Now Falcon 9R has "wings" too it seems

In article ,
says...

William Mook wrote:

On Friday, November 28, 2014 8:05:47 PM UTC+13, William Mook wrote:
On Friday, November 28, 2014 7:21:46 PM UTC+13, William Mook wrote:
On Friday, November 28, 2014 3:50:31 PM UTC+13, William Mook wrote:
On Wednesday, November 26, 2014 8:30:32 PM UTC+13, William Mook wrote:

Mookie on Mookie on Mookie on Mookie on Mookie...

This is why he's banished to my killfile.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Saturday, November 29, 2014 7:25:29 AM UTC+13, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:

On Friday, November 28, 2014 3:50:31 PM UTC+13, William Mook wrote:
On Wednesday, November 26, 2014 8:30:32 PM UTC+13, William Mook wrote:

Oh, good Lord. Someone has fired up the Mookie Loop again...

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Hey, I just signed up for 41 launches in NZ to put up 41 power satellites 145.6 m in diameter each generating 18 MW of laser energy in a sunrise/sunset orbit.

So, don't f with me man! lol. I'll zap your ass from orbit! (not really, the optics won't let you concentrate light to anything higher than your hair dryer - so, I'll dry your hair from orbit! lol)

http://www.rocketlabusa.com/

http://lasermotive.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmRtiGMxiNo

http://www.microfabrica.com/

So, a 1 meter diameter hexagon formed along its edges, with MEMS based "active struts" to form one of 25,660 sections of a 145.6 meter diameter paraboloid of rotation. The glass is 2.6 um thick. The 25,660 hexagons stack together into a 12.2 cm tall stack in the 1 meter diameter nose cone of the Electron rocket.

Each hexagon on orbit is a free flying nano-satellite that is capable of self-assembly to form a single 145.6 meter diameter paraboloid with a 40,000 to 1 concentration - forming a 728 mm solar image at 700 meter focal length..

25,660 hexagons
3.8 grams each hexagon
97508 grams total weight
0.64519 sq m each
16,555.5754 sq m total
2.6 um thick glass

A second satellite with a 728 mm thin disk laser stack takes 22.8 MW laser energy and forms a multi-spectral laser with 18.24 MW of power. The laser is then emitted with a 1 meter diameter primary to form a 1 meter Airy disk at 1,171 km distance.

Each satellite swarm is launched and then self-assembles on orbit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK54Bu9HFRw

The launcher is capable of putting up 140 kg into a sunrise/sunset orbit that completes 18 circuits of the Earth every 24 hours. In this way every location on Earth sees the satellite overhead for 20 minutes each day. Ground stations that are equipped to efficiently convert the multi-spectral laser energy to DC electricity, receive 18.24 MW for 20 minutes - charging a sodium sulphur battery pack. This battery pack discharges at an average rate of 506,000 watts over a 12 hour period. It is then discharged in another 20 minute session.

For the first satellite 36 ground stations are positioned around the planet so as to overlap their demand for power efficiently. In this way 18,000 kWh per hour is sold at $0.15 per kWh earning $2700 per hour. That's $23,668,200 per year!

The satellite costs $5 million to launch and $5 million to build. The ground stations are $1.5 million each. Buyers pay for the ground station and sign a long-term supply arrangement for the power. Buyers have the right to trade with other buyers for power.

A total of 41 launches in the same sunrise sunset orbit supports 1,476 ground stations and generates a total of 26.92 GW of power. This earns $34.94 million per year.

The primary masses 97.5 kg. The secondary masses 42.5 kg. It too uses nano-satellite technology.

On Tuesday, November 25, 2014 10:18:18 AM UTC-5, David Spain wrote:
Try searching for "steerable fins" you'll have better luck. These were noticed first deployed on one of the grasshopper tests in McGregor Tx.

Technically, to be accurate, I should have said on one of the F9R-Dev 1 tests as opposed to Grasshopper...

Dave

In article ,
says...

The more notable fact is that the F9 first stage barge landing is planned
for this month Dec. 16th, and that if it succeeds they plan to re-launch
that stage:

SPACEX CRS-5: GRID-FINS AND A BARGE.
NOVEMBER 25TH, 2014 SCOTT JOHNSON
http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/mi...rge-grid-fins/

If SpaceX succeeds at even the barge landing it will hit the launch industry
like a bombshell. It will force, finally, the other launch providers to also
investigate reusable launchers.

