Introducing Firefly Space Systems

[baldusi]

On the other hand, large carbon-fibre tanks have even less "heritage", but they must be worth their trouble.

I believe it's the other way around. There are prototype tanks in validation right now. According to some calculations, composite tanks could give you 4% to 8% extra performance, which is not thaaaat much. But everybody in the rest of industries is already using composite tanks. Space uses a lot of composites. It's just that cryo tanks require some extra advances to make sense.

[dasmoth]

One nice property of composites is that you can often scale up manufacturing quite cheaply.  Doing that for something as big and as performance-critical as a rocket fuel tank might not be entirely straightforward... but if Firefly do manage that, they could end up with some seriously cheap rockets.

I wonder if they're hoping for an expendable vehicle that's price-competitive with reusable options?

[john smith 19]

Here's the picture in question, for posterity's sake.

It does indeed look like four hypersonic inlets/exhausts feeding onto a common plug nozzle. Hydrocarbon scramjet?

Only if those "landing legs" are in the retracted position.

They look more like inlets to me. IOW something from the William Escher school of space propulsion.

Which is an interesting take on propulsion systems for a start up company to say the least. 

[john smith 19]

We just don't have enough information! Dang it! "One of our themes at Firefly will be transparency" my left foot! It has been OVER 24 hours since markusic posted the first time, and we still have no further information! What is this, "Blue Origin light?" Information wants to be free! We demand details! We demand schematics! Blueprints! Icecream!

True. 

But am I alone in thinking this is one weird little corner of the propulsion/size/propellant trade space to be going after?

If they've raised $100m and it is "small" this thing will have a $/lb to orbit price that makes the ATK Orbital Pegasus look cheap.

And you're right it's 24 hrs since kickoff and 1 tweet and a picture? Are they saying since a picture is worth a 1000 words that's 8 tweets? 

Rand Simbergs comment was "Color me skeptical." With the information given so far I'd agree. 

Thing is the 90's RLV interest was driven by multiple LEO and MEO comm sat constellations and the belief they'd need repeated low cost orbital access as the life expectancy in LEO is (relatively) short.

AFAIK there is no pervasive buzz like that and small sat payloads can't afford primary payload launch prices, mostly because they are not made for profit.

So who's the customer?

[docmordrid]

DoD launch on need. They have several small sat programs in the fire, and ISTM this may be cheaper/simpler than the idea they have of air launching from an F-15.

[Robotbeat]

The LEO mega-constellations of the 1990s lead to still-large but non-mega constellations around 1999 and the early 2000s. They are now getting their first major refresh, but not nearly as much buzz (however, Iridium, Orbcomm and the like are profitable, much better than the late 1990s when they went out of business). However, I think there's still a decent chance of a mega-constellation coming online in the next 10 years. We've learned a lot since the 1990s and there have been some rumblings. IMHO, it's a /good/ thing there hasn't been a ton of buzz about it. Let the systems stand on their own merits instead of empty buzz. And now there's launch capacity and potentially low cost systems (F9R and  MAYBE Firefly) to make it feasible.

But Firefly has a long road ahead of them.

[simonbp]

That would mesh with the apparent focus on sun-synchronous/high-inclination orbits.

IIRC, the only small launcher to come out of the first constellation rush that actually flew was Pegasus, and even that was commercial failure (nearly all Pegasus launches since the initial ORBCOMM constellation were NASA). Hopefully this one is more successful.

[QuantumG]

New website: http://www.fireflyspace.com/
Includes specs for the first launch vehicle: http://www.fireflyspace.com/vehicles/firefly-a

I think those ISP numbers are a tad optimistic

[TrevorMonty]

Taken on board some of SpaceX ideas of common engines/parts between stages. If they can make the aerospike engine work they will become leaders in this technology.

[TrevorMonty]

Just watched their promo video looks like they plan to do a heavy version and reusability in future. This could be a another SpaceX in the making, but unlike SpaceX they will the probably stay in the falcon 1 class market for a while.

[ChrisWilson68]

Just watched their promo video looks like they plan to do a heavy version and reusability in future. This could be a another SpaceX in the making, but unlike SpaceX they will the probably stay in the falcon 1 class market for a while.

I think it's going to be very, very hard trying to be the second SpaceX, because the first SpaceX is already there and has a huge lead.

They're targeting a price of $8-$9 million per launch for 400 kg to LEO at the same time SpaceX is targeting $7 million per launch of reusable Falcon 9, with 1.5 orders of magnitude more payload to LEO.  If both Firefly and SpaceX meet their targets, Firefly will go out of business.

Even if Firefly meets their targets and SpaceX doesn't, it's hard for me to see Firefly being able to get enough business to justify their investment to develop the technology.  If there really are mega-constellations of thousands of very small satellites, there will be many deployed to each orbital plane and it will be cheaper to deploy them in bulk from Falcon 9, as Orbcomm is doing.  If there are so few to each orbital plane that it's cheaper to use Firefly, then the volumes for Firefly will be too low to justify their initial investment.

