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#20 by gospacex on 18 Apr, 2011 14:40
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What was preventing LM and/or Boeing to do what Elon did? They had no spare $0.5bn? I think not. They had no need. They were a monopoly.
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#21 by pathfinder_01 on 18 Apr, 2011 14:49
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What was preventing LM and/or Boeing to do what Elon did? They had no spare $0.5bn? I think not. They had no need. They were a monopoly.
Elon took technology and used it in a different way. Even LM did the same to Boeing as Delta is much more expensive than Atlas(hence Delta is used rarely). -
#22 by mmeijeri on 18 Apr, 2011 18:12
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Their Phase II plan would be a better solution, unifying the tooling would cut the costs to produce dramatically.
They would still have to recoup the investment that would be needed to make the change. If it were nearly free, wouldn't they have done it already? -
#23 by DarkenedOne on 18 Apr, 2011 19:23
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Why is that?
Rockets are optimized to reach certain Orbits. The Saturn I for instance was optimized for LEO. If you needed to reach GEO you would need another stage. Titan IIIC could get to GEO. The Shuttle and Falcon 9 are optimized for LEO. The shuttle can carry nothing higher than LEO without an upper stage while Falcon 9 can carry 4MT. Atlas V(Falcon 9's competitor) in its smallest form lifts 10MT to LEO and 4.5 to GEO but lifts more than Falcon 9 in larger forms(up to 29MT to LEO and 10 to GTO).
F9H lifts 53 to LEO but only 19MT to GTO. A Delta IV heavy can lift about 25MT to LEO and 13MT to GTO. Not that far behind a FH9 in the GTO lift(despite the cost).
What your saying is true, but it increases cost due to the increased fixed costs of developing and maintaining multiple systems. These fixed costs are the main reason cited why launch costs for the US over the last few year have gone up, and are expected to increase significantly in the future. All the producers cite low demand as the principle reason for these increases.
Take a look at the Russian rockets. They have only one rocket, the Proton, bigger than the Soyuz which maxs out about 7 mt. The Proton is 20 tones to LEO, but only 5 tones to GTO. Now seems really inefficient considering that many, probably most, of their payloads are to GTO. However because they have such high launch rates their system is more cost-effective than ours.
Having these different rockets maybe more mass efficient, but less cost efficient. -
#24 by Jim on 18 Apr, 2011 20:19
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Why is that?
Rockets are optimized to reach certain Orbits. The Saturn I for instance was optimized for LEO. If you needed to reach GEO you would need another stage. Titan IIIC could get to GEO. The Shuttle and Falcon 9 are optimized for LEO. The shuttle can carry nothing higher than LEO without an upper stage while Falcon 9 can carry 4MT. Atlas V(Falcon 9's competitor) in its smallest form lifts 10MT to LEO and 4.5 to GEO but lifts more than Falcon 9 in larger forms(up to 29MT to LEO and 10 to GTO).
F9H lifts 53 to LEO but only 19MT to GTO. A Delta IV heavy can lift about 25MT to LEO and 13MT to GTO. Not that far behind a FH9 in the GTO lift(despite the cost).
What your saying is true, but it increases cost due to the increased fixed costs of developing and maintaining multiple systems. These fixed costs are the main reason cited why launch costs for the US over the last few year have gone up, and are expected to increase significantly in the future. All the producers cite low demand as the principle reason for these increases.
Take a look at the Russian rockets. They have only one rocket, the Proton, bigger than the Soyuz which maxs out about 7 mt. The Proton is 20 tones to LEO, but only 5 tones to GTO. Now seems really inefficient considering that many, probably most, of their payloads are to GTO. However because they have such high launch rates their system is more cost-effective than ours.
Having these different rockets maybe more mass efficient, but less cost efficient.
No, it is due to their labor rates and use of conscript soldiers -
#25 by DarkenedOne on 18 Apr, 2011 21:30
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What your saying is true, but it increases cost due to the increased fixed costs of developing and maintaining multiple systems. These fixed costs are the main reason cited why launch costs for the US over the last few year have gone up, and are expected to increase significantly in the future. All the producers cite low demand as the principle reason for these increases.
Take a look at the Russian rockets. They have only one rocket, the Proton, bigger than the Soyuz which maxs out about 7 mt. The Proton is 20 tones to LEO, but only 5 tones to GTO. Now seems really inefficient considering that many, probably most, of their payloads are to GTO. However because they have such high launch rates their system is more cost-effective than ours.
