BFR and the space industry

[speedevil]

Down mass is free, if the BFS is there anyway, if there is enough spare fuel.

Free to whom? The price will be what the market will bear; not the cost to SpaceX of providing the service.

An analogy is all those container ships carrying good from China to the US. They have to go back anyway; but if you want them to carry some cargo for you, you still have to pay.

Well, yes. Sorry, I thought that was obvious.
The amount a commercial entity will charge is usually bounded by the actual cost.

This actual cost could vary from near zero to requiring a whole launch, but the price can be significantly higher.
(or indeed, can in some cases be a loss leader).

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Business cases and the $/kg or $/person that they become valid. There may be some argument on the actual values for some of these but this list is  a starting point and a indicator of what the BFR/BFS would enable even in its initial and much more expensive prices.

Possible BFR/BFS Prices for various life(max number of flights per unit)

Life number of flights/unit	1	10	20	100	1000
$/kg	$4,000	$472	$276	$119	$84
$/person to LEO	$1,500,000	$177,000	$103,500	$44,700	$31,470
$/person to Lunar surface	$21,000,000	$2,478,000	$1,449,000	$625,800	$440,580

LEO tourism viable at $200,000/person. Reason: The price must be low enough to get enough tourists to fill a BFS packed with 400 passengers per trip.

Lunar surface tourism viable at $500,000/person. Reason: The price must be low enough to get enough tourists to fill a BFS with 200 passengers per trip. More will want to go even though more expensive because it is an actual visit to another celestial body.

SBPS (Space Based Power Satellite) viable at $250/kg. This is a complex evaluation of the weight of a SBPS for the power it generates and the value of that power in $/KWhr on the national bussbar grid.

Lunar Mining of Rare Earths viable at $100/kg. As these become more scarce due to more environmental restrictions because the Rare Earths are highly toxic. But they are indispensable in integrated circuits manufacture. The rate is primarily for the shipment of equipment supplies and people to perform the exploration and mining of the Rare Earths at a significant quantity and the shipment back to Earth possibly in large quantities 1,000's of mt. In most the flight rate is more of a significant factor than costs.

General mining Lunar and Asteroid for ISRU viable at $500/kg. The key here is cheap shipment of equipment and resupply of the mining operation. A mine can produce several times than for same cost in material to be shipped from Earth therefore always being able to produce for less than the same weight in shipment cost from Earth. But there is a caveat and that is that the equipment/supplies cost must not be totally dominated by shipping costs.

These are but a few examples.

There are other highly specific business cases which may have a highly mobile viability target price.

[speedevil]

Business cases and the $/kg or $/person that they become valid. There may be some argument on the actual values for some of these but this list is  a starting point and a indicator of what the BFR/BFS would enable even in its initial and much more expensive prices.

Possible BFR/BFS Prices for various life(max number of flights per unit)

Life number of flights/unit	1	10	20	100	1000
$/kg	$4,000	$472	$276	$119	$84
$/person to LEO	$1,500,000	$177,000	$103,500	$44,700	$31,470
$/person to Lunar surface	$21,000,000	$2,478,000	$1,449,000	$625,800	$440,580

I'm not sure what numbers you're basing these off.
1000 launches of 400 people at 31K each is 12 billion, 12 million dollars a launch.

This is presumably based off falcon 1s launch cost.
But, in the most recent speech, he said it was lower than F1s cost, not the same. He also said that it was comparable with airline prices.
Later, he clarified that he meant economy prices.

Fly to most places on Earth in under 30 mins and anywhere in under 60. Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that.

(on instagram).

This is ~$1-2K, depending on destination, not 31K.

If we assume 400-800 passengers, with a total weight of 150 tons, including seating, (180kg-360kg each) that gets to between 400K-1.6M to launch. (at $1K and 2K price points).
And a cargo cost of $2.6 to $10.6/kg.

I'm not saying that this is likely near-term, but Elon is quite able to do basic math, and isn't going to be out by a factor of 15-30 in calculations.

