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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 |
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On Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 2:26:47 PM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote:
r"Scott M. Kozel" wrote: On Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 8:42:25 AM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: Three separate heavy lift vehicles in development that would be capable of taking men to the Moon or Mars. Actually only one 'program'. And two commercial efforts. I don't really understand that. Last time one vehicle was developed and they built 16 of them and had programs in place to use them within a reasonable period of time, that provided economies of scale and focus to do the program. It was a national scale program and accomplished great things. Last time we had a single government program that spent money like water, made the trip, and then had no follow-on, which is why we can't get beyond LEO anymore. The current approach doesn't make sense; too many vehicle types in development and no real focus toward building enough of them to have an actual program. The 'government program' (how we did Apollo) is the high priced spread. It's true that it makes no sense because it has no real goal (it changes with every President) and is too expensive to fly. The other two efforts are commercial efforts, make more sense, spend a lot less money, and will be far cheaper to fly. If we did it the old way, we would ONLY have SLS, Musk and Bezos would keep their money, and we'd get another 'flags and footprints' mission to somewhere at best. What kind of commercial effort for such a vehicle and program could provide the tens of billions of dollars in private capital to fund it? What would be the business model? A classic government engine development effort costs around $1.5 billion. Bezos is developing New Glenn, engines and all, for that amount of money. He's funding it (and most of the rest of Blue Origin) by selling a billion dollars of his Amazon stock every year. Bezos is worth around $81 billion. Meanwhile, Musk is only worth around $16 billion, so he's not funding it all with personal checks like Bezos is. He's funding a lot of it now by undercutting the rest of the world on launch costs. The federal government could provide 60-80% of the funding, but that would not be a private sector effort, that would be massive subsidization by the government. Bezos is funding BE-4 out of his own pocket. USAF is funding AR-1 development. BE-4 will be cheaper to buy (by a lot) and the government isn't paying to develop it. Meanwhile Musk is getting around $34 million from USAF to develop Raptor (while putting up $68 million of his own money). I wasn't kidding when I said that private commercial development costs an order of magnitude less than government funded development. Sure Apollo was expensive, but I wonder how the private sector could profitably fund a program like that. It wouldn't. It would get the same results for a lot less money and then sell missions to anyone who wanted them. Note that USAF has gone down this road now. They don't generally develop rockets. They just buy launch services. No reason NASA can't do the same. Or anyone else, for that matter. The entire budget for New Glenn is what it costs the government to develop an engine. I don't know what they'll charge for a launch. Look at SpaceX launch costs compared to Atlas or Delta. Estimates for SpaceX ITS is around $10 billion to develop with a launch cost of around $63 million. SLS development is about twice that to complete Phase I and costs almost a billion dollars per launch. Well, we may see soon whether the private sector can launch to the Moon or Mars at 1/10 the cost of NASA. If a multi-billionaire can spare $5 or $10 billion donated to the effort obviously that will help the taxpayers! :-) Of course, they will able to take advantage of already existing processing and launch facilities at KSC. What about the Manned Spaceflight Center? That was and is a massive government program to provide the infrastructure and human training for manned spacecraft, and provided Mission Control for each mission. Who will perform that and fund that with private sector launches to the Moon or Mars? |
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"Scott M. Kozel" wrote:
On Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 2:26:47 PM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote: r"Scott M. Kozel" wrote: On Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 8:42:25 AM UTC-4, Fred J. McCall wrote: "Scott M. Kozel" wrote: Three separate heavy lift vehicles in development that would be capable of taking men to the Moon or Mars. Actually only one 'program'. And two commercial efforts. I don't really understand that. Last time one vehicle was developed and they built 16 of them and had programs in place to use them within a reasonable period of time, that provided economies of scale and focus to do the program. It was a national scale program and accomplished great things. Last time we had a single government program that spent money like water, made the trip, and then had no follow-on, which is why we can't get beyond LEO anymore. The current approach doesn't make sense; too many vehicle types in development and no real focus toward building enough of them to have an actual program. The 'government program' (how we did Apollo) is the high priced spread. It's true that it makes no sense because it has no real goal (it changes with every President) and is too expensive to fly. The other two efforts are commercial efforts, make more sense, spend a lot less money, and will be far cheaper to fly. If we did it the old way, we would ONLY have SLS, Musk and Bezos would keep their money, and