Landing isn't reuse. When they refly the stage and land it again
successfully, then we'll talk more.

It might even get Lockheed to resurrect the X-33.

That turkey? I seriously doubt it. X-33 was an exercise in extracting
money from the government. Success of the program was a distant,
secondary, goal. The fact they stopped the program when the funding
dried up is telling. SpaceX, on the other hand, has a huge backlog of
launch orders. A successful reusable first stage should help them
reduce that backlog.

Elon Musk notes that the
first stage is in general the larger more expensive part of a launcher so
just making that stage reusable can save significantly on launch costs.

Surely. It has 9 out of 10 of the engines on a Falcon 9R.

Then
if this fact had been understood during the development of the X-33, it
would have been realized the X-33 would have use as a reusable launcher and
not just a demonstrator vehicle. Then we could have had this large reduction
in launch costs a decade ago.

Except Lockheed didn't care if it was successful or not. They had
other, quite profitable, revenue streams.

SpaceX, on the other hand, has its success directly tied to (successful)
launches priced far lower than the competition.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

The more notable fact is that the F9 first stage barge landing is planned
for this month Dec. 16th, and that if it succeeds they plan to re-launch
that stage:

SPACEX CRS-5: GRID-FINS AND A BARGE.
NOVEMBER 25TH, 2014 SCOTT JOHNSON
http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/mi...rge-grid-fins/

If SpaceX succeeds at even the barge landing it will hit the launch
industry
like a bombshell. It will force, finally, the other launch providers to
also
investigate reusable launchers.

Landing isn't reuse. When they refly the stage and land it again
successfully, then we'll talk more.

It might even get Lockheed to resurrect the X-33.

That turkey? I seriously doubt it. X-33 was an exercise in extracting
money from the government. Success of the program was a distant,
secondary, goal. The fact they stopped the program when the funding
dried up is telling. SpaceX, on the other hand, has a huge backlog of
launch orders. A successful reusable first stage should help them
reduce that backlog.

I could see some interest in DC-X, but X-33 was a dog. Or a Turkey. Or both.

And agreed, landing isn't re-use but it's definitely a step closer.

And you're right below, getting back 9 of the 10 engines alone may be a big
enough win.


Elon Musk notes that the
first stage is in general the larger more expensive part of a launcher so
just making that stage reusable can save significantly on launch costs.

Surely. It has 9 out of 10 of the engines on a Falcon 9R.

Then
if this fact had been understood during the development of the X-33, it
would have been realized the X-33 would have use as a reusable launcher
and
not just a demonstrator vehicle. Then we could have had this large
reduction
in launch costs a decade ago.

Except Lockheed didn't care if it was successful or not. They had
other, quite profitable, revenue streams.

SpaceX, on the other hand, has its success directly tied to (successful)
launches priced far lower than the competition.

Yeah. This is one of those, "even if they fail, they're likely to be
successful on their current pricing merits"
If they succeed the game gets even more tilted in their favor.

I started counting F9 flights vs. Atlas V/Delta IV flights and F9 is flying
at a decent rate comparatively.

I can see it becoming a bigger and bigger threat fairly quickly.


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

A 47 foot tall cone with a 28.5 degree opening angle, topped with a 3 ft diameter hemisphere with the payload pay extending back 14.4 feet to a 9.4 ft diameter bulkhead. Beneath that bulkhead is a 12.4 diameter spherical tank inside the conical airframe, sitting atop a toroid which itself is sitting atop a zero height aerospike engine equipped with thermal protection system. A 20.5 ft tall first stage with 15.5 diameter top and a 25.6 ft diameter base with a larger aerospike engine.

The first stage is powered by a J2-T 250k aerospike engine which has an exhaust velocity of 9,725 mph when used as a first stage and combined with a RL10-T 50k aerospike engine with a similar exhaust velocity in the second stage. The TSTO-RLV lifts 9,650 lbs into low earth orbit and is highly reusable!

