Cost estimates for the BFR

louis · 2017-10-04 12:25:11

Has anyone seen any cost estimates for (a) development of the BFR (starting from now) (b) likely unit cost of production and (c) likely cost of fuel/maintenance per launch over the lifetime of a BFR (related question - how many flights before scrappage?)? Or do you have your own view on likely costs?

Also, do you have a view on how development costs might be apportioned over say the next 10 years between the various BFR projects: ISS/satellite launches, lunar tourism, Mars Mission and intercontinental Earth travel. The Mars mission won't be carrying the full weight of development costs. It might be as low as 20%, given there will initially be many more ISS and satellite launches than Mars flights.

For what it's worth, I note the Curiosity project - spacecraft, payloard and everything - came in at $2.5 billion. That's some kind of benchmark I guess. I would factor in the following:

1. A lot of Space X's development costs in terms of materials, fuel tanks, rockets, propulsive landing and so on have been sunk.

2. The Curiosity was something of a one-off with a novel landing solution.

3. There isn't really much requirement for Space X to operate equipment in the Mars environment apart from PV panels (but that is a well established technology).

However, there is no doubting the BFR is a big, complex project.

RobS · 2017-10-04 12:55:14

I have several times seen $10 billion cited as the development cost. Musk has not given production cost estimates this time, but last year he did. Presumably the smaller booster and smaller second stage/spacecraft will be about the same cost or a little bit less.

Musk didn't mention orbital tourism, which I suspect will be the single biggest use of the system. If he can launch 100 people to orbit at once for several days, even if there is no hotel to take them to (which there will be, soon enough) I suspect he could fly it many times per year. Several flights a year to the moon should be possible as well. The best way to amortize the production cost of a Mars ship, which will make a round trip between planets no more than once every two years, is to use it to take people to orbit or to the moon in between.

louis · 2017-10-04 14:56:39

Thanks Rob.

Yes, I should have mentioned orbital tourism as well as lunar tourism (together with the other uses I mentioned) as possible sharers of cost.

Well let's say the Mars Mission takes a quarter share, that would be $2.5 billion. You then have the unit costs of the BFRs' manufacture and the fuel costs, plus development of orbital craft for refuelling. On top of that you would need to factor in the development cost of habs on Mars, space suits, transit and surface life support systems, propellant processing and propellant tanks and solar energy fields (though I think the latter can be bought in). Other costs will include testing (I think if you need 4 ships for the first mission, 2 being cargo, you probably need another two for testing), development of coms and mission control, staff training and so on. A lot of these development costs have already been recovered. The ISS has perfected a lot of life support equipment. Bigelow have done a lot of development work on inflatable habs. And then NASA and ESA have done a lot of the heavy lift on Mars climateweather research, Mars mapping, resource identification and terrain exploration etc.

I think we might well be talking about another$10-12 billion on top of the $2.5 billion to complete the Mars mission successfully (an Airbus 380 costs $375 million and that's with a huge order book - so surely a single BFR is going to come in over $500 million, and you will need six of them, so that's $3 billion at least for starters). Over 7 years that would average at least $1.7 billion pa.

I doubt Space X have that money right now...but they might be able to borrow that sort of money as they have a very healthy income stream. Alternatively they might set up a separate company/consortium and bring in other investors. Somehow, though I can't see Musk relinquishing control, so I think it's more likely to remain a Space X project.

And, as I have always argued, the potential for commercial sponsorship and sale of TV rights for this project is huge. I think Netflix would pay a very large sum to get exclusive rights to many aspects of the Mars Mission. They've got $8 billion revenue per annum. I don't think it's impossible they might pay something like $200 million per annum - and you could probably sell other TV rights around the world. Total TV rights might be worth anything between $0.5 billion and £1 billion pa (I base that on the fact that just for the USA NBC signed a deal in 2012 worth $4.4 billion for 2 olympic games cycles till 2020). Then commercial sponsorship could raise similarly large or larger amounts: there could be branding of the rocket, branding of shoes, vehicles, drinks and so on. We could again be talking about anything up to $1 billion per annum. The Mars mission will be one of the biggest public events of all time and it won't be confined to a brief timeline like Apollo 11. It has the capacity to sustain interest over several years and carry on year by year as the planet is explored and developed.

I really feel that the majority of the cost could be sold through TV rights and sponsorship but of course, people need to know it's definitely going to happen, and we aren't quite there yet.

RobS wrote:

I have several times seen $10 billion cited as the development cost. Musk has not given production cost estimates this time, but last year he did. Presumably the smaller booster and smaller second stage/spacecraft will be about the same cost or a little bit less.
Musk didn't mention orbital tourism, which I suspect will be the single biggest use of the system. If he can launch 100 people to orbit at once for several days, even if there is no hotel to take them to (which there will be, soon enough) I suspect he could fly it many times per year. Several flights a year to the moon should be possible as well. The best way to amortize the production cost of a Mars ship, which will make a round trip between planets no more than once every two years, is to use it to take people to orbit or to the moon in between.

RobertDyck · 2017-10-04 16:43:56

Wikipedia

In 2000, the originally projected development cost was €9.5 billion. In 2004 Airbus estimated 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) would be added for a €10.3 Bn ($12.7 Bn) total. In 2006 at €10.2 Billion, Airbus stopped publishing its reported cost and then provisioned €4.9 Bn after the difficulties in electric cabling and two years delay for an estimated total of €18 Bn.
In 2014, the aircraft was estimated to have cost $25bn (£16bn – €18.9bn) to develop. In 2015, Airbus said development costs were €15bn (£11.4bn – $16.95 Bn), though analysts believe the figure is likely to be at least €5bn ($5.65 Bn) more for a €20 Bn ($22.6 Bn) total. In 2016, The A380 development costs were estimated at $25 billion for 15 years, $25–30 billion, or 25 billion euros ($28 billion).

