX on pricing since they have to spread their manufacturing across a number of countries and companies, so they can never get the vertical integration benefits that SpaceX has.

    Quote
    As I said before. If difference in unit cost between cheapest possible reusable and expandable booster in same category will be factor of 4, then even with low refurb. and recovery costs your breakeven number will be higher than 5. It could be even higher for 2stage and for exotic rocket designs like Skylon.

    The only way your 4X numbers work is if you wave your hands and state that currently unknown cost reductions will occur for expendable rockets, but won't apply to reusable rockets.

    That is not a convincing argument.

    REMINDER, please use quotes properly so that your conversations don't turn into a wall of text.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: matthewkantar on 09/01/2020 06:25 pm
    Take an example; ULA uses very machining and material intensive isogrid tech to build disposable tanks. SpaceX use sheet and stringers.

    As a result, I very much doubt disposable ULA first stage tankage is cheaper than SpaceX's reusable first stage tankage.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rsdavis9 on 09/01/2020 08:05 pm
    Take an example; ULA uses very machining and material intensive isogrid tech to build disposable tanks. SpaceX use sheet and stringers.

    As a result, I very much doubt disposable ULA first stage tankage is cheaper than SpaceX's reusable first stage tankage.

    Does both s1 and s2 of falcon have stringers?
    I don't seem to remember seeing them in in tank pics.
    Anybody have a link?

    PS I don't doubt it is true.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: LouScheffer on 09/01/2020 08:35 pm
    If you go to any magazine for car enthusiasts, they will track "Total Cost of Ownership" (https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a31267529/cost-of-car-ownership/).   For a particular car they own, they keep track of every penny they spend  - purchase, depreciation, license, insurance, fuel, repairs (and if they need to tow it to the shop, that's included), replacement parts like tires and brake pads, new fluids like oil and refrigerant, etc.  - every single penny.

    I think we can assume SpaceX is at least as competent as a car magazine.  So inside SpaceX they will have a spreadsheet that tells the cost of each launch, first or reuse, as precisely as is humanly possible.

    Since this is accounting, they likely split this cost up many ways.  For example, they almost surely divide each re-use into barge landings and land landings.  These will have separate retrieval costs.  Then there is the refurbishment costs once they get the stage into the hanger.  Then if you want the cost of *launching* a re-used booster, there is fuel, LOX, helium, range fees, etc.  These are needed for figuring the selling price, but don't differ for a first or re-used launch.  Then there will be different customer integration, security, and services requested.  You can include fixed costs, or not.  I'd not be surprised if there are 20 different ways to quote the cost of a re-used booster, all of them "correct".   Elon will pick various ones depending on the point he is making.   Maybe it costs $250K to service a booster once it's in the hanger.   Maybe it's $15M (internally) to launch a fully depreciated booster.  Maybe $30M is the cheapest price you will see on the market.  Or anywhere in between.  The wide range of exactly what is included makes it impractical to derive a precise SpaceX cost for each phase of re-use from Elon's statements.

    Now of course there will be uncertainties in their cost model.  Likely they rent the barge by the year.  So they cannot assign an exact cost to a recovery until they know how many downrange landings in the lease period.  Likewise, all they can state with certainty is the previous costs.  For future launches this is not known, but it should be quite close.

    Finally, it makes little sense to compare Tori Bruno's cost model with SpaceX's.  They use different assumptions and hence get different results.   For example, TB says the cost of a launch is 50% fixed, 25% booster, and 25% upper stage.  So even if you reduce the booster cost to $0, you can't drive the total launch cost down to less than 75% of the original.   That's correct given his assumptions.  But SpaceX could assume otherwise.  Their split might be 50% fixed, 15% upper stage, 35% booster.   But if re-use enables you to launch twice as often with the same staff and facilities, then you can reduce the fixed cost per launch by a factor of 2.  Coupled with a lower-cost upper stage, SpaceX can then hit half-price fairly easily.  Basically you can only use Tori's analysis for ULA.  If you modify enough to incorporate Spacex assumptions, it's no longer Tori's analysis.  It's just another estimate of the cost of re-usable rockets.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: SDSmith on 09/01/2020 09:10 pm
    If you go to any magazine for car enthusiasts, they will track "Total Cost of Ownership" (https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a31267529/cost-of-car-ownership/).   For a particular car they own, they keep track of every penny they spend  - purchase, depreciation, license, insurance, fuel, repairs (and if they need to tow it to the shop, that's included), replacement parts like tires and brake pads, new fluids like oil and refrigerant, etc.  - every single penny.

    I think we can assume SpaceX is at least as competent as a car magazine.  So inside SpaceX they will have a spreadsheet that tells the cost of each launch, first or reuse, as precisely as is humanly possible.

    Since this is accounting, they likely split this cost up many ways.  For example, they almost surely divide each re-use into barge landings and land landings.  These will have separate retrieval costs.  Then there is the refurbishment costs once they get the stage into the hanger.  Then if you want the cost of *launching* a re-used booster, there is fuel, LOX, helium, range fees, etc.  These are needed for figuring the selling price, but don't differ for a first or re-used launch.  Then there will be different customer integration, security, and services requested.  You can include fixed costs, or not.  I'd not be surprised if there are 20 different ways to quote the cost of a re-used booster, all of them "correct".   Elon will pick various ones depending on the point he is making.   Maybe it costs $250K to service a booster once it's in the hanger.   Maybe it's $15M (internally) to launch a fully depreciated booster.  Maybe $30M is the cheapest price you will see on the market.  Or anywhere in between.  The wide range of exactly what is included makes it impractical to derive a precise SpaceX cost for each phase of re-use from Elon's statements.

    Now of course there will be uncertainties in their cost model.  Likely they rent the barge by the year.  So they cannot assign an exact cost to a recovery until they know how many downrange landings in the lease period.  Likewise, all they can state with certainty is the previous costs.  For future launches this is not known, but it should be quite close.

    Finally, it makes little sense to compare Tori Bruno's cost model with SpaceX's.  They use different assumptions and hence get different results.   For example, TB says the cost of a launch is 50% fixed, 25% booster, and 25% upper stage.  So even if you reduce the booster cost to $0, you can't drive the total launch cost down to less than 75% of the original.   That's correct given his assumptions.  But SpaceX could assume otherwise.  Their split might be 50% fixed, 15% upper stage, 35% booster.   But if re-use enables you to launch twice as often with the same staff and facilities, then you can reduce the fixed cost per launch by a factor of 2.  Coupled with a lower-cost upper stage, SpaceX can then hit half-price fairly easily.  Basically you can only use Tori's analysis for ULA.  If you modify enough to incorporate Spacex assumptions, it's no longer Tori's analysis.  It's just another estimate of the cost of re-usable rockets.
    To go along with that is this blog entry from Wayne Hale titled What Figure Did You Have In Mind? in a response to a reporters question how much did it cost.

    https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2019/11/09/what-figure-did-you-have-in-mind/

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: launchwatcher on 09/01/2020 09:13 pm
    Take an example; ULA uses very machining and material intensive isogrid tech to build disposable tanks. SpaceX use sheet and stringers.

    As a result, I very much doubt disposable ULA first stage tankage is cheaper than SpaceX's reusable first stage tankage.
    Watch the Smarter Every Day tour of the ULA factory to see the factory floor acreage & enormous custom tooling that ULA has dedicated to isogrid/orthogrid machining & bending for Atlas and Vulcan tankage.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0fG_lnVhHw
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lars-J on 09/01/2020 10:44 pm
    Take an example; ULA uses very machining and material intensive isogrid tech to build disposable tanks. SpaceX use sheet and stringers.

    As a result, I very much doubt disposable ULA first stage tankage is cheaper than SpaceX's reusable first stage tankage.

    Does both s1 and s2 of falcon have stringers?
    I don't seem to remember seeing them in in tank pics.
    Anybody have a link?


    PS I don't doubt it is true.

    Here is a link with an image of a F9 first stage tank interior. It might have changed since, but not by too much: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy-progress-update/falcon-9-propellant-tank-interior-stringers-spacex-1-crop/
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/01/2020 11:02 pm
    Take an example; ULA uses very machining and material intensive isogrid tech to build disposable tanks. SpaceX use sheet and stringers.

    As a result, I very much doubt disposable ULA first stage tankage is cheaper than SpaceX's reusable first stage tankage.

    Does both s1 and s2 of falcon have stringers?
    I don't seem to remember seeing them in in tank pics.
    Anybody have a link?


    PS I don't doubt it is true.

    Here is a link with an image of a F9 first stage tank interior. It might have changed since, but not by too much: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy-progress-update/falcon-9-propellant-tank-interior-stringers-spacex-1-crop/
    If I recall correctly, only one of the two propellants has stringers. Can't remember if it's the oxygen or kerosene. They don't use any isogrid, though. (Except for Dragon.)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/01/2020 11:33 pm
    And 40% more space hardware is minimum 40% more expensive to build.

    I think the evidence doesn't support that statement.

    The ratio of cost to payload is much, much lower for larger rockets.  Just compare Falcon 9 to Electron, or any other big launcher (SLS excepted) to a small launcher.

    When you scale up a rocket by a certain factor, the cost usually scales up by a smaller factor.

    There are exceptions, of course.  These tend to be when you hit certain limits such as the limit for what is road-transportable.  But there's little to no indication that Falcon 9 has hit many significant points like this where it's so big that it incurs significant additional cost.
    I don't think it's fair to compare Falcon 9 to other smaller rockets, because SpaceX builds rockets cheaper than almost anyone else. If Falcon 9 was a Falcon 5, it would probably be cheaper. Starship can't be compared with Falcon 9 either, because if they built Starships in F9 size it would be much cheaper to build than Falcon 9.

    It'd be more reasonable to compare two rockets of similar type, from same manufacturer, different sizes. Most costs scale fairly linear with mass, such as required thrust, volume and fuel. However other costs are fixed regardless of size such as launch services, range control, administration, electronics, software, some engineering, sales etc... making smaller rockets more expensive per kg payload.

    Edit: Conclusion I can buy that a 40% smaller vehicle may be less than 40% cheaper, due to fixed costs.

    Launch vehicles are rarely similar enough to do this, though. For example, Starship will have 10x the mass and thrust of F9, but may actually be cheaper to build due to simpler construction and larger performance margins. The key factor will probably be engine cost, which is likely to be a bigger percentage of Starship cost then Falcon.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/03/2020 09:44 pm
    Should point out that if you have a super low launch rate, then sure, manufacture is only like half your per-launch cost because you still have to pay the fixed cost of maintaining all those launch pad personnel and pad infrastructure (besides factory infrastructure and engineering staff). Both Ariane and ULA have much lower launch rates than SpaceX, so the fact that ULA and Ariane claim rocket manufacturing costs are only half of the total launch cost is not evidence that they would be for SpaceX.

    In fact, if we assume for the sake of argument that non-manufacturing costs are a constant $300 million per pad for both SpaceX and ULA, then in 2018 ULA's 3 Atlas V launches from CCAFS cost $100 million in pad costs while SpaceX's 12 launches in 2018 from LC-40 were just $25 million apiece (EDIT: in pad costs). So SpaceX saving $40 million or whatever on booster costs (out of a total of $50m?) would save a much larger proportion of per-launch costs than it would for ULA (out of a total of $50m for rocket manufacture cost).
    SpaceX reused launch cost: $35 ($25m pad +$10m booster refurb and upper stage) vs $75m ($25m pad +$50million booster and upperstage manufacture).
    Atlas V reuse cost: $110 ($100m pad + +$10m booster refurb and upper stage) vs $150m ($100m pad +$50million booster and upperstage manufacture).

    In the SpaceX case, a 30% payload reduction from reuse would mean the cost per kg still DECREASES significantly while in the ULA case it slightly INCREASES. (Of course, this is under the weird assumption that number of launches stays exactly the same in either case.... But the point is I used the same exact manufacturing and absolute cost savings from reuse in both cases! Just the fixed pad costs at low flight rate add so much to the per-launch costs that the payload reduction from reuse makes reuse actually counter-productive from a cost-per-kg case...)



    So you can't use statements by Tory about ULA's situation to say that reuse is dumb for a company like SpaceX.

    It also exemplifies the fact that for expendable OR reusable, low launch rates (per rocket family and per pad) absolutely kill economics.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 09/03/2020 10:19 pm
    Should point out that if you have a super low launch rate, then sure, manufacture is only like half your per-launch cost because you still have to pay the fixed cost of maintaining all those launch pad personnel and pad infrastructure (besides factory infrastructure and engineering staff). Both Ariane and ULA have much lower launch rates than SpaceX, so the fact that ULA and Ariane claim rocket manufacturing costs are only half of the total launch cost is not evidence that they would be for SpaceX.

    In fact, if we assume for the sake of argument that non-manufacturing costs are a constant $300 million per pad for both SpaceX and ULA, then in 2018 ULA's 3 Atlas V launches from CCAFS cost $100 million in pad costs while SpaceX's 12 launches in 2018 from LC-40 were just $25 million apiece. So SpaceX saving $40 million or whatever on booster costs (out of a total of $50m? would save a much larger proportion of per-launch costs than it would for ULA (out of a total of $50m for rocket manufacture cost).
    SpaceX reused launch cost: $35 ($25m pad +$10m booster refurb and upper stage) vs $75m ($25m pad +$50million booster and upperstage manufacture).
    Atlas V reuse cost: $110 ($100m pad + +$10m booster refurb and upper stage) vs $150m ($100m pad +$50million booster and upperstage manufacture).

    In the SpaceX case, a 30% payload reduction from reuse would mean the cost per kg still DECREASES significantly while in the ULA case it slightly INCREASES. (Of course, this is under the weird assumption that number of launches stays exactly the same in either case.)



    So you can't use statements by Tory about ULA's situation to say that reuse is dumb for a company like SpaceX.

    It also exemplifies the fact that for expendable OR reusable, low launch rates (per rocket family and per pad) absolutely kill economics.

    Well said. And one would think this is self evident, if one approached the issue with an open mind.

    Elon himself said the $15m marginal cost per Starlink F9 launch excluded overheads and R&D.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/04/2020 03:25 pm
    Should point out that if you have a super low launch rate, then sure, manufacture is only like half your per-launch cost because you still have to pay the fixed cost of maintaining all those launch pad personnel and pad infrastructure (besides factory infrastructure and engineering staff). Both Ariane and ULA have much lower launch rates than SpaceX, so the fact that ULA and Ariane claim rocket manufacturing costs are only half of the total launch cost is not evidence that they would be for SpaceX.

    In fact, if we assume for the sake of argument that non-manufacturing costs are a constant $300 million per pad for both SpaceX and ULA, then in 2018 ULA's 3 Atlas V launches from CCAFS cost $100 million in pad costs while SpaceX's 12 launches in 2018 from LC-40 were just $25 million apiece. So SpaceX saving $40 million or whatever on booster costs (out of a total of $50m? would save a much larger proportion of per-launch costs than it would for ULA (out of a total of $50m for rocket manufacture cost).
    SpaceX reused launch cost: $35 ($25m pad +$10m booster refurb and upper stage) vs $75m ($25m pad +$50million booster and upperstage manufacture).
    Atlas V reuse cost: $110 ($100m pad + +$10m booster refurb and upper stage) vs $150m ($100m pad +$50million booster and upperstage manufacture).

    In the SpaceX case, a 30% payload reduction from reuse would mean the cost per kg still DECREASES significantly while in the ULA case it slightly INCREASES. (Of course, this is under the weird assumption that number of launches stays exactly the same in either case.)



    So you can't use statements by Tory about ULA's situation to say that reuse is dumb for a company like SpaceX.

    It also exemplifies the fact that for expendable OR reusable, low launch rates (per rocket family and per pad) absolutely kill economics.

    Well said. And one would think this is self evident, if one approached the issue with an open mind.

    Elon himself said the $15m marginal cost per Starlink F9 launch excluded overheads and R&D.

    Of course he did, because that's the standard definition of marginal cost. SpaceX's business model pretty clearly has external customers paying more than marginal cost to cover the fixed overhead, while internal customers (Starlink) only pay marginal cost.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: zubenelgenubi on 09/04/2020 06:04 pm
    [zubenelgenubi: Please learn to use the quote function properly. Please use the preview function to read how your post will appear on-screen before you post it.]
    Moderator: TomMul, you can't use, or be bothered to use, the quote function properly.  Your most recent post deleted, along with replies.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 09/06/2020 11:21 am

    If "TB" = ULA's Tory Bruno, then of course I think Elon Musk knows more about his costs than Tory Bruno. No sane person could argue otherwise.

    Tory Bruno and George Sowers long time ago said, that cost of rocket is only halve from total cost of launch. Arianespace said something similar after DLR liquid booster glide back study. I asked T.Bruno on Twitter if for Vulcan cost of rocket will still be only 1/2 from total cost per launch. He said yes.

    E.Musk said that for F9R all costs unrelated to cost of building new upper stage or building ( reusing ) 1stage are just 10 %. If this was true didn't have ULA already enough time with Vulcan development decrease them also to just 10 %.

    In his REDDIT post 5 months ago T.Bruno actually admitted that, if you are " wildly successful " cost of rocket could become 70 % from cost of launch.

    But then he resolutely said that " there is no credible math where 1stage booster reuse can save halve of launch service cost.

    And when - hypothetically for F9R -  cost of rocket was 70 % from total cost of launch service and cost of 1stage was 2/3 from cost of rocket ( like SX claims ) 1st booster reuse can still save just about 46 %.

    It seems obvious to me from his RD post, that he didn't include any additional NASA or military costs into this 30%, that they are limitation for every launch provider in general. I already said why.

    Did you know enough about exact cost of payload integration, cost of launch tower refurb after the flight, cost of stage integration, insurance, renting launch pads from the government, cost of fuel, etc., that you can know for sure that for SpaceX they are just 10 % from total cost of launch service, while for all others they are 50%, minimum 30% percent from total cost of LS.   

    Isn't rational that if " any sane person " must choose between two contradicting CEOs, ( didn't see their companies internal financial records ), he always choose some middle ground or wait with his opinion until he will have real evidence.

    Both E.Musk and T.Bruno has questionable credibility. E.Musk has clear tendency overhype his companies products ( he promised FH in 2013, Crew dragon with propulsive landing in 2014, Red Dragon on Mars in 2018, FH lunar flyby in 2019 and fully self driving Tesla in 2017 ), while T.Bruno is CEO of SX competitor, who can have interest on talking down his competitor product. He claims that SX has large outside investment and private debt, which create disconnect between real F9R costs and prices.

    I believe SpaceX, that F9R 1stage should be about 2/3 from total cost of entire rocket and not 1/2 from cost of rocket like it is for Atlas V 1stage.

    But if T.Bruno limitations are right ( Arianespace said something very similar ) and cost of rocket could by only 50, maximum 70 % from total cost per launch service, 1stage booster reuse could save only 35, maximum 46 % from total cost of launch ( not 60 % like you claims ) and breakeven number will be then little higher than you think.

    Quote
      Rockets are big empty tanks of metal, and the price of that metal doesn't change much. Certainly the manufacturing methods for making those tanks hasn't changed much, and both SpaceX and ULA use friction stir welding (FSW), which is the latest technology for joining metal together. So if the price of the metal used for rocket tanks goes down, it goes down for everyone, and everyone uses FSW for building tanks, that price doesn't change either. So the cost of building the tank parts of stages won't change for years to come.

    As for the engines, SpaceX builds their own engines, and they designed them to be reusable like aircraft engines, so unless another rocket company learns to build their own engines, and makes them reusable too, they can never beat SpaceX on the price of engines.

    Everything else on a rocket is based on component prices that won't vary much into the future because they are commodity products, so no rocket manufacturer would be able to lower their expendable rocket COSTS below what SpaceX builds their reusable rockets.
       
    Tory Bruno in his REDDIT post made very reasonable list of things you must add to the booster to make it reusable :

    1. A second set of avionics, 2. New and additional software development and maintenance to control reentry, terminal flight and landing, 3. A second set of batteries with higher capacity for the additional active flyback systems, 4. Aerodynamic control surfaces, actuators and control electronics for the aero surfaces, 5. Landing sensors, data processors, and interface electronics, 6. Landing Legs, Hydraulic or electromechanical systems and control electronics to deploy the landing legs 7. An Inco, or another other high temperature material, aft heat shield in place of the light weight and inexpensive composite version, 8. Other high temp metal structures vs light weight, low cost aluminum on the aft end for greater reentry survivability, 9. Bolted vs light weight welded aft end structures and interfaces to facilitate replacement and refurbishment, 10. others

    Don't know how much each this single item could cost and add to the unit cost of F9R booster. If you want, you can post list with cost estimate for each of them.

    What I heard from EM those Titanium fins are very expansive.

    I am also curious about engines. Do SpaceX still claims that even block 5 upgraded Merlins cost just 1million$. How we know it is true ? It always depend on time and number of employees they need to build them. Cost of propulsion could be more then 60% from cost of 1stage, so if their actual unit cost was 2 or 3 ml$ instead of 1 ml$, it could change entire reusable booster unit cost significantly.

    And what I remember from some old SpaceX documentary ( I think from Bloomberg ), Merlin engines were from beginning design for reusability ( in this B documentary, it was said that they could made expandable version of Merlin two years sooner ). So even if all those block 5 Merlin upgrades could not increase it unit cost by factor 2 or 3, maybe they were from beginning of F9 more expansive, than SpaceX said.

    RL-10 is for example small hydrolox engine with much better ISP than Merlin, but much worse thrust than M., and even now when AR could decrease it cost by factor of 2, it still should cost much more than 1 ml$.   

    Tory Bruno was several times asked how long it takes to build Atlas V engines and rocket " from the scratch ". He answered that about 9 months. When someone told him that SpaceX can build all F9R engines and rocket in about 1 month, he said that they = ULA could also ramp up production, but that doesn't mean that it takes only 1 month to build them.

    As I understand this, there is difference between time needed to assembly new engine/rocket and time needed to build every single part of a new engine/rocket, which from T.Bruno statement should take much longer time.

    That is another thing, which should be clarified. Difference between time needed to assembly new engine/rocket and time needed to manufacture all of their parts.

    And I know, that ULA don't build Atlas 5, Delta 4 engines, but T.Bruno sounded like he exactly know in detail, how long it takes to manufacture entire engine ( even RD-180 made by Russian Energomash ).