The first stage accelerates to 8,500 mph and separates 518 miles down range, and is recovered 1,036 miles down range. The second stage accelerates to 17,000 mph. The 9,650 lb satellite is released from the orbiter stage, 12,000 miles downrange. The satellite circularizes its orbit, adding 750 mph to the satellite's speed. Meanwhile, the orbiter stage re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, and executes a powered touchdown 84 minutes after launch 1,400 miles short of the launch point.

At each landing location each stage is partially refilled and launched back to the starting point with no loads, where both stages are recovered and reused within eight hours of the original launch.

In this way the TSTO-RLV can send 3 loads per day to low earth orbit of 9,650 pounds each!

The second stage costs $43.4 million while the first stage costs $195.3 million. A total vehicle cost of $238.7 million. A fleet of three, plus non-recurring engineering costs $1,193.5 million. At three flights per day, the cost of each launch is $500,000. The fleet of three produces 9 flights per day at a cost of $4.5 million per day. Each vehicle is capable of 16,000 flight cycles and has 14 year service life.

A fleet of three vehicles delivers 48,000 payloads totalling 463.2 million pounds over 14 years at a total cost of $25.2 billion. This is $51.81 per pound.

Development cost: $1,193.5 million (3 years)
Launch operations: $1,643.7 million per year

At $10 million per satellite, we have

Payload costs: $32,872.5 million per year

A network of 1200 satellites launched into polar orbits to create a satellite network that creates a global wireless hotspot provides a revenue of $100 billion per year in telecommunications services. This pays for the payloads to make full use of the fleet's capabilities.

At 4 square yards per ounce of mass, a thin film concentrator 128 acres in area is deployed from a 9,650 lb satellite. This satellite intercepts 709 MW of solar energy and delivers 500 MW to Earth via laser beam. At $0.11 per kWh each satellite generates $482 million per year! In three years a total of 10,300 satellites provide all the energy on Earth and capture $100 billion per week!

Larger laser satellites, laser powered rockets, and photonic thrusters are built with this added revenue to increase our capabilities going forward.


Specifications.

9,650 lbs - useful load - payload

5,425 lbs - inert structure - Stage 2

4,360.3 lbs - hydrogen 12.4 ft diam. sphere.
23,981.4 lbs - oxygen - toroidal tank at base

50,000.0 lbf - Dual RL-10 engine pumps with aerospike nozzle

24,414.0 lbs - inert structure - stage 1

19,611.4 lbs - hydrogen 20.5 ft diam sphere.
107,862.6 lbs - oxygen - toroidal tank at base

250,000.0 lbf - Dual J-2 engine pumps with aerospike nozzle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Y0FS8Z1Qk
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_...keTC_Final.pdf
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_...s/250K_J2T.png
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_...AEE_Firing.png
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_..._ISP_Graph.png

On Wednesday, December 3, 2014 2:50:33 AM UTC-5, William Mook wrote:
A 47 foot tall cone with a 28.5 degree opening angle, topped with a 3 ft diameter hemisphere with the payload pay extending back 14.4 feet to a 9.4 ft diameter bulkhead. Beneath that bulkhead is a 12.4 diameter spherical tank inside the conical airframe, sitting atop a toroid which itself is sitting atop a zero height aerospike engine equipped with thermal protection system. A 20.5 ft tall first stage with 15.5 diameter top and a 25.6 ft diameter base with a larger aerospike engine.

The first stage is powered by a J2-T 250k aerospike engine which has an exhaust velocity of 9,725 mph when used as a first stage and combined with a RL10-T 50k aerospike engine with a similar exhaust velocity in the second stage. The TSTO-RLV lifts 9,650 lbs into low earth orbit and is highly reusable!

The first stage accelerates to 8,500 mph and separates 518 miles down range, and is recovered 1,036 miles down range. The second stage accelerates to 17,000 mph. The 9,650 lb satellite is released from the orbiter stage, 12,000 miles downrange. The satellite circularizes its orbit, adding 750 mph to the satellite's speed. Meanwhile, the orbiter stage re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, and executes a powered touchdown 84 minutes after launch 1,400 miles short of the launch point.

At each landing location each stage is partially refilled and launched back to the starting point with no loads, where both stages are recovered and reused within eight hours of the original launch.

In this way the TSTO-RLV can send 3 loads per day to low earth orbit of 9,650 pounds each!

