Introducing Firefly Space Systems

[ChrisWilson68]

SpaceX will have an use for their end of the life Merlin engines, instead of junking them. After the Merlins go up a few times in the F9R.

People always seem to assume that Merlin engines can only last for a few flights.  I think that's the minimum SpaceX is going for.  Once they can land stages, if the engines are wearing out after a few flights, I suspect SpaceX will make some modifications.  I don't think there's any fundamental reason rocket engines can't be made to last hundreds of flights.

If it turns out there really is a big market for Firefly-class payloads, SpaceX can just put a very expendable small upper stage on a F9R first stage to duplicate that capability and it's likely to be cheaper than Firefly.

[Zed_Noir]

SpaceX will have an use for their end of the life Merlin engines, instead of junking them. After the Merlins go up a few times in the F9R.

People always seem to assume that Merlin engines can only last for a few flights.  I think that's the minimum SpaceX is going for.  Once they can land stages, if the engines are wearing out after a few flights, I suspect SpaceX will make some modifications.  I don't think there's any fundamental reason rocket engines can't be made to last hundreds of flights.

If it turns out there really is a big market for Firefly-class payloads, SpaceX can just put a very expendable small upper stage on a F9R first stage to duplicate that capability and it's likely to be cheaper than Firefly.

Maybe a very few dozen flights before coking from the RP-1 renders the engine non-serviceable. Somehow a few hundreds flights per engine seems overly optimistic for any KeroLox engine.

[ChrisWilson68]

SpaceX will have an use for their end of the life Merlin engines, instead of junking them. After the Merlins go up a few times in the F9R.

People always seem to assume that Merlin engines can only last for a few flights.  I think that's the minimum SpaceX is going for.  Once they can land stages, if the engines are wearing out after a few flights, I suspect SpaceX will make some modifications.  I don't think there's any fundamental reason rocket engines can't be made to last hundreds of flights.

If it turns out there really is a big market for Firefly-class payloads, SpaceX can just put a very expendable small upper stage on a F9R first stage to duplicate that capability and it's likely to be cheaper than Firefly.

Maybe a very few dozen flights before coking from the RP-1 renders the engine non-serviceable. Somehow a few hundreds flights per engine seems overly optimistic for any KeroLox engine.

It's not impossible they'll find a way to clean the engines.

[Silversheep2011]

Hey people
found this on reddit:

http://lhindependent.com/2014/10/firefly-responds-to-concerns-on-rocket-safety-water-use/

then this

"“There isn’t any pollution issue with what we’re doing,” Markusic said. “Everything we’re burning is non-toxic – it’s kerosene and natural gas … I want to be a good neighbor. I have no plans of hurting Briggs.”"

This implies they are thinking of using RP1...
What gives? how does this  fit in with the Methlox option, as totally different beasts?
Testing a new motor option we haven't heard about?  Other reasons?

[Prober]

We are getting a head of ourselves, competing with SpaceX is looking to far out.

I would be happy to just see a aerospike engine working on a test stand.

That's not going to happen unless they can convince investors they have a viable way to make money, and it's hard to see how they can have that without competing with SpaceX.

Kickstarter could keep this alive & there are other ways.

[Chris Bergin]

I'm told Firefly is having their pre-application meeting with the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation today.

[sghill]

If Firefly succesfully manages to set up shop in the smallsat market and manages to generate enough revenue there I don't see any hold back with developing an upgrade of their technology for the higher end market.

Other than Elon being able to resurrect Falcon-1 any time and bankrupt them?

That's silly talk.

- SpaceX has their plate full with bigger things.
- Falcon-1 used older versions of Merlin, upgrading the design to latest Merlin 1D is not free nor instant.

Oh, SpaceX may compete, but I'd expect it to be with "lets stack a lot of these small sats on a F9R or as secondaries on a bigger FH mission", not adding back a small launcher. That also means there will always be market for small payloads with requirements that prevent them to be candidates for a launch on a larger vehicle.

