Quote from: Asteroza on 03/22/2024 05:32 amQuote from: imprezive on 03/22/2024 03:16 amWhat makes you think that SpaceX would just abandon a chunk of its customer base because Starship came online?Quote from: DanClemmensen on 03/22/2024 03:46 amThis makes no sense. SpaceX claims that their cost of a Starship launch will be lower than their cost of an F9 launch. This means that if they can make money on a particular payload with F9, they will make more money on that same payload using Starship. If that F9 payload is a 10 tonne transporter-1 and it out-competes small launchers on F9, then it will out-compete them even more on Starship even if they don't share that Starship with any other payload.Even worse: at a high enough launch cadence, a Starship launch may be cheaper than a small launcher launch, so a customer with a 200 kg satellite will just use a dedicated Starship flight.There is a possibility that a competitor may become operational and make some money before Starship reaches high cadence, but I'm just not seeing it. Starship is already flying test flights. It's the rideshare payload cat herding problem. It's tough enough getting everyone together and doing the coupled load analysis.Now one could say if a single Starship launch actually is sold as cheaply or cheaper than Falcon 9, simply fitting a transporter stack in Starship would be the immediate solution. Same rideshare mass throughput per transporter launch. Maybe adjust the stack size or launch rate a bit to burn through the 2 year backlog.But we know cat herding is a pain. When your largest payload by volume and mass is consistently Starlink, and the remainder are big ticket payloads with payments to match and comparatively simple payload processing flows, why make the extra effort to accommodate small fry? SpaceX could simply force the market by saying you must be this tall to ride, else you go sit at the kiddie table.Which could trigger a dramatic mass shift in the rideshare market, pushing rideshares out of the payload range of smallsat launchers. Why stay at 3U when you can go 27U or 81U, and burn the extra U on propulsion/power without even changing your payload?The other potential seismic shift is SpaceX designing a payload adapter/container to dampen loads such that coupled load analysis of smallsat rideshares is no longer necessary. But that would kill the smallsat launcher market since time to launch drops to literally next Starship launch.The Starlink Pez dispenser SS is specialized, so the transporter missions must await the generic cargo SS in most of our economic models. However, there is an alternative that might work for most smallsats: a ridshare carrier with the form factor of a pair of V.2 Starlinks, to replace one pair of Starlinks on a Starlink launch. This herds all of the cats into one nice well-specified bunch.SpaceX will "make the extra effort to accommodate small fry" if it is profitable. That's what a for-profit company does. It will be profitable if they have spare launch capacity after handling a Starlink and all other higher-profit launches. with a constellation of 40,000 and a lifetime of 5 years, they must launch 8000/yr in steady state. at 100 Starlinks per SS, that's 80/yr, which leaves a whole lot of spare capacity even if they only had one tower, two SH, and three SS.
Quote from: imprezive on 03/22/2024 03:16 amWhat makes you think that SpaceX would just abandon a chunk of its customer base because Starship came online?Quote from: DanClemmensen on 03/22/2024 03:46 amThis makes no sense. SpaceX claims that their cost of a Starship launch will be lower than their cost of an F9 launch. This means that if they can make money on a particular payload with F9, they will make more money on that same payload using Starship. If that F9 payload is a 10 tonne transporter-1 and it out-competes small launchers on F9, then it will out-compete them even more on Starship even if they don't share that Starship with any other payload.Even worse: at a high enough launch cadence, a Starship launch may be cheaper than a small launcher launch, so a customer with a 200 kg satellite will just use a dedicated Starship flight.There is a possibility that a competitor may become operational and make some money before Starship reaches high cadence, but I'm just not seeing it. Starship is already flying test flights. It's the rideshare payload cat herding problem. It's tough enough getting everyone together and doing the coupled load analysis.Now one could say if a single Starship launch actually is sold as cheaply or cheaper than Falcon 9, simply fitting a transporter stack in Starship would be the immediate solution. Same rideshare mass throughput per transporter launch. Maybe adjust the stack size or launch rate a bit to burn through the 2 year backlog.But we know cat herding is a pain. When your largest payload by volume and mass is consistently Starlink, and the remainder are big ticket payloads with payments to match and comparatively simple payload processing flows, why make the extra effort to accommodate small fry? SpaceX could simply force the market by saying you must be this tall to ride, else you go sit at the kiddie table.Which could trigger a dramatic mass shift in the rideshare market, pushing rideshares out of the payload range of smallsat launchers. Why stay at 3U when you can go 27U or 81U, and burn the extra U on propulsion/power without even changing your payload?The other potential seismic shift is SpaceX designing a payload adapter/container to dampen loads such that coupled load analysis of smallsat rideshares is no longer necessary. But that would kill the smallsat launcher market since time to launch drops to literally next Starship launch.
