The Reaction Engines Skylon/SABRE Master Thread (6)

[oddbodd]

Also, I have to say the idea of a civil hypersonic transport is super exciting to me, too. And it'd use hydrogen, so technically this can be done pretty easily with zero carbon emissions! Very neat.

You do realize that the vast majority (~95%) of hydrogen comes from the processing of fossil fuels? Electrolysis (i.e. using wind, hydro or solar PV) is highly inefficient. There are laboratory scale experiments that may eventually bear fruit (i.e. algae), but I certainly wouldn't say that currently hydrogen can be done pretty easily with zero carbon emissions.

Yes I am. And untrue it's inefficient. 65-70% efficient electrolysis isn't unheard of for large plants. It's completely inaccurate to label that as mere lab-scale. And it can easily be done with zero emissions, it's just that natural gas is super duper cheap right now.

Hmmm. The "highly inefficient" was supposed to be compared to pulling it out of fossil fuels, where I thought the efficiency was much higher, making the resulting fuel cheaper. However, I didn't check my memory that electrolysis was lower, and they're actually pretty close. Apologies for my mistake.

That begs the question, why is the vast majority produced and used is from fossil fuels? Is it because the electricity used is often coming from fossil fuels anyway, so the conversion suffers a double-dip on the efficiency? Might as well just strip it straight out of the fuel. Sure you could stipulate that the electricity has to be from renewables, although historically that has been more expensive. We're approaching the point where electricity from renewables are getting close to fossil fuels, so then it would make sense that the electrolysis would start to take more of the market. As you say, gas being cheap is not going to help that transition.

The lab-scale comment was not talking about electroysis. I was talking about experimental stuff like algae bioreactors, and photocatalytic water splitting.

[lkm]

[Except, accurate or not, all of that is irrelevant.
Skylon, should it ever be built in the manner described, won't be competing with SpaceX or Blue Orgin because neither of them intend to be selling launch vehicles to other launch companies in 2030 and there are dozens of other launch providers who intend to still be in business in 2030 and also thousands of payloads that can't launch on American launch vehicles to fly with them.
 So the actual question is what is everybody other than SpaceX and Blue Orign launching, because that is Skylon's market.

It doesn't matter if Skylon intends to be a vehicle builder or a service provider, since the market that they are addressing is moving mass to space - which is the same market that Blue Origin and SpaceX are addressing.  The only difference is who owns the vehicles, which is really immaterial when discussing supply and demand.

For instance, if the cost of buying and operating a Skylon does not result in the ability of a service provider to offer a competitive $/kg to orbit price, then no one will buy a Skylon.

The market Skylon is addressing is the market of people who want to offer launch services and that market is substantially larger than just SpaceX and Blue origin and that is not an immaterial difference.

Skylon doesn't have to be better than falcon or new Glenn, just better than any other option to compete with them. Or alternatively Skylon doesn't need to be faster than the bear, just faster than anybody else running from it.

To a degree that is true, but only to a degree.  For instance, "the payload market" does want competition, and is willing to buy services from companies that are not the lowest bidders in order to ensure that there are enough choices to support competition and redundancy.

However, that may mean that there is only a market opportunity for (as an example) five launch service providers.  So the situation ends up being like the musical chairs game, where those that are the least competitive are trying to out maneuver each other in order to continue being one of the chosen competitors - which if you don't have deep pockets, can create a fiscal death spiral.

So no matter what, if Skylon wants to be a big success, they have to be one of the least expensive options for moving mass to space.  Anything less means their potential growth won't happen the way they need it to happen.

Five launch providers is substantially fewer that currently exist today servicing a much smaller market but even so assuming two of them are SpaceX and Blue Origin then the other three have to be launching something, so Skylon only has to be the third most cost effective launch vehicle to own a majority of this hypothetical market because, as I've pointed out, it's not competing with falcon and new Glen.

The only situation in which Skylon and falcon would directly compete in the manner you've described  would be if SpaceX were to consider switching to a Skylon fleet so that it internally could focus on Mars and infrastructure.

Assuming reusability is perfected, SpaceX will have the advantage of being able to iterate their existing Falcon 9 design to make it more and more reliable and to drive down costs.

Because of that, the Skylon cost advantage over the Falcon 9 would have to be not only obvious, but significantly better than the Falcon 9 in order for SpaceX to consider abandoning the Falcon 9.  Again, this gets back to the supply and demand issue, and being in the top group of service providers.

But at the pace Skylon is currently going at, SpaceX won't have to worry about their marketshare for at least another decade - at which point their successor to the Falcon 9 (whatever that will be) may already be getting ready for it's own launch.  Skylon needs to go faster...

My point was the only situation where a competitive comparison was warranted was so deeply unlikely and hypothetical that it wasn't worth having.