You miss the point.

If Firefly becomes significantly profitable, this will show Musk that there are money to be made in small launcher market.
Then Musk, leveraging his existing engine and mfg capability, can roll out F-1-esque competitor which would be even cheaper than Firefly.

The mere possibility of such scenario makes Firefly's business strategy more risky. If they fail to create a viable rocket, they fail. If they do create it, they get destroyed by Musk.

If anything, Musk is moving towards bigger launchers to support his vision, and not smaller launchers.  Your post is heavily ascribing a motivation to Musk that is inconsistent with SpaceX or Musk's other companies' past and current behavior.  He has consistently had his companies push the state of the art, but not out of a desire to dominate markets, but rather to expand them and open new markets.  To the contrary, his public statements over the past 10 years have been consistently supportive of lower-cost access to space, and Firefly's entrance to the launcher market would be welcomed by him- IMHO. 

Customers- not SpaceX- will ultimately decide if they want to share a ride on a Falcon9 or have their own ride up on a Firefly.  There's no need- or supporting evidence- that SpaceX will make a conscious decision to kill Firefly- or Arienspace and ULA for that matter. He feels he's got a competitive product, and Firefly is playing in a different market space (albeit with some overlap).

For example, SpaceX developed a technology that allowed for cheaper access to space, and another technology that is offering cheaper (and better IMHO) access to non-polluting vehicles.  The fact that competitors of SpaceX and Tesla offer more expensive or less attractive product alternatives is immaterial.

[savuporo]

The mere possibility of such scenario makes Firefly's business strategy more risky. If they fail to create a viable rocket, they fail. If they do create it, they get destroyed by Musk.

Customers- not SpaceX- will ultimately decide if they want to share a ride on a Falcon9 or have their own ride up on a Firefly.  There's no need- or supporting evidence- that SpaceX will make a conscious decision to kill Firefly- or Arienspace and ULA for that matter. He feels he's got a competitive product, and Firefly is playing in a different market space (albeit with some overlap).

This is a classic "what if Google does what we are trying to do" question for all startups, and common advice is to spend about 5 seconds thinking about it, and then keep on executing on your plans.
If anything, if a large player announces plans to compete in the space that you are about to make your break, it validates your market analysis to all investors - Googles and SpaceXes of the world wouldnt try if there isnt money to be made.

For example:
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/75314/13-Ways-To-Think-About-And-Crush-Your-Competition.aspx

[QuantumG]

SpaceX started out with a commercial business plan: lean development and operation of rockets with most of the hardware production outsourced. They targeted a small market they felt was neglected and that they could dominate, and from there grow. All that changed when they won a government contract.

[ChrisWilson68]

The mere possibility of such scenario makes Firefly's business strategy more risky. If they fail to create a viable rocket, they fail. If they do create it, they get destroyed by Musk.

Customers- not SpaceX- will ultimately decide if they want to share a ride on a Falcon9 or have their own ride up on a Firefly.  There's no need- or supporting evidence- that SpaceX will make a conscious decision to kill Firefly- or Arienspace and ULA for that matter. He feels he's got a competitive product, and Firefly is playing in a different market space (albeit with some overlap).

This is a classic "what if Google does what we are trying to do" question for all startups, and common advice is to spend about 5 seconds thinking about it, and then keep on executing on your plans.
If anything, if a large player announces plans to compete in the space that you are about to make your break, it validates your market analysis to all investors - Googles and SpaceXes of the world wouldnt try if there isnt money to be made.

For example:
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/75314/13-Ways-To-Think-About-And-Crush-Your-Competition.aspx

Sometimes a giant coming into your space means it validates the market.  That's the spin all start-ups use when it happens and when trying to pitch to investors.

The sad truth, though, is that often the giant crushes the small innovator.  Not always, but a good share of the time.