    As I said engines should be about 60 % ( minimum 50 % ) from the cost of 1stage booster, so if cost of upgraded block 5 Merlins was higher than 1 ml$ ( by factor 2 or 3 ), those titanium fins costed more than 1ml$ ( E.Musk said, that they are largest monolithic thing ever cut from solid titanium and it takes very long to make them ) + all of other things from TB list  ( hard to say how expansive they really are ) I can imagine that difference between expendable and reusable booster could be factor 2 ( factor 3 maximum ).   

    Quote
              The only way your 4X numbers work is if you wave your hands and state that currently unknown cost reductions will occur for expendable rockets, but won't apply to reusable rockets.

    That is not a convincing argument.
                 
    I gave you one good example, you ignored. 3D printing. Right now we can 3D print some engines parts, which must be later assembled together, but not 3D print entire big engines. And also not cheaply 3D print large booster tanks.

    Let say, that in the close future we can cheaply and quickly 3D print entire large booster tanks and engines. This new 3D printing methods could be relatively error prone and better suited for expendable then reusable hardware.

    Any expendable booster must only reach vacuum with suborbital speed of 2 - 4 km/s, while reusable booster must then quickly reenter atmosphere and it engines also endure deacceleration and landing burn. That is something on what you can not simply " wave your hand ".

    If with this new 3D printing techniques you can improve unit cost of expandable booster hardware by factor of 10, but reusable booster hardware only by factor 2 or 3, difference between their unit cost could be factor of 4. Could you exclude the possibility ?

    When Ariane NEXT program started ESA (CNES) promised, that they can decrease Ariane NEXT unit cost by factor of 10 compare to Ariane 6 and Ariane 6 unit cost should be close to F9 unit cost, so at least ESA believed that it is possible. And when Ariane NEXT program started ESA still planned for AN and Prometheus engine to be expendable ( CNES president said that priority is lower unit cost and only later ESA decide of they try to make AN reusable ).

    Quote
           It is a safe assumption that since Elon Musk is a numbers driven engineer, that he would want the details from his cost accounting department. And they would give it to him.

    I've never known a CEO that wasn't interested in the cost of their products.
             
    I can imagine, that for every F9R booster reflight, they could need to swap different parts ( they could swap many parts in one month long refurbishment ). And since many of those parts are also produced for new reusable boosters or new upper stages, EM could have only separate info about what it cost inspecting ( scanning ) used booster, cleaning all those 9Merlins turbines ( which he said is difficult ) and he didn't count unit cost of this different hardware into his estimate of average cost for one booster refurbishment cycle.

    All we have is one short quote from interview with very bad sound quality, so at least wait until he or someone from SpaceX clarify this, before you claim that this is some dictionary refurbishment cost estimate.


    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rakaydos on 09/06/2020 11:57 am
    Quote
              The only way your 4X numbers work is if you wave your hands and state that currently unknown cost reductions will occur for expendable rockets, but won't apply to reusable rockets.

    That is not a convincing argument.
                 
    I gave you one good example, you ignored. 3D printing. Right now we can 3D print some engines parts, which must be later assembled together, but not 3D print entire big engines. And also not cheaply 3D print large booster tanks.

    Let say, that in the close future we can cheaply and quickly 3D print entire large booster tanks and engines. This new 3D printing methods could be relatively error prone and better suited for expendable then reusable hardware.

    Please explain why 3D printing reduces the cost of expendables, but NOT reusables?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 09/06/2020 12:21 pm
    Quote
              The only way your 4X numbers work is if you wave your hands and state that currently unknown cost reductions will occur for expendable rockets, but won't apply to reusable rockets.

    That is not a convincing argument.
                 
    I gave you one good example, you ignored. 3D printing. Right now we can 3D print some engines parts, which must be later assembled together, but not 3D print entire big engines. And also not cheaply 3D print large booster tanks.

    Let say, that in the close future we can cheaply and quickly 3D print entire large booster tanks and engines. This new 3D printing methods could be relatively error prone and better suited for expendable then reusable hardware.

    Please explain why 3D printing reduces the cost of expendables, but NOT reusables?
    I wrote " very clearly " that some new exotic 3D printing techniques in the future could decrease unit cost of both reusable and expendable booster, if they allow you to cheaply/quickly 3D print entire big engines ( not just their individual parts, which must be later assembled together ) and large booster tanks.

    But since reusable booster HW must endure worse " wear and tear " during flight than expendable HW, will need to be reflown many times, need inspections and easy parts replacement after the flight, they could be better suited for expendable HW. Try to quickly 3D print complex products tend to be very error prone and expendable booster need only reach 2 - 4 km/s, before you can throw it away.

    If you could with them decrease unit cost of expendable booster by factor of 10, but reusable booster ( in same lift category ) only by factor of 2-3, difference in their unit cost could be factor of 4 or more.

    But nobody can really know how 3D printing will evolve in next 10 - 30 years. My point was, that it could potentially change difference in unit cost between reusable and expendable HW.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Frogstar_Robot on 09/06/2020 12:29 pm
    Let say, that in the close future we can cheaply and quickly 3D print entire large booster tanks and engines. This new 3D printing methods could be relatively error prone and better suited for expendable then reusable hardware.

    Any expendable booster must only reach vacuum with suborbital speed of 2 - 4 km/s, while reusable booster must then quickly reenter atmosphere and it engines also endure deacceleration and landing burn. That is something on what you can not simply " wave your hand ".

    If with this new 3D printing techniques you can improve unit cost of expandable booster hardware by factor of 10, but reusable booster hardware only by factor 2 or 3, difference between their unit cost could be factor of 4. Could you exclude the possibility ?

    I can, because I don't think one will ever be able to "cheaply and quickly 3D print entire large booster tanks and engines". The idea that 3d printing may one day be like a Star Trek replicator, where you press a button and an hour later out pops a working engine will always be science fiction.

    Anyway, certainly not in any short term. The best you can hope for is to more efficiently manufacture parts for subsequent assembly, instead of machining them from a solid billet or casting.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 09/06/2020 05:54 pm
    Tory Bruno and George Sowers long time ago said

    [...]

    I asked T.Bruno on Twitter

    [...]

    In his REDDIT post 5 months ago T.Bruno actually admitted

    [...]

    his RD post

    [...]

    But if T.Bruno limitations are right

    [...]

    Tory Bruno in his REDDIT post

    [...]

    Tory Bruno was several times asked

    [...]

    from T.Bruno statement

    [...]

    T.Bruno sounded like he exactly know

    And that's just one post.  Over and over and over in the same post, then repeated over and over and over in post after post, it's all the same: SpaceX reusability doesn't make economic sense because of what the CEO of their biggest rival says.

    Once it's been said a few times, and many people have said they don't find it a convincing argument, what's the point in repeating it over and over and over and drowning out all other discussion in this thread?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 09/06/2020 05:56 pm
    Let say, that in the close future we can cheaply and quickly 3D print entire large booster tanks and engines. This new 3D printing methods could be relatively error prone and better suited for expendable then reusable hardware.

    Any expendable booster must only reach vacuum with suborbital speed of 2 - 4 km/s, while reusable booster must then quickly reenter atmosphere and it engines also endure deacceleration and landing burn. That is something on what you can not simply " wave your hand ".

    If with this new 3D printing techniques you can improve unit cost of expandable booster hardware by factor of 10, but reusable booster hardware only by factor 2 or 3, difference between their unit cost could be factor of 4. Could you exclude the possibility ?

    I can, because I don't think one will ever be able to "cheaply and quickly 3D print entire large booster tanks and engines". The idea that 3d printing may one day be like a Star Trek replicator, where you press a button and an hour later out pops a working engine will always be science fiction.

    Anyway, certainly not in any short term. The best you can hope for is to more efficiently manufacture parts for subsequent assembly, instead of machining them from a solid billet or casting.

    I largely agree.   3D printing is another tool that can be used to produce finished parts or tooling.   Sometimes it is better/fast/cheaper, other times it is decidedly not so.   I very doubtful that  3D printing will ever be used to produce an entire rocket engine and/or an entire booster (tanks and engines) -- it's not impossible, but it is very far from cost or performance efficient.



    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/06/2020 11:46 pm
    RocketLab 3D prints almost all of their rocket engine. Not uncommon for smallsat launchers.

    Small regen rocket engines are one of the few areas where 3D printing actually makes sense.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: freddo411 on 09/07/2020 12:52 am
    RocketLab 3D prints almost all of their rocket engine. Not uncommon for smallsat launchers.

    Small regen rocket engines are one of the few areas where 3D printing actually makes sense.

    Certainly not the electric motors, the batteries, the tanks, the wires, the avionics, the actuators, etc, etc.   

    If the parts they do print are better/faster/cheaper to make or develop ... then great.   
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 09/07/2020 01:04 am
    Tory Bruno and George Sowers long time ago said

    [...]

    I asked T.Bruno on Twitter

    [...]

    In his REDDIT post 5 months ago T.Bruno actually admitted

    [...]

    his RD post

    [...]

    But if T.Bruno limitations are right

    [...]

    Tory Bruno in his REDDIT post

    [...]

    Tory Bruno was several times asked

    [...]

    from T.Bruno statement

    [...]

    T.Bruno sounded like he exactly know

    And that's just one post.  Over and over and over in the same post, then repeated over and over and over in post after post, it's all the same: SpaceX reusability doesn't make economic sense because of what the CEO of their biggest rival says.

    Once it's been said a few times, and many people have said they don't find it a convincing argument, what's the point in repeating it over and over and over and drowning out all other discussion in this thread?
    Inertia is a harsh mistress.

    All told, these folks will have lost an entire decade in getting into reusability.  I don't think they'll recover, but clearly they'll still launch a good number of government payloads, which in their books counts as success...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TorenAltair on 09/07/2020 05:25 am
    Old post that fell victim to the „quotation massacre“ in short:

    Youtube video to investors erroneously tagged as public stated as far as I remember costs of $21 million for a mission with a reused booster. You don’t lie to investors without calling for very severe consequences (legal ones as well). Statements of costs from Shotwell and Musk a bit lower than the $21 million figure but with reused fairing halves match as well.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/07/2020 06:37 am
    I wrote " very clearly " that some new exotic 3D printing techniques in the future could decrease unit cost of both reusable and expendable booster, if they allow you to cheaply/quickly 3D print entire big engines ( not just their individual parts, which must be later assembled together ) and large booster tanks.

    It is clear that you don't know how additive manufacturing works, and what its advantages AND disadvantages are.

    I suggest you read up on additive manufacturing, and here is one article (https://www.horizontechnology.biz/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-additive-manufacturing-process-vs-powder-metallurgy) that outlines the advantages and disadvantages - disadvantages include:

    1. It’s Almost Always Cost-Prohibitive
    2. No Mixing Allowed (i.e. your part can only be of one type of material)
    3. It’s Slow, and Niche

    So the applications for additive manufacturing are very specific, and they don't replace the commodity materials that make up most of a rocket. For instance, the body of a rocket is a large pressure vessel made out of commodity aluminum and steel, and additive manufacturing can't compete with commodity materials on price (see #1 above).

    Quote
    But since reusable booster HW must endure worse " wear and tear " during flight than expendable HW, will need to be reflown many times, need inspections and easy parts replacement after the flight, they could be better suited for expendable HW.

    Have you ever seen a Boeing 747 take off and land? Or an F-18 take off and land on an aircraft carrier? Tremendous forces at work, every time they fly, and they fly a lot.

    So the aerospace industry as a whole understand how to design for high life cycle usage, and SpaceX now has information about THEIR rockets that no one else has. Including ULA and Tory Bruno. Every Falcon 9 flight gives SpaceX valuable information about how well they have designed their rockets, and what tweaks (if any) they need to make to allow them to last longer.

    Quote
    Try to quickly 3D print complex products tend to be very error prone and expendable booster need only reach 2 - 4 km/s, before you can throw it away.

    See, again you show you don't have any real knowledge about additive manufacturing or how engineering approaches the question of "quality".

    When parts are designed the drawings specify their tolerances and other quality control parameters. Each part has to be made to those parameters otherwise it is not accepted. It is either pass or fail, there is no bucket for parts that might only last for one flight.

    Quote
    But nobody can really know how 3D printing will evolve in next 10 - 30 years.

    Certainly you can't. Which means you should stick to what is known, which is what this thread is about. If you want to fantasize about what COULD change in the future, there are other threads for that. This one is for the reusability effect on cost - please remember that.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 09/07/2020 09:02 am
    Any improvements in 3D printing will almost certainly improve reusables and expendables by the same amount.

    So is irrelevant in this conversation.

    What isn't irrelevant is the incorrect assumption made above that reusables are less reliable because they are reused and wear out. Of course, over time things wear out, but they can be DESIGNED to ensure they don't wear out for the desired lifetime of the product.

    So the premise is incorrect.

    (For example, Formula One engines are designed to last exactly as long as required, and no more. The technology is there to specify engine lifetimes very accurately, and they are DESIGNED to have the required lifetimes.)

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 09/07/2020 11:17 am
    Tory Bruno and George Sowers long time ago said

    [...]

    I asked T.Bruno on Twitter

    [...]

    In his REDDIT post 5 months ago T.Bruno actually admitted

    [...]

    his RD post

    [...]

    But if T.Bruno limitations are right

    [...]

    Tory Bruno in his REDDIT post

    [...]

    Tory Bruno was several times asked

    [...]

    from T.Bruno statement

    [...]

    T.Bruno sounded like he exactly know

    And that's just one post.  Over and over and over in the same post, then repeated over and over and over in post after post, it's all the same: SpaceX reusability doesn't make economic sense because of what the CEO of their biggest rival says.

    Once it's been said a few times, and many people have said they don't find it a convincing argument, what's the point in repeating it over and over and over and drowning out all other discussion in this thread?
    First of all I never said that SpaceX reusability doesn't make economical sense. My estimates for F9R marginal cost, profit margins, refurbishment cost and total cost per flight were always very positive. I said it already about 20 - 30 times.

    I wanted to clarify fundamental things about F9R like :

    1. How big part from the total cost of launch service are costs unrelated to the cost of building rockets. Or in SpaceX's case, to the cost of building 2stages, new reusable boosters and refurbishment/recovery of used boosters.

    ULA or Arianespace claims that 50, minimum 30% ( if you are wildly successful ), but EM claims that it is only 10% for F9R. That is a huge difference. What everything did he count between the cost to launch F9R. Did he also count the cost of payload integration ? And how much could payload integration cost for big GTO comsat like SAOCOM 1B ( assuming you have about 20 flights per year ).

    For industry outsiders it is hard see what all procedures PI of big GTO comsats. could include. Inspections, payload adapter manufacturing etc. But we know that for example many NASA and military missions could add 20-30 ml$ or more to the base cost of any mission.

    Therefore we should clarify exactly what everything payload integration of big GTO comsat. includes and how much it could cost for one big GTO comsat ( with how high flight rates ). Same also for those added NASA and US DoD costs.

    2. We should clarify what could be F9R reusable unit cost and cost difference between expendable and reusable booster. I posted a list of 10 things SpaceX must add to the F9R booster to make it reusable and challenge everybody to make cost estimates for each of them. Of course nobody did that.

    EM for example admits that those titanium fins could be very expensive.

    Also you have not offered any evidence that the unit cost of upgraded block 5 Merlins engines is still just 1 ml$. To know that it is true, you should exactly know how many workers and how much time is needed to produce every single engine part and then to assembly them together. From Tory Bruno statements it sounds like time needed to produce some engine parts is much longer than time needed to assemble all engine parts together ( I think he said about 9 months ).

    Since engines are 60%, minimum 50% from total cost of booster, if block 5 Merlins unit cost was higher than 1 ml$ by factor of 2 or 3 it could itself significantly increase reusable vs expendable booster cost difference.

    3. And again if everything we have about F9R booster refurbishment cost is this chaotic AW interview with very bad sound quality, where EM said that " F9R 1stage still need 250K worth of refurbishment after he said that booster/fairing recovery add to the cost, using RP1 and helium pressurization add to the cost, we should at least wait if he or someone from SpaceX clarify what everything this figure includes. Do you even know how much inspecting a used booster and cleaning of all those 9 Merlin turbines could really cost ? I doubt it.

    These are all fundamental questions that should be discussed in this thread from the beginning.

    If I use some quotes from Tory Bruno or S.Isreal, it is because they spoke about the subject of cost to manufacture and launch rocket in more detail than people from SpaceX and I can offer better quotes from them. That doesn't mean, that I agree with everything they said and expect that for SpaceX it must be exactly the same.

    It is crystal clear to me, that you can not answer any from those questions above and that you are not even interested in discussing this, so can you ( and those 10-15 like you here ) please at least stop responding to my posts and give space for someone who is able to answer them or willing to discuss this, since this is = actually exactly what should have been subject of this thread from the beginning.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TomMul on 09/07/2020 11:22 am
    I wrote " very clearly " that some new exotic 3D printing techniques in the future could decrease unit cost of both reusable and expendable booster, if they allow you to cheaply/quickly 3D print entire big engines ( not just their individual parts, which must be later assembled together ) and large booster tanks.

    It is clear that you don't know how additive manufacturing works, and what its advantages AND disadvantages are.

    I suggest you read up on additive manufacturing, and here is one article (https://www.horizontechnology.biz/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-additive-manufacturing-process-vs-powder-metallurgy) that outlines the advantages and disadvantages - disadvantages include:

    1. It’s Almost Always Cost-Prohibitive
    2. No Mixing Allowed (i.e. your part can only be of one type of material)
    3. It’s Slow, and Niche

    So the applications for additive manufacturing are very specific, and they don't replace the commodity materials that make up most of a rocket. For instance, the body of a rocket is a large pressure vessel made out of commodity aluminum and steel, and additive manufacturing can't compete with commodity materials on price (see #1 above)

    And yet once again you ignore everything that I wrote in my posts above. Put a few quotes out of context and respond only to them with very misleading points.

    I post a list of items that you must add to the F9 booster to make it reusable and challenge you to make a cost estimate for every one of them. Since you pretend to be a manufacturing expert ( even like SX outsider ) you should be able to do at least educated guess. I was interested mostly about the cost of those titanium AD fins.

    I asked you, if you have proof that upgraded block 5 Merlins have really unit cost of just 1 ml$. To know if this is true, you should be able to make at least a qualified guess about how long it takes ( with how many workers ) to build every single engine part and how long it takes to assemble them together.

    I asked you also about the status of block 5 Helium COPVs and how much payload integration could cost for one big GTO comsat like SAOCOM B ( with about 20 flights per year ).

    Of course you can not answer any of these questions, so it is crystal clear that you don't know anything about the cost of manufacturing of rocket HW. Instead you just tried to " cowardly " put some of my quotes about 3D printing out of context.

    Now to 3D printing :

    I know everything about additive manufacturing technologies ( 3D printing is a very broad term ) that you wrote above and actually read this article a long time before.

    I also said " very clearly " that I meant some exotic 3D printing techniques in the future, not current 3D printing techniques right now.

    There was a scientist in Michio Kaku TV show ( in about 2010 ), who promised that he will develop a molecular assembler, in about 20 years. It would be really cool if this was true, but I doubt they will really work like Star Trek replicators. There will be a lot of limitations.

    My point is that you can not really know if there will be some fundamental 3D printing breakthroughs in the next 10-30 years and how some new potential exotic 3D print. techniques could apply to reusable or expendable HW.

    And even for traditional additive manufacturing technologies, you can not know how they will evolve in the next 10-30 years and if they could be better applied for reusable or expendable HW.


    Quote
        See, again you show you don't have any real knowledge about additive manufacturing or how engineering approaches the question of "quality".

    When parts are designed the drawings specify their tolerances and other quality control parameters. Each part has to be made to those parameters otherwise it is not accepted. It is either pass or fail, there is no bucket for parts that might only last for one flight.
                   

    I knew all of this before even without you and it is all totally irrelevant, because I didn't speak about current 3D printing tech., but about some exotic 3DP tech. in the future.

    Reusable boosters must always endure worse " wear and tear " during flight. They need to do boostback, reentry and landing burn and then be reflown as many times as possible. More importantly they must be designed for easy inspections and parts replacements after the flight.
     
    It is "crystal clear ", that you can not know if some future exotic 3D print. tech could be better suited for reusable or expendable HW. And same about existing additive manufacturing tech. which can still evolve in the next 10-30 years.

    Quote
       Certainly you can't. Which means you should stick to what is known, which is what this thread is about. If you want to fantasize about what COULD change in the future, there are other threads for that. This one is for the reusability effect on cost - please remember that.       

    Don't tell me about what I can and can not fantasize. You seems to be a big fan of E.Musk, who fantasize about terraforming MARS. When NASA told him, that there is not enough CO2 on Mars to terraform it, he simply denied this and said that " every big rocky object could be terraformed " ( ya even Pluto ).

    Why not, you must simply crash lots of comets into it to increase its mass and then park it into the Sun habitable zone. With Star Trek tech. everything could possible.

    You should always stay open minded about some fundamental breakthroughs happening in the future.

    Right now we don't even know what is exactly the difference in unit cost between F9 expendable and reusable booster.
    It could be a cost increase of 50%, factor of 2, maybe 3.

    My point was that this cost difference will not be always the same for every reusable booster/rocket design and it can change significantly in the future with some new evolved tech.

    It is a "valid point" and you have no rational argument to claim otherwise.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 09/07/2020 11:35 am
    We (the public) do NOT KNOW what the marginal costs are, what the costs of refurb are, how much they have spent on reusuability equipment,what needs to be replaced and when. We don't know ANYTHING for sure. We only know what is right in front of our eyes - SpaceX keep reusing boosters.

    And please stop quoting ULA or Arianespace boss's thoughts on the matter, they are almost certainly wrong because they
    also don't know what SpaceX's costs are. They know what their own costs are for their EXPENDABLE rockets and their fixed costs. And that is all.


    Put it like this.

    If SpaceX didn't think it was worthwhile, they would not do it. They are RENOWNED for not falling for the sunk cost fallacy. They pivot instantly. If reusability wasn't working, and working well, they would abandon it. We know they have said the third flight means reusability costs are already recovered. That's all you need to know. Unless you think that they are lying with that statement.

    They of course have also said that they see no real upper limit on how many times a F9 S1 can be reused....since they have a lot of evidence i.e. they have recovered a lot of boosters so I am inclined to think they know what they are talking about.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Frogstar_Robot on 09/07/2020 12:01 pm
    I also said " very clearly " that I meant some exotic 3D printing techniques in the future, not current 3D printing techniques right now.

