To me the issue is the relatively small size of the launch market, compared to the massive size of the market for satellite construction, space habitat construction, LEO internet constellations, exploration probes and the like.The money is not in providing launch services. It is in constructing payloads and deriving benefit from them. Why invest in the risky business of developing your own rocket, when you could just buy a cheap launch from SpaceX or Blue Origin to launch your new asteroid mining machine, or satellite constellation or Space Hotel.
To me the issue is the relatively small size of the launch market, compared to the massive size of the market for satellite construction, space habitat construction, LEO internet constellations, exploration probes and the like.The money is not in providing launch services. It is in constructing payloads and deriving benefit from them. Why invest in the risky business of developing your own rocket, when you could just buy a cheap launch from SpaceX or Blue Origin to launch your new asteroid mining machine, or satellite constellation or Space Hotel.That's where the money lies. SpaceX can just be the sub-contractor who gets your stuff into orbit for a minimal fee, now that launch services are so cheap.
Quote from: M.E.T. on 06/19/2017 01:56 pmTo me the issue is the relatively small size of the launch market, compared to the massive size of the market for satellite construction, space habitat construction, LEO internet constellations, exploration probes and the like.The money is not in providing launch services. It is in constructing payloads and deriving benefit from them. Why invest in the risky business of developing your own rocket, when you could just buy a cheap launch from SpaceX or Blue Origin to launch your new asteroid mining machine, or satellite constellation or Space Hotel.That's where the money lies. SpaceX can just be the sub-contractor who gets your stuff into orbit for a minimal fee, now that launch services are so cheap.I'm not so sure I can agree with you on this. While the tourist trade will be important, overall, the space industry has been hampered, largely, by the expense of launch services. we're seeing an explosion, so far, of short term micro and small sats, due to a combination of both more advanced microelectronics and cheaper launch services. Given sufficient cost drops, major colleges and universities could and likely would sponsor their own long term sats for both Earth and space observations, as well as eventually, sponsoring and building their own interplanetary space probes. Universities have, already, sponsored and built experiments launched on NASA probes, and having probes of their own, that they have less restrictions of what experiments they put on them, would have a huge appeal to such institutes of learning. Corporate sponsors are already sending out their own small sats and probes, so building larger craft, designed to exploit microgravity, as well as available resources in space, are natural growth areas that are only now being addressed.
In this spectrum, what I mean by commercial space is pure commercial space, or at least as close to the top of the list as possible. The reasons are economic. If space continues to be (mostly) the purview of governments, it is constrained by government budgets, subject to political winds, subject to hijacking by special interests both inside and outside government and subject to the gross inefficiencies and lack of accountability of any government enterprise.On the other hand, a pure commercial enterprise is subject to the tyranny of consumers who will vote with their feet if the product or service does not meet their needs in both price and performance. It is subject to competition not just from other space companies, but any other idea that meets the same consumer demand. For example, satellite communication services compete with terrestrial communication services. Furthermore, it is accountable to investors who expect a return on their investment. All these pressures drive innovation and efficiency resulting in a continual reduction in cost and increase in performance.
Quote from: JasonAW3 on 06/19/2017 08:09 pmQuote from: M.E.T. on 06/19/2017 01:56 pmTo me the issue is the relatively small size of the launch market, compared to the massive size of the market for satellite construction, space habitat construction, LEO internet constellations, exploration probes and the like.The money is not in providing launch services. It is in constructing payloads and deriving benefit from them. Why invest in the risky business of developing your own rocket, when you could just buy a cheap launch from SpaceX or Blue Origin to launch your new asteroid mining machine, or satellite constellation or Space Hotel.That's where the money lies. SpaceX can just be the sub-contractor who gets your stuff into orbit for a minimal fee, now that launch services are so cheap.I'm not so sure I can agree with you on this. While the tourist trade will be important, overall, the space industry has been hampered, largely, by the expense of launch services. we're seeing an explosion, so far, of short term micro and small sats, due to a combination of both more advanced microelectronics and cheaper launch services. Given sufficient cost drops, major colleges and universities could and likely would sponsor their own long term sats for both Earth and space observations, as well as eventually, sponsoring and building their own interplanetary space probes. Universities have, already, sponsored and built experiments launched on NASA probes, and having probes of their own, that they have less restrictions of what experiments they put on them, would have a huge appeal to such institutes of learning. Corporate sponsors are already sending out their own small sats and probes, so building larger craft, designed to exploit microgravity, as well as available resources in space, are natural growth areas that are only now being addressed.But all of that growth relates to what people can do in space, thanks to cheap launches. None of it is focused on making money by providing cheap launches. Cheap launches becomes the catalyst for the explosion of the space industry. It does not represent the money making mechanism itself. Merely the platform that enables the money making to take place in orbit and beyond.SpaceX themselves admit this. Hence their focus on the satellite constellation. The revenue of which will dwarf the money they can hope to make from launch services.
Thoughts on Commercial Space, Part IIAhttp://georgesowers.blogspot.co.uk/
What do the steps beyond 4.0 look like? Any speculations?
Quote from: sanman on 06/25/2017 09:51 pmWhat do the steps beyond 4.0 look like? Any speculations?Commoditization of launch services market, leading to lower launch services price, leading to new markets... or at least proof that the launch services market is (a) inelastic; or (b) elastic. If the former, don't expect much to change; if the latter, who knows what new markets lurk out there?
Is Reusability a sufficient game-changer, that it deserves its own distinct category (ie. 5.0)?
Any space business counts launch as one of the largest costs as well as one of the highest risks. Access to space remains a significant barrier to entry for any prospective commercial space business.
Quote from: sanman on 06/26/2017 07:52 amIs Reusability a sufficient game-changer, that it deserves its own distinct category (ie. 5.0)?Strange, I was going to propose the opposite. The entrepreneurs described in phase 4 overlap with the ones succesful in phase 3. Unless phase 4 is later explained to contain the billionaires developing new kinds of payloads to put on those commercial launchers from phase 3, it's not a phase in and of itself. And even then, these phases overlap in time, so 'phase' might be a misnomer.As for reusability being a 'phase': reusability has been under development since phase 1. What makes it game-changing at this iteration (phase 3), is that competing government bodies are no longer tacking on commercially unviable requirements (phase 1), actual demand for launches and TRL has caught up with business models (which wasn't the case in phase 2). Plus, reusability is only one of two roads being taken towards lowering the cost. The other being mass production. These aren't even mutually exclusive within a single company. The fact that multiple alternatives are being experimented with, using mostly private startup money, is the strongest identifying aspect of phase 3. COTS falls into phase 3 because the government in this case is much more a consumer/client rather than the main investor who bears the brunt of the risk of going over budget and not becoming succesful.So how about making it: phase 3A: commercial launchers and phase 3B: new space applications. Both with mostly private investment and, wherever necessary, with programmes like COTS to help commercial suppliers manage their burn rate so they can attract investors much earlier in the game.
Dr. Sowers just posted part 2B of his Thoughts on Commercial Space series.
These facts make it tough for any commercial company to break into commercial space on either the demand side (satellite operations), or the (launch) supply side. All the initial satellite companies got their start as some sort of IGO or other heavily government supported entity. The initial launchers were also government. It was only after the trail was blazed that the private sector could or would step in.Even then, profits proved elusive.
