Next steps in commercial space flight

[Robotbeat]

I jut woke up to this thread, and I feel like I've happened on a SpaceX fan club party, at which most people have been drinking.

And here's the soundtrack
http://raptorcommandmusic.com/elon-champion-for-humanity-single-released/

[Lar]

You're missing the point, Oli. The dragon platform is completely adaptable as a Mars lander. It also breaks ground on how we land on Mars.

It's another one of those "build it and they'll come" arguments. The question is whether NASA actually has the need for a static 2t lander. Mars Sample Return is a planned NASA mission, current concepts are based on the sky crane system with a landing platform and a fetch rover. The entry and descent stage come at a cost of $220m, the cruise stage an additional $90m (both without reserves), given a total mission cost of $2.5bn that's not going to break the bank ($2.5bn is without orbiter or the Mars Returned Sample Handling facility). Maybe Dragon could be used for that, but I guess it would have be modified for a rover.

Other than that, maybe drilling would be interesting, or landing at higher altitudes, but NASA doesn't have any concrete plans for those.

I just have to quote this again... Oli do you realise what you're saying? You're defending a mission that costs 2.5B while tearing down one that costs at most .5B (and most estimates are lower than that) for more landed payload mass. This is a game changer if it works. People will focus on payloads. As they should. Dragon certainly could be modified to carry rover(s) 5 rovers for the price of one.

[Space Ghost 1962]

So you can consider a platform for a Mars program out of it. Robert Zubrin's “Mars Semi-Direct” concept would make use of three Falcon Heavy launches every two years, as an example.

A manned program? No way.

Expect Zubrin to update his proposal soon - that one is a few years old. It's the proposal that has the most chance of being funded of any on earth right now. Suggest that as RD reality improves, so will Zubrin's proposal in lockstep.

And this is the most unrealistic of all of the FH proposals ...

Neither of these comes from volume reused components like Dragon, which has flown more times.

And I would argue that a heavily customized version of a LEO crew vehicle is not going to be cheaper than or better suited for robotic science missions.

You clearly don't know/understand/have visited SX. The point is to not heavily customize anything. If anything, Musk is trying to reduce down configurations to the fewest. The downside of that is you can't "tweak" a mission as much as before - you run up against the "hard stops" fast. The other part of this is Musk has to be bought into what you are doing, to even get a chance to "play with the toys" - unlike other SC/LV providers in the extreme.

Many "traditional space" engineers find this awkward in the extreme. The first guy to work on RD for NASA didn't care for this at all, with everything changing every few months (years ago).

If the 2018 Red Dragon is successful, since it is a capabilities demonstrator, the next flight or flights in 2020 would be for paying customers like everything else SpaceX has done in the past. By teaming with someone like Spaceflight Industries a Red Dragon with 75 experiments at a average price per flight for each of $2M would probably have a waiting list such that in 2022 they could launch a Red Dragon flight every 2 weeks over a period of nearly three months.

Aggregating instruments for launch to build a mission is a time honored practice that might work here, but the key to it is a PI at an credible institution for a lander. The funding for about half of the mission would have to be in place, likely from a private sponsor/benefactor, where the remaining NASA/NSF/ESA/DLR/JAXA funded experiments would "piggyback" on the remainder. Since these missions cost 10x and fly every 2-6 years,  hedging launch/landing failures by even just reflying existing instruments 2-3 times on a fraction of the budget of the original missions would likely get your aggregation strategy to work.

If NASA wants or someone else wants a MSR that would use nearly all the landing payload of the RD (2mt for MAV). So for a MSR those would be dedicated designs like a CC version of D2 would be vs a Cargo D2.

Again, the traditional space vision of MSR is a long, risky, and costly mission. Hedging it with a dissimilar Dragon alternative would decrease program risk substantially.

If initial RD EDL works, it will move into the "acceptable" category alongside skycrane (~$350M+). Might even be able to use it for "hard" spots that skycrane can't do (landing in open lava tubes, Hellas Basin, Valles Marineris, ...).

"Anything you can do, I can do better! I can do anything better than you! "

You're missing the point, Oli. The dragon platform is completely adaptable as a Mars lander. It also breaks ground on how we land on Mars.

