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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

#81

Post by ceejayoz »

rbanffy wrote: post #66
bugsy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

> 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.

That, and the living quarters. If it's going to take a couple months to put stuff together and test, you don't want to be living out of an Apollo-sized capsule.

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

#82

Post by ceejayoz »

hugh3 wrote: post #75
InclinedPlane wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup! If it had been a country doing it instead of SpaceX they probably would have already put a human into orbit in a Dragon capsule.

Is there any legal restriction preventing them from putting a person in their next test flight?

I'd imagine it's more a commercial restriction - they really, really, really don't want to kill someone on the first few dozen flights.

(they don't want to kill anyone ever, of course, but an early death would be an inordinately huge blow to their potential success in the market)

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

#83

Post by TheEzEzz »

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…

Hm, if fuel is so cheap then why not bring enough fuel with you to decelerate before de-orbiting? Then you don't have to worry about reentry heat.

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

#84

Post by wanderful »

robryan wrote: post #78
iwwr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is HN, we care about the website almost as much as the product itself.

Not in this case, would rather they spend the time money making the rockets than the website.

They're not mutually exclusive. Most web designers can't make rockets.

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

#85

Post by burgerbrain »

wanderful wrote: post #84
robryan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in this case, would rather they spend the time money making the rockets than the website.

They're not mutually exclusive. Most web designers can't make rockets.

"Most web designers can't make rockets."

Probably explains why they're not too into hiring web developers...

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

#86

Post by jbri »

TheEzEzz wrote: post #83
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…

Hm, if fuel is so cheap then why not bring enough fuel with you to decelerate before de-orbiting? Then you don't have to worry about reentry heat.

Because if you want to take fuel with you, that's a lot of extra mass you have to lift. Which requires bigger engines and even more fuel.

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

#87

Post by prawn »

rbanffy wrote: post #67
modoc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;-)

What about pumping up the prices somewhat (so you have room to give discounts), listing a base price, and then saying something about calling to outline a specific situation and seeing which discounts apply? Add in a few testimonials about people being glad they called, etc.

That way you give people a ballpark price (while they're doing preliminary research), give people a real motivation to call, and still give yourself wriggle room.

I like companies who list pricing and generally avoid enquiring otherwise, probably because of two reasons; [1] embarrassed if it's going to be way over my budget, [2] may just be doing early research and don't want a sales guy following me up every week afterwards.

If that is true for others also, you could easily add wording/checkbox to opt-out of follow-ups or outline that people just running early budgets are welcome to call too.

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

#88

Post by lftl »

jasongullickson wrote: post #27

This is extremely cool but I have one question about the website design; what's with using Flash for the headings (I only noticed because I have click-to-flash turned on)?

It's sIFR - a somewhat older design technique that uses flash to replace bits of text on your site with a custom font. Now that web fonts are more widely supported, and other methods such as Cufon have gained popularity, sIFR isn't used nearly as often.

The most perplexing thing about the usage here is that at the size used the font isn't even that interesting. I would have just stuck with Helvetica bold and called it close enough if that's all they wanted.

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

#89

Post by bugsy »

rbanffy wrote: post #66
bugsy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

I didn't mean to suggest the ISS in any way. I am talking about the various plans such as von Braun's Das Marsprojekt, where you assemble a fleet of (for example) 3720 ton Mars ships in orbit: http://www.thelivingmoon.com/41pegasus/01archives/Von_Braun_...

It's not possible to launch a 3720 ton ship to Mars from the surface in one shot, it has to be assembled in space from parts and fuel shipped up in multiple launches.

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

#90

Post by nikcub »

garyrichardson wrote: post #6

Wow, I like how candid they are about the pricing. It feels like they are targeting consumers more than governments -- most 'expensive,' enterprise targeted products are of the 'call us and ask for pricing' variety.

I think they are just rubbing some salt into government space program wounds

It is a message to the people who control budgets to send work their way

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