(snipped)...If you take those out you get down to a more sensible list of approx. 10-15. And even there you have to filter between the likes of Virgin Orbit, who have hundreds of millions of dollars, launch pad deals, a long line of customers, government support, hugely experienced staff, massive facilities - and companies like Aevum.It's unfortunate his study get so much attention. I genuinely think this forum could do better than that paper.
It's unfortunate his study get so much attention. I genuinely think this forum could do better than that paper.
Smallsat launcher schedule / first (successful) flight since thread opening:...(snip)...
Somebody posted this up on Reddit:http://www.spaceworkscommercial.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Nano-Microsatellite-Market-Forecast-8th-Edition-2018.pdfNot sure what they're basing any ranking on. What's IOC mean - "entry into service date"?
#2 is "Kuaizhou 1A. The list says "successful launch and satellite deployment". Did this become Hyperbola-1 or Jielong-1?
Listen to podcast on Black Arrow. They plan to sealaunch from ship, due to limited launch site oprions in UK. https://blackarrow-space.ukLVs are their long term business plan, near term is building composite tanks for aerospace industry. Unlike lot of small LV companies its not case of space or bust, they have viable alternative business plan.
Quote from: PM3 on 10/28/2019 01:15 pmSmallsat launcher schedule / first (successful) flight since thread opening:...(snip)...OK, so in addition to the ones I listed, we have two dark horse candidates (Astra & X-Bow), and Perigee who competes in the <50kg space.
Quote from: ringsider on 10/27/2019 07:26 amIt's unfortunate his study get so much attention. I genuinely think this forum could do better than that paper.It is the only list I have seen that even attempts to exhaustively account for all of the companies out there. Obviously, 90% of the companies will probably fail, and most of them could be called out fairly quickly as non-viable if sufficient information is available from them. But there is not enough public information to do this for all of them, and the final line drawn would be fairly arbitrary anyway. The total number of companies that are trying at any level, and how many have failed so far are interesting metrics that say a lot about the state of the industry.
Don't dismiss something just because it doesn't communicate the specific piece of information you want or use your specific judging criteria. It is obviously useful to create a shortlist of which companies are actually known to be on track to get a launch in the next couple years, and multiple people have done so on this thread. That doesn't mean that the total number of claimed competitors is useless information, for example, rates of new companies joining and rates of failure can be extracted and tell a story.
Smallsat launcher schedule / first (successful) flight since thread opening:2018-01 Electron US/NZ Rocket Lab2019-07 Hyperbola-1 China iSpace2019-08 Jielong-1 China Chinarocket (state-owned)Planned or expected (NET)2019-11 LauncherOne US Virgin2019 Astra US Astra2019 Simorgh Iran (state-owned)2019 Kuaizhou-11 China (state-owned)2019 OS-M1 China OneSpace2020-Q1 SSLV India ISRO (state-owned)2020-03 Firefly α US/Ukr Firefly2020-07 Blue Whale 1 Korea Perigee2020 Ceres-1 China Galactic Energy2020 RS1 US ABL2020 Jielong-2 China Chinarocket (state-owned)2020 Nebula-1 China Deep Blue2020? Super Strypi US X-Bow2021 Terran 1 US Relativity2021 Newline-1 China LinkSpaceAll the rest (realistically) 2022+.Failed: Vector[2019-10-29: updated SSLV]
Good information ringsider, thanks. That kind of argues for the original list I posted as the most likely list of plausibles.In staring at the vehicles on this list I've come to see that there isn't one group of competitors, there are actually two. The vehicles break out into smallsat vehicles (Electron, Prime, LauncherOne) and much larger (3x-5x the size) vehicles for medium to heavy satellites (Firefly Alpha, Terran 1, RS1).The bigger rockets don't actually have to worry about competing against smallsat launchers for a lot of the primary payload range they are capable of launching but could potentially aggregate/rideshare smallsats to steal payloads from the smallsat launchers (and in turn they are all subject to that happening from SpaceX & others on the big vehicles).I am curious about the actual addressable market size. Does anyone know a good reference for how many payloads of a given weight class generally launch every year? https://www.nanosats.eu/ seems to have some good info but I haven't seen it broken out in a way that would be useful to figuring out how many payloads these launchers are actually likely to be fighting over.