What makes you think that SpaceX would just abandon a chunk of its customer base because Starship came online?
This makes no sense. SpaceX claims that their cost of a Starship launch will be lower than their cost of an F9 launch. This means that if they can make money on a particular payload with F9, they will make more money on that same payload using Starship. If that F9 payload is a 10 tonne transporter-1 and it out-competes small launchers on F9, then it will out-compete them even more on Starship even if they don't share that Starship with any other payload.Even worse: at a high enough launch cadence, a Starship launch may be cheaper than a small launcher launch, so a customer with a 200 kg satellite will just use a dedicated Starship flight.There is a possibility that a competitor may become operational and make some money before Starship reaches high cadence, but I'm just not seeing it. Starship is already flying test flights.
I've seen plenty of product ideas that have net positive or even reasonable profit margin dropped by major corporations simply because of the overhead involved or the overall profit is simply not enough digits. Big corps like to hit big, and SpaceX is starting to reach the stage where they will leave money on the table. It's not inconceivable that they will return to not handling 3U payloads and leave that to payload aggregators/OTV makers like Nanoracks or Spaceflight Inc, etc.
The way to compete against SpaceX, Beck said, “is to outsmart them and outwork them. You have to be the mosquito, that is for sure. And you have to be very agile. … The crazy thing about a mosquito is that it’s kind of annoying, but there’s a nonzero chance that you might get bit, get malaria and die,” he said.
A recent SpaceX rideshare mission known as “Bandwagon” raised concerns among many in the launch industry because the price was extremely low, according to industry officials who saw it as a tactic to take business from competitors. “Competing is one thing, predatory is another,” one industry executive said.Some companies even complained about the mission to the Pentagon because “there was no business reason to fly that mission at that cost,” according to the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “We’ve communicated to them, quietly, that you may want competition, but what do your actions say? Because we can’t compete against that.”
I think its pretty likely that SpaceX charged South Korea the full mission amount of $67M. The rest of the payloads were just gravy.
