Impact of SpaceX rideshare on small sat launchers market

[deltaV]

Only on the very small end where you get hit with aero losses and minimum gauge issues. These aren’t a problem with medium to heavy lift launch vehicles.

In fact, you get penalized at a large enough scale because bending loads and strut loads scale worse than linear at a certain size.

Larger vehicles should have an easier time with reentry heating for two reasons. The first reason is that large vehicles naturally have larger radius curves, which reduces reentry heating. The second reason is that larger vehicles naturally have a lower surface area to mass ratio (square cube law), which reduces the relative mass of insulation or active cooling.

the radius helps a bit, BUT The lower surface area to volume ratio actually *hurts* for the same reason that larger objects of the same density have higher terminal velocity.

If I'm understanding the effect you're referring to correctly it looks like that effect and the first of the two effects I mentioned should roughly cancel, leaving heat flux independent of radius. Suppose our spacecraft has radius R and mass rho_s R^3 for some constant density rho_s. Reentry needs to occur at an altitude where the density of the air rho_a is such that the dynamic pressure rho_a v^2 (and hence lift and drag) is proportional to the spacecraft mass rho_s R^3 times acceleration A divided by the surface area R^2. (I'm omitting some constants such as the coefficients of lift and drag that aren't important for the present discussion.) Solving for rho_a we get rho_a = A rho_s R / v^2, i.e. a larger vehicle needs to slow down at a lower altitude with denser air. The Sutton-Graves equation for reentry heating is q = k sqrt(rho_a / R) v^3. Substituting the previous value for rho_a the two "R"s cancel, yielding q = k sqrt(A rho_s) v^2, which is independent of R.

With heat flux q independent of radius R the mass of insulation per area should be independent of radius. The total mass of the insulation is then proportional to R^2, which grows more slowly than the total mass rho_s R^3. In other words with your effect canceling the first of my two effects the second of my effects (the square cube law) is left standing and gives the bigger vehicle the edge. :-)

This discussion is veering off topic in this thread though.

Edit: my assumption that spacecraft density rho_s is independent of radius R is valid for pressure vessels but is probably not quite right for a spacecraft. I dunno if rho_s should increase with R or decrease. Like all models this is only an approximation.

[john smith 19]

Only on the very small end where you get hit with aero losses and minimum gauge issues. These aren’t a problem with medium to heavy lift launch vehicles.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. IIRC the Shuttle ET had some issues with minimum skin or stiffner sizes, and I don't think anyone would call that small. 

[M.E.T.]

New article by Jeff Foust and looks like the chickens are coming home to roost. The tide has gone out and we can now see who has been swimming naked - and it seems it was everyone.

https://spacenews.com/small-launch-companies-struggle-to-complete-with-spacex-rideshare-missions/
 
This gem is particularly amusing:

“They definitely control and have a dominant position in the market,” said Curt Blake, former chief executive of launch services company Spaceflight who now leads the commercial space group at law firm Wilson Sonsini, of SpaceX. “I think the real question is pricing, and what is their cost, and why so low, so dramatically low?”

Err, how about because they have reusable rockets and all of the rest of you don’t?

The article continues:

“SpaceX started offering rideshare launch opportunities for smallsats as low as $5,000 per kilogram. The company has since raised those prices to $5,500 per kilogram and plans annual increases in future years. However, in most cases those prices are far below what dedicated small launch vehicles offer.

“”I don’t think they had to go that low to have a commanding share of the market,” he said, estimating SpaceX could have gained significant business at prices of $10,000 to $12,000 per kilogram. “That had to have a hugely chilling effect on any other money flowing into startup launch companies.””

All I can add is that Gwynne was right all those years ago. Asked how many smallsat launchers would make it, her answer was “zero”.

[trimeta]

This gem is particularly amusing:

“They definitely control and have a dominant position in the market,” said Curt Blake, former chief executive of launch services company Spaceflight who now leads the commercial space group at law firm Wilson Sonsini, of SpaceX. “I think the real question is pricing, and what is their cost, and why so low, so dramatically low?”

