Falcon 9 - First stage to be recovered!

On Dec 11, 11:42*am, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:31:55 -0500, JF Mezei

wrote:
But aren't NASA's cost models developed with pork in mind, knowing that
not giving specific industries/cities lots of economic activity would be
a political show stopper that would prevent budget approval ?

NASA didn't develop or fund EELV (Boeing's Delta IV and
Lockheed-Martin's Atlas 5), the Pentagon did.

or let me ask this differently:

When Boeing builds a commercial satellite launcher, are its costs much
lower and closer to SpaceX's costs and it is only work done for NASA
that is bloated ?

No, as evidenced by Delta IV's complete failure in the commercial
market (Boeing/ULA don't even market it anymore.)

Brian

well theres zero market for truly large payloads....

companies prefer to build and launch smaller sats that cost less, and
a single failure doesnt cripple a service

On 12/11/2010 10:17 AM, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Thu, 9 Dec 2010 16:08:54 -0500, Jeff Findley
wrote:


I have to admit to being a sceptic that "cots" would lead to real
services being offered. I saw it as mostly "make work" pork project
likely to be cancelled before any real results were to be seen .

Considering the tiny amount of money NASA is spending on COTS ($500M
from 2006 through 2011 - cite below), I'd hardly call it pork.

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/about/c3po.html

Some sort of disconnect there, because SpaceX has a $1.6 billion
contract with NASA for a minimum of 20,000 kg. of cargo to the Space
Station and Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract.

http://www.universetoday.com/22757/s...pply-contract/

That's CRS.

Maybe $500 million was just seed money for development?

That's COTS.

On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:25:43 -0800 (PST), bob haller safety advocate
wrote:

No, as evidenced by Delta IV's complete failure in the commercial
market (Boeing/ULA don't even market it anymore.)

well theres zero market for truly large payloads....

Delta IV-Medium (the garden variety Delta IVs) and Atlas 5 are in the
same class as Ariane V, SeaLaunch, H-II, and Proton. Problem is there
are more rockets than there are big satellites to launch, so it is a
buyer's market right now (which is why SeaLaunch went bankrupt). Atlas
5 could probably make a go of it commercially if Lockheed-Martin were
interested, but they don't seem to be. Delta IV might eventually
become competitive when RS-68A comes online, giving a performance
boost that lets the rockets sacrifice some mass to simpification and
standardization. But for now, it is up there with H-II on the
"unaffordable to anyone but governments" list.

Brian

On 12/12/2010 3:42 AM, Brian Thorn wrote:
On Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:31:55 -0500, JF Mezei
wrote:



When Boeing builds a commercial satellite launcher, are its costs much
lower and closer to SpaceX's costs and it is only work done for NASA
that is bloated ?

No, as evidenced by Delta IV's complete failure in the commercial
market (Boeing/ULA don't even market it anymore.)

Brian

That's got nothing to do with the D-IV itself; there's just such a small
market for two vehicles and the expected increase in low-to-mid-orbital
missions (mobile satellite coms) market didn't eventuate.

Atlas V has only been used for commercial launches seven out of 23 times
it's been used.

It's also to be remembered that, like the Titan III and IV before them,
neither the D-IV nor the Atlas V were designed with commercial
operations in mind; they were really only ever going to be used for
military use with commercial ops a secondary business.

On Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:52:26 +1100, Alan Erskine
wrote:

That's got nothing to do with the D-IV itself; there's just such a small
market for two vehicles and the expected increase in low-to-mid-orbital
missions (mobile satellite coms) market didn't eventuate.

But there is a market, especially after SeaLaunch went bankrupt. Delta
IV is simply not comptetive. Even NASA does not choose it (Delta IV is
not included in the recent Launch Services Contract covering up to 70
launches for the next ten years, despite the contract listing pretty
much every other US vehicle, including the long-dormant Athena.)

Atlas V has only been used for commercial launches seven out of 23 times
it's been used.

