SpaceX News

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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paperburn1
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by paperburn1 »

That statement just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It is all about return on investment. So let's just spitball a few numbers here. Let's say cost to repair/remanufacture a booster is $9 million total cost and to build a booster brand-new is $10 million. You've just made 1 million bucks. Even if it only flies one time after you remanufacture the rocket booster if the cost is lower than what it cost to build a new one then you've made money. Launch site costs are fixed overhead, refueling costs are minimal. Hell transportation is done by a barge and a truck.


The key is to design a system that you don’t need to refurbish (between missions),” Shotwell said March 9 in a panel discussion at the Satellite 2016 industry conference and trade show near Washington, D.C.. “The key is for us to have zero refurbishment.

“Now, we’ve got to inch ourselves toward that, but I took a look at the vehicle that we landed in December … and you pull off the tunnel covers, and that wire harness is pristine,” she said. “The metal is still shiny. You pull off the thermal protection system that we call the ‘dance floor’ near the engines, (and) that engine is beautiful. It’s perfectly clean.”

SpaceX engineers transported the flown rocket stage from its landing zone at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station a few miles north to the Falcon 9’s Complex 40 launch pad for a brief engine firing in January, less than a month after its Dec. 21 flight for Orbcomm.

“Getting that stage back and taking a look at it, it was extraordinary how great it looked,” Shotwell said. “In fact, we didn’t refurbish it at all. We took a look at it and we inspected it (before moving it to the launch pad).”
Last edited by paperburn1 on Wed Jul 20, 2016 12:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

paperburn1
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by paperburn1 »

I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

hanelyp
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by hanelyp »

Reusing a rocket is going to cost something in terms of initial stage construction cost or performance. How many reuses you need for reuse to make sense depends on how much extra it costs to build a reusable stage. By "conventional" lines of launch engineering a reusable stage costs a lot more than a disposable. And yet SpaceX has built a potentially reusable stage for much less than the old guard needed for a disposable.
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D Tibbets
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by D Tibbets »

The estimates above make one glaring assumption. As pointed out, the cost of building the initial booster that is recoverable must be more than a use once booster. There is also a payload to orbit penalty (this is a complex consideration as many missions may not utilize the entire lift to orbit capacity of the rocket). The question is how much more the initial recoverable booster costs. This factors into the final results.

An arbitrary example may be that the recoverable booster costs an initial 40 million. A use once booster may cost 35 million. Refurbishment might be 5 million. So one lunch favors the use once booster by ~ 10 million. Two uses favors the reusable launcher by about 70 million/ 45 million or about 25 million less overall or ~ 12 million per launch. Three uses equates to 105 million / 50 million, Four uses 140 million/ 55 million. The savings compound. Only a few reuses are still impressive. Another factor is that mass production of single use boosters may reduce their relative price further, but I suspect this contribution is modest.

I see the question as not how many reuses is practical, but the underlying refurbishment / infrastructure costs as a fraction of the new cost. Reliability, etc. are other concerns.

The Space Shuttle did not fail because of the number of projected reuses, but because of the high initial vehicle costs, the large percentage of vehicle weight as a percentage of payload, and the high cost and complex process of refurbishment. Even the solid booster, which would seem to lend themselves to cheap reuse, actually needed recovery from a sea water splash down, washing and inspection, possible corrosion correcting actions, disassembly, metal bending (hitting the water bent the 1 inch thick stainless steel tubes out of round), and reassembly in vulnerable (seals) sections, etc.

The Space X approach, if it indeed works, has the major advantages of minimalist refurbishment between flights along with substantially lower initial costs for equivalent payloads.

Dan Tibbets
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D Tibbets
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by D Tibbets »

hanelyp wrote:Reusing a rocket is going to cost something in terms of initial stage construction cost or performance. How many reuses you need for reuse to make sense depends on how much extra it costs to build a reusable stage. By "conventional" lines of launch engineering a reusable stage costs a lot more than a disposable. And yet SpaceX has built a potentially reusable stage for much less than the old guard needed for a disposable.
This is important as prevously indicated. To illustrate- consider another example compared to my previous post. The one use booster may cost 35 million. But the reusable booster now costs an arbitrary 210 million. Even with zero refurbishment/ reuse cost penalty, it would require 6 launches to breakeven, and this is at lower payload capacities per launch. Now, to make sense, 8 to 10 launches may be the minimum requirement for consideration.

So, both perspectives are reasonable, based on the assumptions used. I have not seen any estimates for Falcon 9 reusable rocket booster cost compared to a single use version. The major obvious differences being the the guiding vanes and the landing legs. The launch cost for a reusable Falcon 9 is similar to older single use Falcon 9 launches. There is a tradoff for the cost of reuse capacity and cost savings as SpaceX has evolved their technology and business model. So comparisons are difficult for an outsider.

