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Elon Musk's SpaceX Offers Low-Cost Rockets
HobbySpacer writes "The cover article of the latest issue of Aviation Week looks at SpaceX and how its Falcon line of rockets threatens to shake up the space launch industry. Founded by Elon Musk, who also started PayPal, SpaceX is developing the Falcon I (first flight this summer) and Falcon V (first flight in 2005) that will cost as little as 20-30% of what competitors like Orbital Sciences and Boeing charge for comparable vehicles."
There are already flying cars. Just google for it. You'll find things like the Skycar which look quite promising!
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/267 ::
"That competition is caused by an oversupply of launch vehicles in a soft market according to a recent report by Booz-Allen and Hamilton mentioned in Spacelift Washington. That report notes that the "excess capacity" in the launch vehicle market is currently at 35 percent of the market and growing, creating a downward pressure on prices. That excess capacity may not deter new entrants into the launch vehicle market, such as Japan's H-2A and India's GSLV, but it will prevent them from gaining more than a small piece of the overall market."
It will have to go up against a lot of established players, most notably Ariane with their 12,000 tonne payload launch system, Ariane 5. I don't know what a launch on Ariane 5 costs at the moment though.
Actually, it's a bunch of equations in a Linear Programming problem.
Part of the reasons why satellites are so expensive is because the cost per pound is so high. Reduce the cost per pound, you need to spend less time and money making it so lightweight, which means you can spend time and money making it last longer, cheaper, more functional, etc.
Reliability for unmanned launches ends up being such that, currently, 98% launch reliability is "good enough" because going beyond that ends up being far too expensive.
Gentoo Sucks
It already is cheap enough for tourists... just not cheap enough for tourists like you. Dennis Tito went into space with the Russians in 2001, and Mark Shuttleworth went in 2002. Of course, this cost them tens of millions of dollars, but they were tourists none the less. In addition, there's another tourist, an American, scheduled to fly later this year.
Now, admittedly these have all been based on national programs taking on a "charity" case now and again either for a few bucks, or for the attention that it gives them, but I'd say it's only a matter of time before a private company starts really marketing these trips to the extremely wealthy. If you can bring the price down to a million dollars a trip, you'll have your self a line of people out the door ready and willing to go. This is the ultimate in conspicuous consumption, Thorsten Veblen would be proud.
--
RumorsDaily
"The DOD on the other hand seems to be really interested in cheap, reliable and fast launch."
The DoD wants more than inexpensive, reliable and fast to launch. They have to consider many more things that cost a lot of money. When it gets to the mil specs and the requirements they put on a subcontractor, well you can see why a happer costs $100. There is a lot you don't see until you work in the industry. And it's all about what the military expects and there is almost always a good reason for it. And the reason is usually safety
Evolution or ID?
Quick overview of his old companies: Zip2, Paypal
Zip2 - print-media-to-web software, clients included KnightRidder, etc, sold for $300,000,000 in cash to Compaq
PayPal - started as idea for one web site for all a person's financial needs. Email-money-to-someone feature was a quicky add-on feature, took one day of initial development, "classic viral marketting", 1 million customers at start of 2nd year of operations, went public in 2002, sold in june to Ebay for 4.5 billion in stocks, now worth 3billion.
Was doing background space research in '01-02, why did we stumble after Apollo? Computing analogy, mainframes filling rooms in 1970s, etc.
The idea he settled into would generate public interest, advance both science and engineering and be privately funded. It was a $10-20million Mars lander. The lander would carry seeds and nutrients, a miniature greenhouse, it would attempt to grow plants, the furthest life would have travelled. Went to Moscow looking for rockets, "We don't buy Russian cars, kitchen appliances or computers. Why can the Russians build such reliable, low cost launch vehicles?"
friends with group of aero-engineers from Mercury onward, put together a feasibility study. This happened at the same time he was selling PayPal, at this point he settled on "doing space" as his next business enterprise.
Space now - US govt. spaceflight in bad shape, quick recap of Shuttle status, losses, expenses, dangerous.
Slide - problems of Shuttle - kind of standard complaints.
Slide - OSP/Orbital Space Plane - "Pretty Darn Expensive" -
$300-400million/flight, Delta-IV Heavy is $200mil alone.
Between NASA and the industrial partners, things have traditionally not been under budget and under time.
Soyuz has a good (safety) record, and only costs about $60mil/flight.
Russian economy is size of Belgian economy.
China's program is only current effort that could spur any new government space programs, be it NASA, ESA, etc
Slide - dawn of a new era of space exploration like DARPA, NASA could support entrepreneurs. Burt Rutan, Scaled, Jeff Bezos, SpaceX could all benefit from NASA as enabling customer.
