Who will compete with SpaceX? The last two and next two years.

[Basto]

remember they expect to be able to fly a used core the day after its previous mission in 2040 next year.

You are misunderstanding what has been said about reuse. The 24 hour turnaround on a booster refers to refurbishment/inspection.  It does not mean the same booster will fly again within 24 hours.

Just moving the booster from the refurbishment facility to the HIF, mating to the TEL, and integrating S2 would likely take more than 24hours.

I am by no means diminishing the accomplishment of reuse. Just trying to keep the facts straight. Even getting a booster reused within a month would be a huge accomplishment.

[AbuSimbel]

remember they expect to be able to fly a used core the day after its previous mission in 2040 next year.

You are misunderstanding what has been said about reuse. The 24 hour turnaround on a booster refers to refurbishment/inspection.  It does not mean the same booster will fly again within 24 hours.

Just moving the booster from the refurbishment facility to the HIF, mating to the TEL, and integrating S2 would likely take more than 24hours.

I am by no means diminishing the accomplishment of reuse. Just trying to keep the facts straight. Even getting a booster reused within a month would be a huge accomplishment.

He said 'reflight within 24 hours', and he probably was deliberately lax with his words, as I am, because it's not a matter of 1 hour or 1 day more from flight to flight. We are talking about possible short term developments so astounding that it won't matter if it's just a day or a week. Even if they deliver on half the targeted capabilities, three years later, they will be in an unprecedented position.

[meekGee]

S1 reuse is down to 2-3 months now, and headed for under a week with block 5.

Block 5 will fly >10 times  without refurbishment.

S1 is the bulk of the cost of the rocket.

How the hell is this not indicative of near 10x reduction  in cost?

They chose not to grapple with second stage reuse for the time being, but is there any doubt that for light-to-medium payloads, S2 can be parachuted back?  It's just that apparently they have bigger fish to fry, and foresee a pretty weak demand on S1 production, for all the best reasons.

[gongora]

S1 reuse is down to 2-3 months now, and headed for under a week with block 5.

Block 5 will fly >10 times  without refurbishment.

S1 is the bulk of the cost of the rocket.

How the hell is this not indicative of near 10x reduction  in cost?

It's not even close from the customer's perspective.  If SpaceX saves $20M on first stage cost and passes that along to the customer it's not even a 50% reduction, unless SpaceX also throws away a lot of their profit margin.

They chose not to grapple with second stage reuse for the time being, but is there any doubt that for light-to-medium payloads, S2 can be parachuted back?

On F9?  I think there is certainly plenty of doubt there.

[gospacex]

remember they expect to be able to fly a used core the day after its previous mission in 2040 next year.

You are misunderstanding what has been said about reuse. The 24 hour turnaround on a booster refers to refurbishment/inspection.  It does not mean the same booster will fly again within 24 hours.

Just moving the booster from the refurbishment facility to the HIF, mating to the TEL, and integrating S2 would likely take more than 24hours.

It depends on how hard you are trying. If you decide that you absolutely must to get it below 24 hours, you design your operations so that it is possible.

You surely can't replace all four tires on a car in just one minute, right?



As it turns out, if you must, you can do it 30 times faster than that.

[tvg98]

remember they expect to be able to fly a used core the day after its previous mission in 2040 next year.

You are misunderstanding what has been said about reuse. The 24 hour turnaround on a booster refers to refurbishment/inspection.  It does not mean the same booster will fly again within 24 hours.

Just moving the booster from the refurbishment facility to the HIF, mating to the TEL, and integrating S2 would likely take more than 24hours.

I am by no means diminishing the accomplishment of reuse. Just trying to keep the facts straight. Even getting a booster reused within a month would be a huge accomplishment.

Seems like that is not what he meant: Tweet from Elon Musk

[abaddon]

It's not even close from the customer's perspective.  If SpaceX saves $20M on first stage cost and passes that along to the customer it's not even a 50% reduction, unless SpaceX also throws away a lot of their profit margin.

Agreed.  The sad thing is that the breathless hyperbole makes the possibility of "only" a 50% reduction on what is already the cheapest launcher out there sound poor!

[meekGee]

S1 reuse is down to 2-3 months now, and headed for under a week with block 5.

Block 5 will fly >10 times  without refurbishment.

S1 is the bulk of the cost of the rocket.

