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SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

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Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#81

Post by pkaye »

gardaani wrote: post #30

This is the second rocket launch today! The earlier one was Soyuz Launch to ISS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18587943 I didn't know that there are so many rocket launches going on all the time. Here's a list of them: https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/ There a launch almost every second day. The most interesting ones are Dec 7 Chinese launch to the far side of the moon and Jan 30 launch of India's mo…

Also the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft just arrived at the asteriod Bennu today. At some point it will land and take samples to return to earth.

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#82

Post by true_tuna »

Serious question. Why do you post WSJ articles? Either someone subscribes in which case they don’t need to discover content or they don’t in which case they haven’t discovered anything. WSJ posts are literally just advertisements for a mediocre closed website.

Seriously why do you bother?

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#83

Post by maneesh »

true_tuna wrote: post #82

Serious question. Why do you post WSJ articles? Either someone subscribes in which case they don’t need to discover content or they don’t in which case they haven’t discovered anything. WSJ posts are literally just advertisements for a mediocre closed website. Seriously why do you bother?

because people like me want to read the article, and we are happy it was posted.

It's also extremely easy to get around the paywall.

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#84

Post by jczhang »

SEJeff wrote: post #69
JshWright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon fiber and aluminum, mostly. The reason for reuse isn't really the cost (though that's certainly part of it). The main driver is that they are going to become the production bottleneck if Falcon 9 reaches the flight cadence they are shooting for. The fairings are a big, unwieldy shape, and they take up a lot of room during the manufacturing process, so they can only make one at a time.

Elon described it in an interview once as this: If you saw $6 million, falling from the sky, would you try to catch it? Each fairing is around $3 million, so they're trying to catch it. That gives them $6 million more per-customer they can discount the price should they need to get really competitive. It is really kind of insane that no one has tried this before.

Love that kind of commentary Elon provides.

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#85

Post by max76 »

avmich wrote: post #57
max76 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that cheaper launches will not do much to directly change the business of astroid mining. The majority of the cost, even today, are not related to rockets.

> The majority of the cost, even today, are not related to rockets. "Even today". There is an opinion that payloads are so expensive because the launchers are expensive. I.e., you can't send replacements easily, because a launch is expensive, so you have to design the payload so that it wouldn't break, and last 9-s of reliability cost additional 0-s in price. In other words, if launchers would become cheaper, that wo…

Asteroid mining would require brand new technology. We cannot crash an entire asteroid into Earth's surface, we would need to do zero g mineral processing, regardless of how the minerals are ultimately used. This is a task no one has ever done before. How do you estimate the cost of doing something like this? I'm not qualified, but I do know if a traditional mining organization decided to mine an asteroid the launch costs would be a small line item in their budget.

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#86

Post by nkoren »

I would just like to point out that this story dropped 18 places in 5 minutes:

http://hnrankings.info/18591766/

This is something I've seen before, but solely with stories pertaining to Elon Musk. It is very clear that HN rankings are being manipulated for a specific agenda. This saddens me, as HN is otherwise a place I trust for informed and balanced commentary.

(Note: I am not necessarily accusing the moderators of HN of anything here; I almost always agree with their interventions, even when seemingly heavy-handed. I know that running a community is hard. I suspect that something else is going on here.)

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#87

Post by avmich »

max76 wrote: post #85
avmich wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of the cost, even today, are not related to rockets. "Even today". There is an opinion that payloads are so expensive because the launchers are expensive. I.e., you can't send replacements easily, because a launch is expensive, so you have to design the payload so that it wouldn't break, and last 9-s of reliability cost additional 0-s in price. In other words, if launchers would become cheaper, that wo…

Asteroid mining would require brand new technology. We cannot crash an entire asteroid into Earth's surface, we would need to do zero g mineral processing, regardless of how the minerals are ultimately used. This is a task no one has ever done before. How do you estimate the cost of doing something like this? I'm not qualified, but I do know if a traditional mining organization decided to mine an asteroid the launch…

The traditional NASA ideology is risk averse. It's way easier for them to spend billions doing all kinds of tests and modelling to ensure mission success on the first try. This looks suspiciously related to unwillingness to do multiple similar missions on the side of the customer - i.e. Congress in this case. Once in 1990-s there was an attempt to do things "faster, better, cheaper", which today could be named "move fast and break things", but with some inevitable failures the approach fell out of favor.

As for asteroid mining, Caterpillar was considering lunar base operation equipment on a previous iteration (G.W.Bush program). You probably right, they'd present a hefty bill, but I somehow doubt they'd offer something truly innovative. Maybe with new scrappy startups we can drastically slash those non-launch costs - then we'll come back again to the question of launch prices.

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#88

Post by nur0n »

SEJeff wrote: post #69
JshWright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon fiber and aluminum, mostly. The reason for reuse isn't really the cost (though that's certainly part of it). The main driver is that they are going to become the production bottleneck if Falcon 9 reaches the flight cadence they are shooting for. The fairings are a big, unwieldy shape, and they take up a lot of room during the manufacturing process, so they can only make one at a time.

Elon described it in an interview once as this: If you saw $6 million, falling from the sky, would you try to catch it? Each fairing is around $3 million, so they're trying to catch it. That gives them $6 million more per-customer they can discount the price should they need to get really competitive. It is really kind of insane that no one has tried this before.

Link to the interview?

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#89

Post by max76 »

avmich wrote: post #87
max76 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asteroid mining would require brand new technology. We cannot crash an entire asteroid into Earth's surface, we would need to do zero g mineral processing, regardless of how the minerals are ultimately used. This is a task no one has ever done before. How do you estimate the cost of doing something like this? I'm not qualified, but I do know if a traditional mining organization decided to mine an asteroid the launch…

The traditional NASA ideology is risk averse. It's way easier for them to spend billions doing all kinds of tests and modelling to ensure mission success on the first try. This looks suspiciously related to unwillingness to do multiple similar missions on the side of the customer - i.e. Congress in this case. Once in 1990-s there was an attempt to do things "faster, better, cheaper", which today could be named "move…

> Maybe with new scrappy startups we can drastically slash those non-launch costs - then we'll come back again to the question of launch prices.

Over time asteroid/moon mining is inevitable. Technology will develop (costs fall), and we'll exhaust the mineral supply of Earth (prices increase). I'm sure, among many other types of organizations, scrappy startups will help us get there.

Re: SpaceX Launches 19th Rocket in a Year, a Company Record

#90

Post by max76 »

benj111 wrote: post #71
ajmurmann wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also proposed super fast intercontinental travel via BFR. I think they claimed something like ~20m NYC to Shanghai travel time.

Unfortunately it would have the Ryanair problem of 'Shanghai' spaceport being somewhere in the Gobi desert. And 'NYC' spaceport being somewhere in the Nevada desert, so the journey will still take 12 hours. Plus I can't see China accepting US owned ballistic trajectory rockets firing at their major cities.

> Plus I can't see China accepting US owned ballistic trajectory rockets firing at their major cities.

It wouldn't break mutually assured destruction.

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