Err, how about because they have reusable rockets and all of the rest of you don’t?

I think it's more "because they have a heavy-lift rocket and all the rest of you don't." Scale matters quite a lot.

[abaddon]

You missed my favorite quote:

“Is SpaceX squeezing other people out of the market? I think to a certain extent yes,” said Adam Spice, chief financial officer at Rocket Lab, on the Satellite Innovation panel. “It would be a bit naïve to think their strategies around rideshare aren’t very targeted towards limiting competition.”

SpaceX’s position in the market reduces “forgivable failure” by other companies, he said [...]

Yeah, I guess it does make it harder to lose a rocket on occasion and be forgiven... this is a bad thing?

[abaddon]

This gem is particularly amusing:

“They definitely control and have a dominant position in the market,” said Curt Blake, former chief executive of launch services company Spaceflight who now leads the commercial space group at law firm Wilson Sonsini, of SpaceX. “I think the real question is pricing, and what is their cost, and why so low, so dramatically low?”

Err, how about because they have reusable rockets and all of the rest of you don’t?

I think it's more "because they have a heavy-lift rocket and all the rest of you don't." Scale matters quite a lot.

Other medium-large rockets have had ride-share flights and nobody is talking about them disrupting anything.  The really disruptive thing about SpaceX's flights is how regularly they occur and this is due to their flexibility in booking less than full flights and still being able to (presumably) at least not lose money.  Organizing large rocket rideshare flights is hard.  SpaceX has side-stepped this for the most part with their willingness to fly with whatever is ready and push late payloads to the next flight(s).  This would be much harder to justify with a fully expendable rocket.

[deadman1204]

Its so dramatically low because they want to maintain a monopoly. The entire purpose is to starve the new launch startups of money, so they cant grow up, make bigger rockets, and actually compete with spaceX.

[M.E.T.]

Its so dramatically low because they want to maintain a monopoly. The entire purpose is to starve the new launch startups of money, so they cant grow up, make bigger rockets, and actually compete with spaceX.

Well the bad news (for would be competitors) is that they’re only getting started. Elon’s stated goal is to drop launch costs by at least another order of magnitude.

So best deal with this new reality.

[abaddon]

Its so dramatically low because they want to maintain a monopoly. The entire purpose is to starve the new launch startups of money, so they cant grow up, make bigger rockets, and actually compete with spaceX.

SpaceX isn't a monopoly.

[DanClemmensen]

Its so dramatically low because they want to maintain a monopoly. The entire purpose is to starve the new launch startups of money, so they cant grow up, make bigger rockets, and actually compete with spaceX.

The price is low because they can make a healthy profit at this price. If they set the price higher, they are gouging their customers.  There is no evidence that they are deliberately engaging in predatory pricing to drive the competition out of business. It's more like they are ignoring the competition.

In a monopoly or effective monopoly situation, the trivial ECON 101 solution is to set price to maximize total profit. If demand is elastic, lower price results in higher volume with lower margin, and higher price results in lower volume with higher margin. There is no evidence that SpaceX is deliberately pricing below this optimum.

[john smith 19]

Its so dramatically low because they want to maintain a monopoly.

It's not a monopoly,in the same sense that Microsoft is also not a monopoly.

However if you want to send documents outside your organisation with minimal trouble who are you going to be using?

The entire purpose is to starve the new launch startups of money, so they cant grow up, make bigger rockets, and actually compete with spaceX.

Correct.  You're going to launch anyway. You're primary client is covering all the costs already. Incremental costs then become propellant and mission planning with the rideshares.

But you can choose which rideshares you accept so they all follow the same basic pattern and you can build (essentially) a set of templates for each stage of the mission. Payloads that don't match the templates are a)Extra cost rideshares b)Not accepted. 

So  what should you set the rideshare price at? What the market will bear? Just below what most of the smallsat LV's can manage to choke most (all?) of them off. Keep in mind their survival as businesses is entirely not your concern (as yours is not their concern either).