Dan Tibbets
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Giorgio
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Giorgio »

D Tibbets wrote:The one use booster may cost 35 million. But the reusable booster now costs an arbitrary 210 million.
Sorry, I might have missed it, but where does the 210 Million cost figure comes from for the SpaceX reusable booster?
It seems to me an unrealistic figure from both, a material cost and a research cost point of view.

Edit to fix mis-spelling
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Skipjack
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Skipjack »

As we know from SpaceX launch prices, the cost for the reusable booster is about the same as it is for an expendable booster and except for the legs they are identical. We know that because SpaceX charges only marginally more for expendable flights than they do for flights that allows for reuse.
Most launches don't use the full payload capability of the F9. You cant just fill up the payload capability of a rocket with arbitrary payloads. Two payloads rarely go to the same orbit. In addition to this, they have extra fuel margins in the booster in case of an engine out situation (in which case the stage wont be reused). So there will always be margins left. The loss of payload with reuse is relatively small. You have 30% payload loss if you perform a flight back to the launch site (which should be considered the maximum loss). The losses for downrange recovery are much smaller than that, probably closer to 10%. Because of these points, the "loss of payload" argument is largely irrelevant.
Musk has stated several times that their goal is rapid reuse. He once talked about flying a stage twice in a single day, but that is a very long term goal.
Finally, people assume that SpaceX somehow wants to achieve maximum profit per launch. This is wrong. They want to achieve maximum progress towards their goals with each launch. Their goals are to make spaceflight so affordable that large scale colonization of Mars becomes feasible. Obviously that is a very long term goal, but you can not ever do that with expendable rockets. So mastering reuse is paramount. These initial steps with F9 are merely that, initial steps. The methane architecture will increase Isp tremendously, buying them even more margins for reuse, even with higher orbits.
20 years from now, they will master reusability and then things will get interesting.
Regarding the safety of reusable boosters. Once enough experience has been gathered with reuse, reusable rockets will be safer than expendable ones. With expendable rockets, every launch is the first one, like the very first test flight of a plane. I would not necessarily want to fly on an airplane that has never flown before. With reusable launch vehicles, safety is more of a bathtub curve.

D Tibbets
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by D Tibbets »

Giorgio wrote:
D Tibbets wrote:The one use booster may cost 35 million. But the reusable booster now costs an arbitrary 210 million.
Sorry, I might have missed it, but where does the 210 Million cost figure comes from for the SpaceX reusable booster?
It seems to me an unrealistic figure from both, a material cost and a research cost point of view.

Edit to fix mis-spelling
Thus the term 'arbitrary'- a made up number to make my point. A marginally more expensive booster may repay the cost and be making a profit/ lower cost with only two launches. A much more costly reuse booster will require many reuses to break even. I chose a ratio that may be comparable to the Delta IV versus the shuttle. The Delta may be about 300 million per copy and the Shuttle ~ 3 billion (again somewhat guesses- it is the ratio that is important). Ignoring refurbishment and recovery costs it would take about 10 Shuttle flights to break even. With the high refurbishment costs of the Shuttle, this number would be increased to 30, 50, or even perhaps 100 flights.

With marginally increased reuse costs per flight, the model makes very quick and obvious sense. Those that argue otherwise are making assumptions, not necessarily based on current facts that more closely mimic the Shuttle experience. Again the question is not weather reuse is attractive , but if the cost of reuse can be minimized sufficiently. Except for the reliability issue which remains to be demonstrated, Space X seems to have already answered that question unequivocally- even for a partially reusable system.

Dan Tibbets
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D Tibbets
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by D Tibbets »

Skipjack wrote: ......

Musk has stated several times that their goal is rapid reuse. He once talked about flying a stage twice in a single day, but that is a very long term goal.
Finally, people assume that SpaceX somehow wants to achieve maximum profit per launch. This is wrong. They want to achieve maximum progress towards their goals with each launch. Their goals are to make spaceflight so affordable that large scale colonization of Mars becomes feasible. Obviously that is a very long term goal, but you can not ever do that with expendable rockets.
....
Well, Mars is a lofty goal and I applaud Space X efforts towards that.

But, don't forget the the tremendous advantage a company has by offering reliable launch costs way below that of others. The portion of the launch market they capture (and the amount of profit even with smaller margins) will potentially be very painful to other launch services and possibly put them out of business. This is what has Airainespace and ULA scrambling. The likely current discussions behind closed doors in China, India and Japan are also possibly intriguing. Even the Russians seem to be scared, and they have been the previous low price provider. This is not only a possible path to Mars, but a revolution (not evolution) is access to space. And to think that this is all done with current technology* is amazing. The Russians, or anyone else, are not laughing at E. Musk and company any more!

