#21
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SpaceX pricing
JF Mezei wrote:
On 2018-02-17 10:03, Fred J. McCall wrote: As long as there is money in the budget to support SLS NASA can use some of that money to exercise the option on the existing contract. My original assertion was that Congress could kill SLS before NASA goes to confirm actual order for building of new SSMEs. Your response was that the money had already been allcated/gartanteed and that NASA would get the new engines. I said no such thing. Have you learned a new skill of not being able to read to go with your usual skill of not being able to remember, Mayfly? The text of the press releases confirm that while funding of just over 1 billion was made to allow Rocketdyne to rebuild the tooling, fine tune contruction to reduce costs and refurb the 16 SSMEs into RL25 engines, it clearly states that production of totally new engines will be on separate contract. Uh, no. Again, learn the difference between a 'new contract' and a 'contract action on an existing contract'. Think of it as a firm order for 0 engines, with option for 6 more. The firm order pays for design/improvements/tooling. But to convert the options, you need a new contract and negitiate price at that point based on all the cost reductiosn Rocketdyne will have been able to make during first phase. No, you don't. If the current contract includes an option for 6 (actually 7) engines you don't need a new contract to exercise that option. You just need to apply funding to that line. -- "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 |
#22
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SpaceX pricing
"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
... In article , says... "Jeff Findley" wrote in message ... Of course, the Challenger disaster put an end to that practice and actually made it illegal for NASA to sell commercial launches anymore. That was the start of opening up the commercial markets in the US. Unfortunately the USAF decided it wanted control and the original EELV was born, leaving us with ULA. In other words, the USAF "intervention" for national security reasons prolonged the practice of the US Government subsidizing the US launch industry, keeping the real costs high and actually hurting the US launch industry in the long run. I'll admit, I initially, naively thought the decision to not allow commercial flights was a mistake. Now looking back, I think it was the right move. Of course as you say, the original EELV wasn't much of an improvement. And heck for a while the Titan IV made the shuttle look good Actually, Titan IV total program costs $17.6B divided by 39 flights gives us $450 million. Using that same method gives the shuttle a per flight cost of $1.45 billion. So while many people pointed at Titan IV as being more expensive than the space shuttle, it wasn't really true. Cite: http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/.../99titaniv.pdf I think we're comparing apples to pears here. Yes, taking program cost is a valid way of looking at things. That said, at the time when both were flying the quoted prices for additional Titan IV costs were routinely quoted higher than what NASA was quoted for additional shuttle flights. Again, goes back to the argument that I stand by, that ultimately, the incremental costs of the shuttle were in fact fairly low. It was pretty much always the fixed costs that killed it. With Titan IV, it appears more that the fixed costs were more reasonable, but the incremental costs were much higher. One hope I have now is that Falcon Heavy flies enough to convince Congress to put the nail in the coffin for SLS and redirect that money elsewhere. Not likely, yet. I'm sure there is enough inertia to keep it going until first flight, which is now 3 years away. The next flight will be crewed (with a new *untested* upper stage) and is 6 years away. Yeah, I suspect the first flight will still fly. We'll see about the crewed flight. Back to economics... The unfortunate thing is that ULA is *still* receiving a $1 billion a year subsidy each year for "launch readiness". Thankfully, it will phase out in 2019 and 2020 which will finally level the playing field. That's the remaining legacy of the US Government being in charge of the launch vehicle business and it's still not gone. Ugh. Agreed Jeff -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net IT Disaster Response - https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/ |
#24
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SpaceX pricing
JF Mezei wrote:
On 2018-02-20 06:34, Jeff Findley wrote: The shuttle was a magnificent machine, but it was expensive as hell and held NASA back with its high fixed costs. Considering how SpaceX is revolutionizing pricing by orders of magnitude because it can re-use stages, You left out a word. CHEAPLY. it boggles the mind that the Shuttle couldn't be competitive. Not really. The sheer volume of work required to 'reuse' a Shuttle killed it. That volume of work required a large 'standing army', all of whom had to be paid (whether you were flying or not). From a cheap turn-around point of view, where did the shuttle lose? Was it the cost of turning around SRBs ? new ET for every flights ? Hypergolics in the orbiter? tiles ? or the SSMEs ? (if answer is "all" which were substantial? All but "hypergolics in the orbiter". They didn't reuse SRBs. They reused CASINGS, which was actually more expensive (2x or more) than if they had just thrown them away. The tanks ran around $75 million each, so an external tank cost as much as a Falcon 9. The tiles were prone to damage and had to be inspected and repaired after every use (standing army). The SSMEs (part of the orbiter) essentially required a complete rebuild early in the program (more standing army). That got somewhat better later in the program, but they were always high strung engines that pushed performance. -- "Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar territory." --G. Behn |
#25
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#26
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SpaceX pricing
"JF Mezei" wrote in message ...