    Of course, we can always imagine exotic technologies that don't exist yet; that is literally what science fiction is.

    However, using their possible eventual reality as a premise to a conclusion about current or near term practice is really just a strawman and doesn't advance the discussion.

    Quote
    Reusable boosters must always endure worse " wear and tear " during flight. They need to do boostback, reentry and landing burn and then be reflown as many times as possible. More importantly they must be designed for easy inspections and parts replacements after the flight.

    Generally true, but in engineering and business numbers matter. If the refurbishment cost due to wear is 0.1% that is quite different to 20%. SpaceX has a good handle on this because they are actively doing it. Tony Bruno can't know what the true costs are because ULA are not doing it, he can only guess.

    The meme that SpaceX are somehow mis-representing their re-usability costs is a strange one, I can't see how that would help them, nor can I see any evidence that they are.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/07/2020 01:20 pm
    And how much could payload integration cost for big GTO comsat like SAOCOM 1B

    SAOCOM 1B is a small polar-orbiting SAR-sat.

    Quote
    Since engines are 60%, minimum 50% from total cost of booster, if block 5 Merlins unit cost was higher than 1 ml$ by factor of 2 or 3 it could itself significantly increase reusable vs expendable booster cost difference.

    Engines aren't 50-60% of the cost of a SpaceX booster, and Merlins cost far less than $1M each.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ulm_atms on 09/07/2020 02:34 pm

    large snip...

    Right now we don't even know what is exactly the difference in unit cost between F9 expendable and reusable booster.
    It could be a cost increase of 50%, factor of 2, maybe 3.

    My point was that this cost difference will not be always the same for every reusable booster/rocket design and it can change significantly in the future with some new evolved tech.

    It is a "valid point" and you have no rational argument to claim otherwise.


    To the rest of the quote above.

    1. SpaceX knows..they are the only one that knows, and they are doing it...so it must be cheaper then expendable...otherwise they would be doing that as they need ALL the money going into SH/SS and Starlink they can get.

    2.  This is where we seem to having a "move the goal post" argument.  You orginally stated that there is no way resue can be so cheap and mentioned ESA and ULA's chiefs...who, as was plainly stated, have no clue into SpaceX's business.  They can guess just like everyone else...but they have no clue inside SpaceX.

    Now you bring up some "evolved tech" that hasn't even been made/thought of yet...

    You are right that it is a "valid" point because there is no way to defend against something that doesn't exists.  I might as well say that with new techonology in the future, I will just be a head in a jar and live for eternity like that.  You can't argue with that either.

    These people on here do not know SpaceX's insides...but over the years and years I have been on here, they get it correct more then they get wrong.  You should really take the time to read what people have wrote over the past 5 years and think things through a little more.

    Getting upset because people are not saying what you believe is not the time to go "you don't get it!" and "your not paying attention to what I wrote!".  Coastal Ron is top notch in going through a post, part by part, and explaining to the best of HIS abilities.  I read through what you wrote and what he wrote.  I will tell you from my personal opinion...he did not do what you said he did at the start of your reply.  The only thing I see is that he didn't back up what you wanted to hear.

    As you can see from my "join" date and number of posts...I don't really post much.  My join date is actually off by a few years due to lots of reading/understanding things before I actually joined and started commenting.  The people here know more then me...that's for sure.  Give the people with very large post counts some credit...they wouldn't have those high of a post count blowing smoke all the time.

    And to note: You didn't like Coastal Ron's response?  You have never been Jim'd then.  I miss Jim.  ;D
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 09/07/2020 04:22 pm
    TomMul, what you said (somewhere in there) was that if two CEOs give contradicting numbers, you'll pick a middle ground...

    These two CEOs, one of them developed and is operating a reusable rocket, and the other is perpetuating a business model from before reusability (in current form) existed and does not have the practical option of going there.

    You should completely discount one, and take the other at his word.

    Which one's which, that's your call.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: launchwatcher on 09/07/2020 05:38 pm
    1. How big part from the total cost of launch service are costs unrelated to the cost of building rockets. Or in SpaceX's case, to the cost of building 2stages, new reusable boosters and refurbishment/recovery of used boosters.
    The proportions are not set in stone.   One big factor I haven't seen you mention is launch rate, which has been discussed at length on this forum; I suggest you review previous discussions of the impact of launch rate on costs before responding to this post, and then try to keep your reply short.

    For just one facet of this, look at the split between fixed costs and per-launch marginal costs.    If you have the infrastructure built to handle a couple dozen launches a year, but only do five because demand for more from you isn't there, the cost per launch due to the fixed costs of your infrastructure is going to be a lot higher.   
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AJW on 09/07/2020 05:42 pm
    TomMul,

    George Sowers, a VP from ULA, claimed that reusability would not break even until 10 launches.  Tory stated that he can start saving in as few as 2 flights while recovering just the engines.  That is five-fold discrepancy coming from the same organization. The sources you are using as a foundation do not even agree with each other, making your other suppositions fall like a house of cards.  After your foundation failed, you switched to fantasies about the impact of 3D printing, which you have yet to adequately explain why this wouldn't benefit both expendable and reusables equally.  My recommendation would be to go back to Sowers spreadsheet and enter Vulcan numbers and see if you can replicate Bruno's claims.  Solve that and your other arguments may begin to hold some credence.  Start with a firm foundation, otherwise your claims will simply slip further into fantasyland.

    https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1248307046803550208 (https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1248307046803550208)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 09/07/2020 08:54 pm
    TomMul,

    George Sowers, a VP from ULA, claimed that reusability would not break even until 10 launches.  Tory stated that he can start saving in as few as 2 flights while recovering just the engines.  That is five-fold discrepancy coming from the same organization. The sources you are using as a foundation do not even agree with each other, making your other suppositions fall like a house of cards.  After your foundation failed, you switched to fantasies about the impact of 3D printing, which you have yet to adequately explain why this wouldn't benefit both expendable and reusables equally.  My recommendation would be to go back to Sowers spreadsheet and enter Vulcan numbers and see if you can replicate Bruno's claims.  Solve that and your other arguments may begin to hold some credence.  Start with a firm foundation, otherwise your claims will simply slip further into fantasyland.

    https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1248307046803550208 (https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1248307046803550208)
    Sowers is for reuseable booster, while SMART is engine pod reuse. Different systems hence diffence in break even launches. For ULA SMART is best option in near term especially for range of missions they fly. The SMART system could also be used for US recovery, not something ULA is planning on doing but with proven technology on hand its option in future if financially viable.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 09/07/2020 10:22 pm
    TomMul,

    George Sowers, a VP from ULA, claimed that reusability would not break even until 10 launches.  Tory stated that he can start saving in as few as 2 flights while recovering just the engines.  That is five-fold discrepancy coming from the same organization. The sources you are using as a foundation do not even agree with each other, making your other suppositions fall like a house of cards.  After your foundation failed, you switched to fantasies about the impact of 3D printing, which you have yet to adequately explain why this wouldn't benefit both expendable and reusables equally.  My recommendation would be to go back to Sowers spreadsheet and enter Vulcan numbers and see if you can replicate Bruno's claims.  Solve that and your other arguments may begin to hold some credence.  Start with a firm foundation, otherwise your claims will simply slip further into fantasyland.

    https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1248307046803550208 (https://twitter.com/torybruno/status/1248307046803550208)
    Sowers is for reuseable booster, while SMART is engine pod reuse. Different systems hence diffence in break even launches. For ULA SMART is best option in near term especially for range of missions they fly. The SMART system could also be used for US recovery, not something ULA is planning on doing but with proven technology on hand its option in future if financially viable.
    US aside, how do the booster requirements differ between "the kind of trajectories ULA flies" and those that SpaceX flies?  I call myth on this one.

    SMART is their legacy proposal, from before RTLS was proven, and now they're sticking to the their story.

    After going on about how reuse is barely beneficial because the cost of the first stage (plus turn-around cost) is just not enough of the pie, they suggest a solution that has much higher turn-around costs and saves only a smaller portion of the pie.

    If they keep talking fast enough, maybe nobody will noticed they've tap danced right off the edge of the stage...

    SMART development cost is supposedly lower, and there's no RTLS propellant penalty, but we've already seen that A) most development was done on existing flights, and B) propellant cost only comes in when the rocket is maxed out, and SpaceX can always choose to expend such flights, which it isn't, because guess what - getting your booster back makes more sense than loading more Starlinks on it.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 09/08/2020 12:55 am
    If ULA wanted recover booster either downrange or RTLS, they would need totally new LV with larger more powerful US to compensate for boosters lower staging DV. Would probably need more powerful US engine and affordable than RL10 eg BE3U. For high performance missions they could go fully expendable and add SRBs.  SMART gives them partial reuse without huge R&amp;D outlay on RLV, savings per missions maybe lower but they don't have to repay $Bs of RLV development money.

    Just because SpaceX does reusability one way doesn't make it right way for every launch company's business model.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 09/08/2020 01:02 am
    If ULA wanted recover booster either downrange or RTLS, they would need totally new LV with larger more powerful US to compensate for boosters lower staging DV. Would probably need more powerful US engine and affordable than RL10 eg BE3U. For high performance missions they could go fully expendable and add SRBs.  SMART gives them partial reuse without huge R&amp;D outlay on RLV, savings per missions maybe lower but they don't have to repay $Bs of RLV development money.

    Just because SpaceX does reusability one way doesn't make it right way for every launch company's business model.

    If the horse buggy operators of the early 1900’s wanted to keep up with the times they would have needed to get rid of the horse and add a newfangled internal combustion engine to their carts. That just wouldn’t fit with their business model, so better for them to just stick to what their legacy architecture allowed, right.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ChrisWilson68 on 09/08/2020 01:06 am
    If ULA wanted recover booster either downrange or RTLS, they would need totally new LV with larger more powerful US to compensate for boosters lower staging DV. Would probably need more powerful US engine and affordable than RL10 eg BE3U. For high performance missions they could go fully expendable and add SRBs.  SMART gives them partial reuse without huge R&amp;D outlay on RLV, savings per missions maybe lower but they don't have to repay $Bs of RLV development money.

    Just because SpaceX does reusability one way doesn't make it right way for every launch company's business model.

    There are two reasons people are taking issue with SMART:

    1.  ULA is simultaneously claiming that SMART reuse is financially viable with 3 reuses while full-stage reuse requires 10 reuses.  And they're not just making the claim about their own rocket, they're claiming it's true as a general rule that reusing a first stage takes 10 reuses to make sense.  The Sowers spreadsheet plugs in numbers that are clearly meant to represent SpaceX.

    2. If it's true that they can't do stage reuse with Vulcan and SMART is the best they can do, it's their own fault.  They could have designed Vulcan however they wanted.  Maybe that would have meant a different upper stage.  Maybe it would have cost them more than Vulcan.  But that was their choice.  They've had years to think about this.  They could be well on their way to first-stage reuse by now if that had been the path they had chosen.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: LouScheffer on 09/08/2020 01:41 am

    I wanted to clarify fundamental things about F9R like :  How big part from the total cost of launch service are costs unrelated to the cost of building rockets. [...] Or in SpaceX's case, to the cost of building 2stages, new reusable boosters and refurbishment/recovery of used boosters.  [...] What everything did he count between the cost to launch F9R?   [...] Did he also count the cost of payload integration ?  [...] And how much could payload integration cost for big GTO comsat like SAOCOM 1B ( assuming you have about 20 flights per year ).  For industry outsiders it is hard see what all procedures PI of big GTO comsats. could include.  [...] Inspections, payload adapter manufacturing etc. But we know that for example many NASA and military missions could add 20-30 ml$ or more to the base cost of any mission.  Therefore we should clarify exactly what everything payload integration of big GTO comsat. includes and how much it could cost for one big GTO comsat ( with how high flight rates ).  [...] Same also for those added NASA and US DoD costs. [...] We should clarify what could be F9R reusable unit cost and cost difference between expendable and reusable booster.  [...] Also you have not offered any evidence that the unit cost of upgraded block 5 Merlins engines is still just 1 ml$.  [...] EM said that " F9R 1stage still need 250K worth of refurbishment after he said that booster/fairing recovery add to the cost, using RP1 and helium pressurization add to the cost, we should at least wait if he or someone from SpaceX clarify what everything this figure includes.  [...]  Do you even know how much inspecting a used booster and cleaning of all those 9 Merlin turbines could really cost ?

    It is crystal clear to me, that you can not answer any from those questions above and that you are not even interested in discussing this, so can you ( and those 10-15 like you here ) please at least stop responding to my posts and give space for someone who is able to answer them or willing to discuss this, since this is = actually exactly what should have been subject of this thread from the beginning.
    Of course everyone here is interested in these questions.  But no matter how often you ask, there is no chance of getting accurate answers here.  This is proprietary commercial data of SpaceX, at the heart of their business model.  Billion dollar deals (and lawsuits) are won and lost over this kind of data.  Anyone except Elon who discloses it would be fired.  Elon as head can disclose what he pleases, but he's not going to specify all the details you want.  That's not his job, it could help his competitors, and he's a busy guy.  So your detailed questions will remain unanswered.
    Quote
    I posted a list of 10 things SpaceX must add to the F9R booster to make it reusable and challenge everybody to make cost estimates for each of them. Of course nobody did that.
    Perhaps you mis-understand how discussion boards work.  It is not up to others to do the work to answer your questions.  If you want to discuss this, then YOU need to take the initiative.  Start with the statement that you want to discuss, and the best evidence you can find so far.   This could look something like:

       Titanium grid fins - estimated cost of XXX, by comparison to other large titanium forgings, as specified here
       First stage avionics - cost of additional avionics on the first stage is likely YYY, by comparison with rocket Z
       ......  7 more components .....
       Landing legs - cost of ZZZ, by comparison to cost of other large carbon fiber structures.
     ----------
      Total cost of additional features of $MMM.

    So YOU need to start with the best estimates you can form from public sources.  It's a lot of work but it's exactly what any other member here could possibly do.   Then once you have done the initial work, likely discussion will follow.   A lot of contributors here perhaps could contribute to a better estimate of perhaps 1 of the 10 additional needs.
       
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/08/2020 01:46 am
    I post a list of items that you must add to the F9 booster to make it reusable and challenge you to make a cost estimate for every one of them.

    #1 No one outside of SpaceX knows their real costs.
    #2 We don't need to know the detailed cost over every part since we have been told total cost info.

    Quote
    I asked you, if you have proof that upgraded block 5 Merlins have really unit cost of just 1 ml$.

    I have as much proof as there is in the public domain, so it is not MY proof, it is the information in the public domain. Maybe you just need to learn how to use internet search better...  ;)

    Quote
    To know if this is true, you should be able to make at least a qualified guess about how long it takes ( with how many workers ) to build every single engine part and how long it takes to assemble them together.

    I could certainly do that if I was a SpaceX employee and I had access to labor costs and inventory costs. But NO ONE OUTSIDE OF SPACEX KNOWS THAT.

    Not sure how many times you must be told that.

    And who cares how much labor goes into an engine, or how much the cost of Part ABCDE costs? All that matters is the total cost, and for Merlin engines we in the public have been told that it is less than $1M.

    Quote
    My point is that you can not really know if there will be some fundamental 3D printing breakthroughs in the next 10-30 years and how some new potential exotic 3D print.

    MY point is that you can not really know if there will be some fundamental 3D printing breakthroughs in the next 10-30 years and how some new potential exotic 3D print.

    That would be in the realm of speculation, not fact. And this thread is about the reusability effect on costs TODAY, not 10-30 years from now.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 09/08/2020 05:57 am
    If ULA wanted recover booster either downrange or RTLS, they would need totally new LV with larger more powerful US to compensate for boosters lower staging DV. Would probably need more powerful US engine and affordable than RL10 eg BE3U. For high performance missions they could go fully expendable and add SRBs.  SMART gives them partial reuse without huge R&D outlay on RLV, savings per missions maybe lower but they don't have to repay $Bs of RLV development money.

    Just because SpaceX does reusability one way doesn't make it right way for every launch company's business model.
    What you've described is not business or launch profile...  It's a succinct explanation of the technical hole they're in, since they are building their rocket from pieces made by others.

    Making an RTLS booster requires getting into propulsion, no practical way around that.

    And until they do, they are stuck with SMART, which is a very far second to booster recovery, no matter how much lipstick you put on it, or how much rationale you paint around it...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lemurion on 09/14/2020 05:29 pm
    @TomMul

    Another thing to consider when looking at costs is that ULA's booster costs as a proportion of total launch costs are likely lower than SpaceX's for a number of reasons:

    Launch Cadence: According to ULA's website they have launched 17 missions since the beginning of 2018. SpaceX has launched 16 missions in 2020 alone. ULA's fixed facilities cost per flight is going to be higher for that reason alone.

    GSE Requirements: Most ULA launches use the Atlas V, which uses a kerolox booster and a hydrolox upper stage. Thus ULA's pads need to be able to handle two different propellant combinations, one of which is liquid hydrogen. SpaceX on the other hand uses the same propellant combination for both stages.

    Solids: ULA uses SRBs on many launches. They both require extra handling in addition to the two stages, but also reduce the booster stage's proportion of the total cost.

    All of these things factor into the numbers Tory Bruno sees, knows, and understands. As many others have said, his numbers are different than Elon Musk's. The idea that the person who's never seen SpaceX's books speaks more accurately about SpaceX's books than the people who have actually seen them is ludicrous.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 09/25/2020 03:38 pm
    That’s a decent saving:

    https://twitter.com/free_space/status/1309515417703120897

    Quote
    Air Force  clears @spacex to fly two upcoming GPS satellites on previously flown @spacex Falcon 9 rockets, saving $26m per flight, says Dr Walt Lauderale
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: theprotobe on 09/25/2020 03:54 pm
    That’s a decent saving:

    https://twitter.com/free_space/status/1309515417703120897

    Quote
    Air Force  clears @spacex to fly two upcoming GPS satellites on previously flown @spacex Falcon 9 rockets, saving $26m per flight, says Dr Walt Lauderale
    A very good saving. How does it save 26 million a launch though? AFAIK booster recovery may only be able to do 16 million.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: lucas071200 on 09/25/2020 04:02 pm
    That’s a decent saving:

    https://twitter.com/free_space/status/1309515417703120897

    Quote
    Air Force  clears @spacex to fly two upcoming GPS satellites on previously flown @spacex Falcon 9 rockets, saving $26m per flight, says Dr Walt Lauderale
    A very good saving. How does it save 26 million a launch though? AFAIK booster recovery may only be able to do 16 million.
    This is not only recovering a booster, but using a previous used one too

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/25/2020 04:11 pm
    That’s a decent saving:

    https://twitter.com/free_space/status/1309515417703120897

    Quote
    Air Force  clears @spacex to fly two upcoming GPS satellites on previously flown @spacex Falcon 9 rockets, saving $26m per flight, says Dr Walt Lauderale
    A very good saving. How does it save 26 million a launch though? AFAIK booster recovery may only be able to do 16 million.
    This is not only recovering a booster, but using a previous used one too
    Yup. Let’s say a new booster costs $40m and lasts 5 flights. That’s $8m amortization cost per flight. If the refurb & recovery cost $6m, that’s $26m in savings.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 09/25/2020 04:37 pm
    That’s a decent saving:

    https://twitter.com/free_space/status/1309515417703120897

    Quote
    Air Force  clears @spacex to fly two upcoming GPS satellites on previously flown @spacex Falcon 9 rockets, saving $26m per flight, says Dr Walt Lauderale
    A very good saving. How does it save 26 million a launch though? AFAIK booster recovery may only be able to do 16 million.
    This is not only recovering a booster, but using a previous used one too
    Yup. Let’s say a new booster costs $40m and lasts 5 flights. That’s $8m amortization cost per flight. If the refurb & recovery cost $6m, that’s $26m in savings.

    Elon has said refurb is below $1m. Recovery is probably well below $1m too - maybe as low as $100k (but I went with $500k in my estimate below to be safe).

    A new booster was said to be around $35m in an example Elon previously used. Also, they are probably working on 10 times reuse by next year, so $35m/10 = say $3.5m. Plus max $1.5m for recovery and refurbishment so around $5m total cost for the booster.

    That’s $30m savings. Before factoring in fairing reuse which probably saves at least half the fairing cost, so another $3m or so savings there, getting to around $33m total cost reduction per launch.

    Now, I’m slightly surprised they’re passing $26m of that on to the customer, but it might be an initial sweetener to get them to bite on reuse before upping the price a bit in future.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Comga on 09/25/2020 05:08 pm
    More detail on USAF booster reuse:

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1309532875205861377 (https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1309532875205861377)

    Quote
    After SpaceX successfully recovered the Falcon 9 rocket booster after the GPS III SV-03 launch in June, the U.S. Space Force's SMC amended its contract with the company to allow for recovery and reuse for the upcoming SV-04, SV-05, and SV-06 missions.

    twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1309533181046124546

    Quote
    SMC Falcon chief Dr. Walt Lauderdale: “I am proud of our partnership with SpaceX that allowed us to successfully negotiate contract modifications for the upcoming GPS III missions that will save taxpayers $52.7 million while maintaining our unprecedented record of success.”

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1309533573591060480 (https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1309533573591060480)

    Quote
    SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell: "We appreciate the effort that the U.S. Space Force invested into the evaluation ... Our extensive experience with reuse has allowed SpaceX to continually upgrade the fleet and save significant precious tax dollars on these launches.”

    One could question why this is to SpaceX's advantage.
    Why would they work so hard to reduce their billing?
    DoD's previous insistence on new rockets meant they paid to expand SpaceX's fleet.
    It seems SpaceX really believes in market elasticity, that bringing down prices will increase business in the long run.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: ajmarco on 09/25/2020 05:15 pm

    One could question why this is to SpaceX's advantage.
    Why would they work so hard to reduce their billing?
    DoD's previous insistence on new rockets meant they paid to expand SpaceX's fleet.
    It seems SpaceX really believes in market elasticity, that bringing down prices will increase business in the long run.

    The two things that I think of here are:

    1) Schedule flexibility for SpaceX to launch these payloads with available boosters.

    2) DoD signing off on previously flown boosters can help convince other customers to do so as well.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/25/2020 05:25 pm
    One could question why this is to SpaceX's advantage.
    Why would they work so hard to reduce their billing?
    DoD's previous insistence on new rockets meant they paid to expand SpaceX's fleet.
    It seems SpaceX really believes in market elasticity, that bringing down prices will increase business in the long run.