*Current technology. It is the choices made with that technology/ engineering knowledge that is the game changer.

Dan Tibbets
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Skipjack
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Skipjack »

Dan, SpaceX is already much cheaper than anybody else, while at the same time investing in the future capability to lower prices even more drastically.
It is a not a "nice for profit" thing for them. It is a must have if they ever want to achieve their mission.

Maui
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Maui »

Skipjack wrote:As we know from SpaceX launch prices, the cost for the reusable booster is about the same as it is for an expendable booster and except for the legs they are identical.
Sorry, but we know next to nothing about the cost comparison between a one-use and re-usable booster based on the price SpaceX is charging.
- SpaceX is private so we don't know anything about their costs or even if they are making a profit. Familiar with a loss leader?
- If they had any intention of a re-usable booster program in the long run, there's no way they could get away with charging more for launches using re-usable boosters-- what would be in it for the customer?
- Cheap prices likely say much more about gov contractor vs private industry than they do about the one-use vs re-use.
- They've always intended on re-usability, so whether or not all of their boosters had legs, they all incorporated design that targeted re-use capabilities.
- More than just legs: RCS, grid fins, navigation system, larger size to accommodate fuel for landing, not to mention the barge or the team needed to recover it.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm an avid fan of what SpaceX is doing. But how can you argue that the percentage of boosters that can be re-flown doesn't impact the profitability/cost effectiveness? Let's be reasonable.

Giorgio
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by Giorgio »

D Tibbets wrote:Thus the term 'arbitrary'- a made up number to make my point. A marginally more expensive booster may repay the cost and be making a profit/ lower cost with only two launches.
When I checked into it, I made a quick estimate of the whole hardware systems added to the rockets to enable the landing, and it come out in the 600K/750K USD range, excluding ancillaries and of course the landing barge, but also that one is not much expensive, its just a barge after all.

Even if they reuse it only twice it will be big savings for them.
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D Tibbets
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by D Tibbets »

Reuse and presumed savings from it allows for more profits for Space X or cheaper prices for customers. Or more reasonably, a combination of both. Higher profit margins allows for more growth and less aversion to risk. Lower prices to customers encourages a greater slice of the pie for Space X. That by itself can increase profits- overhead per flight for infrastructure, etc. is proportionately less. Space X can further reduce their already low charges to customers, thus attracting more business at the expense of competitors, and still make more (or lose less if you think they are currently at a negative balance). It can be a win- win situation for Space X and customers. And of course a big loss for competitors.

One issue may be that if Space X establishes a monopoly for space access, then customers may become subsequently vulnerable to higher costs at the whim of Space X. That Space X seems to have an attitude of promoting space access at minimal cost helps to discourage this, at least for now. This monopoly happened with the ULA, and as is often the case, once this imbalance is established, entrepreneurs see an opportunity to exploit it. ULA resisted for a time with government manipulations, but now they are being buried by the momentum established by Musk, Besos, etc.

As for weather Space is making a profit with a current ~ 62 million dollar launch price is an open question. How bookkeeping is handled, how costs are divided between research, development, production and distribution and current versus expected future costs and return is factored is the complex question and it is somewhat susceptible to creative management.

Also, Space X, along with other players have investments from the government and NASA, and Air Force, etc. Eg: forty million from the Air Force, 90 million for a CRS mission (Does that include the Dragon costs?). Perhaps the glaring example of this is the 1 billion dollars per year that ULA has been getting from the US government for no itemized reason.

Dan Tibbets
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kunkmiester
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by kunkmiester »

SpaceX cannot establish a natural monopoly. Now that cheaper flight costs have been shown, others can eventually duplicate the work. If SpaceX attempts to increase costs too much, competitors will enter.

The only way ULA style monopolies exist is with government interference.
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D Tibbets
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Re: SpaceX News

Post by D Tibbets »

kunkmiester wrote:SpaceX cannot establish a natural monopoly. Now that cheaper flight costs have been shown, others can eventually duplicate the work. If SpaceX attempts to increase costs too much, competitors will enter.

The only way ULA style monopolies exist is with government interference.
Well,to be fair, monopolies can be influenced by government, but not always to the monopolizers benefit. The monopoly breaking US government actions at the beginning of the 20th century are examples. Admittedly, such actions are often (sometimes?) driven by public opinion more than government competence.

Dan Tibbets
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