A Space & astronomy forum. SpaceBanter.com

Go Back   Home » SpaceBanter.com forum » Space Science » Policy
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Another date set for Falcon 9 Heavy



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #11  
Old March 18th 16, 09:11 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Greg \(Strider\) Moore
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 752
Default Another date set for Falcon 9 Heavy

"Rick Jones" wrote in message ...

bob haller wrote:
now what could we put in orbit thats massive enough to make a high
flight rate affordable?


besides dont forget SLS cost is just the booster......... what sort
of payload would be worth it


Just a peanut-gallery guess, but a big, honking solar power satellite
is the first and only thing which comes to mind.


"Maybe". But there's a lot of economic reasons against pretty much any sort
of SPS (basically while you lose a lot of hours of sunshine here on earth,
driving a truck up and fixing deploying and fixing your solar panels is
helluva a lot cheaper than doing so at GEO.

I think if we had a robust Mars program and had to build something like
Hermes from The Martian, then, it might make sense to loft large single
payloads.

But even then, I suspect multiple Falcon 9 launches would be cheaper.



rick jones


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

  #12  
Old March 19th 16, 12:30 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Niels Jørgen Kruse[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default Another date set for Falcon 9 Heavy

Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:

"Maybe". But there's a lot of economic reasons against pretty much any sort
of SPS (basically while you lose a lot of hours of sunshine here on earth,
driving a truck up and fixing deploying and fixing your solar panels is
helluva a lot cheaper than doing so at GEO.


Solar panels are getting so cheap that it makes sense to underspec the
inverters and live with a flattopped power curve.

--
Mvh./Regards, Niels Jørgen Kruse, Vanløse, Denmark
  #13  
Old March 20th 16, 06:11 AM posted to sci.space.policy
William Mook[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,840
Default Another date set for Falcon 9 Heavy

The SLS Block 2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_...-_Post_CDR.jpg

puts 130 metric tons into LEO.

The 30.5-meter (100 ft) diameter balloon was made of 0.5-mil-thick (12.7 µm) metalized 0.2-micrometre-thick (0.00787-mil) biaxially oriented PET film ("Mylar") material. Echo 1A was easily visible to the unaided eye over most of the Earth. The spacecraft was nicknamed a 'satelloon' by those involved in the project, as a portmanteau of satellite-balloon.

It had a total mass of 180 kilograms (397 lb).

Echo 1A was originally loosely estimated to survive until soon after its fourth dip into the atmosphere in July 1963 but possibly until 1964 or beyond.. It ended up living much longer than these estimates and reentered Earth's atmosphere, burning up on May 24, 1968.

Echo 2 was a 41.1-meter-diameter (135 ft) balloon. Echo 2 used an improved inflation system to improve the balloon's smoothness and sphericity. It was launched January 25, 1964, on a Thor Agena rocket.

Instrumentation included a beacon telemetry system that provided a tracking signal, monitored spacecraft skin temperature between -120 and +16 °C (-184 and 61 °F), and measured the internal pressure of the spacecraft between 0.00005 mm of mercury and 0.5 mm of mercury, especially during the initial inflation stages. The system consisted of two beacon assemblies powered by solar cell panels and had a minimum power output of 45 mW at 136.02 MHz and 136.17 MHz.

In addition to the passive communications experiments, it was used to investigate the dynamics of large spacecraft and for global geometric geodesy.

Echo 2, being larger than Echo 1A and also orbiting in a near polar orbit, was conspicuously visible to the unaided eye over all of the Earth. Echo 2 reentered Earth's atmosphere and burned up on June 7, 1969.

Unlike Echo 1, Echo 2's skin was rigidizable, and the balloon was capable of maintaining its shape without a constant internal pressure. This removed the requirement for a long term supply of inflation gas, and meant that the balloon could easily survive strikes from micrometeoroids. The balloon was constructed from "a 0.35mil (9µm) thick mylar film sandwiched between two layers of 0.18 mil (4.5µm) thick aluminum foil and bonded together." The balloon was inflated to such a level as required to slightly plastically deform the metal layers of the laminate, while leaving the polymer in the elastic range. This resulted in a rigid and very smooth spherical shell.

