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What is the cost per kilogram delivered into LEO? The Falcon 9 can deliver 13 metric tons to LEO for $54 million, or $4 million per metric ton. That PSLV rocket that you are quoting only puts 3 metric tons to LEO for the $17 million, or about $5 million (plus change) per metric ton. The $54 million is the quote on the SpaceX Falcon 9 web page if you want the source.

Russia has actually raised their launch prices in part because of the demand for them is outstripping their supply and they have a backlog on production at the moment. They are simply being capitalists, which is a good thing too but sort of shoots your theory out of the water. Name a specific launcher if you think it can be more competitive.

The Ariane V vehicle has a launch cost of $120 million and puts about 15 metric tons into orbit, or about $8 million per metric ton. In other words, it is literally twice the cost as the Falcon 9. It can put up a slightly heavier payload at the moment, but that is something SpaceX is trying to fix with their Falcon Heavy rocket.

If you want to find the source from Chinese space officials who toured the SpaceX plant in Hawthorne, California and said they couldn't compete, do some Google searching on the topic. I won't bother but it was widely reported at the time including a post here on Slashdot when it happened.

Q. How much does it cost to launch a Space Shuttle?
A. The average cost to launch a Space Shuttle is about $450 million per mission.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/delheavy.htm

Delta IV Heavy ... Launch Price $: 254.000 million in 2004 dollars in 2002 dollars.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/elvs/atlas5_specs.shtml

Atlas V Heavy ... US $130 M

On the plus side, they should be able to absolutely cash in on the heavily subsidized "US puppet warlords in dusty hellholes with dubious cell coverage who need to chat with their CIA handlers" market...

Iridium satellites were about to be de-orbited, because no one stepped up to buy it even at the fire-sale price. Suddenly, a previously unknown company came out of nowhere to buy Iridium, and it already had a long-term contract with the US government that effectively guaranteed their long-term operating expenses.

When Globalstar protested because the contract was held, the GAO put a hold on the contract. The Pentagon had the hold removed, citing national security. The GAO investigation apparently ended after the 100-day limit with no action.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/digest/sd2001-01/sd2001-01-009.shtml

It has had some great successes, such as the HST repairs (I don't know how else those would have been feasible)

No, that was a miserable financial failure, not a success. You probably have no idea of the staggering expense of a "reusable" vehicle like the shuttle.

The HST was planned to cost $400M to build and launch. It ended up costing about $2500M because it takes a lot of expensive screwing around to launch on the shuttle. I don't know if the $2500M cost includes the $1500M cost of a shuttle launch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope

JWST is going to "cost" about $4500M, but that's a R and D jobs program not a production program. It could be made to cost anything between maybe $1000M and $100000000000000M depending on how many grants they want to farm out (empire building, etc). I also have no idea what they'll use for a launcher based on all the American launcher cancellations. Probably either a Space-X product, or hang the thumb out like a hitchhiker and hope the ESA will bail us out.

Herschel cost about 1100M euros. I don't know if the 1100M euro cost includes the cost of a dirt cheap Ariane 5.

An Ariane 5 only costs about 120M euro, or about one twelfth of a shuttle launch. Or, rephrased, you can launch 12 scopes on an Ariane for the cost of launching 1 scope on the shuttle. Or rephrased, a shuttle launch, with an empty payload bay, costs more than the entire Herschel program, but an Ariane launch is a pretty small line item on any scope launch.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/elvs/ariane5_specs.shtml

A shuttle launch costs about $1500M

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle

Generally speaking, "partially rebuilding" a space telescope costs about as much as launching a new scope on a launcher thats not a joke.

A partially broken down scope seems like a waste, but if it would cost more to fix than to launch a new one... Of course, if we had a freaking assembly line of space telescopes, sort of like a place that Meade has for earthbound scopes, we could probably launch something like a HST or a Herschel for maybe $250M each, plus about $150M for an Ariane5 launch, which would otherwise only pay for about 1/4 of a shuttle repair mission.

