Tory is a class act. His congrats to SpaceX are what we want to see from rival execs (and Dr. Sowers was also gracious)... But I think the numbers are already staring him in the face, he just can't say that out loud.
But this is almost all offtopic for a mission specific thread. Not sure which thread to move it to.
Martin and Elon made an important point in the press conference: this will be the new "normal". The idea of throwing away big rockets is going to be obsolete.
If your company or nation is shackled to launchers that were never designed for re-use, you are swimming in shark-infested waters with a cinder block tied to your ankle.
ULA didn't start talking about engine re-use until SpaceX convinced them that they better be seen to be doing something in that area.
Arianespace didn't start talking about re-use of engines on their new Ariane until SpaceX convinced them of the same thing.
One man convinced a bunch of other people to take risks, work their butts off and CHANGE what's "normal". That is a big accomplishment.
Quote from: abaddon on 03/31/2017 07:15 pmThe part of the Bruno quote that really got me was this one:QuoteSo it can only done on the portion of missions where the spacecraft is small and not going to an especially difficult orbitSince when is a 5.2 metric ton spacecraft "small" and going to a geosynchronous transfer orbit "not especially difficult"? Is there any reasonable way that this statement can be interpreted as anything but straight-up denial? That's an honest question, I am open to hearing otherwise.It's all relative. Falcon 9 has so far lifted no more than 5.282 tonnes to GTO (GEO-~1800m/s) while recovering its first stage. Even Falcon Heavy will only be able to boost 8 tonnes to GTO while recovering its lower stages. ULA has a rocket (Delta 4 Heavy) that can lift up to 13.8 tonnes to the same orbit. Vulcan/ACES will be able to lift maybe 15 tonnes to GTO. From Mr. Bruno's point of view, the lift capability given up for recovery is a kind of lost business opportunity. His point is that this all does have a cost. Even Mr. Musk said yesterday that it has cost the company $1 billion in recovery systems development so far. Imagine how much smaller and cheaper Falcon could be if it was fully expendable while carrying the same payloads. It wouldn't need 10 Merlin engines per launch, for starters.It is a fascinating debate. The answer will be given not by the words spoken by anyone, but by the results of the hardware and procedures and bottom-line budgets of these companies over the next decade. - Ed Kyle
The part of the Bruno quote that really got me was this one:QuoteSo it can only done on the portion of missions where the spacecraft is small and not going to an especially difficult orbitSince when is a 5.2 metric ton spacecraft "small" and going to a geosynchronous transfer orbit "not especially difficult"? Is there any reasonable way that this statement can be interpreted as anything but straight-up denial? That's an honest question, I am open to hearing otherwise.
So it can only done on the portion of missions where the spacecraft is small and not going to an especially difficult orbit
It's all relative. Falcon 9 has so far lifted no more than 5.282 tonnes to GTO (GEO-~1800m/s) while recovering its first stage. Even Falcon Heavy will only be able to boost 8 tonnes to GTO while recovering its lower stages. ULA has a rocket (Delta 4 Heavy) that can lift up to 13.8 tonnes to the same orbit. Vulcan/ACES will be able to lift maybe 15 tonnes to GTO.
Quote from: edkyle99 on 03/31/2017 09:43 pmIt's all relative. Falcon 9 has so far lifted no more than 5.282 tonnes to GTO (GEO-~1800m/s) while recovering its first stage. Even Falcon Heavy will only be able to boost 8 tonnes to GTO while recovering its lower stages. ULA has a rocket (Delta 4 Heavy) that can lift up to 13.8 tonnes to the same orbit. Vulcan/ACES will be able to lift maybe 15 tonnes to GTO.Where did 8 tons to GTO with recovery for FH come from? Wiki says 22 tons to GTO, which I assume is with expendable cores. The payload penalty for a single stick Falcon is about 1/3 max capacity. Even if you use a recoverability penalty of 50% for FH that is still 11 tons to GTO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy
Quote from: cppetrie on 03/31/2017 11:11 pmQuote from: edkyle99 on 03/31/2017 09:43 pmIt's all relative. Falcon 9 has so far lifted no more than 5.282 tonnes to GTO (GEO-~1800m/s) while recovering its first stage. Even Falcon Heavy will only be able to boost 8 tonnes to GTO while recovering its lower stages. ULA has a rocket (Delta 4 Heavy) that can lift up to 13.8 tonnes to the same orbit. Vulcan/ACES will be able to lift maybe 15 tonnes to GTO.Where did 8 tons to GTO with recovery for FH come from? Wiki says 22 tons to GTO, which I assume is with expendable cores. The payload penalty for a single stick Falcon is about 1/3 max capacity. Even if you use a recoverability penalty of 50% for FH that is still 11 tons to GTO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_HeavyCheck out the "pricing" page. Prices are for recoverable missions.