[TrevorMonty]

IMO Skylon need SpaceX and Blue RLVs to build market demand that will justify huge investment required for full scale Skylon. The competition sometimes helps businesses.

[ChrisWilson68]

IMO Skylon need SpaceX and Blue RLVs to build market demand that will justify huge investment required for full scale Skylon. The competition sometimes helps businesses.

Yes, competition sometimes helps businesses.  But only if the business has some kind of advantage over the competition that lets it take some market share.

What people are arguing here is that in this instance the competition is so efficient that it makes it very hard for Skylon to have an advantage that is worth the huge development cost.  Even discounting the development cost, there's reason to believe Skylon is likely to be more expensive on a marginal basis than the competition from SpaceX and Blue Origin long before Skylon could actually be built.

[lkm]

IMO Skylon need SpaceX and Blue RLVs to build market demand that will justify huge investment required for full scale Skylon. The competition sometimes helps businesses.

Yes, competition sometimes helps businesses.  But only if the business has some kind of advantage over the competition that lets it take some market share.

What people are arguing here is that in this instance the competition is so efficient that it makes it very hard for Skylon to have an advantage that is worth the huge development cost.  Even discounting the development cost, there's reason to believe Skylon is likely to be more expensive on a marginal basis than the competition from SpaceX and Blue Origin long before Skylon could actually be built.

Except that, no.
If competition expands a new market a competitor doesn't need some kind of technical advantage over the first mover to take some market share, it just needs to be available in a manner the first mover isn't.
For example the iPhone rapidly expanded the smartphone market upon its launch giving blackberry several years of rapid growth despite selling an inferior product just because the iPhone successfully made a smartphone market but was unable to fill all of it. Today the iPhone is probably the best smartphone you can buy but is only 12% of global phones because Apple doesn't allow any other company to make them, so ever other phone maker has to make Android phones. That is the argument. SpaceX can build iPhones but that just means everybody else has to use Android. Is Skylon Android?

[ChrisWilson68]

IMO Skylon need SpaceX and Blue RLVs to build market demand that will justify huge investment required for full scale Skylon. The competition sometimes helps businesses.

Yes, competition sometimes helps businesses.  But only if the business has some kind of advantage over the competition that lets it take some market share.

What people are arguing here is that in this instance the competition is so efficient that it makes it very hard for Skylon to have an advantage that is worth the huge development cost.  Even discounting the development cost, there's reason to believe Skylon is likely to be more expensive on a marginal basis than the competition from SpaceX and Blue Origin long before Skylon could actually be built.

Except that, no.
If competition expands a new market a competitor doesn't need some kind of technical advantage over the first mover to take some market share, it just needs to be available in a manner the first mover isn't.
For example the iPhone rapidly expanded the smartphone market upon its launch giving blackberry several years of rapid growth despite selling an inferior product just because the iPhone successfully made a smartphone market but was unable to fill all of it. Today the iPhone is probably the best smartphone you can buy but is only 12% of global phones because Apple doesn't allow any other company to make them, so ever other phone maker has to make Android phones. That is the argument. SpaceX can build iPhones but that just means everybody else has to use Android. Is Skylon Android?

None of that is remotely true.  The iPhone wasn't a success initially because nobody else had the capacity to fill the market.  It was a success initially because it offered an experience that was differentiated from the competition.

The split today between Android and iPhone is because there's a different price/features/experience trade-off for different phones.  Some consumers like iPhones better, some Android.  Some have more money to spend, some less.

Launch services don't work that way.  They're not a consumer market where the customers have a wide variety of different preferences.  The customers basically just want to get their payloads from point A to point B.  And the idea that somehow the market would grow so quickly that SpaceX and Blue Origin wouldn't be able to meet demand is just silly.

[Coastal Ron]

It doesn't matter if Skylon intends to be a vehicle builder or a service provider, since the market that they are addressing is moving mass to space - which is the same market that Blue Origin and SpaceX are addressing.  The only difference is who owns the vehicles, which is really immaterial when discussing supply and demand.

For instance, if the cost of buying and operating a Skylon does not result in the ability of a service provider to offer a competitive $/kg to orbit price, then no one will buy a Skylon.

The market Skylon is addressing is the market of people who want to offer launch services and that market is substantially larger than just SpaceX and Blue origin and that is not an immaterial difference.

Sorry, but no.  You are not looking at the prime source of the demand.

For instance, no one will buy the Skylon to operate their own transportation business if the Skylon would be the most expensive transportation option.  For example:

The SpaceX current model (i.e. they build and operate their own launchers):
Falcon 9 production costs + SpaceX launch operations costs + SpaceX profit = customer price

The Skylon model that you are suggesting (i.e. the Boeing model):
Skylon production costs + Skylon profit + Operator capital equipment costs (purchase loan, maintenance, etc.) + Operator launch operations costs + Operator profit = customer price

So you can see that builder/operators have an advantage where they skip one layer of profit that otherwise would be added, and that could be enough of a difference to wipe away the competitive advantage of what otherwise would be a lower cost Skylon service.

