Falcon Heavy

Alan Erskine wrote:
On 30/03/2011 9:28 AM, Brian Thorn wrote:

They won't have to. It will be dead and gone (if it isn't already), a
footnote in SpaceX history.

Brian

I disagree - they'res a market for small LV's that is being met with
ex-ICBM's at the moment. I include Minitaur in this, seeing it's based
on Minuteman.

The SpaceX website says the Falcon 1e replaces the Falcon 1 and prices it
out to 1010kg to LEO for $10.9M. That works out to $10,792 per kg to LEO
or ~$4900 per lb to LEO for a fully loaded payload.

How's that compare to ex-ICBM pricing? Seems damn competitive to me.

You know I wonder if there is a supplemental business to be had here.
A company whose sole purpose is to aggregate payload into a common bus
structure for adaptation onto something like a Falcon 1e for the very small
players that would like to get to LEO but cannot afford to go-it-alone and buy
all of the capacity of a Falcon 1e. Esp. if they only need a fraction of that
capacity. So you have a 18lb payload you want to place into LEO? They would
charge you (let's say they aim for 30% profit 4,900 x 1.3 = $6370 rounded to
$6,400 per lb for any payload up to the max (course you wouldn't pay that for
the max if you could go straight to SpaceX, so maybe its a sliding scale with
a cap at the top). You pay a small fee up front to reserve a spot with the
rest due in installments as the bus fills and with the last payments due just
before the rocket is ready to order. So for your 18 lb payload you'd be
charged $6400 x 18 = $115,200. You put down 10% (refundable until you start to
make installment payments) to reserve a slot on the bus; that works out to a
very respectable $11,500. As the bus begins to fill you have an installment
payment due in order to close the bus out and prevent a single player
withdrawing from sinking the bus launch. You miss an installment and you lose
whatever you've put in to date, so a real disincentive to the disingenuous.
And it would allow the company to offer steep discounts to a late player that
wants in on the bus and is not exceeding the weight limit of any repossessed
bus capacity.

Much like the way a contractor bills for the construction of a new house, so
various amounts are paid out at various stages of the project and no one gets
stuck with a huge balloon payment at the end and the contractor doesn't get
stuck with all the cost of construction.

Now ~$115k doesn't sound too bad to put an 18lb payload into orbit.

The question remains, is there a market for micro-payload reselling? Is there
enough volume to make it work and work within a reasonable time-frame? (say 2
years max from initial order to launch?)...


Dave

David Spain scribbled something like ...

You know I wonder if there is a supplemental business to be had here.
A company whose sole purpose is to aggregate payload into a common bus
structure for adaptation onto something like a Falcon 1e for the very
small players that would like to get to LEO but cannot afford to
go-it-alone and buy all of the capacity of a Falcon 1e. Esp. if they
only need a fraction of that capacity.

I was under the impression that LEO launches that included secondary
payloads was pretty common these days. Several school-based microsats, for
instance. Indeed, the Glory satellite entry in Whicked Foot says
"The Taurus rocket also carried three small CubeSat satellites built by
university students in Montana, Colorado and Kentucky."

So maybe someone is already carrying out that supplemental business.

/dps

Snidely wrote:
David Spain scribbled something like ...

You know I wonder if there is a supplemental business to be had here.

I was under the impression that LEO launches that included secondary
payloads was pretty common these days. Several school-based microsats, for
instance. Indeed, the Glory satellite entry in Whicked Foot says
"The Taurus rocket also carried three small CubeSat satellites built by
university students in Montana, Colorado and Kentucky."

So maybe someone is already carrying out that supplemental business.


Well I've read plenty of stories about govt sponsored payloads that let out
extra capacity to smaller players (like schools and universities) but I was
not aware of any commercial business that did so.

You'd think payload aggregation would be a great way to cut the cost of LEO
access to folk w/o deep pockets. Sure you may have to wait longer to get there
(until the bus fills up) but for the dramatic reduction in cost it could well
be worth the wait.

This is just another form of the old value added reseller we see in IT all the
time. Or if you will, leasing cloud computation. It's the same idea.