Quote from: mme on 03/31/2017 11:16 pmQuote from: cppetrie on 03/31/2017 11:11 pmQuote from: edkyle99 on 03/31/2017 09:43 pmIt's all relative. Falcon 9 has so far lifted no more than 5.282 tonnes to GTO (GEO-~1800m/s) while recovering its first stage. Even Falcon Heavy will only be able to boost 8 tonnes to GTO while recovering its lower stages. ULA has a rocket (Delta 4 Heavy) that can lift up to 13.8 tonnes to the same orbit. Vulcan/ACES will be able to lift maybe 15 tonnes to GTO.Where did 8 tons to GTO with recovery for FH come from? Wiki says 22 tons to GTO, which I assume is with expendable cores. The payload penalty for a single stick Falcon is about 1/3 max capacity. Even if you use a recoverability penalty of 50% for FH that is still 11 tons to GTO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_HeavyCheck out the "pricing" page. Prices are for recoverable missions.That's http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities, for clarity. $90M for 8.0 mT to GTO, reusable. 22 mT GTO expendable (no price given).Edit: Also worth noting that the F9 expendable performance is *higher* than the FH recoverable. The performance penalty is very real.
Awesome banner image from SpaceX.com of today's flight booster along with two others being prepped for future flights.
From Mr. Bruno's point of view, the lift capability given up for recovery is a kind of lost business opportunity. His point is that this all does have a cost. Even Mr. Musk said yesterday that it has cost the company $1 billion in recovery systems development so far. Imagine how much smaller and cheaper Falcon could be if it was fully expendable while carrying the same payloads. It wouldn't need 10 Merlin engines per launch, for starters.It is a fascinating debate. The answer will be given not by the words spoken by anyone, but by the results of the hardware and procedures and bottom-line budgets of these companies over the next decade.
ULA might still be on USG life support in mid 2020s, but don't plan on them being carried for much longer than that unless they seriously up their game.
I recall one panel where the Ariane representative essentially answered the question about how they will compete with SpaceX reuse by saying, "We aren't going to compete with a dream."
“We have every reason to believe that we can compete” with SpaceX and other companies in the global space industry, Peskov was quoted as saying by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. He did not specify what exactly the government plans to do to compete. Russia’s state space corporation, Roscosmos, is being modernized right now, Peskov said. “The head of Roscomos, Igor Komarov, has reported to President Vladimir Putin that Russian specialists are working on cutting-edge technologies.”
Russia, “homeland of [the first man in space Yuri] Gagarin,” has fallen 20 years behind Musk, Vadim Lukashevich, a prominent space expert who was dismissed from the Skolkovo, a state-backed research center, for criticizing Roscosmos’ reform efforts in 2015, wrote on Facebook Friday. “Today, the Presidential Space Council will discuss the main areas of development of the Russian space industry up to 2030, and this program has nothing in it about reusing [rockets],” Lukashevich wrote. “I’m genuinely ashamed for Roscosmos.”