Until the purchase price and maintenance costs of a Skylon are known, it's hard to argue that the Skylon can beat the price of current competitors.

Five launch providers is substantially fewer that currently exist today servicing a much smaller market but even so assuming two of them are SpaceX and Blue Origin then the other three have to be launching something, so Skylon only has to be the third most cost effective launch vehicle to own a majority of this hypothetical market because, as I've pointed out, it's not competing with falcon and new Glen.

Again, the number "5" was just an example, and not meant to represent reality.

However I would posit that the top three providers winning the most business will have a major profit advantage over the everyone else.  And in case you haven't looked, other than SpaceX and Blue Origin, everyone else in the launch business is state supported in some way, so Skylon would be competing against a lot of deep pockets.  How long could Skylon engage in a price war against nation-states?

I think the Skylon is an interesting concept, and it appeals to my wish that there was such a technology.  But just because it could be technically capable of doing what it's designed to do doesn't mean it could be profitable at doing it.  The two don't always go together.

But as long as someone is willing to put money into the Skylon, I'll keep watching it...

[john smith 19]

It's too bad you're so hung up on SSTO that you can't see that both SpaceX and Blue Origin are well on their way to providing what you're really looking for, which is low cost made possible by full reusability.

Well on their way? Blue is nowhere near orbital yet and SX are nowhere near reflying the F9 stage and when they do it's looking increasingly like there will be no price discount for flying a reusable.

And just to be clear. It's the $/Kg price I care about, not how much it costs someone to make a LV.

So while SX have advanced technically we're seeing no substantial price cut, and running any sort of price simulation game will show they are unlikely to ever with a semi expendable system.

Reusability is the key, not SSTO.  The people who are actually having success with reusuability have done the analysis and realized that SSTO actually makes things more expensive than staging for fully-reusable systems.

And if you're committed to a VTOL rocket then it always will be. 

A Skylon SSTO depends on lots of expensive techniques, such as using hydrogen, very high mass ratios, and thermal protection with properties beyond anything ever successfully used before.  Staging is the cheaper technique for fully-reusable, low-cost space launch.

Using actual facts. LH2 is roughly 1/8 the cost of NTO/UDMH and a hell of a lot safer to handle, chich might explain why the Titan was retired decades ago.  It's bad to try retrofitting LH2 to an existing system however, somewhat like adding pre-cooled propellants into a system that was not designed for them from day one.

You need to stop with your claim about "high mass ratios." SABRE enables low mass ratios and hence allows a greater fraction of the GTOW to be structure.

Your constant repetition of this statement is really starting to make you sound like a troll

Do you want to be treated like a troll?

As for the TPS  what exactly do you mean "Beyond anything used before" ?

Doesn't by definition any reusable vehicle have to do this. Had SX succeeded in getting their F9 to have  a fully reusable 2nd stage it would have needed the same, as will ITS. The only known examples were the "shingles" on a Gemini capsule the tiels and blankets of the Shuttle and (possible) what the X37b uses.

Not according to Elon Musk.

It baffles me why you would believe REL's optimistic predictions about Skylon, when REL hasn't flown anything but not believe SpaceX's predictions, when SpaceX is trying something much more conservative and has a lot of real-world experience and a track record of success.

Simple. When REL have been fully funded they've delivered on schedule

Musk and SX have never delivered on schedule, hence others comments along the lines of "When I hear an SX schedule I double it."

Personally I add 2-4 years to any IOC date.

SX have always delivered eventually (except in the case of a fully reusable F9, which is quite a big failure of either understanding or delivery on their part, but maybe they will in the end).

Likewise any flight schedule should be taken with a pinch bag of salt. A point regularly made on the SX threads.

2018 on Mars? More like 2020-2022 I think.
None of which I would care about if they seriously had a shot of lowering the price to send a reasonable sized payload to LEO.

So far they have failed to do so.   

Both Musk and Bezos came to the space world as complete outsiders, without any bias.  The considered the options and both chose two-stage reusable systems with horizontal take-off and landing.  No confirmation bias there.

Oh, if only they had 

IRL Musk wanted to land on Mars and Mars has no runways. Bezos motivation is more obscure. No one suggested it was possible? The projected (honest) development cost of Skylon? REL's desire not to entangled in the US interpretation of ITAR? A desire for fast results?

It depends on what you consider "not too bad".  The projections are something like 830 Celsius.  It will require active cooling.  Skylon is supposed to have a ceramic skin on a huge scale to handle that.  The only other operational vehicle to ever try ceramic TPS was shuttle, and we all know how many surprise issues it had that weren't anticipated, and how much that drove costs through the roof and resulted in a dead crew.

A nice piece of innuendo there. You really do sound like you've got a Marketing background.   