    SpaceX gets the boosters to use for other missions (e.g, fly them twice for the USAF and them 8 times for Starlink). Unless they can replace them in the same amount of time for less than $26M each, they are saving money on later flights.

    Since recovered boosters have significant value, this gives the USAF leverage in the negotiation to allow used boosters: USAF can say "give a good deal, or we won't amend the contract terms to allow reuse and you won't get those valuable boosters back". Since the boosters are still worth, say, $30M after 1 flight, SpaceX isn't going to say "we'll give you $5M off, but nothing more".
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/25/2020 05:39 pm
    One could question why this is to SpaceX's advantage.
    Why would they work so hard to reduce their billing?

    For most companies it is not the amount billed, but the profit derived from that billing amount that is important. And for all we know the amount of profit SpaceX gets from a previously flown stage is the same as a new one - the overall cost reductions between previously flown and new is passed along to the customer.

    Plus, for U.S. Government launches there are always additional contracted services that are independent of the price of the launch, and those would not change.

    Quote
    DoD's previous insistence on new rockets meant they paid to expand SpaceX's fleet.

    A very good point, but that also creates a storage liability for SpaceX. If a stage isn't making money it is consuming money, so what SpaceX has to balance is having enough stages, but not too many.

    Also, I wouldn't imagine that this precludes SpaceX from using a new stage if that is all that available.

    Quote
    It seems SpaceX really believes in market elasticity, that bringing down prices will increase business in the long run.

    That is what they have been saying for a long time, and their ability to capture 50% of the global commercial launch market seems to confirm that. Now, with reusability, we'll have to see if new markets can be created that MUST use the lower cost previously flown 1st stages. Starlink might be an example of that, but we need non-SpaceX companies to commit in order to validate that.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: whitelancer64 on 09/25/2020 06:08 pm
    Posting the Space News article for the record.

    "During a call with reporters Sept. 25, Walt Lauderdale, SMC’s Falcon Systems and Operations Division chief, said the contract modifications for the upcoming GPS 3 missions will save the government $52.7 million"

    ********

    "SMC had planned to start flying payloads on previously flown Falcon 9s in Phase 2 but decided to get an early start with the current GPS contract.

    “That will set us up for our partnership with SpaceX for Phase 2 over the next year,” said Lauderdale.

    To allow reused boosters and get the cost savings, SMC had delay the 5th GPS 3 launch from January to July 2021 to allow time for design validation and “make sure we understand how SpaceX refurbishes previously flown hardware,” Lauderdale said. “This gets us started before Phase 2. We’re getting going now.”

    https://spacenews.com/spacexs-contract-to-launch-gps-satellites-modified-to-allow-reuse-of-falcon-9-boosters/
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Norm38 on 09/25/2020 07:08 pm
    I wonder if USAF will want to keep boosters for themselves and only fly on those, as NASA is planning to fly crew on B1061.1 and B1061.2, or if they will accept whichever booster is next up in the rotation?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/25/2020 07:33 pm
    I wonder if USAF will want to keep boosters for themselves and only fly on those, as NASA is planning to fly crew on B1061.1 and B1061.2, or if they will accept whichever booster is next up in the rotation?

    Launch customers buy launch services, not rockets. So the ownership of all parts of a Falcon 9 rocket stays with SpaceX.

    As to which 1st stage they fly on, I would think SpaceX would resist giving any customer a choice on that, but I also think they have shared with their customers how many uses a previously flown stage would have max for that customer (or all customers).

    SpaceX is using Starlink launches to validate how many uses a stage is good for, so the average number of flights a 1st stage can be certified for may not be set in stone.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Norm38 on 09/26/2020 01:50 am
    But SpaceX is letting NASA hold a booster for themselves, so there is precedent.  According to the manifest anyway.  Maybe that will change?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Norm38 on 09/26/2020 02:32 am
    One could question why this is to SpaceX's advantage.
    Why would they work so hard to reduce their billing?

    SpaceX spent a lot of effort lobbying the government just for the right to bid on contracts.
    The best way to win contracts is to be a lot cheaper than the competition. Not just a bit cheaper.  Happy customers are frequent customers.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/26/2020 03:57 am
    But SpaceX is letting NASA hold a booster for themselves, so there is precedent.  According to the manifest anyway.  Maybe that will change?

    NASA is not holding the booster, SpaceX has agreed to reuse the same booster for the same customer.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 09/26/2020 07:03 am
    One could question why this is to SpaceX's advantage.
    Why would they work so hard to reduce their billing?
    DoD's previous insistence on new rockets meant they paid to expand SpaceX's fleet.
    It seems SpaceX really believes in market elasticity, that bringing down prices will increase business in the long run.
    That works out as a saving of $17.3m per mission.

    Which going by earlier estimates is about 1/2 the cost of a new booster.
    So SX
    a) Avoid half the cost of a new build (or alternatively get to keep 1/2 the additional profit you get from not having to build a new booster.
    b) The cachet of having the DoD comfortable with launching high value payloads on pre used boosters.

    A good deal is one where everyone wins and this looks like a pretty good deal for both sides.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 09/26/2020 07:08 am
    To allow reused boosters and get the cost savings, SMC had delay the 5th GPS 3 launch from January to July 2021 to allow time for design validation and “make sure we understand how SpaceX refurbishes previously flown hardware,” Lauderdale said. “This gets us started before Phase 2. We’re getting going now.”

    https://spacenews.com/spacexs-contract-to-launch-gps-satellites-modified-to-allow-reuse-of-falcon-9-boosters/
    Will this make them the first group outside of SX to know how SX refurbishes boosters?

    I think it maybe, with commercial clients gambling on SX previous launch record that they could make reuse work.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/26/2020 04:33 pm
    To allow reused boosters and get the cost savings, SMC had delay the 5th GPS 3 launch from January to July 2021 to allow time for design validation and “make sure we understand how SpaceX refurbishes previously flown hardware,” Lauderdale said. “This gets us started before Phase 2. We’re getting going now.”

    https://spacenews.com/spacexs-contract-to-launch-gps-satellites-modified-to-allow-reuse-of-falcon-9-boosters/
    Will this make them the first group outside of SX to know how SX refurbishes boosters?

    I think it maybe, with commercial clients gambling on SX previous launch record that they could make reuse work.
    Every single launch vehicle is a gamble based on past performance. There's nothing particularly special about reuse, there.

    (Also, the Air Force and NASA both have PLENTY of insight into SpaceX's reuse process. They just don't talk about that because the information is proprietary. So this wouldn't be the first.)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: D_Dom on 09/30/2020 11:28 pm
    Deleted the off topic tangent. Please stick to reusability effects on costs. You know, per the thread title.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/04/2020 06:19 am

    Quote
    It seems SpaceX really believes in market elasticity, that bringing down prices will increase business in the long run.

    That is what they have been saying for a long time, and their ability to capture 50% of the global commercial launch market seems to confirm that. Now, with reusability, we'll have to see if new markets can be created that MUST use the lower cost previously flown 1st stages. Starlink might be an example of that, but we need non-SpaceX companies to commit in order to validate that.
    The actual issue with partial reusabilty is wheather or not the cost reduction is enough to open that market.

    My instinct is it isn't.  If a plan is uneconomic at X 10s of $m it's likely to remain uneconomic at (X-n) 10s of $m, where n is a pretty small number.

    Price elasticity studies (IIRC Georgetown U did one) suggest that for market growth you need a 10x drop in price and a semi reusable architecture will never deliver that.  :(
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 10/05/2020 12:19 pm
    Methinks Bank of America’s analysis is a little off, if price reduction to USAF is $26M per launch:

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1313089905023737856

    Quote
    Bank of America: SpaceX saves as much as $20 million per Falcon 9 launch by recovering the boosters and fairings.

    "If a rocket completes 10 flights over its lifetime, the company will be able to save over $196 million given current price levels.”
    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/why-the-space-industry-may-triple-to-1point4-trillion-by-2030.html [paywalled]
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 10/05/2020 02:33 pm
    Methinks Bank of America’s analysis is a little off, if price reduction to USAF is $26M per launch:

    https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1313089905023737856 (https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1313089905023737856)

    Quote
    Bank of America: SpaceX saves as much as $20 million per Falcon 9 launch by recovering the boosters and fairings.

    "If a rocket completes 10 flights over its lifetime, the company will be able to save over $196 million given current price levels.”
    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/why-the-space-industry-may-triple-to-1point4-trillion-by-2030.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/02/why-the-space-industry-may-triple-to-1point4-trillion-by-2030.html) [paywalled]

    Emphasis mine.

    The mistake you make here is thinking that only the cost reduction of the booster (due to reuse) is given back to the client (USAF). That's not entirely the case here. In exchange for convincing USAF to fly reused boosters SpaceX also agreed to give up PART OF the profit they would normally make when using all-new boosters.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Blackjax on 10/06/2020 06:50 pm
    I'm not sure that it adds much to what we already know and the analysis of the launch industry is a little naive, but I think it is interesting to see coverage of this from a website with their particular niche.

    https://www.fool.com/amp/investing/2020/10/05/how-much-cheaper-are-spacex-reusable-rockets-now-w/
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 10/07/2020 06:50 am
    I'm not sure that it adds much to what we already know and the analysis of the launch industry is a little naive, but I think it is interesting to see coverage of this from a website with their particular niche.

    https://www.fool.com/amp/investing/2020/10/05/how-much-cheaper-are-spacex-reusable-rockets-now-w/
    So USG gets a price cut from $97m to about $70.65m.

    I guess as per the thread title SX does allow them to save on costs.

    So only about $6m above the baseline price for an F9 launch.

    Good news for US Taxpayers. Not very impressive for anyone else.  :(
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Arb on 10/07/2020 11:53 am
    ...
    In exchange for convincing USAF to fly reused boosters SpaceX also agreed to give up PART OF the profit they would normally make when using all-new boosters.
    Isn't that just a consequence of FAR contracting under which (simplifying somewhat) the % of profit allowed is agreed along with everything else.

    So reduced contract total "automatically" leads to reduced profit.

    Or did you mean something deeper?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 11/25/2020 04:07 pm
    I was wondering if there are still any naysayers on the effects of reusability.  SpaceX has now achieved 7 reuses.  They were shooting for 10 with F9 due to cleaning and coking issues.  They are reusing boosters to launch Starlink satellites after someone else has paid for a new booster launch.  SpaceX seems to be saving tons of money on boosters for Starlink alone. 

    I know that ULA did not go for reuse with Vulcan, except maybe parachuting the engines back if they get around to it.  Do you guys think that is a mistake?

    I know Blue Origin is going for booster reuse with Vulcan, when it comes out. 

    Will ESA eventually build reusable boosters to compete? 

    Thoughts?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RonM on 11/25/2020 06:29 pm
    I was wondering if there are still any naysayers on the effects of reusability.  SpaceX has now achieved 7 reuses.  They were shooting for 10 with F9 due to cleaning and coking issues.  They are reusing boosters to launch Starlink satellites after someone else has paid for a new booster launch.  SpaceX seems to be saving tons of money on boosters for Starlink alone. 

    I know that ULA did not go for reuse with Vulcan, except maybe parachuting the engines back if they get around to it.  Do you guys think that is a mistake?

    I know Blue Origin is going for booster reuse with Vulcan, when it comes out. 

    Will ESA eventually build reusable boosters to compete? 

    Thoughts?

    ULA should have tried recovering an engine pod from the start. Since the engines are the most expensive part of the booster, recovering them and throwing away the tanks might be easier and cost effective. Won't know until they try. Problem is they're not trying. With SpaceX and soon Blue Origins flying reusable boosters, there may not be enough room in the launch services market for a more expensive ULA.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/02/2020 06:19 am
    ULA should have tried recovering an engine pod from the start. Since the engines are the most expensive part of the booster, recovering them and throwing away the tanks might be easier and cost effective. Won't know until they try. Problem is they're not trying. With SpaceX and soon Blue Origins flying reusable boosters, there may not be enough room in the launch services market for a more expensive ULA.
    Don't be silly. That would mean their parents would have to put money on the table, instead of in their pockets.

    The parents will tell the DoD that if they can't afford to develop booster reusability and the DoD could (gasp) loos "assured access" to space. Unthinkable. 

    The DoD will then fund a project (or "competition" which ULA will win) to pay for the work they should have done a decade ago.

    None of this will come as a surprise to anyone with a minimal awareness of how the defense business operates.  :( How much did t he USAF cough up for Vulcan development work. How much to ATK for AR-1?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RoadWithoutEnd on 12/02/2020 12:43 pm
    The excuse typically used to avoid investing in reuse was the chicken-and-egg argument that there wasn't enough demand to sustain cadences that would make it economical.  Which is circular, because the demand is limited by the cost of launch.  The old, "Why would we build roads to there?  Nobody goes there!"

    Expensive launch has the knock-on effect of forcing satellite manufacturers to plow as much utility as possible into their payloads, making them also costly and lower-volume products that keep demand low.

    The question mark that some organizations hide behind (Arianespace has been a regular offender) is what level of reusability would break this Gordian Knot.  Rather than doing anything in practice to find out, the traditional industry has been content to keep the discussion theoretical while making little or no progress (or even going backwards).

    Fortunately, Falcon 9 is producing solid data on this, and effects on the satellite industry are visible.  However, SpaceX appears to be conceding some level of their competitors' point by initiating Starlink to revitalize launch demand.  They are giving the payload industry a push in order to help along their progress in the launch industry.

    This suggests the traditional industry is not totally blameworthy, but that reducing costs is actually a much bigger challenge than just changing the rocket.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: racevedo88 on 12/02/2020 01:37 pm

    Expensive launch has the knock-on effect of forcing satellite manufacturers to plow as much utility as possible into their payloads, making them also costly and lower-volume products that keep demand low.

    Fortunately, Falcon 9 is producing solid data on this, and effects on the satellite industry are visible.  However, SpaceX appears to be conceding some level of their competitors' point by initiating Starlink to revitalize launch demand.  They are giving the payload industry a push in order to help along their progress in the launch industry.

    This suggests the traditional industry is not totally blameworthy, but that reducing costs is actually a much bigger challenge than just changing the rocket.

    Agree with almost the entirety of your post, but don't agree with the launch demand and the starlink as conceding to the competitors level, not because your assertion might be wrong, but rather because is too early to tell. A couple of points to consider

    1. Most of the satellites being launched today (aside from starlink) were conceived and more than likely manifested more than 5 years ago, considering that SpaceX successfully recovered their first booster almost exactly 5 years ago and reuse probably wasn't consider mainstream until 2017 then points to this satellites being built using the expensive launch model you alluded to.

    2. Also because of the launch expense of non reusables, payloads needed to miniaturize every component which meant using newly created specialized component or an off the shelf expensive component (ie satellite bus) vs  extensively using regular off the shelf components.  This increased the price of the satellite, which means that the satellite users and owners could only afford a few. Sooner rather than later satellite owners are going to realize that they can build and launch multiple satellites for the price of one (and optimize its function) which will increase launch cadence.

    3. Satellite bus manufacturers are old space and mostly resistant to change, which means that their satellite busses are designed with all the aforementioned miniaturized, specialty components, expensive components. However with market competition this might change either by A. New Space company making cheaper Satellite busses with off the shelf tech or b. an old pace competitor realizing that they can grab a bigger segment of the market.

    In conclusion is still too early to analyze the impact of reuse and lower launch cost on launch demand for payloads.
     
    edit/Lar: Fix quotes
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/03/2020 06:02 am
    Expensive launch has the knock-on effect of forcing satellite manufacturers to plow as much utility as possible into their payloads, making them also costly and lower-volume products that keep demand low.
    The launch cost seems to be considered in isolation but that's not the case. JPL's rule of thumb for project costs is Launch cost, Payload is 2x Launch cost and Operations (over the mission life) is 3x Launch cost.
    So in fact everything is scaled to launch cost. Which means either JPL would have to radically alter how they do their missions or find a different way to cost their payload and mission costs.

    Quote from: RoadWithoutEnd
    This suggests the traditional industry is not totally blameworthy, but that reducing costs is actually a much bigger challenge than just changing the rocket.
    The actual issue is that cost reduction is possible but is it significant?

    The market is highly inelastic. A 50% cost reduction does not bring a 50% increase in launches. The irony is that the company that swallows the pain of making even partial reuse work gets to keep a much larger  profit margin than any ELV mfg. They can recover the development cost in a viable number of launches and start making very significant profits.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 12/03/2020 10:31 am
    Wait. That’s not ironic, that’s the way things are supposed to work.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/04/2020 06:42 pm
    Wait. That’s not ironic, that’s the way things are supposed to work.
    Put it down to the perverse incentives of solely serving the USG as a customer.

    It's like a life form that over time has lost the ability to do things for itself. The simply cannot exist without the regular support provided by another organism. What's the word for something like that? :(
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: DreamyPickle on 12/04/2020 07:34 pm
    Reusability seems to be working very well operationally but the prices SpaceX charges to customers have not fallen significantly. This means we will have to wait for a cheap second reusable competitor to start a price war and drive costs down.

    The IPXE mission was priced at ~50M in order to win against Pegasus XL but other launches are in the ballpark of ~90M despite using the same vehicle. The obvious explanation is that SpaceX is charging less than the Atlas but as much as the market bear. Most of this revenue is being pumped into Starship so there's no reason to be upset about it.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 12/04/2020 09:10 pm
    The IPXE mission was priced at ~50M in order to win against Pegasus XL but other launches are in the ballpark of ~90M despite using the same vehicle.
    SpaceX doesn't sell a vehicle, they sell a launch service.  Launch services provided are heavily payload dependent and vary widely.  That is the source of price discrepancy, not "what the market will bear" (which would be illegal when it comes to the government payloads).  Of course, it does seem likely SpaceX could charge less and make less money across the board based on what we know of their costs.  They are not trying to operate at razor thin margins.

    $50 million is in fact a nice price reduction compared to the ~$62 million SpaceX was charging before reuse, particularly if you factor in inflation.  Whether anyone considers it "significant" or not is likely to be in the eye of the beholder.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: DreamyPickle on 12/04/2020 10:47 pm
    The IPXE mission was priced at ~50M in order to win against Pegasus XL but other launches are in the ballpark of ~90M despite using the same vehicle.
    SpaceX doesn't sell a vehicle, they sell a launch service.  Launch services provided are heavily payload dependent and vary widely.
    I'm not buying it, services are a generic excuse.

    There's no way that "services" involved in launching IPXE are $50M cheaper than a mission like Sentinel-6A. If anything the target orbit of IPXE makes this launch *harder* to execute.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 12/06/2020 02:37 am
    Wait. That’s not ironic, that’s the way things are supposed to work.
    Put it down to the perverse incentives of solely serving the USG as a customer.

    It's like a life form that over time has lost the ability to do things for itself. The simply cannot exist without the regular support provided by another organism. What's the word for something like that? :(

    I'm not sure that your thesis is supported by the data that you have provided to support it (i.e. none that I can recall)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 12/06/2020 03:27 am
    The IPXE mission was priced at ~50M in order to win against Pegasus XL but other launches are in the ballpark of ~90M despite using the same vehicle.
    SpaceX doesn't sell a vehicle, they sell a launch service.  Launch services provided are heavily payload dependent and vary widely.
    I'm not buying it, services are a generic excuse.

    There's no way that "services" involved in launching IPXE are $50M cheaper than a mission like Sentinel-6A. If anything the target orbit of IPXE makes this launch *harder* to execute.

    You are not the first person to wonder about this, but it is a fact that the U.S. Government pre-negotiates standard launch services through IDIQ contracts (https://www.gsa.gov/buying-selling/new-to-gsa-acquisitions/how-to-sell-to-the-government/indefinite-delivery-indefinite-quantity-contracts) on the Launch Services Program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_Services_Program), with the current contract being NLS II.

    The prices that are pre-negotiated are for standard launch services, but each government customer may have their own requirements for unique services, which you'll see mentioned on the press releases when the contracts are awarded.

    The thing to remember is that the U.S. Government is not stupid. If contractor A sells a standard item to the public for $X, then the U.S. Government expects to pay no more than $X for the same standard item. So it goes with standardized services.

    What can be negotiated is unique services, and as someone that has worked for government contractors, I can tell you that the U.S. Government reserves the right to audit the prices being offered in order to ensure that they are not be taken advantage of.

    And yes, big contractors have figured out how to game the system for large contracts, but the unique launch services that government customers want are actually fairly standard - special processing & handling, additional data, unique orbits, etc.

    So the bottom line is that if SpaceX advertises a Falcon 9 launch for $62M, the U.S. Government is certainly not paying more than that, and they may have a contract in place to pay less. Then the only question is how much more will the unique services cost. But the price the government pays for the launch doesn't vary.

    Does that answer your questions?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: john smith 19 on 12/06/2020 07:37 pm
    Reusability seems to be working very well operationally but the prices SpaceX charges to customers have not fallen significantly. This means we will have to wait for a cheap second reusable competitor to start a price war and drive costs down.
    Exactly.  Actual competition is what drives prices down in any market.

    As per the thread title reusability seems to have done exactly what its proponents have always believed and lowered costs quite a lot.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 06/14/2021 03:41 pm
    I read this as savings compared with using new F9 boosters:

    https://twitter.com/emrekelly/status/1404462824672448526

    Quote
    SpaceX / #GPSIII briefing: Including Thursday's launch, Space Force says using previously flown Falcon 9 boosters should save a total of $64 million over the next two years.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Davidthefat on 06/29/2021 03:11 pm
    How much cost savings does SpaceX actually get from reused boosters? How much of that is going toward the customer vs SpaceX? I wonder what percentage of components have to go through refurbishment and acceptance testing again, or if it's acceptance tested as a booster.

    I've heard that in the earlier days of recovery, most of the seals in the chamber and turbopump had to be replaced. I wonder if that's still the case or not. It's still a lot of man hours going to disassembly and reassembly and test if that's still the case.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: alugobi on 06/29/2021 04:05 pm
    Quote
    How much cost savings does SpaceX actually get from reused boosters?
    Enough that they make every effort to retrieve them.
    Quote
    How much of that is going toward the customer vs SpaceX?
    SpaceX is gobbling up customers from all over.  It would appear that the price is right.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Davidthefat on 06/29/2021 04:16 pm
    Quote
    How much cost savings does SpaceX actually get from reused boosters?
    Enough that they make every effort to retrieve them.
    Quote
    How much of that is going toward the customer vs SpaceX?
    SpaceX is gobbling up customers from all over.  It would appear that the price is right.