Airbus A380 was very expensive. However, my point is this was paid by commercial business, not government. As long as positive return on investment is possible, that much money is available. We could raise that much for space as well. The catch is you have to demonstrate technology and demonstrate revenue before investors will put up that kind of money.

My other point is your estimate of A380 is based on per-unit cost after development was completed.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2017-10-04 16:44:17)

louis · 2017-10-04 18:11:31

I take your general point. But the Mars Mission is slightly different in that it could attract huge revenue through commercial sponsorship and TV rights, even if the Mars settlement itself were a commercial failure (not that I believe it will be). I am just underlining here that a Mars Mission is of intrinsic interest to people on Earth and can generate lots of sponsorship and TV interest as a result whether or not the longer term project has commercial merit. The amount of money that could be attracted is so large as to almost pay for the project I think, but of course, the advertisers and TV people need to know for sure that the project is going ahead before they commit.

RobertDyck wrote:

Wikipedia
In 2000, the originally projected development cost was €9.5 billion. In 2004 Airbus estimated 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) would be added for a €10.3 Bn ($12.7 Bn) total. In 2006 at €10.2 Billion, Airbus stopped publishing its reported cost and then provisioned €4.9 Bn after the difficulties in electric cabling and two years delay for an estimated total of €18 Bn.
In 2014, the aircraft was estimated to have cost $25bn (£16bn – €18.9bn) to develop. In 2015, Airbus said development costs were €15bn (£11.4bn – $16.95 Bn), though analysts believe the figure is likely to be at least €5bn ($5.65 Bn) more for a €20 Bn ($22.6 Bn) total. In 2016, The A380 development costs were estimated at $25 billion for 15 years, $25–30 billion, or 25 billion euros ($28 billion).
Airbus A380 was very expensive. However, my point is this was paid by commercial business, not government. As long as positive return on investment is possible, that much money is available. We could raise that much for space as well. The catch is you have to demonstrate technology and demonstrate revenue before investors will put up that kind of money.
My other point is your estimate of A380 is based on per-unit cost after development was completed.

SpaceNut · 2017-10-04 19:18:26

Loius I would agree that landing 2 test cargo units on mars with useful cargo would be a good test of landing acuracy but they will not be coming back as there is no one to unload the cargo that is sent so are we to believe that the human lander based on the cargo test landing will perform as well for acuracy on the next cycle?
Then again the selection of the test site might be driven by a different set of characteristics to which would not be a base camp selection for the future crew to land at.
Would the cargo lander be disposable due to how long they would have been on the surface or is all the vehicles expected to be on the recyclable manner for all of the archetecture?

louis · 2017-10-05 01:09:30

I have never seen the problem with landing accuracy...as long as you have transponders on the ground, why wouldn't it be accurate? The cargo ships can be the transponders. I think it quite like the cargo ships will be considered expendable...but who knows - once the propellant production is fully up and running they may be ready to head back for Earth. Generally speaking though, I would have thought it is unwise to have a ship sitting on a planet for two years before you use it again. So maybe the first four will be abandoned and the first humans will return on the ship that arrives two years after they land.

SpaceNut wrote:

Loius I would agree that landing 2 test cargo units on mars with useful cargo would be a good test of landing acuracy but they will not be coming back as there is no one to unload the cargo that is sent so are we to believe that the human lander based on the cargo test landing will perform as well for acuracy on the next cycle?
Then again the selection of the test site might be driven by a different set of characteristics to which would not be a base camp selection for the future crew to land at.
Would the cargo lander be disposable due to how long they would have been on the surface or is all the vehicles expected to be on the recyclable manner for all of the archetecture?

SpaceNut · 2017-10-05 18:00:37

I think that means that we would need to design a landing beacon or three to allow for the cargo ship to make use them in order to traingulate to the correct location as it comes out of the black out and needs to find where it is in the landing arch.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-18 16:04:33

Cost of each use and launch will rely heavily of reuse of the stages that will make it up. The flight of city to city lends for the greatest cost lowering while the use to orbit might not be so kind.

louis · 2018-03-18 16:12:06

The author of this video suggests that the cost of BFR development to launch to Mars would be around $4 billion plus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMFOlw7ne4

Of course, as I suggested below, the costs of BFR development are being spread across several uses.

kbd512 · 2018-03-18 17:49:18

Louis,

Does the author of that video work for SpaceX or any other launch services provider that has designed, tested, and operated a super heavy lift launch vehicle? If not, then his opinion is most likely uneducated and relatively meaningless. All we have are historical costs to develop and use such vehicles and what information Elon Musk himself chooses to provide about the true costs of launch vehicle development. As a general rule, most aerospace vehicle development costs are very closely tied to the mass of the operational vehicle.

louis · 2018-03-19 01:51:22

For me, $4 billion sounds much closer to the mark than $10 billion (the figure more commonly bandied-about).

We can't trust historical costings. NASA is notoriously profligate, spending $2.5 billion on getting a Rover (Curiosity) to Mars in the most complicated way possible. For NASA, complicated = good. For Musk, complicated = bad.

Space X claim the BFR will be ready to fly in the first half of 2019. That is remarkable. If the development costs were really of an order of $10 billion that would mean they must already have spent about $5 billion, and there is no evidence they have spent anything like that amount (although I would say a lot of the development costs - perhaps as much as $1 billion - had already been spent before the Sept 17 announcement).

If you really think the overall development cost is going to be much more than $4 billion you need to explain why you think Space X have announced plans to fly next year.

Personally my guesstimate from Sept 17 would be more like $3 billion.

Of course, the Mars Mission is more than a rocket, so there will be a lot of other development costs for life support, propellant production etc on the planet.

kbd512 · 2018-03-19 05:41:41

Louis,

To begin with, the idea that this rocket will be ready to fly next year is a bit far-fetched. Falcon Heavy was ready to fly SIX YEARS after Elon Musk thought it would be ready to fly. Nobody, not even Elon Musk himself, knows how much it will cost to get BFR ready to fly. That's not a good reason to abandon efforts to build the rocket, but super heavy lift launch vehicles are always inherently more costly and time consuming endeavors than the people working on them initially believe them to be. That's just historical fact.

