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#20
by
edkyle99
on 08 May, 2014 15:49
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Regarding the economic optimality, that's a more difficult question. Is Atlas V cheaper than an USA made Zenit? I don't really know.
I guess the answer might be addressed hypothetically by asking another question. Would it cost more to double the number of RD-180s and to have an extra RP upper stage or two, or to maintain the existing RL10 setup?
The nearest comparison is Falcon 9, but v1.1 doesn't quite lift as much as even a 401 to GTO, and I doubt that we're seeing the long-term price point for SpaceX launch services.
- Ed Kyle
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#21
by
baldusi
on 08 May, 2014 16:16
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Regarding the economic optimality, that's a more difficult question. Is Atlas V cheaper than an USA made Zenit? I don't really know.
I guess the answer might be addressed hypothetically by asking another question. Would it cost more to double the number of RD-180s and to have an extra RP upper stage or two, or to maintain the existing RL10 setup?
The nearest comparison is Falcon 9, but v1.1 doesn't quite lift as much as even a 401 to GTO, and I doubt that we're seeing the long-term price point for SpaceX launch services.
- Ed Kyle
F9 v1.1 does 3650kg to 1,500m/s GTO, 401 does 3,460kg. But a Zenit would have a single RD-171M always. No solids, because the core already has a T/W of 2 (core alone). And a high T/W SC RP-1/LOX second stage is used for LEO and smal GTO, you can add a third stage for higher performance GTO or a heavy.
The NWO was quoted 10M per solid on each mission. I don't believe that RD-171M is more than 10M more expensive than an RD-180. And you get the equivalent to 431 or even 541 performance to US staging point (Centaur is more efficient, yes). But then you have the heavy.
So you'd still have three stages (core, second and third), and less performance steps. But also you'd have a single propellant, bigger economies of scale with engines and cores, and you could have done something like the Falcon 9 flow with erector and an optional MST for government payloads. It's not cheaper if you think only of DoD specs. But you can lower the costs for commercial and NASA.
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#22
by
BrightLight
on 08 May, 2014 16:26
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One of the issues with the production of anything is the number of people required to make the widget - that being said, how;
many people are required to keep the Atlas V system in production?
Are the same people used to keep the Delta V going? and
Does the Atlas V cost have to include the costs for the Delta IV?
The production, engineering and operations teams cross product lines.
If the Delta IV were removed, then some of these people can be removed from the system, reducing overhead cost?
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#23
by
Jim
on 08 May, 2014 16:35
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yes, and that would also include shutting down two launch pads, a HIF, a control center and offices, possibly a ship, etc
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#24
by
edkyle99
on 08 May, 2014 16:41
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F9 v1.1 does 3650kg to 1,500m/s GTO, 401 does 3,460kg.
Can you show me where that Falcon 9 number came from? I suspect it is an old number. SpaceX hasn't release details like that about v1.1 to my knowledge.
- Ed Kyle
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#25
by
baldusi
on 08 May, 2014 20:14
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F9 v1.1 does 3650kg to 1,500m/s GTO, 401 does 3,460kg.
Can you show me where that Falcon 9 number came from? I suspect it is an old number. SpaceX hasn't release details like that about v1.1 to my knowledge.
- Ed Kyle
I took the number from the NLS II site (185km x 35768km x 15deg). But it's also true that after the Thaicom mission SpaceX disclosed that they had reserved 300kg of GTO performance. Thus, to a 1,800m/s GTO, it can actually launch 5,150kg. Which is what SES contracted for, BTW. And this would agree with 3,650kg to a 1,500m/s GTO.
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#26
by
BrightLight
on 08 May, 2014 20:17
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yes, and that would also include shutting down two launch pads, a HIF, a control center and offices, possibly a ship, etc
In general terms - is this a whole lot of money or trivial?
roughly how many people are employed by ULA?
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#27
by
baldusi
on 08 May, 2014 21:28
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yes, and that would also include shutting down two launch pads, a HIF, a control center and offices, possibly a ship, etc
Control center and offices aren't going to be closed anyways because of Common Avionics?
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#28
by
Jim
on 08 May, 2014 22:47
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yes, and that would also include shutting down two launch pads, a HIF, a control center and offices, possibly a ship, etc
In general terms - is this a whole lot of money or trivial?
roughly how many people are employed by ULA?
3700
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#29
by
Jim
on 08 May, 2014 22:48
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Control center and offices aren't going to be closed anyways because of Common Avionics?
Delta and Atlas have separate LCC's.
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#30
by
BrightLight
on 08 May, 2014 22:52
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yes, and that would also include shutting down two launch pads, a HIF, a control center and offices, possibly a ship, etc
In general terms - is this a whole lot of money or trivial?
roughly how many people are employed by ULA?