The second stage costs $43.4 million while the first stage costs $195.3 million. A total vehicle cost of $238.7 million. A fleet of three, plus non-recurring engineering costs $1,193.5 million. At three flights per day, the cost of each launch is $500,000. The fleet of three produces 9 flights per day at a cost of $4.5 million per day. Each vehicle is capable of 16,000 flight cycles and has 14 year service life.

A fleet of three vehicles delivers 48,000 payloads totalling 463.2 million pounds over 14 years at a total cost of $25.2 billion. This is $51.81 per pound.

Development cost: $1,193.5 million (3 years)
Launch operations: $1,643.7 million per year

At $10 million per satellite, we have

Payload costs: $32,872.5 million per year

A network of 1200 satellites launched into polar orbits to create a satellite network that creates a global wireless hotspot provides a revenue of $100 billion per year in telecommunications services. This pays for the payloads to make full use of the fleet's capabilities.

At 4 square yards per ounce of mass, a thin film concentrator 128 acres in area is deployed from a 9,650 lb satellite. This satellite intercepts 709 MW of solar energy and delivers 500 MW to Earth via laser beam. At $0.11 per kWh each satellite generates $482 million per year! In three years a total of 10,300 satellites provide all the energy on Earth and capture $100 billion per week!

Larger laser satellites, laser powered rockets, and photonic thrusters are built with this added revenue to increase our capabilities going forward.


Specifications.

9,650 lbs - useful load - payload

5,425 lbs - inert structure - Stage 2

4,360.3 lbs - hydrogen 12.4 ft diam. sphere.
23,981.4 lbs - oxygen - toroidal tank at base

50,000.0 lbf - Dual RL-10 engine pumps with aerospike nozzle

24,414.0 lbs - inert structure - stage 1

19,611.4 lbs - hydrogen 20.5 ft diam sphere.
107,862.6 lbs - oxygen - toroidal tank at base

250,000.0 lbf - Dual J-2 engine pumps with aerospike nozzle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Y0FS8Z1Qk
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_...keTC_Final.pdf
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_...s/250K_J2T.png
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_...AEE_Firing.png
http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space_..._ISP_Graph.png

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...968006392..pdf

Three M1-rocket engine pump sets arrayed within a large aerospike engine as described, produces a single engine that produces 4.5 million pounds of thrust, capable of lifting a 3.5 million pound vehicle. This takes the form of a 125 foot long tank that's 35 feet in diameter with an inert weight of 122,265 pounds and carries 3,393,360 pounds of LOX/LH2 propellant.

Seven of these elements operate together in a single cluster, with all engines firing at lift-off. Four of the seven tanks are drained during launch, forming in effect a first stage. These four feed all seven engines in the launch vehicle.

This massive vehicle, weighing 27,254,375 pounds at lift off, is capable of placing 3,500,000 pounds into low-earth-orbit.

3,000,000 lbs Useful payload

122,265 lbs - inert mass per element
3,393,360 lbs - propellant per element

27,609,375 lbs - Take of Weight (7 elements + payload)
13,573,440 lbs - propellant (4 elements (Stage 1))
0.4916 propellant fraction
6,656 mph S1 6,656 mph total

13,546,875 - Stage 2 Weight (3 elements + payload)
6,786,720 - propellant (2 elements (Stage 2))
0.5010 propellant fraction
6,839 mph S2 13,495 mph total

6,515,625 - Stage 3 Weight (1 element + payload)
3,393,360 - propellant (1 element (Stage 3))
0.5208 - propellant fraction
7,238 mph S3 20,733 mph total (before subtracting losses)

Each element costs $600 million to build, $4.2 billion for the seven element system. $21 billion for the entire programme, including three launch vehicles (21 flight elements + non-recurring engineering).

All elements re-enter down range and slow to subsonic speeds. They then deploy inflatable wings and glide down from the stratosphere. Tow planes loitering down range snag each of the elements and tow them back to the launch centre to be released and recovered. In this way all elements are returned to the launch centre and are capable of re-launch within eight hours. A fleet of three vehicles in this way supports the launch of 9 payloads per day.

