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SES-10 Mission

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Re: SES-10 Mission

#131

Post by jacquesm »

mikeash wrote: post #128
jacquesm wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I covered that with: "Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovative than what SpaceX is doing because we simply had not launched any rockets of that size at all and so there were many more failures." So of course the situation is not 1:1 comparable. But given that it is a new platform some failures were to be expected, it doesn't take a lot in rocketry to have a failure. How many launc…

You're confusing my comment with some sort of value judgment. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying that some customers care more about reliability than cost, and those customers will provide a steady stream of revenue for ULA and friends until SpaceX improves in this area. I have no opinion about what is "acceptable" or not, but my opinion doesn't matter. What matters is the opinion of the customer. There…

Yes, that makes good sense.

So then the race is on in a way: will SpaceX be able to get their next platform stabilized before the competition catches up to being able to re-use their first stage? If they can there might be some actual competition which should drive down prices even further.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#132

Post by dwaltrip »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120
grondilu wrote: post #82

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…

Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.

There's no special humanity wide significance to having a city on Mt. Everest. And there is also no new science that such a city would enable. Lastly, it wouldn't teach us anything about our place in the universe.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#133

Post by sigmar »

Someone wrote: post #83

I understand the enthusiasm, but I don't see enough hard data to convince me this will be a commercial success. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... , SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. Factors that might prevent this from making this economically superior to 'just' ramping up productio…

>"almost one year, taking way more effort than building a new one does".

Nope-

"Next goal is reflight within 24 hours."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/847594208219336705

Re: SES-10 Mission

#134

Post by jacquesm »

tdy721 wrote: post #116
david-given wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My heart attack moment was during the launch when I started seeing flame flickering around the tops of the engines... and then I thought to look at the altitude indicator, and realised they were at about 10km, and it was just the plume expanding as the atmospheric pressure dropped.

The flames around the top of the engines is normal, it's the exhaust from the turbo pumps feeding the main engines. Check this page, the Merlin uses an open cycle, where fuel/oxidizer used to fuel the pumps is just dumped overboard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-generator_cycle This picture clearly shows both exhausts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family)#...

For some reason that effect was much more pronounced during this flight (at least in the video) than in previous launches that I watched. Maybe it was because of the camera angle looking more at the side of the rocket when usually you are looking more at the bottom.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#135

Post by nickik »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #120
grondilu wrote: post #82

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…

Its a reach. For comparison, lets start a city on top of Mt Everest? Better air, better weather, lots easier to get to, and help is only days away instead of months. Yet we haven't begun to do things even that ambitious yet.

We have no reason to start a city on Mt Everest. We would not do it just for training, if we are going to do it, there must be a good reason.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#136

Post by hackuser »

vtange wrote: post #4

Does SpaceX have any real competitors in the private sector? Would be a bummer if people decided they were a monopoly of some sort and demanded a break up.

> Does SpaceX have any real competitors in the private sector?

They do, such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, and others I can't think of off the top of my head.

However, Musk appears to have a major advantage: At least two major investment banks [0][1][2] and many other observers and investors [3][4] believe a major advantage Musk has over competitors is his relationship with President Trump. They claim it has greatly increased investment in Tesla (and investment indeed has greatly increased since Musk embraced Trump after the election, but of course the cause is impossible to prove and U.S. stocks in general have rallied). If you doubt this is an issue, not only see the cites but search a news index for "musk trump" - it is widespread outside HN.

I don't know about the effect on SpaceX (are they public?), but the space business is highly dependent on government contracts, project funding, and regulation; you can imagine what the appearances are. Compare that with competitor Jeff Bezos, for example, who owns a major newspaper that regularly criticizes Trump; will the competition for government contracts and other benefits be free and fair?

It would be bad for the space industry, the economy, the U.S. as a nation, and the fight for the free market and against corruption if that relationship decided or even appeared to decide the winner in this competition. Appearances are reality on the public stage; if people merely perceive corruption helped him, the (many) unscrupulous people will try to use that tactics themselves and many others will doubt Musk's legitimacy.

I think he has what it takes to win on his own; the other stuff could undermine him unnecessarily, and be bad for everyone else.

----

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/elon-musk-donald...

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/20/technology/elon-musk-trump/

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/ubs-analyst-says-he-cant-und...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/musk-s-su...

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/elon-...

[Mods: Last time I mentioned Musk's relationship with Trump, you objected but the problem wasn't clear to me; I responded and asked, but probably too late to for you to see it. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13880838 ) If this post is somehow objectionable, please tell me the problem so that I can avoid it in the future. This seems like many other posts on HN, except its content criticizes a very popular figure and includes a controversial one; hopefully popularity doesn't preclude criticism and the POTUS can be discussed. I am speaking plainly and documenting it very well.]

Re: SES-10 Mission

#137

Post by bvm »

beamatronic wrote: post #117
Flame wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real-time streaming made me really excited for the future. Elon is truly a genius... SpaceX will save so much money. I can't wait to see what comes next. Honestly, the rate at which technology is growing is truly absurd if you think about it.

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that (almost) every literate human being can communicate (almost) instantly around the planet with (almost) every other literate human being, and the fact that with machine translation, language is less of a barrier all the time.

If you think about it, rapidly reusable suborbital rockets are like a physical version of the communication you describe here. It's plausible to physically be anywhere in the world (if you burn enough fuel) within 30 minutes. Ditto up to 10 tonnes of cargo.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#138

Post by jccooper »

Someone wrote: post #83

I understand the enthusiasm, but I don't see enough hard data to convince me this will be a commercial success. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... , SpaceX has launched and landed about 10 of these rockets, and has so far reused one. That rocket was first used about a year ago. Factors that might prevent this from making this economically superior to 'just' ramping up productio…

> Does anybody have that?

No. Because it's never been done before. We'll just have to wait and see.

But: for this particular flight, SpaceX claims to have spent 4 months in refurb, and it seems to have been very thorough. Inside information suggests that a lot of this was in upgrading things to current spec. Four months is already a significant time savings on production, which is currently said to be about a year.

I find it hard to believe that reflying hardware won't be economical. But NASA's failure to do so with Shuttle seems to have broken people's brains in this area.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#139

Post by ncallaway »

mr_overalls wrote: post #87

The obvious question: how much cheaper will a reusable rocket make it, per pound, to put a payload in orbit?

Well, if you go to the extreme case (the entire rocket is reusable with _no_ refurbishment) the cost of rocket fuel is $200,000 while the approximate cost of the hardware is in the range of $60M. So, in the extreme case it would be _massively_ cheaper. On the order of 99% savings.

At the moment, SpaceX is only reusing a portion of the rocket (the first stage, not the second stage or the fairings). And that re-used portion requires some refurbishment. SpaceX estimates it's 30% cheaper per launch right now.

Over the next few years SpaceX will probably bring that cost down (though they won't necessarily pass that cost on to the consumer — they could very well just enjoy the extra margins). I'm guessing they can realistically get to 50-70% cost savings per launch over the next few years.

though they are working on recovering the fairing, and attempting something related to that today.

Re: SES-10 Mission

#140

Post by nickik »

grondilu wrote: post #82

I've noticed that during the webcast they talked much more about their planetary colonisation project than they usually do. I guess it makes sense since today is the first time they actually implement the re-usability plan they believe is the key to this colonisation. But frankly, is the cost of going to mars really that important for its colonisation? I mean, I wouldn't move to mars even if going there was free. For…

For all Spaceflight of getting to Space is huge, no matter what you are trying to do.

I'm not sure why it is conflicting for you. Even if they are delusional, you profit from cheaper access to Space no matter why they are going there.

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