How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#81

Post by adolph » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

bgroat wrote: post #65

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trash is full of valuable materials! Right now it may not be economical to recover those, but I would be surprised if we aren't mining our landfills in the next 100 years. That said, the CO2 emissions from launching anything non-essential into orbit are huge, I'd wait until we have a space elevator to (intentionally) throw trash into space.

Or a rail gun. My understanding for why we don't use those for spacecraft is because people and fine machinery can't take the Gs. Trash could.

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#82

Post by wizzwizz4 » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #32

cbozeman wrote: post #23

Given these insanely cheap prices, I have to wonder about the viability of sending your own microsatellites into space to create your own personal communications cluster. I don't know enough to know what all would be required, how / if you could communicate with other networks, etc., but even just having your own personal LEO satellite-based communications network seems relatively plausible based on these launch cost…

Cheap means "of a low price", so a price can't be cheap, just low.

You can pay A for B, which you then pay for C. B is the price of C, and A is B's price. If A has a low value, then B is cheap, and thus a cheap price.

Pretty much all money can be bought for very slightly more money. Thus, a price can be cheap.

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#83

Post by nijave » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #22

Are these numbers inflation adjusted? The difference would be far more dramatic if not.

There is a source link in the article that shows a spreadsheet that claims to be inflation adjusted

Edit looks like it was updated minutes ago

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#84

Post by Scoundreller » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

RyJones wrote: post #36

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trash is full of valuable materials! Right now it may not be economical to recover those, but I would be surprised if we aren't mining our landfills in the next 100 years. That said, the CO2 emissions from launching anything non-essential into orbit are huge, I'd wait until we have a space elevator to (intentionally) throw trash into space.

I was just watching a video where they made the claim that the slag from steel production 100 years ago has more metal than some ores, so it's becoming worthwhile to re-mill slag.

I wonder how much silver comes from recycling old copper, lead and zinc.

Only about a quarter of « new » silver comes from silver mines. The rest as a byproduct of other mineral mining where they separate out the silver.

https://www.globalxetfs.com/silver-explained/

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#85

Post by valuearb » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #41

Maer4everever wrote: post #21

Nice charts ! I was a bit sad not to find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_(rocket_family) in the list ! I'm really not expert enough into space race matters to know if it's relevant, or if the tiny french LEO platform would be worth charting ?

Ariane isn't competitive at all price-wise for commodity satellites. What it has going for however is a near perfect track record.

Ariane is still somewhat competitive to geocentric orbits and when dual berthing.

Falcon 9 and Heavy lose most of their performance advantage when going to higher orbits, IIRC because their first stages stage lower, and their upper stage has an ISP disadvantage vs. hydrogen rockets.

To maximize payload percentage to both LEO and higher orbits the most optimal rocket configuration is a first stage burning a dense fuel like RP-1 or Methane to minimize your largest tankage size/weight, and use hydrogen on your upper stage to maximum ISP without incurring too large a cost in heavier tankage. That’s how the Saturn V could lift 150 metric tons to LEO and 50 to translunar injection.

But instead SpaceX decided to use the same fuel and engines for both stages to get economies of scale in engine production, and dense fuels to save the most dry mass.

They could have optimized the next generation Falcon platform with a cryogenic hydrogen upper, and increased their GEO payloads 10-20%, at the cost of dual engine designs with less economies of scale and increased fueling complexity and infrastructure.

Instead they decided to brute force the same simple design architecture and build a 10x larger booster/second stage with Starship/SuperHeavy with 3x times the engines. One engine type, one fuel type and bigger rockets with enough brute lifting capacity that you can still put 100 metric tons in LEO while conserving enough to fly back your first stage and make your second stage out of heavy stainless steel so it can re-enter and be reused too.

So probably two thirds the payload to orbit capacity as a Saturn V style rocket, but 1/100th the cost per launch.

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#86

Post by VLM » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #24

satellite2 wrote: post #11

In Switzerland, in some Cantons, there is a trash tax. You pay roughly 1-2 USD the small taxed trash bag. So at the current trend it will literally become cost efficient to send our trash to space in a few years.

I can't stand stuff like that. There's no way the actual negative externality of a small bag of trash is $2. If I lived in a place with a ridiculous rule like that, I would be more inclined to protest the rule by dumping illegally than going along with it. Trash disposal here is great; free unlimited household trash disposal if you drive it to a dump, with only larger things like tires and mattresses costing money (b…

Its the strange intersection of conspicuous consumption and virtue signaling. Only we are good enough people and wealthy enough to pay a bizarre tax.

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#87

Post by dougmwne » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

hughes wrote: post #80

dougmwne wrote: post #73

I was wondering, so in case you were too, that other recently introduced rocket that has a <$5k/kg launch cost is the Russian Angara A5. It has flown twice. Falcon 9 has flown over 100 times. SpaceX really does have an incredible lead on the competition.

How much useful payload did the A5 deliver in those two flights?

None. Both launches were of mass simulators.

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#88

Post by trianglem » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

Is ISRO being considered? I can’t really tell from the chart but they must be highly price competitive purely looking at India’s PPI.

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#89

Post by huhtenberg » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #82

huhtenberg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap means "of a low price", so a price can't be cheap, just low.

You can pay A for B, which you then pay for C. B is the price of C, and A is B's price. If A has a low value, then B is cheap, and thus a cheap price. Pretty much all money can be bought for very slightly more money. Thus, a price can be cheap.

"Cheap X" means "an X that costs less".

"Cheap price" literally means "a price that costs less".

You can certainly say that, but it makes no sense.

Re: How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?

#90

Post by sonotmyname » Fri, Dec 18, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

blt wrote: post #74

huhtenberg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss trash bag fees pay for garbage collection and improvements to the recycling infrastructure. They aren't meant to offset the damage to the Earth or some abstract puffery like that.

Paying by the bag is good. In the USA, if you live in a detached house there's normally a fixed price to get a large barrel collected weekly. The barrel is large enough to hold a week's trash from a family of four who puts no effort into reducing trash output. If you live alone and are conscious about generating trash, you get ripped off.

> In the USA

Hold up.. This not only varies by state, but by county and city. Some places have this built in to special assessments on property taxes, some contract with a trash company that collects fees directly, and some are a bit of a free for all with multiple trash companies providing pickup and or/dumpster service (this is more common in rural areas).

I had a place up in the mountains where we had to buy special $6 trash bags and haul it to a central dumpster ourselves, and there are those in large cities who have to deal with mob-run collection companies who bribe local politicians for monopoly rights.

TLDR; To generalize "In the USA" for something like this is impossible.