Thin film concentrators feeding solar pumped lasers cover 4 square yards of area for each ounce of payload weight. In this way each pound covers 576 square feet of solar collector on orbit. A solar collector 8.88 miles in diameter is launched with each take off. Each satellite intercepts 219.8 billion watts of solar energy of which 175 billion watts is useful laser energy beamed to wherever its needed on Earth.

With 9 launches per day 1.575 trillion watts of power plants are orbited each day. In ten days humanity equals its current energy usage with laser energy from space. In two months there is enough power to support millionaire life styles for 8 billion people.

Ballistic transport that accelerates people at two gravities throughout its flight cycle, can travel from one side of the Earth in 36 minutes while maintaining a constant two gees for occupants inside the vehicle. After the vehicle travels 2,967 miles it is traveling at a speed so that centripetal acceleration is 3 gees radially outward (30,600 mph!). Subtracting one gee radially inward due to gravity, the ship boosts 2 gees toward the Earth to maintain altitude!

Delta vee for this trip from one side of the Earth to the other in this way at this speed, is 94,727 mph. This sizes our power system for a given population.

With this capability, AI, 3D printing, global communications, we create a global city which encompasses the entire Earth! 37.8 billion acres!

An enlarged version of this;

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/broad...-ut-1509433082

Instead of the motorcar and the telephone and 1950s infrastructure, we use ballistic transport, the wireless internet, and orbiting infrastructure with AI to turn our planet into a single city.

LASER LAUNCHER

175 billion watts energizing material to move at 20,733 mph can energize material at a rate of 9,097.3 pounds per second. This is sufficient to produce 8,439,441 pounds of thrust.

A single stage vehicle carrying 4,167,770 lbs of inert propellant, energized by laser energy, ejecting it at 20,733 mph, with 230,765 pounds of inert weight, can carry 2,194,779 pounds into low Earth orbit!

The vehicle deploys a payload on orbit, re-enters the atmosphere and is ready for re-launch within 2 hours. Thus a single launcher may be capable of placing 24 million pounds into orbit every single day.

The conversion of three launchers of seven elements each with twenty one single element launchers, provides the ability to put up 252 payloads totaling 500 million pounds each day.

PHOTONIC THRUSTER

Payloads may be deployed to the asteroids or any other body in the solar system using photonic thruster technology.

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct...80642063,d.dGc

Allocating 330 pounds for an astronaut capable of traveling anywhere in the solar system using suspended animation

http://labs.fhcrc.org/roth/

500 million pounds per day translates to 1.51 million people per day.

Starting today, we reduce human numbers to 569 million by 2027.

2014 7,120
2015 6,650
2016 6,174
2017 5,693
2018 5,206
2019 4,714
2020 4,216
2021 3,713
2022 3,204
2023 2,689
2024 2,168
2025 1,641
2026 1,108
2027 569

In article ,
says...
Yeah. This is one of those, "even if they fail, they're likely to be
successful on their current pricing merits"
If they succeed the game gets even more tilted in their favor.

I started counting F9 flights vs. Atlas V/Delta IV flights and F9 is flying
at a decent rate comparatively.

I can see it becoming a bigger and bigger threat fairly quickly.


They have recently made changes to their engine manufacturing area in
order to increase production for 2015, so even without reuse, they
should be in a good position to increase the flight rate. Add to that
their plans to increase launch sites from two to four and the long term
looks good, even without reuse. Even expending all of the Falcon Heavy
stages, they're advertising twice the payload for 1/3 of the cost of a
Delta IV Heavy launch. That will be devastating to the existing
expendable "heavy" launch vehicle market.

Optimistically, if they can reuse the three booster/core stages on a
Falcon Heavy flight, then they're reusing 27 out of 28 engines. If they
can achieve this, expending the upper stage really won't matter as
they'll be able to drop their costs so far below the existing
competition that they will dominate the "heavy" launch market.

Dominating the launch market would mean a very steady stream of income
in order to finance the R&D of their large methane engine and the large
launch vehicle to use it. An operational reusable methane/LOX "super
heavy" launch vehicle would make SLS look like an absolute dinosaur. If
this happens, I'd say that would be the final nail in the coffin for
SLS.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

In article ,
says...

With the reusable Falcon 9 tests, i.e., Grasshopper tests, in Texas, SpaceX
has alreadyshown its engines are reusable albeit with only 1 to 3 engines.
With 9 engines there will be probably more refurbishment time and cost but
the reusability of the engines has already been demonstrated.