One property of the Starlink constellation is that it requires a constant rate of launches toa) replenish satellites that have reached end-of-life - became defective or run out of propellantb) upgrade the constellation with new capabilites.Both together keep SpaceX pretty busy with launches - be it Falcon9 or StarshipWhat has been suggested multiple times now (and afaik also proposed by SpaceX) is to put hosted payloads ON the Starlink sats. - either as virtual payloads (compute, using sensors/comm that Starlink has anyway) or as actual physical payloads with their own sensors.In a way Starshield seems to be implemented that way, but it goes a bit further since these sats are actually fully dedicated for Starshield and don't partake in the regular constellation business.For a lot of applications - this would be fully sufficient and absolutely unbeatable - not just in price, but also in what you get - the hosted payload would not just benefit from SpaceX power, stationkeeping and telemetry, which you get with any "of the shelf" sat bus. SpaceX can offer that for almost free, since the bus launches anyway, and it has completely unbeatable data up and downlink and 24/7 reachability due to the laser interlinks.SpaceX will probably add an "SSO plane" into Starlink to cover this common orbit for hosted payloads if they don't have that already. This alone will cover a large part of the smallsat launch market.What's left are payloads that are1. too big, power hungry or incompatible to fit on a starlink sat as hosted payload (even on the bigger ones launched with Starship). These can be launched with transporter launches.2. in need of very specific non-standard orbits3. special in another way that requires launch on a very specific date - or on very short notice - or with elevated levels of secrecy.This would be a relatively small subset of the smallsat market. But it includes an elevated proportion of national security payload, which typically are willing to pay a premium. so while there wouldn't be too many launches in that subclass, there would be still a fair amount of a market - aka money.Let's call it the "premium luxury market"The issue is, it still needs to be "smallsat" - because if these payloads get bigger , such as traditional national security payload - one would have to compete with established players - from ULA's Vulcan over Ariane6 to various international launchers - and of course those directly compete with Falcon 9 and a bunch of newcomers (Neutron, New Glenn, ... ) right now Falcon9 is hard to beat, and its stellar reliability rating will remain hard to beat for quite a while (which is crucial for this particular market)This leaves the "mini luxury markets" - premium payloads with special needs that weigh less than a ton and don't need too much deltaVLets call it "the road legal luxury sportscar" segment of the space launch market. Well, as Koenigsegg or Lamborghini would be happy to tell you, such a market does indeed exist. Whether its big enough for all the newcomers that are working on their small sat launchers.I doubt it.It was like that with petrol cars, with electric cars, with airliners - and now with rockets. the first company who makes a technologicial breakthrough starts a "gold rush" into the market with a lot of investor money being poured into a lot of would-be competitors.And a lot of those will inevitably die.if any of the small sat companies find their own (starlink) "el dorado" - basically allowing them to become their own customer and have a full manifest and a profit no matter what, they will most certainly make it. So far I don't see this. It doesn't really fit in the "road legal supercar" niche the small sat launchers have been pushed into by SpaceX. It might exist, but if I could see this golden application I'd probably be founding a rocket company right now instead of <REDACTED>
Quoth the Corvus: "Nevermore!"
if any of the small sat companies find their own (starlink) "el dorado" - basically allowing them to become their own customer and have a full manifest and a profit no matter what, they will most certainly make it. So far I don't see this. It doesn't really fit in the "road legal supercar" niche the small sat launchers have been pushed into by SpaceX. It might exist, but if I could see this golden application I'd probably be founding a rocket company right now instead of <REDACTED>
What has been suggested multiple times now (and afaik also proposed by SpaceX) is to put hosted payloads ON the Starlink sats. - either as virtual payloads (compute, using sensors/comm that Starlink has anyway) or as actual physical payloads with their own sensors.
IIRC, M.E.T., you're one of the few who acknowledge that Transporter (and more recently Bandwagon) are explicit attempts to take 100% of launches away from competitors and establish a completely untouchable absolute monopoly in the commercial launch industry. You just think this is, if not an outright good thing, at least an inevitable thing that should have kept anyone from daring to start a launch company in the first place.
Quote from: trimeta on 05/28/2024 02:18 pmIIRC, M.E.T., you're one of the few who acknowledge that Transporter (and more recently Bandwagon) are explicit attempts to take 100% of launches away from competitors and establish a completely untouchable absolute monopoly in the commercial launch industry. You just think this is, if not an outright good thing, at least an inevitable thing that should have kept anyone from daring to start a launch company in the first place.Beck asserts that SpaceX is deliberately trying to drive the competition out of business, but he has no evidence this it is deliberate. SpaceX asserts that they are not doing this deliberately: they are just pursuing a profitable business.Why should we believe Beck instead of SpaceX? Why would SpaceX even care if other launch companies exist?