Quote from: cscott on 03/31/2017 03:20 pmQuote from: kevinof on 03/31/2017 10:55 amDon't see why SX would have to give large discounts. If they can (re)launch reliably and they are still the cheapest gig in town and they have spare capacity then they are in a great position. They need to offer large discounts to drive up demand. Without demand, they don't fly often enough and fixed costs start catching up with them.They have 70+ launches on their manifest. They can't even service their current demand at the moment. I'd say they can retain current price levels through the 70 remaining existing launches. That's 70 x $30m profit per reusable launch = a cool $2Bn profit over the next 2-3 years.And by the time they have cleared that manifest they will likely have more than 70 new launches on the books, even at, or very close to, current prices. At that point they can decide to start dropping prices, if it makes sense. But otherwise milk it for as long as they can, would be my advice.
Quote from: kevinof on 03/31/2017 10:55 amDon't see why SX would have to give large discounts. If they can (re)launch reliably and they are still the cheapest gig in town and they have spare capacity then they are in a great position. They need to offer large discounts to drive up demand. Without demand, they don't fly often enough and fixed costs start catching up with them.
Don't see why SX would have to give large discounts. If they can (re)launch reliably and they are still the cheapest gig in town and they have spare capacity then they are in a great position.
Quote from: S.Paulissen on 03/31/2017 08:43 pm I recall one panel where the Ariane representative essentially answered the question about how they will compete with SpaceX reuse by saying, "We aren't going to compete with a dream." No, they are competing with their worst nightmare!
Quote from: Jeff Lerner on 03/31/2017 05:38 pmDo we have any idea as to what was changed out or refurbished, percentage of changes, and the associated costs with those parts and labour, for this launch ??...Four months. According to Elon, "the core airframe remained the same, the engines remained the same, but any auxillary components that might be slightly questionable we changed out."https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/62i6m1/recap_of_the_elon_musk_and_martin_halliwell_press/dfmw95b/
Do we have any idea as to what was changed out or refurbished, percentage of changes, and the associated costs with those parts and labour, for this launch ??...
Quote from: Lar on 03/31/2017 07:46 pmTory is a class act. His congrats to SpaceX are what we want to see from rival execs (and Dr. Sowers was also gracious)... But I think the numbers are already staring him in the face, he just can't say that out loud. SpaceX optimized for cost from the get go and has lots of margin to play with. ULA optimizes for performance so they don't have the margins. And they don't have the funding from B/L to play catchup fast. Vulcan is the best they can do.Jeff Bezos congratulations were ... well I didn't find any yet... maybe you did... But Amazon is a master at Fast-Follower. You can be sure the Blue team are studying every single scrap of publicly available data and figuring out how to do it better faster and cheaper. Blue is what should keep Elon up at night, not ULA.But this is almost all offtopic for a mission specific thread. Not sure which thread to move it to.I think it's clear by now (and I've been thinking this for months now) that Arianespace is the true "SpaceX adversary" if there is such a thing, not ULA. In fact, I'm not sure why ULA keeps getting singled out as SpX's nemesis.ULA, by competitor status, isn't going to go out of their way to compliment SpX etc. and this makes sense. However the neutral to mild-congratulatory tone, to me at least, speaks volumes about their respect for SpX and their approach, even if they don't follow the same path. Vulcan engine reuse in response to SpX says the rest IMO. On the other hand, it's well documented the animosity some Arianespace reps have spoken about SpaceX. I recall one panel where the Ariane representative essentially answered the question about how they will compete with SpaceX reuse by saying, "We aren't going to compete with a dream." THAT WAS WITH GYWNNE SITTING TWO SEATS AWAY. Talk about a in public dismissal. TL;DR: Ariane hates SpX, ULA doesn't.
Tory is a class act. His congrats to SpaceX are what we want to see from rival execs (and Dr. Sowers was also gracious)... But I think the numbers are already staring him in the face, he just can't say that out loud. SpaceX optimized for cost from the get go and has lots of margin to play with. ULA optimizes for performance so they don't have the margins. And they don't have the funding from B/L to play catchup fast. Vulcan is the best they can do.Jeff Bezos congratulations were ... well I didn't find any yet... maybe you did... But Amazon is a master at Fast-Follower. You can be sure the Blue team are studying every single scrap of publicly available data and figuring out how to do it better faster and cheaper. Blue is what should keep Elon up at night, not ULA.But this is almost all offtopic for a mission specific thread. Not sure which thread to move it to.
