SpaceX did it

[Skroe]

SpaceX is citing somewhere around 30% cost savings when they can reliably land them safely and re-use the rockets.

That number is market driven though. It's 30% less because they think they can operate re-usability at that among economically at the present. When there is greater demand, cost savings will go away up.

A falcon 9 Core has a market price of $61 million to launch. Build costs are different though. The first stage is probably around $28 million. The second stage is around $8 million. Propellant is about 0.3% of the cost, so $200,000. This puts the entire build cost of the rocket at about $36 million and the entire profitability (excluding Fees for delays, which SpaceX has paid a lot of), at about $25 million for a non-reused Falcon 9. A 30% cost saving on $61 million would be a $42.7 million launch, but with costs of just ~$8 million, meaning $34 million in profit. That's a lot of incentive to be reusable.

With a high enough launch rate and sufficient demand, they could cut costs down to sub $20 million.

For example if they have 14 launches per year and charge $42.7 million per launch, they see a profit of $476 million. However if they launch 50 times a year, they can make the same profit charging $9.52 million per launch.

The key is going to be in their customers getting breaks for buying reusable in bulk, which is something SpaceX is trying to sell. The day of the $8 million launch to LEO is approaching, but the market needs to mature.

[Deleted]

What's the advantage of single stage to orbit? Wouldn't that just make it more difficult to recover the stage once it's delivered its payload?

Its take a huge amout of fule to climb to orbit. It helps tremendously to discard the first stage insted of drag it upp as deadweight to orbit. Hence no single stage to orbit.

[Reeve]

SpaceX is citing somewhere around 30% cost savings when they can reliably land them safely and re-use the rockets.

SpaceX has cited much better than that. Currently the cost to launch a Falcon 9 is approximately $57 million. SpaceX has cited the cost to re-launch a used Falcon 9 as $5-7 million. So it's an order of magnitude cheaper.

[Skroe]

What's the advantage of single stage to orbit? Wouldn't that just make it more difficult to recover the stage once it's delivered its payload?

The biggest advantage is even lower launch costs. A Falcon 9 reusabile costs Space X $7-8 million for the upper stage and $200,000 for the gas, meaning they need to charge at least that + operational costs to make it profitable. A fully functional SSTO would have just gas money. Furthermore it would increase launch rate. Imagine if Jet Aircraft required "first stage jet engines" to take off, that were jetissoned and crashed into the ground, and had a tail-based "cruise engine". You'd have a fraction the flight rate. You'd have to build new engines (huge costs + time) for every flight.

SSTOs are very difficult though. NASA and others have been working on that problem for 30 years. And even fully reusable two-stage-to-orbit has had many variations. Vehicle requirements for low altitude, high altitude, space and then landing are just so different. Most SSTO designs have had wings or been liftting body designs, because the vision was to land on a runway. Very few concepts landed vertically like a rocket is launched (or the Falcon 9 just did). Wings cut capability. The X-33/VentureStar required exotic engines (linear aerospike, the XRS-2200) to lift off.

I've deeply questioned the need for SSTO for years. I think unless you give a rocket an exotic, low mass power source - namely nuclear - or use a truly exotic vehicle design - like a turbojet + scramjet to high altitude + booster rocket to orbit - you're asking to create a very complex vehicle that is more difficult to design, more difficult to maintain and less economical to launch than say, a fully reusable two stage to orbit. If SpaceX found a way to make their second stage reusable (they would need a whole new design but it's far from impossible), what justification would there be to junk their reusable first stage, resusable second stage, for a fully new SSTO?

In my opinion, SSTOs are a relic of an earlier age when few people imagined rocket first stages capable of landing like the Falcon 9 just did. To them reusability means an airplane like profile. I mean who could imagine say, a Delta IV Core landing? Until SpaceX did it, it seemed ridiculous. But them having done it now, I think indicates we need to treat Space as something entirely different, and not just "higher in the air", and abandon any kind of desire for an airplane style SSTO.

That isn't to say Airplanes don't have their role. A large carrier jet taking a large rocket above most of the atmopshere before letting the rocket fire - so long as the rocket is reusable (or maybe itself can land like an airplane) - that's a very viable design. But it's still Two Stage to Orbit. Cramming it all into one air frame? Unless it looks like teh X-33/VentureStar, I don't see it, and those designs were deeply troubled and likely dead ends (although the technology was important).

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SpaceX has cited much better than that. Currently the cost to launch a Falcon 9 is approximately $57 million. SpaceX has cited the cost to re-launch a used Falcon 9 as $5-7 million. So it's an order of magnitude cheaper.