It'd be kind of fun to design such a bus. I've been thinking about it off and
on today. You could imagine a cylindrical metal cage like device with
compartments running along the long axis of the cylinder, with the inner axis
containing spring or otherwise mechanically triggered devices for ejecting the
payload modules. Each payload module would consist of a smaller cylinder that
fits into the larger. The entire structure would of course have to fit within
the payload fairing of a Falcon 1e and meet its total weight restrictions.

Most compartments would be of a 'standard' size but a few could be double or
even triple sized to hold larger payloads.

As a customer, I would give you the dimensions and the cost to 'rent' space on
the bus. You would have to design your payload to fit within the bus and be
compatible with the bus ejection mechanism, but that is about it.

Once in orbit the outer shell fairing would be ejected, exposing the payload
modules which would then be individually ejected out of the bus using the
ejectors.

It's fun to toy around with ideas like this. I have no clue if $$$ could be
made this way however...

Dave

On 30/03/2011 3:31 PM, David Spain wrote:
Alan Erskine wrote:
On 30/03/2011 9:28 AM, Brian Thorn wrote:

They won't have to. It will be dead and gone (if it isn't already), a
footnote in SpaceX history.

Brian

I disagree - they'res a market for small LV's that is being met with
ex-ICBM's at the moment. I include Minitaur in this, seeing it's based
on Minuteman.

The SpaceX website says the Falcon 1e replaces the Falcon 1 and prices it
out to 1010kg to LEO for $10.9M. That works out to $10,792 per kg to LEO
or ~$4900 per lb to LEO for a fully loaded payload.

How's that compare to ex-ICBM pricing? Seems damn competitive to me.


Not many ICBM's being built - limited launch capacity; limited payload
size. The fairing for the Falcon 1 is quite large by comparison.

Pat Flannery wrote:
On 3/30/2011 6:30 PM, David Spain wrote:

It's fun to toy around with ideas like this. I have no clue if $$$ could
be made this way however...

What's a "Whicked Foot"?

Pat


Well it could mean a foot very comfortably ensconced within a sweat sock.

In reference to the odor of which, if translated to the Latin from the phrase
"of the foot from the Wick" we obtain our root phrase:

"wik e pedia"

;-)

Dave

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_%28satellite%29

On 3/30/2011 6:30 PM, David Spain wrote:

It's fun to toy around with ideas like this. I have no clue if $$$ could
be made this way however...

What's a "Whicked Foot"?

Pat

David Spain scribbled something like ...

As a customer, I would give you the dimensions and the cost to 'rent'
space on the bus. You would have to design your payload to fit within
the bus and be compatible with the bus ejection mechanism, but that is
about it.

The February 2011 Scientific American has an article on the CubeSat
program, which already fits that description: "Citizen Satellites", pp 44
and following. The SciAm web site will have the opening paragraph of the
article available for free and the rest behind a paywall, but most
libraries will have hardcopy.

/dps

Snidely wrote:
David Spain scribbled something like ...

As a customer, I would give you the dimensions and the cost to 'rent'
space on the bus. You would have to design your payload to fit within
the bus and be compatible with the bus ejection mechanism, but that is
about it.

The February 2011 Scientific American has an article on the CubeSat
program, which already fits that description: "Citizen Satellites", pp 44
and following. The SciAm web site will have the opening paragraph of the
article available for free and the rest behind a paywall, but most
libraries will have hardcopy.

/dps

For $7.95 I downloaded the issue. Bingo! Seems I'm not as dumb as (a/my)
post(s)...

;-)

We'll see if, as the cost to occupy a slot in the bus goes down, it generates
enough interest and customers for Interorbital Systems to make a go of it. The
key to all of this is getting the cost of the LV down. If the LV costs $100
million I can't reap much $$$ benefit as a small player even if I split the
cost 100 ways. If the LV costs $10 million it gets interesting, $1 million
and it gets really interesting...

Sorry to have hijacked the tread: I've renamed this one NOT Falcon Heavy.

:-D

Dave

One last comment:

http://www.cubesat.org/

Today was the last day to get your presentation in...

Dave