In May 2019, I helped arrange a meeting between Beck and Musk. Beck had flown to Rocket Lab’s California offices, and Musk had found time in his schedule, even though he’d claimed to have little interest in Rocket Lab. The meeting would forever change the relationship between the giant SpaceX and the underdog Rocket Lab.SpaceX executives had long pushed Musk to use some of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets to fly huge batches of small satellites into orbit. SpaceX had allowed the small devices to hitch rides alongside bigger satellites now and again, but some members of SpaceX thought there could be a decent business in flying tons of the things at once. Pete Worden had made similar requests of Musk in the past to help with machines built by NASA Ames and its partners. During one such meeting between the two men, Musk had gone ballistic at the very suggestion of the idea. “Stop asking about this,” Musk had said, according to a person in the room. “This really fraks me off. We are never going to do this.”If SpaceX did decide to fly lots of small satellites in one go, it would pose a major threat to Rocket Lab just as the company was hitting its stride. SpaceX’s large Falcon 9 rockets gave it an overall cost and cargo advantage. Someone would need to pay $60 million for a SpaceX launch instead of Rocket Lab’s $6 million, but they’d be able to put entire satellite constellations into place with a single rocket instead of buying them month by month.By that time, Brian Merkel had left his job setting up Rocket Lab’s US operations and returned to SpaceX. Ahead of the dinner with Beck, Musk asked one of his vice presidents to debrief with Merkel about Rocket Lab and help ascertain how real of a competitor it was. “I said that I couldn’t speak to how successful they would be as a business but that they’re great engineers and that their rockets will launch and fly well,” Merkel said. “I don’t know exactly what was said at that dinner, but people came back afterward and said Elon had come away impressed. I think Pete had conveyed a vision for Rocket Lab that was not that far off from what SpaceX had in general. I think Elon may have used the meeting as a piece of feedback that told him Rocket Lab was attracting a bunch of business and SpaceX should take some of it.”Part of the reason Beck asked to meet with Musk could be chalked up to ego.* Understandably, Beck wanted people to realize that he and Rocket Lab were in the same ultraelite club as Musk and SpaceX. More to the point, he wanted Musk to recognize him as a peer. Beck retained much of his low-key, humble New Zealand spirit, but he’d always harbored grand ambitions. Rocket Lab’s success had started to inflate his self-confidence and given rise to yearnings for adoration. The problem, of course, was that striving to get onto Musk’s radar meant that he just might end up on Musk’s radar, which is historically a horrible place to be.In August 2019, SpaceX revealed a new plan to begin regular launches for small-satellite makers. It would free up entire Falcon 9s and let various companies buy space on the rockets. If a company wanted to send five hundred pounds of cargo, about the equivalent of what an Electron would carry, it would cost a bit more than $1 million, or $5 million cheaper than Rocket Lab’s charge. SpaceX later put up a record 143 satellites in a single launch via the program.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 05/28/2024 02:36 pmQuote from: trimeta on 05/28/2024 02:18 pmIIRC, M.E.T., you're one of the few who acknowledge that Transporter (and more recently Bandwagon) are explicit attempts to take 100% of launches away from competitors and establish a completely untouchable absolute monopoly in the commercial launch industry. You just think this is, if not an outright good thing, at least an inevitable thing that should have kept anyone from daring to start a launch company in the first place.Beck asserts that SpaceX is deliberately trying to drive the competition out of business, but he has no evidence this it is deliberate. SpaceX asserts that they are not doing this deliberately: they are just pursuing a profitable business.Why should we believe Beck instead of SpaceX? Why would SpaceX even care if other launch companies exist?There's this famous excerpt from Ashlee Vance's When the Heavens Went on Sale that's fairly telling regarding Transporter:Quote from: Ashlee VanceIn May 2019, I helped arrange a meeting between Beck and Musk. Beck had flown to Rocket Lab’s California offices, and Musk had found time in his schedule, even though he’d claimed to have little interest in Rocket Lab. The meeting would forever change the relationship between the giant SpaceX and the underdog Rocket Lab.SpaceX executives had long pushed Musk to use some of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets to fly huge