Having these different rockets maybe more mass efficient, but less cost efficient.
No, it is due to their labor rates and use of conscript soldiers
Use of conscript soldiers would make sense for their own payloads, but why in the world would Russia pay their soldiers to launch payloads for foreign commercial companies.
As far as labor rates they are no doubt lower, however its hard to believe they make up for the difference. -
#26 by Jim on 18 Apr, 2011 23:36
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Use of conscript soldiers would make sense for their own payloads, but why in the world would Russia pay their soldiers to launch payloads for foreign commercial companies.
As far as labor rates they are no doubt lower, however its hard to believe they make up for the difference.
It has nothing to do with sensee, the soldiers support all launches.
It is the difference.
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#27 by DarkenedOne on 19 Apr, 2011 01:54
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Use of conscript soldiers would make sense for their own payloads, but why in the world would Russia pay their soldiers to launch payloads for foreign commercial companies.
As far as labor rates they are no doubt lower, however its hard to believe they make up for the difference.
It has nothing to do with sensee, the soldiers support all launches.
It is the difference.
As far as subsidizing our commercial launches with their conscript soldiers I am ok with that. If they want to pay for part of our launch costs than I am fine with that. However with regards to the Soyuz it is my understand that they are making a significant profit.
As far as it being the difference does it also explain why Europe and China also have comparatively low costs.
In any case if labor is the source of the high costs than why does it continue to rise. -
#28 by Jim on 19 Apr, 2011 01:57
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The government also subsidizes by providing money
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#29 by Jorge on 19 Apr, 2011 02:05
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Use of conscript soldiers would make sense for their own payloads, but why in the world would Russia pay their soldiers to launch payloads for foreign commercial companies.
As far as labor rates they are no doubt lower, however its hard to believe they make up for the difference.
It has nothing to do with sensee, the soldiers support all launches.
It is the difference.
As far as subsidizing our commercial launches with their conscript soldiers I am ok with that. If they want to pay for part of our launch costs than I am fine with that. However with regards to the Soyuz it is my understand that they are making a significant profit.
As far as it being the difference does it also explain why Europe and China also have comparatively low costs.
In any case if labor is the source of the high costs than why does it continue to rise.
Some of it is charging what the market will bear. That is supply-n-demand economics 101.
Some of it is the continuing weakening of the dollar against the ruble. The price in rubles hasn't gone up that much. -
#30 by kevin-rf on 19 Apr, 2011 02:11
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Well, there was that recent article in AvWeek that quoted people from GreatWall saying they could not offer a ride for as cheap as SpaceX's published prices...
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#31 by Ronsmytheiii on 19 Apr, 2011 04:09
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Well, there was that recent article in AvWeek that quoted people from GreatWall saying they could not offer a ride for as cheap as SpaceX's published prices...
Of course that assumes their prices will stay the same. The answer to that question will not be answered for awhile, and most likely they will go up (I would like to be wrong, and alot of dreams of everyone would come true as well, but conservative pessimism wins most of the time) -
#32 by Patchouli on 19 Apr, 2011 04:37
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Well, there was that recent article in AvWeek that quoted people from GreatWall saying they could not offer a ride for as cheap as SpaceX's published prices...
Of course that assumes their prices will stay the same. The answer to that question will not be answered for awhile, and most likely they will go up (I would like to be wrong, and alot of dreams of everyone would come true as well, but conservative pessimism wins most of the time)
The Chinese likely already considered that in detail.
Even if the cost of FH goes up by 50% it still would be a very cheap LV for it's performance range.
I don't think Spacex's cost would go up any more then 50% since they now have an understanding of costs and trouble with dealing with government red tape.
Their predictions for today are going to be much more accurate then their predictions of 2004.
What GreatWall will do in response they'll likely push for variants of the kerolox LM 5 LVs to replace their hypergolic LVs.
They may go for more engine commonality and horizontal vehicle integration as well.
The F9 second stage engine is just a restartable version of the first stage engines economically it's a brilliant concept.
I don't think we can say ULA has any sort of monopoly anymore since Spacex and OSC have LVs that can compete for many payloads.
If ULA and PWR were smart they'd take advantage of the SLS project to get some money saving concepts such as ACES through.
I don't think they will likely go out of business instead I think in the end they'll choose to adapt much like how IBM adapted to the personal computer revolution in the 70s.
