Quote from: gospacex on 05/14/2017 05:54 pmQuoteSo once we’re flying that, all other rockets will probably be obsolete. <laughs>I bet Rogozin doesn't laugh Especially at this part:QuoteThe Russians are saying they’re coming up with a rocket that can beat SpaceX, which is entertaining, <laughs> which is entertaining, because they’ve been working on their Angara rocket for 22 years, and launched it once. And suddenly they’re going to be coming up with a low-cost one.That would officially be considered throwing shade -- on a world leader in spaceflight.
QuoteSo once we’re flying that, all other rockets will probably be obsolete. <laughs>I bet Rogozin doesn't laugh
So once we’re flying that, all other rockets will probably be obsolete. <laughs>
The Russians are saying they’re coming up with a rocket that can beat SpaceX, which is entertaining, <laughs> which is entertaining, because they’ve been working on their Angara rocket for 22 years, and launched it once. And suddenly they’re going to be coming up with a low-cost one.
Quote from: shuttle_buff on 05/15/2017 12:39 amThis interview is a gold mine of information. Not sure everybody realizes what *Tom* is presenting here. I'm working on a summary to be released shortly. This covers SpaceX, the SpaceX satellite business, Tesla and more. The whole idea that SpaceX is the "airline" to Mars and other companies will have to participate to have car rentals, hotels and other attractions is * AWESOME!*This is crazy!Most of the stuff in what he mentioned we already knew or already knew most of. This just re-confirms a lot of the stuff we knew our puts it in more clear terms.
This interview is a gold mine of information. Not sure everybody realizes what *Tom* is presenting here. I'm working on a summary to be released shortly. This covers SpaceX, the SpaceX satellite business, Tesla and more. The whole idea that SpaceX is the "airline" to Mars and other companies will have to participate to have car rentals, hotels and other attractions is * AWESOME!*This is crazy!
I once got a nice tour at General Motors, as part of some automated assembly thing. The very notion of changing the heartbeat rate of a production line was sacrilegious...
Quote from: mlindner on 05/15/2017 01:06 amQuote from: shuttle_buff on 05/15/2017 12:39 amThis interview is a gold mine of information. Not sure everybody realizes what *Tom* is presenting here. I'm working on a summary to be released shortly. This covers SpaceX, the SpaceX satellite business, Tesla and more. The whole idea that SpaceX is the "airline" to Mars and other companies will have to participate to have car rentals, hotels and other attractions is * AWESOME!*This is crazy!Most of the stuff in what he mentioned we already knew or already knew most of. This just re-confirms a lot of the stuff we knew our puts it in more clear terms.I disagree. For example, we knew the number - "24 hours", but not the context around it. We didn't know about the valving scheme, and again - about the context around it."If a robot is not moving as fast as physically possible, someone is not doing their job..." - that's illuminating.I once got a nice tour at General Motors, as part of some automated assembly thing. The very notion of changing the heartbeat rate of a production line was sacrilegious...
Quote from: meekGee on 05/15/2017 02:45 amQuote from: mlindner on 05/15/2017 01:06 amQuote from: shuttle_buff on 05/15/2017 12:39 amThis interview is a gold mine of information. Not sure everybody realizes what *Tom* is presenting here. I'm working on a summary to be released shortly. This covers SpaceX, the SpaceX satellite business, Tesla and more. The whole idea that SpaceX is the "airline" to Mars and other companies will have to participate to have car rentals, hotels and other attractions is * AWESOME!*This is crazy!Most of the stuff in what he mentioned we already knew or already knew most of. This just re-confirms a lot of the stuff we knew our puts it in more clear terms.I disagree. For example, we knew the number - "24 hours", but not the context around it. We didn't know about the valving scheme, and again - about the context around it."If a robot is not moving as fast as physically possible, someone is not doing their job..." - that's illuminating.I once got a nice tour at General Motors, as part of some automated assembly thing. The very notion of changing the heartbeat rate of a production line was sacrilegious...If there are humans on the production line, changing the speed involves intense politics because you are probably torturing some of them. Hence eliminating all human touches first makes a lot of difference.
Quote from: meekGee on 05/15/2017 02:45 amQuote from: mlindner on 05/15/2017 01:06 amQuote from: shuttle_buff on 05/15/2017 12:39 amThis interview is a gold mine of information. Not sure everybody realizes what *Tom* is presenting here. I'm working on a summary to be released shortly. This covers SpaceX, the SpaceX satellite business, Tesla and more. The whole idea that SpaceX is the "airline" to Mars and other companies will have to participate to have car rentals, hotels and other attractions is * AWESOME!*This is crazy!Most of the stuff in what he mentioned we already knew or already knew most of. This just re-confirms a lot of the stuff we knew our puts it in more clear terms.I disagree. For example, we knew the number - "24 hours", but not the context around it. We didn't know about the valving scheme, and again - about the context around it."If a robot is not moving as fast as physically possible, someone is not doing their job..." - that's illuminating.I once got a nice tour at General Motors, as part of some automated assembly thing. The very notion of changing the heartbeat rate of a production line was sacrilegious...I love watching videos of incredibly fast machines. My faves are pick and place machines (chip shooters can place up to 30 parts PER SECOND and look a lot like a Gatling gun) and Power Looms, achieving also 30 picks or weft insertions per second.And this one going twice as fast as the previous one (2015rpm or 33 per second), but not as detailed:It's insane. But it makes sense. They are essentially encoding near raw materials (yarn on spools and canisters of components) into very detailed designs at an incredibly fast and efficient rate, with very large economic driving functions. Power looms have been getting better for over 200 years, and chip shooters for decades. They're near physical limits for single components at a time. The only things faster are things that operate using a one or two dimensional array, like photolithography (PCBs, computer chips) and printing.
