Falcon 1 & Falcon 9

GW Johnson · 2012-05-28 08:53:08

Louis:

What you say is probably true, although I haven't checked the numbers for chemical. In my calculations, I looked at substantially-higher delta-vee requirements to cover up to 30 degrees orbital plane change, each way. Without that, you are restricted to a very narrow track right under your orbit. I also looked at two-way self-supplied trips, no refueling on the ground. That's a much tougher problem. To do all of that single stage at 20% inert structure (for tough-as-an-old-boot reusability) and 10% dead-head payload required nuclear Isp. You could do it multi-stage chemical, but then it's a one-shot throwaway. I was going for a multiple-landing lander, refuelled in orbit between trips. I was also going for multiple landing sites in the one trip. Different mission objectives.

GW

Rune · 2012-05-30 11:45:43

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1205/29falconheavy/

SpaceX announced the first commercial contract for the Falcon Heavy rocket Tuesday, unveiling a deal with Intelsat, the world's largest communications satellite operator.
The company's statement did not say when or where the launch will occur, but one industry source said Intelsat is eyeing 2017 or 2018 for the mission.
Intelsat has not identified a satellite for the launch, and Alex Horwitz, an Intelsat spokesperson, said the company has not decided whether the flight would launch a single or multiple payloads.
The contract's monetary value was also not disclosed, but SpaceX has said the Falcon Heavy would sell for between $80 million and $125 million per flight, about one-third the price of a less powerful United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket.

Well, it seems the Heavy has its first customer, and it is a completely commercial entity. Wonder what kind of monster they want to loft to GEO, or if they will carry the satellite in a mostly empty rocket or paired with another big one. Oh, and it's likely that they will deploy it straight into GEO, and not GTO, since the... call it third stage, will have restart capability and enough delta-v left. That should save on satellite fuel.

Rune. Seems like a bright future for SpaceX, they have already become a big player going by contracted value.

GW Johnson · 2012-05-30 13:59:54

Last I heard, Spacex is building a pad at Vandenburg for Falcon-Heavy. Their first customer is supposed to be USAF for really big military payloads. The pad should be ready by 2013. First flight might be later that year. They gotta test the stages in Texas first. That test stand is being built right now.

They're trying to buy one of the shuttle pads at Canaveral to convert over for Falcon-Heavy. That might be for both NASA and civilian/commercial payloads. I'm not sure how that's going, haven't heard for a while, and NASA can be amazingly bureaucratic.

Which is probably why they are looking for other civilian/commercial launch sites where they need only deal with the FAA to launch. One of those is near Brownsville, Texas, near the Rio Grande delta. They would shoot out over the Gulf toward the mid-to-south Atlantic. I'm rooting for that one.

GW

SpaceNut · 2012-05-30 18:18:23

Falcon Heavy Demo Hardware is expected to arrive at the Vandenberg AFB in late 2012.

VEHICLE INCLINATION ORBIT PAYLOAD TO LEO
Falcon Heavy 28.5 degrees 200 km 53,000 kg

53 metric tons to low Earth orbit and over 12 metric tons to geosynchronous transfer orbit.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/30 … print.html

Intelsat, which provides satellites to media and network companies all over the world...

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/ … e-forward/

Void · 2012-05-30 18:50:48

GW Johnson said in a post that the Space Shuttle was $27,000.00 per pound, and the regular Falcons might be $2000.00 per pound.

I think I read somewhere that the Falcon Heavy might do $900.00 per pound. Do you think that that is possible, or something better than $2000.00 per pound?

SpaceNut · 2012-05-30 19:24:12

http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php
Pricing

In facilitating SpaceX services, the Falcon 9 launch vehicle will offer the lowest cost per pound/kilogram to orbit, despite providing breakthrough improvements in reliability.

SpaceX offers open and fixed pricing for its launch services. Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases. A half bay flight of Falcon 9 is available to accommodate customers with payloads (e.g., satellites or other spacecraft) in between Falcon 1 and 9. Please contact us on details for this accommodation.

Price $54M*

http://www.spacex.com/falcon_heavy.php
Pricing

SpaceX offers open and fixed pricing for its launch services. Modest discounts are available for contractually committed, multi-launch purchases.

PAYLOAD PRICE
Up to 6.4 ton to GTO $83M*
Greater than 6.4 ton to GTO $128M*

Rune · 2012-05-31 09:49:59

And splashdown! Congrats to the SpaceX team on a very successful mission. Year of the Dragon, right?