The crewed version of Dragon has yet to fly. How long has that little aerospace vehicle been in development?

Regarding Curiosity, NASA and JPL actually successfully landed a Mini Cooper on Mars. Nobody else has done that, period. If it wasn't for NASA and JPL, we wouldn't know half of what we now know about Mars, period. NASA and their contractors are also the only successful operators of a super heavy lift launch vehicle, period. The handful of attempts by the Russians to operate such a vehicle don't count as operational programs spanning decades, although their efforts towards that goal are to be commended as the excellent work that they were.

This is just a really hard thing to accomplish. It's very far from impossible, but it's complicated, expensive, and requires iron will to continually find and fix problems while maintaining the forward momentum of the development program. I have confidence in Elon Musk and his crew, but this will be another of those things that took longer and was more expensive than he initially thought it would be. I applaud Elon Musk's enthusiasm, and yours, but it needs to be tempered with a healthy dose of reality. If BFR is ready to fly four years from now, that'd be an unmitigated success.

louis · 2018-03-19 07:55:50

1. You give no citation for your claim about Musk being six years out re the F9H. I am guessing that was probably related to his initial timeline when the project was first announced.

2. The BFR project has been around a long time now. Wikipedia says work began in earnest before 2012. I believe that. They have done a lot of work on the propellant/fuel tank and the raptor engines. More importantly, I believe, they have built up a huge store of design and manufacture knowledge through their work on their other rockets which can be applied to the BFR. Of course, no one can know if development will proceed smoothly, but I take it Musk's prediction is an indication of what is feasible if there are no major hitches en route.

3. The crewed version of the Dragon has been tested and a crewed mission is planned for later this year. But that's not relevant to the BFR development.

4. Curiosity is fascinating but also painfully slow and unable to follow up interesting finds. Two people on Mars will accomplish more in one week than Curiosity has done on the whole mission. The $2.5 billion spent on Curiosity could have been used to fund a human Mars Mission. It was not. That was NASA's choice. A bad one in my view, as I think we would be on Mars by now if they had focussed on the Mission in the way Musk is. Curiosity is and was an exceptionally complex mission but the complexity was imposed upon itself by NASA. It was in my view a daft idea to send a complex robotic science lab 100 million miles away using a quixotic landing procedure.

5. Well the good thing about BFR is that it is a real project that is already in the manufacturing process. I think some people are in denial about that! I guess it's like many things...the romantic dream can be more exciting than the everyday reality. But that's the truth - a Mars transporter really is being built and we'll see, by June 2019, if Musk is right in his prediction.

kbd512 wrote:

Louis,
To begin with, the idea that this rocket will be ready to fly next year is a bit far-fetched. Falcon Heavy was ready to fly SIX YEARS after Elon Musk thought it would be ready to fly. Nobody, not even Elon Musk himself, knows how much it will cost to get BFR ready to fly. That's not a good reason to abandon efforts to build the rocket, but super heavy lift launch vehicles are always inherently more costly and time consuming endeavors than the people working on them initially believe them to be. That's just historical fact.
The crewed version of Dragon has yet to fly. How long has that little aerospace vehicle been in development?
Regarding Curiosity, NASA and JPL actually successfully landed a Mini Cooper on Mars. Nobody else has done that, period. If it wasn't for NASA and JPL, we wouldn't know half of what we now know about Mars, period. NASA and their contractors are also the only successful operators of a super heavy lift launch vehicle, period. The handful of attempts by the Russians to operate such a vehicle don't count as operational programs spanning decades, although their efforts towards that goal are to be commended as the excellent work that they were.
This is just a really hard thing to accomplish. It's very far from impossible, but it's complicated, expensive, and requires iron will to continually find and fix problems while maintaining the forward momentum of the development program. I have confidence in Elon Musk and his crew, but this will be another of those things that took longer and was more expensive than he initially thought it would be. I applaud Elon Musk's enthusiasm, and yours, but it needs to be tempered with a healthy dose of reality. If BFR is ready to fly four years from now, that'd be an unmitigated success.

Oldfart1939 · 2018-03-19 11:09:39

Just a point of information as reference: Musk revealed that development costs for FH were over a billion dollars. Not counting his personal Tesla as a throwaway. The first BFS version may be considered "expendable" in the hover and "grasshopper" tests. Just a WAG at $350 million for this first test vehicle? The first stage booster should be coming along slightly behind the BFS; I'd estimate $400 million for the first stage test vehicle. If neither of these crashes/explodes, then another $300 million for systems integration and a full vehicle launch if the original 2 stages don't need replacement. So this comes to roughly between $1 billion and $1.2 billion for a fully functional BFR/BFS. Subsequent, follow-on rockets could come in at around $650 million each. However: "Tis many a slip twixt the cup and the lip." Everything could easily double these estimates, if any significant redesign is required.

louis · 2018-03-19 11:19:29

Sounds reasonable to me. Of course where development stops and missions begin is difficult to say. I am imagining they are going to be doing some test crewed circumnavigations around the Moon before they head for Mars - so they will cost some as well.

But at the same time, we can also view these development costs as being shared across several projects: ISS, satellite launches, the orbital internet, orbital tourism, lunar tourism, and Earth2Earth. Musk can probably raise significant private finance for some of those - so they could be sharing the development costs. You might end up with a situation where in reality the Mars share of the development costs is less than a billion...difficult to say at this point. I think once the BFR is flying the world perception of what can be achieved will be altered almost overnight. The Falcon 9 Heavy launch was pretty exciting but the BFR will generate enormous interest (which can potentially be turned into investment, should that be required).

