$/Kg of various launch systems

http://www.androidpubs.com/Chap04.htm

There has been a great deal of discussion on low cost LEO systems.
Here we have a tabulated list of the various launch systems. There is
a rider to all this, there is no analysis of the contributions of
labor costs (lower in Russia) or any analysis of possible subsidies.

Energia is bottom at $660/Kg LEO. This is the unadorned bottom line.
Ariane is a GEO vehicle and is only quoted under the GEO heading.

I think what we should be debating is the reason for these cost
differences. Labor and subsidies are part of, but not the full story.
In any case US car companies are expected to sell their cars
competitively competing with the 20c/hr economies. One would have
expected automation to have reduced US labor costs, as it has in other
areas of the economy.

Many people will hve their theories. I think a large part of the
answer is the abanonment of proven (quite low $/Kg) Saturn technology
and its replacement with a Suttle that has proved to be a
fundamentally unsound concept. Short of resurecting Saturn the best
bet might well be to build Energia/Proton under license.


- Ian Parker

Giving this page a quick look, I'm going to call bull.

There's too many assumptions.

For example, the shuttle cost per lb is very sensitive to flight rate and
how you calculate it.

For example, if you count just incremental costs (and there's arguments for
that and against that), it's actually fairly cheap.

And given that Energia flew twice, it's virtually impossible to believe any
number on it. But very likely that cost is an incremental cost vs. the full
costs for something like Shuttle


And the Saturn rockets weren't so cheap.
--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

"Ian Parker" wrote in message
...
http://www.androidpubs.com/Chap04.htm

There has been a great deal of discussion on low cost LEO systems.
Here we have a tabulated list of the various launch systems. There is
a rider to all this, there is no analysis of the contributions of
labor costs (lower in Russia) or any analysis of possible subsidies.

Energia is bottom at $660/Kg LEO. This is the unadorned bottom line.
Ariane is a GEO vehicle and is only quoted under the GEO heading.

I think what we should be debating is the reason for these cost
differences. Labor and subsidies are part of, but not the full story.
In any case US car companies are expected to sell their cars
competitively competing with the 20c/hr economies. One would have
expected automation to have reduced US labor costs, as it has in other
areas of the economy.

Many people will hve their theories. I think a large part of the
answer is the abanonment of proven (quite low $/Kg) Saturn technology
and its replacement with a Suttle that has proved to be a
fundamentally unsound concept. Short of resurecting Saturn the best
bet might well be to build Energia/Proton under license.


- Ian Parker

On 8 Nov, 16:05, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
Giving this page a quick look, I'm going to call bull.

There's too many assumptions.

For example, the shuttle cost per lb is very sensitive to flight rate and
how you calculate it.

For example, if you count just incremental costs (and there's arguments for
that and against that), it's actually fairly cheap.

And given that Energia flew twice, it's virtually impossible to believe any
number on it. *But very likely that cost is an incremental cost vs. the full
costs for something like Shuttle

And the Saturn rockets weren't so cheap.
--
All this could well be an argument for some sort of rationalization.
You are in fact highlighting one obvious point. Space is a matter of
international virility. Launch costs could be reduced by having fewer
launchers but the politics of the situation prevents this.

I feel these are things that we should be getting away from.

BTW - In a COMMERCIAL environment, there would be takeovers. Why can
Lehman Bros be sold but not NASA? You are correct of incremental
costs. The problem is that NASA got its market forecast wrong.


- Ian Parker

On Nov 8, 12:19*pm, Ian Parker wrote:
On 8 Nov, 16:05, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"

wrote:
Giving this page a quick look, I'm going to call bull.

There's too many assumptions.

For example, the shuttle cost per lb is very sensitive to flight rate and
how you calculate it.

well ya, cause theres so damn much management overhead, you double the
flight rate and you cut the cost by a quarter.


For example, if you count just incremental costs (and there's arguments for
that and against that), it's actually fairly cheap.

Until you get a new TPS, your stuck with a crappy flight rate.


And the Saturn rockets weren't so cheap.

No, but mostly due to development, not assembly costs. The assembly
line was getting going quite well by the time we scrapped it, every
additional rocket made cut the development share by a large percent.
We had so many spare S V stages lying around when it was ended that
they littered the yards of every phallically challenged government
agency in the US.

--

All this could well be an argument for some sort of rationalization.
You are in fact highlighting one obvious point. Space is a matter of
international virility. Launch costs could be reduced by having fewer
launchers but the politics of the situation prevents this.

Thats not provable, and in fact, monopolies tend to bloat their ways
into expensiveness from lack of competition.


I feel these are things that we should be getting away from.

BTW - In a COMMERCIAL environment, there would be takeovers. Why can
Lehman Bros be sold but not NASA? You are correct of incremental
costs. The problem is that NASA got its market forecast wrong.

