ESA in discussion with SpaceX on launch requirements

[DanClemmensen]

It's fair to say that the invasion of Ukraine at the moment when the rocket fleets worldwide are turning over has put everybody except SpaceX in a bind.

So far, SpaceX is managing the transition well.  Rather than "this is what dominance gives you," I would say "this is what reusability gives you."

Some of this is luck. SpaceX's business model is that Starlink is a reliable low-priority customer, so they will pretty much always have a launcher available for a higher-priority customer who is willing to pay for it. I don't think SpaceX anticipated the sudden surge in demand for F9 launches, but they were able to accommodate it almost by accident.

Well, back when they landed their first booster they had a production capacity of around 12 expendable F9 rockets per year. Now that they only have to produce maybe 4 or so boosters a year, the freed up capacity is churning out 2nd stages by the truck load.

SpaceX basically has unlimited launch capacity at this point. There might be additional ramp-up costs to jump past some temporary production ceilings, but if sufficient demand exists they can pretty much pump out as many launches as their launch facilities can accommodate.

The rate is currently constrained by the recovery fleet, range availability,  and refurbishment, not by production. I suppose they could add staff to speed up refurbishment, but adding recovery vessels on short notice is hard. Since the demand surge is likely to now  be over and the longer-term demand for F9 is likely to drop off starting next year(?), SpaceX is probably reluctant to make new investments in F9 capacity.

[Nomadd]

Stop

 If you knew the power of the Shiny Side...

[M.E.T.]

It's fair to say that the invasion of Ukraine at the moment when the rocket fleets worldwide are turning over has put everybody except SpaceX in a bind.

So far, SpaceX is managing the transition well.  Rather than "this is what dominance gives you," I would say "this is what reusability gives you."

Some of this is luck. SpaceX's business model is that Starlink is a reliable low-priority customer, so they will pretty much always have a launcher available for a higher-priority customer who is willing to pay for it. I don't think SpaceX anticipated the sudden surge in demand for F9 launches, but they were able to accommodate it almost by accident.

Well, back when they landed their first booster they had a production capacity of around 12 expendable F9 rockets per year. Now that they only have to produce maybe 4 or so boosters a year, the freed up capacity is churning out 2nd stages by the truck load.

SpaceX basically has unlimited launch capacity at this point. There might be additional ramp-up costs to jump past some temporary production ceilings, but if sufficient demand exists they can pretty much pump out as many launches as their launch facilities can accommodate.

The rate is currently constrained by the recovery fleet, range availability,  and refurbishment, not by production. I suppose they could add staff to speed up refurbishment, but adding recovery vessels on short notice is hard. Since the demand surge is likely to now  be over and the longer-term demand for F9 is likely to drop off starting next year(?), SpaceX is probably reluctant to make new investments in F9 capacity.

Yep. I find it useful to look at it from a cumulative perspective. As in, how many total launches will F9 complete over its entire lifetime - meaning until the rocket is retired.

It is already approaching 200. I expect its lifetime launch tally to reach around 400.

So let’s say there are 200-250 launches left - with maybe 3 years of high cadence representing the bulk of that, and then a 5-10 year tail thereafter with a dwindling number of “traditionalist” customers insisting on F9 even when Starship is in operation.

So any investment SpaceX makes in F9 now, needs to be seen in the context of those 200-250 remaining lifetime launches.

Not worth over investing in it at all.

[rubicondsrv]

but adding recovery vessels on short notice is hard.

the barges are the biggest issue there. there aren't really any DP equipped deck barges just waiting for hire.

best case it would take a few months to outfit a barge to be minimally functional for a landing platform.   

[meekGee]

There's irony here, in that SpaceX intentionally did not lower prices to match internal cost, for a number of well discussed reasons, and then just as things were going according to plan, their low-cost high-capacity competitor just offs themselves.

Best laid plans and all.

But yeah, competition is good, but winning competitions is better.

[Comga]

Would be "temporary" to bridge a gap.  SpaceX one of several options.  Japan and India are other options. 
Soyuz was only flying once or twice a year from Kourou, so this probably would not amount to a large number of flights.

 - Ed Kyle

Way to sandbag, Ed!
SpaceX's dominance isn't total, permanent, or all that significant, really, in the global sense of things.
Right

SpaceX's unmatched ability (It surely is.) to expand their manifest on demand is just what is needed at the moment when the Russians have taken themselves out of the commercial launch business, at which they were doing well.
It shows that now is the right time for (mostly) reusable launch launch vehicles.
Was this an inevitable outcome?
No
Was it well thought out and executed?
Yes

It serves the Russians right, and is such delicious karma.
Remember that theirs were the guys who spit, physically not metaphorically, on Musk for being so presumptive as to ask to buy their glorious rockets just because he was rich. (About a third of a billion dollars! Woo Hoo!)

[wannamoonbase]

There's irony here, in that SpaceX intentionally did not lower prices to match internal cost, for a number of well discussed reasons, and then just as things were going according to plan, their low-cost high-capacity competitor just offs themselves.

Best laid plans and all.

But yeah, competition is good, but winning competitions is better.

SpaceX spent years and who knows how many millions developing F9 and the ability to reuse the booster and fairing. They need to earn back that investment, there is no need to leave money on the table.

Prices will come down closer to the actual costs when/if there is competition.

[alugobi]

Well they're just price gouging.

[wannamoonbase]

Well they're just price gouging.

Yes, and still cheaper than every other launch provider in history.