About 1/3 commercial is actually a pretty good record in a buyer's
market.

It's also to be remembered that, like the Titan III and IV before them,
neither the D-IV nor the Atlas V were designed with commercial
operations in mind; they were really only ever going to be used for
military use with commercial ops a secondary business.

No, they were intended to do both jobs, that's why the Air Force only
paid for half of the development costs: to give Boeing (or was it
still McDonnell-Douglas then?) and LockMart incentive to make cheaper,
commercially competitive vehicles. As far as the rocket is concerned,
there isn't much difference between a commercial DirecTV and a
military WGS communications satellite. Both are Boeing 702s.

Brian

In article , bthorn64
@suddenlink.net says...

On Thu, 9 Dec 2010 16:08:54 -0500, Jeff Findley
wrote:


I have to admit to being a sceptic that "cots" would lead to real
services being offered. I saw it as mostly "make work" pork project
likely to be cancelled before any real results were to be seen .

Considering the tiny amount of money NASA is spending on COTS ($500M
from 2006 through 2011 - cite below), I'd hardly call it pork.

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/about/c3po.html

Some sort of disconnect there, because SpaceX has a $1.6 billion
contract with NASA for a minimum of 20,000 kg. of cargo to the Space
Station and Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract.

http://www.universetoday.com/22757/s...pply-contract/

Maybe $500 million was just seed money for development?

I believe this is correct. Beyond that small seed money, NASA will pay
for actual cargo deliveries to ISS. So I would not call it pork. NASA
is paying for a service which is needed (cargo delivery) since the
shuttle program is ending. This is not a typical cost plus development
contract where the contractor makes money even if the project fails
completely.

They've only got 1200 employees,

It remains to be seen how many more employees they'll need when they
have to start building and launching 10 or more Falcon 9s a year. I
hope the company has a good plan for ramping up from essentially an
R&D organization into a full-scale operational service.

I doubt they'd need that many additional employees to ramp up
production. 10 launches a year is still a relatively low flight rate.
That's still less than one launch vehicle built every month.

Also note that production should become easier if they start recovering
the first stages. Even if the tanks get torn up in the process, if they
can re-use the engines from each stage, that's 9 less engines they have
to produce for the next launch.

Jeff
--
42

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:34:36 -0500, Jeff Findley
wrote:


I doubt they'd need that many additional employees to ramp up
production. 10 launches a year is still a relatively low flight rate.
That's still less than one launch vehicle built every month.

Don't underestimate that challenge. 10 per year is more than the two
EELVs combined. Its higher than Titan IV ever achieved. It's higher
than Space Shuttle ever achieved. It's higher than Ariane 5 has ever
achieved. Delta II, Atlas-Centaur, and Ariane 4 all got to 11-12
launches a year on only a few ocassions, and these were run by much
larger organizations than SpaceX.

Also note that production should become easier if they start recovering
the first stages. Even if the tanks get torn up in the process, if they
can re-use the engines from each stage, that's 9 less engines they have
to produce for the next launch.

I'll go out on a limb here and say SpaceX is never going to recover
the first stage. It seemed to me a ridiculous proposition from Day 1
and the operational experience so far has not caused me to waver in
that estimation at all.

Brian

In article , bthorn64
@suddenlink.net says...

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:34:36 -0500, Jeff Findley
wrote:


I doubt they'd need that many additional employees to ramp up
production. 10 launches a year is still a relatively low flight rate.
That's still less than one launch vehicle built every month.

Don't underestimate that challenge. 10 per year is more than the two
EELVs combined. Its higher than Titan IV ever achieved. It's higher
than Space Shuttle ever achieved. It's higher than Ariane 5 has ever
achieved. Delta II, Atlas-Centaur, and Ariane 4 all got to 11-12
launches a year on only a few ocassions, and these were run by much
larger organizations than SpaceX.