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/84399
http://www.lgarde.com/assets/content...ns/scaling.pdf
http://www.travisdeyle.com/files/pub..._TermPaper.pdf

https://goo.gl/m1I4Oi

At 1600x solar intensity, using solar pumped multi-spectral lasers, attains 62 grams per square meter of sunlight. This is 22,064 Watts/kg of payload..

At this specific output the solar collector intercepts 2,868.3 MW of power and the size of the solar collector is 1,634 meters - a little over a mile across. 2,150 MW of useful power is available, and 150 MW is used by the spacecraft itself, and the ground stations.

A station placed in a 1,688 km high orbit with a 77 degree inclination, will be visible 3.5 hours before sunrise or sunset, until 3.5 hours after sunrise or sunset. Charging takes place during a 35 minute period when the satellite is high in the sky, once every 12 hours - for any spot on Earth!

A 2,000 MW beam delivering energy for 30 minutes every 12 hours, delivers 2 million kWh per day. With 1 million kWh storage and 0.1 kWh/kg

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...er_lithium_ion

We need 10,000 tons of batteries for each 83 MW (average, 2,000 MW peak) station. There are 24 stations served around the planet. At 8cents per kWh each ground station is worth $794 million when funded by a green bond, and the collection of 24 ground stations with a single power satellite in SSO is worth $19 billion. Well worth the $500 million launch cost, and the $500 million. At $0.47 per Wh a 1 million kWh battery pack costs $470 million each at today's prices. Each half billion dollars adds $0.04 per kWh to thecost.

Using solar powered, or laser powered, ion rockets in Low Earth Orbit, payloads may be boosted to GEO in a 28 degree orbital plane, along a transfer orbit, and then circularised at altitude, and the orbit inclination tilted to zero degrees.

So, a satellite in Low Earth orbit moves at 7.9 km/sec. To attain a transfer orbit requires it increase its speed by 2.52 km/sec achieving 10.42 km/sec. When it attains geosynchronous altitude, 35,786 km 5 hrs and 14 minutes later, its speed is slowed to 0.20 km/sec but must attain 0.39 km/sec to stay at that altitude. It must also be directed along the equator, with no north/south component. However when it arrives it is moving at 0.20 km/sec along its 28 degree path, and that means 0.1766 km/sec is moving along the equator, and 0.0939 km/sec is moving perpendicular to the equator. To get the velocity vector to move along the equator at 0.39 km/sec means that 0.2134 km/sec must be added to the equatorial velocity and 0.0939 km/sec must be subtracted from the north/south component. A total delta vee of 0.2332 km/sec directed 51.74 degrees away from the direction of travel. A total of 2.76 km/sec delta vee to go from LEO at 28 degrees to GEO at 0 degrees.

To impart 2.76 km/sec to the payload using a 8.2 km/sec exhaust speed requires that 28.23% of the mass at LEO be propellant. So for a 130 ton satellite 51.14 tons must be propellant. About what a Falcon Heavy could lift.

The added cost of the propellant/solar ion stage, of say $125 million ($60 million for launch, $65 million for the stage itself) would more than pay for itself by cutting out nearly all of the batteries needed in the SSO test system. Here you'd save $470 million per ground station, $11.28 billion per satellite.

Three Falcon Heavy Launches, at $61 million each, including one solar pumped ion stage, would cost less than the $500 million SLS cost.

The advantage of a GEO based solar power satellite is that you get 1368 Watts of power 24/7 with rare exceptions that occur only twice per year for a few minutes. You can get it at a competitive price. You can also get it in adequate quantity - a reliable renewable. 3,312 satellites of this capacity provide all the electrical power currently provided by coal fired power plants. One every 6.52 arc minutes around the equator. 80 kilometer separation between each of the 1.6 km diameter stations.

With one launch every eight hours (one SLS, one SpaceX Mars Colonial Transport, one Chinese SLS equivalent) we can put up 3,312 satellites in 1,104 days. A little over three years. In that time we can improve launch rates, reliability, and reduce costs. This sets the stage for colonisation of mars, the moon and the asteroids.

6.6 TW operating continuously around the world, (replacing coal fired stations) and selling at $0.08 per kWh, generates $4.628 trillion per year. At 25% retained revenue by the launch providers, $1 trillion per year is available to expand upon the experience of these providers to help build the off world colonies that will reduce human numbers on Earth.

As the number of humans decline on Earth, the use of non-renewable fuels decline, and more reliance on renewable beamed power is made.