Reading the article you'd be forgiven for thinking the launch business was a gentlemen's club where prices are not lowered so struggling competitors can stay in business.

What utter nonsense.  . Only the USG does this, usually following lots of special pleading lobbying by specific companies.

It was trivial to demonstrate that if you could a)Swallow the cost of developing even partial reuse and b)That refurb costs were significantly below half the cost of building a new stage you could make  a very large profit margin on the subsequent re-flights.

What you've actually got (with very few exceptions) are a huge gallery of yet another TSTO ELVs and a pack of VC's who's game plan seems to be to a)Talk up their supposed USP of their LV b)Sell out in an IPO to someone who has not done the necessary due diligence and will be left holding the baby.

The world  really does not need yet another TSTO ELV. 

Maybe 3 companies have projects that look like they could actually compete with SX.  In Europe, Russia, China or India they are more aware of how much control the LV supplier has and will remain less willing to go with a non-local LV supplier.

The other US ones can be viewed as on-the-job-training places for future SX engineers. 

[RedLineTrain]

I feel like we are watching the ante for competition in the launch market increase dramatically.  My guess is that a proper entry to the market would cost on the order of $20 billion to cash flow break even (launcher + megaconstellation).

Small launchers have no place there.

[deltaV]

The article continues:
“SpaceX started offering rideshare launch opportunities for smallsats as low as $5,000 per kilogram. The company has since raised those prices to $5,500 per kilogram and plans annual increases in future years. However, in most cases those prices are far below what dedicated small launch vehicles offer.

$5,500 per kg is $95.7M per 17.4 tonne Falcon 9 ASDS. Falcon 9 ASDS is probably less than half that cost. SpaceX does need to pay engineers to hand-hold these small payload owners but I'm guessing they're still making a nice profit even for dedicated launches. For ride shares using excess capacity of a launch of a big payload their cost may be close to zero. I see no reason to believe SpaceX is doing anything improper.

There have been very strong hints for decades that small launch is a bad idea, e.g. the cancellation of Falcon 1 and Terran 1. The investors have only themselves and bad luck to blame.

[Robotbeat]

Marginal cost of F9 is between $15M and $25M or something.

[joek]

...
All I can add is that Gwynne was right all those years ago. Asked how many smallsat launchers would make it, her answer was “zero”.

Nit; from Jeff Foust 20-Sep-2019...

Flaw in a question on the number of small launchers: choices are “at least 2”, “at least 5”, “less than 10”, “more than 10.”
Shotwell says she picked “less than 10” since it was the only option that included zero. #WSBW

If anyone has video-audio of Shotwell's response, would love to see it. Should be saved for posterity.
(Remember that pretty clearly as had to buy a new keyboard.)
Maybe we need a "hall of fame-shame" section here on NSF for preserving such gems.

[jongoff]

I still think the main lesson to learn is "don't bring a knife (and expendable launcher) to a gun (reusable launcher) fight."

If Falcon 9 first stage reuse hadn't panned out, they likely would've had to charge a lot more for Transporter ride shares to make the business case close, and wouldn't have sucked away as many flights from Rocket Lab and others.

Conversely, if Rocket Lab had come around to reusability sooner in the process, and had a fully reusable first stage that allowed them to drop their prices down to say $5M/launch, once again they'd be in a better position against Transporter.

If someone did a 500kg to LEO full RLV (like a mini version of Stoke's Nova), they could almost certainly eat most of the Transporter market, even if SpaceX cut its prices. I think a small RLV could win even in a Starship world. Starship mass rideshare will almost always have a very low utilization factor, so the $/kg for rideshare won't drop as fast as the $/kg for a nearly full flight of propellant or megaconstellations, etc. And as the $/kg launch price goes down, other costs like the cost of delay waiting for a mass rideshare flight, the added cost of using a tug or other aggregator for integrating your payload, the added cost of having to design and test your vehicle more robustly to prove it can handle worst case loads when SpaceX won't do coupled-loads-analysis for rideshare missions, etc. start swamping the raw $/kg launch price number.