How the hell is this not indicative of near 10x reduction  in cost?

It's not even close from the customer's perspective.  If SpaceX saves $20M on first stage cost and passes that along to the customer it's not even a 50% reduction, unless SpaceX also throws away a lot of their profit margin.

They chose not to grapple with second stage reuse for the time being, but is there any doubt that for light-to-medium payloads, S2 can be parachuted back?

On F9?  I think there is certainly plenty of doubt there.

The price to the customer is SpaceX's business decision. As long as price >  cost, you have a viable company.

The rocket is mostly S1.  The cost of that is being reduced by more than 10x.   This is because it will fly easily more than 10 times, with very minimal work in between.

The thing is, SpaceX won't see this reduction (amortised!) until the rocket flies 10 times, which will take a while, even if you assume 3-4 active S1s in rotation.

Meanwhile, SpaceX will be launching more and more while basically not paying for S1s, with a ridiculously low per launch cost.

[gongora]

A 90% reduction in customer cost would only let them charge enough to build a second stage.  They can't get 10x reduction on Falcon.

[envy887]

S1 reuse is down to 2-3 months now, and headed for under a week with block 5.

Block 5 will fly >10 times  without refurbishment.

S1 is the bulk of the cost of the rocket.

How the hell is this not indicative of near 10x reduction  in cost?

It's not even close from the customer's perspective.  If SpaceX saves $20M on first stage cost and passes that along to the customer it's not even a 50% reduction, unless SpaceX also throws away a lot of their profit margin.

SpaceX is planning to be their own biggest customer in about 2.5 years. Fairing and booster reuse will save them up to 80+% internally and make their internal cost about 10x cheaper for the same payload than if they had to go out an buy launches.

To external customers they would "only" be about 4 or 5x cheaper (about double the payload for half the price).

[envy887]

A 90% reduction in customer cost would only let them charge enough to build a second stage.  They can't get 10x reduction on Falcon.

Don't forget that Falcon can lift bigger payloads with partial reuse than any expendable competitor in the same price range. For large or fungible payloads this is critical.

[abaddon]

A 90% reduction in customer cost would only let them charge enough to build a second stage.  They can't get 10x reduction on Falcon.

Not to mention covering payload integration, range costs, launch facility costs, payroll to support the launch, other expenses, etc...

[RedLineTrain]

A 90% reduction in customer cost would only let them charge enough to build a second stage.  They can't get 10x reduction on Falcon.

They could get awful close with Falcon Heavy, assuming dual launch of supersized birds to GTO, with the baseline as the current price for Ariane 5.

I don't suggest that they will go this approach, however.

[MP99]

Will we ever get to a point where a higher failure rate - on unmanned flights - becomes an acceptable price to pay for dramatically lower launch costs?

Say 5 failures in every 100 launches, but in exchange for an order of magnitude drop in launch costs?

5 percent is the overall current failure rate for orbital launch vehicles world-wide, expendable or not.  Falcon 9 has an 8 percent failure rate so far if AMOS 6 is included.  SpaceX will have to improve that rate no matter what it charges for a launch if it wants to compete with Arianespace and ULA, which have demonstrate 1-3% failure rates.

 - Ed Kyle

SpaceX is competing with Arianespace and ULA.  Ariane 5, Delta IV-M, and Atlas V itself are being retired -- due to that competition -- before another hundred (cumulative) launches, and new economized rockets will be their replacements.  Are you assuming each of these vendors is able to create new, 'cheap' rockets that are as reliable as their current expensive ones?

ULA is retiring Atlas and Delta not due to competition, but because it is being forced to stop using RD-180.  Europe wanted to reduce its Arianespace costs, which largely led to Ariane 6, though SpaceX appears to have been an influence.

Launch reliability is not just about the rocket.  It is also about the corporate cultures, the methods and processes, etc.  Arianespace and ULA (and its predecessors) have established their top-tier reliability records while using several different launch vehicles.  SpaceX is on a path to approach their results, but as it keeps tweaking its designs and launch processing methods, it is still on the "learning curve" where failures are more frequent.

 - Ed Kyle

I wonder how much of the engineering changes for block 5 come from crawling all over the recovered boosters?

It should make it easier to detect near misses.

Cheers, Martin

Cheers, Martin

[Coastal Ron]

The facts also show that SpaceX is nowhere near reducing launch costs by an order of magnitude (ignoring the several orders of magnitude reduction required for Mars for the moment). It's all fugazi.