Good summary of yesterday's flight and the implications for the future of space travel http://www.space.com/36300-spacex-rocket-reflight-elon-musk-mars-colony.html
How SpaceX's Historic Rocket Re-Flight Boosts Elon Musk's Mars PlanBy Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | March 31, 2017 03:15pm ET
A while ago I posted in the reuse discussions my assumption that the hard thing was landing and figuring out how to minimize refurb efforts.Launching...SpaceX already knows how to launch. They already knew how to test a rocket to ensure its safe to launch.I wasn't nervous at all on this launch. I expected nearly the same chance of success as a regular launch, with so little extra risk there was no point being extra anxious.At the same time, an objective viewer that doesn't track SpaceX exploits closely had every reason to say I'll believe it when I see it. Just not me.Quote from: M.E.T. on 03/31/2017 04:24 pmQuote from: cscott on 03/31/2017 03:20 pmQuote from: kevinof on 03/31/2017 10:55 amDon't see why SX would have to give large discounts. If they can (re)launch reliably and they are still the cheapest gig in town and they have spare capacity then they are in a great position. They need to offer large discounts to drive up demand. Without demand, they don't fly often enough and fixed costs start catching up with them.They have 70+ launches on their manifest. They can't even service their current demand at the moment. I'd say they can retain current price levels through the 70 remaining existing launches. That's 70 x $30m profit per reusable launch = a cool $2Bn profit over the next 2-3 years.And by the time they have cleared that manifest they will likely have more than 70 new launches on the books, even at, or very close to, current prices. At that point they can decide to start dropping prices, if it makes sense. But otherwise milk it for as long as they can, would be my advice.You incorrectly assume that SpaceX has leeway to launch as many customers on reused boosters as they'd like. We don't know what's on the launch contracts, but I think its safe to assume that the vast majority of contracts specify new boosters and customers will demand a discount *if* they accept to fly on a reused stage.But with the booster being 75% of the rocket construction costs and around half of the entire launch cost, SpaceX can easily give customers a 30% discount for existing contracts that jump the bandwagon.For new launch contracts the discussion is quite different. Once several relaunches have been demonstrated and assuming no launch failures, SpaceX might be able to reduce the discount perhaps to 20 or 25%.SpaceX does have substantial motive to give higher discounts for block launch purchases. Specially if the customer commit 100% of their launches to SpaceX.Quote from: Surfdaddy on 04/01/2017 12:34 amQuote from: S.Paulissen on 03/31/2017 08:43 pm I recall one panel where the Ariane representative essentially answered the question about how they will compete with SpaceX reuse by saying, "We aren't going to compete with a dream." No, they are competing with their worst nightmare!SpaceX reuse will certainly change the market. Although I gave you a Like, I'll add the fact that this whole thing is contingent on Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy being an extremely reliable launch vehicle. If SpaceX does say 50 launches between failures, then Ariane is nearly dead, if SpaceX continues having a failure every 12-15 launches, Ariane will find conservative customers willing to pay extra to get reliability.BTW I think SpaceX knows what its doing and reliability is only going up by testing recovered stages as much as needed, even destructive testing when appropriate. In fact that's one of the biggest reasons to recover 2nd stages too, nobody knows what gremlins are hiding there until those stages are recovered and extensively tested/analyzed.
Europeans aren't good at the "competition" thing. Part of this probably comes from being in a culture where it is difficult to hire because it's difficult to fire. Most people aren't thinking "I'd better keep it polite because I might want a job with the other guy one day".
Quote from: alang on 04/01/2017 06:05 amEuropeans aren't good at the "competition" thing. Part of this probably comes from being in a culture where it is difficult to hire because it's difficult to fire. Most people aren't thinking "I'd better keep it polite because I might want a job with the other guy one day".That's an impressively wide brush you just tarred 742 million people with, so thanks. It is perfectly possible to hire and fire in Europe.