PyroSic is a fibre reinforced glass, unlike the Shuttle tiles, which were basically an open cell ceramic foam. It's non porous and AFAIK quite flexible when corrugated (as the Skylon skin is designed to be).
REL don't expect it to be glued to the skin, they expect it to be the skin and they expect it to be de-coupled from the space frame structure by hairpin rivets, a technique first developed for the X20 Dyna-Soar.

it's expected to operate up to 1200c. The areas above that are expected to "transpiration cooled" by water through holes in the surface.  This has actually been flight tested at ICBM reentry speeds in the late 70s/early 80's and works well.

That is not correct.  Musk has said on various occasions that the long-term target is a turn-around time of hours for the first stage and 24 hours for the upper stage.

They may or may not achieve that target, but the target is just as aggressive as that for Skylon.  And, since Skylon has lower margins available because it needs such high performance to make up for the lack of staging that it's far more likely SpaceX will meet its targets than that Skylon will.

Still pushing that "low margins" line.   

Really starting to sound like a troll.

And that's completely irrelevant, because it's during the development program.

And who knows how long that "development program" could last?

SpaceX has already done launches off the same pad just two weeks apart and they have plans to automate the whole process and have the pad ready for multiple launches the same day.

IIRC at a busy airport the takeoffs during the day can be as little as 30 seconds apart.

Now that's a fast turnaround for a takeoff system. 

Pad procedures historically have required a few weeks between launches just because there's no point in designing them for faster turn-around for expensive expendable vehicles.  Once vehicles can be reused and the launch rates can go up, procedures will change to allow the quick turn-around time needed.

I guess it depends on what the minimum pad damage done during a launch is.

And the same is true for SpaceX and Blue Origin too.

What external audit's of SX or Blue's architectures have ever taken place? I'm sure SX's investors have done audits of their accounts but when did SX invite someone in to sanity check ITS? Or SRF9? or SRFH? How about New Shepperd or Glenn?

iIf you're going to give REL the benefit of the doubt, give SpaceX and Blue Origin at least as much.

Never is a long time.

How about "Not going to happen with any semi-reusable launch system"? Or "Not unless the system is fully reusable at a scale affordable for existing payloads IE 5-25 tonnes, not 100s" ?

The thing is, you are predicting.  You're predicting it won't be SpaceX or Blue Origin.  Why not?  Because their solutions aren't as aesthetically pleasing?  Aesthetically pleasing doesn't give us cheap access to space.  Good engineering choices will do that.

True.
Wheather that those "good engineering choices" turn out to be made by the companies with the angel investor with very large bank balanced is a question only time will answer.

[john smith 19]

I'll pass on the mass ratio. IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist) and I don't follow how high mass ratio = expensive technique.

There's an engineering rule-of-thumb that I was given years ago: for every 10% reduction in mass or thickness of a part, the life-span halves. (Or every 10% increase/double.) In practice, you end up substituting complexity for mass. The greater engineering complexity then increases cost-of-development.

Then how about the reverse?

SABRE, and HTOL allows roughly a 25% structural mass fraction. Demanding for aircraft but astonishingly generous by the standards of previous VTOL SSTO.

The age of the company means nothing, a lot of the facilities needed for Skylon would have to built from scratch anyway no matter who took on the project and their orbital 500 presuming it becomes operational should give plenty of experience as a airframe manufacture and experience of putting stuff into space an give some of the facilities needed for Skylon. More concerning is that so far they only have 2 million euros and a bit of money from UK Space Agency. Somedays I wish I had a idea that would make me billions so I could fund this properly.

Reaction engines spent years being a powerpoint company.

They spent years raising money and doing actual research. The powerpoints were few and far between, as were the website updates.  It did mean they have moved fairly quickly when cash has been available.

Hopefully they will see the prototype vehicle flying.

I hope we will see quicker process that 2035-2040. I think the earliest is 2030 for Sky launch.

That seems plausible.

REL's problems have always been financial. There engineering team was strong from day one but they have lacked entrepreneurship

More likely not.  It still could be too complex to be run by anybody other than the developer/manufacturer.

The truth is no one knows.

But after a 400 flight test programme (which is factored into the budget) they will know very well.

[lkm]

IMO Skylon need SpaceX and Blue RLVs to build market demand that will justify huge investment required for full scale Skylon. The competition sometimes helps businesses.

Yes, competition sometimes helps businesses.  But only if the business has some kind of advantage over the competition that lets it take some market share.

What people are arguing here is that in this instance the competition is so efficient that it makes it very hard for Skylon to have an advantage that is worth the huge development cost.  Even discounting the development cost, there's reason to believe Skylon is likely to be more expensive on a marginal basis than the competition from SpaceX and Blue Origin long before Skylon could actually be built.