May he be out in the number of times the vehicle can be reused, or the cost of that reuse - sure.

But, I see no way of justifying $31K for a passenger launch as anything other than a number picked from the air.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Business cases and the $/kg or $/person that they become valid. There may be some argument on the actual values for some of these but this list is  a starting point and a indicator of what the BFR/BFS would enable even in its initial and much more expensive prices.

Possible BFR/BFS Prices for various life(max number of flights per unit)

Life number of flights/unit	1	10	20	100	1000
$/kg	$4,000	$472	$276	$119	$84
$/person to LEO	$1,500,000	$177,000	$103,500	$44,700	$31,470
$/person to Lunar surface	$21,000,000	$2,478,000	$1,449,000	$625,800	$440,580

I'm not sure what numbers you're basing these off.
1000 launches of 400 people at 31K each is 12 billion, 12 million dollars a launch.

This is presumably based off falcon 1s launch cost.
But, in the most recent speech, he said it was lower than F1s cost, not the same. He also said that it was comparable with airline prices.
Later, he clarified that he meant economy prices.

Fly to most places on Earth in under 30 mins and anywhere in under 60. Cost per seat should be about the same as full fare economy in an aircraft. Forgot to mention that.

(on instagram).

This is ~$1-2K, depending on destination, not 31K.

If we assume 400-800 passengers, with a total weight of 150 tons, including seating, (180kg-360kg each) that gets to between 400K-1.6M to launch. (at $1K and 2K price points).
And a cargo cost of $2.6 to $10.6/kg.

I'm not saying that this is likely near-term, but Elon is quite able to do basic math, and isn't going to be out by a factor of 15-30 in calculations.

May he be out in the number of times the vehicle can be reused, or the cost of that reuse - sure.

But, I see no way of justifying $31K for a passenger launch as anything other than a number picked from the air.

The numbers are based on a booster costing $230M to manufacture and a spacecraft to cost $250M to manufacture. The everything else costs per launch starts at $20M and reduces to $10M as the rate increases. It may be possible to get the everything else costs per launch lower than $10M at very high launch rates. The top values are how many flights can a specific vehicle be reused. As the design matures this number should continue to increase. At 1000 flights per unit the contribution to launch costs of the unit's manufacture becomes <$500K. At high build rates it may be possible to lower the manufacturing costs by as much as a factor of 2. Making the primary driver of the cost of a ticket the everything else costs (maintenance, pad costs, fees, manpower [flight crew], propellant, etc[lots of little stuff that increases the cost of a flight]). I know that my values are pessimistic but if it works with very pessimistic values than it should work economically without a problem with the real ones whatever they may be in the future.

The simple model I used to calculate Prices shows a very interesting thing and that is that even with expensive build costs a vehicle with a reuse count of 100 will open and enable many space industry business cases.

[Robotbeat]

The booster is half the size of last iteration, so should cost almost half as much to build.

And there's no reason 1000 has to be a hard limit for reuse. Or 100 for the booster, especially for these more modest reentry speeds where there is a much larger choice in TPS materials.

[oiorionsbelt]

I think this fits here......

http://www.teslarati.com/us-air-force-rfp-super-heavy-lift-rockets-spacex-bfr/

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

The booster is half the size of last iteration, so should cost almost half as much to build.

And there's no reason 1000 has to be a hard limit for reuse. Or 100 for the booster, especially for these more modest reentry speeds where there is a much larger choice in TPS materials.

The key was that because of reusablity and even for a very expensive to build set of hardware the per flight costs are so small when evaluating what the system is able to do for that cost that most of the currently envisioned proposed business cases will close easily. This includes mass space tourism. And as you mention 100 flight life is not lekly to be the end or even 1000. SpaceX continually improves the vehicles they build every couple of years like they have been doing with F9 improving reliability and performance rapidly while continuing to decrease costs with reuse life extensions.

Then there is the final nail of that if SpaceX being SpaceX the cost per unit is not likely to be very expensive because the major strength that SpaceX has is innovation of manufacture for space systems that result in better performance, reliability and lower costs.

