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SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

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Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#61

Post by Tuna-Fish »

hugh3 wrote: post #37
jessriedel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually surprised things haven't gotten cheaper by more than a factor of 5 in half a century. (If anyone's wondering, $1.11 Billion is in 2011 dollars.) Does anyone know what the primary costs are? People, construction, raw materials, etc.?

One interesting thing I read Elon Musk saying the other day is that it's definitely not fuel -- the cost of fuelling a Falcon 9 is actually only about the same as the cost of fuelling a Boeing 747. The problem is that the cost of building a Falcon 9 is still similar to the cost of building a 747, and you throw it away after one flight. So if you could recover and re-use the booster rocket then you'd be looking at a s…

> So if you could recover and re-use the booster rocket then you'd be looking at a serious cost reduction.

This was the logic behind the space shuttle. But unfortunately, they have to survive to high stresses that inspecting and repairing them between launches costs more than building a simpler disposable launch vehicles.

I honestly believe that as long as we will be using rockets, the best cost savings will not come from reuse, but from increasing the launch volumes to the point where launch vehicles stop being hand-built boutique items and start being mass-produced commodities.

This announcement gives me hope that this might happen during my lifetime.

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#62

Post by rbanffy »

modoc wrote: post #49
bradleyland wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Space X can quote a price on their website, but if I want to know what "Infrastructure Monitoring Tool XYZ" costs, I have to call and talk to some retired used car salesman. I now have hope for our future.

I started a company that sells to enterprise customers and we thought we could differentiate ourselves by making our pricing public, simple, and affordable. It was VERY easy for anyone to figure out how much we'd charge them without having to call. There were no hidden fees, nothing tricky or weird. This has proven to be a mistake for two main reasons: Firstly, everyone expects huge discounts (since all their other e…

> Secondly I think we're losing opportunities because we aren't making people call us

That can be an advantage - you end up spending far less than your competition on each sale.

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#63

Post by JshWright »

hugh3 wrote: post #35

There's only one thing I don't like about this, and that's the name. Falcon Heavy? Doesn't sound cool. SpaceX has done an excellent job of coming up with cool-sounding names for everything they do, second only to US muscle car manufacturers of the 1960s. Falcon! Merlin! Draco! They even skipped straight from Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 because the numbers in between just don't sound nearly as cool. But "heavy"? Sure, it's d…

Skipped the boring numbers? Count the number of engines on first stage of the Falcon 1... now count the number of engines on the first stage of the Falcon 9...

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#64

Post by modoc »

rbanffy wrote: post #62
modoc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started a company that sells to enterprise customers and we thought we could differentiate ourselves by making our pricing public, simple, and affordable. It was VERY easy for anyone to figure out how much we'd charge them without having to call. There were no hidden fees, nothing tricky or weird. This has proven to be a mistake for two main reasons: Firstly, everyone expects huge discounts (since all their other e…

> Secondly I think we're losing opportunities because we aren't making people call us That can be an advantage - you end up spending far less than your competition on each sale.

Not in our case at least. I'd happily spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a new sale. And a phone call is a really great opportunity for us to explain our advantages and establish a personal connection with someone.

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#65

Post by sbierwagen »

adamfeldman wrote: post #5
portentint wrote: post #2

Can this eventually carry people into orbit, I wonder?

"Anticipating potential astronaut transport needs, Falcon Heavy is also designed to meet NASA human rating standards. Falcon Heavy is designed to higher structural safety margins of 40% above flight loads, rather than the 25% level of other rockets, and triple redundant avionics. Despite being designed to higher structural margins than other rockets, the Falcon Heavy side booster stages have a mass ratio (full vs. em…

It's all the more impressive when you realize that the Falcon series to designed to (eventually) be reusable. Now, the mass fraction won't be anything like as good as the expendable version, and the turnaround time will be significant, (you'll have to sea-recover each stage, install new seals, and reapply the heat shield; but the STS also has a turnaround time for the same orbiter measured in months, even with their reusable heat shield and dry-land capability) but they've given themselves quite a lot of margin.