* - Ian Parker

Well NASA got a lot wrong with the shuttle. Fully half of the hundreds
of thousands of man hours of work on a shuttle between flights goes
solely to the thermal protection system that was supposed to be so
reliable. The engines are the most work intensive (and need a complete
rebuild every flight) around. There is a new model of throwaway engine
based on the shuttle main engines thats tons cheaper, higher thrust
and ISP, should just install those and chuck them after every flight,
would save tons of money and manhours, and be cheaper too.

The external tanks.... we all know about that. When they stopped
painting them the foam started falling off. saved 800 lbs of paint and
increased risk cost of total mission failure by the hundreds of
millions of dollars, and they stopped using freon to clean the surface
of the tank before spraying it with foam, that caused it to suffer
adherence problems, the replacement for the freon is inferior.

And yes, the lack of assembly line engineering is the major problem.
Aerospace companies lack the assembly line manufacturing engineering
capabilities the auto industry has. Given how broke the auto makers
are these days, the US should let GM compete against NASA for launch
contracts.

Mike Lorrey writes:

On Nov 8, 12:19=A0pm, Ian Parker wrote:
On 8 Nov, 16:05, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:
For example, the shuttle cost per lb is very sensitive to flight rate a=
nd
how you calculate it.

well ya, cause theres so damn much management overhead, you double the
flight rate and you cut the cost by a quarter.

Got it. So it is unfair and misleading to judge the cost
of a rocket flight as simply the incremental costs involved in
adding a new flight to the current schedule: the entire development
and facilities and other fixed costs must be counted.


And the Saturn rockets weren't so cheap.

No, but mostly due to development, not assembly costs. The assembly
line was getting going quite well by the time we scrapped it, every
additional rocket made cut the development share by a large percent.
We had so many spare S V stages lying around when it was ended that
they littered the yards of every phallically challenged government
agency in the US.

Got it. So it is unfair and misleading to judge the cost
of a rocket flight as the entire development and facilities and other
fixed costs involved in creating the project and getting it into a
flight-ready state: it's only the cost of adding another flight to the
schedule which must be counted.


--
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Nov 8, 9:49*am, Ian Parker wrote:
http://www.androidpubs.com/Chap04.htm

There has been a great deal of discussion on low cost LEO systems.
Here we have a tabulated list of the various launch systems. ....

Few know what these costs really are - or were. The launch systems
were and are mostly paid for by governments, even when they are
use to launch "commercial" satellites (many of which are themselves
heavily subsidized by governments).

On a dollar per kg basis, bigger has the potential to cost less than
smaller, but flight rate is often a more important factor. Take the
U.S. EELV program, which costs the U.S. Government $1.2 billion per
year whether or not any launches occur, plus another $100 million or
so per mission. This is what it costs to keep the factories and
launch
pads open. There have only been two EELV launches so far this
year, and only one more may occur. That's $500-700 million per
flight
for 2008. Last year there were five (about $300 million per flight).
If
there were 10 EELV flights per year, the per flight cost would come
down to roughly $200 million, and so on.

Now if the Government had any sense, it would cancel Atlas V or
Delta IV, keeping only one of the two EELV systems. That would
halve the infrastructure costs and double the flight rate for the
surviving vehicle. So it might only cost $600 million per year,
which
would mean maybe $150 million per flight at 10 per year. And so on.

The next step would be to build EELV out of parts that are common
with some other world launch vehicles. Tanks common with
Ariane or Zenit, for example. Perhaps a common upper stage or
booster engine (an advantage Atlas V already has with RD-180 and
with use of the Ariane 5 payload fairing). Orbital is going this
route
with Taurus II, which will use tanks built on Zenit tooling in the
Ukraine.

Ariane 5 has some advantage over EELV, because it only needs
one launch site for both GTO and near-polar orbit missions. EELV
has to have one pad in Florida and one in California. Ariane 5 also
has the advantage of a near equatorial location, which provides a bit
of a "free ride" to GTO that rockets launched from the Cape or from
Baikonur don't have.

SpaceX is having a go at this problem. Its approach is to use common
propellants and engines for all stages, to push materials and
structures
hard to carry the most payload for the least amount of rocket, and to
bring most production "in house". Time will tell if this approach
has
merit.

China's approach has been to develop a single launch vehicle system
(Long March) that can be configured in a variety of ways. From two
stage LEO rockets to 3.5 stage whopper GTO launchers, all use the
same basic engines and tanks,etc.

So there it is. There seems to be some possibilities for program
cost
reduction by optimizing manufacturing techniques, by clever design,
and by paring back infrastructure. Some cost savings can also be
provided by keeping a launch vehicle program running for decades in
order to amortize the development costs. In the end, however, flight
rate
rules.

So, to cut costs

1) Build it smart
2) Minimize Infrastructure
3) Fly it often
4) Fly it forever

- Ed Kyle

Mike Lorrey wrote:
On Nov 8, 12:19 pm, Ian Parker wrote:
On 8 Nov, 16:05, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"

And the Saturn rockets weren't so cheap.