Quote from: PM3 on 10/28/2019 01:15 pmSmallsat launcher schedule / first (successful) flight since thread opening:2018-01 Electron US/NZ Rocket Lab2019-07 Hyperbola-1 China iSpace2019-08 Jielong-1 China Chinarocket (state-owned)Planned or expected (NET)2019-11 LauncherOne US Virgin2019 Astra US Astra2019 Simorgh Iran (state-owned)2019 Kuaizhou-11 China (state-owned)2019 OS-M1 China OneSpace2020-Q1 SSLV India ISRO (state-owned)2020-03 Firefly α US/Ukr Firefly2020-07 Blue Whale 1 Korea Perigee2020 Ceres-1 China Galactic Energy2020 RS1 US ABL2020 Jielong-2 China Chinarocket (state-owned)2020 Nebula-1 China Deep Blue2020? Super Strypi US X-Bow2021 Terran 1 US Relativity2021 Newline-1 China LinkSpaceAll the rest (realistically) 2022+.Failed: Vector[2019-10-29: updated SSLV]The only company, that imho, should be add in this list is Launcher Space...they are coming very slow...but they have the money and the product, for survive...and put something that actually fly in the next years...https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47486.msg1913440#msg1913440
Firstly there is a huge amount of quite public information on almost all the vehicles in his study. See above for the so-called secret one, X-Bow. I put that together in half an hour. You could do that for all the 100+ groups on his list in a week or two, and not to go to that level is a poor methodology.
Secondly I disagree about the metric: that is like saying "this is how many people say they want to be an astronaut" rather than "thes are the 12 astronaut candidates selected by NASA". It should be obvious that just wanting to be an astronaut doesn't make it either possible or likely. More important are things that qualfiy you to be an astronaut, like educational background in hard subjects, aerospace experience, physical fitness, size and weight, visual acuity. You are overweight, didn't get a degree, never piloted an aircraft and you want to be an astronaut? Awesome, this is why we have video games.
I think that list is worse than useless, I think it is actively misleading, because it is built on criteria that are too inclusive, like listing everybody who wants to be an astronaut, without asking the critical questions about qualifications. So we know there are a lot of people who would like to be an astronaut? Great - who didn't know that?
Beyond that his list is not even exhaustive, as it doesn't include several firms e.g. Agnikul in India (http://www.agnikul.in/) and others I could name. So what metric are we getting? The wrong numerator over the wrong denominator.
And I could make it worse, by opening a few bogus launcher company websites for the next survey, and forcing him to include them in his list. I might just do that; I might just build a couple of new launcher firms and let him include them and then debunk his methodology by revealing they are totally fictitious, and that his survey doesn't discriminate effectively.
Much of what you put together is simply not relevant for his paper, and you for some strange reason included a link to the wiki page of a different rocket that flew and failed once 4 years ago.
And now you seem to be suggesting that you are going to intentionally lie, setting up fake companies to mess with the results of a published paper.I'd comment on that, but maybe you should just read that previous sentence I wrote a couple of times and reflect on it. Imagine what you would think if you heard someone say they were going to do that in some other context.
Quote from: meberbs on 10/29/2019 06:43 pmMuch of what you put together is simply not relevant for his paper, and you for some strange reason included a link to the wiki page of a different rocket that flew and failed once 4 years ago. The strange reason is the one I wrote above: text written by X-Bow in support of the Hawaii launch site states that the X-Bow concept is based on LEONIDAS, which is Spark AKA Super Strypi:-
Oh you mean like the scientists who published a bunch of totally bogus papers to expose the scandal of academic publishing?https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/Appalling.And anyway, I actually intend to actively develop those rockets, eventually. Really. Sure - I don't have any money, or a team, or a rocket factory, or customers. But I - I should say "we" - will have a Twitter account and a single page website, and I sincerely intend to build those damn rockets, one day. I expect a few new efforts will pop up in the next year or so. Will you spot the imposter? There's nothing fake about them if they fulfill the criteria, right?
Quote from: ringsider on 10/29/2019 07:53 pmThe strange reason is the one I wrote above: text written by X-Bow in support of the Hawaii launch site states that the X-Bow concept is based on LEONIDAS, which is Spark AKA Super Strypi:- And I should know that how? The wiki article doesn't mention the LEONIDAS name.
The strange reason is the one I wrote above: text written by X-Bow in support of the Hawaii launch site states that the X-Bow concept is based on LEONIDAS, which is Spark AKA Super Strypi:-
What you are claiming is not the same as what you referenced, and even if you succeeded, adding 3 more to the watch list would not really change much.
There are certainly ones currently on the list that are either too incompetent to ever get anywhere, or possibly outright frauds. It doesn't matter, as there is no rigorous criteria to split them into unarguable categories.
Again, if you can do better than the paper, feel free to. If you aren't going to do so, then stop insisting that metrics and viability, and what is worth tracking, should all be determined at your discretion.