Oldfart1939 wrote:

Just a point of information as reference: Musk revealed that development costs for FH were over a billion dollars. Not counting his personal Tesla as a throwaway. The first BFS version may be considered "expendable" in the hover and "grasshopper" tests. Just a WAG at $350 million for this first test vehicle? The first stage booster should be coming along slightly behind the BFS; I'd estimate $400 million for the first stage test vehicle. If neither of these crashes/explodes, then another $300 million for systems integration and a full vehicle launch if the original 2 stages don't need replacement. So this comes to roughly between $1 billion and $1.2 billion for a fully functional BFR/BFS. Subsequent, follow-on rockets could come in at around $650 million each. However: "Tis many a slip twixt the cup and the lip." Everything could easily double these estimates, if any significant redesign is required.

kbd512 · 2018-03-19 12:08:18

louis wrote:

1. You give no citation for your claim about Musk being six years out re the F9H. I am guessing that was probably related to his initial timeline when the project was first announced.

I don't need to cite things from the past, Louis. You can go look them up yourself. Since you've not demonstrated the ability to do that, I'll post some links here:

Musk unveils plans for low-cost heavy lift rocket By William Harwood from CBS News

If you think CBS News isn't trustworthy when it comes to simply writing down what came out of Elon Musk's mouth, here's a press release from SpaceX's website that puts the launch date one to two years later (Falcon Heavy actually flew four years later than what they claimed in their press release):

SPACEX ANNOUNCES LAUNCH DATE FOR THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL ROCKET

There were similar claims made about the launch date for the crewed version of Dragon. I'm not going to waste my time posting them here. You should demonstrate that you're capable of fact-checking information yourself by looking that up for yourself. I don't make things up to suit my point of view. I review historical evidence and form an opinion about what the probabilities are that something will happen in a given period of time. At some point, you might want to try doing that yourself.

louis wrote:

2. The BFR project has been around a long time now. Wikipedia says work began in earnest before 2012. I believe that. They have done a lot of work on the propellant/fuel tank and the raptor engines. More importantly, I believe, they have built up a huge store of design and manufacture knowledge through their work on their other rockets which can be applied to the BFR. Of course, no one can know if development will proceed smoothly, but I take it Musk's prediction is an indication of what is feasible if there are no major hitches en route.

BFR has been a paper concept, in Elon Musk's own words, for some time now. What you believe about what SpaceX's engineers know or don't know has no bearing on reality. That first part of the last sentence you wrote that I quoted above is about as close to the truth as you've been thus far. Nobody knows if development will proceed smoothly or not. Nobody ever does.

louis wrote:

3. The crewed version of the Dragon has been tested and a crewed mission is planned for later this year. But that's not relevant to the BFR development.

Dragon's development timeline is entirely relevant to BFR's development timeline if BFR is going to be a manned spacecraft carrying ten times as many crew members. The upper stage is basically a vertical landing Space Shuttle carrying ten times as many crew members as Dragon or the STS orbiter. Since this is SpaceX we're talking about, developing that should be a piece of cake, right?

louis wrote:

4. Curiosity is fascinating but also painfully slow and unable to follow up interesting finds. Two people on Mars will accomplish more in one week than Curiosity has done on the whole mission. The $2.5 billion spent on Curiosity could have been used to fund a human Mars Mission. It was not. That was NASA's choice. A bad one in my view, as I think we would be on Mars by now if they had focussed on the Mission in the way Musk is. Curiosity is and was an exceptionally complex mission but the complexity was imposed upon itself by NASA. It was in my view a daft idea to send a complex robotic science lab 100 million miles away using a quixotic landing procedure.

If there was any possibility of sending humans to Mars without an unacceptably high likelihood of killing them, then NASA or ROSCOSMOS would've done it by now. It's a far more complicated undertaking than you believe it to be. You talk about this as though some magical person can wave their magic wand and make it happen, but Elon Musk himself doesn't seem to share your level of optimism.

NASA developed and launched a super heavy lift rocket before Elon Musk was born. They developed and completed ground testing of a nuclear thermal rocket engine with the specific impulse required to send humans to Mars when Elon Musk was a toddler. As soon as they did that, President Nixon decided to kill that program and approve a program for a reusable spacecraft. Either Congress or the President has pulled the rug out from under NASA at every subsequent attempt to develop and implement the hardware required to deliver humans to Mars or even just the moon. That is the only reason why we're not already on Mars.

NASA recently used a pair of identical twins, both astronauts, to study what happens to humans in space while aboard ISS for a year. 7% of the DNA of the man they sent there for a year changed over the course of that year. The only reason we know that today is because NASA procured an identical pair of willing human guinea pigs to see what happens when a human spends a year in space. Elon Musk had nothing to do with that and he's every bit as clueless about how well humans can live in .38g as everyone else is. All this experimentation isn't simply done because NASA likes spending money. They have to know certain things before they attempt other things that require basic knowledge about how well something is likely to work before many more billions are spent trying to do something that ultimately proves to be futile.

A life support system that is reliable and efficient enough for humans to live on Mars has only been developed by NASA in the past few years, after decades of efforts towards that goal. I can guarantee that SpaceX has not secretly developed a magical new life support system that billions of dollars of NASA research failed to produce.

If you know next to nothing about the surface of a planet, then finding sites that aren't impassable debris fields is a really good idea if you want to send humans there in the future. The only reason we know much of anything at all about Mars is because of NASA and JPL. Elon Musk was four years old when NASA sent their first lander to Mars.

With respect to the cost associated with Curiosity, do you have any idea what the delivery options actually were for delivering a one ton rover to the surface of Mars at the time development began? We had Atlas V and Delta IV heavy rockets available at that time. JPL took what appeared to be an impossible set of mass constraints and devised an entire robotic exploration system that actually worked.

