SpaceX News

[JoeP]

There is an anti-SpaceX crank I've been entertained to read name of Gary Church. Anyone now what his reaction has been to SpaceX landing on the barge successfully?

I can't find the guy and don't know if he died or finally got banned from the last sites that had been putting up with him.

He's the guy who kept on referring to the Falcon series as a "hobby rocket".

I remember a flurry of posts from that guy, or a guy with the same name, on another blog I occasionally read. He had very definite opinions that there was only one way to colonize the solar system and nearby star systems -- and that was with nuclear bomb propulsion and massive amounts of water as cosmic radiation shield. No other alternative. It got a little tedious, IMO, got a bit tired of it personally. But he disappeared a couple years ago or might have been banned.

[ladajo]

http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

New pricing is up:

Falcon 9: 5.5mT to GTO @ $62 million, 1.71M lbf (ground, up to max of 1.9 in flight).

Falcon Heavy: 8mT to GTO @ $90 million, 5.1M lbf (ground)

The posted numbers are for expendable. They say subtract 35%ish cargo for recoverable flight.

Looks like about $11,000/kg. Be interesting to see how fast/how far this drops once they validate reusable boosters. I expect this within the year or two at the most. (I am taking into account some 'booms'.)

[Skipjack]

http://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities

New pricing is up:

Falcon 9: 5.5mT to GTO @ $62 million, 1.71M lbf (ground, up to max of 1.9 in flight).

Falcon Heavy: 8mT to GTO @ $90 million, 5.1M lbf (ground)

The posted numbers are for expendable. They say subtract 35%ish cargo for recoverable flight.

Looks like about $11,000/kg. Be interesting to see how fast/how far this drops once they validate reusable boosters. I expect this within the year or two at the most. (I am taking into account some 'booms'.)

Also interesting is the increased thrust and payload on each of their rockets. The Merlin 1D now has a record breaking T/W of almost 200! The Falcon 9 has a record breaking payload fraction to LEO of 4.15%. Also amazing!

[Giorgio]

All of this should have happened 20 years ago..... anyhow, is nice to be still around and to be able to see Boeing and Lockheed finally getting some payback for having prevented any meaningful development in the industry in the last 20 years.

[kunkmiester]

All of this should have happened 20 years ago..... anyhow, is nice to be still around and to be able to see Boeing and Lockheed finally getting some payback for having prevented any meaningful development in the industry in the last 20 years.

I'd say 30, seems to me most of this could have been done in the 80s.

[ladajo]

I don't know, there have been some truly game changing materials advancements over the last 20 years, as well as significant advancement of technology application and integration into design, development, and production cycles. All of this has lead to milestone improvements in access to applications and associated performance levels that were only dreams in the past.

While I agree that the 'Defence Industrial Complexity' approach has been bad and a vampire on rapid innovation, I think there were other factors at play.

[ladajo]

This article was informative on the costing estimates and potential savings from reflight of recovered units.

http://www.space.com/32688-spacex-reusa ... vings.html

Bottom line: SpaceX could reduce the current ticket price by 20-30% and still maintain a nice margin, based on 15 reflights (Musk thinks he could do at least double, based on him commenting "dozens".)

[krenshala]

I would have expected the first stage cost to be a higher percentage of the entire stack in a Falcon Heavy, considering it uses three cores while everything above it remains (essentially) the same.

[ladajo]

Yes, that is curious. Good catch. Somewhere else I recall seeing a first stage costing of under $20 mil. (if I remember correctly).
Given this was a NASA analysis, they may not have had access to full SpaceX costing, and had to rely on some estimated amounts and factors.
How do you move in an economy of scale argument where a single unit costs $27.5 mil, and three costs $40.5 mil? This infers that scaling up by two more units allows them to be sourced for less than half of a single standalone. That does not seem to make sense, especially given what we know about SpaceX manufacturing processes and practices.

Overall, the starting argument numbers for launch pricing is accurate.
The deconstruction may be inaccurate, based on your observation, in the first stage estimates. It would seem to make more sense if a single booster build ran about $15 mil, and with cost scaling economies, you could push out two more for around $12.5 mil each, coming in with an averaged cost of about $13 mil per booster (if $40 mil is in the ballpark).

Hmmm...

[krenshala]

I guess another option to consider is that SpaceX may just charge more for the single core (more margin) than they plan to for the three-core Heavy on a per-core basis.

[hanelyp]

SpaceX seems to be in a position of having lots of space between what it costs them and what it would cost a competitor to deliver a similar service. That being the case, the price they charge would have a lot to do with market demand and the volume they're equipped to supply. The Falcon Heavy may be oversized for the majority of demand. There's also costs that are per launch regardless of vehicle size.

[D Tibbets]

The cost of three cores compared to one would depend on economies of scale (mass production), but I wonder if the major consideration may be reusability. I suspect the two booster cores would lend themselves to recovery and reuse more so than the central core that would push the upper stage to a higher speed and height. The first core may be the single use cost while the two boosters are reused items. This is speculation and actual cost performance with reuse considerations is more complicated than single use considerations.

Dan Tibbets

[DeltaV]

Tesla Model X has a Bioweapon Defense mode. Does it work for Republicans, or will only Democrats make it to Mars? :)
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Chdy3FOW4AcOZvL.jpg

[Skipjack]

Looks like another successful launch and another successful barge landing for SpaceX. This stage came in so hot, they had to use 3 engines for the landing burn!

[ladajo]

Nice!