Except that, no.
If competition expands a new market a competitor doesn't need some kind of technical advantage over the first mover to take some market share, it just needs to be available in a manner the first mover isn't.
For example the iPhone rapidly expanded the smartphone market upon its launch giving blackberry several years of rapid growth despite selling an inferior product just because the iPhone successfully made a smartphone market but was unable to fill all of it. Today the iPhone is probably the best smartphone you can buy but is only 12% of global phones because Apple doesn't allow any other company to make them, so ever other phone maker has to make Android phones. That is the argument. SpaceX can build iPhones but that just means everybody else has to use Android. Is Skylon Android?

None of that is remotely true.  The iPhone wasn't a success initially because nobody else had the capacity to fill the market.  It was a success initially because it offered an experience that was differentiated from the competition.

You've taken the exact opposite of my meaning.
 I said that the iPhone launched with a successful product, a product that redefined what a smartphone was, so the smartphone market expanded, lots of new people wanted smartphones, but Apple couldn't fill that market, Apple launched on only a few carriers in a small number of countries and it took several years before it could even begin to address the entire potential customer bass. Meanwhile Blackberry was already in the smartphone market and had a grossly inferior product but they had global distribution with hundreds of carriers so as Apple expanded the smartphone market they experience a few years of rapid growth soaking up consumer demand for smartphones, even though their product was inferior.

The split today between Android and iPhone is because there's a different price/features/experience trade-off for different phones.  Some consumers like iPhones better, some Android.  Some have more money to spend, some less.

Launch services don't work that way.  They're not a consumer market where the customers have a wide variety of different preferences.  The customers basically just want to get their payloads from point A to point B.  And the idea that somehow the market would grow so quickly that SpaceX and Blue Origin wouldn't be able to meet demand is just silly.

The split between iOS and Android is the split between a proprietary OS written for one company's products and a freely licensable OS used by many companies in competition with each other. If iOS was licensable then many companies would surely use it rather than Android making iPhone clones at many different price points and iOS market share would be much higher but it's not so they have to use Android. Just as the market for operating systems is the companies making the devices so the market for launch vehicles is the launch service providers and the demand that Falcon and New Glenn can't meet is the demand for launch vehicles from launch providers other than SpaceX or Blue Origin. As for whether iOS is better than Android it was your contention that SpaceX will be superior to any potential Skylon which I accepted for the sake of the hypothetical and this analogy.
This is really an integrated versus modular strategy question, integrated is usually better in a fast changing product space but in the long run everything tends to modular.
In the launch market there are many, many different potential point As and many many different point Bs as well many different potential business models and customer preferences, such as responsive flight, minimum cost, maximum payload, that launch providers could use in competition in a Skylon/Falcon/Glenn world.

[lkm]

It doesn't matter if Skylon intends to be a vehicle builder or a service provider, since the market that they are addressing is moving mass to space - which is the same market that Blue Origin and SpaceX are addressing.  The only difference is who owns the vehicles, which is really immaterial when discussing supply and demand.

For instance, if the cost of buying and operating a Skylon does not result in the ability of a service provider to offer a competitive $/kg to orbit price, then no one will buy a Skylon.

The market Skylon is addressing is the market of people who want to offer launch services and that market is substantially larger than just SpaceX and Blue origin and that is not an immaterial difference.

Sorry, but no.  You are not looking at the prime source of the demand.

For instance, no one will buy the Skylon to operate their own transportation business if the Skylon would be the most expensive transportation option.  For example:

The SpaceX current model (i.e. they build and operate their own launchers):
Falcon 9 production costs + SpaceX launch operations costs + SpaceX profit = customer price

The Skylon model that you are suggesting (i.e. the Boeing model):
Skylon production costs + Skylon profit + Operator capital equipment costs (purchase loan, maintenance, etc.) + Operator launch operations costs + Operator profit = customer price

So you can see that builder/operators have an advantage where they skip one layer of profit that otherwise would be added, and that could be enough of a difference to wipe away the competitive advantage of what otherwise would be a lower cost Skylon service.

Until the purchase price and maintenance costs of a Skylon are known, it's hard to argue that the Skylon can beat the price of current competitors.

So what exactly are you imagining the many launch service providers who aren't SpaceX or Blue Origin are going to fly in 2030? The other launch service providers exit today, they'll exist tomorrow and they'll exist in 2030, and when they do they'll have a demand for launch vehicles to market and that demand is what Skylon is built to service.

Five launch providers is substantially fewer that currently exist today servicing a much smaller market but even so assuming two of them are SpaceX and Blue Origin then the other three have to be launching something, so Skylon only has to be the third most cost effective launch vehicle to own a majority of this hypothetical market because, as I've pointed out, it's not competing with falcon and new Glen.

Again, the number "5" was just an example, and not meant to represent reality.