Lastly, the only reason SpaceX exists today is because NASA was willing to fund them. I give NASA a little more credit than you do because I've seen and read enough history to know where we came from, where we are, and where we're going.

louis wrote:

5. Well the good thing about BFR is that it is a real project that is already in the manufacturing process. I think some people are in denial about that! I guess it's like many things...the romantic dream can be more exciting than the everyday reality. But that's the truth - a Mars transporter really is being built and we'll see, by June 2019, if Musk is right in his prediction.

Daydream all you want, but when 2019 rolls around the BFR still won't be ready to fly. If I'm wrong, then I'll start to believe that SpaceX does have a magic wand. I'm pretty sure they don't.

SpaceNut · 2018-03-19 17:36:09

Most design processes are a couple of years for the proto/ pilot phase of design plus testing of parts, a year plus to setup manufacturing production, and then at least the same to intergrate the articals into a final trial product. Even the robotics, satelite industry is in that same 6 year cycle.

The launcher after a few cycles will be pretty much a fixed cost plus the payload changes required for what meets the mission contents and requirements.

I agree that robotics is slow but we are coming to an end to the slow motion exploration. Its up to earth to promote mars manned missions and make good choices to make it a safe journey.

louis · 2018-03-19 20:00:36

Thanks for the link.

1. Yes that was quite a misprediction - out by nearly five years.

2. I don't think it's really a "paper project" when they've been building the rocket engines and a prototype of the propellant tank.

3. As I understand it the Crewed Dragon is an entirely separate project. No doubt some of the things learnt by Space X in designed and building it will presumably be used in relation to the BFR.

4. NASA have spent $2.5 billion on one small Rover project. That could have been used to build a BFR type craft.
Talking of 7% DNA change is misleading as this article notes:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/15/1712 … ce-station

It was a minimal change in gene expression. And it's not clear exactly what related to the space flight. NASA had to issue a correction because this misinterpretation was circulating. But I blame NASA for spinning it in the first place - typical of them to try and give the impression that the impact of zero G is very negative.

Moreover the twin was in zero G for over one year. The Mars pioneers will be in zero G for six months or thereabouts and then be in recovery on Mars. There is no doubt in my mind that their muscle power will recover in the 0.38 G assisted by wearing weighted suits. This is a purely mechanical process. The origin of effects on the immune system are less clear. But they are unlikely to be life threatening, since no one has died after extended orbital zero G exposure, even over 400 plus days.

Obviously I'm not saying NASA haven't done good things, but with a budget of over $20 billion per annum, it would be odd if they hadn't. But if you reflect that's over $1000 billion dollars they've had to play with over the 46 years since the last manned mission to the Moon, I think they do have a case to answer. Can you imagine what Musk could have achieved with $1000 billion over those 4 plus decades?

Space X and NASA are working together on life support:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … stems.html

5. The first Boeing 747 - something on a similar scale - was built in about 18 months. The BFR will probably be less complex than the 747. But as I say, we shall at least be able to settle this point in reality.

kbd512 wrote:

louis wrote:
1. You give no citation for your claim about Musk being six years out re the F9H. I am guessing that was probably related to his initial timeline when the project was first announced.
I don't need to cite things from the past, Louis. You can go look them up yourself. Since you've not demonstrated the ability to do that, I'll post some links here:
Musk unveils plans for low-cost heavy lift rocket By William Harwood from CBS News
If you think CBS News isn't trustworthy when it comes to simply writing down what came out of Elon Musk's mouth, here's a press release from SpaceX's website that puts the launch date one to two years later (Falcon Heavy actually flew four years later than what they claimed in their press release):
SPACEX ANNOUNCES LAUNCH DATE FOR THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL ROCKET
There were similar claims made about the launch date for the crewed version of Dragon. I'm not going to waste my time posting them here. You should demonstrate that you're capable of fact-checking information yourself by looking that up for yourself. I don't make things up to suit my point of view. I review historical evidence and form an opinion about what the probabilities are that something will happen in a given period of time. At some point, you might want to try doing that yourself.
louis wrote:
2. The BFR project has been around a long time now. Wikipedia says work began in earnest before 2012. I believe that. They have done a lot of work on the propellant/fuel tank and the raptor engines. More importantly, I believe, they have built up a huge store of design and manufacture knowledge through their work on their other rockets which can be applied to the BFR. Of course, no one can know if development will proceed smoothly, but I take it Musk's prediction is an indication of what is feasible if there are no major hitches en route.
BFR has been a paper concept, in Elon Musk's own words, for some time now. What you believe about what SpaceX's engineers know or don't know has no bearing on reality. That first part of the last sentence you wrote that I quoted above is about as close to the truth as you've been thus far. Nobody knows if development will proceed smoothly or not. Nobody ever does.
louis wrote:
3. The crewed version of the Dragon has been tested and a crewed mission is planned for later this year. But that's not relevant to the BFR development.
Dragon's development timeline is entirely relevant to BFR's development timeline if BFR is going to be a manned spacecraft carrying ten times as many crew members. The upper stage is basically a vertical landing Space Shuttle carrying ten times as many crew members as Dragon or the STS orbiter. Since this is SpaceX we're talking about, developing that should be a piece of cake, right?
louis wrote:
4. Curiosity is fascinating but also painfully slow and unable to follow up interesting finds. Two people on Mars will accomplish more in one week than Curiosity has done on the whole mission. The $2.5 billion spent on Curiosity could have been used to fund a human Mars Mission. It was not. That was NASA's choice. A bad one in my view, as I think we would be on Mars by now if they had focussed on the Mission in the way Musk is. Curiosity is and was an exceptionally complex mission but the complexity was imposed upon itself by NASA. It was in my view a daft idea to send a complex robotic science lab 100 million miles away using a quixotic landing procedure.
If there was any possibility of sending humans to Mars without an unacceptably high likelihood of killing them, then NASA or ROSCOSMOS would've done it by now. It's a far more complicated undertaking than you believe it to be. You talk about this as though some magical person can wave their magic wand and make it happen, but Elon Musk himself doesn't seem to share your level of optimism.
NASA developed and launched a super heavy lift rocket before Elon Musk was born. They developed and completed ground testing of a nuclear thermal rocket engine with the specific impulse required to send humans to Mars when Elon Musk was a toddler. As soon as they did that, President Nixon decided to kill that program and approve a program for a reusable spacecraft. Either Congress or the President has pulled the rug out from under NASA at every subsequent attempt to develop and implement the hardware required to deliver humans to Mars or even just the moon. That is the only reason why we're not already on Mars.
NASA recently used a pair of identical twins, both astronauts, to study what happens to humans in space while aboard ISS for a year. 7% of the DNA of the man they sent there for a year changed over the course of that year. The only reason we know that today is because NASA procured an identical pair of willing human guinea pigs to see what happens when a human spends a year in space. Elon Musk had nothing to do with that and he's every bit as clueless about how well humans can live in .38g as everyone else is. All this experimentation isn't simply done because NASA likes spending money. They have to know certain things before they attempt other things that require basic knowledge about how well something is likely to work before many more billions are spent trying to do something that ultimately proves to be futile.
A life support system that is reliable and efficient enough for humans to live on Mars has only been developed by NASA in the past few years, after decades of efforts towards that goal. I can guarantee that SpaceX has not secretly developed a magical new life support system that billions of dollars of NASA research failed to produce.
If you know next to nothing about the surface of a planet, then finding sites that aren't impassable debris fields is a really good idea if you want to send humans there in the future. The only reason we know much of anything at all about Mars is because of NASA and JPL. Elon Musk was four years old when NASA sent their first lander to Mars.
With respect to the cost associated with Curiosity, do you have any idea what the delivery options actually were for delivering a one ton rover to the surface of Mars at the time development began? We had Atlas V and Delta IV heavy rockets available at that time. JPL took what appeared to be an impossible set of mass constraints and devised an entire robotic exploration system that actually worked.
Lastly, the only reason SpaceX exists today is because NASA was willing to fund them. I give NASA a little more credit than you do because I've seen and read enough history to know where we came from, where we are, and where we're going.
louis wrote:
5. Well the good thing about BFR is that it is a real project that is already in the manufacturing process. I think some people are in denial about that! I guess it's like many things...the romantic dream can be more exciting than the everyday reality. But that's the truth - a Mars transporter really is being built and we'll see, by June 2019, if Musk is right in his prediction.
Daydream all you want, but when 2019 rolls around the BFR still won't be ready to fly. If I'm wrong, then I'll start to believe that SpaceX does have a magic wand. I'm pretty sure they don't.