[meekGee]

That's 100% right, so assuming they are not clueless, a good guess is that this is their F1, and their road map is leading to a much heavier launcher.  The "Alpha" designation supports that guess.

[IslandPlaya]

...with 1.5 orders of magnitude more payload to LEO.  If both Firefly and SpaceX meet their targets, Firefly will go out of business.

1.5 orders of magnitude increase means x31.62, not the x15 that I think you meant to say.
 

[Robotbeat]

...with 1.5 orders of magnitude more payload to LEO.  If both Firefly and SpaceX meet their targets, Firefly will go out of business.

1.5 orders of magnitude increase means x31.62, not the x15 that I think you meant to say.
 

400kg*31=12400kg, about a reusable F9R.

[IslandPlaya]

...with 1.5 orders of magnitude more payload to LEO.  If both Firefly and SpaceX meet their targets, Firefly will go out of business.

1.5 orders of magnitude increase means x31.62, not the x15 that I think you meant to say.
 

400kg*31=12400kg, about a reusable F9R.

Whoops. You are correct of course. I was thinking mass to GTO for some bizzare reason. 

[ncb1397]

...with 1.5 orders of magnitude more payload to LEO.  If both Firefly and SpaceX meet their targets, Firefly will go out of business.

1.5 orders of magnitude increase means x31.62, not the x15 that I think you meant to say.
 

400kg*31=12400kg, about a reusable F9R.

If I am not mistaken, a 7 million dollar Falcon launch would require both stage re-use which would make it quite a bit lower than 12,400kg(probably more like 9000 kg given the 1/3 rule of thumb). The landing gear, heatshield, fuel, engines and possibly payload bay for 2nd stage reuse could easily add up to ~4000 kg.

Anyways, SpaceX meeting its targets could help startups like Firefly get interest from investors. Re-use doesn't automatically mean that every other space launch company will go out of business. They would be wise to consider reusability though.

[TrevorMonty]

Firefly's startup should be easier than SpaceX.  They are employing staff from various newspace companies with experience in developing new engines and manufacturing technologies.  3D printers will radically reduce development and manufacturing costs of new engines and complex LV components. Financing should be easier as there a more traditional investors willing invest in newspace startups.

 SpaceX never had these advantages 12 years ago.

[Tev]

I haven't found this anywhere else, so I'll ask here: Does this feel like a SpaceX spin-off to anyone else?

Someone already mentioned it here, but it needs more emphasizis I think:
Locations, duh.
The font for their logo seems to be the same (as does their marketing style).
They want "NewSpace" engineers.
The ideas are basically the same - start up small and simple, then make your way towards bigger and possibly reusable rockets. And common parts between stages.

And just when SpaceX is slowly (problems notwithstanding) becoming "standard" launcher company - new and awfuly similar company shows up, trying something new and fresh (who was talking about offering the "cutting edge" development to bright minds?). Conveniently targeting market complementing that of SpaceX. And by the time this new company might reach SpaceX's capability - but with potentially much better tech and design - they will have moved on to bigger rockets and getting to Mars for real.

Imo a few more or less rebellious engineers ("this aerospike stuff is AWESOME!") talked with Elon and he gave them few bucks and maybe a few tech. Because keeping it in house doesn't really fit his goals and maybe because he realizes that by the time Falcon 9 will be fully reusable they will have enough experience to design much better reusable rockets, so he wants to keep potential competitors close. Or even actually own them?

[QuantumG]

.. or they're just positioning themselves to be bought by SpaceX once they have some success.

[ChrisWilson68]

Firefly's startup should be easier than SpaceX.  They are employing staff from various newspace companies with experience in developing new engines and manufacturing technologies.  3D printers will radically reduce development and manufacturing costs of new engines and complex LV components. Financing should be easier as there a more traditional investors willing invest in newspace startups.

 SpaceX never had these advantages 12 years ago.

Yeah, I agree that there are some ways that they'll have advantages SpaceX didn't when they started.

But they also have some pretty significant disadvantages compared with SpaceX at that point.  They don't have a crazy billionaire willing to throw every cent he has into it just for the sake of improving the lot of humanity, regardless of the financial return.

They also have an incumbent (SpaceX today) that is much more efficient and cost-focused than the incumbents SpaceX faced when they started.  SpaceX had a plausible story that they could produce a product that was far superior to the incumbents of the time.  Firefly has a plausible story that they could produce a product that matches the incumbent today.

I think Firefly's best shot is if SpaceX really can make both first and second stage reusability work, drive down costs by two orders of magnitude, and drive up the size of the entire launch market by a huge amount.  Then, the launch market will be big enough to support Firefly and SpaceX and Firefly will be in a good position to be the second supplier to the market.

Even if Firefly would be capable of doing that, though, they have a long road ahead of them to get there, and they could fail at any point along it.