Spacex Merlin 2 development.

I was reading the other day Elon Must said he'd like to develop a
large engine for a heavy lift rocket called the BFR.

What surprised me is he said it would cost $100m to develop.

I'm impressed that having spent ~$100m so far, he has purchased
buildings, hired 160+ staff, desgned, built, tested two engines (one
ablative, one regeneratively cooled), and had two smaller rocket
launchs. Bargain!

Seeing as the Merlin 2 is to be pretty much an upscaled model of an
existing design of his, with I presume a similar number of parts,
where do all the extra costs come from? Fuel is cheap. Similar number
of parts to design, build, put together.

There must be a big gap in my understanding.

Anyone?


Gunn

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:37:09 +1300, in a place far, far away, Chris
Gunn made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


I was reading the other day Elon Must said he'd like to develop a
large engine for a heavy lift rocket called the BFR.

You may have read that the other day, but when did he actually say it?

What surprised me is he said it would cost $100m to develop.

I'm impressed that having spent ~$100m so far, he has purchased
buildings, hired 160+ staff, desgned, built, tested two engines (one
ablative, one regeneratively cooled), and had two smaller rocket
launchs. Bargain!

Seeing as the Merlin 2 is to be pretty much an upscaled model of an
existing design of his, with I presume a similar number of parts,
where do all the extra costs come from? Fuel is cheap. Similar number
of parts to design, build, put together.

Fuel cost is irrelevant to development costs.

Big engines may have more parts. It's also more expensive to build
test facilities for.

Chris Gunn wrote:
I was reading the other day Elon Must said he'd like to develop a
large engine for a heavy lift rocket called the BFR.

I do like that name

Seeing as the Merlin 2 is to be pretty much an upscaled model of an
existing design of his, with I presume a similar number of parts,
where do all the extra costs come from? Fuel is cheap. Similar
number of parts to design, build, put together.

There must be a big gap in my understanding.

I doubt the gaps in mine are all the narrower, but some things come to
mind:

*) Might need a new/bigger test facility for the engine
*) Will need a bunch of new tooling
*) Forces etc are much larger now, so it isn't just a question of
increase the dimensions.

ISTR from reading wikipedia (my "apollogies" to the regulars) that
there were a bunch of problems with "cumbustion stability" in the F-1
and that took lots of tests and destroyed engines and whatnot. Those
were problems that either didn't exist on smaller engines, or perhaps
weren't big enough problems to be "problems" for smaller engines?

Is the $100mil strictly for the new engine, or does some of that also
go to the BFR?

In the recent news reports I think China was saying that developing
the LM-5 (?) was going to be something like $500mil and change. I'm
guessing that was engines and vehicle etc. If the LM-5 is in the same
"ballpark" as Elon Musk's "BFR" then $100mil for a big engine doesn't
necessarily seem outlandish to my untrained eye.

rick jones
--
The glass is neither half-empty nor half-full. The glass has a leak.
The real question is "Can it be patched?"
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:08:52 GMT, h (Rand
Simberg) wrote:
On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:37:09 +1300, in a place far, far away, Chris
Gunn made the phosphor on my monitor
I was reading the other day Elon Must said he'd like to develop a
large engine for a heavy lift rocket called the BFR.

You may have read that the other day, but when did he actually say it?

Before he developed his small cooled engine 8-]

What surprised me is he said it would cost $100m to develop.

I'm impressed that having spent ~$100m so far, he has purchased
buildings, hired 160+ staff, desgned, built, tested two engines (one
ablative, one regeneratively cooled), and had two smaller rocket
launchs. Bargain!

Seeing as the Merlin 2 is to be pretty much an upscaled model of an
existing design of his, with I presume a similar number of parts,
where do all the extra costs come from? Fuel is cheap. Similar number
of parts to design, build, put together.

Fuel cost is irrelevant to development costs.

Big engines may have more parts. It's also more expensive to build
test facilities for.