[c4fusion]

Possible BFR/BFS Prices for various life(max number of flights per unit)

Life number of flights/unit	1	10	20	100	1000
$/kg	$4,000	$472	$276	$119	$84
$/person to LEO	$1,500,000	$177,000	$103,500	$44,700	$31,470
$/person to Lunar surface	$21,000,000	$2,478,000	$1,449,000	$625,800	$440,580

I would like to throw on another graph into the mix as sort of best case scenario in regards to prices and a way to attain Elon's numbers of economy class price to any where in the world. In the attached slide from last year's conference, propellent price are stated to be $162/ton.  At this price and approximately 4000 tons of fuel, the total cost of fuel per flight is $672,000. 

The next price to consider is maintenance.  In the slide the cost of maintenance is $200,000, $500,000, and $10,000,000 for the booster, tanker, and the ship respectively.  Here I am going to go out on a limb and say that the cost of maintenance for the ship is slashed by a factor of 10 when it is going to a low earth orbit trip due to lower stress from re-entry and number of trips it will probably perform per year.  So the average total maintenance per use should be $1,200,000. 

Additionally, I am just going to use the total price of $430,000,000 to build the two parts, the ship and the booster as presented in the slide (I would imagine the price for the new BFR will be lower). 

For the last assumption, I assumed that the weight per passenger including their luggage would be 100kg, similar to current airline assumptions, and 50kg for the weight of the seats, life support and so on (this number doesn't have much bases in reality, just a doubling of the approximate 25kg per passenger for amenities in domestic flights).

Below is the table I generated from these values:

Life number of flights/unit	1	10	20	100	1000	10000
$/kg	$2,879	$299	$156	$41	$15	$13
$/person to LEO	$431,872	$44,872	$23,372	$6,172	$2,302	$1,915

It is interesting to note that once you get to 1000 flights, the price the the ship is no longer that big of a concern unless the price of fuel and the price maintenance comes down significantly (maybe the day everyone goes solar/wind/hydro/batteries/etc.?).


Weight Estimates on Air Passengers

[Norm38]

A good thread for this.  Watching the webcast, in the intro during all the payload processing, I couldn't help thinking how delicate it all looks.  Everything wrapped in gossamer foil, the precautions.  How much more mass does it take to build a satellite as a rugged industrial machine?  To optimize for performance and lifespan instead of weight?  To just put a nice big heavy thing like a shipping container in GEO that just works.
Maybe whole platforms.  Where a systems upgrade is just changing out some rack equipment?

[wilbobaggins]

It is a shame that the lowering of price that finally make asteroid and lunar mining attempts possible for private enterprise also crashes the worth of their products at least in LEO.

Perhaps the jump to rare metals needs to be done sooner rather than later or off world produced goods will just not me present in LEO.

[BobHk]

I cannot believe no one mentioned: FACTORIES...

Why send raw ore to earth, lunar ores can be processed, wasting no downmass at all.  Factories can be moved into orbit to make finished products.  Tourism isn't going to dominate space bound human traffic... making things and processing things is.

[Nibb31]

Orbital manufacturing isn't going to require factory workers. We are phasing out manuel labour on Earth. Sending hundreds of factory workers to space and keeping them alive is a huge expense that simply doesn't make any economical sense. If we ever see orbital factories, they will be as automated as possible.

You might not even need a factory. Just stuff the manufacturing equipment and raw materiel into a BFS, launch, produce a batch of your zero-g gizmos, and return the whole thing for maintenance.

All we need is to figure out what gizmos will economically benefit from being made in zero-g.

[CuddlyRocket]

All we need is to figure out what gizmos will economically benefit from being made in zero-g.

Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing! But then, you probably need to do a lot more experimentation in space before someone stumbles over such a product.

Of course if you had a colony - even one that just supports a tourist operation or science laboratories - then you'll likely develop local manufacture. A bit like the development of Las Vegas.