    Given that the baseline expendable Falcon 9 prices are a lot cheaper than the competitors already, it doesn't surprise me. I am thinking since they already are the cheapest on the market, they can reinvest a bigger chunk of the cost savings to R&D. I wonder how much of that portion pays for their Starlink missions vs going to Starship.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: alugobi on 06/29/2021 04:36 pm
    Whatever they save on reusing boosters will (maybe already is) be dwarfed by the money earned from Starlink.  They're banking it on Starship.  Then, if they get Starship flying and deploying Starlinks, it all becomes a money fountain.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 06/29/2021 05:04 pm
    Whatever they save on reusing boosters will (maybe already is) be dwarfed by the money earned from Starlink.  They're banking it on Starship.  Then, if they get Starship flying and deploying Starlinks, it all becomes a money fountain.

    It's definitely not the case now.  Roughly 3 reuses now equals the current annual run-rate revenue for Starlink discounting all expenses.  Reuse has already saved an enormous sum.  Dwarfage starts to enter the picture at the 100M order-of-magnitude for Starlink subcribers.  Even at 10M subscribers, reuse is a sizable savings chunk vs that revenue.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RotoSequence on 06/29/2021 06:25 pm
    Whatever they save on reusing boosters will (maybe already is) be dwarfed by the money earned from Starlink.  They're banking it on Starship.  Then, if they get Starship flying and deploying Starlinks, it all becomes a money fountain.

    It's definitely not the case now.  Roughly 3 reuses now equals the current annual run-rate revenue for Starlink discounting all expenses.  Reuse has already saved an enormous sum.  Dwarfage starts to enter the picture at the 100M order-of-magnitude for Starlink subcribers.  Even at 10M subscribers, reuse is a sizable savings chunk vs that revenue.

    SpaceX is expecting to replace its Starlink constellation on whole every five years. For a 5000 satellite constellation, this means 16 to 17 launches on Falcon 9 per annum in perpetuity. With reuse, that's ~467 million a year. Without reuse, that's closer to 833 million or more a year, depending on how you determine costs. Without reuse, SpaceX would need over 700,000 customers just to break even with these hypothesized annual expenses. With reuse, they only need approximately 400,000. These numbers can be grown and shrunk based on constellation size as desired. Starship, with its larger capacity and reduced operating costs, will save SpaceX a lot of money.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: scdavis on 06/29/2021 06:32 pm
    June 29th 2021 Updates:  Elon keynote update on orbital attempt
    <snip>

    https://youtu.be/FqudEnb5ClA

    At 1:45 in the video, Elon says their costs on Falcon 9 are currently:
    60% First stage
    10% Fairing
    20% Upper Stage
    10% Launch, Recovery & Refurbishment

    Edit: So even if we assign the entire last 10% including launch to the cost of reuse, they are saving about 70% of launch costs every time they reuse a rocket and fairings.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Redclaws on 06/29/2021 06:47 pm
    I feel it seems important to gently repeat something:

    There is absolutely nothing inconsistent about the statements “Reuse has been *wildly* successful for SpaceX”

    And “SpaceX has not dropped their prices that much since sorting out reusability”.

    Not a single thing.  They can, should, and will charge what they find/believe the market will bear, which in a mature market is defined above all else by availability and cost of alternatives.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 07/13/2021 11:43 pm
    twitter.com/astro_g_dogg/status/1414930216460378113

    Quote
    Affordable reusability has become a critical component of spaceflight. The shuttle was largely reusable, but the cost of maintenance between flights was very high. In some cases it would have been cheaper to make new parts for each launch...

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1415091715296403456

    Quote
    Took more work to make F9 booster reuse cost-effective than went into recovering it in the first place. This is an important point.

    Things finally clicked into place with Block 5. My hat is off to everyone at SpaceX, NASA, Space Force, FAA & suppliers who helped make it happen.

    twitter.com/younietyler/status/1415092152963461120

    Quote
    What was the most expensive part of reuse? Was getting the fairings back in 1 piece the key component?

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1415093161853128704

    Quote
    Booster is more than half cost of mission. Fairing is ~10%.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 07/14/2021 12:42 am
    It’s nice to have corroboration from the source; it seemed very likely when SpaceX was expending pre Block 5 boosters they had recovered that there was a step change involved.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 07/14/2021 01:32 am
    Quote
    Took more work to make F9 booster reuse cost-effective than went into recovering it in the first place. This is an important point.

    Things finally clicked into place with Block 5. My hat is off to everyone at SpaceX, NASA, Space Force, FAA & suppliers who helped make it happen.

    Hmmm ... I wonder if that statement is imprecise?  Perhaps missing a qualifier on cost-effective like "highly".

    Taken literally, it would seem to mean that Booster reuse was not initially cost-effective.  Given the percentage cost of the booster, I'd have thought it was cost-effective right from the start even if not as highly cost-effective as they would want.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 07/14/2021 03:26 am
    Quote
    Took more work to make F9 booster reuse cost-effective than went into recovering it in the first place. This is an important point.

    Things finally clicked into place with Block 5. My hat is off to everyone at SpaceX, NASA, Space Force, FAA & suppliers who helped make it happen.

    Hmmm ... I wonder if that statement is imprecise?  Perhaps missing a qualifier on cost-effective like "highly".

    Taken literally, it would seem to mean that Booster reuse was not initially cost-effective.  Given the percentage cost of the booster, I'd have thought it was cost-effective right from the start even if not as highly cost-effective as they would want.

    Shotwell stated (around 2019 if I recall correctly) that even initially, refurbishment cost considerably less than half of a new booster. And that this was improving dramatically going forward.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 07/14/2021 03:29 am
    Quote
    Took more work to make F9 booster reuse cost-effective than went into recovering it in the first place. This is an important point.

    Things finally clicked into place with Block 5. My hat is off to everyone at SpaceX, NASA, Space Force, FAA &amp; suppliers who helped make it happen.

    Hmmm ... I wonder if that statement is imprecise?  Perhaps missing a qualifier on cost-effective like "highly".

    Taken literally, it would seem to mean that Booster reuse was not initially cost-effective.  Given the percentage cost of the booster, I'd have thought it was cost-effective right from the start even if not as highly cost-effective as they would want.
    From Musk's pint of view probably it means "Cost effective enough to make a financial difference "..  So 10% savings would not have cut it.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Hyperborealis on 07/14/2021 12:39 pm
    So, making the Falcon recoverable was not in and of itself enough to make the financial side work. It was the optimizations afterwards, all the incremental improvements across a range of parameters (ie related to "NASA, Space Force, FAA etc.") that made recoverability a financial win. It's harder than it looks.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 07/14/2021 02:24 pm
    Quote
    Took more work to make F9 booster reuse cost-effective than went into recovering it in the first place. This is an important point.

    Things finally clicked into place with Block 5. My hat is off to everyone at SpaceX, NASA, Space Force, FAA & suppliers who helped make it happen.

    Hmmm ... I wonder if that statement is imprecise?  Perhaps missing a qualifier on cost-effective like "highly".

    Taken literally, it would seem to mean that Booster reuse was not initially cost-effective.  Given the percentage cost of the booster, I'd have thought it was cost-effective right from the start even if not as highly cost-effective as they would want.

    I couldn't find the tweet right now but did he say something like use twice breakeven and use a 3rd time you're ahead? Block 4 was only reused once, so probably just breakeven, needed Block 5 to actually start saving money.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 07/14/2021 03:33 pm
    I couldn't find the tweet right now but did he say something like use twice breakeven and use a 3rd time you're ahead? Block 4 was only reused once, so probably just breakeven, needed Block 5 to actually start saving money.

    Surely such statements only make sense ignoring the cost of developing reusability?

    In terms of paying off overall, number of flights is key. Makes perfect sense for SpaceX to have invested hundreds of millions in reusability with the flight rate that Starlink requires. For others, like ULA, it’s a very different equation.

    If Starship were to come online - for Starlink launches - in the coming months, I do wonder how big a saving SpaceX would have achieved? Of course the experience gained in turn makes Starship possible.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: joek on 07/14/2021 03:46 pm
    I couldn't find the tweet right now but did he say something like use twice breakeven and use a 3rd time you're ahead? Block 4 was only reused once, so probably just breakeven, needed Block 5 to actually start saving money.

    Probably this one
    Quote
    Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so you’re roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with 3

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Redclaws on 07/14/2021 03:59 pm
    So, making the Falcon recoverable was not in and of itself enough to make the financial side work. It was the optimizations afterwards, all the incremental improvements across a range of parameters (ie related to "NASA, Space Force, FAA etc.") that made recoverability a financial win. It's harder than it looks.

    I got the impression he was thanking those who had been buying and approving Falcon 9 flights, ie, awards speech style "I'd like to thank everyone who brought me here".

    These groups were involved primarily in approving & buying launches on reused rockets.  I don't think they helped with the actual economics of reuse, they just permitted it to occur.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: joek on 07/14/2021 04:05 pm
    Surely such statements only make sense ignoring the cost of developing reusability?
    ...

    Agree; Musk's statement was certainly direct costs and did not include R&D. A more informed analysis would require factoring in reuse rate over the life of the system to determine R&D amortization, as well as savings and opportunity costs from not having to build as many vehicles. Those numbers are difficult to pin down, but trend is obvious with >60 reflights to date with the majority in the last couple years.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: joek on 07/14/2021 04:46 pm
    ...
    These groups were involved primarily in approving & buying launches on reused rockets.  I don't think they helped with the actual economics of reuse, they just permitted it to occur.

    Think a bit more than "permitted". Price was certainly a factor in some of those decisions, and SpaceX had to demonstrate suitable level of reliability; mutually beneficial.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: MaxTeranous on 07/15/2021 09:05 pm
    I couldn't find the tweet right now but did he say something like use twice breakeven and use a 3rd time you're ahead? Block 4 was only reused once, so probably just breakeven, needed Block 5 to actually start saving money.

    Surely such statements only make sense ignoring the cost of developing reusability?

    In terms of paying off overall, number of flights is key. Makes perfect sense for SpaceX to have invested hundreds of millions in reusability with the flight rate that Starlink requires. For others, like ULA, it’s a very different equation.


    Of course that can become a self fulfilling prophecy. Not developing reusability as you’ve only got a market for 20 flights per year so you can never go above 20 flights per year as you’ve not developed reusability. (For example)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Slarty1080 on 08/03/2021 01:29 pm
    I couldn't find the tweet right now but did he say something like use twice breakeven and use a 3rd time you're ahead? Block 4 was only reused once, so probably just breakeven, needed Block 5 to actually start saving money.

    Surely such statements only make sense ignoring the cost of developing reusability?

    In terms of paying off overall, number of flights is key. Makes perfect sense for SpaceX to have invested hundreds of millions in reusability with the flight rate that Starlink requires. For others, like ULA, it’s a very different equation.


    Of course that can become a self fulfilling prophecy. Not developing reusability as you’ve only got a market for 20 flights per year so you can never go above 20 flights per year as you’ve not developed reusability. (For example)
    I think you're right. And its not until someone comes along with a need to fly hundreds of time a year that questions are asked.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Redclaws on 08/03/2021 01:38 pm
    ...
    These groups were involved primarily in approving & buying launches on reused rockets.  I don't think they helped with the actual economics of reuse, they just permitted it to occur.

    Think a bit more than "permitted". Price was certainly a factor in some of those decisions, and SpaceX had to demonstrate suitable level of reliability; mutually beneficial.

    Yes, that’s what I meant, but I agree it’s a lot more than just permitted. :). Enabled.

    But, to belabor my original point: enabled through (complex and important) *supportive purchasing and permitting decisions*, not technical assistance (NASA aside).
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 09/07/2021 12:06 pm
    twitter.com/lionnetpierre/status/1435165744560582662

    Quote
    We have modelized the economic equation of @SpaceX as a launch service provider (leaving aside Dragon, Starship and Starlink) with a view to uncover its cost and profit drivers. The idea was to use Falcon 9 as a benchmark for testing the economics of launcher Reusability. 1/18

    https://twitter.com/lionnetpierre/status/1435165747437838338

    Quote
    The full research paper is available at linkedin, please read it to understand the assumptions and limitations. The key findings and highlights are posted in this thread. 2/18

    https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eurospacepierrelionnet_spacex-launch-services-economics-activity-6840929023577612289-hzle/ (and attached)

    twitter.com/lionnetpierre/status/1435165752827518979

    Quote
    We find that there is a very strong correlation between gross profit and launch cadence in launcher economics, in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not. 3/18

    https://twitter.com/lionnetpierre/status/1435165757911011329

    Quote
    Even with very optimistic assumptions a seemingly very affordable system such as the Falcon does not guarantee to be profitable without sufficient volumes. The break even for Falcon is between 6 & 8 flights, after that point the profit grows fast. 4/18
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 09/07/2021 04:59 pm
    Quote
    in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not
    Isn't that kind of stating the bleedin' obvious?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: climbergilles on 09/07/2021 05:16 pm
    Quote
    in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not
    Isn't that kind of stating the bleedin' obvious?
    Obvious I agree. Also, how do you take in « account » that this will give you 10 years of technology advance against others company ? How do you value that this open up the possibility of Starship system ? While some may look at numbers only, I believe SpaceX make different assumption.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/07/2021 05:22 pm
    Quote
    in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not
    Isn't that kind of stating the bleedin' obvious?

    It was an assumption many people have had, but now we have a study that provides analysis to validate that assumption.

    And for me, I would have thought breakeven occurred earlier than 6-8 launches. But since Falcon is a 1st generation reusable booster, and when the study was done SpaceX may have still been early in testing the limits of reusability, maybe that is correct. And if so, then that should help to validate the assumption that Starship - as a 2nd generation reusable system - can achieve breakeven with less launches.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rakaydos on 09/07/2021 05:51 pm
    When it says 6-8 flights, is that 6-8 flights per year? Per booster? Or 6-8 flights for the whole program to break even?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: cppetrie on 09/07/2021 09:24 pm
    When it says 6-8 flights, is that 6-8 flights per year? Per booster? Or 6-8 flights for the whole program to break even?
    I read the tweet summary to be program, but it isn’t very clear. Haven’t read the whole paper where perhaps it is made more clear.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/07/2021 09:52 pm
    Quote
    in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not
    Isn't that kind of stating the bleedin' obvious?

    It was an assumption many people have had, but now we have a study that provides analysis to validate that assumption.

    And for me, I would have thought breakeven occurred earlier than 6-8 launches. But since Falcon is a 1st generation reusable booster, and when the study was done SpaceX may have still been early in testing the limits of reusability, maybe that is correct. And if so, then that should help to validate the assumption that Starship - as a 2nd generation reusable system - can achieve breakeven with less launches.

    It's a "study" that's based on public data and "guesstimates". And it's from Eurospace, "the trade association of the European Space Industry". So take it with several large grains of salt.

    That said, the main conclusions are obvious and correct: profitability is strongly correlated with flight rate, and any launch company (with reuse or not!) that is doing fewer than 6 launches a year is either really tightening the belt or else bleeding a ton of cash.

    However, the claim that SpaceX is not particularly inexpensive is complete bunk. And the implication that Ariane doesn't have enough business to sustain a reusable launcher is entirely unsupported, IMO. If they split the A5/A6 dual manifests, and put those and Soyuz on a F9-class vehicle, they should average over a dozen per year.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/07/2021 10:05 pm
    It's a "study" that's based on public data and "guesstimates". And it's from Eurospace, "the trade association of the European Space Industry". So take it with several large grains of salt.

    Good point. Understanding the motivations of the people who chartered the study, and who did the study, is important to know so that any potential biases can be understood.

    Quote
    That said, the main conclusions are obvious and correct:

    Well, their conclusions match assumptions that many of us have, but not sure that ensures we are all right.  :D

    Quote
    ...profitability is strongly correlated with flight rate, and any launch company (with reuse or not!) that is doing fewer than 6 launches a year is either really tightening the belt or else bleeding a ton of cash.

    Agreed. Though there is one other potential condition, and that is the launch provider is charging LOTS of money because they have a captive customer - like ULA does.

    Quote
    However, the claim that SpaceX is not particularly inexpensive is complete bunk. And the implication that Ariane doesn't have enough business to sustain a reusable launcher is entirely unsupported, IMO. If they split the A5/A6 dual manifests, and put those and Soyuz on a F9-class vehicle, they should average over a dozen per year.

    I think we all know that Arianespace exists not only to launch European payloads, but also to employ Europeans. And as long as jobs is a factor in how European payloads get launched, reusability won't be a significant factor.

    This may be why we don't see a global rush towards building domestic reusable launchers. Which means such a global shift may have to wait until Starship is operational, and the cost to launch payloads drops even further, and the advantages of reusable launchers because too expensive to ignore.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JayWee on 09/07/2021 10:42 pm
    However, the claim that SpaceX is not particularly inexpensive is complete bunk. And the implication that Ariane doesn't have enough business to sustain a reusable launcher is entirely unsupported, IMO. If they split the A5/A6 dual manifests, and put those and Soyuz on a F9-class vehicle, they should average over a dozen per year.

    The study is looking at overall SpaceX finances, not just launch business. They explicitely state:

    Quote
    a. either the Falcon 9 cost & revenue assumptions are overly optimistic (i.e. Falcon 9 operations, general costs, value of assets and R&D are higher than discussed and/or revenues are much lower),
    b. either SpaceX is already paying large cash dividends to its shareholders
    c. either some other operation at SpaceX is incredibly expensive, be it the Dragon , the Starlink constellation and/or the Starship development.

    In other terms: if Falcon 9 is so cost effective, and if investors are not rewarded, it means that everything else SpaceX is doing is way more expensive than usually credited for, this includes Dragon, Starlink and Starship

    After all, no matter how you slice it, the Falcon 9 launch business alone can't sustain 10000 employees SpaceX currently has.
    For example, Elon has mentioned that he estimates he'll have to sink $10-20B into Starlink alone and Starship isn't really cheap either.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: alugobi on 09/07/2021 11:17 pm
    Quote
    Starship isn't really cheap either.
    Explain.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JayWee on 09/07/2021 11:27 pm
    Quote
    Starship isn't really cheap either.
    Explain.
    It certainly looks like a multi billion effort (see HLS award)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 09/07/2021 11:41 pm
    When it says 6-8 flights, is that 6-8 flights per year? Per booster? Or 6-8 flights for the whole program to break even?
    I read the tweet summary to be program, but it isn’t very clear. Haven’t read the whole paper where perhaps it is made more clear.
    The paper, on cursory glance, seems to clearly reiterate that it's that number of launches per year.


    Edit:  Good Lord there's some egregious factual errors:  Handful of proofreading deficiencies as well.

    1)  "Partial reusability: SpaceX successfully introduced launcher partial reusability in 2013, by managing to land the
    main stage, then refurbish it for further reuse"

    2) "Falcon 9 was rapidly adopted by commercial customers internationally, with the first commercial launch of a
    pre-flown booster in 2013 for the European operator SES."

    3) "In 2020 Space X started to recover also the launcher fairings (with the claim that the fairing alone represents as
    much as half of the upper stage cost, and 10% of the total launcher value, i.e. 5-6 M€)."


    Edit2:  Final Conclusion:

    Not impressed.  Not sure whether its tone is derived from translation but the whole thing comes across as sophomoric and better work can be found in any random thread on this site.  Sad.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Coastal Ron on 09/08/2021 02:07 am
    Quote
    a. either the Falcon 9 cost & revenue assumptions are overly optimistic (i.e. Falcon 9 operations, general costs, value of assets and R&D are higher than discussed and/or revenues are much lower),
    b. either SpaceX is already paying large cash dividends to its shareholders
    c. either some other operation at SpaceX is incredibly expensive, be it the Dragon , the Starlink constellation and/or the Starship development.

    In other terms: if Falcon 9 is so cost effective, and if investors are not rewarded, it means that everything else SpaceX is doing is way more expensive than usually credited for, this includes Dragon, Starlink and Starship

    Not sure where you are quoting that from, especially the last sentence. Is it from the study? Regardless, I have some comments.

    Regarding "a", no one outside of SpaceX knows what assumptions SpaceX had about Falcon 9.

    Regarding "b", venture backed companies like SpaceX don't pay dividends. The payoff for investors is when there is a sale or an IPO, dividends are NOT a reward.

    Regarding "c", Dragon Cargo and Dragon Crew development were paid for by NASA contracts that SpaceX won. As for Starlink and Starship those would be the programs that the most recent investors are investing for. Starship has the potential to replace Falcon 9, and to significantly reduce the cost of moving mass to space, so investors would be betting that SpaceX can increase the size of the market AND take a larger percentage of the current market - all because reusability has the potential to significantly lower costs.

    Quote
    After all, no matter how you slice it, the Falcon 9 launch business alone can't sustain 10000 employees SpaceX currently has.
    For example, Elon has mentioned that he estimates he'll have to sink $10-20B into Starlink alone and Starship isn't really cheap either.

    SpaceX just raised $1.16B more capital 4 months ago, and $850M 2 months earlier. I don't see the end of their ability to raise capital coming soon. IIRC SpaceX is the 2nd most valuable company that hasn't yet IPO'd or been bought, but Elon Musk has talked about spinning Starlink out as an IPO at some point, and that potential is likely driving some of the recent investment.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JayWee on 09/08/2021 03:58 am
    Not sure where you are quoting that from, especially the last sentence. Is it from the study? Regardless, I have some comments.
    Yep, from the study. Agreed on your comments.

    I think the main problem with it is that they are trying to look at SpaceX as if it were another Arianespace/ULA - a launch company with a rocket and nothing more - and then trying to "understand" how SpaceX finances work. It includes this gem of a statement:
    Quote from: The study
    Furthermore, the lurking notion that SpaceX may be using the profit made on premium launches (for NASA, DoD and NRO) to subsidise its commercial offering and undercut the competition, while being an undemonstrated possibility, is potentially very disturbing for both US taxpayers and for SpaceX competitors.

    Or this one:
    Quote from: The study
    SpaceX may well be, like Solar City, a large scale money losing operation, only kept afloat by the permanent cash infusion from not so well informed investors that are buying in Elon Musk's stated "grand plans" for Mars colonies. The track record of Elon Musk as Chairman of the Board of Solar City (that is being revealed through his court testimony) does not plead favourably for him in this context.
    While completely ignoring the success Tesla is.