If there are humans on the production line, changing the speed involves intense politics because you are probably torturing some of them. Hence eliminating all human touches first makes a lot of difference.
Quote from: LucR on 05/14/2017 12:59 amQuote from: Daniels30 on 05/13/2017 11:34 pmMerlin 1D uses a method called “Phase shut off”, removes most valves reducing chances of failure by removing components and removing a lot of risk of a hard start.I think he means "face shutoff", meaning propellants are "shut off" at the injector face.See e.g. http://www.rocket-propulsion.info/resources/articles/TRW_PINTLE_ENGINE.pdf.The interesting bit...QuoteAnd, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail, but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing. One of the things that we did with the Merlin 1D was; he kept complaining— I talked earlier about how expensive the engine was. <inaudible> [I said,] “[the] only way is to get rid of all these valves. Because that’s what’s really driving the complexity and cost.” And how can you do that? And I said, “Well, on smaller engines, we’d go phase-shutoff, but nobody’s done it on a really large engine. It’ll be really different.” And he said, “We need to do phase-shutoff. Explain how that works?” So I drew it up, did some, you know, sketches, and said “here’s what we’d do,” and he* said “That’s what we need to do.” And I advised him against it; I said it’s going to be too hard to do, and it’s not going to save that much. But he made the decision that we were going to do phase-shutoff.So we went and developed that engine; and it was hard. We blew up a lot of hardware. And we tried probably tried a hundred different combinations to make it work; but we made it work. * love the speed of that trade
Quote from: Daniels30 on 05/13/2017 11:34 pmMerlin 1D uses a method called “Phase shut off”, removes most valves reducing chances of failure by removing components and removing a lot of risk of a hard start.I think he means "face shutoff", meaning propellants are "shut off" at the injector face.See e.g. http://www.rocket-propulsion.info/resources/articles/TRW_PINTLE_ENGINE.pdf.
Merlin 1D uses a method called “Phase shut off”, removes most valves reducing chances of failure by removing components and removing a lot of risk of a hard start.
And, uh, I’ve seen that hurt us before, I’ve seen that fail, but I’ve also seen— where nobody thought it would work— it was the right decision. It was the harder way to do it, but in the end, it was the right thing. One of the things that we did with the Merlin 1D was; he kept complaining— I talked earlier about how expensive the engine was. <inaudible> [I said,] “[the] only way is to get rid of all these valves. Because that’s what’s really driving the complexity and cost.” And how can you do that? And I said, “Well, on smaller engines, we’d go phase-shutoff, but nobody’s done it on a really large engine. It’ll be really different.” And he said, “We need to do phase-shutoff. Explain how that works?” So I drew it up, did some, you know, sketches, and said “here’s what we’d do,” and he* said “That’s what we need to do.” And I advised him against it; I said it’s going to be too hard to do, and it’s not going to save that much. But he made the decision that we were going to do phase-shutoff.So we went and developed that engine; and it was hard. We blew up a lot of hardware. And we tried probably tried a hundred different combinations to make it work; but we made it work.
I don't think any of them worked on a 90 second cycle, except perhaps the guy that drives it off the line. (How does he get back to drive the next one out ?!)
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/14/2017 07:31 pmThe comments from Mueller gives the impression that the M1D has hit all three items instead of just 2 in the cost, performance, reliability tradeoff. This is in itself very significant and also important for SpaceX. They have a very low cost engine with high performance and high reliability. Something that no one else in the US industry has even come close to. Which is why the Atlas V uses the low cost, high performance, high reliability RD-180 from Russia, the only other engine in use in the US that hits all three points.This goal of hitting all three for the Raptor is also encouraging. Using lessons learned and piling the difficulty into development to be able to make such an engine instead of compromising on operational costs to keep development costs down. Musk has it right. If your going to fly lots of them and want to lower operational costs have good or high performance and high reliability, don't push off doing the right things in development for reducing the development costs.I think hitting all three is the baseline standard...
The comments from Mueller gives the impression that the M1D has hit all three items instead of just 2 in the cost, performance, reliability tradeoff. This is in itself very significant and also important for SpaceX. They have a very low cost engine with high performance and high reliability. Something that no one else in the US industry has even come close to. Which is why the Atlas V uses the low cost, high performance, high reliability RD-180 from Russia, the only other engine in use in the US that hits all three points.This goal of hitting all three for the Raptor is also encouraging. Using lessons learned and piling the difficulty into development to be able to make such an engine instead of compromising on operational costs to keep development costs down. Musk has it right. If your going to fly lots of them and want to lower operational costs have good or high performance and high reliability, don't push off doing the right things in development for reducing the development costs.