Eventually that is their goal. Their immediate asking price is around $40 million (30% off $61m). But that's demand driven because it's brand new. The $8m number is for a market with more demand (which lines up with 1 launch per week).

[Zogarth]

This is awesome. If they can get this to be close to 100% reliable, it could do wonders for space exploration.

[Ariselea]

This is so cool. This is like something right out of Star Wars.
"Permission to land like a dainty butterfly?"
"Permission granted."
"Nice. That was nice."

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1. As a person who actually has satellite TV, it hardly ever goes out. Also, the satellite internet being redeployed now (e.g. the Orbcomm satellites SpaceX launched last year) is LEO, not GEO. It is much closer (meaning the massive latency that existing satellite internet has is gone) and uses large constellations of small satellites to provide consistent coverage.

2. If they won't do it, Musk seems to be planning to do it himself.

3. Not government, but commercial. See the Bigelow unit that went up in this launch. If the testing over the next 2 years goes well, they plan to make an entire station of that.

4. And with the launch costs reduced, it'll be that much cheaper to have a "Hubble 2" and thus that much easier to get the funding.

Aren't we already launching the James Webb Space Telescope only next year?
"Stuck with Hubble"? I don't think so.
After Ultra Deep Field hopefully these people saw what could be possible.

[Deleted]

Unless it looks like teh X-33/VentureStar, I don't see it, and those designs were deeply troubled and likely dead ends (although the technology was important).

I wounder way they did not strap 3 X-33/VentureStar together, but 2 worked as bosters (and the boster X-33/VentureStar was striped from all unnecessary space equipment like heat shelds) Everything is recyclable and it is no probelm that X-33VentureStar was a bit overwight.

Sure they need to make some modification to strap them together but the prinsipe is sound....you strap the external flue tank to the shuttel.

[Skroe]

This is so cool. This is like something right out of Star Wars.
"Permission to land like a dainty butterfly?"
"Permission granted."
"Nice. That was nice."

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Aren't we already launching the James Webb Space Telescope only next year?
"Stuck with Hubble"? I don't think so.
After Ultra Deep Field hopefully these people saw what could be possible.

Mercifully the JWST will launch in 2018, and NASA science budgets will recover as a result. It is the beast that ate space science and while it's results will be impressive, let's not mistake for a second it's been an unmitigated disaster of a program. Be proud of the science, but don't be proud of how it got made.

The JWST is not a replacement for hubble per-se. It's it's spiritual successor as NASA's premier deep space observatory, but it images from orange-red visible light to mid infra-red. Hubble images in near-ultraviolet, visible and near-infra red, so there is only some overlap.

JWST is actually more of a Spitzer space telescope successor, but with a much larger mirror area.



The real Hubble Successor will be a telescope with various names, such as ATLAST, that will launch on an SLS after 2025. It will have UV, optical and IR sensing.

However "Hubble2" is kind of a minomer because "Hubble" isn't even "Hubble 1". Hubble is a NASA-ized version of the KH-11 Kennen / KH-12 Crystal NRO Spy Sattlite. Externally, they are nearly indentical (with some minor differences for launch vehicle and sensing). Internally, they have different imaging systems, but share a common spacecraft bus. They are fall all intents and purposes, brother-sister.

The US has launched one Hubble, but at least sixteen KH-11/KH-12s since 1976, and it has built at least three more (which have been gifted to NASA, more on that momentarily). The last one was launched in August 2013, and before that January 2011. Currently the US has five KH-12s in orbit, the oldest one from 1996.

This is an image of a K-12 (it's solar panels facing the viewer). As we can see, it's basically hubble with a shorter instrument section (the fat "base")


In 2012 the NRO donated two and a half KH-12s to NASA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_N...nation_to_NASA

Each worth about $250 million. These are unflown Hubble-like space telescopes. NASA is putting the first two use in a few years, as part of the WFIRST mission to study Dark Energy and the expansion of the universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_F...rvey_Telescope

The optical instruments will be different than Hubble, but the spacecraft will be largely the same.


