China Space Official Confounded By SpaceX Price

hackingbear writes "Declining to speak for attribution, the Chinese officials from Great Wall Industry, a marketing arm of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CAST), say they find the published prices on the SpaceX website very low for the services offered, and concede they could not match them with the Long March series of launch vehicles even if it were possible for them to launch satellites with U.S. components in them. According to the SpaceX website, launch on a Falcon 9 — which has an advertised lift capacity of 10,450 kg. (23,000 lb.) — from Cape Canaveral costs $54 million — $59.5 million. If the SpaceX price is real and its quality is proven, both are big IFs, it is remarkable to see that US can beat China in term of price. Between August 1996 and August 2009, the Chinese rockets have achieved 75 consecutive successful launches were conducted, ending with a partial failure in the launch of Palapa-D on August 31, 2009. If we all learn from SpaceX, maybe soon China will outsource from the US."

Comments

Reverse outsourcing? No.

[macraig]

... maybe soon China will outsource from the US.

No, they won't. They'll do the same thing they've been doing for generations now: they'll study what we're doing (e.g. SpaceX), both legally and not-legally, copy it at first like a baby learning a new language, then learn how to integrate what they learn into their own way of doing things, and finally wind up doing it better or at least more cheaply than we can.

Comparitive Advantage

[Stormy Dragon]

China's big advantage is cheap unskilled labor.

Space rockets aren't produced in big enough batches to mass produce and generally require a lot of skilled labor. Exactly the sort of product where the US tends to have an advantage.

Re:Comparitive Advantage

[0123456]

Space rockets aren't produced in big enough batches to mass produce and generally require a lot of skilled labor. Exactly the sort of product where the US tends to have an advantage.

Yet the reason why SpaceX believe they can get the costs down to a tenth of the competition is precisely because they plan to mass-produce their rocket components (e.g. three first stages with the same basic design and nine of the same engines on each stage).

Re:Comparitive Advantage

[bmo]

>China's big advantage is cheap unskilled labor.

That's changing, though, in case you haven't noticed. They've targeted aerospace. Sure, they're not competitive *now* but do you seriously think that's going stay that way?

The US automakers thought the same thing in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

--
BMO

Re:Comparitive Advantage

[Stormy Dragon]

That is, by and large, what the US does do. Contrary to general impression, US manufacturing continues to increase (in deed, according to the UN Industrial Development Org, the US accounts for 21% of the planet's manufacturing). In 2006, our country produced more than it ever had before. Since then it's fallen off a bit, but due to the recession, not outsourcing.

Now yes, manufacturing JOBS continue to decrease. But the reality is that it's not because jobs are going overseas; it's because they're disappering entirely. Much like agriculture at one time took a large part of society's labor and then shifted to something that only required a few percent, we are going through a similar shift where a few percent of the population is capable of manufacturing everything.

Re:Comparitive Advantage

[jd]

It's not enough to focus on skilled tasks. They need to be skilled tasks that the mindset is well-adapted for. Britain's penchant for risk-taking is why it is a key R&D center for not only Formula 1 but Indycar as well. America is risk-averse, which is why it has outsourced a lot of the low-profit, high-investment research (nuclear fusion, supercolliders, etc) to other nations. A lot of the R&D in America is high-profit (such as medical work, advanced microelectronics, etc) and requires relatively little investment once the research facility has been put together. Silicon Valley would never have survived otherwise, given the enormous cost of constructing some of those facilities.

Monocultures are a Bad Idea (Michigan can help explain that one rather better than it would like) but there's nothing wrong with optimizing to your strengths. Indeed, it seems very likely that if America stopped trying to compete where it is weak and started competing where it is strong, it would not run into so many problems. The same goes for the EU and everyone else. Diverting money to lost causes only achieves inferior progress everywhere else.

Of course, you have to be a bit careful with federating technologies. Although a federation is nominally superior to over-generalized societies, it is open to abuse. America doesn't produce its own Rare Earths, but depends utterly on China for them. Not because of any scaricity in America, more for convenience. That turned out to be an incorrect path. Politics now utterly controls the availability of critical elements, which is utterly wrong. You've got to have some balance in there.

Unfortunately, balanced thinking is something corporations (and people in general) are rather bad at.

Re:Comparitive Advantage

[0123456]

I think "mass production" in terms of rockets means "a dozen". It's the kind of "mass production" where China has little to offer.

SpaceX are talking about manufacturing 400 engines per year; there aren't many rocket booster engines that have been produced in three digit numbers, let alone that many per year.

I believe a single Falcon Heavy launch would have more engines on it than all the SSMEs ever built, for example.

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[MrEricSir]

China: if Microsoft was a country.

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[jd]

Pfffft. As if America hadn't done the same. America, prior to signing onto international treaties on copyright and patents, was notorious for reverse-engineering European products and then using mass-production (as opposed to specialist workshops) to undercut the Europeans and sell back to them. Indeed, most major nations throughout history have been... loose on morals and ethics in their formative years. The Romans stole all their technologies - and usually stole the countries that invented them too. The only "we" in this equation is humanity, since every nation on Earth that made it big did so on the back of other nations, robbing them at first, then exploiting them later. The usual end result is an addiction to those other nations, resulting in the inevitable death from that addiction.

(This is why I would like to see a nation actually acheve something honestly for a change. If there isn't that addictive quality, if using others isn't the drug of choice, then you might actually get stable, sustainable achievement. Might. Without any actual case studies to examine, this is a difficult theory to test.)

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[rAiNsT0rm]

You will see soon enough how much damage it truly has done. As a long-time investor, researcher, and currently in charge of a large global voice and data network for a global corp, I see it first-hand. A lot of research and many great books have been written on this topic, you should check some out and then see if your opinion holds. Japan as Number One, China Inc., and anything on the topic of BRIC are decent starting points in normal prose.

