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

[Lar]

What changed is that 'some newspace company' broke out of the hidebound NASA/USAF formula and processes.  They are now kicking some serious butt.

Not to mention a pretty kick ass sales team.

It helps to have a kickass product to sell.

[Lars-J]

A tenfold reduction of current F9 launch prices is not possible with just a reused first stage. The first stage is only ~70% of the cost. So even if you were to have a free first stage (impossible), you would only reduce costs by 70%. Assuming that block 5 is much easier to refurbish, you might see a ~30-40% reduction in cost. (still significant!) 

A tenfold reduction is cost requires a fully reusable launch system, and won't be achievable until the next launch system after F9/FH.

[gospacex]

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.

Obviously.

if you optimize for cost in order to increase volume and build the market this isn't where you'll end up.

The point is:
To increase volume via faster reuse, you need to move S1 from LZ to hangar faster.
In this case adding, say, a custom fixture ("extra fast and expensive air wrench") to turn rocket horizontal in 10 minutes rather than 4 hours is worth it. Even if that fixture costs $100k to build.

[bstrong]

Going to be very hard for others to compete on a broad basis at any level if their competitors own and operate the vast majority of the stack.  Which I expect Bezos and Musk are aiming for, based on how they have approached their other businesses.

Actually Bezos said the opposite. He wants to provide the infrastructure (cheap launch).

I'm not sure why anyone takes Bezos at his word on this. He has a long history of saying he just wants to provide infrastructure, then proceeding to learn everything he can from his customers and working his way up the value chain to compete with them.

Remember when Borders, Toys 'R Us, and Target outsourced e-commerce to Amazon (and how well that worked out for everyone but Amazon)? Same with AWS. It started with a promised focus on low-level infrastructure, but now they offer business email, contact center, video conferencing, etc., in direct competition with many of their customers. There are plenty of other examples (becoming a book publisher, TV and movie producer, etc.), but hopefully that is sufficient to illustrate a pattern.

[rakaydos]

A tenfold reduction of current F9 launch prices is not possible with just a reused first stage. The first stage is only ~70% of the cost. So even if you were to have a free first stage (impossible), you would only reduce costs by 70%. Assuming that block 5 is much easier to refurbish, you might see a ~30-40% reduction in cost. (still significant!) 

A tenfold reduction is cost requires a fully reusable launch system, and won't be achievable until the next launch system after F9/FH.

Stage 2 recovery hardware might be reasonable as a "Secondary payload" on Falcon heavy, and they are already making progress on recovering fairings.

[ZachF]

Going to be very hard for others to compete on a broad basis at any level if their competitors own and operate the vast majority of the stack.  Which I expect Bezos and Musk are aiming for, based on how they have approached their other businesses.

Actually Bezos said the opposite. He wants to provide the infrastructure (cheap launch).

I'm not sure why anyone takes Bezos at his word on this. He has a long history of saying he just wants to provide infrastructure, then proceeding to learn everything he can from his customers and working his way up the value chain to compete with them.

Remember when Borders, Toys 'R Us, and Target outsourced e-commerce to Amazon (and how well that worked out for everyone but Amazon)? Same with AWS. It started with a promised focus on low-level infrastructure, but now they offer business email, contact center, video conferencing, etc., in direct competition with many of their customers. There are plenty of other examples (becoming a book publisher, TV and movie producer, etc.), but hopefully that is sufficient to illustrate a pattern.

I've said this before, but I would not be surprised at all if Bezos is eyeballing a future Amazon constellation put up by BO.

[Owlon]

A tenfold reduction of current F9 launch prices is not possible with just a reused first stage. The first stage is only ~70% of the cost. So even if you were to have a free first stage (impossible), you would only reduce costs by 70%. Assuming that block 5 is much easier to refurbish, you might see a ~30-40% reduction in cost. (still significant!) 

A tenfold reduction is cost requires a fully reusable launch system, and won't be achievable until the next launch system after F9/FH.

Stage 2 recovery hardware might be reasonable as a "Secondary payload" on Falcon heavy, and they are already making progress on recovering fairings.

Spot on. The fairing is another 10% or so of the total cost. Fairing reuse, which seems quite likely to succeed, should bump that up to ~80% theoretical max cost reduction without touching S2 reuse--and stage 2 reuse remains a possibility based on recent comments by Musk. This ignores some external costs, but I would take a semi-educated guess and say those add up to maybe 10% of the total current total.