He was renting a test facility that could handle bigger engines, but
he said he couldn't use them for Merlin-2. Apparently it would break
windows in a nearby town x-}

He said he'd have to test it at the launch site, or somewhere else.

I suppose a launch site would be sweet!


I still feel I'm missing something here.

Gunn

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:10:28 +0000 (UTC), Rick Jones
wrote:

Chris Gunn wrote:
I was reading the other day Elon Must said he'd like to develop a
large engine for a heavy lift rocket called the BFR.

I do like that name

Stands for Big Falcon Rocket. Officially that is ;-)

Seeing as the Merlin 2 is to be pretty much an upscaled model of an
existing design of his, with I presume a similar number of parts,
where do all the extra costs come from? Fuel is cheap. Similar
number of parts to design, build, put together.

There must be a big gap in my understanding.

I doubt the gaps in mine are all the narrower, but some things come to
mind:

*) Might need a new/bigger test facility for the engine

True, see my other reply.

*) Will need a bunch of new tooling

Yes, but hopefully not ten times that of before.

*) Forces etc are much larger now, so it isn't just a question of
increase the dimensions.

ISTR from reading wikipedia (my "apollogies" to the regulars) that
there were a bunch of problems with "cumbustion stability" in the F-1
and that took lots of tests and destroyed engines and whatnot. Those
were problems that either didn't exist on smaller engines, or perhaps
weren't big enough problems to be "problems" for smaller engines?

Well, there's a point of course, the estimates could be based on what
it cost rocketdyne to develop the F-1 and the RS-68.

Also, the RS-68 cost $14m to build, (and the SSME $50m) so perhaps
it's not too unreasonable.

Is the $100mil strictly for the new engine, or does some of that also
go to the BFR?

Strictly.

In the recent news reports I think China was saying that developing
the LM-5 (?) was going to be something like $500mil and change. I'm
guessing that was engines and vehicle etc. If the LM-5 is in the same
"ballpark" as Elon Musk's "BFR" then $100mil for a big engine doesn't
necessarily seem outlandish to my untrained eye.

rick jones

$500m buys you a lot of manpower in China. I think you mean the CZ-5
heavy lift vehicle.

Thanks for your help.

Where is Henery anyhow?



Gunn

On Nov 29, 3:37 pm, Chris Gunn wrote:
I was reading the other day Elon Must said he'd like to develop a
large engine for a heavy lift rocket called the BFR.

What surprised me is he said it would cost $100m to develop.

I'm impressed that having spent ~$100m so far, he has purchased
buildings, hired 160+ staff, desgned, built, tested two engines (one
ablative, one regeneratively cooled), and had two smaller rocket
launchs. Bargain!

Seeing as the Merlin 2 is to be pretty much an upscaled model of an
existing design of his, with I presume a similar number of parts,
where do all the extra costs come from? Fuel is cheap. Similar number
of parts to design, build, put together.

There must be a big gap in my understanding.

Anyone?

Gunn

How about those 100% reliable and extremely impressive Saturn V
engines that supposedly provided nearly twice as much fly-by-rocket
thrust per kg of fuel, of representing far better Isp results than
anything else ever since, and that was entirely without SRBs or other
solid kickers stages.

We're talking about a mere 60:1 ratio of rocket per given payload that
was having to deal with nearly 30% inert GLOW to start off with, that
made for getting nearly 50 tonnes to our moon within 3 days, look
pretty darn good.

By way of using composites and super alloys on behalf of cutting out a
mere 5% of the GLOW inert mass, by rights this should boost that new
and improved Saturn V lunar payload to accommodating nearly 200
tonnes. So, without hardly any R&D, Isn't that good news, or what.

So, what's there to R&D?
- Brad Guth

On Nov 29, 9:24 pm, Chris Gunn wrote:

$500m buys you a lot of manpower in China. I think you mean the CZ-5
heavy lift vehicle.

How about:
"$50m buys you a lot of intelligent and productive manpower in China"
- Brad Guth