Rune. Oh, and 3 for 3 for the Falcon. That is even more significant.

GW Johnson · 2012-05-31 10:24:14

Launches of Falcon-Heavy from Vandenburg AFB in S California are more-or-less southward over the Pacific for more-or-less polar orbits. Very popular for military stuff, not useful at all commercially. Spacex's pad at Vandenburg will be mostly for USAF payloads as the customer on Falcon-Heavy. Those are typically 25+ ton payloads, what the shuttle bay was originally designed to carry.

Polar-only at Vandenburg is why Spacex trying to buy the old shuttle pad at Canaveral, to support eastward launches of Falcon-Heavy at about 23 degree inclination. That's what the LEO 23 deg 53 ton figure is for. That's for both NASA and commercial payloads. But, Canaveral is pretty much governed by NASA rules and bureaucracy. If they can obtain the pad, that'll be their first available eastward launch site for Falcon-Heavy.

They're also looking for a purely commercial launch site, where only FAA approval is required, unhampered by NASA bureaucracy, for purely commercial launch services. The candidates are all eastward launch for the more-or-less 23 degree inclination, supporting commercial needs. Far south Texas is the one I'm rooting for. Near Brownsville at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Out over the Gulf of Mexico into the mid-to-south Atlantic.

The cost per pound-or-kg delivered payload can be deceptive. They are usually calculated as launch cost divided by max payload capability. But, if the rocket doesn't fly fully loaded, launch cost is usually the same or not very much different, while payload weight can be very much smaller, leading to a very much higher unit cost. You get the full cost benefit only if you fly fully loaded.

I noticed a new, slight price break being projected for Falcon-Heavy on Spacex's website: below 6 tons, $85M, but from 6 tons to the max 53 tons, $124M. I might be off a trailing digit or so, but those figures are pretty close to what I read a couple of days ago. The unit cost at 6 tons is bunch higher. It really pays off to fly at or very near full load at 53 tons. Metric tons, that is. Right at $1000/lb.

Figured at launch cost divided by max payload, I had right at $2500/lb for Falcon-9 at its 10.45 tons. Shuttle was 1.5B per launch, 25 metric tons max, which was about $27,000/lb. Multiply those figures by 2.205 for $/kg. I can't remember what I had figured for some of the Atlas-V and Delta-IV configurations, but those data are posted over on "exrocketman" in the last few days.

GW
http://exrocketman.blogspot.com

Void · 2012-05-31 15:06:47

So maybe $1000.00/Pound in the best case for Falcon Heavy. Thanks.

SpaceNut · 2012-05-31 17:26:33

To be more exact for GTO orbits....
Be careful metric ton is 1,000 Kg and a Kg unit is 2.2 pounds

$124,000,000 / 53,000 kg = $2339.6/kg

or

$124,000,000 / (2.2*53,000)lbs = $1063.49/lbs

GW Johnson · 2012-06-04 09:53:45

The really interesting thing about the curves I plotted for this is that tripling payload capability only cuts the unit price in half. Spacex and ULA are all showing the same trend at the same slope. For only factor 2-class benefit, it's hardly worth building bigger rockets by factor 3 payload-class. Unless you have a specific and compelling need.

The second interesting thing is where spaceplanes might actually fit into all this. Over at the left, where payloads are small, under 10 tons, a well-designed spaceplane might be cheaper, especially since the launch rocket curves seem to bend upward going that direction. Although, that remains to be seen. From that, I suggest that a successful spaceplane will look more like a Dream Chaser or an X-37 than our old shuttle. Self-launching Skylon is the dark horse there. There's a couple of others, too.

GW

Rune · 2012-06-04 11:57:39

GW Johnson wrote:

Self-launching Skylon is the dark horse there.

Talk about dark horses. If they keep blowing through milestones the way they do, they might just pull off the impossible. Or to put it another way, after pulling off a 400MW precooler that doesn't turn into a block of ice, I am starting to believe them capable of anything, even what they actually say they can (and ESA engineers concur!). And has anyone heard about their planned testing phase? 300 freaking flights with two prototypes! In a couple of years! 200 cycle lifetime proven before the first bird is sold, and their business plan is based on that. Just wow.

Rune. Wish they find the deep pockets and the engineer army to finish the details. Looks like that's all that's needed.