Slide - Armadillo Aerospace
Slide - Bezos' Blue Origin
Slide - SpaceX -
Falcon is a 2-stage orbital rocket, initial target is satelite launch business small commsats- revenue base long-term aim is human spaceflight super-heavy lift, Apollo-class rocket for Moon, Mars, SpaceX "Holy Grail"
Video - Merlin main engine test
Video - Upper stage engine test
First flight will be from SpaceX's pad at Vandenburg AFB, aiming for March 2004, a Navy satelite
QA -
comparison of Zip2, PayPal
PP had 30 fulltime engineers, both were made of small teams, software-based products flat hierarchy, best idea wins, everyone in each company was an equity stakeholder on development, pick a path, do it instead of vacilating on design decisions both companies were very product focused.
q- biggest stumbling blocks for space entrepreneurs?
a - stifling regulation, jumping through regulator's hoops. Rockets are still munitions, lack of regulations on software encouraged development, Silicon Valley as "Libertarian Paradise"
Falcon has been the fastest development time ever for an orbital vehicle.
(basic rocket/space questions)
Rocket development, "What makes space expensive?" - Low launch rates, 2/% of rocket's mass to orbit low cost launch suffers from chicken-and-egg problem, need cheaper flights to get a bigger volume of flights, need volume for cheaper flights. (he doesn't say this, but Internet entrepreneurs like him
have the resources to solve the chicken-egg problem)
Compares Falcon to Pegasus, costs of $6 vs $25 million/flight
Q - XPrize - will it succeed in brining CATS, How did SpaceX get Navy contract?
A- likes the XPrize, compares Carmac, etc, a very good thing. Mentions that
Nothing to see here
Right you are, Sir, no problems!
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Hmm, if you have a small device to launch, an Ariane-4 ASAP looks to be the best option. If I am reading http://centaur.sstl.co.uk/SSHP/launcher/launch_asa p.html correctly, you can put a 50kg object into orbit for $1.2m (actually up to 4 50kg objects into orbit). Looks like excess capacity in scheduled launches is utilised.
... they have to recoup $8b in development costs, although the rocket is powerful enough to launch space planes (The Hermes, cancelled). I don't see a launch under $100m for this launcher, of course they would be for massive devices anyway, 1000kg - 10000kg, or dual-launch of smaller devices. http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/lvs /ariane5.htm ah, $180m a launch ... or $120m a launch http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/project/launchers/ariane/ ariane.html
l vf am/ariane.htm
... that must be a mistype, the other Ariane 4 launches are around $80m a flight.
An Ariane 5 launch will be expensive though
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/
Ariane 44P apparently can launch at a cost of $10m and do 3000kg devices
I'd bet the insurance on an untested launch vehicle with so-far 50% failure rate would be a fair portion of the cost of the launch+device! Insurance appears to take up a large portion of space-launch costs.
So a Rocket Scientist created paypal, huh?
Not exactly... as I understand it, he got rich from PayPal (originally at this cool URL), *then* started SpaceX.
So in effect, PayPal created a Rocket Scientist!
What's next? Google Labs creating a Brain Surgeon?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
The most interesting thing about the Falcon X second stage is that it is pressure fed. This simplifies the rocket design at the expense of increasing its size. Check out this old but interesting article which discusses many ideas which the folks at FalconX seemed to have taken to heart.
an ill wind that blows no good
The Vandenberg AFB launch schedule currently shows the launch as 'indefinite'. Until it's got a scheduled launch date it'll stay down at the bottom of the page.
Yeah, I know there aren't any exact dates listed for the launches. Hopefully Public Affairs will let me change that soon... it's been that way since 9/11. Until then, Google is your friend.
That still doesn't change the fact that ASAP launches are constrained to go when and where the primary payload wants to go, while Falcon launches are not.
Can you make a fully functional useful satellite in 300kg? Imagine launching 4 at the same time and then being able to offer a few hundred digital TV channels off your own satellite network ... heh!
Yes. Globalstar satellites were ~300 kg. They were launched multiply-manifested (up to 8 at a time IIRC) on a variety of launch vehicles. However Globalstar was a LEO constellation. GEO sats tend to be much bigger, because they either need a lot more power, or a much larger antenna aperture, than a LEO sat in order to be able to offset the greater RF propagation loss that results from their greater distance from the Earth. That's why there was so much excitement about LEO constellations a few years back - the sats could be much smaller and cheaper. You need a lot more of them of course, but if you build enough (ala Iridium or Globalstar) you can realize economies of scale not available to one-off GEO comm birds.
In theory it can be done with a laser and a very small sail. Essentially you build a rocket with no real fuel - maybe just some reaction mass - and shine a BFL up the tailpipe.
Very nice in theory, very hard in practice.