Let me list the estimated maximum payloads since you did not:
Delta IV Heavy: 57,000 pounds or so
Atlas V Heavy: 44,000 pounds or so
SpaceX Falcon 9: 27,000 pounds or so
Ares I: 50,000 pounds or so

Fixed. Here's the sources for Delta IV Heavy and Atlas V Heavy.

Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago because Boeing had became something more than an aircraft manufacturer in Seattle.

At the time, Boeing had about 200,000 employees world-wide, 78,000 in Seattle and a headquarters staff of about 500. To attract Boeing, Illinois kicked in $41 in tax breaks and grants, Chicago $20 million. Boeing Moving Headquarters to Chicago

There's already a lot of International co-operation in space R&D. Take for example the Australian satellite Fedsat. Bus design by SIL of the UK, completed and re-engineered by Auspace in Australia, Star Camera from Stellenbosch in South Africa, Attitude Control System by Dynacon Canada, GPS system by NASA, USA. Telemetry standards by the European Space Agency. And launched on a Japanase H2A booster.

With a design lifetime of 3 years, it's been operational for 4, and was the first satellite to demonstrate self-healing of radiation damage in Space.

The key is to minimise bureaucracy, and have a single systems integrator. Probably not in the US due to some eccentric export control restrictions you have.

And yes, I had the honour and privelege of heading the on-board computer development team. I spent most of my time sorting out inconsistencies between the many different Universities in Australia involved, not to mention the International partners. Having to make decisions - one experiment suddenly needed more resources, who can I rob? Fortunately I always kept a reserve... so no-one ended up losing, and I could even give them a bit more than they asked for in the end.

Best thing about it? Well, at age 10 in 1968 I watched Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and vowed I'd be working on a space programme in 2001. That, and being entitled to wear a T-shirt saying "As a matter of fact, I am a Rocket Scientist!".

Well, let's see what we know about all this:

From the following pages:
[1] http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/logs/2000/20 00-075a_eo-1_sumpub.shtml
[2] http://eo1.usgs.gov/index.php
[3] http://eo1.usgs.gov/products.php
[4] http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/st6/ABOUT/About_index.html

The Earth Observation 1 satellite was launched on the 21st of November 2001, to validate technology for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission. The satellite cost $193'000'000. As the mission approached its end, interest was expressed in keeping it up there to gather more pictures, and an agreement was formed between NASA and the United States Geological Survey to continue the EO-1 Program as an extended mission. Later, in early 2004, the group responsible for the original sending of the satellite decided to try a new thing called the "Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment". This is the what the article above is talking about. So, they beam their program to the satellite, and make more than 100 photos while the thing is autonomous, tweaking the program many, many times in between. One of them happened to be useful and noticeable, and NASA made an article about it for the sake of PR. Now, according to [3], taking a single photo costs at most 500$, and that's with a bunch of add-ons. If by "more than 100" they mean 150 shots, that's still only 75'000$. In short, they used a satellite that should have sunk into disuse years before to test and tweak some AI using real data and a real satellite. I'd say that's actually a very efficient use of money. I mean, compared to sending yet another satellite just to do these experiments.

The ATV will be used for reboost

This seems to suggest (last paragraph) that ATV and Progress is used for the reboost. However this mentions a "ISS reboost if adequate propellant" in 2001

The article can be summed up from these two quotes:

"Galileo is largely a political project, aimed at asserting Europe's independence"

"Giove-A will not be part of the final 30 satellites that make up the Galileo network. It will try out new technology developed for the project and ensure that the European Space Agency claims the frequencies reserved for Galileo."

Europe already has access to a second GPS system - the one built by the Russian Military.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/constellatio ns/glonass_consum.shtml

I guess the Russians must have figured out what they were doing wrong then, when they built the RD-180 (http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd1 80_sum.shtml) and licensed it to Pratt & Whitney to be used for Atlas V, US military launches.

LOL. Actually, it only costs 800,000 USD. And, it's actually quite a technology.

The window (WORF; for Window Observational Research Facility) is 20 inches in diameter. It is made of very high quality glass suitable for use with high-resolution telescopes.