[Coastal Ron]

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?

May be, and if so then that is a good thing. And my example of the ISS construction was to show a specific large-scale use, since transportation costs were such a high percentage of the overall cost of building the ISS.

For the same payload and orbit (i.e. 15mT to LEO) today ULA would charge $10.3M/mT ($154M launch per ULA RocketBuilder), so that is not quite an "order of magnitude" reduction over the Shuttle, but still 1/8 the cost would have been a significant cost savings.

[Lars-J]

A tenfold reduction of current F9 launch prices is not possible with just a reused first stage. The first stage is only ~70% of the cost. So even if you were to have a free first stage (impossible), you would only reduce costs by 70%. Assuming that block 5 is much easier to refurbish, you might see a ~30-40% reduction in cost. (still significant!) 

A tenfold reduction is cost requires a fully reusable launch system, and won't be achievable until the next launch system after F9/FH.

Stage 2 recovery hardware might be reasonable as a "Secondary payload" on Falcon heavy, and they are already making progress on recovering fairings.

Spot on. The fairing is another 10% or so of the total cost. Fairing reuse, which seems quite likely to succeed, should bump that up to ~80% theoretical max cost reduction without touching S2 reuse--and stage 2 reuse remains a possibility based on recent comments by Musk. This ignores some external costs, but I would take a semi-educated guess and say those add up to maybe 10% of the total current total.

Just 10%? That's exceedingly optimistic, IMO. With 5000 (or closer to 6000) employees - and still growing, they have quite a bit of overhead they need income for in order to be cash flow positive. Their payroll alone is likely over half a billion per year! They also need profit to roll into development of the Mars system.

[Semmel]

A tenfold reduction of current F9 launch prices is not possible with just a reused first stage. The first stage is only ~70% of the cost. So even if you were to have a free first stage (impossible), you would only reduce costs by 70%. Assuming that block 5 is much easier to refurbish, you might see a ~30-40% reduction in cost. (still significant!) 

A tenfold reduction is cost requires a fully reusable launch system, and won't be achievable until the next launch system after F9/FH.

It deosnt go far enough. There is a fundamental limit to how much launch cost can be reduced, even if the launch vehicle would be completely free. There are range fees, regulations to fulfil, payload processing, road blocks to install. I dont know all the components that are relevant but there is a cost to all of that and much more that I dont know about. I would be surprised if the rocket hardware of a launch campaign would even reach 90% of the total launch cost. I unfortunately have no numbers, does someone in the know can provide a document listing the individual costs to launch campaign related activities?

[QuantumG]

It helps to have a kickass product to sell.

Sure, but the Russians are so bad at it that for a while the US was selling more Russian launches than the Russians.

[Coastal Ron]

With 5000 (or closer to 6000) employees - and still growing, they have quite a bit of overhead they need income for in order to be cash flow positive. Their payroll alone is likely over half a billion per year! They also need profit to roll into development of the Mars system.

To be fair they have more than Falcon 9/Heavy launch services to provide money for future projects:

- By 2024 they plan to have their internet-providing satellite network in operation, which I would imagine is supposed to provide most of the revenue needed to support their Mars efforts.

- Sending humans and cargo to Mars won't be for free, so I would imagine they plan to at least break even.

- And we can't forget the last investment round that provided them with $1B to do with as they please.

But I think overall the biggest reduction in cost for moving mass to space will be with the BFR, and not with the Falcon series. However that is beyond the two years being discussed here...

[joek]

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

Someone did not do their homework; see SpaceX Wins GPS III Launch Contract Over ULA, Air Force Magazine, 16-Mar-2017 (emphasis added):

​SpaceX was awarded a $96.5 million contract on Tuesday to provide launch services for the third GPS III satellite, which is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., in February 2019. Elon Musk’s space exploration company beat out United Launch Alliance in a competitive process. Both bids “adequately met our criteria” on technical standards, and price was the decisive factor, said Claire Leon, launch enterprise director at Space and Missile Systems Center, in a phone conference with reporters Wednesday. The launch is SpaceX’s second contract in the GPS III program after being selected in April of 2016 to launch the second GPS III satellite in May 2018.