3700
wow - my arm waving here - if ULA made a 25% reduction in force to only fly the Atlas and a average full time equivalent cost $250,000 per year, that's over $230 million - that can be a substantial portion of the expense in the Atlas.
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#31
by
clongton
on 08 May, 2014 23:55
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yes, and that would also include shutting down two launch pads, a HIF, a control center and offices, possibly a ship, etc
In general terms - is this a whole lot of money or trivial?
roughly how many people are employed by ULA?
3700
wow - my arm waving here - if ULA made a 25% reduction in force to only fly the Atlas and a average full time equivalent cost $250,000 per year, that's over $230 million - that can be a substantial portion of the expense in the Atlas.
You can't just cut percentages. There are skill sets that MUST be kept intact regardless of the workforce size.
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#32
by
gospacex
on 09 May, 2014 00:21
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Where does the expense come from in the Atlas V?
From ULA.
Gotta go....
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#33
by
kevin-rf
on 09 May, 2014 11:53
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I'll make the argument all launchers have subsidies, it is just ULA's are more visible.
Do SpaceX's prices include the full accounting costs it has taken to develop the Falcon 9? At $50 something million a flight, how long will it take to pay off the development costs?
Ariane had many subsidies in the past allowing lower current costs. Notice without these subsidies SpaceX is giving them a run for the money.
Proton was paid for and written off long before it became available on the commercial market. Does Proton still use conscripts as part of the launch operations?
I think a handful of things keep the perceived costs so high.
1. Fully audit-able cost accounting.
2. A large well paid workforce. Putting all the employees on conscript gruel and wages would not fly.
3. Double checking/documenting everything (That is not free). An alligator waddles into the VIF, someone gets paid to write a report.
4. Being Horizontally integrated adds cost at every step of the process. Instead of paying the overhead of a single company, you are paying the overhead of all the suppliers plus ULA. SpaceX by being vertically integrates avoids having to pay this additional overhead.
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#34
by
WHAP
on 09 May, 2014 13:24
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I'll make the argument all launchers have subsidies, it is just ULA's are more visible.
Do SpaceX's prices include the full accounting costs it has taken to develop the Falcon 9? At $50 something million a flight, how long will it take to pay off the development costs?
Ariane had many subsidies in the past allowing lower current costs. Notice without these subsidies SpaceX is giving them a run for the money.
Proton was paid for and written off long before it became available on the commercial market. Does Proton still use conscripts as part of the launch operations?
I think a handful of things keep the perceived costs so high.
1. Fully audit-able cost accounting.
2. A large well paid workforce. Putting all the employees on conscript gruel and wages would not fly.
3. Double checking/documenting everything (That is not free). An alligator waddles into the VIF, someone gets paid to write a report.
4. Being Horizontally integrated adds cost at every step of the process. Instead of paying the overhead of a single company, you are paying the overhead of all the suppliers plus ULA. SpaceX by being vertically integrates avoids having to pay this additional overhead.
5. Profits. Having two masters that want profits (documented in the LMT and BA annual report), vs. one who wants none. And horizontal integration also increases cost beyond overhead, as each supplier is going to make money. These aren't profits of 20% at each stage, but they still add up.
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#35
by
edkyle99
on 09 May, 2014 13:39
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F9 v1.1 does 3650kg to 1,500m/s GTO, 401 does 3,460kg.
Can you show me where that Falcon 9 number came from? I suspect it is an old number. SpaceX hasn't release details like that about v1.1 to my knowledge.
- Ed Kyle
I took the number from the NLS II site (185km x 35768km x 15deg). But it's also true that after the Thaicom mission SpaceX disclosed that they had reserved 300kg of GTO performance. Thus, to a 1,800m/s GTO, it can actually launch 5,150kg. Which is what SES contracted for, BTW. And this would agree with 3,650kg to a 1,500m/s GTO.
We'll have to see about those NLS II numbers. They seem overoptimistic, or simply outdated, to me.
- Ed Kyle
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#36
by
Roy_H
on 16 May, 2014 17:00
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I'll make the argument all launchers have subsidies, it is just ULA's are more visible.
Do SpaceX's prices include the full accounting costs it has taken to develop the Falcon 9? At $50 something million a flight, how long will it take to pay off the development costs?
Ariane had many subsidies in the past allowing lower current costs. Notice without these subsidies SpaceX is giving them a run for the money.
Proton was paid for and written off long before it became available on the commercial market. Does Proton still use conscripts as part of the launch operations?
I think a handful of things keep the perceived costs so high.
1. Fully audit-able cost accounting.
2. A large well paid workforce. Putting all the employees on conscript gruel and wages would not fly.
3. Double checking/documenting everything (That is not free). An alligator waddles into the VIF, someone gets paid to write a report.