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#66

Post by rbanffy »

bugsy wrote: post #12
paul wrote: post #7

Apparently the Saturn V could lift 119 metric tons to LEO.

The Falcon XX is planned to have a 140 metric ton to LEO capacity, but that comes later, for when we need to ship cargo to Mars colony without requiring a space station stop. http://news.discovery.com/space/will-a-commercial-flight-be-...

Unless you extract fuel from the environment on your stop, it's a very bad idea to make a stop when you are shipping cargo to space. Any change in trajectory spends fuel. If you absolutely have to send the vehicle in pieces, you'd better send them to the lowest energy orbit, assemble them there and blast off. The ISS is not on a particularly useful orbit for this and the only reason I imagine to stop by would be to use the extra helping hands of the resident crew to do the required assembly.

And shipping cargo to Mars doesn't need to be very expensive if you are patient - you send the cargo towards a low-perihelion trajectory and deploy a solar sail closest to the Sun. It may take a good couple years for the shipment to get to Mars, but the delta-V on the way up will be free. If you send the shipments well ahead of the landing crews, they'll have lots of toys when they arrive.

But I agree with the SpaceX folks. Nuclear is the way to go if we are to even go back to the Moon.

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#67

Post by rbanffy »

modoc wrote: post #64
rbanffy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Secondly I think we're losing opportunities because we aren't making people call us That can be an advantage - you end up spending far less than your competition on each sale.

Not in our case at least. I'd happily spend tens of thousands of dollars to get a new sale. And a phone call is a really great opportunity for us to explain our advantages and establish a personal connection with someone.

That's because your goods are relatively expensive when compared to the call and you can use the opportunity to upsell when the client phones in.

I said it could be turned into an advantage ;-)

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#68

Post by Semiapies »

jessriedel wrote: post #21
ceejayoz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $1.11 billion per launch, though. SpaceX is promising $80-$125 million for half the payload.

I'm actually surprised things haven't gotten cheaper by more than a factor of 5 in half a century. (If anyone's wondering, $1.11 Billion is in 2011 dollars.) Does anyone know what the primary costs are? People, construction, raw materials, etc.?

Aside from what's already been mentioned, no real competition. You had NASA or nothing for decades.

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#69

Post by InclinedPlane »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #61
hugh3 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One interesting thing I read Elon Musk saying the other day is that it's definitely not fuel -- the cost of fuelling a Falcon 9 is actually only about the same as the cost of fuelling a Boeing 747. The problem is that the cost of building a Falcon 9 is still similar to the cost of building a 747, and you throw it away after one flight. So if you could recover and re-use the booster rocket then you'd be looking at a s…

> So if you could recover and re-use the booster rocket then you'd be looking at a serious cost reduction. This was the logic behind the space shuttle. But unfortunately, they have to survive to high stresses that inspecting and repairing them between launches costs more than building a simpler disposable launch vehicles. I honestly believe that as long as we will be using rockets, the best cost savings will not come…

The Shuttle is an excellent example of how an initially good idea (reusable launch vehicles) can become twisted and perverted by excessive compromises and congressional meddling. The Shuttle as it was built was actually a step backward from previous generations. Not only was it not properly reusable (it was at best refurbishable and partially reusable), it's unusual characteristics caused it to require a huge standing army of engineers to keep the program going, regardless of flight rate. As the true limits to the flight-rate of the Shuttle came to light it became obvious that no matter what the Shuttle system was capable of it wasn't capable of lowering launch costs over conventional expendable boosters.

It's a good case study in the downfalls of a waterfall type process and of committing too early to a system before it's true character is known.

Re: SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit

#70

Post by 3kMarlin »

jasongullickson wrote: post #29

Elon Musk seems to be someone who really knows how to do cool things with the spoils of a successful software company. Are there any other good examples of people like this that have taken one big win and parlayed it into investing in seriously futuristic technology?

Robert Bigelow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bigelow

His space station company:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace

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