SpaceX Upgrades

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message .. .
From this site:

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/...lta/record.htm

I see very few GTO launches for a Delta II. The vast majority of
launches are GPS and LEO, with a few planetary missions. I just don't
see that much GTO traffic for that payload class--the slots are too
valuable to put up small satellites there. So I'd say that the "other
elliptical orbits" is the real market, not GTO.

Mr. Musk has to be thinking of the lucrative GPS launch
contracts (no launch contract is better than a long-term
constellation effort backed by a deep-pocket customer
that can't go bankrupt!) as a Falcon V target. The
problem is that he will have to compete with EELV
proposals to launch future GPS sats two or three or four
at a time on the bigger EELV rockets (proposals that
will, ironically, probably spell the end for Boeing's
Falcon V-class Delta 2. NASA is a secondary Delta 2
customer who might not be able, or interested, in
supporting the launcher alone.

Hmmm. But then doesn't Falcon V stand to gain if
Delta 2 goes away? Maybe this could turn out to be
a sort of space biz squeeze play.

Farfetched, perhaps, but Musk *was* one of the few
people savvy enough to sell those overpriced Internet
stocks when they were high, just before the market
collapsed. (I think William Shatner was the other guy).

- Ed Kyle

On 20 Oct 2004 21:58:03 -0700, in a place far, far away,
(ed kyle) made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Mr. Musk has to be thinking of the lucrative GPS launch
contracts (no launch contract is better than a long-term
constellation effort backed by a deep-pocket customer
that can't go bankrupt!) as a Falcon V target. The
problem is that he will have to compete with EELV
proposals to launch future GPS sats two or three or four
at a time on the bigger EELV rockets (proposals that
will, ironically, probably spell the end for Boeing's
Falcon V-class Delta 2.

At his prices, that might not be hard to compete with. If I were the
Air Force, I might even be willing to pay a little more for the
ability to put them up one at a time, rather than putting three or
four eggs in one unreliable basket.

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
At his prices, that might not be hard to compete with. If I were the
Air Force, I might even be willing to pay a little more for the
ability to put them up one at a time, rather than putting three or
four eggs in one unreliable basket.

This would have some operational benefits, wouldn't it? A launch failure
that results in the destruction of say a single GPS satellite wouldn't
impact the overall program as much as a launch failure that destroyed four
at once.

Sometimes bigger isn't necessarily better in the aerospace world, despite
the ranting and raving my the engineers working on the bigger vehicles.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

(ed kyle) wrote in message . com...
Mr. Musk has to be thinking of the lucrative GPS launch
contracts (no launch contract is better than a long-term
constellation effort backed by a deep-pocket customer
that can't go bankrupt!) as a Falcon V target. The
problem is that he will have to compete with EELV
proposals to launch future GPS sats two or three or four
at a time on the bigger EELV rockets (proposals that
will, ironically, probably spell the end for Boeing's
Falcon V-class Delta 2.

If the Falcon V costs what Musk is claiming it will, it'll still be
substantially cheaper to launch GPS sats one at a time using it than
doing clustered launches on an EELV.

NASA is a secondary Delta 2
customer who might not be able, or interested, in
supporting the launcher alone.

In the past five years there have been 9 GPS Delta II launches and 19
non-GPS Delta II launches. I'm not sure what the difference is
between what NASA pays and what the USAF pays, but it looks like NASA
is the primary customer, not the other way around.

-jake

NASA has been the most frequent user of Delta II since
about 2001, but the U.S. Dept of Defense (most notably
the Air Force) has purchased more Delta II missions than
any other customer all told. And, of course, Delta II was
developed in response to an Air Force RFP to launch
the GPS constellation (a few years after NASA shut down
the original Delta production line).

There have been 40-ish GPS launches now, and other DoD
payloads account for about 5 more launches. NASA didn't
use Delta II much until the mid-1990s, but has now used the
rocket 30-some times. Delta II hasn't handled a commercial
launch since 2002, but the Iridium and Globalstar launches
pushed the commercial Delta II launch total up to nearly
40-something as well. Altogether, government-funded
payloads account for about 70% of all Delta II missions.

In retrospect, Delta II was busiest when it was doing the
initial launches of LEO or MEO constellations and it flew
more than a dozen times per year. Each of these surges
only lasted 2-3 years, however. The last few years, when
NASA has been the biggest customer, have seen Delta II
fly only about a half-dozen times per year, with NASA
accounting for an average of a bit more than 3 per year.

- Ed Kyle

Rand Simberg wrote:
glowed:
That's not what Elon Musk said in the March 29, 2004 issue of Aviation
Week. He said then that: "The Falcon V is being designed to dominate
the Delta Medium- and Delta Medium Plus-class market," (which
predominately consists of missions to GTO or to other elliptical orbits
requiring similar launch energy). The article is posted on SpaceX's
web site under "Media Coverage".

shrug

Then I don't understand his business plan. I don't think there's much
market there. I would have thought that his goal was to establish new
markets with a low-cost vehicle.

There is (or should be) enough market there to keep SpaceX profitable
at the stated launch rates and prices.

As a defensive measure, I think it wise for any business plan where
market elasticity is a major unknown to be able to support ongoing
stable profitable on operations without any market expansion.

If the market does expand, good on you. If not, you've at least
brought the costs down and put yourself in the game.


-george william herbert