Anyhow, I think people are taking the wrong lesson from this all. Sure, the smallsat launchers were wrong that people would launch whole constellations of satellites on a small launcher. But I think people are also wrong that rideshare is fundamentally better than dedicated launch, and that everyone should just get on the bus. I think the real lesson is just that trying to compete with a semi- or fully-reusable vehicle with a fully expendable one is a dumb idea.

~Jon

[AllenB]

Imho small launchers have been obviously doomed for quite a few years now. That should be obvious to any investor doing even the most minimal due diligence. Conveniently, even that has gone missing over the last decade.

Having said that, I don’t believe that SpaceX is trying to drive small launchers out of the market. They probably don’t care. There may even be truth to the idea that they’d welcome the competition. Aside from that, providing affordable rides to space is good for society.

Most of all though, I think SpaceX has at least one eye on the long game. Occasionally one of those small sat customers will grow up to build big sats, and when they do, who will they call?

[joek]

I still think the main lesson to learn is "don't bring a knife (and expendable launcher) to a gun (reusable launcher) fight."
...
Anyhow, I think people are taking the wrong lesson from this all. Sure, the smallsat launchers were wrong that people would launch whole constellations of satellites on a small launcher. But I think people are also wrong that rideshare is fundamentally better than dedicated launch, and that everyone should just get on the bus. I think the real lesson is just that trying to compete with a semi- or fully-reusable vehicle with a fully expendable one is a dumb idea.

True, but need to be a bit more specific about "people". Some "people" (potential competitors) appear to be using it as an indication that SpaceX is acting in a monopolistic manner. Personally, that is what sets me off. The wannabees just need to find their place, as much as a disappointment as it may be to their investors--which is their own fault, not SpaceX's.

[Robotbeat]

I still think the main lesson to learn is "don't bring a knife (and expendable launcher) to a gun (reusable launcher) fight."

If Falcon 9 first stage reuse hadn't panned out, they likely would've had to charge a lot more for Transporter ride shares to make the business case close, and wouldn't have sucked away as many flights from Rocket Lab and others.

Conversely, if Rocket Lab had come around to reusability sooner in the process, and had a fully reusable first stage that allowed them to drop their prices down to say $5M/launch, once again they'd be in a better position against Transporter.

If someone did a 500kg to LEO full RLV (like a mini version of Stoke's Nova), they could almost certainly eat most of the Transporter market, even if SpaceX cut its prices. I think a small RLV could win even in a Starship world. Starship mass rideshare will almost always have a very low utilization factor, so the $/kg for rideshare won't drop as fast as the $/kg for a nearly full flight of propellant or megaconstellations, etc. And as the $/kg launch price goes down, other costs like the cost of delay waiting for a mass rideshare flight, the added cost of using a tug or other aggregator for integrating your payload, the added cost of having to design and test your vehicle more robustly to prove it can handle worst case loads when SpaceX won't do coupled-loads-analysis for rideshare missions, etc. start swamping the raw $/kg launch price number.

Anyhow, I think people are taking the wrong lesson from this all. Sure, the smallsat launchers were wrong that people would launch whole constellations of satellites on a small launcher. But I think people are also wrong that rideshare is fundamentally better than dedicated launch, and that everyone should just get on the bus. I think the real lesson is just that trying to compete with a semi- or fully-reusable vehicle with a fully expendable one is a dumb idea.

~Jon

Thing is, how much cheaper would a 500kg full RLV per launch compared to 3000kg Stoke? I bet it wouldn’t even by half the price per launch.

[fj35]

The average amount of actual payload mass on a Transporter mission is about 3 tons. Elon said on Lex Fridman podcast that they are trying to get F9 marginal cost below $20MM. So at $5k/kg, they actually are losing money (certainly not making a material amount).

Utilization is a huge problem due to poor packing efficiency with standard ports and a large center column. This problem will be dramatically worse on Starship.