However I would posit that the top three providers winning the most business will have a major profit advantage over the everyone else.  And in case you haven't looked, other than SpaceX and Blue Origin, everyone else in the launch business is state supported in some way, so Skylon would be competing against a lot of deep pockets.  How long could Skylon engage in a price war against nation-states?

I think the Skylon is an interesting concept, and it appeals to my wish that there was such a technology.  But just because it could be technically capable of doing what it's designed to do doesn't mean it could be profitable at doing it.  The two don't always go together.

But as long as someone is willing to put money into the Skylon, I'll keep watching it...

Ahhh... so you've changed your argument from an economic one to a not invented here one. That's an entirely different question. That's like how every national carrier flies indigenously built airliners. Oh wait that doesn't happen.
To be serious this is actually a much more interesting question, in part because it's really more debatable than your original contention but also because our answers are very much coloured by nationality. As an American I'm sure you see having an indigenously built space program as a source of national pride and thus project that onto the rest of the world, but as a Brit I would see having any space program as a source of pride and an economic boon and that perfect is the enemy of good and thus I project that onto the world, and I think more of the world thinks like me than you. But then I would, wouldn't I?
And SpaceX isn't state supported? How much have they been paid over the last decade for developing commercial resupply and commercial crew, how much have they paid NASA for technical aid, how much did they pay NASA for Fastrac? I'm sure REL would love to have that level of non state support.

[Paul451]

Your constant repetition of this statement is really starting to make you sound like a troll
Do you want to be treated like a troll?
[...]
A nice piece of innuendo there. You really do sound like you've got a Marketing background.
[...]
Really starting to sound like a troll.

Accusing someone you know as a regular poster of being a troll or a shill is obnoxious and undermines any other argument you make.

If you disagree with someone, disagree with them, don't resort to this kind of passive aggressive crap.

[Coastal Ron]

So what exactly are you imagining the many launch service providers who aren't SpaceX or Blue Origin are going to fly in 2030? The other launch service providers exit today, they'll exist tomorrow and they'll exist in 2030, and when they do they'll have a demand for launch vehicles to market and that demand is what Skylon is built to service.

I think SpaceX will continue to have a good chunk of the commercial market, and Blue Origin may be planning to go after the commercial market too (not sure we know for sure what their plans are).

Arianespace will continue to win a lot of European business, and Russia and China have state supported launch services which can afford to get into price wars.

So without knowing for sure what the Skylon pricing will be for the most popular payloads (i.e. GEO delivery), it's hard to understand how competitive Skylon can be on day one.  And remember that their competitors can drop their prices to make Skylon look less competitive - which happened to company I worked for with a new service they were working on (I was part of that group).

Skylon, and those buying their own Skylon vehicles, would have to be very well funded in order to succeed in a market like that.  Such market conditions can affect the likelihood that Skylon could find buyers.

It's not an easy market to get into, not as long as so many state-supported launch providers exist - and they are the ones Skylon has to really watch out for.

Ahhh... so you've changed your argument from an economic one to a not invented here one. That's an entirely different question. That's like how every national carrier flies indigenously built airliners. Oh wait that doesn't happen.

Not sure where you're getting that, since my arguments are purely economic.

As an American I'm sure you see having an indigenously built space program as a source of national pride and thus project that onto the rest of the world...

Not in this day and age.  Certainly not since SpaceX confirmed that the private sector was more than capable enough to take care of the needs of the U.S. Government.

I see the SLS program as a waste of taxpayer money, since NASA doesn't have enough of a need for an HLV, NASA doesn't have any special experience or expertise in operating a space transportation system (contractors ran the Shuttle program), and NASA's charter specifically calls out for using the private sector when possible.

...but as a Brit I would see having any space program as a source of pride and an economic boon...

Skylon is not a "space program", it's a transportation system that only goes to LEO.

If it works, then no doubt it will be a source of pride.  As to an "economic boon", ask Airbus about how easy it is to be a transportation vehicle manufacturer.

...and that perfect is the enemy of good and thus I project that onto the world, and I think more of the world thinks like me than you. But then I would, wouldn't I?

I have no opinion about the technical merits of the Skylon, I've only been talking about the market situation it faces if it finally gets built.  If you feel that's a "glass half-empty" attitude, well I can't change that.

And SpaceX isn't state supported?

No.  For instance, Arianespace gets direct government reimbursement for every Ariane 5 flight.  SpaceX does not.

How much have they been paid over the last decade for developing commercial resupply and commercial crew...

They won competitively bid contracts for services.  That would not, in any definition, be "state supported".  Let's not make up definitions when real ones exist.

how much have they paid NASA for technical aid...

NASA is a national resource, available to any U.S. company to use - if they pay for the services.

...how much did they pay NASA for Fastrac?

All U.S. companies get access to taxpayer funded research - since all U.S. companies pay taxes (well, except for Trump companies...), all U.S. companies get access to the same taxpayer funded research.  I'm sure you have that in the UK, right?