Last edited by louis (2018-03-19 20:15:10)

SpaceNut · 2018-03-19 20:06:18

I agree that the 7% DNA change is misleading as to what permanent damage will persist and become a cancer in the following decades.

kbd512 · 2018-03-20 01:22:56

SpaceNut,

There may be no permanent ill effects from the DNA changes. The point is, we don't know what the effect will be. Prior to shipping hundreds of people to Mars, do you think it might be a good idea to find out first? How about having people live the rest of their lives in .38g? Does anyone here know what the effect of that will be? If so, care to share what you see in your crystal ball with the rest of us? I'm sure NASA and Elon Musk would love to know.

Louis,

1. I think it's highly unlikely that an empty lot, soon-to-be factory, that's being acquired as we speak is going to go from a bunch of abandoned buildings to an operational rocket manufacturing and refurbishment facility that's turned out its first operational rocket in two years. I could always be wrong, but as far as I'm aware, even Elon Musk hasn't done that at any point in the past. It might take at least several years to get that factory built, the rocket engine ground testing completed, and the vehicle assembled. I think a 2021 launch date is very ambitious, to say the least.

2. The rocket engine is an incomplete scale model demonstrator and the tank, which was a single test article without any of the other equipment installed, was for a different rocket design. When you build an entirely new rocket from scratch, which is what BFR is, you still have to go through the entire design and testing process. Every. Single. Time. There are no shortcuts and there never have been. Shortcuts cost lives. Nobody is more painfully aware of this than NASA and ROSCOSMOS. FAA and NASA mandate that launch service providers do their due diligence in the design and testing process. Things that even the engineers think are impossible can and will happen.

3. Whereupon crewed Dragon flies for the first time aboard Falcon 9, SpaceX will have learned a great deal about what is required to stand up an operational manned space flight system. Years after work started on this project, it's still a work in progress.

4. Without knowing much of anything about the surface of another planet where humans have never lived, would you simply build a giant rocket to send a hundred people there? You keep talking about this like the knowledge we have today magically materialized out of thin air. The only real "magic" that happened was that NASA and JPL have been so successful in delivering things to Mars and gathering data to accurately characterize the nature of their exploration target. There's a logical progression to these exploration missions.

I already told you why it is that there has been no apparent progress. It had nothing to do with NASA's lack of will to go there. The politicians can't keep cutting NASA off at the knees and expect them to ever achieve anything worthwhile. Long term thinking is required here, but politicians don't think beyond the next election cycle. Congress and the President have been using NASA as a political toy to play money distribution games with. That special kind of stupid never results in good outcomes. It's getting rather tiresome, too.

NASA wanted to go to Mars. Saturn V and NTR were developed for that purpose. Funding terminated.

NASA again wanted to develop a super heavy lift launch vehicle from STS hardware after the STS program was established.

1970's - Saturn V Applications; Apollo Applications; NERVA (Nuclear Thermal Rocket); Skylab - Funding terminated.

1980's - Shuttle-C; Advanced Launch System - Funding terminated.

1990's - Shuttle-Z; Magnum; National Launch System; X-33 (far less costly STS replacement); TransHab - Funding terminated.

2000's - Jupiter / DIRECT; Side Mount Vehicle (Shuttle-Z variant) - Funding terminated.

2010's - Ares-I / Ares-IV / Ares-V / Ares-V Lite / Altair (new lunar lander) - Funding terminated.