I *think* NASA had demonstrated this technology to get a 1-pound 'rocket' to a height of about 10 feet, but that's the state-of-the-art for ground-based laser launch.
Unfortnately, such attempts at misinterpreted humor often fail because of the obscurity of the alternate interpretation, as in this case.
Overall funny rating: 2.5 out of a possible 5.0 (Weak). [Not to be confused with slashdot moderation scores, of course. Everyone knows those are a joke.]
I can see the fnords!
Jon Goff pointed me toward the lecture video a couple months ago. I saw your notes and gosh do they look familiar:
My sci.space.policy lecture notes, posted 14.12.2003 titled Elon Musk Lecture notes, Stanford 10/08/03
That said, Elon rocks! Falcon will be cheap enough that new businesses beyond comm sats may become viable. Entrpreneurs have postulated a "sweet spot" in pricing where widely available tourism, water mining, maybe Space Solar Power become viable. Russian Dnepr rockets almost hit that spot (offered @ $700/lb in late 90s), but we Americans have to pay significantly more for them, a rule to keep home-grown rocket companies "competitive". Yeah, free market and all. Anyway, the Falcon looks to be about to completely shake up the launch market. Imagine Falcon flying from the SeaLaunch platform?
Now, can you please give me a little credit, Amigoro? And you forgot to include my intro paragraph.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
This is a common misperception.
In reality, it is often cheaper to fly on the next
sized larger rocket than it is to save 10% off the weight of the payload itself. Trying to save the last few pounds because you didn't plan in enough margins for your project is always a horrible experience, expensive and painful.
It's a rule of thumb that the most efficient
satellites have hardware cost around the same
as the launch cost. R&D and operations costs
may be other major factors, but you want to
try and balance out the payload and launcher
costs to be roughly equal.
Look at the Falcon V. It costs around $12 mil.
A roughly equivalently sized Delta II (7925) is about $45 million. A much smaller Delta II (7325) only costs $22 mil (NASA used a bunch of these for small missions in the last 5 years) but only lifts about half as much payload as Falcon V.
Using the rule of thumb, we want to spend about $12 mil on the spacecraft hardware for a Falcon V launch, and about $22 mil for the hardware for a Delta II launch, which weighs half as much. So the price per pound of the Delta II payload is about four times as much.
As a rough rule of thumb, allowing weight to double within otherwise identical performance
requirements for electronics and systems will
save you about half the total cost. Sometimes
more than half, but half is conservative. So the rule of thumb supports the $12 mil payload price on the Falcon.
So we have a total mission whose hardware costs $12 mil to build and $12 mil to launch ($24 million, plus the R&D costs and the operations costs) versus $22 mil to build and $22 mil to launch ($44 million plus R&D costs and operations costs). Capabilities should be roughly identical.
Saving $20 million on the flight is a lot of money, even for rocket people.
The R&D and operations costs may add another $50 to $100 million to the mission cost, but even so, saving the $20 million on the hardware and launch is a big deal. And R&D costs may go down a lot if the hardware complexity goes down and weight is allowed to grow, so you can save there too.
And the best part is, the rule of thumb keeps being valid as you keep making cheaper larger
rockets to launch things on.
So don't fall for the old story that you don't save overall cost if you make lower cost launchers. You need both cheaper *and* bigger, but if it gets cheaper faster than it gets
bigger you win.
Actually there are a surprising number of interested parties out there that are willing to take the risk. Universities are one.
The two biggest problems universities face when trying to launch their satellite are cost and ITAR. A lot of the satellites that universities build have the latest and greatest because companies like to give samples and parts to universities. We stick those on some satellites and then ITAR becomes an issue. The state department laughs at us and says there's no way that's leaving the country. So now we're stuck on an American launch vehicle, which costs much more and generally has more stringent requirements for redundancy. So we sit on the ground with no way of getting into orbit.
Then comes a startup. They offer a cheap(er) ride to orbit, with less stringent safety requirements (yay, only triple redundancy instead of quad or higher), are an american company, and a little more risk on our side. So our satellite might not make it into an exact orbit with the precision that a Delta could do. So our satellite might blow up in a million parts, but hey, at least we had some fun and had the chance of getting into space. University satellites generally only have a 50/50 chance of working once in orbit anyway.
I work on a picosatellite project called CubeSat. We developed a standard system to allow universities and other interested parties to build picosatellites (10cm x 10cm x 10cm, 1kg) and then integrate all the satellites together into a single system that is then sent to the launch provider as a unit and attached to the launch vehicle. The goal is to provide cheap, easy, frequent, access to space. We have our second launch coming up this fall on a Russian DNEPR launch vehicle and will be deploying 14 satellites from universities all across the world. This same launch is also carrying multiple other small satellites.
CubeSat