It all depends on the details.  Is there some advantage the small innovator has?  Can the giant leverage its existing business to get an advantage?

In the case of Firefly, I don't see much advantage they'd have over SpaceX if SpaceX chose to compete with them.  There's probably enough overlap between the small dedicated launch business and SpaceX's other business they'd have a distinct advantage.

I still don't think there's a large enough market for dedicated small satellite launches to make it worth SpaceX's while to get into it (again).  I don't think it's enough to support Firefly either.  And it's only going to get smaller as SpaceX perfects first-stage reusability and lowers the cost of launch, because it means more opportunities to ride as a secondary payload and lower prices for those secondary payloads.   It makes it easier for a few payloads to get together and share a dedicated F9R flight.

A dedicated flight might be preferable to some small payload owners.  But as the cost of non-dedicated alternatives goes down, the dedicated flight becomes proportionately more expensive.  They might be less willing to buy a dedicated flight if it's 20x more expensive than if it's 2x more expensive.

[meekGee]

SpaceX started out with a commercial business plan: lean development and operation of rockets with most of the hardware production outsourced. They targeted a small market they felt was neglected and that they could dominate, and from there grow. All that changed when they won a government contract.

Luck favors those that are prepared...

("We don't rely on luck, we just consider it in our plans")

[Garrett]

SpaceX started out with a commercial business plan: lean development and operation of rockets with most of the hardware production outsourced. They targeted a small market they felt was neglected and that they could dominate, and from there grow. All that changed when they won a government contract.

I'll add to your narrative:
SpaceX's ultimate goal has always been to provide a way for humans to settle Mars. To achieve that goal, SpaceX started out with a commercial business plan: lean development and operation of rockets with most of the hardware production outsourced. They targeted a small market they felt was neglected and that they could dominate, and from there grow. However, it was by no means certain that dominating a niche market would allow them to grow to the point of being able to build rockets capable of going to Mars. All that changed when they won a government contract. The government contract gave them an opportunity to leap-frog the "niche-rocket-market-champions" phase and get stuck into the bigger rockets sooner. They also found that many suppliers charged exaggerated prices for rocket and space-fidelity components, so they transitioned to being more vertically integrated.  They still maintain, however, over 3000 suppliers with some 1100 of those delivering to SpaceX nearly weekly.

To link this with respect to Firefly Space Systems and keep the conversation on-topic, FSS have no ambitions of going to Mars or other such grand ambitions. FSS was created to "provide low-cost, high-performance space launch capability for the under-served small satellite market". A very different philosophy to that of SpaceX, so if* they stick to their principles the outcome should be quite different.

*if = big if

[dror]

Spacex is not the only possible direct competition.
I read all the time about new dedicated launch vehicles for the  "under-served small satellite market" or whatever it's called by the new contender. I think I've read  it at least 10 times in the resent past from such as DARPA, Boeing, Lockheed, masten, altius, ARCA space, Swiss, stratolaunch, Xcor... you name it. They all have some smallest launcher in the making.
Spacex  is the last to worry about since they have already moved on.
Unless they find a way to make it reusable, like using a reusable second stage as a booster.

[parabolicarc]

One interesting tidbit from the announcement is that it sounds like they will be focusing on sun-synchronous orbits,  which makes sense for comm sat constellations and downward-looking telescopes, but also means they need a launch site like Vanderburg where they can launch polar, slightly retrograde.

Why rule out Sea Launch? It looks small enough.

Or Kodiak.

[TrevorMonty]

Firefly most likely competition at present is Rocketlab and they are about a year ahead.
NB near Firefly or any of the small sat wantabe LV providers are flying yet so there is no actual competition.

[savuporo]

Firefly most likely competition at present is Rocketlab and they are about a year ahead.
NB near Firefly or any of the small sat wantabe LV providers are flying yet so there is no actual competition.

I would think Shtil or Volna.