Per the USAF, this was a head-to-head competition SpaceX vs. ULA for an NSS payload.  Both submitted bids.  SpaceX won.  This was not a case of SpaceX competing with itself and submitting multiple bids. If ULA declined to bid it would have been stated, and we would have heard much more.


p.s. And so much for the proclamation by Some (to paraphrase) "ULA has never lost to SpaceX".  ULA clearly lost this to SpaceX in a competitive bid for an NSS payload.

[Lars-J]

With 5000 (or closer to 6000) employees - and still growing, they have quite a bit of overhead they need income for in order to be cash flow positive. Their payroll alone is likely over half a billion per year! They also need profit to roll into development of the Mars system.

To be fair they have more than Falcon 9/Heavy launch services to provide money for future projects:
[snip]

True, but they also need to stay in business. This simple math can be eye opening: (please excuse very simplistic lowballed numbers) 5000 employees * $100k/year pay = $0.5 billion dollars. If they do 20 launches - $25 million from every launch goes straight to paying the employees. (If only 10 launches, that number goes up to $50 million per launch) Now add rocket raw materials, external contracts, facility rent & upkeep, taxes, debt, and the absolute minimum price starts to get quite a bit higher. Oh, and you want some profit on top of that too. 

Therefore one could actually argue that flight rate is just as important as reusability (or even more so) for lowering costs. And for SpaceX to succeed, they need to do both. Launch often AND reuse.

Anyway, sorry for the side tracking, just trying to illustrate from a different point of view how difficult it is to bring down costs.

[Brovane]

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

Someone did not do their homework; see SpaceX Wins GPS III Launch Contract Over ULA, Air Force Magazine, 16-Mar-2017 (emphasis added):

SpaceX was awarded a $96.5 million contract on Tuesday to provide launch services for the third GPS III satellite, which is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla., in February 2019. Elon Musk’s space exploration company beat out United Launch Alliance in a competitive process. Both bids “adequately met our criteria” on technical standards, and price was the decisive factor, said Claire Leon, launch enterprise director at Space and Missile Systems Center, in a phone conference with reporters Wednesday. The launch is SpaceX’s second contract in the GPS III program after being selected in April of 2016 to launch the second GPS III satellite in May 2018.

Per the USAF, this was a head-to-head competition SpaceX vs. ULA for an NSS payload.  Both submitted bids.  SpaceX won.  This was not a case of SpaceX competing with itself and submitting multiple bids. If ULA declined to bid it would have been stated, and we would have heard much more.


p.s. And so much for the proclamation by Some (to paraphrase) "ULA has never lost to SpaceX".  ULA clearly lost this to SpaceX in a competitive bid for an NSS payload.

Are you referring to me?   

[joek]

Are you referring to me?   

No, at least with respect to statements that "ULA has never lost to SpaceX".  But I do think your reference to the previous thread cites sources which were incorrect.  In short, SpaceX went head-to-head with ULA in a competitive bid for an NSS payload.  SpaceX won; ULA lost.  That's something for the books IMHO.

[gongora]

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

Someone did not do their homework; see SpaceX Wins GPS III Launch Contract Over ULA, Air Force Magazine, 16-Mar-2017 (emphasis added):

That article was for GPS 3-3.

[joek]

That article was for GPS 3-3.

Which "That article"?  And it matters how?  The article I was referring to relates to GPS 3-3.  Which illustrates that SpaceX can compete--and win--against ULA for NSS payloads.

[gongora]

That article was for GPS 3-3.

Which "That article"?  And it matters how?  The article I was referring to relates to GPS 3-3.  Which illustrates that SpaceX can compete--and win--against ULA for NSS payloads.

Some journalists reported that SpaceX seems to have submitted both of the bids for GPS 3-2.  That's what Brovane was linking.  SpaceX and ULA each submitted bids for GPS 3-3.  That's what you linked.

[joek]

Some journalists reported that SpaceX seems to have submitted both of the bids for GPS 3-2.  That's what Brovane was linking.  SpaceX and ULA each submitted bids for GPS 3-3.  That's what you linked.

Ok, got that sorted.  Still think that without credible evidence that SpaceX submitting two bids for GPS 3-2 is questionable; but let that pass.  We do have credible evidence that SpaceX has won against ULA in a heads-up competitive bid for GPS 3-3.

Which, to the point of this thread, "Who will compete with SpaceX?"...  ULA? unlikely for some (most?) NSS launches--if GPS 3-3 is any example.   Unless ULA gets serious game, or unless DoD parcels out launch services to keep ULA alive.