One thread was about the cost of production of the Falcon 9, and how it was 5 to 10 times cheaper than what NASA could have produced.
I don't expect them to produce EVERYTHING though. That would be insane. Does anyone know of any of their suppliers?
One thread was about the cost of production of the Falcon 9, and how it was 5 to 10 times cheaper than what NASA could have produced. Now, I am curious. How is that possible?
There's a YouTube video of Elon speaking somewhere in 2003 saying ... "we're really just a systems integrator, we're buying things from other people", but by the time I showed up in 2005 that had completely turned around and pretty much everything was getting done in-house. And you can see why when you see the interactions with these suppliers, particularly the ones in the space industry. They think they're the only ones who can make this widget or who have the secret sauce, and when you say "no, you're too expensive", they say "well, that's what it is". And they're used to customers who, if they slip the schedule and double the price, the customer shrugs and goes back to headquarters and says, "well, it's gonna take twice as long and it's gonna cost twice as much", and that's how things go in a traditional government run program.But SpaceX would say "no, that's not acceptable", and they'd cancel the contract. And sometimes these suppliers were literally scoffing on the phone as you hung up, and call you back a few months later saying "so, have you changed your mind yet?" And being able to say to them that "no, if you can do it, then maybe somebody else can do it too", like either SpaceX figured out how to do it themselves, because they hired some smart people and gave them the resources and tools, or you find another supplier with maybe a non-space version and you upgrade and qualify it for space.And now what you've done, this backward supplier has bred a competitor for themselves, where they're not used to competition. I mean, many of the suppliers in this industry would just go out of business in a heartbeat if competition were actually introduced.So really that's the game changing stuff that SpaceX has been doing: bringing stuff in-house, not just because it gives them control of cost and schedule, but because the space suppliers, traditional suppliers just don't get it. They're not used to being held to schedules and budgets.And that's not true of everybody, but there is list of anecdotes I could tell you about suppliers with this attitude. And in each case either SpaceX brings it in-house and makes it successfully, or they find another supplier and upgrade it, and that supplier is usually thrilled to have a whole new market opened up for them.
Quote from: Arbs001 on 01/04/2016 02:26 pmOne thread was about the cost of production of the Falcon 9, and how it was 5 to 10 times cheaper than what NASA could have produced. There is a slight misunderstanding. They have developed 5 to 10 times cheaper.
For the Falcon 9 analysis, NASA used NAFCOM to predict the development cost for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle using two methodologies:1) Cost to develop Falcon 9 using traditional NASA approach, and2) Cost using a more commercial development approach.Under methodology #1, the cost model predicted that the Falcon 9 would cost $4.0 billion based on a traditional approach. Under methodology #2, NAFCOM predicted $1.7 billion when the inputs were adjusted to a more commercial development approach. Thus, the predicted the cost to develop the Falcon 9 if done by NASA would have been between $1.7 billion and $4.0 billion.SpaceX has publicly indicated that the development cost for Falcon 9 launch vehicle was approximately $300 million. Additionally, approximately $90 million was spent developing the Falcon 1 launch vehicle which did contribute to some extent to the Falcon 9, for a total of $390 million. NASA has verified these costs.It is difficult to determine exactly why the actual cost was so dramatically lower than the NAFCOM predictions. It could be any number of factors associated with the non-traditional public-private partnership under which the Falcon 9 was developed (e.g., fewer NASA processes, reduced oversight, and less overhead), or other factors not directly tied to the development approach. NASA is continuing to refine this analysis to better understand the differences.
Hello all,I think we can all agree that SpaceX is amazing. I've been lurking around here for a little bit, reading up on them. One thread was about the cost of production of the Falcon 9, and how it was 5 to 10 times cheaper than what NASA could have produced. Now, I am curious. How is that possible? Does SpaceX produce everything in-house? I don't expect them to produce EVERYTHING though. That would be insane. Does anyone know of any of their suppliers?
One of the interesting trends at SpaceX is the use of off-the-shelf products not necessarily designed for the aerospace industry (eg the use of GoPro cameras on the fairings). And given Elon's experience with the auto industry, it wouldn't be surprising to find some automotive-type products in their supply chain too. At Orbital Sciences in the days of Pegasus design they were looking at cost-saving items like standard automotive electrical connectors.
As I worked for many years on Military avionic systems, I can probably add a bit of useful information to thishttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Military_connector_specificationsMany off the shelf components MAY be suitable for high speed flight or Spaceflight, However they need to be Tested to much tighter, more rigorous standards.I'm old enough to remember the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7400-series_integrated_circuits and the equivalent 5400 Series. In many cases these were produced in the same production facility, if they failed Mil Spec, they were often still good enough for commercial grade equipment.
