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After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

arstechnica.com

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Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#51

Post by Retric »

zizee wrote: post #50
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Mu…

Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which…

2 billion at the high end isn’t actually unreasonable when compared to falcon 9’s costs which are sitting around 100m/launch right now largely due to inflation.

There’s a have a fairly linear relationship between rocket payload and size, and for large structures going big tends to increase cost per pound so ~10x the size resulting in ~20x the cost is just mildly pessimistic.

If and only if they the thing is both rapidly reusable and individual starships are actually used for hundreds of launches do those highly optimistic numbers become vaguely possible. Even just a 0.2% failure rate would represent a massive increase over their optimistic estimates.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#52

Post by Retric »

teractiveodular wrote: post #41
Retric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s got more than twice the payload capacity of Falcon 9 to LEO and a 7m payload fairing vs 9m for Starship. The real question is if there’s going to be enough demand to justify these systems. With enough reusability it might make sense to fly these things 2/3 empty, but that’s only going to be so profitable.

New Glenn's main customer will be Kuiper, Amazon's answer to Starlink.

Starlink already scaled to 1M US households using Falcon 9 launches and this is twice as large. I think it’s reasonable to question just how many launches a competitor would support.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#53

Post by OhMeadhbh »

zizee wrote: post #50
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Mu…

Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which…

Yes. An estimate for 2 billion is laughable. I did not say the cost WAS $2 billion, I said the Google AI gave me a range from $100M to $2B. Maybe the total cost of the program for the 1st launch was 2 billion? But you're going to amortize that cost over (hopefully) several launches.

I think you misunderstand my argument. Let me restate it.

Someone, sometime said the Starship launch was $2b. The Google AI picked that up and included it in its answer. Someone, sometime said it was around $100m. The Google AI picked that up and included it in its answer. There is a lot of range between 100m and 2b, which implies there's a lot of data getting thrown around and we don't have good numbers.

If observing that we don't have good numbers is arguing in bad faith... I don't know what to tell you.

Musk at some point said $10m for a Starship launch. I think I found a reference for that in a CNBC interview... I'll look it up later. But my point is... It is unlikely that Starship launches are $10m RIGHT NOW. But sure... maybe they will be in the future. I take Elon with a grain of salt because of his comments regarding Full Self-Driving Mode and Robo-Taxi deployment dates.

I said we should not compare New Glenn estimated launch costs RIGHT NOW with Elon's asperational price target of $10m. We should compare Starship's cost per kg to LEO RIGHT NOW with New Glenn's estimated cost per kg to LEO RIGHT NOW. Or we could compare them at a particular point in the project history. We could compare per-kg costs at first launch or estimated per-kg costs at the 10th launch.

Both companies are saying they want to do a lot of launches, so we'll eventually have MUCH better data.

I'm suggesting we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges and not apples to oranges.

At the current moment, all Starship launches have been fully disposable (though yes, one booster was caught by the chopsticks so it's probably more accurate to say the whole system is about 1/12th re-usable.) At this point in the program, you have to pay for each vehicle that lands or crashes in the water. I agree with you when you say "100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch." Starship is currently more disposable than it is reusable.

When SpaceX re-uses the boosters and the Starships, then it will not be fully disposable and the price per launch will go down. We are not at that point at the moment. You can tell this because a number of boosters and starships have fallen into the ocean, some crashing, some coming to a controlled stop just over the ocean and then falling over.

But the important part here is that the equipment that wasn't caught by the chopsticks doesn't get to be re-used. So if you want to do another launch, you have to build new equipment. That new equipment will cost money.

So if the current, mostly non-reusable Starship launches cost $100m a pop, that's after several launches. Even though we have someone estimating the first couple of New Glenn launches cost $68m, let's wait until it has 6 launches and THEN compare costs.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#54

Post by ternnoburn »

zizee wrote: post #50
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is factually inaccurate. What's your source? Though admittedly, we have to depend on BO's predictions for per-kg launch costs, and those may be a lot higher for the first few missions and gradually ease off. Google's AI tells me the current costs for a Starship launch is somewhere between $100m and $2b. Wikipedia says a Falcon 9 costs about $50m and can lift about 20t to LEO. I see a blurb that says Mu…

Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which…

100m is vaporware pricing. It's the $30k Tesla that drives itself. Or any of the numbers on the hyperloop. It's a made up number for the press.

I'm begging the internet to please be critical and do some basic analysis and not just believe everything they hear from that guy!

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#55

Post by ben-schaaf »

jiggawatts wrote: post #22
ternnoburn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's simply no way one vehicle will be the best option in every case. If you have a small satellite you need placed somewhere unique, firing up a huge launch vehicle makes no sense.

It does if it's still cheaper than any other rocket.

I don't see how that makes any sense. Starship is 100t dry; simply the fuel costs of a launch will necessarily be higher than disposable alternatives.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#56

Post by ternnoburn »

jiggawatts wrote: post #22
ternnoburn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's simply no way one vehicle will be the best option in every case. If you have a small satellite you need placed somewhere unique, firing up a huge launch vehicle makes no sense.

It does if it's still cheaper than any other rocket.

The rocket equation doesn't participate in capitalism -- moving mass to orbit takes delta-v and that takes fuel.

If you are going to imagine a hypothetical future where starship has made technological leaps forward sufficient to be the cheapest possible option despite being significantly heavier and larger aerodynamically, you have to imagine someone else could also improve their rocket. A smaller rocket requires less fuel to fly.

The US is not the only place flying rockets, and spacex has a lead, but if the industry takes off, there will be other contenders. Once rockets start getting more similar as they all start contending with physics, a smaller rocket will necessarily be cheaper.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#57

Post by Jach »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #35

Blue Origin is a funny company. I worked for TerraBella/SkySat/Google Satellite, Planet Labs and Kubos, each as a consultant/contractor/whatever. I struck up a conversation w/ Rob Meyerson @ a conference and told him what I was working on (mostly comms / ground station work, but with a tiny bit of GNC test infrastructure.) I mean, I'm not God's gift to rocket scientists, but... I was pretty heavily recruited by them…

There's several funny stories of their hiring oddities on HN going back at least 10 years... For myself, I only talked to them about a back-end SWE role, not avionics, but they were the only company to ever ask about my college GPA. (Not good.)

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#59

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #30
jiggawatts wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does if it's still cheaper than any other rocket.

This. If, and it’s a big if, starship can be 100% reusable and less than 24 hours turn around, then it will be the space truck NASA envisioned with the shuttle

There's no way they're getting rapid turnaround with the damage it's has sustained on the last two tests.

Re: After a 24-second test of its engines, the New Glenn rocket is ready to fly

#60

Post by fastball »

ternnoburn wrote: post #54
zizee wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so your argument for Starship not being the best choice for all mission profiles is based solely on cost. If Starship was cheaper, then you'd agree that it serves the mission profiles? An estimate of 2 billion per launch is laughable, and suggests you are not arguing in good faith. 100m is more accurate for a fully disposable launch, and SpaceX has demonstrated great progress on reusability of the booster, which…

100m is vaporware pricing. It's the $30k Tesla that drives itself. Or any of the numbers on the hyperloop. It's a made up number for the press. I'm begging the internet to please be critical and do some basic analysis and not just believe everything they hear from that guy!

SpaceX is mass-producing the engines, mass-producing the heat shield tiles, the fuel is cheap, the structure is stainless steel (cheap), payload capacity is huge, and full rapid re-usability seems well under way. There is no way Starship will not be the cheapest launch platform (per kilogram) if and when it is operational. It will definitely have a launch price tag for under $100m.
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