  #14  
Old April 5th 16, 12:40 AM posted to sci.space.policy
Rick Jones[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 106
Default Another date set for Falcon 9 Heavy

Fred J. McCall wrote:
Rick Jones wrote:
Just a peanut-gallery guess, but a big, honking solar power
satellite is the first and only thing which comes to mind.


Even that's not worth it. It's still cheaper to build them down
here.


The almost (shy 3 minutes?) 24 hour sunlight at GEO is a nice draw,
though I suppose that even with storage enough for 24 hour supply it
is still cheaper to do terrestrially.

rick jones
--
I don't interest myself in "why." I think more often in terms of
"when," sometimes "where;" always "how much." - Joubert
these opinions are mine, all mine; HPE might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hpe.com but NOT BOTH...
  #15  
Old April 10th 16, 07:43 AM posted to sci.space.policy
William Mook[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,840
Default Another date set for Falcon 9 Heavy

On Tuesday, April 5, 2016 at 11:47:24 AM UTC+12, Rick Jones wrote:
Fred J. McCall wrote:
Rick Jones wrote:
Just a peanut-gallery guess, but a big, honking solar power
satellite is the first and only thing which comes to mind.


Even that's not worth it. It's still cheaper to build them down
here.


Thin film inflatable optics

A reflective sphere that's transparent on one hemisphere and reflective on another, when oriented toward the sun, focuses the sun in a confocal way. By molding small ridges into the reflective hemisphere, sunlight can be brought to a precise focus.

This provides the ability to concentrate sunlight to over 20,000x its ambient intensity at Earth. So, a 30.5 meter diameter concentrator can focus light on to a 216 mm diameter wafer that efficiently converts the beam to laser energy and transmits it using conjugate optical techniques to a receiver..

Operating at 500 nm wavelengths a 216 mm diameter objective can efficiently beam energy to another 216 mm diameter objective a distance of 69.53 km.

Concentrating 1600x ambient increases the mass of the thin disk laser and increases broadcast range. At 1600x intensity sunlight is focused to a spot 762.5 mm in diameter and beams to a similarly sized spot 865.34 km distant.

Systems 1,000 m in diameter have been contemplated that efficiently beam energy to Earth from GEO to receivers 762.5 mm in diameter.

A kg covers 16 sq meters in the best designs I've seen for space applications.

Echo satellite comprised of a 30.5-metre (100 ft) diameter balloon was made of 0.5-mil-thick (12.7 µm) metalized 0.2-micrometre-thick (0.00787-mil) biaxially oriented PET film ("Mylar") material, that was 99.8% reflective. The sphere itself was 94.26 kg total mass. The entire satellite, including inflation hardware, massed 180 kg. This is 16.2 m2 per kg of mass. 4.05 m2 per kg of projected area.

GBO film is made of layered birefringent PET film that efficiently reflects sunlight with 99.99% efficiency with 0.2 micrometer thick PET film. A 30..5 m diameter ball of this material is 0.9 kg! Now PET film that does not have birefringence reflectivity built into it, masses the same and is perfectly transparent. With MEMS based systems, ultra low pressure gas, and other details this provides over 64.8 m2 per kg of mass. This is 16.2 m2 per square meter of area normal to the sun using stable spherical configurations..

Similarly sized systems on Earth, must operate at 2 bar and be 150 microns thick. So, a 30.5 m diameter sphere is 625 kg of material. 36,248 kg of pressurised air. Another 625 kg of hardware to support it. 1250 kg at $1.50 per kg is $1875 air is nearly free just the cost of pressurisation. Electronics, tracking and other hardware add another $125 - for $2,000 per unit..

The system on orbit masses 46.5 kg overall and at $150 per kg (100x the cost of a terrestrial unit) it costs $697.50 to build. This cost compares favourably with other nanosatellites.

A Falcon Heavy costing $90 million and reusable say 100 times, cost $900,000 for the cost of the rocket and say another $1.1 million for the cost of the propellant and recovery operations. Say $2,000,000 - per launch. 53 metric tons divided by 46.5 kg for the satellite described above, means 1140 of these devices may be orbited at once. Dividing this figure into the $2,000,000 cost is $175.43 A total cost of $872.93 per satellite.