Not sure how you can say that when the facts show they have decreased launch costs by a magnitude - just with Falcon 9.

For instance, we used the Shuttle to move heavy components to LEO for building the ISS. Studies have shown (and NASA agrees) that a Shuttle flight cost $1.2B on average (without DDT&E), and on average the heaviest components weighed about 15mT, meaning it cost about $80M/mT to use the Shuttle.

Using Falcon 9 today costs $62M to move up to 22mT to LEO, so using the same 15mT figure that works out to $4.1M/mT to LEO. Which is about 1/20 the cost of using the Shuttle.

So I'd say for that particular unit of work that SpaceX has reduced launch costs by a order of magnitude. And in the next two years SpaceX should have Falcon Heavy operational, which while further reduce launch costs.

[Basto]

remember they expect to be able to fly a used core the day after its previous mission in 2040 next year.

You are misunderstanding what has been said about reuse. The 24 hour turnaround on a booster refers to refurbishment/inspection.  It does not mean the same booster will fly again within 24 hours.

Just moving the booster from the refurbishment facility to the HIF, mating to the TEL, and integrating S2 would likely take more than 24hours.

It depends on how hard you are trying. If you decide that you absolutely must to get it below 24 hours, you design your operations so that it is possible.

You surely can't replace all four tires on a car in just one minute, right?



As it turns out, if you must, you can do it 30 times faster than that.

So to use your analogy... yes it possible to change all four tires on a car in seconds but how much does that cost?  Pretty sure those guys make more than a technician at your local Firestone. Not to mention the fact that there were at least 10 dudes jammed around that car.

So if SpaceX quadruples the number of employees and runs them in four shifts maybe they can get a booster from the landing pad to the launch pad in 24 hours. But what is the point?  I do see that EM stated they wanted 24 hours (and I had thought that Shotwell walked that back to 24 hours from landing to available to launch again but can't recall where that came from).

I thought we were talking about reducing the costs of launch...

[gongora]

For instance, we used the Shuttle to move heavy components to LEO for building the ISS. Studies have shown (and NASA agrees) that a Shuttle flight cost $1.2B on average (without DDT&E), and on average the heaviest components weighed about 15mT, meaning it cost about $80M/mT to use the Shuttle.
...

By this reasoning haven't a bunch of launch providers reduced costs by an order of magnitude?

[launchwatcher]

You surely can't replace all four tires on a car in just one minute, right? ... As it turns out, if you must, you can do it 30 times faster than that.

So rather than one mechanic and one air wrench, you need a crew of 20, four extra fast and expensive air wrenches, etc.; if you optimize for cost in order to increase volume and build the market this isn't where you'll end up.

[Brovane]

Ed - The conclusion on this board was that SpaceX bid two quotes for the 1st GPS launch contract and the lower bid was Horizontal Integration and the higher bid was for Vertical Integration.  The board also concluded that the lower bid was selected and it was for horizontal integration.  (Since the GPS Bus Supports both methods) 

Extremely odd to allow a bidder to provide more than one bid--so odd that unless someone can quote the RFP verbiage allowing such that I highly doubt it.  The norm is specifically to disallow such.

The requirements are not fungible or negotiable.  Bidder can't say "if you require X, the price is $Y, but if you want P, the prices is $Q, or hey, we can provide this cool capability S [which you didn't require] for $T".

Those sorts of shenanigans lead to all sorts of difficulties; for example, Boeing vs. Airbus USAF tanker bid.

Specific board reference that for the GPS 3-2 contract that SpaceX submitted two proposals for this contract.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33921.msg1525015#msg1525015

[AbuSimbel]

I think this whole discussion about the tenfold price reduction is baseless. Where does this number come from? A promise by Elon? If that's the case:
1. Why do some of you equal a tenfold decrease in launch price to a 90% discount on a current expendable F9 FT? I think it should bereferred to what other LSP offered at the time the 'promise' was made
2.Nobody quotes actual numbers, and I'm talking about $/kg to LEO or whatever fair parameter you choose.

Arguably you should compare the supposed price of a reusable Block 5 F9, $/kg to LEO, to the best offer $/kg to LEO (accounting for inflation) available from the competition at the time the  tenfold reduction 'promise' was made...