I'm sure REL would love to have that level of non state support.

Has the UK ever funded air-breathing engines?  If so you'd think that research would be available for UK companies.

[t43562]

They won competitively bid contracts for services.  That would not, in any definition, be "state supported".  Let's not make up definitions when real ones exist.

Just to nibble at that, was the contract open to non-US companies?

[CameronD]

They won competitively bid contracts for services.  That would not, in any definition, be "state supported".  Let's not make up definitions when real ones exist.

Just to nibble at that, was the contract open to non-US companies?

No.. but then there was no requirement for it to be either.  In any open market anywhere on the planet, a buyer, State or Private, is free to set whatever restrictions they feel are important to them.  After all, it's their money.
 

[t43562]

They won competitively bid contracts for services.  That would not, in any definition, be "state supported".  Let's not make up definitions when real ones exist.

Just to nibble at that, was the contract open to non-US companies?

No.. but then there was no requirement for it to be either.  In any open market anywhere on the planet, a buyer, State or Private, is free to set whatever restrictions they feel are important to them.  After all, it's their money.

That's a red herring. It doesn't matter what the requirements are or are not or whose money it is.  It's a way for the state to support one of it's own industries.

[john smith 19]

They won competitively bid contracts for services.  That would not, in any definition, be "state supported".  Let's not make up definitions when real ones exist.

Just to nibble at that, was the contract open to non-US companies?

No.. but then there was no requirement for it to be either.  In any open market anywhere on the planet, a buyer, State or Private, is free to set whatever restrictions they feel are important to them.  After all, it's their money.

Actually it's the taxpayers money since states don't have any money of their own except where they one assets, like coal or gas reserves.

[john smith 19]

So without knowing for sure what the Skylon pricing will be for the most popular payloads (i.e. GEO delivery), it's hard to understand how competitive Skylon can be on day one. 

The answer to the question "what is pricing for the most popular payloads" is simple but unintelligible to anyone with an ELV launcher mind set.

It is "Whatever the Skylon operators want it to be."

Unlike the current system of one mfg/one provider Skylon operators would compete with each other. It's likely first buyer would charge market rates for launches as Skylon has a design that's proved by a 400 flight test programme. As more operators come on line that unique sales proposition erodes and operators either start to specialize in certain markets or lower their prices. Meanwhile economies of scale can be expected to lower servicing and support costs.

That is for operators who chose to compete in offering launches outside of their governments, or possibly corporations direct needs. 

Skylon can turn the idea of an affordable "orbital factory" into a reality, without needing an ELV to launch the factory in the first place. As a fully reusable intact abort RLV it give its owner on-demand launch.

People have used various analogies for the space launch market. Let me suggest another.

Current space launch is like a world where personal computers do not exist. Everything is a dumb terminal. All applications are written by the same corporations that supply the terminals. Normal users cannot ever write their own programs. All data is of course accessible to corporations that operate the system and the governments of the jurisdictions they operate in.

Now someone makes a PC. It runs whatever software you load (or write) on it. When you want it and data that's on it stays on it.  IOW it gives it's users control of their applications and their data (and if you think that's a mad scenario what is Office365)?

Nothing that uses the sole mfg / sole operator model will ever give payload owners that level of control. You launch when Arianespace, or SX, or ULA say you can launch.

[oddbodd]

I'm sure REL would love to have that level of non state support.

Has the UK ever funded air-breathing engines?  If so you'd think that research would be available for UK companies.

Well actually, yes they have, and yes you would think so... Alan Bond worked on the RB545/HOTOL which was an air breathing SSTO reusable space plane launch system, which is the spiritual parent of SABRE/Skylon. It was funded by the UK government till they lost interest/patience (the design had massive CoG issues because the engines were at the rear). Then the typically short-sighted UK government killed funding and slapped it under the official secrets act, leaving the idea to rot. So Bond, Scott-Scott and Varvill had to go away and come up with another design that would not make them fall foul of the act. RB545 may have been declassified by now (http://sounds.bl.uk/related-content/TRANSCRIPTS/021T-C1379X0005XX-0000A0.pdf and seach for classified), but the information is probably not of use with the evolution of the SABRE along its own trajectory (pun intended).

[lkm]

So what exactly are you imagining the many launch service providers who aren't SpaceX or Blue Origin are going to fly in 2030? The other launch service providers exit today, they'll exist tomorrow and they'll exist in 2030, and when they do they'll have a demand for launch vehicles to market and that demand is what Skylon is built to service.

I think SpaceX will continue to have a good chunk of the commercial market, and Blue Origin may be planning to go after the commercial market too (not sure we know for sure what their plans are).

Arianespace will continue to win a lot of European business, and Russia and China have state supported launch services which can afford to get into price wars.