we'd get another 'flags and footprints' mission to somewhere at best. What kind of commercial effort for such a vehicle and program could provide the tens of billions of dollars in private capital to fund it? What would be the business model? A classic government engine development effort costs around $1.5 billion. Bezos is developing New Glenn, engines and all, for that amount of money. He's funding it (and most of the rest of Blue Origin) by selling a billion dollars of his Amazon stock every year. Bezos is worth around $81 billion. Meanwhile, Musk is only worth around $16 billion, so he's not funding it all with personal checks like Bezos is. He's funding a lot of it now by undercutting the rest of the world on launch costs. The federal government could provide 60-80% of the funding, but that would not be a private sector effort, that would be massive subsidization by the government. Bezos is funding BE-4 out of his own pocket. USAF is funding AR-1 development. BE-4 will be cheaper to buy (by a lot) and the government isn't paying to develop it. Meanwhile Musk is getting around $34 million from USAF to develop Raptor (while putting up $68 million of his own money). I wasn't kidding when I said that private commercial development costs an order of magnitude less than government funded development. Sure Apollo was expensive, but I wonder how the private sector could profitably fund a program like that. It wouldn't. It would get the same results for a lot less money and then sell missions to anyone who wanted them. Note that USAF has gone down this road now. They don't generally develop rockets. They just buy launch services. No reason NASA can't do the same. Or anyone else, for that matter. The entire budget for New Glenn is what it costs the government to develop an engine. I don't know what they'll charge for a launch. Look at SpaceX launch costs compared to Atlas or Delta. Estimates for SpaceX ITS is around $10 billion to develop with a launch cost of around $63 million. SLS development is about twice that to complete Phase I and costs almost a billion dollars per launch. Well, we may see soon whether the private sector can launch to the Moon or Mars at 1/10 the cost of NASA. If a multi-billionaire can spare $5 or $10 billion donated to the effort obviously that will help the taxpayers! :-) It doesn't even take that. Musk has certainly spent a bunch of his own money, but his launch company is a going concern that is turning a profit. Of course, they will able to take advantage of already existing processing and launch facilities at KSC. They pay leases on those. If they didn't exist, they'd build their own. What about the Manned Spaceflight Center? That was and is a massive government program to provide the infrastructure and human training for manned spacecraft, and provided Mission Control for each mission. Only used for government launches. Who will perform that and fund that with private sector launches to the Moon or Mars? SpaceX currently includes all that stuff in their launch costs and provide it themselves. Like everything else they do, they do it a lot more cheaply than the government. -- "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 |
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#46
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"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
... In article , says... Well, we may see soon whether the private sector can launch to the Moon or Mars at 1/10 the cost of NASA. If a multi-billionaire can spare $5 or $10 billion donated to the effort obviously that will help the taxpayers! :-) Of course, they will able to take advantage of already existing processing and launch facilities at KSC. Do note that SpaceX has leased Pad 39A (anyone was allowed to bid on that) and do note that they have built a lot of their own facilities (buildings, strong-back for the launcher, horizontal transporter, landing pads, and etc.) to go along with that. It's not like SpaceX moved into the VAB and took over the former shuttle processing facility. There really isn't much of a "free lunch" there. Other US launch providers had the same opportunity to bid on leasing Pad 39A. Other US launch providers also have the opportunity to lease pads ad Cape Canaveral (just as SpaceX leases pad 40). What SpaceX never had was the $1 billion dollar per year guaranteed revenue that used to be part of the ULA EELV deal with the US Government. That was "taking advantage" of the US Government in a far more lucrative way than SpaceX ever has and never resulted in any significant innovations that reduced the cost of the EELVs. Why would it? The incentive was never there to reduce costs! What about the Manned Spaceflight Center? That was and is a massive government program to provide the infrastructure and human training for manned spacecraft, and provided Mission Control for each mission. Who will perform that and fund that with private sector launches to the Moon or Mars? I'm sure NASA will get to continue to train its astronauts pretty much anyway it wants. If it thinks there is value in things like continuing to let the pilots fly T-38 jet aircraft on the government's dime in the interest of keeping up their flight hours, then more power to them. Jeff I suspect too initially SpaceX and others will rent/lease any additional facilities they need (like DSN for deep space missions). If they're smart (and so far they seem to be) they'll build what they have to and lease what is cheaper. As for Manned Spaceflight Center, etc. Just as the US has say the Military Airlift Command and other services that somewhat duplicate commercial services, I suspect the government will want to keep its own capabilities for various reasons. -- 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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