It's another one of those "build it and they'll come" arguments. The question is whether NASA actually has the need for a static 2t lander. Mars Sample Return is a planned NASA mission, current concepts are based on the sky crane system with a landing platform and a fetch rover. The entry and descent stage come at a cost of $220m, the cruise stage an additional $90m (both without reserves), given a total mission cost of $2.5bn that's not going to break the bank ($2.5bn is without orbiter or the Mars Returned Sample Handling facility). Maybe Dragon could be used for that, but I guess it would have be modified for a rover.

Other than that, maybe drilling would be interesting, or landing at higher altitudes, but NASA doesn't have any concrete plans for those.

I just have to quote this again... Oli do you realise what you're saying? You're defending a mission that costs 2.5B while tearing down one that costs at most .5B (and most estimates are lower than that) for more landed payload mass. This is a game changer if it works. People will focus on payloads. As they should. Dragon certainly could be modified to carry rover(s) 5 rovers for the price of one.

I don't know if it's a "game changer" ... only find that out after the fact.

But I do know where scientists want to go, and what they want to put there to find things, and what they want to look for.

And they can fill dozens of Dragons directed to different places to get experiments long desired to the surface to prove many questions dating back to the Viking landing.

I *expect* that someone will start a "Mars Science" fund to bootstrap this into existence, to allow for private/public fund matching to fill this need before RD launches.

[sanman]

If initial RD EDL works, it will move into the "acceptable" category alongside skycrane (~$350M+). Might even be able to use it for "hard" spots that skycrane can't do (landing in open lava tubes, Hellas Basin, Valles Marineris, ...).

SkyCrane always seemed like a bit of a Rube Goldberg contraption to me - is its particular approach really justified? Wouldn't a Red Dragon landing be much simpler and more straightforward? Even if SkyCrane's development costs are already done, wouldn't a proven Red Dragon end up being the method of choice, because its more conventional approach seems likely to be more reliable (will have to wait for actual landing to know for sure).

But in what scenarios would you want to use SkyCrane instead of Red Dragon?

[b0objunior]

If initial RD EDL works, it will move into the "acceptable" category alongside skycrane (~$350M+). Might even be able to use it for "hard" spots that skycrane can't do (landing in open lava tubes, Hellas Basin, Valles Marineris, ...).

SkyCrane always seemed like a bit of a Rube Goldberg contraption to me - is its particular approach really justified? Wouldn't a Red Dragon landing be much simpler and more straightforward? Even if SkyCrane's development costs are already done, wouldn't a proven Red Dragon end up being the method of choice, because its more conventional approach seems likely to be more reliable (will have to wait for actual landing to know for sure).

But in what scenarios would you want to use SkyCrane instead of Red Dragon?

Yes, it is justified, because it delivered a one ton rover on the surface.

[redliox]

So you can consider a platform for a Mars program out of it. Robert Zubrin's “Mars Semi-Direct” concept would make use of three Falcon Heavy launches every two years, as an example.

A manned program? No way.

Expect Zubrin to update his proposal soon - that one is a few years old. It's the proposal that has the most chance of being funded of any on earth right now. Suggest that as RD reality improves, so will Zubrin's proposal in lockstep.

And this is the most unrealistic of all of the FH proposals ...

I agree on that.  RD can deliver something to the surface of Mars, but it wouldn't be able to comfortably handle the 6-9 months beforehand with humans.  For a crew mission it will need to to paired with a transfer vehicle, and in Zubrin's Mars Semi-Direct that was the ERV.  Be it NASA or Mars Society, my guess is an orbiter/transfer vehicle will need to play a part basically for human logistics.

You're missing the point, Oli. The dragon platform is completely adaptable as a Mars lander. It also breaks ground on how we land on Mars.

It's another one of those "build it and they'll come" arguments. The question is whether NASA actually has the need for a static 2t lander. Mars Sample Return is a planned NASA mission, current concepts are based on the sky crane system with a landing platform and a fetch rover. The entry and descent stage come at a cost of $220m, the cruise stage an additional $90m (both without reserves), given a total mission cost of $2.5bn that's not going to break the bank ($2.5bn is without orbiter or the Mars Returned Sample Handling facility). Maybe Dragon could be used for that, but I guess it would have be modified for a rover.