So in a sense, we are getting a 'Hubble 2' as a general science instrument, already, in WFIRST. For Hubble's "legacy", that's the JWST. For Hubble's capabilities, that's ATLAST a decade down the road. As for Hubble's "family", it's brothers and sisters in KH-12 will be flying overhead for decades to come. That just goes to show how pioneering the space craft was. But at the same time, it's also a kind of indictment to of NASA. Decades ago they launched Hubble and it took decades to replace it with the JWST. The 2012 NRO donation? They didn't even want it. It was forced on them. They were reluctant to take it. The NRO on the other hand, came up with the KH-11 design in the 1970s, and stuck and upgraded with it for 40 years. The result is they have launched ever better Hubble-sized Spy Satellites, every 3-5 years. They adopted incremental improvements, rather than radical clean sheet designs. And as a result they had excess capacity to just give 2.5 Hubble clones away because they move din a different direction.

Imagine where we would be if NASA adopted this approach rather than treating every space vehicle or probe or telescope it's ever launched as a "one off"? It's been forced to do that, reluctantly, the past decade, but too many NASA programs trailblaze ground that didn't make programmic sense to be trailblazed. Sure we're getting the JWST. It will be great. But we should not forget the long list of science programs killed just so a mega program like JWST could exist when it's budget grew from $2.5 billion to $8.9 billion, and it fell a decade behind schedule.

[Osmeric]

The cool thing about SpaceX's approach to reusability is that it becomes profitable even if they can only reuse a stage a few (maybe even one?) times. It's not like more elaborate reusable launcher schemes where dozens or hundreds of launches per vehicle are needed for breakeven.

Musk's focus on Mars, though, doesn't make much sense to me. I'd much rather they focus on near-Earth markets (like the ones that are actually paying their bills now).

I suspect Mars colonization is going to be a sideshow, if it starts happening at all, until well after there's a large functioning economy in cis-lunar space. The technology I want to see in the next few decades is space laser power beaming to aircraft. This will require various advances and much cost reduction, but the advantages could be huge (unlimited range, low or no CO2 emission). The move toward electric-drive aircraft will support this.

[Skroe]

I wounder way they did not strap 3 X-33/VentureStar together, but 2 worked as bosters (and the boster X-33/VentureStar was striped from all unnecessary space equipment like heat shelds) Everything is recyclable and it is no probelm that X-33VentureStar was a bit overwight.

Sure they need to make some modification to strap them together but the prinsipe is sound....you strap the external flue tank to the shuttel.

Eh the venture star wasn't designed like that. Maybe you're thinking the X-34.
[img[http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/research/x33/x33_venturestar_shuttle.jpg[/img]

The story of the X-33/VS is a pretty fucked up one. Basically it was betrayed in Congressional testimony by someone who was expected to support it, and the program, despite it passing critical project goals, was canceled despite being on schedule and on budget.

But by the end it had morphed into a completely weird design because the original design was not performing as expected.



It was good it was put out of it's misery, but the most important technologies - the XR2200 engine, the metallic thermal protection system and the tank (though not the unnecessary composite one) all survived. Who knows if they'll ever be seen again but the Metallic TPS was worked on some more just a few years ago. None could have been adapted to the shuttle though.

XRS-2200


http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/...ain_armor3.jpg

[Fencers]

Every once in a while I think we as humans are pretty fucking amazing. I try to forget the article I read previous to an ocean landing of a rocket on an autonomous barrage was of a man throwing an alligator through a drive-thru window.

The distance from the gutter to the stars is not far.

[Skroe]

Everyone once in a while I think we as humans are pretty fucking amazing. I try to forget the article I read previous to an ocean landing of a rocket on an autonomous barrage was of a man throwing an alligator through a drive-thru window.

The distance from the gutter to the stars is not far.

And they happened in the same state!

[Deleted]

a man throwing an alligator through a drive-thru window.

It's actually very funny if you think about it.

[Osmeric]

And they happened in the same state!

Florida Man is the world's worst superhero.

https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan

In particular:

https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan/stat...60752442470401

[alexw]

The biggest advantage is even lower launch costs. A Falcon 9 reusabile costs Space X $7-8 million for the upper stage and $200,000 for the gas, meaning they need to charge at least that + operational costs to make it profitable. A fully functional SSTO would have just gas money. Furthermore it would increase launch rate. Imagine if Jet Aircraft required "first stage jet engines" to take off, that were jetissoned and crashed into the ground, and had a tail-based "cruise engine". You'd have a fraction the flight rate. You'd have to build new engines (huge costs + time) for every flight.

SSTOs are very difficult though. NASA and others have been working on that problem for 30 years. And even fully reusable two-stage-to-orbit has had many variations. Vehicle requirements for low altitude, high altitude, space and then landing are just so different. Most SSTO designs have had wings or been liftting body designs, because the vision was to land on a runway. Very few concepts landed vertically like a rocket is launched (or the Falcon 9 just did). Wings cut capability. The X-33/VentureStar required exotic engines (linear aerospike, the XRS-2200) to lift off.