No, but mostly due to development, not assembly costs. The assembly
line was getting going quite well by the time we scrapped it, every
additional rocket made cut the development share by a large percent.
We had so many spare S V stages lying around when it was ended that
they littered the yards of every phallically challenged government
agency in the US.

Two whole rockets worth. Yawn.

There is a new model of throwaway engine
based on the shuttle main engines thats tons cheaper, higher thrust
and ISP

Incorrect. The RS-68 is higher thrust but much lower Isp. If you were
thinking about another engine please specify. There is no such engine
currently available. The RS-25 was never developed.

The external tanks.... we all know about that. When they stopped
painting them the foam started falling off.

Incorrect. Read the CAIB report. There was foam liberation on both of
the painted ETs and the rate didn't increase after the paint was no
longer applied.

saved 800 lbs of paint and
increased risk cost of total mission failure by the hundreds of
millions of dollars, and they stopped using freon to clean the surface
of the tank before spraying it with foam, that caused it to suffer
adherence problems, the replacement for the freon is inferior.

Incorrect. The change in pressurant had nothing to do with the Columbia
accident. Read the CAIB report.

Three years away from s.s.* and this is the best you can do? You might
as well have stayed away.

On 9 Nov, 06:25, Ed Kyle wrote:

So, to cut costs

1) Build it smart
2) Minimize Infrastructure
3) Fly it often
4) Fly it forever

I think these 4 things can be taken as read. However if you are
"commercial" there is the market. "3) Fly it often" is very much
linked up with MARKETING. The remark I made about mergers and Lehman
Bros I think sums this up. I couls say :-

3a) Do market research.

I disagree about large rockets costng less (per Kg) than smaller ones.
Smaller ones have the advantage or more flights in a market, hence
more opportunity for mass production.

On monopolies. National virility is in fact what is creating monopoly
conditions. There is only really room for one or two different types
of rocket, the market being the size it is, if advantages is to be
taken of economies of scale.

Note that all this is written purely from a commercial, economic stand
point. The precise technical problems of, say, the Shuttle, important
though they are, are not part of the big economic picture.


- Ian Parker

On Sat, 8 Nov 2008 22:25:47 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away, Ed
Kyle made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

On a dollar per kg basis, bigger has the potential to cost less than
smaller, but flight rate is often a more important factor. Take the
U.S. EELV program, which costs the U.S. Government $1.2 billion per
year whether or not any launches occur, plus another $100 million or
so per mission. This is what it costs to keep the factories and
launch
pads open. There have only been two EELV launches so far this
year, and only one more may occur. That's $500-700 million per
flight
for 2008. Last year there were five (about $300 million per flight).
If
there were 10 EELV flights per year, the per flight cost would come
down to roughly $200 million, and so on.

Now if the Government had any sense, it would cancel Atlas V or
Delta IV, keeping only one of the two EELV systems. That would
halve the infrastructure costs and double the flight rate for the
surviving vehicle. So it might only cost $600 million per year,
which
would mean maybe $150 million per flight at 10 per year. And so on.

No, if the government had any sense, it would fly them a lot more, and
stop developing new unnecessary rockets for the VSE.

On 9 Nov, 13:18, (Rand Simberg) wrote:
On Sat, 8 Nov 2008 22:25:47 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away, Ed
Kyle made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:





On a dollar per kg basis, bigger has the potential to cost less than
smaller, but flight rate is often a more important factor. *Take the
U.S. EELV program, which costs the U.S. Government $1.2 billion per
year whether or not any launches occur, plus another $100 million or
so per mission. *This is what it costs to keep the factories and
launch
pads open. *There have only been two EELV launches so far this
year, *and only one more may occur. *That's $500-700 million per
flight
for 2008. *Last year there were five (about $300 million per flight).
If
there were 10 EELV flights per year, the per flight cost would come
down to roughly $200 million, and so on.

Now if the Government had any sense, it would cancel Atlas V or
Delta IV, keeping only one of the two EELV systems. *That would
halve the infrastructure costs and double the flight rate for the
surviving vehicle. *So it might only cost $600 million per year,
which
would mean maybe $150 million per flight at 10 per year. *And so on.

No, if the government had any sense, it would fly them a lot more, and
stop developing new unnecessary rockets for the VSE.- Hide quoted text -

I note we were discussing safety in an earlier thread. As was said,
proving safety is difficult. Asking the sort of "what if" questions
that safety assessments do often miss vital points. If however you can
say "This rocket has made 5,000 flights, the last 4,000 of them being
without incident" would do far more to persuade me that making a trip
in said rocket was safe than any amount of risk analysis.

Mass production is in fact safe. Cars are produced by automation with
humans superintending the process. If therefore you have a lot of
rockets the chance of a "Friday afternoon rocket" disappears.


- Ian Parker