[envy887]

All we need is to figure out what gizmos will economically benefit from being made in zero-g.

Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing! ...

In large part because no matter how hard something is to manufacture on Earth, it's usually easier than paying $10,000 per kg to go to orbit and back.

[savuporo]

..Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing!

Can we just agree to not make substantial quantities of antimatter on earth, ever ? I mean beyond particle accelerator kind of things.
An antimatter factory on the far side of the moon i could live with.

[CuddlyRocket]

Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing! ...

In large part because no matter how hard something is to manufacture on Earth, it's usually easier than paying $10,000 per kg to go to orbit and back.

Possibly, though I don't recall reading about any product that has people saying they'd manufacture it in space if only the transportation costs were lower. Anybody got any examples?

Can we just agree to not make substantial quantities of antimatter on earth, ever ? I mean beyond particle accelerator kind of things.
An antimatter factory on the far side of the moon i could live with.

Substantial quantities of antimatter - safely stored antimatter! - is presently unobtanium. But yes, if they ever crack the science and engineering it would be better to site it outside Earth's gravity well!

[RotoSequence]

Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing! ...

In large part because no matter how hard something is to manufacture on Earth, it's usually easier than paying $10,000 per kg to go to orbit and back.

Possibly, though I don't recall reading about any product that has people saying they'd manufacture it in space if only the transportation costs were lower. Anybody got any examples?

ZBLAN metal fluoride glass optical fiber has superior transmission bandwidth but develops extensive impurities from convection when it’s pulled. When produced in microgravity, the fibers are clear.

[Semmel]

Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing! ...

In large part because no matter how hard something is to manufacture on Earth, it's usually easier than paying $10,000 per kg to go to orbit and back.

Possibly, though I don't recall reading about any product that has people saying they'd manufacture it in space if only the transportation costs were lower. Anybody got any examples?

ZBLAN metal fluoride glass optical fiber has superior transmission bandwidth but develops extensive impurities from convection when it’s pulled. When produced in microgravity, the fibers are clear.

There is an experiment to that nature either going to or already on the ISS. I believe from a company called fittingly 'made in space'

[Nibb31]

Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing! ...

In large part because no matter how hard something is to manufacture on Earth, it's usually easier than paying $10,000 per kg to go to orbit and back.

Possibly, though I don't recall reading about any product that has people saying they'd manufacture it in space if only the transportation costs were lower. Anybody got any examples?

ZBLAN metal fluoride glass optical fiber has superior transmission bandwidth but develops extensive impurities from convection when it’s pulled. When produced in microgravity, the fibers are clear.

There is an experiment to that nature either going to or already on the ISS. I believe from a company called fittingly 'made in space'

Sure, there are other prospective ideas like silicon wafers and growing crystals. The question is what is the market and how much is it willing to pay. Maybe BFR will bring down the cost of orbital manufacturing enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe it won't.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Which is the biggest flaw in current ideas of orbital or otherwise off-Earth manufacturing - no-one's found anything worth manufacturing! ...

In large part because no matter how hard something is to manufacture on Earth, it's usually easier than paying $10,000 per kg to go to orbit and back.

Possibly, though I don't recall reading about any product that has people saying they'd manufacture it in space if only the transportation costs were lower. Anybody got any examples?

ZBLAN metal fluoride glass optical fiber has superior transmission bandwidth but develops extensive impurities from convection when it’s pulled. When produced in microgravity, the fibers are clear.

There is an experiment to that nature either going to or already on the ISS. I believe from a company called fittingly 'made in space'

Sure, there are other prospective ideas like silicon wafers and growing crystals. The question is what is the market and how much is it willing to pay. Maybe BFR will bring down the cost of orbital manufacturing enough to make it worthwhile. Maybe it won't.

The ZBLAM fiber is worth from $100 to $10,000 per meter of length. A kg of source materiial will produce 6km of fiber or a produce value of $600,000/kg to $60,000,000/kg. Based on quality of fibre. It is expected that the space made fibers will be of exceptional quality therefore worth $10,000/m.