ULA and PWR will just have to start thinking outside of the box.
The time of being able to stay in the comfort zone and be conservative is over just be glad it's an American company that's over turning the statuesque.
In the end I think the shakeup will be good for the industry as a whole and may prevent it from moving over seas like so many other industries have. -
#33 by alexw on 19 Apr, 2011 05:11
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What was preventing LM and/or Boeing to do what Elon did? They had no spare $0.5bn? I think not. They had no need. They were a monopoly.
They actually kinda did, on a different scale. Boeing and LockMart (and their predecessors?) invested far more of their own money than the US government's (~several billion vs. half-billion, roughly, for each of Atlas and Delta). Didn't go so well when the commercial market collapsed.
ULA's been offering Atlas V Heavy at 29mT to LEO and 13mT to GTO for years, yet no orders, because there have been no payloads in the first category and a bare handful in the second. Phase II scales much larger than Falcon Heavy, yet no market to develop it.
The key point is that Falcon Heavy isn't being financially justified as a 53mT to LEO or 19 mT to GTO launcher. SpaceX wants to target the GTO satellite market and some of the DOD market, and given that Merlin has scaled nicely, the simplest way to do that is to core-stretch Falcon 9 and also build the tri-core. Falcon Heavy is larger than necessary to achieve the target performance, but that's because building a hydrolox upper stage or adding solids to Falcon 9 is outside their experience base.
It's a happy coincidence (or rather, a side-effect of messy history) that we also may end up with a huge LEO launcher. Maybe it will have uses; it probably has more *political* uses than *payload* uses at the moment. That's not quite the same thing as suggesting complacent monopoly vs. disruptive upstart.
-Alex -
#34 by gospacex on 19 Apr, 2011 13:20
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What was preventing LM and/or Boeing to do what Elon did? They had no spare $0.5bn? I think not. They had no need. They were a monopoly.
They actually kinda did, on a different scale. Boeing and LockMart (and their predecessors?) invested far more of their own money than the US government's (~several billion vs. half-billion, roughly, for each of Atlas and Delta). Didn't go so well when the commercial market collapsed.
ULA's been offering Atlas V Heavy at 29mT to LEO and 13mT to GTO for years, yet no orders, because there have been no payloads in the first category and a bare handful in the second.
Correction. There is no payloads in Atlas V *price* category. And ULA did nothing to lower the price. Apparently, they felt no need to work towards that, because they had their key customer, DoD, cornered. They were a monopoly as far as DoD and NASA, who can't use foreign launchers regardless of price, were concerned. -
#35 by Jim on 19 Apr, 2011 13:25
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Correction. There is no payloads in Atlas V *price* category. And ULA did nothing to lower the price. Apparently, they felt no need to work towards that, because they had their key customer, DoD, cornered. They were a monopoly as far as DoD and NASA, who can't use foreign launchers regardless of price, were concerned.
wrong on all accounts. No payloads period.
Know some real information instead of spewing the koolade. -
#36 by kevin-rf on 19 Apr, 2011 14:00
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wrong on all accounts. No payloads period.
Jim,
I found a payload
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#37 by Downix on 19 Apr, 2011 14:05
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Oh yeah!!
wrong on all accounts. No payloads period.
Jim,
I found a payload
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#38 by kevin-rf on 19 Apr, 2011 14:50
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#39 by DarkenedOne on 19 Apr, 2011 15:22
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What was preventing LM and/or Boeing to do what Elon did? They had no spare $0.5bn? I think not. They had no need. They were a monopoly.
They actually kinda did, on a different scale. Boeing and LockMart (and their predecessors?) invested far more of their own money than the US government's (~several billion vs. half-billion, roughly, for each of Atlas and Delta). Didn't go so well when the commercial market collapsed.
"when the commercial market collapsed" - I cannot hate it when this is used as a reason why the EELVs have not been successful in the commercial market.
Fact of the matter is that the commercial market is still very much alive and kicking. In fact last year 23 of the 74 launches were commercial. Of course not a single one of those commercial launches were launched with the EELV.
Now that SpaceX has gotten in the game they have shown they are quite capable of getting commercial launches. They have also shown that they could get government payloads from other countries.
All of the evidence supports one conclusion. There exists a significant commercial market, and the Atlas V and the Delta IV have simply priced themselves out of it. The current launch costs of these vehicles is almost double that of what is found on the market.
