91–100 of 113 posts
The y-scale on that graph really makes it hard to understand the true drop in price.
The log scale and the orgin at 0 definitely don't help the readability here...
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…
I've been a ham a long time and its interesting to see the progress. Back when I was a gen-x kid amsat was about 20 years old and had just barely broken two digits of launched satellites and there were never more than a couple in orbit at a time. Now a days there's two digits of ham radio satellites launched per year...
The satnogs project is pretty interesting to see what goes into the ground station for a small satellite. Maybe start there.
AFAIK other than some obscure situations involving the ISS and some APRS satellites, there has never been any AMSAT multi-satellite networking, but at the current incredible rate of expansion I'd expect to see hobbyists having something like that by 2030 or so.
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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.
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Falcon Heavy has a significantly smaller payload bay and the 1st stage will always be lost. If a starship can fly 10 times and requires much less refurb than a FH, it makes sense.
Right, the projected rate is effectively the super-bulk discounted rate if you buy 10 launches worth of cargo at once and actually fill it to max capacity whenever a launch window is open. I don’t think the individual flight rate would be anywhere close to $50/kg for the vast majority of customers. The more relevant number is the all-in immediate price per launch, the rate where one could simply wire the money and Sp…
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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.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon [Edit] Also the German V-3. An important note is that the V3 and Babylon (unsure of HARP) were designed to have multiple charges go off as the projectile proceeded down the barrel, which gives an acceleration profile more like a railgun than a traditional cannon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon Solid-fuel rocke…
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Right, the projected rate is effectively the super-bulk discounted rate if you buy 10 launches worth of cargo at once and actually fill it to max capacity whenever a launch window is open. I don’t think the individual flight rate would be anywhere close to $50/kg for the vast majority of customers. The more relevant number is the all-in immediate price per launch, the rate where one could simply wire the money and Sp…
Nobody does launches on a week's notice.
For order of magnitude comparisons we can ignore all that, for finer grained comparisons it really is comparing apples and oranges.
In the ideal future world launches should be done without the need for secret contracts, something like the private jet industry where planes can chartered, almost at the push of a button, at short notice.
That's one of the reasons I'm not really interested in the Artemis program. I'd rather fund Starship to get that massive launch cost reduction and then start looking at returning to the moon. Being able to ship more hardware means you don't have to make it as reliable since you have spares. That further drives down the cost of R&D.
Artemis != SLS. Artemis is a program for which the SLS and other vehicles are under development. SpaceX and other commercial launch providers are also being engaged by the Artemis program to develop vehicles. While Starship (and maybe New Glenn) does look more attractive than SLS now, a effort as large as Artemis is more concerned with capability than immediately driving the cost down. SLS is a capable vehicle moved…
Using hydrogen to fuel the first stage required building a massively heavy cryogenic tank, impairing performance so greatly the RS-25s cant lift the SLS without SRBs.
And not only will it cost $20B before it’s first launch, but each flight will destroy over a half billion in engines alone. So the minimum cost per flight is over $1B without counting the R&D, about $3B to $5B per flight in total depending on how many flights are flown to amortize the R&D.
And with all that, SLS has very limited capabilities. The block 1 will be the largest heavy lift launch system (until Starship launches), but it’s only about 30% more payload mass than a $150M falcon heavy expendable.
But worse is the maximum possible cadence for the SLS is twice yearly, making it both useless and unnecessary for more ambitious missions that will rely on in orbit refueling. It’s just an archaic dinosaur built out of nearly 50 year old parts.
How would these numbers change if we had a proper carbon tax?
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Right, the projected rate is effectively the super-bulk discounted rate if you buy 10 launches worth of cargo at once and actually fill it to max capacity whenever a launch window is open. I don’t think the individual flight rate would be anywhere close to $50/kg for the vast majority of customers. The more relevant number is the all-in immediate price per launch, the rate where one could simply wire the money and Sp…
Nobody does launches on a week's notice.
Are these numbers inflation adjusted? The difference would be far more dramatic if not.