Other than that, maybe drilling would be interesting, or landing at higher altitudes, but NASA doesn't have any concrete plans for those.

I just have to quote this again... Oli do you realise what you're saying? You're defending a mission that costs 2.5B while tearing down one that costs at most .5B (and most estimates are lower than that) for more landed payload mass. This is a game changer if it works. People will focus on payloads. As they should. Dragon certainly could be modified to carry rover(s) 5 rovers for the price of one.

I don't know if it's a "game changer" ... only find that out after the fact.

But I do know where scientists want to go, and what they want to put there to find things, and what they want to look for.

And they can fill dozens of Dragons directed to different places to get experiments long desired to the surface to prove many questions dating back to the Viking landing.

I *expect* that someone will start a "Mars Science" fund to bootstrap this into existence, to allow for private/public fund matching to fill this need before RD launches.

Hopefully it changes the game, but naturally premature to be absolutely sure until 2018 arrives.

[redliox]

If initial RD EDL works, it will move into the "acceptable" category alongside skycrane (~$350M+). Might even be able to use it for "hard" spots that skycrane can't do (landing in open lava tubes, Hellas Basin, Valles Marineris, ...).

SkyCrane always seemed like a bit of a Rube Goldberg contraption to me - is its particular approach really justified? Wouldn't a Red Dragon landing be much simpler and more straightforward? Even if SkyCrane's development costs are already done, wouldn't a proven Red Dragon end up being the method of choice, because its more conventional approach seems likely to be more reliable (will have to wait for actual landing to know for sure).

But in what scenarios would you want to use SkyCrane instead of Red Dragon?

Slightly smaller budget with a bulkier payload would be my guess.  Or when you're not as worried about contaminating the site with rocket fire, which was why the Skycrane doesn't touchdown at the same spot as the rover.

[Lumina]

Between now and 2018, first stage booster landings will become a more reliable affair. By 2018, the Falcon Heavy will also have started flying, and all the F9 landing know-how accumulated by then should feed straight into landing the Falcon Heavy booster stages. Timescales are tight but it's not impossible to imagine that RD could fly on a reused FH, making it a relatively inexpensive demonstration of SRP and propulsive landing technologies leading up to BFR/MCT.

At the same time, a successful RD mission will compellingly demonstrate to space agencies and governments around the world that low-cost access to anywhere in the solar system is available here and now. The point being to generate demand for the Falcon Heavy / Dragon 2 combo and future income to fund BFR/MCT investment. Being the premier space logistics company of the 21st century is the core of SpaceX's business, after all.

So what happens next? If all goes well with RD, it will be a solid step forward both for the BFR/MCT development and for SpaceX developing new unmanned science mission business for their FH/D2 combo.

[sanman]

It'll be interesting to see the progression of the number of Mars missions per launch-window cycle.
(eg. 2018=1, 2020=2, 2022=4, 2025=8, etc)
I wonder how that will play out?

[Rocket Science]

To the naysayers on this thread I ask one simple question... What are the alternatives?

[RyanC]

This is a very new paradigm. This makes the potential to at least survey for resources on Mars or the Moon for significantly less than than the costs of a communications satellite until recently.  This doesn't make exploitation affordable yet, but at least some resource companies with vision (say like BHP Billiton who in the 90's poured $1.5B into setting up a diamond mine a degree or so south of the arctic circle in Canada's Northwest Territories) would probably risk a quarter of a billion to stake out Lunar resources at the poles

Doesn't have to be private investors. Could be a country deciding to have a space program by contracting a lot of things out to SpX, in much the same vein of starting a National Airline for prestige reasons.

[rayleighscatter]

To the naysayers on this thread I ask one simple question... What are the alternatives?

No government funding of space.

If NASA is just to be a pass through for federal money then this has to be accepted as a legitimate alternative.

[stoker5432]

Or when you're not as worried about contaminating the site with rocket fire, which was why the Skycrane doesn't touchdown at the same spot as the rover.

