Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
SES-10 Mission
141–150 of 368 posts
Re: SES-10 Mission
#142Does 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.
SpaceX is increasing its launch cadence and reducing its prices substantially (through reusability) so they are becoming more competitive by leaps and bounds every moment. If they can follow through on their cadence increases (right now they are around an average of 3 weeks between launches and a minimum of 2 weeks) and cost reductions (see recent flight) no one else will be able to keep up with them. Their internal cost reductions on reuse are unknown but their current price reductions are around 30%, which is off of their already incredibly aggressive low launch prices. If SpaceX can provide launches at around $45 mil and can launch often enough to satisfy demand reasonably then they'll end up with the majority of the commercial launch business eventually. If you can put your satellite in orbit reliably and save on the order of $50 million then you'd be insane not to do so. There's a bit of an insurance premium with launching on SpaceX currently but that should even out after a while and the huge cost reductions swamp that difference regardless (even if, for example, SpaceX were to blow up another rocket tomorrow).
The only realistic competitor for SpaceX in the near term is Blue Origin, once they develop their orbital launcher which will also have VTVL first stage reusability. The timeline on that is sometime before 2020, but that's likely to be the soonest any real competition for SpaceX's business model shows up. Once it becomes commonplace for launches to involve first stage reuse (which will probably happen over the next 5 years or so) I'd expect a lot of the other rocket companies (like Boeing and LockMart) to come out with similar designs (or go out of business or be relegated to national payloads only). It's a lot easier to put forward some hypothetical "better" design for your next generation rocket when everything is on paper, it's a lot harder to pretend your rocket is still better when you're getting your face pushed in by the competition on price by huge margins on a regular basis.
Once SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy running (which will be even more reusable since the upper stage is a smaller proportion of the rocket) they'll be able to launch nearly anything anyone else can, and at dramatically lower costs. Once they're able to launch GPS satellites (which they've already got orders for) as well as the big national security birds (on the FH) for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars less than ULA then almost all of that business is going to flow to them and LockMart/Boeing are going to have some tough times.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
10% is pretty bad. ULA has launched over a hundred times with no failures. The much-maligned Shuttle had two failures in 135 flights (and, strictly speaking, only one of those failures would have prevented a payload from getting to orbit). I'm pretty sure the Russians are the only ones doing worse right now.
But you'd have to compare their first thirty launches with these to compare. Anyway, notice has been served today I think, now let's see what it leads to. For comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launche... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovativ…
My understanding is that they are now producing and flying Block 5 Falcon 9's which means no more changes to the hardware.
Falcon heavy is obviously a different kettle of fish but the chat around SpaceX on Reddit has been that things are settling/reaching maturity with Falcon 9
Re: SES-10 Mission
#145Re: SES-10 Mission
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how valid it is, but i read somewhere that Blue Origin and SpaceX are both shooting for the same target, but taking different paths. Blue Origin is doing Reusability first and orbital second. SpaceX went Orbital first and Reusability second. although to me it seems spacex is clearly ahead.
The difference between launching something to space and to orbit is roughly the difference between a bicycle, and a motorcycle. Blue Origin can go to space. They are nowhere close to going to orbit. We've sent things to space and back a long time ago. We call them airplanes. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
They're new engine (BE-4) that will power New Glenn is going through test firings now. Additionally, they're angling to get BE-4 sold into other launch stacks than just their internal hardware.
If they are able to get BE-4 out into other launch stacks in the next year or two, it's very possible that New Glenn will launch it's first mission before 2020.
New Glenn will be comparable to the Falcon Heavy in terms of lift. The Falcon Heavy won't have it's demo flight until later this year.
I'd agree that Blue Origin is behind SpaceX. Still, though, I think they are on a pretty good track to take second place in the reusable launch stack to orbit.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#147Does 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.
Arianespace is their biggest competitor, they are the de facto rulers of the commercial launch market, with SpaceX hot on their heels. The Ariane 5 launches twin payloads about 7 times a year, for a total of about 14 total spacecraft launches per year. SpaceX is about at a similar cadence but has yet to hit the overall schedule and mission reliability figures that Arianespace has achieved so it's still a bit of a rac…
Arian will still have non competitive flight that SpaceX can not take away. They will probably survive.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Blue Origin count?
I believe they are currently doing sub-orbital flights while they are working up to re-usable orbital flights. Please correct me if i misremembered.
They are actively working on their next gen launch stack (New Glenn), which is set to have its first launch before 2020. New Glenn will be a reusable launch stack capable of inserting payloads into orbit. It will be roughly similar to the Falcon Heavy in terms of mission capabilities.
Re: SES-10 Mission
#149Re: SES-10 Mission
#150The 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 p…
Good point; it depends on how much they could expect demand to grow if the prices were lower.