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SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

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Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#11

Post by Patrick_Devine »

kilroy123 wrote: post #2

I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.

There is a bigger question which was asked in the Economist this week (http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/spa...), which is can SpaceX create a big enough market where they can realize the savings of reusability? Right now satellites cost more than the price of the rocket, so if you shave off $10 million on a launch that's pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to the overall price.

This isn't to take anything away from SpaceX. It's absolutely amazing what they've done. I only hope that they can open up the market enough for things like asteroid mining and space tourism.

Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#12

Post by colechristensen »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #5
castratikron wrote: post #3

Just wanted to say that the phrase "flight-proven" is genius marketing.

Better than "Certified Pre-Owned Rocket" :-) I agree with the folks who have tweeted they should start adding launch "check marks" to the paint but that assumes that they will launch it w/recovery and then do it again.

They'll definitely want to do extensive destructive testing on the first twice-used rocket if they can land it (or maybe put it in a museum and do that on the second)

There is a lot to learn about how the structure reacts to repeated launches (and undoubtedly engineering iterations to improve future models' reusability)

Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#13

Post by colechristensen »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #11
kilroy123 wrote: post #2

I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.

There is a bigger question which was asked in the Economist this week ( http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/spa... ), which is can SpaceX create a big enough market where they can realize the savings of reusability? Right now satellites cost more than the price of the rocket, so if you shave off $10 million on a launch that's pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to the overall price. This is…

Mansa Musa can be considered the wealthiest man in history. On a pilgrimage to Mecca he gave gold to the poor everywhere along the way and traded great values of it too. He inadvertently destroyed many economies for a long time with the influx of capital.

Asteroid mining is going to do much the same thing, but the changes will be permanent.

It's not a matter of "if" but "when". Lots of sophisticated technology needs to be developed and the up-front cost is going to be in the billions... but once it's done and regular, lots of economies for materials are going to be shattered.

Satellite programs cost so much _because_ rockets cost so much. You can't justify putting a cheap satellite on an expensive rocket, but as the launch cost goes down, you get to being able to launch cheaper and cheaper satellites.

If SpaceX fails, someone else will succeed. The cat is out of the bag.

Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#15

Post by colechristensen »

rst wrote: post #9
tomlock wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder this! CRS-8 was launched on the 8th of April this year, so given that the launch of SES-10 is slated for Q4 2016, that means there's like, 6/7/8 months for the turnaround. But I'm hopeful that we'll see an assembly line of rockets landing, being inspected, and being launched, sometime in the future :)

The delay between landing and relaunch has less to do with refurb on this particular booster, than with the series of tests that they're doing on other returned boosters to convince both the customers and their insurance companies that they generally come back in re-flyable condition, which have been happening on and off for months. Among other things, a different booster has been put through at least three full-leng…

They would have launched sooner, but public opinion is swayed too much by failure. Engineers and money men don't really care, failure is interesting and valuable. Unfortunately, so is public opinion and support... and every perceived failure has a million armchair rocket scientists shitting on SpaceX because people loove to do that sort of thing... so they have to be unduly careful about it.

Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#17

Post by rst »

paulvs wrote: post #8
castratikron wrote: post #3

Just wanted to say that the phrase "flight-proven" is genius marketing.

"Flight-proven" as opposed to those inferior non-flight-proven rockets we're so used to. In a few years, perhaps flying your cargo on an un-flight-proven rocket will be the risky option. I applaud SES for being the early adopters, and SpaceX for always pushing the boundaries.

It'll take more than a few years for anyone other than SpaceX, and perhaps Blue Origin, to start recovering entire boosters -- it's a lot harder than you might think to retrofit on an existing rocket, and those two companies are the only ones to have designed rockets from scratch for it (though Blue is ... ahem ... a little while yet from even starting to actually build their orbital launcher).

Other launch providers are obviously watching, and the Indian space program, at least, is developing technology intended to feed into an eventual reusable design. But some of the others with announced plans still won't be trying to recover an intact stage, but only pieces, particularly the engines (detached in flight from the rest of the stage). That's the case both for Vulcan, the next-generation rocket from United Launch Alliance (the Pentagon's preferred provider), and for the Ariane-6 -- both of which won't initially launch with even that level of reuse, but only get it in follow-on work. (The reuse strategies for these are called SMART and Adeline, respectively, if you want to Google for them.)

Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#18

Post by walrus01 »

It is really interesting to see that this is a very 'ordinary' commercial geostationary launch customer, and not a government funded research satellite. This is oversimplified, but traditionally, rockets that are in beta test mode are tested like:

1) static pad tests/firings of engines

2) all-up launch of the full rocket, carrying a boilerplate satellite with some instrumentation, maybe some cubesats or low cost small R&D satellites tagging along

3) one or two launches of government science payloads, or government-funded weather satellites, something like that

4) commercial launches begin

Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#19

Post by walrus01 »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #11
kilroy123 wrote: post #2

I wonder if they'll really save money right away doing this. I imagine they'll spend a lot on inspections and getting things 100% right. Either way, it's an amazing achievement.

There is a bigger question which was asked in the Economist this week ( http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/spa... ), which is can SpaceX create a big enough market where they can realize the savings of reusability? Right now satellites cost more than the price of the rocket, so if you shave off $10 million on a launch that's pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to the overall price. This is…

Building many identical satellites in an assembly-line like fashion cuts down on costs significantly. Large geostationary satellites are currently based on standard buses (like the Boeing 702 and its variants), but each satellite is generally a bespoke product. Larger quantities of the same thing like the second generation Iridium network and the o3b MEO satellites are very interesting from a per-unit cost perspective.

Re: SES-10 Launching to Orbit on SpaceX's Flight-Proven Falcon 9 Rocket

#20

Post by Patrick_Devine »

walrus01 wrote: post #19
Patrick_Devine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a bigger question which was asked in the Economist this week ( http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/spa... ), which is can SpaceX create a big enough market where they can realize the savings of reusability? Right now satellites cost more than the price of the rocket, so if you shave off $10 million on a launch that's pretty much a drop in the bucket compared to the overall price. This is…

Building many identical satellites in an assembly-line like fashion cuts down on costs significantly. Large geostationary satellites are currently based on standard buses (like the Boeing 702 and its variants), but each satellite is generally a bespoke product. Larger quantities of the same thing like the second generation Iridium network and the o3b MEO satellites are very interesting from a per-unit cost perspectiv…

Right. It definitely looks like we could be in for a shakeup in the industry. The question still remains though; what is the total size of the market for all of those satellites? How many could we place in MEO/GEO/GSO before the market is completely saturated? I honestly have no idea. I would think the LEO satellite market will eventually be dominated by less powerful vehicles, although if SpaceX can survive long enough to open up other markets (like Mars tourism and mining), maybe those smaller rockets get cannibalized by payloads being co-launched on larger vehicles.
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