[alugobi]

Would be "temporary" to bridge a gap. 

Way to sandbag, Ed!

Lol.

"temporary", in quotes, as in not so temporary.  Once EU sat makers get a taste of the fractional cost to launch compared to Ariane and Vega, [arnold]they'll be back.[/arnold]

[Robotbeat]

I strongly support competition, but… It is satisfying to see, after two decades of dismissal and belittlement, SpaceX and their workhorse reusable Falcon 9 becoming so utterly dominant.

I hope all the providers learned their lesson and will start relying more on reuse instead of cheap, geopolitically-questionable labor for expendable hardware.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

After starting at about the same time frame. SpaceX has done to the world LV manufacturers/designers that Tesla has done to the Car manufactures around the world. Things have changed and will no longer be the same. Therefore as existing and new companies spring up with new vehicles they will address the reasonableness of their design in order to get the investment or government funding (EVEN IN cHINA). So more competition is around the corner just like what has recently shown up in the EV market. Once the paradigm has changed it takes a lot to change it back even more so than it took to change it to this new one.

Up and coming new F9 sized or larger designs:
Neutron -Reusable
Antares330 -unknown reusability status
New Glenn -Reusable
New design China LVs -Reusable

[Greg Hullender]

They should invite SpaceX to launch from the Guiana Space Centre. I hear the ELS pad is available now. :-)

--Greg

[butters]

What ESA and Arianespace need is a commitment from Eutelsat-OneWeb, Airbus, etc. that there will be a European megaconstellation on something like the scale of Kuiper if not Starlink. They've always been caught up in the "It's not needed!" attitude, their failure to recognize the value of reusability tightly interwoven with their failure to recognize the applications of high launch cadence.

Starlink scares the European aerospace industry more than the reusable F9 steamroller ever could with manifests like there were in 2018 and 2019. It's what's happened since 2020 that's shown them the error of their ways. It's the value of combining high-rate rockets with high-rate payloads that changes the ballgame for both sides of the industry.

SpaceX solved the chicken-and-egg problem that arguably doomed the generation of LEO constellation providers who went bankrupt in the early 2000s and possibly doomed previous reusable launch vehicle projects. Now everybody has to play catch-up. It's not just the Europeans, there's a lot of "let them eat hat" going around, because it was hard to believe that anybody could launch 3000 satellites in 2.5 years until they watched it happening from the sidelines.

Before the Eutelsat acquisition, OneWeb and Relativity announced some kind of preliminary launch deal for what they're calling the Gen2 constellation. Launching on Terran-R isn't necessarily a bad thing in the nearer term, but in the meantime they need to be developing a reusable launch system with the confidence that the European constellation will be a reliable anchor customer when it's ready.

[rpapo]

Remember that theirs were the guys who spit, physically not metaphorically, on Musk for being so presumptive as to ask to buy their glorious rockets just because he was rich. (About a third of a billion dollars! Woo Hoo!)

Now he is worth that much.  Then he was a nobody, from their point of view.  He had "only" $170-180M in cash burning a hole in his pocket at the time, which was nothing to the oligarchs, and not that big a deal by Silicon Valley standards.

But I agree.  Karma can really bite sometimes.

[Athelstane]

I strongly support competition, but… It is satisfying to see, after two decades of dismissal and belittlement, SpaceX and their workhorse reusable Falcon 9 becoming so utterly dominant.

I hope all the providers learned their lesson and will start relying more on reuse instead of cheap, geopolitically-questionable labor for expendable hardware.

Re: Reusability

It has to emphasized that the Falcon 9 was the lowest cost and lowest price medium class clauncher in the world before they ever reused a single flight proven booster in March 2017. They achieved this through a comprehensive approach to reducing cost and obstacles to iteration. They build and source as much in house as they can. They use off-the-shelf commercial components where they can do the job. And so on.

What reuse really does is allow a higher cadence. And that's really paying off now.

[ZachF]

This is a parenthesis. There is a de facto F9 near monopoly due to geopolitical circumstances (Ukraine) and delays in development of some competitors.

But in a few years there will be new vehicles, etc. and the parenthesis will be over.

Eh, I suspect SpaceX will lift a majority of the worlds tonnage to orbit for quite a while. This year they’re on track to lift around 2/3rds of the world’s tonnage to orbit, even when adjusted for LEO requiring less dV. In a few years their market share of tonnage to orbit might be as high as 90%+…

Boeing built a majority of the world’s airliners for almost half a century, for a little historical comparison.

[Zed_Noir]

Remember that theirs were the guys who spit, physically not metaphorically, on Musk for being so presumptive as to ask to buy their glorious rockets just because he was rich. (About a third of a billion dollars! Woo Hoo!)

Now he is worth that much.  Then he was a nobody, from their point of view.  He had "only" $170-180M in cash burning a hole in his pocket at the time, which was nothing to the oligarchs, and not that big a deal by Silicon Valley standards.

But I agree.  Karma can really bite sometimes.

Actually he is worth a few magnitudes more than that. Just look up his current pay package in stock options with Tesla.

[freddo411]

They should invite SpaceX to launch from the Guiana Space Centre. I hear the ELS pad is available now. :-)

--Greg

I get it, tongue in cheek.

But actually, Europe would have a lot to gain if they welcomed SX with open arms to make a new pad .. maybe a starship pad

[punder]

SpaceX did something else that put them ahead—they basically ignored the pandemic while others slowed down considerably. India for example.