On orbit 999,460 Watts of sunlight are intercepted 24/7 and converted with near perfect efficiency. This nets 8.761 million kWh. $1.57 million per year when sold at $0.18 per kWh

On Earth 730,620 Watts of sunlight are intercepted at the surface for 4 hours out of every 24 hours. 121,770 Watts on average. $193,000 per year when sold at $0.18 per kWh.

Both are tremendously profitable - $1.57 million per year for $873 invested for the orbital system. $193,000 per year earned for each $2,000 invested in the terrestrial system. Now, if the systems turn out to be 70% efficient overall, we merely multiply the revenue figures by this factor. $1 million and $135,000 respectively. We have achieved 82% efficiency in the lab and can go higher. Others have reported similar figures.

Now when we look at taking power from sunny regions and transmitting them to cloudy regions via optical fiber, or open air transmission, we can match or do better than the cost of wired transmission from similar installations like hydroelectric dams. However, as in the case of the generator above, we do far far better beaming energy directly to where its needed from space..

The almost (shy 3 minutes?) 24 hour sunlight at GEO is a nice draw,
though I suppose that even with storage enough for 24 hour supply it
is still cheaper to do terrestrially.


No, if you have boosters that you can use 100x or more, and use best practices, you can make terrestrial solar very cheaply, and space solar astoundingly cheaply. There's no contest once launch costs are reduced by a factor of 50 or so.

Space based solar power
https://vimeo.com/37102557

Terrestrial solar power
https://vimeo.com/52213948


rick jones
--
I don't interest myself in "why." I think more often in terms of
"when," sometimes "where;" always "how much." - Joubert
these opinions are mine, all mine; HPE might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hpe.com but NOT BOTH...

  #16  
Old April 17th 16, 12:49 AM posted to sci.space.policy
William Mook[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 3,840
Default Another date set for Falcon 9 Heavy

On Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 7:32:55 AM UTC+13, Greg (Strider) Moore wrote:
"JF Mezei" wrote in message
b.com...

On 2016-03-14 10:15, bob haller wrote:

SLS has had endless delays, and cost a billion dollars per flight just
for the booster.



In fairness, if SLS were to be productized, and disposable SSMEs built
in production line, wouldn't the cost per launch come down considerably
? Would it go below Space Shuttle costs or still be higher ?


No idea, but sort of irrelevant in a sense. The cost per seat of a 747 is
pretty low but if you only have 100 passengers per flight, it's going to
cost a lot no matter what.

That's a big part of the SLS problem. Even if the cost per kg comes down,
it's far too large right now for the payloads out there and there's no real
evidence that there's a big market for payloads that large any time soon.



Yes, as it stands, SLS has finite number of engines it can destroy, and
the development costs for just a couple of token flights make each
flight ridiculously expensive.

Just wondering what those costs would become if SLS actually had a long
term high frequency use.



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



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/tr...ax-ticket.html

Ticket Costs:

30.00% - staff costs - including maintenance
29.42% - fuel costs (including fuel taxes)
21.97% - taxes
10.00% - aircraft leases (including corporate debt and interest)
8.00% - sales and marketing
0.61% - profit

Now, with a structure fraction of 7% and a cost of $1,500 per kg for vehicle construction, with a LOX/LNG engine with a 3.65 km/sec exhaust speed, and $0.16 per kg for LOX and LNG -

500,000 kg TSTO vehicle with 21,211 kg payload;

Payload: 21,211 kg
Inert: 1,596 kg $2,394,000 - used: 1x (aeroshell and satellite launch hardware)

Propellant: 76,506 kg $12,241
Inert: 7,475 kg - $11,212,500 - used: 100x ($112,125)

Propellant: 358,212 kg - $57,314
Inert: 35,000 kg - $52,500,000 - used: 150x ($350,000)


This is a total build cost of $66.1 million and a total fuel cost of $69,555 - actual out of pocket costs related to launch operations likely equal no more than 10x fuel costs $695,550 - a with a large number of lanch operations could fall to $70,000 or so.

Now, with the stated goals of SpaceX over the years, costs could drop to $3..63 million per launch. $171 per kg!! $57 per kg for CAPEX and leases, $57 per kg for fuel costs and $57 per kg for operations costs.

With full recovery and 1,000 reuses and lower staff costs, this could drop to $11,212.5 for the upper stage, $2,394 for the aeroshell - assuming full recovery and reuse, and $52,500 for the first stage. $66,100 per launch for hardware and $69,555 for fuel costs and $70,000 for operations cost - a total of $210,000 for 21,000 kg - or $10 per kg.