Read a bit more here.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd12 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd18 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0412/22atlas5n ro/ http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /atlasv.htm http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/09/01/npo-energomash. html and: http://www.friends-partners.ru/partners/mwade/lvfa m/energia.htm Sorry for the inconvenience in the previous post.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd12 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/engines/rd18 0_sum.shtml http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0412/22atlas5n ro/ http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /atlasv.htm http://www.asi.org/adb/04/03/09/01/npo-energomash. html and: http://www.friends-partners.ru/partners/mwade/lvfa m/energia.htm Sorry for the inconvenience in the previous post.

and here http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/elvs/angara_ sum.shtml

With the Space Shuttle still grounded, the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world ...

The Shuttle hasn't been in the satellite launching business since the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. The "new" generation of American boosters are variations of existing boosters so it's not like there's a supply vacuum (as it were) as the author suggests. As for demand for launchers ... I'm not going to take the author's word for it due to the cyclic nature of the launch industry.

The irony of the rocket's new popularity has not been lost on the veteran space engineers of Baikonur. [NASA] is now grounded despite annual approval of budgets of close to $20 billion.

Since the only role NASA has in the launch business is as a customer, claims of "irony" are ... well ... ironic.

With the Space Shuttle still grounded, the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world ...

The Shuttle hasn't been in the satellite launching business since the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. The "new" generation of American boosters are variations of existing boosters so it's not like there's a supply vacuum (as it were) as the author suggests. As for demand for launchers ... I'm not going to take the author's word for it due to the cyclic nature of the launch industry.

The irony of the rocket's new popularity has not been lost on the veteran space engineers of Baikonur. [NASA] is now grounded despite annual approval of budgets of close to $20 billion.

Since the only role NASA has in the launch business is as a customer, claims of "irony" are ... well ... ironic.

With the Space Shuttle still grounded, the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world ...

The Shuttle hasn't been in the satellite launching business since the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. The "new" generation of American boosters are variations of existing boosters so it's not like there's a supply vacuum (as it were) as the author suggests. As for demand for launchers ... I'm not going to take the author's word for it due to the cyclic nature of the launch industry.

The irony of the rocket's new popularity has not been lost on the veteran space engineers of Baikonur. [NASA] is now grounded despite annual approval of budgets of close to $20 billion.

Since the only role NASA has in the launch business is as a customer, claims of "irony" are ... well ... ironic.

If the UoSAT-2/UO-11 is still functioning after 20 years, why was there such a rush to deorbit the Iridium satellite constellation?

I stand corrected. Although they were used on the Apollo project, the design of the RL-10 was started in the late 50's, before Apollo.

"NOAA-N is a cooperative effort between NOAA, NASA, the United Kingdom and France."

Check out Rotary Rockets..

Last I heard the Rotory Rocket company's assets had been seized, including the Roton prototype, and that XCOR had bought at least some of them, including the IP rights to the design.

From looking at the XCOR Website they've pretty much shelved the Roton in favour of their own suborbital spaceplane design, the Xerus, which they're prototyping with the EZ-Rocket.

In any case it looks like the Roton is dead, which is a shame, it was a novel and interesting design. Which isn't to say it was going to work when they scaled it up of course...

It's about cost, reliability and payload.
{Note - this goes off-topic because I googled a bit and was stunned by modern launch capability. Sorry}

A Space Shuttle can throw about thirteen tonnes into low earth orbit. That's a huge chunk of satellite. Unfortunately, NASA will charge you in excess of $500 million for the service. The reliability is excellent. One failure in over 110 launches. Probably the most reliable launcher in history. Use the Space Shuttle if it's very heavy, cost is no problem and it absolutely, certainly, definitely must get there.

Delta is an old, proven, excellent technology. It used to be considered a 'light' launcher. Delta IV, however, can smack a meaty Thirteen tonnes to orbit. Yowza. I only found that out now. OK, that vehicle hasn't been built yet.

Whoo-Hoo! I just read that page again. The Delta Heavy (not built yet, but all technology in place) can stuff 13 tonnes into Geosynchronous transfer orbit. It can throw (and this is astonishing) twenty-three humungous tonnes to low earth orbit. What the hell can compete with that?

Well, Ariane 5 ECS-B can do twelve tonnes to Geosynchronous orbit. No payload assist required for orbit transfer.