So without knowing for sure what the Skylon pricing will be for the most popular payloads (i.e. GEO delivery), it's hard to understand how competitive Skylon can be on day one.  And remember that their competitors can drop their prices to make Skylon look less competitive - which happened to company I worked for with a new service they were working on (I was part of that group).

Skylon, and those buying their own Skylon vehicles, would have to be very well funded in order to succeed in a market like that.  Such market conditions can affect the likelihood that Skylon could find buyers.

It's not an easy market to get into, not as long as so many state-supported launch providers exist - and they are the ones Skylon has to really watch out for.

So you've singularly failed to answer the actual question, so I'm going to have to guess at your implied answers.
You think state backed launch service providers will stick with indigenously developed launchers even if a reusable SSTO was for sale for nationalistic reasons.
In reality if Skylon actually gets built it will be dependent upon Arianespace being a development and launch partner because Skylon will be built by much the same contractors that currently build Ariane, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation will buy some just to take apart and reverse engineer and the Russians will still have no money and be under a trade embargo.

Ahhh... so you've changed your argument from an economic one to a not invented here one. That's an entirely different question. That's like how every national carrier flies indigenously built airliners. Oh wait that doesn't happen.

Not sure where you're getting that, since my arguments are purely economic.

If you are arguing that state backed launch providers won't buy Skylon because it's not an indigenously developed launcher then that is a political argument.

As an American I'm sure you see having an indigenously built space program as a source of national pride and thus project that onto the rest of the world...

Not in this day and age.  Certainly not since SpaceX confirmed that the private sector was more than capable enough to take care of the needs of the U.S. Government.

I see the SLS program as a waste of taxpayer money, since NASA doesn't have enough of a need for an HLV, NASA doesn't have any special experience or expertise in operating a space transportation system (contractors ran the Shuttle program), and NASA's charter specifically calls out for using the private sector when possible.

...but as a Brit I would see having any space program as a source of pride and an economic boon...

Skylon is not a "space program", it's a transportation system that only goes to LEO.

If it works, then no doubt it will be a source of pride.  As to an "economic boon", ask Airbus about how easy it is to be a transportation vehicle manufacturer.

...and that perfect is the enemy of good and thus I project that onto the world, and I think more of the world thinks like me than you. But then I would, wouldn't I?

I have no opinion about the technical merits of the Skylon, I've only been talking about the market situation it faces if it finally gets built.  If you feel that's a "glass half-empty" attitude, well I can't change that.

Misconstrued word choice, two nations divided by a language.
I didn't mean Space Program in that narrow national sense but in the sense of having a space Industry that puts things in orbit and gets things done there, public/private is irrelevant to what I meant.
 Thus when I talk about having a space industry vis ŕ via an indigenously built one I'm implicitly not talking about developing Skylon I'm saying any space company choosing to operate launches from here would be good and produce economic gains for the national economy, as studies of Skylon show it would, and that as such the "perfect", having an indigenously built launch vehicle, is the enemy of "good", having a space launch industry at all. As an American you already have the "perfect" and that colours your view of what other people want.
If you are saying state launch providers won't be interested in Skylon because it's not indigenous then I'm  saying that if you start from not having much then "good" can look pretty good.

And SpaceX isn't state supported?

No.  For instance, Arianespace gets direct government reimbursement for every Ariane 5 flight.  SpaceX does not.

Did I say Arianespace isn't state supported?

How much have they been paid over the last decade for developing commercial resupply and commercial crew...

They won competitively bid contracts for services.  That would not, in any definition, be "state supported".  Let's not make up definitions when real ones exist.

The service contracts explicitly exist in an attempt to develop private space companies , they are exactly the sort of contract that the EU complained to the WTO regarding Boeing state aid. SpaceX was paid by NASA to develop hardware that SpaceX wanted to develop anyway and NASA just funded the development.

how much have they paid NASA for technical aid...

NASA is a national resource, available to any U.S. company to use - if they pay for the services.

There's no requirement in a Space Act Agreement that NASA is reimbursed for their services. Given SpaceX's activities their SAA's were likely to be nonreimbursable  agreements.

...how much did they pay NASA for Fastrac?

All U.S. companies get access to taxpayer funded research - since all U.S. companies pay taxes (well, except for Trump companies...), all U.S. companies get access to the same taxpayer funded research.  I'm sure you have that in the UK, right?

And that's state support. The state paid for something and then gave it away free to SpaceX.

I'm sure REL would love to have that level of non state support.

Has the UK ever funded air-breathing engines?  If so you'd think that research would be available for UK companies.

The UK has invested $90million in REL, which was held up for two years while it was evaluated over whether it was illegal state aid, while NASA has spent $3144.6million on SpaceX over the same period, or nearly 35 times more. As I said,  I'm sure REL would love to have that level of non state support.

I think you might be under the illusion that state support is bad, it's not. Pretending that it doesn't exist, that a company or person just manfully carved their existence out nothing is.