The X-33 was to test 3 key technologies for the proposed SSTO VentureStar:
conformal composite tanks, metallic shingle thermal protection, and
aerospike engines. Both the metallic shingles and aerospike were
successfully tested in ground tests. The failure occurred with the conformal
composite tanks. But the key point is the composite (lightweight) tanks
would only be needed for a SSTO. If you only wanted the vehicle to serve as
a first stage the mass ratio did not need to be nearly as great and metallic
tanks would work just fine.
Since the X-33 was viewed as only a test vehicle for a SSTO, not having
composite tanks doomed it for that purpose. But the point is just giving it
metal tanks would give it reusable first stage capability and could cut the
cost to space to the same extent as the reusable Falcon 9 first stage.

Only if you ignore development costs. Look at how high the X-33
development costs were and note they did not even fly. Add to that the
estimated costs for aluminum/lithium tanks (proposed by Lockheed to
bring X-33 up to flight worthy status) and you're well over what it has
cost SpaceX for Falcon 9.

And even if you ignore development costs, you'd need an accurate
estimate of reoccurring costs for both an operational X-33 style first
stage versus an operational Falcon 9R first stage. Given the simplicity
of Falcon 9R compared to an X-33 style stage, I'd guess that operational
costs will still be lower for X-33.

And this is ignoring the huge elephant in the room. SpaceX is solving
the fly back performance penalty for Falcon 9R by using a floating
landing pad in the Atlantic ocean. An X-33 style first stage launched
from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base or KSC would face a similar problem,
but I think that a floating runway would be quite impractical. So an X-
33 style first stage would have to live with the full payload penalty of
gliding back to KSC for a landing on the former space shuttle runway.
Perhaps it would not incur much of a fuel/oxidizer penalty, other than a
propulsive turn-around like Falcon 9R performs, but the devil would be
in the details.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...
Yeah. This is one of those, "even if they fail, they're likely to be
successful on their current pricing merits"
If they succeed the game gets even more tilted in their favor.

I started counting F9 flights vs. Atlas V/Delta IV flights and F9 is
flying
at a decent rate comparatively.

I can see it becoming a bigger and bigger threat fairly quickly.


They have recently made changes to their engine manufacturing area in
order to increase production for 2015, so even without reuse, they
should be in a good position to increase the flight rate. Add to that
their plans to increase launch sites from two to four and the long term
looks good, even without reuse. Even expending all of the Falcon Heavy
stages, they're advertising twice the payload for 1/3 of the cost of a
Delta IV Heavy launch. That will be devastating to the existing
expendable "heavy" launch vehicle market.

Yeah expect more fast footwork from the dinosaurs as they try legal remedies
to keep SpaceX out of the market as much as they can.

They'll ultimately fail though since SpaceX will be wining on price, and I
suspect at this flight-rate, soon showing similar or better reliability
numbers. (that's still the one are I think SpaceX could fail, if they have a
string of failures, people will point to that and say, "see, this really is
rocket science, leave it to the big boys". But I really don't see that
happening.


Optimistically, if they can reuse the three booster/core stages on a
Falcon Heavy flight, then they're reusing 27 out of 28 engines. If they
can achieve this, expending the upper stage really won't matter as
they'll be able to drop their costs so far below the existing
competition that they will dominate the "heavy" launch market.

Dominating the launch market would mean a very steady stream of income
in order to finance the R&D of their large methane engine and the large
launch vehicle to use it. An operational reusable methane/LOX "super
heavy" launch vehicle would make SLS look like an absolute dinosaur. If
this happens, I'd say that would be the final nail in the coffin for
SLS.

I think the more important thing is they'll create a true "super-heavy"
market.
A big part of Saturn V's problem was no one could justify spending that much
on any single payload.
And we're seeing this on the SLS manifest, it costs so much it has an
extremely low flight rate and no one is really planning many missions for it
because it's doubtful they'd ever get the budget approved.

Heck, right now, even if you figure in parasitic payload costs, and did
assembly on-orbit, Falcon 9 can most likely beat SLS on price.
Figure Falcon 9R and it's a no-brainer. Figure some sort of Falcon
Superheavy and Mars, here we come!


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net