The shuttle is a special case, but the other launchers are driven more
by supply and demand. There just isn't enough demand to require high
flight rates. If it weren't in our "national interest", there wouldn't
even be two EELV providers to begin with since the demand for two of
them just isn't there.

The EELV providers don't publicly talk much about their production
capacity (it's proprietary company information), but I'd be willing to
bet that they've got quite a bit of excess capacity built into the
system.

Heck, the Russians have been building Soyuz launchers like clockwork for
decades. Building and flying launch vehicles just isn't as hard as
would appear on the surface.

Also note that production should become easier if they start
recovering
the first stages. Even if the tanks get torn up in the process, if they
can re-use the engines from each stage, that's 9 less engines they have
to produce for the next launch.

I'll go out on a limb here and say SpaceX is never going to recover
the first stage. It seemed to me a ridiculous proposition from Day 1
and the operational experience so far has not caused me to waver in
that estimation at all.

Stranger things have happened. Quite a few people thought it wouldn't
be possible for a start-up as small as SpaceX to build and fly their own
space capsule, but they did that just last week. ;-)

Time will tell.

Jeff
--
42

Brian Thorn writes:

Don't underestimate that challenge. 10 per year is more than the two
EELVs combined. Its higher than Titan IV ever achieved. It's higher
than Space Shuttle ever achieved. It's higher than Ariane 5 has ever
achieved. Delta II, Atlas-Centaur, and Ariane 4 all got to 11-12
launches a year on only a few ocassions, and these were run by much
larger organizations than SpaceX.

But then Falcon 9 is *much* simpler than all of those. Just two stages,
both with the same domes and tanks, differing just in length, the very
same engines in both stages... Looks quite mass-production friendly to
me.

Also note that production should become easier if they start recovering
the first stages. Even if the tanks get torn up in the process, if they
can re-use the engines from each stage, that's 9 less engines they have
to produce for the next launch.

I'll go out on a limb here and say SpaceX is never going to recover
the first stage. It seemed to me a ridiculous proposition from Day 1
and the operational experience so far has not caused me to waver in
that estimation at all.

They are saying they will recover the first stage from the sixth launch
on, everything before is more or less R&D. They still have four more
launches to get the first stage down intact. On recovering the second
stage I'd agree with you though.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010 11:26:14 -0500, Jeff Findley
wrote:

Don't underestimate that challenge. 10 per year is more than the two
EELVs combined. Its higher than Titan IV ever achieved. It's higher
than Space Shuttle ever achieved. It's higher than Ariane 5 has ever
achieved. Delta II, Atlas-Centaur, and Ariane 4 all got to 11-12
launches a year on only a few ocassions, and these were run by much
larger organizations than SpaceX.

The shuttle is a special case, but the other launchers are driven more
by supply and demand. There just isn't enough demand to require high
flight rates.

Yet look at the workforce required to meet the *low* flight rates.

If it weren't in our "national interest", there wouldn't
even be two EELV providers to begin with since the demand for two of
them just isn't there.

I did not "combined". This year Atlas 5 and Delta IV together have
flown seven times.

The EELV providers don't publicly talk much about their production
capacity (it's proprietary company information), but I'd be willing to
bet that they've got quite a bit of excess capacity built into the
system.

Some, but since Atlas and Delta production merged at Decatur, a lot
less now.

Heck, the Russians have been building Soyuz launchers like clockwork for
decades.

We really can't compare a communist work force to what we have in the
west, and Russia is now flying a much lower launch rate with
infrastructure it built at gunpoint under the old USSR system.

Building and flying launch vehicles just isn't as hard as
would appear on the surface.

Of course, SpaceX can't threaten to send workers off to the Gulag if
they don't meet their production quota.

I'll go out on a limb here and say SpaceX is never going to recover
the first stage.

Stranger things have happened. Quite a few people thought it wouldn't
be possible for a start-up as small as SpaceX to build and fly their own
space capsule, but they did that just last week. ;-)

This is an engineering/aerodynamics/thermal environment issue, though,
not an organizational one.

Brian