Musk convinced Mueller of using this method despite Mueller explaining what it is and how it increases complexity of R&D and increased costs due to blowing lots of hardware up before mastering the method.
Quote from: AncientU on 05/14/2017 08:47 pmQuote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/14/2017 07:31 pmThe comments from Mueller gives the impression that the M1D has hit all three items instead of just 2 in the cost, performance, reliability tradeoff. This is in itself very significant and also important for SpaceX. They have a very low cost engine with high performance and high reliability. Something that no one else in the US industry has even come close to. Which is why the Atlas V uses the low cost, high performance, high reliability RD-180 from Russia, the only other engine in use in the US that hits all three points.This goal of hitting all three for the Raptor is also encouraging. Using lessons learned and piling the difficulty into development to be able to make such an engine instead of compromising on operational costs to keep development costs down. Musk has it right. If your going to fly lots of them and want to lower operational costs have good or high performance and high reliability, don't push off doing the right things in development for reducing the development costs.I think hitting all three is the baseline standard...What? The conventional approach is "cost, performance, reliability: pick two". Hitting all 3 is rare indeed. Also, while the marginal cost per engine may be low, you have to amortize the development cost, and I get the impression the quoted low cost doesn't take that into account. This quote suggests development cost will have been high: QuoteMusk convinced Mueller of using this method despite Mueller explaining what it is and how it increases complexity of R&D and increased costs due to blowing lots of hardware up before mastering the method.
Re: "I've seen that hurt us before, I've seen that fail".Would it be churlish to imagine a conversation starting along the lines of: "What's the problem with immersing carbon fibre in liquid oxygen, where's the ignition source going to come from?".
Quote from: Hobbes-22 on 05/15/2017 02:08 pmQuote from: AncientU on 05/14/2017 08:47 pmQuote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 05/14/2017 07:31 pmThe comments from Mueller gives the impression that the M1D has hit all three items instead of just 2 in the cost, performance, reliability tradeoff. This is in itself very significant and also important for SpaceX. They have a very low cost engine with high performance and high reliability. Something that no one else in the US industry has even come close to. Which is why the Atlas V uses the low cost, high performance, high reliability RD-180 from Russia, the only other engine in use in the US that hits all three points.This goal of hitting all three for the Raptor is also encouraging. Using lessons learned and piling the difficulty into development to be able to make such an engine instead of compromising on operational costs to keep development costs down. Musk has it right. If your going to fly lots of them and want to lower operational costs have good or high performance and high reliability, don't push off doing the right things in development for reducing the development costs.I think hitting all three is the baseline standard...What? The conventional approach is "cost, performance, reliability: pick two". Hitting all 3 is rare indeed. Also, while the marginal cost per engine may be low, you have to amortize the development cost, and I get the impression the quoted low cost doesn't take that into account. This quote suggests development cost will have been high: QuoteMusk convinced Mueller of using this method despite Mueller explaining what it is and how it increases complexity of R&D and increased costs due to blowing lots of hardware up before mastering the method.Cost of R&D per engine is related to number of engines manufactured. If the number was going to be only a few hundred then yes but the number of engines produced will be in the thousands. They have flown about 300 M!D already. By end of year they have flown another 150. Next year another 250. Then 300 Then 350. By EOY 2020 if all goes well they will have flown 1350 engines. $1B R&Dcost (It didn't cost that much or even close) is $.75M/engine. Development cost of $500M is $.37M/engine. If the extra cost is $200M over the normal development $500M vs $300M then the increase in cost per engine due to R&D is $.15M. But the decrease in cost per engine due to using the lower parts count is probably a lot more than that.
Quote from: LucR on 05/14/2017 12:59 amQuote from: Daniels30 on 05/13/2017 11:34 pmMerlin 1D uses a method called “Phase shut off”, removes most valves reducing chances of failure by removing components and removing a lot of risk of a hard start.I think he means "face shutoff", meaning propellants are "shut off" at the injector face.See e.g. http://www.rocket-propulsion.info/resources/articles/TRW_PINTLE_ENGINE.pdf.So SpaceX went from an injector plate, with separate propellant injection orifices to a single injector "sprinkler"? Please corret me if wrong but that seems like a major redesign of the engine.
Cost of R&D per engine is related to number of engines manufactured. If the number was going to be only a few hundred then yes but the number of engines produced will be in the thousands. They have flown about 300 M!D already. By end of year they have flown another 150. Next year another 250. Then 300 Then 350. By EOY 2020 if all goes well they will have flown 1350 engines. $1B R&Dcost (It didn't cost that much or even close) is $.75M/engine. Development cost of $500M is $.37M/engine. If the extra cost is $200M over the normal development $500M vs $300M then the increase in cost per engine due to R&D is $.15M. But the decrease in cost per engine due to using the lower parts count is probably a lot more than that.
