Tom Merkle wrote:
I wonder how Elon Musk slipped this one under the radar. According to
this article:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/70/1

Elon Musk says the follow on to Falcon I will be a vehicle called
Falcon 5, which will essentially use 5 clustered Merlin engines
(Falcon I uses 1) in a Saturn-V like configuration, with an additional
Merlin on the upper stage. Musk claims this configuration will cost
approximately $12 mil to launch. That compared to the Falcon 1 at $6
mil. By my reckoning, that means Musk anticipates launching Falcon 5,
which has 6 Merlins on it, and presumably some other complex design
differences too, for only twice the price of Falcon I.

Does anybody see any way this makes any kind of sense?

That matches well with my low cost vehicle modeling.

Their numbers are higher than mine, but they're further
down the development road and also using inherently more
expensive technologies.

Once you are building low cost rockets, bigger low cost
rockets aren't that much more expensive to build or set up
or fire off...


-george william herbert