|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#36
|
|||
|
|||
RD-180 relplacement
Jeff Findley wrote:
In article . com, says... On 2017-05-15 14:09, Fred J. McCall wrote: percentage of the cost basis of the engine. For rockets the cost of fuel is almost irrelevant to the cost of operation, so trying to compare to aircraft is comparing apples and aardvarks. The numbers given by Elon Murk show cost of fuel is minimal compared to cost of new rocket. However, in an environment where re-use becomes common, cost of turn around (incl engine check/maintennce) and cost of fuel become the big ticket items, just as is the case for commercial aircraft. We're a long, long way from fuel costs being an issue. The first Falcon 9 first stage to refly cost SpaceX refurbishment costs less than half the cost of building a new stage. As far as I know they didn't say exactly how much, but we can guess if it was really 1/4 the cost they would have said 1/4 instead of 1/2. At any rate, fuel is less than 1% of launch costs, so refurbishment costs are still the lion's share of reflight costs. External estimates in the past have put the cost of reusing the stage at around 10% of the cost of the original stage. That feels high to me. If you judge by what Musk has put forward for ITS operation, reusing the booster costs about 0.1% of the original cost. This ranges up to 5% for the actual spacecraft (2nd stage). He also expects to get 1,000 launches out of the booster. The spacecraft gets around a dozen relaunches, so that 5% figure may be about right for Falcon stages. -- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|