Small aircraft in winter assum 98 kg per passenger which includes an 11 kg luggage allowance.

Long duration mechanical counter pressure spacesuits, that have active materials and are very light weight, and also include MEMS based life support

http://news.mit.edu/2014/second-skin-spacesuits-0918
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...0120009158.pdf
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/s.../mems-in-space

Dava Newman says first generation suits will mass 54 kg and will likely fall to half that figure in a few years to 27 kg. A total of 125 kg per person. Adding another 75 kg per person for vehicle inert mass, obtains 200 kg overall.

Spacesuit purchase at $1,500 per kg runs from $81,000 for early models to $40,500 for later models. Large scale production will reduce this figure to $8,000 to $4,000 for a suit. Suit rentals could be 5% this figure - $4,000 to $2,000 per trip in early days, dropping to $400 to $200 per trip in later days. Cost of tickets to the operator is $34,200 per person, rising to $38,200 per person for a $4,000 suit and consumables charge and 106 persons per launch.

Larger sized vehicles consisting of essentially three Falcon first stage boosters, drop the personnell operations and launch costs per trip by a factor of 3 on a per kg basis from $57 per kg to $19 per kg - reducing costs from $171 per kg to $133 per kg.

When Elon Musk announced he was taking orders for the Tesla S, at $35,000 to start, he quickly sold $15 billion of vehicles.

http://www.thedrive.com/new-cars/286...orders-already

The Falcon Heavy variant burning LOX/LNG can project 20 metric tons on a trans lunar trajectory. A 20 ton payload burning LOX/LNG on a trans lunar trajectory, requires 1.28 km/sec to enter low lunar orbit and then return to Earth. This means that of the 20,000 kg going to the moon, 7442 kg must be LOX/LNG in cryogenic tanks. A useful load of 12,558 kg - means that 63 persons can go to orbit the moon.

Now a rocket belt can land a person on the moon and retrieve them.

http://www.wired.com/2013/07/lunar-flying-units-1969/
http://rocketbelt.nl/pogos/nasa-lunar-transport

With a 150 kg payload - and a 7% inert fraction - we can see that a 253 kg propellant per passenger along with a 30 kg rig, can be used to take an astronaut from Low Lunar Orbit, to any point on the lunar surface, and back.

With seven rigs, totalling 210 kg we can send 27 people to the vicinity of the moon, land them at 27 locations and return them to orbit, before returning to Earth, starting with 20,000 kg in a trans-lunar trajectory from Earth.


Launch costs for the larger system is $7.98 million. At $0.16 per kg for 7442 kg of propellant we have $1,191 for added propellant. Each rocket belt it $45,000 and seven of them is $315,000. With 1,000 reuses, this is $315 per use. WIth 253 kg of propellant at $0.16 this is $41 for the landing and return. $356 per landing. Divided by 27 persons this is $310,000 per trip to the moon landing on the surface and return!

It seems to me if Musk developed a system like this, and offered trips to the moon for $600,000 - he would sell out three years production at one trip per week. A total of $2.53 billion.

$0.6 milion x 52 per year x 3 years x 27 persons per trip = 4,212 x $0.06 million = $2.53 billion

17% of sales of the Tesla Model S. If SpaceX were to match Carnival Cruise lines $15.9 billion in sales each year, at $0.4 million per passenger they'd need 38,250 passengers per year, and at 27 persons per trip would launch 1417 rockets per year. One every 6.2 hours. A fleet of four resuable boosters and 55 lunar ships would be needed to sustain this rate of sales.

 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Could Delta IV Heavy use the same technique as Falcon Heavy Alan Erskine[_3_] Space Shuttle 1 May 20th 11 07:56 AM
Falcon Heavy David Spain Policy 8 April 12th 11 08:49 PM
Falcon Heavy Snidely Space Shuttle 2 April 12th 11 08:49 PM
Falcon 9/Dragon shoot for Oct 23 launch date Pat Flannery Policy 6 September 3rd 10 11:43 AM
SpaceX still mum on Falcon 9 launch date Dr J R Stockton[_64_] Policy 4 April 3rd 10 11:07 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 11:13 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 SpaceBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.