Thread: SpaceX pricing
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Old February 15th 18, 03:30 PM posted to sci.space.policy
David Spain
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Default SpaceX pricing

On 2/15/2018 9:12 AM, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
One hope I have now is that Falcon Heavy flies enough to convince
Congress to put the nail in the coffin for SLS and redirect that money
elsewhere.


Won't happen due to FH. It just won't fly enough nor the "right" type of
missions to make Congress wake up and smell the coffee. Even though I
agree it should...

OTOH BFR/BFS, once it starts to fly, will definitely be the tombstone
for SLS. Musk says it will definitely end FH and likely F9 or stop
further production of F9's until they are all expended.

But Musk time doesn't jibe well with real time, so we'll see...
There are a ton of fixed costs (mainly time, some money, and big time
infrastructure) for BFR/BFS development that I think Elon is discounting
right now... But maybe he's much further along on the curve than I
believe he is? We'll see...

As per cost vis-a-vis ULA, I read an article on Ars Technica from Eric
Berger where there is a contract with ULA that will expire soon that
will cause fixed costs of D-IVH to rise well above that $350 million
figure. (Don't have time to look up the link now, Google it yourself).
ULA knows that it *has* to get its Vulcan rocket flying ASAP. It will be
interesting to see how well it can compete with F9 and F9H when reuse of
Vulcan AT BEST will require some reassembly (re-mating used methalox
BE-9(?) engines with core tanks EVERY SINGLE TIME), vs inspection and
resetting of landing legs and not even bothering with a paint job for
the F9.

Dave