Source please. I've never seen this as a reason that the sky crane concept was used.

[Bob Shaw]

Or when you're not as worried about contaminating the site with rocket fire, which was why the Skycrane doesn't touchdown at the same spot as the rover.

Source please. I've never seen this as a reason that the sky crane concept was used.

There were certainly concerns about rocket exhaust in the days of Viking, but it was a life-detecting mission as opposed to geology-led. There hasn't been a biology mission since then, so the issue is somewhat moot.

It was my understanding that the *big* benefit of Skycrane was that there were no issues with getting a large rover off of the required rocketry and onto the surface. Compared to the unknowns involved in that operation, being lowered on bits of knotted string below a hovering jet-pack seemed somehow less risky. In fact, it all worked perfectly.

The sort of biology experiments which RD seems ideal for are those which involve drilling and quite large forms of assay equipment, and the obvious target for such would be near to a subsurface ice/ground interface, perhaps a couple of metres down. Looking at the plumes from the SuperDracos it wouldn't surprise me if the area around the Dragon was chewed up, but I doubt if the area directly below the spacecraft would be - and that's where the 'classic' RD proposal would have been drilling.

[Bob Shaw]

I don't know if it's a "game changer" ... only find that out after the fact.

Certainly, it may *not* be a game changer. It *could* all fizzle and die.

What we can say with absolute certainty, however, is that it is *intended* to be a game changer, and as such is certainly a game-changing gambit, proposal, project, plan or whatever. 'Game changer' is certainly the phrase which suits this particular plan!

Remember, too, that unlike all the visionary proposals for Mars flybys and colonies of recent times, in this case we're talking about basic hardware which is practically built, paid-for and delivered.  No other 'vision' has gone beyond CGI and handwaving - Dragon 2 exists and will soon go to the ISS, F9H is also about to fly, and SpaceX has already repeatedly demonstrated the ability to land vehicles under rocket power.

This is not PowerPoint, but cut metal - and is a dream so close to Elon Musk's heart that he will move mountains to bring it to fruition.

What's not to like?

[Rocket Science]

To the naysayers on this thread I ask one simple question... What are the alternatives?

No government funding of space.

If NASA is just to be a pass through for federal money then this has to be accepted as a legitimate alternative.

So then what is the alternative to the SpaceX way of doing things is the question? (My original question was pretty much a rhetorical one).

[Lar]

To the naysayers on this thread I ask one simple question... What are the alternatives?

No government funding of space.

If NASA is just to be a pass through for federal money then this has to be accepted as a legitimate alternative.

So then what is the alternative to the SpaceX way of doing things is the question? (My original question was pretty much a rhetorical one).

What we have now? Custom missions at great cost, humans perpetually 20 years out...

[nadreck]

This is a very new paradigm. This makes the potential to at least survey for resources on Mars or the Moon for significantly less than than the costs of a communications satellite until recently.  This doesn't make exploitation affordable yet, but at least some resource companies with vision (say like BHP Billiton who in the 90's poured $1.5B into setting up a diamond mine a degree or so south of the arctic circle in Canada's Northwest Territories) would probably risk a quarter of a billion to stake out Lunar resources at the poles

Doesn't have to be private investors. Could be a country deciding to have a space program by contracting a lot of things out to SpX, in much the same vein of starting a National Airline for prestige reasons.

In the same post I wrote: "Their clients might be academia, multinational corporations, governments and even NGOs."

[Oli]

What we have now? Custom missions at great cost, humans perpetually 20 years out...

Science missions will remain custom, since that is what scientists demand. InSight and Mars 2020 are expensive missions despite using proven landing and even rover platforms.

[Lar]

What we have now? Custom missions at great cost, humans perpetually 20 years out...

Science missions will remain custom, since that is what scientists demand. InSight and Mars 2020 are expensive missions despite using proven landing and even rover platforms.

This misses the point.  The missions themselves will remain custom but the delivery mechanism to get the science to where it can be carried out will become more off the shelf. Instead of just the launcher being used with a custom lander, it'll be launcher and lander with only the payload custom. The launcher and lander will be adapted rather than the lander being a bespoke design and build each time.