Falcon Heavy

Alan Erskine wrote:
On 30/03/2011 9:28 AM, Brian Thorn wrote:

They won't have to. It will be dead and gone (if it isn't already), a
footnote in SpaceX history.

Brian

I disagree - they'res a market for small LV's that is being met with
ex-ICBM's at the moment. I include Minitaur in this, seeing it's based
on Minuteman.

The SpaceX website says the Falcon 1e replaces the Falcon 1 and prices it
out to 1010kg to LEO for $10.9M. That works out to $10,792 per kg to LEO
or ~$4900 per lb to LEO for a fully loaded payload.

How's that compare to ex-ICBM pricing? Seems damn competitive to me.

You know I wonder if there is a supplemental business to be had here.
A company whose sole purpose is to aggregate payload into a common bus
structure for adaptation onto something like a Falcon 1e for the very small
players that would like to get to LEO but cannot afford to go-it-alone and buy
all of the capacity of a Falcon 1e. Esp. if they only need a fraction of that
capacity. So you have a 18lb payload you want to place into LEO? They would
charge you (let's say they aim for 30% profit 4,900 x 1.3 = $6370 rounded to
$6,400 per lb for any payload up to the max (course you wouldn't pay that for
the max if you could go straight to SpaceX, so maybe its a sliding scale with
a cap at the top). You pay a small fee up front to reserve a spot with the
rest due in installments as the bus fills and with the last payments due just
before the rocket is ready to order. So for your 18 lb payload you'd be
charged $6400 x 18 = $115,200. You put down 10% (refundable until you start to
make installment payments) to reserve a slot on the bus; that works out to a
very respectable $11,500. As the bus begins to fill you have an installment
payment due in order to close the bus out and prevent a single player
withdrawing from sinking the bus launch. You miss an installment and you lose
whatever you've put in to date, so a real disincentive to the disingenuous.
And it would allow the company to offer steep discounts to a late player that
wants in on the bus and is not exceeding the weight limit of any repossessed
bus capacity.

Much like the way a contractor bills for the construction of a new house, so
various amounts are paid out at various stages of the project and no one gets
stuck with a huge balloon payment at the end and the contractor doesn't get
stuck with all the cost of construction.

Now ~$115k doesn't sound too bad to put an 18lb payload into orbit.

The question remains, is there a market for micro-payload reselling? Is there
enough volume to make it work and work within a reasonable time-frame? (say 2
years max from initial order to launch?)...


Dave