I've deeply questioned the need for SSTO for years. I think unless you give a rocket an exotic, low mass power source - namely nuclear - or use a truly exotic vehicle design - like a turbojet + scramjet to high altitude + booster rocket to orbit - you're asking to create a very complex vehicle that is more difficult to design, more difficult to maintain and less economical to launch than say, a fully reusable two stage to orbit. If SpaceX found a way to make their second stage reusable (they would need a whole new design but it's far from impossible), what justification would there be to junk their reusable first stage, resusable second stage, for a fully new SSTO?

In my opinion, SSTOs are a relic of an earlier age when few people imagined rocket first stages capable of landing like the Falcon 9 just did. To them reusability means an airplane like profile. I mean who could imagine say, a Delta IV Core landing? Until SpaceX did it, it seemed ridiculous. But them having done it now, I think indicates we need to treat Space as something entirely different, and not just "higher in the air", and abandon any kind of desire for an airplane style SSTO.

That isn't to say Airplanes don't have their role. A large carrier jet taking a large rocket above most of the atmopshere before letting the rocket fire - so long as the rocket is reusable (or maybe itself can land like an airplane) - that's a very viable design. But it's still Two Stage to Orbit. Cramming it all into one air frame? Unless it looks like teh X-33/VentureStar, I don't see it, and those designs were deeply troubled and likely dead ends (although the technology was important).

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Eventually that is their goal. Their immediate asking price is around $40 million (30% off $61m). But that's demand driven because it's brand new. The $8m number is for a market with more demand (which lines up with 1 launch per week).

Have you heard of the SABRE engine? What are your thoughts on something like that? (you seem knowledgeable in this field). Its early days yet in its development but its an actual real live spaceplane with everything that brings. From what I gather the air force is pretty interested in it.

[phillys]

so much huge in this thread. rockets that land perfectly on a barge, new and better telescopic sattelites, alligators being thrown.

[Skroe]

Have you heard of the SABRE engine? What are your thoughts on something like that? (you seem knowledgeable in this field). Its early days yet in its development but its an actual real live spaceplane with everything that brings. From what I gather the air force is pretty interested in it.

SABRE is one of the few engine designs that would allow substantial SSTO.

It's a money starved project that is a multi-billion dollar program that gets a few tens of millions of dollars here and there. Consequently it's development is extremely protracted. I think they've been throwing around the same concept art for a decade now?

If Skylon is ever going to happen, it needs to be bought up, in full, by a larger company and made the centerpiece of a major program. Otherwise it's not going to lead anywhere. It needs $200 million a year, for ten years, not $50 million spread across 10.

Skylon is one of the better designs but the early-mid 2000s were filled to the brim with great sounding future space plane projects. And even if you throw that $2 billion at skylon, it's payload to LEO will be 15 tons, about about a Falcon 9 Full Thrust does does today. So you're spending $2 billion to effectively replace the Falcon ( FT's upperstage, which is not reusable. SpaceX could do it for a fraction of that, if it were a priority.

SABRE/Skylon is interesting technology, but when a Falcon 9 already gets stuff to LEO (and never mind, Skylon couldnt go PAST that to places like GTO or Lunar orbit, that Falcon 9s can go) at that mass, with a disposable cost of $8 million, then what's the point? The Airplaneing of Space travel is probably an obsolete way to look at it. Rather, have airplane-style aircraft to atmospheric needs and rocket-style for exoatmospheric. Even from a future commercials stand point, if both stages are reusable, there is no reason a future civilian can't go to a commercial space station only by means of a rocket, and have it be as routine as an aircraft. In the end, a launch is a launch and a landing is a landing. If you can get a payload to an orbit economically, who cares what it looks like.

[Osmeric]

SABRE is an example of how not to work toward reusability. It's a huge expensive step that makes a vehicle that won't compete until you're launching it a lot, if then.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...eap-space.html

[Masark]

Imagine where we would be if NASA adopted this approach rather than treating every space vehicle or probe or telescope it's ever launched as a "one off"?

It would either end up like NRO or like the Russian's rockets. Both adopted the same "standard platform with long term incremental upgrades" plan, but one has been successful, whereas the other has SpaceX eyeing their lunch.

[Daethz]

Things where looking down for SpaceX and Tesla not long ago, now things are looking great for both of them, i just hope progression continues.