4. Being Horizontally integrated adds cost at every step of the process. Instead of paying the overhead of a single company, you are paying the overhead of all the suppliers plus ULA. SpaceX by being vertically integrates avoids having to pay this additional overhead.
5. Profits. Having two masters that want profits (documented in the LMT and BA annual report), vs. one who wants none. And horizontal integration also increases cost beyond overhead, as each supplier is going to make money. These aren't profits of 20% at each stage, but they still add up.
Elaborating on point 4. Someone said that ULA reported an average profit of $43M per launch. Elon stated that ULA has in extreme cases 5 sub-contractor deep structure. If each of these takes a similar percentage markup, the costs can easily double. This is not all ULA's fault, the politics of the business is that to get Congressional support, everybody wants a piece of the pie, and wants some parts sub-contracted to their district. Congressmen want to keep these jobs in their district, and will fight SpaceX at every turn.
ULA will never be able to compete with SpaceX without a more vertical integration, but they won't have to if Congress has any say.
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#37
by
Go4TLI
on 16 May, 2014 17:25
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5. Profits. Having two masters that want profits (documented in the LMT and BA annual report), vs. one who wants none. And horizontal integration also increases cost beyond overhead, as each supplier is going to make money. These aren't profits of 20% at each stage, but they still add up.
If this is serious it shows the ridiculousness of some of the SpaceX crowd.
Yes, now Musk and SpaceX want no profits whatsoever. They are going to run a company that forever nets to zero dollars or loses money. They will do all these grand things they have spoken about from the money that grows on the tree in the backyard. In addition, all SpaceX employees will forever forgo any pay increases regardless if they have earned or the cost of living changes. Such wonderful people....
And "horizontal integration" gets a unfair pounding as if it is "bad" in the same way people rail away at certain types of contracts. It depends on the situation and it doesn't always make sense to establish a capability, gain the expertise, etc when a supplier of those products and that expertise is available.
Take Boeing for example. It would be very difficult as a company from a management, cost and competitive viewpoint to have every capability under the Boeing roof to produce everything ever needed for every single type of aircraft (commercial and military), sats of all kinds, spacecraft of all kinds and every other program they are involved in.
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#38
by
Antares
on 16 May, 2014 18:14
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How do you equate profits and pay increases? If SpaceX wants pay increases, it will raise prices. There's no reason to assume prices are static.
Do you consider revenue that goes back into R&D of new things to be profit? There's a reason why SpaceX doesn't IPO: it's the loss of control (and the openness that regulations require of a publicly held company).
Everyone said the same thing about vertical integration, until SpaceX did it. Seems to work. Assumptions have to be turned on their heads every once in a while.
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#39
by
pathfinder_01
on 16 May, 2014 22:40
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And "horizontal integration" gets a unfair pounding as if it is "bad" in the same way people rail away at certain types of contracts. It depends on the situation and it doesn't always make sense to establish a capability, gain the expertise, etc when a supplier of those products and that expertise is available.
Take Boeing for example. It would be very difficult as a company from a management, cost and competitive viewpoint to have every capability under the Boeing roof to produce everything ever needed for every single type of aircraft (commercial and military), sats of all kinds, spacecraft of all kinds and every other program they are involved in.
I think that in the rocket industry horizontal integration often does not add value. One of the reasons why horizontal integration works, is if the item or part has a larger market than just your own product. The cost per unit could be spread over far more units than you could produce yourself.
Jet engines for instance, aircraft often get their engines replaced. One model of jet engine can be used in more than a single model of airplane both civilian and military and thus having aircraft manufactures separate from engine manufactures works. Boeing makes the air frame and say GE makes the engine.
Another more likely example might be tires and automobiles. Both new and used autos need tires and thus there is a huge market for tires and tire companies like Firestone could offer cheaper tires to auto companies like Ford because they were selling tires to both new and used cars made by Ford as well as others.
Solar panels and satellites might be an third. There are more than one satellite manufacture(Boeing, Orbital, Lockheed Martin, and others each build satellites) and thus there is an market for ATK’s solar panels.
With rocket parts and rocket engines there really is not a huge market to spread costs over many units. ULA was until recently an monopoly. The RD-180 is only cheaper because it is not manufactured in the US. Which for a rocket meant to launch national security payloads saved some money, but just added risk. About the only engines that might be used across more than a single type of rocket are upper stage ones like the RL-10 or some of the solid fueled ones.
I think there may be many inefficiencies built into the standard model of rocket manufacture. The one that ULA uses that don’t make sense and simply add cost or risk. There are not enough rocket manufactures as well as rocket models to spread the cost over multiple units over and instead of save money it just adds costs with more overhead and supplier risk. ATK for instance is not the only solar panel manufacturer and it's panels could be replaced but replacing the RD-180 on Atlas is an major problem.