On 2018-02-20 06:34, Jeff Findley wrote: The shuttle was a magnificent machine, but it was expensive as hell and held NASA back with its high fixed costs. Considering how SpaceX is revolutionizing pricing by orders of magnitude because it can re-use stages, it boggles the mind that the Shuttle couldn't be competitive. From a cheap turn-around point of view, where did the shuttle lose? Was it the cost of turning around SRBs ? new ET for every flights ? Hypergolics in the orbiter? tiles ? or the SSMEs ? (if answer is "all" which were substantial? Jeff gives a pretty decent answer. It really comes down to: "It wasn't designed to be cheap to fly. It was designed to be cheap build." For example, boosters that were liquid fueled and used perhaps the proven F-1 and could be refurbished at the Cape. (and probably would have prevented Challenger). Even if you ignore other factors, not having to ship boosters 2/3rds of the way across the country and back would save you money. Instead of landing like the Falcon 9, most likely, they'd have been fly-back and landed on the shuttle runway. The ET was probably "cost effective". Moving away from hypergolics would have had a different effect. One of the issues with hypergolics is that during any processing you had to basically lock down the shuttle processing facility. This really screws with your ability to get work done. Remove that issue and you can process the shuttle faster. Process faster, means fly faster. Settle for a lighter/smaller shuttle. This gives you other options for the heat shield. Design for better processing of on-board items. Make everything electronic (and mechanical) easier to remove and services. Adds some mass for connectors, but again, speeds up processing. Basically design it so you really CAN refly every 2 weeks. Or even every 4 weeks. With 3 shuttles available, every 4 weeks gives you 36 flights a year (as opposed to 9-12). Now, you might still have the same standing army (but my suspicion is if you had built in reusability from the beginning you could cut that in 1/2.). But spread over 3x as many flights. So even if total fixed costs remained the same, you'd be looking at an incremental cost of about $100M or, if you prefer Jeff's costing over the cost of the program, under $500M (vs the close to $1.5B/flight). Basically, THIS is what you want the Orbital Processing Facility to look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critic...singVision.jpg Not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critic...singActual.jpg Basically though, too much politics. This was sort of inevitable given the way NASA was headed (and partly conceived). A private investor, like Musk, doesn't need to spread the pork around. He's going to spend energy on designing the cheapest to fly system he can. NASA is going to spend energy on making the pork is spread. -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net IT Disaster Response - https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/ |
#27
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"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:
"JF Mezei" wrote in message ... On 2018-02-20 06:34, Jeff Findley wrote: The shuttle was a magnificent machine, but it was expensive as hell and held NASA back with its high fixed costs. Considering how SpaceX is revolutionizing pricing by orders of magnitude because it can re-use stages, it boggles the mind that the Shuttle couldn't be competitive. From a cheap turn-around point of view, where did the shuttle lose? Was it the cost of turning around SRBs ? new ET for every flights ? Hypergolics in the orbiter? tiles ? or the SSMEs ? (if answer is "all" which were substantial? Jeff gives a pretty decent answer. It really comes down to: "It wasn't designed to be cheap to fly. It was designed to be cheap build." For example, boosters that were liquid fueled and used perhaps the proven F-1 and could be refurbished at the Cape. (and probably would have prevented Challenger). It probably would have prevented Columbia, too, since the foam shedding that was the root cause of that accident was primarily because of the high vibration solid boosters. -- "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden |
#28
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On 2/21/2018 11:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote:
It probably would have prevented Columbia, too, since the foam shedding that was the root cause of that accident was primarily because of the high vibration solid boosters. That's a very interesting observation I had not considered. You might be onto something there Fred. Dave |
#29
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On 2/22/2018 11:45 PM, David Spain wrote:
On 2/21/2018 11:26 PM, Fred J. McCall wrote: It probably would have prevented Columbia, too, since the foam shedding that was the root cause of that accident was primarily because of the high vibration solid boosters. That's a very interesting observation I had not considered. You might be onto something there Fred. Dave OTOH I think we are done with crew vehicles not at the top of the "stack" for a long time, unless that stack is air-breathing. Avoids this issue altogether. Dave |
#30
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SpaceX pricing
"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message
... "Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote: "JF Mezei" wrote in message ... On 2018-02-20 06:34, Jeff Findley wrote: The shuttle was a magnificent machine, but it was expensive as hell and held NASA back with its high fixed costs. Considering how SpaceX is revolutionizing pricing by orders of magnitude because it can re-use stages, it boggles the mind that the Shuttle couldn't be competitive. From a cheap turn-around point of view, where did the shuttle lose? Was it the cost of turning around SRBs ? new ET for every flights ? Hypergolics in the orbiter? tiles ? or the SSMEs ? (if answer is "all" which were substantial? Jeff gives a pretty decent answer. It really comes down to: "It wasn't designed to be cheap to fly. It was designed to be cheap build." For example, boosters that were liquid fueled and used perhaps the proven F-1 and could be refurbished at the Cape. (and probably would have prevented Challenger). It probably would have prevented Columbia, too, since the foam shedding that was the root cause of that accident was primarily because of the high vibration solid boosters. I'd given that some thought, but didn't want to add that as it's a little harder to draw a direct correlation. But that said, I suspect you're right. -- Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/ CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net IT Disaster Response - https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Resp...dp/1484221834/ |
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