Last edited by Rune (2012-06-04 12:09:16)

Impaler · 2012-06-04 16:49:46

Well assuming Skylon proved feasible sometime in the next decade I'm wondering exactly what portion of the market it would take. The launch mass is in the range of a Soyuz and the Soyuz dose have a modest amount of the Satellite launch business but I think it's only LEO sats not the big GEOs which are the bulk of the market. So a Skylon could take the whole LEO sat market, the whole Human to LEO market and the whole Cargo to LEO market.

What it wouldn't take is the GEO sat launch market, or the Station building market. GEO sats are now generally fired into a Geosynchronous transfer orbit with the Satilite using an thruster to raise Peragee and circularize the orbit up to full GEO. I don't think present GEO sat design would give them the power, fuel or time to raise themselves entirely from LEO to GEO and even if they could it would leave insufficient station-keeping propellent for a viable lifespan. SEP tugs might change this economic math and give Skylon the GEO sat market as well. Stations however are just right out the window cause IMHO the smallest viable pieces of a station masses 20 mt and if vehicles like a F9H are viable I'd expect that to grow, the difficulty and complexity of orbital assembly dictates a station should be made out of chunks that are as large as the launch vehicle can manage.

So a successful Skylon that achieves an order of magnitude cost reduction over the industry best small scale expendable basically eliminates Soyuz and F9 from the market place and makes supplying a LEO station with food, fuel, crew etc etc very very cheap. I'd estimate that when all expendable rockets and autonomous docking are used to build and maintain a station (Mir) and said station sees at least a decade of usage the combined mass of all the resupply launches exceeds the building/construction launches by a factor of 2 to 4. A BOE check on the ISS seems to confirm, at 6 Soyuz and 1 each ATV and HTV per year thats 100 mt of resupply for a 450 mt station, resupply per year of ~25% of station mass. So assuming equal cost per kg of all expendables to build and supply a station means using a 1/10th cost supply vehicle would reduce lifetime costs for a station by between 60%-80%.

On the other hand attempting to build the station or a deep-space mission stack from pieces that are of the 10mt reusable launcher size looks more dubious. While tin-cans of 10mt could certainly be made and assembled in space it would likely require manual assembly (meaning EVA crews and probably several Skylon rendezvousing) so as to not eat-up mass in making each module capable of autonomous docking and rendezvous. The Russians have attached small Soyuz launched modules to the ISS and they are little more then auxiliary airlocks and storage areas, I don's see a viable station being made out of them, the assembly logistics and engineering compromises of small masses and construction delay of it all just eat up the per kg savings a reusable would provide. The US portion of the ISS showed this to be untenable and that vehicle could lift 20+mt pieces.

So Skylon would be great for Bigelow, NASA and anyone else who wants to operate a LEO station. The total cost of ownership for a government station that contracts out it's resupply goes way down and a commercial 'tourist' station that acts as a hotel has access to more potential customers. A Space-X loses all the routine small LEO transport that a rocket company needs to amortize its costs over, but if it already done the amortizing and their are enough station building, GEO sat launches, and deep-space activity available an expendable Heavy LV company can still survive, especially if they can evolve to first-stage re-usability and bring their cost premium over space-planes below 10:1.

Last edited by Impaler (2012-06-04 16:54:14)

Glandu · 2012-06-05 02:29:54

For GEO, well, one can imagine 2 LEO launches : one for the sat, one for a pusher. With a proper design, docking could even be automatic(à la ATV). Or, with reduced costs, it could be even worth to deliver everything to a manned LEO industrial space station that would make assemblies, store pushers, store petrol, service tugs, deploy anti-debris systems, etc..... One could even imagine launching tugs for catching damaged sats, bringing them back to the station, repairing/refueling them, and launching them again.

El_slapper. LEO should be our next garden.

Terraformer · 2012-06-05 03:09:17

A LEO depot? Mmmm. If you can launch small masses very cheaply, it makes sense to collect stuff in one place. Not just fuel, also equipment and furnishings (for Bigelow habs), and maybe even stuff like food.

The Sundancer modules are under 10 tonnes. Now who was it who suggested launching a central module on Falcon Heavy and docking such modules to it...?

The great thing about such an orbital economy is that it would be rather simple to link in Lunar volatile mining...