The Russian Proton
can do about 23 tonnes to low earth orbit. This is the only one I know the cost for. You want twenty-three thousand kilogrammes orbiting at 350 kilometers? 75 million dollars. Cash up front, go talk to your insurers. (The Proton is almost as insanely reliable as the shuttle, actually - certainly comparable with Delta)

Right. That's it. I'm going to become a rocket engineer. It's got to beat the hell out of managing telecoms networks for a living.

Space and tech has information on a lot of production and experimental spacecraft. Including payload user manuals in the expendable launch vehical section. The Soyuz payload user manual makes great three AM reading :) According to the documentation there, the Atlas V is in the same category as the Proton and the older Shuttle configurations. IE, roughly 20 tons to LEO, including the Colombia. The Atlas V is just barely more powerful for LEO than the Proton (45238 lbs vers 44035). But, is not as powerful as the current shuttles for LEO, at 65000 lbs. FYI, Columbia has a limited LEO capability. In it's original configuration, it was limited to around 10000 lb payloads. And, granted, GSO is a different ball game.

Space and tech has information on a lot of production and experimental spacecraft. Including payload user manuals in the expendable launch vehical section. The Soyuz payload user manual makes great three AM reading :) According to the documentation there, the Atlas V is in the same category as the Proton and the older Shuttle configurations. IE, roughly 20 tons to LEO, including the Colombia. The Atlas V is just barely more powerful for LEO than the Proton (45238 lbs vers 44035). But, is not as powerful as the current shuttles for LEO, at 65000 lbs. FYI, Columbia has a limited LEO capability. In it's original configuration, it was limited to around 10000 lb payloads. And, granted, GSO is a different ball game.

The varient that took off today is a lightweight varient of the new Atlas V. The strongest is the Atlas V 552 with a max payload of 22 tons.

Seems that the C-21 is the Russian Entry to the X-Prize.
Also, they have built two of the M-55 carrier craft. They are a updated 'research' version of the M-17, which was the Russian version of America's U2 spy plane.
This page on HTOL TSTO (Horizontal take off & landing, two stage to orbit) has a few pictures of various launch systems. There is a nice picture of the M-17 in flight at the end of that page. (The M-55 in this picutre seems to have additional wing mounted engines.
According to the cutaway model, the cabin is relativly roomy, but there dosn't seem much room for fuel. Most of the equipment at the rear of the craft seems to be life support and other equipment, not presurised fuel tanks. Perhaps they are using solid rocket motors (aka Big Firework), but russians tend to prefer, and endeed excell, at liquid fueled rockets. Besides, this schematic seems to show a rather different type of spacecraft. (note the wings, and overall length) Therefore, I suspect that this is a plywood mockup, for the benifit of potential investors, in the tradition of most space enterprises over the past 5 years.

Check out space and tech launch data. Soyuz has a 30:1 launch mass:payload ratio. most of which is going to be fuel; and that's an old multistager and not at all cutting edge.

Besides, fuel is cheap (government tax notwithstanding.) Fuel costs are much less than 1% of rocketry costs right now. The rest goes into the armies of people needed to launch these things. Thing is, the armies don't get much bigger when you launch much more often - they are fixed costs and the unit costs are very much lower.

According to an article on the Space and Tech website, the Avrora launch vehicle is a Russian designed and manufactured rocket capable of delivering satellites to both low earth and geosynchronous transfer orbits. APSC (Asia Pacific Space Centre) plans to use a new spaceport being developed on Christmas Island, an Australian territory located in the northeast India Ocean.
No technology or license on the production of rockets and spacecraft will be offered to the Australian partners. No Russian government funds will be invested in the venture.
The Avrora flight tests will be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first commercial launch out of Australia's Christmas Island is planned for the last quarter of 2003. After introduction, manufacturing and launch rates are projected to ramp up to as many as 15 launches per year by 2006.
Avrora is capable of delivering 4.5 metric tons (9900 lbm) of payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit at 11 degrees inclination and over 2 metric tons (4400 lbm) directly to geostationary orbit.