My personal opinion is that we are heading for a large fall and one that we will not quickly or easily climb out of. My best guess is that in 3-5 years China and BRIC (as well as allies they bring in as they get closer to #1) will start to flex their muscle, you can see the framework in place now. I am also guessing the quickest we could begin to recover will be 10-15 years, with 20 seeming not out of the question. Positions/rankings may not be important to you but they mean quite a lot in terms of resources and where they go, and many of the countries with the resources will go where the growth and numbers are... which is not the US, a number of those ties are already strained or deteriorating. Again, this is my opinion, but it is based on a lot of information. No one has a crystal ball, but I would be very shocked if I'm completely wrong.

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[rAiNsT0rm]

I'm in solid agreement with you mostly, but there is a difference. Greed. Not just greed but artificial constructs such as the current stock market. Many European companies have endured and lasted perfectly fine on stability and flat/zero growth or very low percentages. And there is nothing wrong with that, but many US companies force massive, unsustainable, double digit growth in the name of stock prices and lining executive pockets and once they are run into the ground or fail spectacularly those execs simply move on to another company to rape. This has left many American businesses extremely weak and badly broken which is something that is a much deeper and serious. I think the US can and could innovate again, but first the infrastructure would need to be rebuilt and the desire to do so which we currently lack.

I actually don't care about patents and "secrets" as they are of marginal value anyhow in the grand scheme of things, it ultimately comes down to sustainability and the product. Every culture has gotten too big for it's britches at some point and most go supernova as a result, innovation be damned.

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[im_thatoneguy]

Except that Microsoft spends more on R&D than most other companies combined and often enters markets long before anyone else. (See Smart Phone, MP3 Players, Tablets etc...)

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[paiute]

Except that Microsoft spends more on R&D than most other companies combined and often enters markets long before anyone else. (See Smart Phone, MP3 Players, Tablets etc...)

Black powder, printing, noodles.

Re:Orbital Inclination + no equator access = money

[Rakishi]

You've never looked at a map of China have you? Hint: it's not further north than the US.

The in progress Wenchang Satellite Launch Center is in fact further south than Cape Canaveral by a decent amount. Xichang Satellite Launch Center is at roughly the same latitude as Cape Canaveral . That said, historically China has built it's launch facilities deep inside the country which puts them further north but also away from prying eyes. Which is likely a politically motivated limitation rather than any geographic or technical limitation.

Re:Orbital Inclination + no equator access = money

[wagnerrp]

Cape Canaveral is at roughly 28.5 degrees. The Chinese have satellite launch facilities at Jiuquan (39 deg), Taiyuan (38 deg), Xichang (28 deg), and Wenchang on their southern island at only 19.5 degrees. The equator is 40Mm around, so initial speed at the equator would be around 0.46km/s. At 19.5, you have 0.43km/s; 28 is 0.41km/s; 38 is .36km/s.

Now what does all this mean? Low Earth orbit is around 8km/s, plus another 2.5km/s in altitude. That means there's all of a whopping 1% difference in delta-V between an equatorial launch, and one from China's northern launch facilities. Now true, fuel budgets run on exponential functions, and a 1% increase in velocity results in a more than 1% increase in fuel and cost, but it's not going to be the determining factor whether a launch system succeeded or fails.

Orbital plane changes are a completely different matter. The shuttle only has storage room to carry with it enough fuel for a couple degrees difference in plane, but that's because you're traveling 8km/s. It's not like you're in a car or a plane, and can push off something while maintaining your momentum. It all has to be done with thrust, and you have to reduce velocity in one direction, and increase it in another. When you're going a mere 0.4km/s starting from the ground, you only have to add velocity to get where you want to go. That means it is actually more efficient to land and take off again if you want to transition between equatorial and polar orbits.

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[jd]

Ok, I can buy your argument on greed and artificial constructs. As for your .sig, the Brits used espionage to steal tea secrets from the Chinese. As I said, all nations have used theft to get ahead. (For those interested in the history of tea, the Brits used to drink coffee. They switched to tea to protest government efforts to shut down the trade unions and other "unapproved" organizations. America switching to coffee as a protest against essentially the same government for essentially the same practices is one of history's greatest ironies.)

Re:Chinese lying?

[Rei]

I don't see what's so shocking about those numbers. Just under $6k per kilo? The cheapest US and European launch systems have long gotten $10k per kilo. What's so shocking about a 40% reduction in price per kilo from a totally new launch stack that makes use of "lessons learned"? And Russia's regular prices hover around $7k per kilo, with "specials" at $5k per kilo or less. China should be embarrassed that with their cheap labor costs, they can't do any better than $6k per kilo. They won't just be ceding the market to the US, but to India, too.

Re:Reverse outsourcing? No.

[SplashMyBandit]

China had a technological lead a long time ago, in the technologies you mention. With the Age of Enlightenment (decreased religious and political control of learning and thought), the printing press, and personal freedoms the West/Russia/Middle East leapt ahead. So, while you mention black powder, (block) printing, noodles, which are all great inventions you are choosing to selectively ignore the mammoth changes the West developed since. For example: free speech, modern printing press, mass literacy, railways, steam/coal/hydro/wind/nuclear power, true understanding of electricity and electromagnetism, true understanding of chemistry, true understanding of much of physics, electromagnetic communication, flight, blah blah blah blah blah. Sure the Chinese were by no means primitive, but you are also missing the elephant in the room when you mention their historic contributions. Hopefully they'll also contribute again meaningfully in the future, instead of just copying and refining ideas as they are doing know. That said, I still personally would not like to be a Chinese citizen living in China, hopefully individuals will have more meaningful existences there too.