Author Topic: SpaceX and OneWeb internet satellite comparison (Read 121654 times)

Oli · « **Reply #140 on:** 06/23/2015 05:05 pm »

From a cost per utilized capacity point of view I still don't see them winning over GEO sats or O3b for that matter, but if customers want reduced latency that may be secondary.

What is kind of interesting is that it would shift costs from manufacturing to launch. The mass to LEO is probably not big enough though for having a big impact on the launch industry. Depending on their replenishment strategy it might be interesting for reusable small sat launchers. There's also the cost of the ground infrastructure which is an unknown, to me at least.

nadreck · « **Reply #141 on:** 06/23/2015 05:24 pm »

Quote from: Oli on 06/23/2015 05:05 pm

From a cost per utilized capacity point of view I still don't see them winning over GEO sats or O3b for that matter, but if customers want reduced latency that may be secondary.

What is kind of interesting is that it would shift costs from manufacturing to launch. The mass to LEO is probably not big enough though for having a big impact on the launch industry. Depending on their replenishment strategy it might be interesting for reusable small sat launchers. There's also the cost of the ground infrastructure which is an unknown, to me at least.

But how many of the design team from OneWeb and the SpaceX constellation might go on to projects to design GEO sats that cost mere millions instead of hundreds of millions? Then even with today's pricing ($30M for the launch a 2,000kg GEO sat like ABS-3A and EutelSat 115 West B) the total cost of a GEO comms satellite drops enough to give new satellite operators the option to put infrastructure in place at less than a tenth the cost of legacy systems and provides incentive to launch at least replacement of existing capacity in the very short term to compete. Disruptive AND creating LV services demand. If the price of the LV service catches up (goes to single millions) then that is incentive again to redouble capacity on orbit just to compete.

baldusi · « **Reply #142 on:** 06/23/2015 05:46 pm »

Quote from: nadreck on 06/23/2015 04:12 pm

Quote from: TrevorMonty on 06/23/2015 12:38 am
Targeting $500K build cost for 150kg satellite, life 5yrs+.
Launch cost is going to be significant, given they are going to 1200km.

I think a more significant gating of the launch cost will be the dispenser system, or rather what density they can launch these at. I remember numbers like 16 being batted around here. On a simple mass basis there are several of LV that could put the mass of 50 of these in a 1200km near circular orbit. If one such booster that cost in the order of $200M were used it would put the per unit launch cost at $4M on a mass basis, but if only 16 can be arranged in the fairing and dispensed that boosts the unit cost to by more than 3 times! I have no doubt that both OneWeb and SpaceX can achieve costs bellow $1M per unit for their constellations, but for OneWeb to truly take advantage of that cost savings, they also need to have the benefit of both high density dispensers and the cost savings promised with FH, that way they could get launch costs below build costs.

If they became volume limited, the F9 is a particularly cheap choice. Maximum available fairing diameter are Soyuz/Proton/Sea Launch maxes out at 4.1m, Antares 3.9m, GSLV 3.4m, PSLV 3.2m, Dnepr 3m, Vega/Rokot 2.6m, Minotaur C 2.4m. This leaves Araine 5, Atlas V, Delta IV, H-IIA, Angara-5 and Falcon 9. I think the choice, for a really big deployment, would be quite obvious.

TrevorMonty · « **Reply #143 on:** 06/23/2015 08:41 pm »

The DARPA XS-1 vehicles would be an ideal LV for these satellites. $5m for 1500-2500kg to LEO. Not sure of 1200km payload say 1000-1700kg. At this price they could deliver 6-10per launch with cost of <$1M per satellite. With flights every day if need be.

Unfortunately the earliest a XS1 will fly is 2018, 2019-2020 more likely.

baldusi · « **Reply #144 on:** 06/23/2015 10:31 pm »

Quote from: TrevorMonty on 06/23/2015 08:41 pm

The DARPA XS-1 vehicles would be an ideal LV for these satellites. $5m for 1500-2500kg to LEO. Not sure of 1200km payload say 1000-1700kg. At this price they could deliver 6-10per launch with cost of <$1M per satellite. With flights every day if need be.