    Regarding "c", Dragon Cargo and Dragon Crew development were paid for by NASA contracts that SpaceX won. As for Starlink and Starship those would be the programs that the most recent investors are investing for. Starship has the potential to replace Falcon 9, and to significantly reduce the cost of moving mass to space, so investors would be betting that SpaceX can increase the size of the market AND take a larger percentage of the current market - all because reusability has the potential to significantly lower costs.


    Agreed, that's the part they don't understand, so I think we can safely put this "paper" into the Trash category close to a hit piece. They don't even mention megaconstellations for god sake!
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/08/2021 04:35 am
    Launch is traditionally low-margin business. Satellite manufacture is higher margin usually and satellite services higher margin still. SpaceX is doing the latter two, but they wouldn't be able to pursue their radical Dragon crew and Starlink costs without the cheap costs of a partially reusable launcher. But you can't just hope such a launcher appears.

    So you gain a lot by vertically integrating launch, satellite manufacture, and services. Otherwise you're hoping for a miracle to occur and another business create a cheap launch and manufacturing solution for your high-margin satellite services concept. Vertical integration allows SpaceX to fully capture the value inherent in reusability (it solves the chicken and egg problem by doing both), and if they're ignoring satellite manufacture and satellite services, then they're ignoring a CRUCIAL aspect of how SpaceX was able to make Falcon 9 reuse viable (in a large, hypothetical free market, this wouldn't be necessary, but we live in the real world). And so by ignoring those things, this is invalid analysis.

    But I suspect the purpose of the analysis is to provide fodder for Arianespace to whine to the WTO or whatever about F9 being "uncompetitive" because SpaceX also has higher margin business in Dragon and Starlink.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: TrevorMonty on 09/08/2021 04:45 am
    Launch is traditionally low-margin business. Satellite manufacture is higher margin usually and satellite services higher margin still. SpaceX is doing the latter two, but they wouldn't be able to pursue their radical Dragon crew and Starlink costs without the cheap costs of a partially reusable launcher. But you can't just hope such a launcher appears.

    So you gain a lot by vertically integrating launch, satellite manufacture, and services. Otherwise you're hoping for a miracle to occur and another business create a cheap launch and manufacturing solution for your high-margin satellite services concept. Vertical integration allows SpaceX to fully capture the value inherent in reusability (it solves the chicken and egg problem by doing both), and if they're ignoring satellite manufacture and satellite services, then they're ignoring a CRUCIAL aspect of how SpaceX was able to make Falcon 9 reuse viable (in a large, hypothetical free market, this wouldn't be necessary, but we live in the real world). And so by ignoring those things, this is invalid analysis.

    But I suspect the purpose of the analysis is to provide fodder for Arianespace to whine to the WTO or whatever about F9 being "uncompetitive" because SpaceX also has higher margin business in Dragon and Starlink.
    RL seem to be following same path into satellite market. I think long term they will do some type of constellation that will bring in steady revenue stream. Going need RLV like Neutron to make this affordable.

    Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/08/2021 01:07 pm
    Quote
    Starship isn't really cheap either.
    Explain.
    It certainly looks like a multi billion effort (see HLS award)

    That's still really cheap. The only other remotely comparable effort was STS, which cost $40B to develop.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/08/2021 02:18 pm
    However, the claim that SpaceX is not particularly inexpensive is complete bunk. And the implication that Ariane doesn't have enough business to sustain a reusable launcher is entirely unsupported, IMO. If they split the A5/A6 dual manifests, and put those and Soyuz on a F9-class vehicle, they should average over a dozen per year.

    The study is looking at overall SpaceX finances, not just launch business. They explicitely state:

    Quote
    a. either the Falcon 9 cost & revenue assumptions are overly optimistic (i.e. Falcon 9 operations, general costs, value of assets and R&D are higher than discussed and/or revenues are much lower),
    b. either SpaceX is already paying large cash dividends to its shareholders
    c. either some other operation at SpaceX is incredibly expensive, be it the Dragon , the Starlink constellation and/or the Starship development.

    In other terms: if Falcon 9 is so cost effective, and if investors are not rewarded, it means that everything else SpaceX is doing is way more expensive than usually credited for, this includes Dragon, Starlink and Starship

    After all, no matter how you slice it, the Falcon 9 launch business alone can't sustain 10000 employees SpaceX currently has.
    For example, Elon has mentioned that he estimates he'll have to sink $10-20B into Starlink alone and Starship isn't really cheap either.

    The assumptions in the study are that a booster costs $33M and that variable launch costs are about $17M. These are entirely reasonable, but then operational spend on all 127 Falcon launches is roughly (33+17)*65+17*65=~$4.4B. Considering Falcon development cost at least $1.4B (per NASA and Elon), that means the total spend on Falcon was some $5.8B.

    Excluding Falcon costs, Cargo Dragon is probably about $100M per mission, plus $660M for dev (per NASA). That's $3B.

    Crew Dragon is probably at least $2.5B in spend so far - the total value of the Crew contracts is $3.144B, and SpaceX is about to launch the 5th of 8 missions.

    Starlink probably cost about $1B for satellites and another $2B for development work on the satellites, constellation, and terminals, including the terminals and ground stations.

    Starship has probably cost about $2B so far, including all the work put into Raptor going back to 2012.

    From the paper, estimated cash in from all sources is $17.2B (see attached). Less all the spending above, that leaves $900M cash on hand, which IMO is eminently reasonable.

    None of this implies anything that is "incredibly expensive", or that Falcon costs much more than $33M/booster and $17M in variable costs, or that SpaceX is paying large dividends (which is silly). Even at these spending levels, SpaceX is accomplishing incredible amounts of work for the money. This is cheap, not "incredibly expensive".
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: alugobi on 09/08/2021 07:15 pm
    Quote
    It includes this gem of a statement...

    These whoppers raise the one big question:  who is the target audience for this "study"? 

    Answer:  bias-confirmed opponents who've had their lunch eaten by the inexpensive launch competitor.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Robotbeat on 09/09/2021 04:04 am
    Quote
    Starship isn't really cheap either.
    Explain.
    It certainly looks like a multi billion effort (see HLS award)

    That's still really cheap. The only other remotely comparable effort was STS, which cost $40B to develop.
    Yeah, and SpaceX originally gave a range of like $3B to $10 Billion for developing BFR/ITS/etc.

    Meeting NASA's spec for HLS will cost some of that, but overall I think they'll manage to do it.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: niwax on 09/09/2021 08:05 am
    Quote
    It includes this gem of a statement...

    These whoppers raise the one big question:  who is the target audience for this "study"? 

    Answer:  bias-confirmed opponents who've had their lunch eaten by the inexpensive launch competitor.

    I think the craziest thing is just looking at their total spend divided by number of missions:

    $16300m / 129 = $126m

    They could trash everything thing they are working on and close up shop and still have been on par with comparable launchers doing nothing but simple satellite-to-orbit missions. Instead, they developed a whole set of rockets and capsules from scratch, basically reinvented and perfected reusability, designed and launched 1500+ satellites, have capsules with literally years of on-orbit time and several astronauts in orbit.

    It's not hard to see why they say SpaceX has never been run at a balance sheet loss since their first successful mission.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Arb on 09/09/2021 09:49 am
    They ... have capsules with literally years of on-orbit time...
    Interesting observation.

    Is this statistic being tracked anywhere?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rpapo on 09/09/2021 11:03 am
    They ... have capsules with literally years of on-orbit time...
    Interesting observation.

    Is this statistic being tracked anywhere?
    Who knows?  But it is easy to see: There have been at least 22 Cargo Dragon missions, and each has spent around a month docked with the ISS.  Then add four Crew Dragon missions so far, varying from one week to six months in space.

    All told, roughly between two and three years in space for the various versions of the Dragon capsule.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: niwax on 09/09/2021 11:06 am
    They ... have capsules with literally years of on-orbit time...
    Interesting observation.

    Is this statistic being tracked anywhere?

    https://www.spacexstats.xyz/#dragon-crs

    Cargo Dragon spends on average ~1 month on orbit, for almost two years now. Crew can be the better part of a year for each flight.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: dondar on 09/11/2021 07:00 pm
    the french article is extremely low effort.

    Both COTS and CCP required private investment (I believe COTS required something like 50/50 for some milestones and accumulating sufficient private capital for others.)

    They have extremely strange ideas  where the money go. It is as the french say "secret de Polichinelle".

    Just out of head projects which weren't directly paid by NASA or any other entity.

    Propulsive landing of Dragon capsule (2012-2015). Being aborted doesn't make it less expensive.

    The so called (by Musk) re-usability development of Falcon 9. It includes modernization of Merlin beyond D, Fairing redesign, booster redesign, landing procedures (legs included), landing barges, fairing recovery program. The whole program cost was more than the development of Dragon 2 (which was incredibly overpriced due to quirks of cooperation with NASA)

    FH development.


    Aborted development of BFR (they've dumped in and later discarded at least $400mln on LA construction site and CF toys to play with. I suspect administrative load costs were also extremely high.

    Yes SpaceX was accumulating immense amount of money and they were spending them  on high tech. It's all visible and out in the plain site.

    I will throw for a reference direct investments in Arian 5 program (2000-2012) by european countries: 12.7 bln euros.
    https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Business_with_ESA/Global_Space_Economic_Forum/Evaluation_of_the_Launchers_Programmes


    (the number is "pessimistic" actually because as usually they didn't count "follow up" contracts and "personnel support schemes" so popular in France.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 09/12/2021 08:24 pm
    Quote
    in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not
    Isn't that kind of stating the bleedin' obvious?

    It was an assumption many people have had, but now we have a study that provides analysis to validate that assumption.

    And for me, I would have thought breakeven occurred earlier than 6-8 launches.

    It does. Per Elon:

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    break even occurs on second launch. Profit from third launch forward.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 09/12/2021 08:30 pm
    Quote
    Starship isn't really cheap either.
    Explain.

    Elon himself said in 2018 (September 17th to be exact) that development of BFR (what we now know as Starship/Super Heavy) will cost between $5B and $10B.

    Not exactly cheap.
    Not exactly NASA-style expensive either btw.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 09/13/2021 03:48 am
    Quote
    in other words: without a sufficient volume of launch the launcher cannot be profitable, reusable or not
    Isn't that kind of stating the bleedin' obvious?

    It was an assumption many people have had, but now we have a study that provides analysis to validate that assumption.

    And for me, I would have thought breakeven occurred earlier than 6-8 launches.

    It does. Per Elon:

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144

    break even occurs on second launch. Profit from third launch forward.

    Seems to be talking about different breakevens, Elon was talking about breakeven for reusing a single booster which didn't include the fixed costs, the paper is talking about breakeven for the entire Falcon fleet which included the fixed costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 09/13/2021 08:06 am
    And for me, I would have thought breakeven occurred earlier than 6-8 launches.

    It does. Per Elon:

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144 (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144)

    break even occurs on second launch. Profit from third launch forward.

    Seems to be talking about different breakevens, Elon was talking about breakeven for reusing a single booster which didn't include the fixed costs, the paper is talking about breakeven for the entire Falcon fleet which included the fixed costs.

    The paper is based on public information and a lot of guesstimates. Elon bases his tweets of his own knowledge of how things are run at SpaceX. Him being the SpaceX founder, CEO and CTO, I have a lot more faith in his tweets than in a French research paper from SpaceX competitiors.

    So, I don't buy the 6-8 flight estimate for break-even. Remember the infamous reusability Excel sheet from ULA's George Sowers? (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0) That predicted a break-even point around 10 flights. That load of incorrect got thorougly and decisively debunked as well.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 09/13/2021 06:53 pm

    - An external paper making assumptions BY NECESSITY, WHY ? Because SpaceX jealously retains information a


    You just showed that you don't know what "proprietary" means.

    It has nothing to do with "jealously retaining information". Has everything to do with not needlessly giving your competition any advantage.
    Business 101.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: DistantTemple on 09/13/2021 08:39 pm
    Quote
    The paper is based on public information and a lot of guesstimates. Elon bases his tweets of his own knowledge of how things are run at SpaceX. Him being the SpaceX founder, CEO and CTO, I have a lot more faith in his tweets than in a French research paper from SpaceX competitiors.

    Dear God...

    The truth is out there.

    - Elon Musk being completely impartial and not drumming any hype about his OWN company and his own success. 

    Yeaaaaah...


    ...and if my grandmother had wheels, I would call her a wagon.

    - An external paper making assumptions BY NECESSITY, WHY ? Because SpaceX jealously retains information and still doesn't share any numbers - except via Saint Elon tweets.

    - People reacting hysterically because an outsider (the horror !) dare to attack the numbers and cast some doubts.

    That thread represent all that is presently dysfunctional with that (otherwise excellent) forum - the SpaceX hype cranked to 15 or 18.

    Illibra, read the language you used, and the language you are criticising, and come on; who sounds the most hysterical?
    I admit that woods seems to be voicing an opinion. And sure you may strongly disagree. However your objection strays from fact, observations, and even professional opinion into "hyperbole". This is unlikely to attract respect here.
    Further the person you are shouting down has persistently provided insights, information, and well thought-out commentary. He is clearly involved in the space industry ecosystem, and has gained respect for his sober and insightful contributions, as well as tips otherwise not available to forum members.
    Aiming to understand and emulate his approach could be a way to gain respect here.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: c4fusion on 09/13/2021 11:32 pm
    That thread represent all that is presently dysfunctional with that (otherwise excellent) forum - the SpaceX hype cranked to 15 or 18.

    And please be kind to my eyes, the spacing and the boldness was unnecessary.

    I think the issue that a lot of people are having on the report is that the initial analysis is very reasonable, but the conclusion that they are trying to draw is a bit forced.  They say that they are going to not try to analyze the work on Cargo and Crew Dragon, Dragon XL, Starship, and Starlink, yet they draw a conclusion on the cost of reusability on Falcon 9 based on an arbitrary number of employees working on Falcon 9 (there was no analysis).

    The other place people have issue with the report is since SpaceX has had a revenue of 15-20 billion, Falcon 9 must be far more expensive than than Elon says or even more damning conclusion - SpaceX is losing money on each flight. After all, 122 flights/15 billion is still over 100 million a flight. 

    However, there was no breakdown of potentially of how much money is going to each major project and we know Starship and Starlink, more so, are very expensive (If either one was cheap, people would have done it years ago and everyone would be rushing to become ISPs).  Additionally, like any reasonable company, when they know that they are going to burn tons of money, they raise a bunch of money ready to be burnt.

    Thus, it is possible to take the conclusion to the other extreme and say that SpaceX has spent at least 4 billion on Starlink and Starship and has another 6 billion in the ready cash pile.  And then crew + cargo + v1 + xl dragon cost SpaceX over 5 billion.  Then I can draw the outrageous conclusion that SpaceX has spent less than 3 billion for all of Falcon 9 including all the future launches (over 200), or less than 15 million a launch averaged out.

    If that annoyed you, then good, it’s a terrible conclusion.

    I will be posting my take on how much it costs SpaceX to launch each Falcon 9 tonight. Maybe I will agree with the author more than I expect, though he did have very good points that reuse is not free.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: libra on 09/14/2021 07:24 am
    Quote
    proprietary

    Nope. REL, Kistler, ULA - many old and new space companies (alive or defunct) are sharing basic (screened) information through AIAA, SAE, and the many others technical organizations of this kind.

    And that encompass papers on their business cases, including reusability. I have dozen of papers of this kind on my HD.

    SpaceX has never done that. We still have to speculate about basic stuff such as Starship or F9R propellant mass fractions. Or the reusability benefits, breakeven.

    There would be no threat whatsoever to Falcon 9 and BFR-Starship if SpaceX published some basic numbers - provided they screened sensitive stuff ahead of publication, of course.

    What bothers me with the last five pages of this thread is people assassinating the paper - when they expressly acknowledge they have to make some assumptions because, well, SpaceX don't publish anything.

    There is a difference between "proprietary data, because I protect my business" and "total blackout on basic information".

    Somebody explains me why making public Falcon 9 first stage exact PMF would threaten SpaceX growing leadership ?

    As for the paper authors, before dismissing them (or insulting them, in passing), go checking who they are in the first place.

    https://eurospace.org/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurospace

    Quote
    Eurospace is an association of 55 European companies involved in space activities.

    And major ones with that. You guess, they are well-informed people; well connected to the aerospace world. And yet even them, just like us modest forumers, are in the dark - related to SpaceX  vehicles basic technical data, and also basic data about SpaceX reuse business case findings.

    As I say up post, they are not asking proprietary data to steal SpaceX thunder and benefit Arianespace. Nope. They are pondering about SpaceX experience with reusability; about their basic numbers.

    There has been some hundreds studies about rocket reusability since the dawn of the space age. None validated by flight experience (except perhaps Mathematica vs Shuttle, and it wasn't pretty ).
    SpaceX succeeding with reusable rocket is precious for future RLVs. They are asking an honest-to-God analysis about their experience since 2014.
    There is nothing proprietary in that !

    ---------

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: watermod on 09/14/2021 10:25 am
    Comparisons of cost and production (including reuse) and other company's/nation's costs for SpaceX need to consider locale and vertical integration.   It is perhaps useful to consider one of Musk's sister company - Tesla - in various new locales.

    First consider the aerial drone view of 3 "giga" plants as they grow and then produce.   

    Giga Shanghai was extremely massive and swift construction and production.  It's now producing at an "annualized rate" of about 430,000 autos a year and climbing.  The activity in the drone photos is amazing.

    Giga Austin is still being built but its first shift of workers are being trained and it's drone videos of activity look like a major beehive in frenzy.

    Giga Berlin still needs minor work but the latest drone videos of it look near idle and almost abandoned compared to the other giga plants. This is likely do to the major legal and political push backs by various "actors" on the German stage.   You can even see it in the YouTube videos where the advertisements interrupting the drone videos tend to be BMW, Volkswagen or Mercedes showing flashy body lines.  For Giga-Berlin in the near idle videos this makes it look like Tesla is bad.   

    So if you were then to compare Tesla giga factories would one not also need to include the legal and political climate?  This includes within the USA.  Note how the pending budget in the USA favors Ford EVs over Tesla (see latest tweets by Elon claiming $4,500/car for Ford EVs made in Mexico vs $500 for Teslas made in the USA.)

    This would imply that for SpaceX vs other rocket firms/countries the legal and political climate needs to be factored in.  In the USA also, one sees efforts by business/political forces to slow/stop launching from Boca Chica for StarShip.  Political costs need to be included.

    Oh, and a side note the flyover videos (not drone as not allowed) over Boca Chica on any given day show way more activity than any launch site anywhere on the planet.  This has costs pluses and minuses that need to be factored in to estimates.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 09/14/2021 12:27 pm
    And for me, I would have thought breakeven occurred earlier than 6-8 launches.

    It does. Per Elon:

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144 (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144)

    break even occurs on second launch. Profit from third launch forward.

    Seems to be talking about different breakevens, Elon was talking about breakeven for reusing a single booster which didn't include the fixed costs, the paper is talking about breakeven for the entire Falcon fleet which included the fixed costs.

    The paper is based on public information and a lot of guesstimates. Elon bases his tweets of his own knowledge of how things are run at SpaceX. Him being the SpaceX founder, CEO and CTO, I have a lot more faith in his tweets than in a French research paper from SpaceX competitiors.

    So, I don't buy the 6-8 flight estimate for break-even. Remember the infamous reusability Excel sheet from ULA's George Sowers? (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0) That predicted a break-even point around 10 flights. That load of incorrect got thorougly and decisively debunked as well.

    Please re-read what I said, I'm not commenting on whose number is more trustful, I'm saying the two breakeven numbers are talking about different things and thus not comparable.

    Yes, I know ULA's excel predicted breakeven around 10 flights, but that's for a single booster and you reuse it 10 times. That's not the breakeven this paper is talking about, this paper is asking this: How many Falcons SpaceX will need to launch per year to cover all their fixed cost for Falcon fleet and the marginal cost for all these launches. That's a different calculation from the breakeven point for reuse of a single booster.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/14/2021 01:01 pm
    And for me, I would have thought breakeven occurred earlier than 6-8 launches.

    It does. Per Elon:

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144 (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144)

    break even occurs on second launch. Profit from third launch forward.

    Seems to be talking about different breakevens, Elon was talking about breakeven for reusing a single booster which didn't include the fixed costs, the paper is talking about breakeven for the entire Falcon fleet which included the fixed costs.

    The paper is based on public information and a lot of guesstimates. Elon bases his tweets of his own knowledge of how things are run at SpaceX. Him being the SpaceX founder, CEO and CTO, I have a lot more faith in his tweets than in a French research paper from SpaceX competitiors.

    So, I don't buy the 6-8 flight estimate for break-even. Remember the infamous reusability Excel sheet from ULA's George Sowers? (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0) That predicted a break-even point around 10 flights. That load of incorrect got thorougly and decisively debunked as well.

    You're still talking about different things. Sowers was doing a flights-per-booster breakeven, and only considering the cost of that booster and its launches. The french paper (which was by Lionnet https://twitter.com/LionnetPierre) was figuring overall program breakeven, including all the boosters, all the operations, and all the initial expenses over the program lifespan, at an annual level.

    I don't think he's far off, either. Any launch company that's not launching 6-8 times per year is going to be looking at a lot of red ink in the books, regardless of reuse.

    SpaceX probably breaks even on the booster costs on the 2nd reuse. But if they only launched twice a year, they would be bleeding huge amounts of cash to cover fixed expenses.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/14/2021 01:11 pm
    ULA's excel predicted breakeven around 10 flights, but that's for a single booster and you reuse it 10 times.

    For what it's worth, that's because Sowers has some weird operational assumptions in the spreadsheet math:
    1) he assumes EOL boosters are recovered and refurbished, so you have a barn somewhere full of EOL boosters that are fully refurbished and ready to fly but will never used;
    2) he assumes the final flight of a booster has the same reuse performance penalty as the other flights, when in reality it should have no reuse penalty at all - in fact the recovery hardware (legs, fins, etc) can be stripped and reused on other boosters, giving you essentially free hardware that reduces the time to breakeven on the next booster.

    I fixed the math related those operational incongruities, and the spreadsheet promptly said 2 or 3 flights to breakeven, even with pretty much the same costing assumptions. My version is posted in the thread Sowers started.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 09/14/2021 01:44 pm
    I don't see what is so hard about this.  Per rocket only costs, the reuse seems to be break even at 2-3 uses.  If you factor in development costs, yeah, it goes up some.  F9 has had over 100 launches, and 80 to date landings.  So factoring in development of F9 only, not other stuff, break even is probably 3-4 uses or less.  As more launches and landings and reusing occurs, this number goes way down to about 3 uses of the rocket.  So yeah SpaceX is MAKING money on launches and especially by reusing the boosters.  How do you think they have money to spend on development of Starship/Superheavy. 