Rune · 2012-06-05 03:56:09

Impaler wrote:

Well assuming Skylon proved feasible sometime in the next decade I'm wondering exactly what portion of the market it would take. The launch mass is in the range of a Soyuz and the Soyuz dose have a modest amount of the Satellite launch business but I think it's only LEO sats not the big GEOs which are the bulk of the market. So a Skylon could take the whole LEO sat market, the whole Human to LEO market and the whole Cargo to LEO market.
What it wouldn't take is the GEO sat launch market, or the Station building market. GEO sats are now generally fired into a Geosynchronous transfer orbit with the Satilite using an thruster to raise Peragee and circularize the orbit up to full GEO. I don't think present GEO sat design would give them the power, fuel or time to raise themselves entirely from LEO to GEO and even if they could it would leave insufficient station-keeping propellent for a viable lifespan. SEP tugs might change this economic math and give Skylon the GEO sat market as well. Stations however are just right out the window cause IMHO the smallest viable pieces of a station masses 20 mt and if vehicles like a F9H are viable I'd expect that to grow, the difficulty and complexity of orbital assembly dictates a station should be made out of chunks that are as large as the launch vehicle can manage.

The last Skylon published revision, the C2, is specifically sized (15mT to LEO) so you can fit in the payload bay a standard ~6mT GEO commsat and a SUS (Skylon Upper Stage), a reusable H2/LOX stage that performs a rendezvous with Skylon after it has inserted the satellite into GTO. Running the numbers (up to two launches a week per airframe, 200 flights per airframe) you come to the conclusion that a single Skylon could service the whole international launch market as it exists today, if it performs as expected. But they are hoping for "a little" more competition. Worst case scenario, with 30 vehicles sharing 30% of the present-day market that doesn't grow a single bit, they figure they could only lower price to about 40% of the one today (total cost including range and hidden subsides). But don't trust me, go check the stuff on their web, I see you haven't in quite a while.

The latest revision they are actually working on is rumored to be about 20mT to LEO (or so I've gathered). Which is about what the shuttle was promised to be way back when it was first conceptualized, only in a HTOL single stage. But will any big engine company AND a big aircraft company buy an idea "not invented here"? That is the question now. REL are only planning to become a minor supplier to Skylon production, providing just the concept and the precoolers to the project.

Rune. Only a madman would develop a commercial system for LEO only. The big commercial bucks are to GTO, as of today.

Impaler · 2012-06-05 12:15:43

Well 20mt dose sound a lot more viable as a GEO launcher which is as you say ware the money is, but it sounds too aggressive from a technology perspective to me. A Skylon that big is going to have a worse ballistic co-efficient upon reentry and worse W/m2 heating as a result. The awesome REL engine technology is what makes it singe stage to orbit. But re usability is all predicated on not burning up in the atmosphere and that's a product of overall vehicle design giving really low W/m2 reentry heating, they have to get a heat so low that they don't need the exotic and heavy heat shield that every large object has used to date. Up-sizing the vehicle will have a limit.

Second your optimum launch rate of 1 vehicle covering the entire present market clearly shows that Skylon would over-supply the present market. We've seen that before when the satellite launch market failed to grow fast enough to support the existing expendable rocket portfolios and the anticipated savings from scale failed to materialize. I think we will have to see the launch market grow one or two orders of magnitude before a Space-plane of any kind becomes commercially viable. A generation or two of Space-X cheap expendables and even cheaper partially reusable rockets may stimulate that kind of growth but I think it will take a few decades to happen. If REL perfects their engine before that it's very likely it will sit on the shelf for a decade before anyone is interested in operating a vehicle, the fact that the company only wishes to be a parts-supplier and not the vehicle operator speak volumes about what kind of commercial viability they see for the proposed vehicle.

Last edited by Impaler (2012-06-05 12:17:25)

Terraformer · 2012-06-05 16:38:29

Hmmm, what sort of market do you guys think there will be for a 5 tonne to LEO spaceplane in the foreseeable future? The ISS needs 100 tonnes a year roughly in resupply, which would be 20 flights of such a vehicle. We could even got smaller, to 2 tonnes... I'm thinking more along the lines of the DH-1 proposal to market them as space access vehicles rather than selling cargo space. Groups, which could be governments, companies, or even private individuals, could purchase one and buy say a Falcon Heavy launch to put their bulk hardware up there.