Unfortunately the earliest a XS1 will fly is 2018, 2019-2020 more likely.

You don't know that they will actually achieve that target. History is against them in that sense. But I wonder how many birds per plane are they planning. I would guess something like 16 planes, or over 50 birds per plane. The question is if they could pack 50 S/C on a F9 fairing. F9 v1.1 can do over 11tonnes to their 1,200 polar orbit. So they could probably put 50 (plus 45% extra for dispenser and payload growth margin).
If they can do their birds 1.2m x 1m x 0.6m, they can easily pack 50 birds in a 5m fairing. That would mean satellites that are 200kg/m³ dense. Very light in my book. At that numbers, And contracting 16 or so launches, they could get under 1M/bird pricing today. And probably 700k or less if RTLS is successful.
As far as I can see, an Ariane Soyuz won't be much cheaper, Angara 1.2 won't be competitive for a while. And even if they can get a PSLV for 20M, it will only be able to launch 10 satellites for a cost of 2M/bird. I simply don't see anything able to touch F9 prices for this application.

MikeAtkinson · « **Reply #145 on:** 06/25/2015 11:51 am »

OneWeb launch with 21 Soyuz from Arianespace.

OneWeb replenishment by LauncherOne 39 flights + option for 100 more.

OneWeb $500M of extra investment by wideranging group - Airbus Group, Bharti Enterprises, Grupo Salinas, Hughes Network Systems, (Hughes), a subsidiary of EchoStar Corp. Intelsat, Qualcomm Incorporated, The Coca-Cola Company and Virgin Group.

Hughes Network Systems - investing in OneWeb and is ground systems provider.

Edit:

Intelsat investing $25M in OneWeb. Used for improved maritime/aero delivery and will let OneWeb customers use Intelsat sats at equator.

abaddon · « **Reply #146 on:** 06/25/2015 11:59 am »

So we're talking maybe 45 birds per Souyz? A 21 flight order is enormous! Costliest commercial contract ever?

MikeAtkinson · « **Reply #147 on:** 06/25/2015 12:26 pm »

http://www.inquisitr.com/1430280/russian-rocket-launched-into-wrong-orbit/

This gives a price of $105M to the European Commission for an Arianespace Soyuz launch.

A similar price would be over $2B, I think however that OneWeb will be getting a steep discount on that.

Robotbeat · « **Reply #148 on:** 06/25/2015 12:27 pm »

How much is Ariane's Soyuz cost? $60-90 million per launch? If so, that's $1.2-1.9 billion. They could have saved a pretty penny by launching on Falcon 9, considering it's nearly double payload and/or ability for reuse. Of course, that would also mean helping out their competitor. But I don't expect SpaceX to suffer much because of it.

If you could launch on Falcon 9, that'd be about half the price. On Falcon Heavy (if you could fit that many birds at once, which you can't really because of the limitation in number of birds per plane), maybe a third the price. Even less (a fifth? A tenth?) with FH's 95% reuse. Of course, you can't realistically launch the whole constellation in 4 or 5 FH/FHR launches, but you could now afford to launch a much larger and heavier constellation, like SpaceX's constellation. (Or possibly even BFR early flights.)

So I actually expect that SpaceX's cost to launch the SpaceXtellation won't be too much worse than OneWeb's cost to launch OneWeb, even though the SpaceXtellation will be 20-50 times the mass.

At high flight rate, you should be able to get FHR flights down below $50 million per flight cost. That's an order of magnitude less than what One-Web is likely paying per kg. and far, far less if you include LauncherOne costs. Additionally, I expect the SpaceXtellation could reach initial operation in just a few hundred satellites, so the initial launch costs for SpaceX may be even lower than OneWeb (since FHR is likely to have already reached an appreciable launch rate for other customers).

guckyfan · « **Reply #149 on:** 06/25/2015 12:33 pm »

Quote from: MikeAtkinson on 06/25/2015 11:51 am

Intelsat investing $25M in OneWeb. Used for improved maritime/aero delivery and will let OneWeb customers use Intelsat sats at equator.

One Web cannot serve the equator region.