2020's - SLS - Funding insufficient (President Obama tried to terminate Orion and SLS once, but Congress revived those programs; next President after President Trump all but guaranteed to terminate those programs).

Does anyone else but me see the pattern there? Does anyone else read history? NASA has been trying to rebuild a real space exploration program. The shortsighted individuals who inhabit Congress and the Oval Office keep pulling the rug out from underneath them at every opportunity presented. We can't have a real space exploration program when we pull the plug on the funding at every opportunity because the people who run America can't have what they want from our space program the instant they want it. In any event, the history seems pretty clear on this point.

5. Boeing had nearly everyone in the company working on the 747 design and it very nearly bankrupted the company. Boeing also had a working aircraft factory to make aircraft in at that time and a customer base who needed a product to ship more people across the globe in a more economic manner. SpaceX is starting with no factory or machinery, no employees to work in their factory, no customers who require the use of a gigantic launch vehicle, and they have to work out all the details of delivering the rocket from the factory to the launch pad, launch pad infrastructure, etc.

It would help if people dug a little deeper to determine why things worked out the way they did. That is the part that interests me the most. There are very few accidents of the desirable variety or magic technology advancements in aerospace engineering. Most things work out the way they do for fairly simplistic reasons, often irrelevant to whether or not something will actually work.

louis · 2018-03-20 06:02:44

This suggests LA as the eventual manufacturing centre:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03 … s-angeles/

The first launches (of the BFR spaceship only) will apparently be at Brownsville Texas - in the first half of 2019. Those will just be short low fuel hops. Effectively they will just be testing the rocket engines' launch performance. I wonder whether a prototype is being built in Texas. Is that not possible? (Musk has stated explicitly that construction is in progress - either he's a liar or that means construction is taking place somewhere else).

Probably hundreds of people have now spent months in low G. I think we do have a reasonably good idea of the effects which seem only marginally negative in the long term, although clearly there are issues over human performance beyond one year.

I maintain that with $1000 billion to spend over nearly 5 decades NASA could have been more focussed. I personally would have prioritised a permanent lunar base and then a Mars Mission.

To take one example: reliable life support systems. These are not beyond the wit of man or woman. They just needed a lot more resources ploughed into them. But if you are going to authorise big robot rovers to try and replicate human activity on the surface of Mars, you are only going to have small change left over for life support development.

kbd512 wrote:

SpaceNut,
There may be no permanent ill effects from the DNA changes. The point is, we don't know what the effect will be. Prior to shipping hundreds of people to Mars, do you think it might be a good idea to find out first? How about having people live the rest of their lives in .38g? Does anyone here know what the effect of that will be? If so, care to share what you see in your crystal ball with the rest of us? I'm sure NASA and Elon Musk would love to know.
Louis,
1. I think it's highly unlikely that an empty lot, soon-to-be factory, that's being acquired as we speak is going to go from a bunch of abandoned buildings to an operational rocket manufacturing and refurbishment facility that's turned out its first operational rocket in two years. I could always be wrong, but as far as I'm aware, even Elon Musk hasn't done that at any point in the past. It might take at least several years to get that factory built, the rocket engine ground testing completed, and the vehicle assembled. I think a 2021 launch date is very ambitious, to say the least.
2. The rocket engine is an incomplete scale model demonstrator and the tank, which was a single test article without any of the other equipment installed, was for a different rocket design. When you build an entirely new rocket from scratch, which is what BFR is, you still have to go through the entire design and testing process. Every. Single. Time. There are no shortcuts and there never have been. Shortcuts cost lives. Nobody is more painfully aware of this than NASA and ROSCOSMOS. FAA and NASA mandate that launch service providers do their due diligence in the design and testing process. Things that even the engineers think are impossible can and will happen.
3. Whereupon crewed Dragon flies for the first time aboard Falcon 9, SpaceX will have learned a great deal about what is required to stand up an operational manned space flight system. Years after work started on this project, it's still a work in progress.
4. Without knowing much of anything about the surface of another planet where humans have never lived, would you simply build a giant rocket to send a hundred people there? You keep talking about this like the knowledge we have today magically materialized out of thin air. The only real "magic" that happened was that NASA and JPL have been so successful in delivering things to Mars and gathering data to accurately characterize the nature of their exploration target. There's a logical progression to these exploration missions.
I already told you why it is that there has been no apparent progress. It had nothing to do with NASA's lack of will to go there. The politicians can't keep cutting NASA off at the knees and expect them to ever achieve anything worthwhile. Long term thinking is required here, but politicians don't think beyond the next election cycle. Congress and the President have been using NASA as a political toy to play money distribution games with. That special kind of stupid never results in good outcomes. It's getting rather tiresome, too.
NASA wanted to go to Mars. Saturn V and NTR were developed for that purpose. Funding terminated.
NASA again wanted to develop a super heavy lift launch vehicle from STS hardware after the STS program was established.
1970's - Saturn V Applications; Apollo Applications; NERVA (Nuclear Thermal Rocket); Skylab - Funding terminated.
1980's - Shuttle-C; Advanced Launch System - Funding terminated.
1990's - Shuttle-Z; Magnum; National Launch System; X-33 (far less costly STS replacement); TransHab - Funding terminated.
2000's - Jupiter / DIRECT; Side Mount Vehicle (Shuttle-Z variant) - Funding terminated.
2010's - Ares-I / Ares-IV / Ares-V / Ares-V Lite / Altair (new lunar lander) - Funding terminated.
2020's - SLS - Funding insufficient (President Obama tried to terminate Orion and SLS once, but Congress revived those programs; next President after President Trump all but guaranteed to terminate those programs).
Does anyone else but me see the pattern there? Does anyone else read history? NASA has been trying to rebuild a real space exploration program. The shortsighted individuals who inhabit Congress and the Oval Office keep pulling the rug out from underneath them at every opportunity presented. We can't have a real space exploration program when we pull the plug on the funding at every opportunity because the people who run America can't have what they want from our space program the instant they want it. In any event, the history seems pretty clear on this point.
5. Boeing had nearly everyone in the company working on the 747 design and it very nearly bankrupted the company. Boeing also had a working aircraft factory to make aircraft in at that time and a customer base who needed a product to ship more people across the globe in a more economic manner. SpaceX is starting with no factory or machinery, no employees to work in their factory, no customers who require the use of a gigantic launch vehicle, and they have to work out all the details of delivering the rocket from the factory to the launch pad, launch pad infrastructure, etc.
It would help if people dug a little deeper to determine why things worked out the way they did. That is the part that interests me the most. There are very few accidents of the desirable variety or magic technology advancements in aerospace engineering. Most things work out the way they do for fairly simplistic reasons, often irrelevant to whether or not something will actually work.