[Robotbeat]

SpaceX started out with a commercial business plan: lean development and operation of rockets with most of the hardware production outsourced. They targeted a small market they felt was neglected and that they could dominate, and from there grow. All that changed when they won a government contract.

This was SpaceX's modest goals in 2003:

"THE FALCON FAMILY OF LAUNCH VEHICLES IS INTENDED TO PROVIDE
*THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF DESIGN RELIABILITY
*THE MOST BENIGN FLIGHT ENVIRONMENT
*A LONG TERM REDUCTION IN COST BY A FACTOR OF TEN"

They are much further along /because/ they got a government contract than they would be if they hadn't. They didn't announce Falcon 9 until after their govt contract (sometime in 2004 or 2005?). They wouldn't be threatening ULA or Ariane (Falcon V is much too small except for Delta II and R7 class launches to LEO, at best!). They probably also wouldn't have built Dragon in this time. They wouldn't be talking about Mars colonization or working on BFR or MCT or any of that. They may not even have survived the Recession and the loss of their first 3 Falcon 1s.

If government contracts have "gotten in the way" of SpaceX, then I hope they get a whole lot more of them.

[Robotbeat]

Anyway, how many launches ARE there in the Falcon 1 range? I counted. Last year, only 2 orbital launches were on rockets near or less than Falcon 1 or 1e payload to LEO (400-1000kg, none to GTO), neither of which were commercial or domestic US. And Falcon 5 was to have 4100kg to LEO and 1050kg to GTO. Of these launches, only 11 were Falcon 5 or lower capability (plus the 2 in Falcon 1/1e's range), and many of those were national payloads that F5 wouldn't have had a chance to win, leaving just 4 non-national payloads that Falcon 5 could've launched (not counting payloads launched on heavier vehicles that could've squeaked by on F5), and 0 that could've flown on F1/1e. (In this analysis, I wasn't counting secondaries.)

2014 launches, modified from Ed Kyle's list
LV      launches   approximate LEO payload (kg)
Atlas 5      9   14300
Proton      8   20700
CZ4      7   4200 (but 1500 to GTO)
CZ 2      6   3675  *0 F5, all Chinese national
Ariane 5      6   21000
Falcon 9      6   14500
Delta 4      4   19105
H-2A      4   10000
PSLV      3   3250 (2 of which were to GTO, with 1425kg capability) *1 F5
Antares      3   6120
CZ 3      2   8615
Dnepr      2   4500 *2 F5
Rokot/Briz KM      2   1950 *0 F5, all russian national
Zenit      1   13740
Delta 2      1   6100
GSLV      1   5000
Vega      1   2500 *1 F5
Strela      1   2000 *0 F5, Russian national
Kuaizhou      1   300 *0 F1/1e/5, Chinese national
Shavit 2      1   800 *0 F1/1e/5, Israeli national

It's not like small launch vehicles don't exist. They do. It's just that there is really not much of an existing market for them beyond a few national payloads.

Most of the payloads are for larger rockets or catch a much cheaper secondary ride. It's much harder to justify entering the small launch vehicle market except as a stepping stone to the MUCH higher revenue medium-to-heavy lift market.

So the only thing that makes sense is that Firefly must think there's an enormous untapped market out there for small payloads, hiding as secondaries on the larger vehicles.  You're fighting for a small part of the pie and expending nearly as much capital as you might for a medium launch vehicle (which has a much larger market cap). I guess I'm concern-trolling, because I just don't see much of a business case (although I do wish them luck, especially now that they intend to make a reusable rocket).

[QuantumG]

If government contracts have "gotten in the way" of SpaceX, then I hope they get a whole lot more of them.

I'm sure they do too. Not sure what your point is..

[Robotbeat]

If government contracts have "gotten in the way" of SpaceX, then I hope they get a whole lot more of them.

I'm sure they do too. Not sure what your point is..

I'm not sure what your point is, either.