I'm thinking of a Methane/LOX ramjet-rocket SSTO vehicle; GW will know if it's feasible to build one for such a payload (2-5 tonnes)... use the rockets to get up to Ramjet speed, use the ramjet as much as you can, then transition back to the rocket to reach orbit,

louis · 2012-06-05 17:41:45

Terraformer wrote:

Hmmm, what sort of market do you guys think there will be for a 5 tonne to LEO spaceplane in the foreseeable future? The ISS needs 100 tonnes a year roughly in resupply, which would be 20 flights of such a vehicle. We could even got smaller, to 2 tonnes... I'm thinking more along the lines of the DH-1 proposal to market them as space access vehicles rather than selling cargo space. Groups, which could be governments, companies, or even private individuals, could purchase one and buy say a Falcon Heavy launch to put their bulk hardware up there.
I'm thinking of a Methane/LOX ramjet-rocket SSTO vehicle; GW will know if it's feasible to build one for such a payload (2-5 tonnes)... use the rockets to get up to Ramjet speed, use the ramjet as much as you can, then transition back to the rocket to reach orbit,

Sounds good for ferrying people to LEO.

Terraformer · 2012-06-06 03:00:15

Well, a 2 tonne payload vehicle should be able to ferry 8 people to orbit, from what I've seen. But I'm not just talking about people here, I'm talking about supplies, which means anything that can fit the payload requirements. Such a craft would have a mass ratio of maybe 10 if the rocket Vex is 3.5km/s and provides 8km/s of delta-V, so if we're aiming to put 2 tonnes in orbit, we're maybe dealing with a GLOW of 50 tonnes? Could such a craft be built with a dry mass of 3 tonnes? Fortunately, the Isp should be higher than that and the delta-V lower, so we might be able to get a mass ratio of 8...

Have SpaceX managed to pay off Dragon development yet with all their contracts?

Impaler · 2012-06-06 16:04:11

If you don't want to deliver 2 tons of corpses your going to need some kind of life-support system for them that can last at-least a day and that will cut into payload. Normally it's three days of loitering in LEO before docking with the ISS but I think most of that is orbital inclination changing so in an ideal world that won't be necessary. But at-least a day for contingency and safety is a must so your looking at air-scrubbers and toilet facilities, hot food can be skipped and well as water recycling but its still a minimum mass of equipment comparable I would think to whats inside the Soyuz re-entry capsule.

Also keep in mind that when I stated 100 tons of resupply to the ISS per year that's a measurement of the EXPENDABLE Launch Vehicle sizes not the actual food/water/equipment. The real stuff is probably under 30 tons per year (would be great to get some real numbers on this) because so much of what the expendable vehicle launches is capsule and other hardware particularly the Progress and Soyuz. Look at the cargo values for Dragon vs the lift mass of the F9 you'll see the same ratio. The most efficient thing used to supply the ISS was probably the MPLM which was just a 4 ton aluminum-can filled with ~12 tons of cargo carried in the shuttle bay and attached by robotic arm. A true space-plane with X tons of cargo capacity is really going to deliver around ~75% of X as true cargo and would need to launch probably half as much as linear math would indicate. Our hypothetical 10 mt hauling space-plane needs just 5 visits per year to supply the ISS, again were looking at massive over-supply which means too few missions to amortize costs over.

As for Space-X, Falcon is probably payed off considering the long list of commercial sat launches booked. NASA is the only purchaser of Dragon capsules as far as I know and while they have a dozen launches scheduled I think NASA pays only on delivery so it will be a while before Dragon turns a profit. I wonder though if the Dragon capsule is billed separately from the F9 rocket?

Terraformer · 2012-06-06 16:30:50

I seem to recall reading about a vehicle that would carry either 2 tonnes cargo or 8 passengers...

If the market is space access rather than satellite delivery, a 2 tonne payload spaceplane should work. When the cost of owning and operating your own space station at maybe $500m upfront and $1-200m annually after that, there's going to be a lot of countries, companies and maybe even space groups interested. The market will self create if the vehicle is there.

RobS · 2012-06-07 06:23:21

I think your delta-v is a bit low, Terraformer. One needs to be moving at 17,500 mph in orbit, but to get up there you're also dealing with gravity losses and atmospheric friction, so the total delta-v I understand to be 22,000 mph, which is 9.8 km/sec.

Terraformer · 2012-06-07 11:28:12

That delta-V is, I imagine, for Hydrogen-fueled vehicles. For denser fuels, it's lower: dunnspace used 9500m/s. 1.5km/s of that delta-v can probably come from the Ramjet, leaving us with 8km/s delta-V for the rocket...

It's a very simplistic analysis, I know.

SpaceNut · 2012-06-07 18:08:04

I am sort of late to the party on the EDL but I was looking at the parachute for MSL

This is different in what we use for Earth in that it has the vent for the release of a compressed air....

Last edited by SpaceNut (2012-06-07 18:11:07)

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Re: Falcon 1 & Falcon 9

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