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: woods170 on 09/14/2021 03:03 pm
    Quote
    proprietary

    Nope. REL, Kistler, ULA - many old and new space companies (alive or defunct) are sharing basic (screened) information through AIAA, SAE, and the many others technical organizations of this kind.

    And that encompass papers on their business cases, including reusability. I have dozen of papers of this kind on my HD.

    SpaceX has never done that. We still have to speculate about basic stuff such as Starship or F9R propellant mass fractions. Or the reusability benefits, breakeven.

    There would be no threat whatsoever to Falcon 9 and BFR-Starship if SpaceX published some basic numbers - provided they screened sensitive stuff ahead of publication, of course.

    What bothers me with the last five pages of this thread is people assassinating the paper - when they expressly acknowledge they have to make some assumptions because, well, SpaceX don't publish anything.

    There is a difference between "proprietary data, because I protect my business" and "total blackout on basic information".

    Somebody explains me why making public Falcon 9 first stage exact PMF would threaten SpaceX growing leadership ?

    As for the paper authors, before dismissing them (or insulting them, in passing), go checking who they are in the first place.

    https://eurospace.org/ (https://eurospace.org/)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurospace (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurospace)

    Quote
    Eurospace is an association of 55 European companies involved in space activities.

    And major ones with that. You guess, they are well-informed people; well connected to the aerospace world. And yet even them, just like us modest forumers, are in the dark - related to SpaceX  vehicles basic technical data, and also basic data about SpaceX reuse business case findings.

    As I say up post, they are not asking proprietary data to steal SpaceX thunder and benefit Arianespace. Nope. They are pondering about SpaceX experience with reusability; about their basic numbers.

    There has been some hundreds studies about rocket reusability since the dawn of the space age. None validated by flight experience (except perhaps Mathematica vs Shuttle, and it wasn't pretty ).
    SpaceX succeeding with reusable rocket is precious for future RLVs. They are asking an honest-to-God analysis about their experience since 2014.
    There is nothing proprietary in that !

    ---------



    You still don't get it. Reusability gives SpaceX a major cost advantage over its competitors. One that is quite succesful in taking away business from ULA, Arianespace, Starsem, etc.
    Revealing any sliver of information that might allow competitors to gain better insight, into the secrets of SpaceX's success, would ultimately be bad for SpaceX's business case. Because it might give the competition enough clues to catch up.

    That is not what SpaceX is going to do. Not Elon's style. Not Gwynne's style either. So, the rest of the world (ULA, Arianespace, etc. included) will have to make do with whatever tidbit is revealed by Elon or Gwynne via Twitter or interviews.
    That this way of working does not "fit the established industry norm" is business as usual for SpaceX. Because a lot of what they do does not "fit the established industry form".  Established old-space players like ULA and Arianespace can't get their heads around THAT, and that's why they are so baffled, to the point of being frustrated.

    Don't like it?  Too bad...
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 09/14/2021 03:24 pm
    Quote
    Eurospace is an association of 55 European companies involved in space activities.

    And major ones with that. You guess, they are well-informed people; well connected to the aerospace world. And yet even them, just like us modest forumers, are in the dark - related to SpaceX  vehicles basic technical data, and also basic data about SpaceX reuse business case findings.

    I don't think they are all that well informed. For example, Lionnet had not read Zapata's 2017 paper on COTS/CRS costs until I pointed him to it. That's been out for 4 years and Ars even wrote an article on it. Anyone even superficially interested in tracking SpaceX's costs should be well aware of it.

    They have access to internal expertise and data, and do some modeling of the competition technical and financial capabilities, but they don't obsessively track every data point like the NSF, Reddit, etc. fans do.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: markbike528cbx on 09/15/2021 08:38 am
    So, I don't buy the 6-8 flight estimate for break-even. Remember the infamous reusability Excel sheet from ULA's George Sowers? (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=37390.0) That predicted a break-even point around 10 flights. That load of incorrect got thorougly and decisively debunked as well.

    I thought the Sower's spreadsheet was quite enlightening.  A few small parameter changes and it said what Elon said.
    It does seem that ULA and others still use the same garbage input and get garbage out.
    Garbage is a little too strong, as those numbers DO apply to ULA and others.
    If you are determined not to have something work, it probably won't work for you.

    I'm pretty new to the forum and the actual debate about reusability. 
    I've just caught up to the present in this thread, starting from last week.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: libra on 09/15/2021 11:01 am
    Quote
    You still don't get it. Reusability gives SpaceX a major cost advantage over its competitors. One that is quite succesful in taking away business from ULA, Arianespace, Starsem, etc.
    Revealing any sliver of information that might allow competitors to gain better insight, into the secrets of SpaceX's success, would ultimately be bad for SpaceX's business case. Because it might give the competition enough clues to catch up.

    That is not what SpaceX is going to do. Not Elon's style. Not Gwynne's style either. So, the rest of the world (ULA, Arianespace, etc. included) will have to make do with whatever tidbit is revealed by Elon or Gwynne via Twitter or interviews.
    That this way of working does not "fit the established industry norm" is business as usual for SpaceX. Because a lot of what they do does not "fit the established industry form".  Established old-space players like ULA and Arianespace can't get their heads around THAT, and that's why they are so baffled, to the point of being frustrated.

    I stick to my point. They could still share some basic facts about their experience with reusability. Carefully screened ahead.

    "Dr. Pangloss, professor of "métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie" (English: "metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology") and self-proclaimed optimist, teaches his pupils that they live in the "best of all possible worlds" and that "all is for the best". "

    This is an egoistical retention of data which is altogether: absurd, and a shame. Complete bollocks.  To SpaceX credit, it seems to be a growing, new trend from the 2010's: B.O is doing no better since 2000.

    As if the competition was illiterate and couldn't do the basic maths... there is nothing revolutionary in SpaceX basic reusability numbers and experience, nor their vehicles; and their retention of data is idiotic, in that regard. 

    Now, had they invented some brand new drive outside chemical rockets (nuclear, antimatter, that kind of huge breakthrough, you get the point) I would understand better they would not disclose too many details.
    Heck, that what REL did with their Skylon pre-cooler breakthrough.
    THEY had valuable reasons to fear the basic tech could be stolen against them.

    But SpaceX chemical rockets with reuse of the lower stage - I mean, what do they have to hide, that is so revolutionary ?

    Don't like what I say ? too bad.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rakaydos on 09/15/2021 11:25 am
    It's less that the competitors cant do math, and more that they are making bad asssumptions about the numbers to put into the math, no doubt in part due to SpaceX's secrecy around those numbers.

    But as said earlier, the Sower spreadsheet is pretty solid, mathematically, but ULA put some boneheaded assumptions into it. (warehouse of recovered, refurbished EoL boosters never to fly again, instead of SpaceX's approach of dial-a-recovery, expending cores near EoL to expand their market and save on EoL recovery costs)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: DreamyPickle on 09/15/2021 12:15 pm
    SpaceX people have mentioned cost numbers in the past but some people don't believe them anyway.

    For example the cost of an operational launch (presumably including recovery) was quoted at "$28M". This is probably what it costs to launch a starlink mission, without the satellites or any development costs. The Falcon Heavy reusable is quoted at "$90M" which is a bit more than 3x and Falcon Heavy expendable is "$150M" which is $50M for each expended core.

    Compared to other launch providers SpaceX is capable of shifting resources between manufacturing lower and upper stages, this adds a lot of confounding. They probably moved a lot of people towards Starship and Raptor by now, and a lot of the fixed costs involved in developing Falcon 9 reusability feeds directly into Starship.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: frog on 09/15/2021 12:31 pm

    Falcon Heavy expendable is "$150M" which is $50M for each expended core.


    So the upper stage and payload fairing are free?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 09/15/2021 01:23 pm

    I stick to my point. They could still share some basic facts about their experience with reusability. Carefully screened ahead.


    Which is exactly what they do. They just screened off the bits you wanted to know, presumably because they think it will give competitors an advantage.

    There's absolutely no reason for them to release any figures at all. It gives them no benefit whatsoever, the benefits are all elsewhere. So why bother? Just to satisfy some forum users interests?

    As for the basic facts about reusability? Well, we see videos of that every time they launch. It works. You cannot get more basic than that. Shame that all the other launch providers haven't quite grasped that yet.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Welsh Dragon on 09/15/2021 02:03 pm
    I stick to my point. They could still share some basic facts about their experience with reusability. Carefully screened ahead.

    <rant snipped>
    Why? Give me one good reason why they (or indeed any commercial company) would want to do that?

    (You wanting to know it isn't a good reason)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: GreenShrike on 09/15/2021 03:34 pm

    Falcon Heavy expendable is "$150M" which is $50M for each expended core.


    So the upper stage and payload fairing are free?

    F9's booster is about 2/3rds the cost of the rocket. At $60M expendable, that's $40M. Upper stage is ~$10M and fairing is ~$6M. The remaining few million would be integration, range fees, etc.

    Falcon Heavy, then, is $136M for the basic F9 components, plus booster core conversion costs to make a FH center core and interstage; costs to change the nose cap and thrust structure for the side boosters; and the increased integration costs of a tri-barrel rocket.

    $150M for an expendable Falcon Heavy seems to check out.


    $28M for an internal F9-R mission implies something like $10M for a refurb booster ($10M booster, $10M upper stage, $3M refurb fairings, plus integration, range, etc). This means plus $20M and increased integration for ~$50-60M for an internal FH-3R (probably 1xASDS, 2xRTLS) mission, and either $50-60M for an internal FH-2R (probably 2xASDS) mission if they don't mind losing a refurbed center core, or maybe $70-80M if they need to build and expend a new center core.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: dondar on 09/15/2021 11:49 pm
    about "releasing info".

    SpaceX shares quite a bit actually (to engineers of ULA etc. included). The leaked videos and documents from relevant workshops illustrate it nicely.
     
    Practical internal cost of SpaceX operations is actually quite badly kept secret (few things are leaked others can be safely estimated), because the real reason why other companies are silent (leverage during negotiation)is not important for SpaceX. They have fast prices.They don't care.

    Now about open "break down of costs" etc.First of all it should be done by somebody. Somebody should stop,put a snapshot of the company operations and get financial breakdown for one (few) full operational cycles.Why?  Why anybody should spend actually few weeks of his time on this useless crap, which will expire on the next run because everything is fluid?
    It is useless for internal consumption, it is not providing  any useful reference for engineers and it is a talking point for powerpoint warriors. All negatives.

     I am pretty sure they don't have such information ready on a table. (for historical reference check the financial "counting" of the Shuttle program. You know the time when Boeing was actually doing things).

    Most importantly it is all not needed. SpaceX had collected specific sums of money. They started with DARPA, they got money from Google, etc. etc. etc. This all can be rather easily (see "intuitively obvious") collected. What they've done can be collected as well. The two sides can be compared. SpaceX is clearly and obviously very healthy financially. SpaceX had clearly done a lot. Really really lot of hardcore engineering grinding.
    So the whole "problem" is moot.

    Now principal point:
    "Breakdown" of a booster re-usability per flight is useless exercise of financial masturbation.

    Technical operations of such  scale are highly in-ergodic.

    Even project cost won't give you actual useful information beyond "di^ck contest" discussion fodder. Because costs on every step differ and the project cost (especially if terminated administratively) will never provide you useful metric per unit.

    It is in the end binary choice of having/not. Can you reuse (and bother with building second stages only), or not. Can you check actual technical performance of your hardware, or not. etc.

    P.S. the main reason why SpaceX is so successful with reuse is fantastic redesign of  Falcon/Merlin set which more than doubled payload and had provided sufficient free power reserves, which gave SpaceX ability to implement re-usability elements without raising in any significant way production costs. It's not about "design", it is about process of building.
    That's what Musk so futilely  tries to explain. "Mass production is difficult". Production cycles are important, operational cycles are important.
    Financially "money flow" is important. Company should have enough money to finance what they decided to do.
    That's it.
    The financial control is the "last step" (reality check as it was called in good times) and putting the "last person" on top was the most stupid thing and is the major chronic decease of our society.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: pathfinder_01 on 09/16/2021 01:15 am



    I stick to my point. They could still share some basic facts about their experience with reusability. Carefully screened ahead.


    They have. They gave mention roughly what they think it saves, the number of reuses they expect out of an booster and how much it affects performance.

    Quote
    As if the competition was illiterate and couldn't do the basic maths... there is nothing revolutionary in SpaceX basic reusability numbers and experience, nor their vehicles; and their retention of data is idiotic, in that regard. 


    Sometimes things are hidden in plain sight. Lets take Atlas and Falcon 9. Falcon 9 can do 80-90% of the missions that Atlas  V can but lets look at the design.

    Atlas V has two very different stages, solids, differing numbers of engines on the upper stage and so on.  Falcon 9 has 2 stages which share as much as possible. Atlas V has Lots of different configurations to build\test. In fact I dare say it maybe the perfect EXPENDABLE rocket because it allows to throw away as little as possible.

    I will bet that Atlas V beats Falcon 9 in PMF or any space geeky spec except cost.  Having two stages and 1 engine(with two variations) makes a huge difference in the cost to build and the cost it takes for space X to keep the production line open. Not having so many different variations makes a difference when it comes to production costs. The people who build the first stage can be easily transitioned to make the 2nd stage, and much of the avionics are shared. Space X makes it's own engines in house so they are available at cost to SpaceX.

    If Atlas V were reusable, you would still need to order solids. You would have two very different production lines(aluminum tanks for the first stage vs. steel for the 2nd). ULA does not produce engines which would itself cause problems. (i.e. The engine manufacturer would have fewer engines to spread it costs over which could mean each engine becomes more expensive and ULA would need to pay the manufacturer to inspect the engines prior to flight).



    Quote
    But SpaceX chemical rockets with reuse of the lower stage - I mean, what do they have to hide, that is so revolutionary ?

    Don't like what I say ? too bad.

    They may not have hidden anything. It is just that some companies are structured in a way that they are not able to take advantage of an reusable design.

    For Space X sharing materials and parts between stages means lower cost by buying in volume and creating the engines inhouse means that they directly benefit by using fewer of them. In addition an overall simpler design makes things cheaper(note there are not near as many versions of the upcoming Vulcan as there are of Atlas and Delta).  For Space X so long as the time/cost to reuse is less than the time/cost to build a new stage they are ahead of the game. For others it isn't so simple.

    For Arianespace and ULA, the problem of how do you keep all those subcontractors profitable while buying fewer parts from them would crop up to a much bigger degree than Space X.  In general the more you buy from another company the cheaper they can provide it(economies of scale). Reuse reduces this factor.

    For Arianespace and NASA(SLS) how do you keep political support with fewer companies to spend over as Arianespace is directly subsidized by European governments that expect employment in their respective countries. Space X on the other hand laid off workers as it perfected reuse.  ULA considered smart reuse i.e. catching the booster engine, but then Space X returns the WHOLE booster....
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 09/16/2021 01:50 pm
    It is very obvious that reuse is saving SpaceX a lot of money.  The first 10-20 flights probably paid for the development of F9.  Then all booster landings saved $20 million at least for every landing, and now they have had 81 landings.  127 launches have more than spread the development costs over the life of F9. 

    Then, the cost of F9 is way less than Atlas V.  SpaceX said the engine costs are $1 million each.  That is $10 million per rocket.  RD-180 is what?, $25 million each, not counting the RL-10's on the upper stage.  Also, vertical integration saves them a lot of money per rocket. 

    SpaceX could probably launch a F9 for less cost to their customers.  However, they are pricing them as high as possible, but below other competiton to make money on the launches. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: RedLineTrain on 09/16/2021 02:04 pm
    Why anybody should spend actually few weeks of his time on this useless crap, which will expire on the next run because everything is fluid?
    It is useless for internal consumption, it is not providing  any useful reference for engineers and it is a talking point for powerpoint warriors. All negatives.

    Yes, I doubt anybody at SpaceX is paying attention to these types of overcomplicated analyses that really only serve to lower ambition.  SpaceX is a venture-financed company. All such companies manage to their cash flow and keep their eyes on future products.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: abaddon on 09/16/2021 03:21 pm
    and now they have had 81 landings
    91.  But, well said.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 10/01/2021 04:28 pm
    In his Code Conference interview on 28th September Elon said:

    Quote
    Falcon 9 is able to be the most competitive rocket in the world because we recover the boost stage and the fairing, but still our best case marginal cost of launch, not taking into account overhead allocation, is about $15 million [per launch] for 15 tons to orbit.

    See 17:39 of:

    https://youtu.be/NqhgkCAOkjk
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JayWee on 10/01/2021 05:05 pm
    "not taking into account overhead allocation" - means just hardware without cost of facilities and staff?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 10/01/2021 05:17 pm
    "not taking into account overhead allocation" - means just hardware without cost of facilities and staff?

    Hardware, propellant, range fees.  Anything they have to spend specifically because of adding an incremental launch.  Variable costs.  Not fixed costs.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: hplan on 10/01/2021 05:21 pm
    "not taking into account overhead allocation" - means just hardware without cost of facilities and staff?

    What counts as the marginal cost of a rocket launch and what is overhead is somewhat ambiguous. The cost of facilities and administrative staff would clearly not be a part of the marginal launch cost. I'm guessing that the personnel cost of manufacturing and launching the rocket, recovering the fairings, refurbishing the booster, etc. would be counted as part of the marginal launch cost since they are expenses you wouldn't have if you didn't launch the rocket.

    (The fuzzy part is that they're on staff whether or not you launch the rocket, though you may be able to reduce staff with fewer launches per year, etc.)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Pipcard on 10/01/2021 06:37 pm
    Compared to other launch providers SpaceX is capable of shifting resources between manufacturing lower and upper stages, this adds a lot of confounding.

    I will bet that Atlas V beats Falcon 9 in PMF or any space geeky spec except cost.  Having two stages and 1 engine(with two variations) makes a huge difference in the cost to build and the cost it takes for space X to keep the production line open. Not having so many different variations makes a difference when it comes to production costs. The people who build the first stage can be easily transitioned to make the 2nd stage, and much of the avionics are shared. Space X makes it's own engines in house so they are available at cost to SpaceX.

    If Atlas V were reusable, you would still need to order solids. You would have two very different production lines(aluminum tanks for the first stage vs. steel for the 2nd). ULA does not produce engines which would itself cause problems. (i.e. The engine manufacturer would have fewer engines to spread it costs over which could mean each engine becomes more expensive and ULA would need to pay the manufacturer to inspect the engines prior to flight).

    Is this the only way a reusable multistage rocket can make economic sense? Commonality in stages and engines?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: envy887 on 10/02/2021 03:00 am
    Compared to other launch providers SpaceX is capable of shifting resources between manufacturing lower and upper stages, this adds a lot of confounding.

    I will bet that Atlas V beats Falcon 9 in PMF or any space geeky spec except cost.  Having two stages and 1 engine(with two variations) makes a huge difference in the cost to build and the cost it takes for space X to keep the production line open. Not having so many different variations makes a difference when it comes to production costs. The people who build the first stage can be easily transitioned to make the 2nd stage, and much of the avionics are shared. Space X makes it's own engines in house so they are available at cost to SpaceX.

    If Atlas V were reusable, you would still need to order solids. You would have two very different production lines(aluminum tanks for the first stage vs. steel for the 2nd). ULA does not produce engines which would itself cause problems. (i.e. The engine manufacturer would have fewer engines to spread it costs over which could mean each engine becomes more expensive and ULA would need to pay the manufacturer to inspect the engines prior to flight).

    Is this the only way a reusable multistage rocket can make economic sense? Commonality in stages and engines?

    I doubt it's the only way. But it sure seems to be easier, at least to start off.

    I will bet that Atlas V beats Falcon 9 in PMF or any space geeky spec except cost. 

    Falcon 9 has substantially better mass ratios than Atlas on both stages and both engines. The only spec where it is lower is ISP, but it's larger mass and mass efficiency usually make up for that.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: FutureSpaceTourist on 10/02/2021 08:16 am
    With best case F9 marginal cost at $15M here’s what Elon thinks for Starship:

    September 28th 2021 Updates:  Starship launch cost

    [Elon interview on Sep 28 at Code Conference]
    Elon quote:  The marginal cost of launch we think potentially can be under $1 million, for over 100 tons to orbit. 100 tons likely and with refinement of the design probably 150 tons.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 10/02/2021 10:44 am
    With best case F9 marginal cost at $15M here’s what Elon thinks for Starship:

    September 28th 2021 Updates:  Starship launch cost

    [Elon interview on Sep 28 at Code Conference]
    Elon quote:  The marginal cost of launch we think potentially can be under $1 million, for over 100 tons to orbit. 100 tons likely and with refinement of the design probably 150 tons.

    I thought he was slightly pushed into the $1m answer by Swisher. So he added words like “potentially”, to soften it a bit. $1m is obviously way in the future, with massive economies of scale and optimization.

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 10/02/2021 03:18 pm
    I thought he was slightly pushed into the $1m answer by Swisher. So he added words like “potentially”, to soften it a bit. $1m is obviously way in the future, with massive economies of scale and optimization.
    ISTM that "economies of scale and optimization" would primarily be elements that don't impact the marginal cost number Musk is discussing.

    $1M would roughly be incremental propellant, turnaround, and range/recovery costs.  I don't think it's "obviously way in the future".  It might be as early as 1st reuse if they were to just (they won't) go for it with an immediate gas-n-go.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: M.E.T. on 10/02/2021 05:54 pm
    I thought he was slightly pushed into the $1m answer by Swisher. So he added words like “potentially”, to soften it a bit. $1m is obviously way in the future, with massive economies of scale and optimization.
    ISTM that "economies of scale and optimization" would primarily be elements that don't impact the marginal cost number Musk is discussing.

    $1M would roughly be incremental propellant, turnaround, and range/recovery costs.  I don't think it's "obviously way in the future".  It might be as early as 1st reuse if they were to just (they won't) go for it with an immediate gas-n-go.

    I thought he was referring to $1m total cost per launch.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rakaydos on 10/04/2021 11:57 am
    I thought he was slightly pushed into the $1m answer by Swisher. So he added words like “potentially”, to soften it a bit. $1m is obviously way in the future, with massive economies of scale and optimization.
    ISTM that "economies of scale and optimization" would primarily be elements that don't impact the marginal cost number Musk is discussing.