According to an article on the Space and Tech website, the Avrora launch vehicle is a Russian designed and manufactured rocket capable of delivering satellites to both low earth and geosynchronous transfer orbits. APSC (Asia Pacific Space Centre) plans to use a new spaceport being developed on Christmas Island, an Australian territory located in the northeast India Ocean.
No technology or license on the production of rockets and spacecraft will be offered to the Australian partners. No Russian government funds will be invested in the venture.
The Avrora flight tests will be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first commercial launch out of Australia's Christmas Island is planned for the last quarter of 2003. After introduction, manufacturing and launch rates are projected to ramp up to as many as 15 launches per year by 2006.
Avrora is capable of delivering 4.5 metric tons (9900 lbm) of payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit at 11 degrees inclination and over 2 metric tons (4400 lbm) directly to geostationary orbit.

According to this Expendable Launch Vehicle Cost Comparison, Soyuz is actually one of the cheapest ways to orbit at US$18M a pop. (It's those 27 years to depreciate base manufacturing costs that helps.) And each flight could presumably carry one cosmonaut and two passengers. I'm not sure anyone has a good way to estimate Energia's numbers, though: Russia's financial situation is such that cold hard American cash is worth far more than its paper conversion value, and they've probably run flights at a worse loss basis for the Russian government. Besides, this will help subsidize a running production line (more vehicles == cheaper costs), as well as advertise their satellite launch services.

I wonder what makes space travel so expensive? Is it the fuel (liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen I believe), the cost of the vehicle itself (the various booster stages and so on) or the maintenance costs(engineers, repairs and general upkeep).

Fuels differ. LOX/LH is what the shuttle rockets use, but Soyuz uses a LOX/Kerosene fuel in all 3 stages. Figure 30 cents/kg for the combination, and you'll need something like 270,000 kg., but that's less than $100,000. The Soyuz crew vehicle is theoretically reusable, but they tend to land hard and space-rating afterward would be tricky. In practice Energia probably salvages what they can and sticks it back in the assembly line. What you're looking at are the overall costs of running the infrastructure. The shuttle has basically the same problem: if you look at pure materials and other "just this time" costs, you can come up with ridiculously low numbers (say, $60-100 million); but when you have 5 launches in a year and pay $5 billion for the privilege, you know there's more to it than that.

Soyuz launch vehicles (the type that go to Mir).

Why haven't we developed cool spacecrafts like they had in Star Wars:TPM that can go straight into the atmosphere? [you mean out of?] It would seem to be more an economic issue as opposed to a technological issue. I guess they can't develop quite enough thrust to escape the Earth's gravity without using those huge rockets.

SSTO (Single Stage to Orbit) vehicles have been on the drawing board since the earliest days of NASA, but none has ever been built. The closest prototypes from recent years have suffered from the existence of the shuttle and other working launch systems. The DC-X was a promising vehicle, but it was damaged during a hard landing. The VentureStar project is billed as a next-generation shuttle, but since STS will be around for at least another 15-20 years it's not imminent. The X-33 is a prototype of some of its technology, but it's been delayed by problems of its own. The X-38 is a similarly-shaped (flying wing) vehicle, that would be a lifeboat for an ISS crew of up to 7; but it's an orbit-to-ground vehicle only.

Meanwhile, the non-governmental "space launches for profit" crowd has a number of possibilities close to reality. Kistler Aerospace has a two-stage reusable design, and Rotary Rocket uses an innovative rotor design to land a cone-shaped vehicle straight up (just like those 50s sci-fi flicks). The main obstacle remains a robust launching industry, with competition keeping the prices of expendable rockets low. Boeing and LockMart pretty much have this market sewn up; in fact there are more launches than can be accomodated at American facilities. A company called SeaLaunch partners with Boeing and Ukraine to orbit satellites from a floating oil-derrick-platform that lives in Hawaii. Launch facilities are being worked on in Canada and Alaska (to serve the polar orbit market), while India and China beef up their launch facilities. Indonesia and the Phillipines are proposing launch sites. It's really a wide-open market, as long as you're not talking about people yet. Give some of these systems a couple of years to mature and lower costs, and you'll have $1000/pound to earth orbit. That's when launching people will become easy.

http://www.space.com/business/launching/new_rock ets_wg.html
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