batches of small satellites into orbit. SpaceX had allowed the small devices to hitch rides alongside bigger satellites now and again, but some members of SpaceX thought there could be a decent business in flying tons of the things at once. Pete Worden had made similar requests of Musk in the past to help with machines built by NASA Ames and its partners. During one such meeting between the two men, Musk had gone ballistic at the very suggestion of the idea. “Stop asking about this,” Musk had said, according to a person in the room. “This really fraks me off. We are never going to do this.”If SpaceX did decide to fly lots of small satellites in one go, it would pose a major threat to Rocket Lab just as the company was hitting its stride. SpaceX’s large Falcon 9 rockets gave it an overall cost and cargo advantage. Someone would need to pay $60 million for a SpaceX launch instead of Rocket Lab’s $6 million, but they’d be able to put entire satellite constellations into place with a single rocket instead of buying them month by month.By that time, Brian Merkel had left his job setting up Rocket Lab’s US operations and returned to SpaceX. Ahead of the dinner with Beck, Musk asked one of his vice presidents to debrief with Merkel about Rocket Lab and help ascertain how real of a competitor it was. “I said that I couldn’t speak to how successful they would be as a business but that they’re great engineers and that their rockets will launch and fly well,” Merkel said. “I don’t know exactly what was said at that dinner, but people came back afterward and said Elon had come away impressed. I think Pete had conveyed a vision for Rocket Lab that was not that far off from what SpaceX had in general. I think Elon may have used the meeting as a piece of feedback that told him Rocket Lab was attracting a bunch of business and SpaceX should take some of it.”Part of the reason Beck asked to meet with Musk could be chalked up to ego.* Understandably, Beck wanted people to realize that he and Rocket Lab were in the same ultraelite club as Musk and SpaceX. More to the point, he wanted Musk to recognize him as a peer. Beck retained much of his low-key, humble New Zealand spirit, but he’d always harbored grand ambitions. Rocket Lab’s success had started to inflate his self-confidence and given rise to yearnings for adoration. The problem, of course, was that striving to get onto Musk’s radar meant that he just might end up on Musk’s radar, which is historically a horrible place to be.In August 2019, SpaceX revealed a new plan to begin regular launches for small-satellite makers. It would free up entire Falcon 9s and let various companies buy space on the rockets. If a company wanted to send five hundred pounds of cargo, about the equivalent of what an Electron would carry, it would cost a bit more than $1 million, or $5 million cheaper than Rocket Lab’s charge. SpaceX later put up a record 143 satellites in a single launch via the program.Perhaps the timing is coincidental: maybe Musk would have been convinced to operate the Transporter missions regardless. Perhaps the meeting with Beck didn't convince Musk that he needed to crush Rocket Lab, but rather convinced him that if Rocket Lab saw a viable business opportunity with small satellites, SpaceX should make money from that segment too. But the flip-flop from "This really fraks me off. We are never going to do this" to making this a regularly-scheduled launch certainly seems like something changed Musk's mind.
I didn't say anything about "illegal" (the question of whether something counts as illegal dumping even if internal costs are so low you're still actually making a profit is separate), but intent: did SpaceX decide to take as much of the business opportunity as possible because it was a good business opportunity, or because doing so would deprive a potential future competitor of funds and ensure they die on the vine before growing big enough to become an actual competitor? And yes, the answer can be "both."
Quote from: trimeta on 05/28/2024 03:34 pmI didn't say anything about "illegal" (the question of whether something counts as illegal dumping even if internal costs are so low you're still actually making a profit is separate), but intent: did SpaceX decide to take as much of the business opportunity as possible because it was a good business opportunity, or because doing so would deprive a potential future competitor of funds and ensure they die on the vine before growing big enough to become an actual competitor? And yes, the answer can be "both."If I was Elon, then definitely both. Again, if you can do that while still making a profit, then NOT doing it is just bad business. Should you charge artificially inflated prices just to ensure competitors get a slice of the pie? Of course not.Pushing rivals into bankruptcy is surely a key part of successful business practice.