    $1M would roughly be incremental propellant, turnaround, and range/recovery costs.  I don't think it's "obviously way in the future".  It might be as early as 1st reuse if they were to just (they won't) go for it with an immediate gas-n-go.

    I thought he was referring to $1m total cost per launch.
    One million dollars of: propellant to refill a booster that has already landed on the launch mount, plus the hourly wages of the crane operator who slings the next starship onto it, plus the hourly wages of the launch staff, for the time it takes them to complete their tasks.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 10/04/2021 06:29 pm
    I thought he was slightly pushed into the $1m answer by Swisher. So he added words like “potentially”, to soften it a bit. $1m is obviously way in the future, with massive economies of scale and optimization.
    ISTM that "economies of scale and optimization" would primarily be elements that don't impact the marginal cost number Musk is discussing.

    $1M would roughly be incremental propellant, turnaround, and range/recovery costs.  I don't think it's "obviously way in the future".  It might be as early as 1st reuse if they were to just (they won't) go for it with an immediate gas-n-go.

    I thought he was referring to $1m total cost per launch.
    One million dollars of: propellant to refill a booster that has already landed on the launch mount, plus the hourly wages of the crane operator who slings the next starship onto it, plus the hourly wages of the launch staff, for the time it takes them to complete their tasks.
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    But there are lots of range safety tasks that can't be done (or we won't want done) by machines for the foreseeable future.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 10/07/2021 12:28 pm
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    Seems an ambitious claim given the thing isn't even built yet.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Welsh Dragon on 10/07/2021 02:16 pm
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    Seems an ambitious claim given the thing isn't even built yet.
    That is the plan. Time will tell if it's overly ambitious or not. Also, the tower has already been built, as have most of the parts - as far as we can tell - of the catching/stacking mechanism. So to say "it's not even built yet" is largely incorrect. With regards to automated launching, that's basically what the Zenit was designed to do in the 1980s and it does it pretty well (it's not the most reliable, but that has nothing to do with the launch process.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: matthewkantar on 10/07/2021 04:13 pm
    -snip-
    SpaceX has never done that. We still have to speculate about basic stuff such as Starship or F9R propellant mass fractions. Or the reusability benefits, breakeven.
    -snip-

    Giving all of the startups and competitors a target on mass fraction would be dumb. What is the first stage mass fraction on Atlas? On A5?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 10/07/2021 05:17 pm
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    Seems an ambitious claim given the thing isn't even built yet.
    Sorry, I really should have been clearer that I was making a prediction about how an operational service would work, but I'd be quite surprised if this isn't what SpaceX are aiming/designing for. 

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: markbike528cbx on 10/08/2021 04:50 am
    I've read through this thread and am amazed about the fact that some members here got significant reuseability  milestones correct (if often a bit later than they predicted :-). 
    The reuseabilty predictors who got it correct in the early part of the thread seemed to be on the optimistic side at the time.

    I found a similar thread on slashdot.
    https://slashdot.org/story/14/05/07/0410242/nasa-france-skeptical-of-spacex-reusable-rocket-project
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 10/08/2021 11:06 am
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    Seems an ambitious claim given the thing isn't even built yet.
    Sorry, I really should have been clearer that I was making a prediction about how an operational service would work, but I'd be quite surprised if this isn't what SpaceX are aiming/designing for.

    Fair enough. My prediction would be autonomous for landing, manned for lifting operations. After all, we don't, on the whole, have unmanned cranes.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 10/08/2021 09:59 pm
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    Seems an ambitious claim given the thing isn't even built yet.
    Sorry, I really should have been clearer that I was making a prediction about how an operational service would work, but I'd be quite surprised if this isn't what SpaceX are aiming/designing for.

    Fair enough. My prediction would be autonomous for landing, manned for lifting operations. After all, we don't, on the whole, have unmanned cranes.
    The fact that no-one has made unmanned cranes work probably contributed to the (likely) decision not to use cranes for operational Starship landing & stacking.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Welsh Dragon on 10/09/2021 07:03 am
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    Seems an ambitious claim given the thing isn't even built yet.
    Sorry, I really should have been clearer that I was making a prediction about how an operational service would work, but I'd be quite surprised if this isn't what SpaceX are aiming/designing for.

    Fair enough. My prediction would be autonomous for landing, manned for lifting operations. After all, we don't, on the whole, have unmanned cranes.
    There are several automated car parks  (http://Automated parking system)which do essentially the same thing. They work fine (just expensive) Yes, it's a smaller scale and indoors, but it's hardly miles away from stacking Starship. Crewed lifting (not just men) is useful in situations where you need a lot of flexibly and communication with the ground, like on a building site. Stacking Starship is different, a very constrained problem just like carparks, where I don't see the issue with automating it.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Barley on 10/09/2021 08:21 pm
    What's the advantage of automated stacking?

    Usually we automate things because it's cheaper or more precise/reliable.

    The salaries for a few crane operators are going to be a rounding error.  (highly skilled and paid though they may be).  Even if automation saves some money, it's not critical money.  It should not be on the critical path, which means it gets left for later, if at all.  Further if you want to automate something, you need to figure out how to do it first, the first attempts are essentially a prototype.

    In this case it's not clear that automation would give greater precision.  It's not like the crane operator is lifting with his own muscles.  There are quite a lot of systems where the high frequency feedback is automated, with the operator handling the rest.

    And using an operator gives a built in scapegoat if things go wrong.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rpapo on 10/09/2021 09:52 pm
    What's the advantage of automated stacking?
    The fundamental problem here, to my point of view, is that given that every human being is kept miles away from the launch pad at launch and landing time, and given that they want to turn everything around in an hour, there is no time to spend driving the crane operator out to the pad, waiting for him to get his job done, and then getting him out of there.

    And if they are going to catch the booster out of the air in the first place, a goodly portion of the crane operator's work is already done.

    There's nothing like having a robot in a really dangerous place.  Workplace liability insurance costs money.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 10/10/2021 01:07 am
    What's the advantage of automated stacking?
    The fundamental problem here, to my point of view, is that given that every human being is kept miles away from the launch pad at launch and landing time, and given that they want to turn everything around in an hour, there is no time to spend driving the crane operator out to the pad, waiting for him to get his job done, and then getting him out of there.

    And if they are going to catch the booster out of the air in the first place, a goodly portion of the crane operator's work is already done.

    There's nothing like having a robot in a really dangerous place.  Workplace liability insurance costs money.
    Yep, that.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: oiorionsbelt on 10/10/2021 01:30 am
    What's the advantage of automated stacking?

    Usually we automate things because it's cheaper or more precise/reliable.

    The salaries for a few crane operators are going to be a rounding error.  (highly skilled and paid though they may be).  Even if automation saves some money, it's not critical money.  It should not be on the critical path, which means it gets left for later, if at all.  Further if you want to automate something, you need to figure out how to do it first, the first attempts are essentially a prototype.

    In this case it's not clear that automation would give greater precision.  It's not like the crane operator is lifting with his own muscles.  There are quite a lot of systems where the high frequency feedback is automated, with the operator handling the rest.

    And using an operator gives a built in scapegoat if things go wrong.
    They have only stacked SS SH once but it certainly looked like something that could be done faster, better, cheaper.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Welsh Dragon on 10/10/2021 07:58 am
    What's the advantage of automated stacking?
    Speed.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: rsdavis9 on 10/10/2021 03:02 pm
    The accuracy of not having something dangling from a cable.
    Speeds it up tremendously and less likely to bang into something.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: kessdawg on 10/10/2021 03:04 pm
    Why does the crane operator need to be on-site?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 10/11/2021 02:45 pm
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    Seems an ambitious claim given the thing isn't even built yet.
    Well the "crane" is the chopsticks, and we already know they're automated during the catch phase of operations...

    So while I'm sure they COULD be operated manually, why in the world would you?

    The set-down point is known, and lifting pieces off of the SPMT can't be more difficult than plucking them out of the air.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Barley on 10/11/2021 07:06 pm

    So while I'm sure they COULD be operated manually, why in the world would you?


    Because people are smart and adaptable.  A lot more projects to replace people with robots have failed than succeeded.     Lots of money has been wasted trying to replace humans earning $7.50 per hour.  Even when you use robots there are usually still a few people around to deal with things that are hard for robots.  Crane operators earn more than $7.50 but they are also doing far fewer than 500 repetitions per day.

    IMHO the question to ask is "why on earth would you use a robot?"  A hazardous environment is a good reason, but may be overstated if Starship is anywhere near airliner style of operation.

    Ultimately I don't think automated or manual will make much difference, but I also think crane operators are more readily available than roboticists.  The roboticists should be working on robots for Mars, an unquestionably hazardous environment.


    Too many robots (https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/13/17234296/tesla-model-3-robots-production-hell-elon,-musk)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: meekGee on 10/11/2021 07:51 pm

    So while I'm sure they COULD be operated manually, why in the world would you?


    Because people are smart and adaptable.  A lot more projects to replace people with robots have failed than succeeded.     Lots of money has been wasted trying to replace humans earning $7.50 per hour.  Even when you use robots there are usually still a few people around to deal with things that are hard for robots.  Crane operators earn more than $7.50 but they are also doing far fewer than 500 repetitions per day.

    IMHO the question to ask is "why on earth would you use a robot?"  A hazardous environment is a good reason, but may be overstated if Starship is anywhere near airliner style of operation.

    Ultimately I don't think automated or manual will make much difference, but I also think crane operators are more readily available than roboticists.  The roboticists should be working on robots for Mars, an unquestionably hazardous environment.


    Too many robots (https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/13/17234296/tesla-model-3-robots-production-hell-elon,-musk)
    Because it's already automated, and the operation is well defined and repeatable.

    I'm sure someone will be watching a remote feed with go/no-go criteria for various steps, but otherwise why?

    Projects that fail automation usually involve unstructured environments or parts not designed to be handled automatically.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: JamesH65 on 10/14/2021 11:23 am

    So while I'm sure they COULD be operated manually, why in the world would you?


    Because people are smart and adaptable.  A lot more projects to replace people with robots have failed than succeeded.     Lots of money has been wasted trying to replace humans earning $7.50 per hour.  Even when you use robots there are usually still a few people around to deal with things that are hard for robots.  Crane operators earn more than $7.50 but they are also doing far fewer than 500 repetitions per day.

    IMHO the question to ask is "why on earth would you use a robot?"  A hazardous environment is a good reason, but may be overstated if Starship is anywhere near airliner style of operation.

    Ultimately I don't think automated or manual will make much difference, but I also think crane operators are more readily available than roboticists.  The roboticists should be working on robots for Mars, an unquestionably hazardous environment.


    Too many robots (https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/13/17234296/tesla-model-3-robots-production-hell-elon,-musk)
    Because it's already automated, and the operation is well defined and repeatable.

    I'm sure someone will be watching a remote feed with go/no-go criteria for various steps, but otherwise why?

    Projects that fail automation usually involve unstructured environments or parts not designed to be handled automatically.

    Still not seeing why the stacking process would be better automated. That's a lot of work in software, sensors etc, to replace a single human operator. Note, landing != stacking. Landing requires automation - humans cannot react fast enough. But there are a different set of criteria for stacking vs landing. Stacking requires higher accuracy for example. Of course automating it would be possible, but would it be desirable?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: alugobi on 10/14/2021 03:52 pm
    They don't allow people back to the launch site for hours after a test or Starship landing.  If one expects human operators to be doing stacking and crane work for a one-hour launch turnaround, like they say they want to do, then they're going to have to dramatically improve their fuel and range safety processes. 

    Not saying they can't--this is SpaceX.  But it's going to be a while, and it won't be Elon Time.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 10/14/2021 04:04 pm
    They don't allow people back to the launch site for hours after a test or Starship landing.  If one expects human operators to be doing stacking and crane work for a one-hour launch turnaround, like they say they want to do, then they're going to have to dramatically improve their fuel and range safety processes. 

    Not saying they can't--this is SpaceX.  But it's going to be a while, and it won't be Elon Time.

    Human Operation is already "remote".  It's just a question of how remote.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Swedish chef on 10/14/2021 04:10 pm
    Still not seeing why the stacking process would be better automated.

    Perhaps not better automated but better with more rigidity.

    After seeing SpaceX while they where stacking Starship unto Super heavy a couple weeks ago I noticed that there where quite hard winds on that beach. Lifting Starship on a string made it wobble about quite a bit. SpaceX solved this problem by sending up quite a number of workers to manhandle Starship while it was acting like a pendulum.

    With the chopstick solution that they are soon to try with Super heavy and im guessing also with Starship, there is much more rigidity. There will also be more automation and less workers involved in the stacking procedure if it works out.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Brovane on 10/17/2021 02:12 am
    Why not use a remote crane operator?

    Operators located in a control room supervise the crane motion via onboard cameras and Remote Control Station. This is very useful especially in case of taller STS cranes where the abilities of human eyes become a limitation due to the physical distance between the cabin and the target. Combined with access to information provided by the automation system, the camera views help to improve the overall operator performance.

    Remote crane operation allows humans to be separated from big machines and moved from a dangerous and harsh working environment to the safety and comfort of a control room. Now the crane can run faster and ramp times and cycle times become shorter. This reduces the time needed for discharging and loading the ships, and prevents operators’ health problems caused by poor working environment.


    https://new.abb.com/ports/solutions-for-marine-terminals/our-offerings/container-terminal-automation/remote-crane-operation (https://new.abb.com/ports/solutions-for-marine-terminals/our-offerings/container-terminal-automation/remote-crane-operation)
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 10/17/2021 09:05 am
    Why not use a remote crane operator?

    Operators located in a control room supervise the crane motion via onboard cameras and Remote Control Station. This is very useful especially in case of taller STS cranes where the abilities of human eyes become a limitation due to the physical distance between the cabin and the target. Combined with access to information provided by the automation system, the camera views help to improve the overall operator performance.

    Remote crane operation allows humans to be separated from big machines and moved from a dangerous and harsh working environment to the safety and comfort of a control room. Now the crane can run faster and ramp times and cycle times become shorter. This reduces the time needed for discharging and loading the ships, and prevents operators’ health problems caused by poor working environment.


    https://new.abb.com/ports/solutions-for-marine-terminals/our-offerings/container-terminal-automation/remote-crane-operation (https://new.abb.com/ports/solutions-for-marine-terminals/our-offerings/container-terminal-automation/remote-crane-operation)
    What's the point? All the benefits you list for remote operators apply even more for fully-automated operations. People are much more adaptable than autonomous robotics, but that isn't really needed for stacking.

    1. The stacking should be the same every time, with the impact of variable winds minimised by using rigid arms rather than flexible cables

    2. The arms already have to be able to autonomously handle the much more dynamic scenario of catching the vehicles during landing

    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: spacenut on 10/17/2021 01:54 pm
    Humans might have to always be at the stacking operation, for a while anyway.  This is because Boca Chica can get windy.  A very large Starship dangling in the air will need precise alignment that in wind may need more precise getting into place.  Men pulling cables to align properly will be needed.  A large object dangling is easy to pull into precise position by a single person. 
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Brovane on 10/17/2021 03:03 pm
    Why not use a remote crane operator?

    Operators located in a control room supervise the crane motion via onboard cameras and Remote Control Station. This is very useful especially in case of taller STS cranes where the abilities of human eyes become a limitation due to the physical distance between the cabin and the target. Combined with access to information provided by the automation system, the camera views help to improve the overall operator performance.

    Remote crane operation allows humans to be separated from big machines and moved from a dangerous and harsh working environment to the safety and comfort of a control room. Now the crane can run faster and ramp times and cycle times become shorter. This reduces the time needed for discharging and loading the ships, and prevents operators’ health problems caused by poor working environment.


    https://new.abb.com/ports/solutions-for-marine-terminals/our-offerings/container-terminal-automation/remote-crane-operation (https://new.abb.com/ports/solutions-for-marine-terminals/our-offerings/container-terminal-automation/remote-crane-operation)
    What's the point? All the benefits you list for remote operators apply even more for fully-automated operations. People are much more adaptable than autonomous robotics, but that isn't really needed for stacking.

    1. The stacking should be the same every time, with the impact of variable winds minimised by using rigid arms rather than flexible cables

    2. The arms already have to be able to autonomously handle the much more dynamic scenario of catching the vehicles during landing

    You still need a human in the loop to supervise the process. 

    Automation is the basis for efficient remote crane operation. With most of the crane cycle handled automatically, the crane operator’s main task is to supervise the process and take action only when required.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 10/17/2021 04:18 pm
    Humans might have to always be at the stacking operation, for a while anyway.  This is because Boca Chica can get windy.  A very large Starship dangling in the air will need precise alignment that in wind may need more precise getting into place.  Men pulling cables to align properly will be needed.  A large object dangling is easy to pull into precise position by a single person.
    That was for crane-based stacking which is/was a short-term solution needed only until they complete the tower. As soon as they switch to using the arms for stacking there won't be a need to pull it into position.

    Also, when winds get too high they will need to keep people away from huge suspended loads anyway.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 10/17/2021 05:16 pm
    I thought he was slightly pushed into the $1m answer by Swisher. So he added words like “potentially”, to soften it a bit. $1m is obviously way in the future, with massive economies of scale and optimization.
    ISTM that "economies of scale and optimization" would primarily be elements that don't impact the marginal cost number Musk is discussing.

    $1M would roughly be incremental propellant, turnaround, and range/recovery costs.  I don't think it's "obviously way in the future".  It might be as early as 1st reuse if they were to just (they won't) go for it with an immediate gas-n-go.

    I thought he was referring to $1m total cost per launch.
    One million dollars of: propellant to refill a booster that has already landed on the launch mount, plus the hourly wages of the crane operator who slings the next starship onto it, plus the hourly wages of the launch staff, for the time it takes them to complete their tasks.
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    But there are lots of range safety tasks that can't be done (or we won't want done) by machines for the foreseeable future.

    Perhaps now would be a good moment to pause and reflect on this coming-up-on two-week digression into automated stacking vs. human-operated stacking?

    1)  Elon mentions $1M marginal launch cost
    2)  Explication on marginal launch cost
    3)  Mention of wages of stackers in marginal launch costs rather than simply being bundled in turnaround costs
    4)  Much ice-pick-to-temple exposition on stacking including examples of automated car parks

    Can we bring this two-week 26-post mostly off-topic stacking sub-thread to a merciful close?
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: steveleach on 10/17/2021 06:28 pm
    I thought he was slightly pushed into the $1m answer by Swisher. So he added words like “potentially”, to soften it a bit. $1m is obviously way in the future, with massive economies of scale and optimization.
    ISTM that "economies of scale and optimization" would primarily be elements that don't impact the marginal cost number Musk is discussing.

    $1M would roughly be incremental propellant, turnaround, and range/recovery costs.  I don't think it's "obviously way in the future".  It might be as early as 1st reuse if they were to just (they won't) go for it with an immediate gas-n-go.

    I thought he was referring to $1m total cost per launch.
    One million dollars of: propellant to refill a booster that has already landed on the launch mount, plus the hourly wages of the crane operator who slings the next starship onto it, plus the hourly wages of the launch staff, for the time it takes them to complete their tasks.
    There's no crane-operator, the tower will autonomously stack the vehicle. The launch process can also be automated.

    But there are lots of range safety tasks that can't be done (or we won't want done) by machines for the foreseeable future.

    Perhaps now would be a good moment to pause and reflect on this coming-up-on two-week digression into automated stacking vs. human-operated stacking?

    1)  Elon mentions $1M marginal launch cost
    2)  Explication on marginal launch cost
    3)  Mention of wages of stackers in marginal launch costs rather than simply being bundled in turnaround costs
    4)  Much ice-pick-to-temple exposition on stacking including examples of automated car parks

    Can we bring this two-week 26-post mostly off-topic stacking sub-thread to a merciful close?
    Good point. I wouldn't be unhappy if the mods deleted it all, tbh. We're all just bored.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: AC in NC on 10/17/2021 07:00 pm
    We're all just bored.
    Ain't that the truth.  The lack of traffic milling about waiting on a potential S20 SF on Thurs was noticeable and in marked contrast to

    Maybe -- in addition to moderators -- we need mediators (or camp counsellors) around to challenge the restless natives to a useful exerciese.

    Noticed this post from a bit back and was mildly interested in see a summary of the predictions but was too lazy to go compile it myself.

    I've read through this thread and am amazed about the fact that some members here got significant reuseability  milestones correct (if often a bit later than they predicted :-). 
    The reuseabilty predictors who got it correct in the early part of the thread seemed to be on the optimistic side at the time.

    I found a similar thread on slashdot.
    https://slashdot.org/story/14/05/07/0410242/nasa-france-skeptical-of-spacex-reusable-rocket-project
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: Lar on 10/17/2021 07:04 pm
    You're grownups. (mostly)

    Self moderate.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: markbike528cbx on 10/19/2021 07:30 pm
    .snip.....
    Noticed this post from a bit back and was mildly interested in see a summary of the predictions but was too lazy to go compile it myself.

    I've read through this thread and am amazed about the fact that some members here got significant reuseability  milestones correct (if often a bit later than they predicted :-). 
    The reuseabilty predictors who got it correct in the early part of the thread seemed to be on the optimistic side at the time.

    I found a similar thread on slashdot.
    https://slashdot.org/story/14/05/07/0410242/nasa-france-skeptical-of-spacex-reusable-rocket-project
    I'm also too lazy.   
    If I compiled the predictions, I would want to focus on the positive ones, but statements taken out of context don't have the same impact. 
    It would sound like a group of amazing people Elon quotes - which is how they were taken at that time.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: dglow on 10/29/2021 01:58 pm
    Well, this (https://xkcd.com/2534/) needs to get posted somewhere. Punchline in the alt text:

    Quote from: XKCD
    Hard to believe that for so many years once they were fully extended we just let them tip over.
    Title: Re: Reusability effect on costs
    Post by: su27k on 12/22/2021 04:23 am
    https://twitter.com/Robotbeat/status/1473342620466393091

    Quote
    VentureStar (NASA’s orbital SSTO RLV scaled up version of X-33) when announced in 1996 was supposed to be capable of $1000/lb to orbit. That’s $4000/kg today. Falcon 9 goes for about $3000/kg commercially and internally (ie for Starlink missions) can do about $1500-2000/kg.



    And I should point out Falcon 9 is about where the early Shuttle cost projections were, at least for internal marginal costs (Starlink).