MikeAtkinson · « **Reply #150 on:** 06/25/2015 01:18 pm »

Quote

Arianespace ‏@Arianespace 55m55 minutes ago
#OneWeb contract covers 21 #Soyuz launches, plus options for five more with the medium-lift workhorse and three using the next-gen #Ariane6

nadreck · « **Reply #151 on:** 06/25/2015 01:19 pm »

Quote from: guckyfan on 06/25/2015 12:33 pm

One Web cannot serve the equator region.

What, where did this come up? I thought his target group included included equatorial Africa and central America.

Nomadd · « **Reply #152 on:** 06/25/2015 01:22 pm »

Soyuz is a pretty high profit launcher according to some sources. One Russian claimed they spend less than $20 million on non manned missions.

MikeAtkinson · « **Reply #153 on:** 06/25/2015 01:24 pm »

Total OneWeb cost is

Satellite Build: ~$500M (guess)
Launcher One: 39 x <$10M = ~$300M
Soyuz : 21 x <$100M = ~$1800M
Ground segment : ~ $100M (guess)

Total: ~ $2.7B

So current funding of $500M is only ~20% of the total.

MikeAtkinson · « **Reply #154 on:** 06/25/2015 01:27 pm »

Quote from: guckyfan on 06/25/2015 12:33 pm

Quote from: MikeAtkinson on 06/25/2015 11:51 am
Intelsat investing $25M in OneWeb. Used for improved maritime/aero delivery and will let OneWeb customers use Intelsat sats at equator.

One Web cannot serve the equator region.

OneWeb can serve the equator region, Intelsat sats may just provide another option for customers.

nadreck · « **Reply #155 on:** 06/25/2015 01:41 pm »

Quote from: MikeAtkinson on 06/25/2015 01:24 pm

Total OneWeb cost is

Satellite Build: ~$500M (guess)
Launcher One: 39 x <$10M = ~$300M
Soyuz : 21 x <$100M = ~$1800M
Ground segment : ~ $100M (guess)

Total: ~ $2.7B

So current funding of $500M is only ~20% of the total.

I would note that Iridium managed to use a lot of debt financing. I think floating ~$2B in bonds is possible.

guckyfan · « **Reply #156 on:** 06/25/2015 02:04 pm »

Quote from: MikeAtkinson on 06/25/2015 01:27 pm

Quote from: guckyfan on 06/25/2015 12:33 pm
One Web cannot serve the equator region.

OneWeb can serve the equator region, Intelsat sats may just provide another option for customers.

Then how does using Intelsat make any sense?

Nomadd · « **Reply #157 on:** 06/25/2015 02:17 pm »

Quote from: nadreck on 06/25/2015 01:41 pm

Quote from: MikeAtkinson on 06/25/2015 01:24 pm
Total OneWeb cost is

Satellite Build: ~$500M (guess)
Launcher One: 39 x <$10M = ~$300M
Soyuz : 21 x <$100M = ~$1800M
Ground segment : ~ $100M (guess)

Total: ~ $2.7B

So current funding of $500M is only ~20% of the total.

I would note that Iridium managed to use a lot of debt financing. I think floating ~$2B in bonds is possible.

Iridium went bankrupt.

Nomadd · « **Reply #158 on:** 06/25/2015 02:18 pm »

Quote from: guckyfan on 06/25/2015 12:33 pm

One Web cannot serve the equator region.

Why would it have a problem with the equator? Polar regions, maybe.

su27k · « **Reply #159 on:** 06/25/2015 02:32 pm »

Quote from: Robotbeat on 06/25/2015 12:27 pm

How much is Ariane's Soyuz cost? $60-90 million per launch? If so, that's $1.2-1.9 billion. They could have saved a pretty penny by launching on Falcon 9, considering it's nearly double payload and/or ability for reuse. Of course, that would also mean helping out their competitor. But I don't expect SpaceX to suffer much because of it.

Based on http://spacenews.com/40177arianespace-eyes-new-soyuz-opportunities-from-baikonur/, it looks like European Soyuz is 60 million euro, but Baikonur Soyuz could be a lot cheaper.