Last edited by louis (2018-03-20 06:03:36)

kbd512 · 2018-03-20 12:33:53

Louis,

I'm excited that SpaceX is actually working on building BFR, but I believe the initial timeline for when the first rocket will fly is a bit of a stretch given everything that must be completed first. I want them to succeed where government bureaucracy has caused so many failures to launch. I temper my enthusiasm with the knowledge that this sort of undertaking is always more complicated and time consuming than anyone initially believes it to be.

LA is intended to be where the rockets are manufactured, but the land purchased is a collection of abandoned facilities. It's not some sort of turnkey solution. There's an enormous amount of work to be done to transform that LA port facility into a functional BFR factory.

I have been harping on the issue of reliable closed-loop life support systems for quite some time, but I thought everyone else would be sick of reading about it by now.

NASA is actively working on more reliable closed-loop life support systems. Paragon SDC and NASA are developing the next generation of atmospheric scrubbers (CO2 And Moisture Removal Amine Swingbed or CAMRAS) and waste water processing equipment (Ionomer Water Processor or IWP). Both systems are a very clear cut above what ISS currently uses. During testing, CAMRAS halved CO2 levels aboard ISS for the period it was in operation and was operated longer than was required by the testing cycle as a function of its excellent performance. IWP isn't ready for prime time yet, but in testing the system recovered 97% to 98% at a rate far above the target recovery rate. An IWP flight demonstration unit will fly aboard ISS in 2019. Both systems also demonstrate an extreme level of power consumption and maintenance reduction over current systems. IWP is an in-conjunction-with, rather than a standalone water processor, but it dramatically lowers the requirement for further filtration to potable water standards. In short, it's a lightweight plastic filter bag that filters out the nasty stuff using minimal pumping power so that more power and maintenance intensive filtration systems have less demand placed upon them.

All of this un-sexy but absolutely mandatory life support work is being undertaken by NASA and their contractors. Paragon SDC does a lot of important work for the agency in that regard, as do a slew of other contractors. None of this technology would exist without NASA because there are few other requirements for it and nobody else has paid to develop it.

To reiterate, I believe SpaceX will get to Mars, possibly ahead of when NASA is ready to do so or perhaps not, only time will tell, but nobody is going to get there alive without a lot of help from NASA and JPL. All bashing aside, they're the undisputed experts in this complex multi-disciplinary field of expertise and they have the considerable resources of the US federal government backing them.

Oldfart1939 · 2018-03-20 13:00:02

Just another reality check from a devoted SpaceX supporter, who also carries around a big bucket of ice water to throw on some of the outlandish and super enthusiastic claims. Enumerated below is something of a bucket list of criticism:
(1) The new liq. CH4/LOX engine has been static fired at McGregor test site only. Has not been test flown.
(2) Dragon 2 capsule crew rated has yet to fly.
(3) Falcon 9 not yet human/crew rated due to expanded NASA "safety concerns." NASA has essentially tripled the standards applied to Shuttle.
(4) Problem of getting LA manufactured vehicles to TX; still a mystery.
Yeah, I could list several more, but there are many unaddressed or unsolved problems remaining

Oldfart1939 · 2018-03-20 13:09:47

In my post #24 above, I listed some of the problems remaining for getting a fully functional and man-rated vehicle flying. In this separate post, I'm gonna offer some solutions.
For concern (1), SpaceX could conceivably build a Falcon 9 second stage which is fueled/powered by a Raptor engine instead of the current Merlin D-1 RP-1 & LOX engine. This could be considered the "final upgrade" to the reliable falcon 9 launch vehicle which would be even more capable than that in current use.
Concern (2) may be resolved later this year.
Concern (3) is intimately coupled to concern (2). Same solution "in the works."
Concern (4) is probably amenable to solution by purchase of a motorship capable of carrying the 2 stages as deck mounted cargo under a special protective structure; delivery to either the Cape or Brownsville, TX.

Problem remaining is TIME! How quickly SpaceX can move on these items.

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#1 2017-10-04 12:25:11

Cost estimates for the BFR

#2 2017-10-04 12:55:14

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#3 2017-10-04 14:56:39

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#4 2017-10-04 16:43:56

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#5 2017-10-04 18:11:31

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#6 2017-10-04 19:18:26

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#7 2017-10-05 01:09:30

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#8 2017-10-05 18:00:37

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#9 2018-03-18 16:04:33

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#10 2018-03-18 16:12:06

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#11 2018-03-18 17:49:18

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#12 2018-03-19 01:51:22

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#13 2018-03-19 05:41:41

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#14 2018-03-19 07:55:50

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#15 2018-03-19 11:09:39

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#16 2018-03-19 11:19:29

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#17 2018-03-19 12:08:18

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#18 2018-03-19 17:36:09

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#19 2018-03-19 20:00:36

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#20 2018-03-19 20:06:18

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#21 2018-03-20 01:22:56

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#22 2018-03-20 06:02:44

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#23 2018-03-20 12:33:53

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#24 2018-03-20 13:00:02

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

#25 2018-03-20 13:09:47

Re: Cost estimates for the BFR

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