Cost of Spaceflight

tahanson43206 · 2022-03-26 18:55:25

This topic is offered for posts with specific cost information for specific space mission.

It is rare for costs to be broken out with precision, but occasionally it happens.

Please do NOT put comments in this topic. Please DO use the numerous Chat topics for any comments.

What I am looking for in ** this ** topic are facts about costs, and related facts about specific missions.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2022-03-26 18:56:14

I'd like to lead off this new topic with an item that SpaceNut found:

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php … 84#p192784

By now, SpaceX is very familiar with these flights. The company completed 20 supply missions under a previous CRS contract, CRS-1. According to NASA’s inspector general, the total payment to SpaceX for those missions was $3.04 billion, or around $152 million per mission.

I'd appreciate someone posting details about the breakout of costs shown above.

My expectation is that the total of $152 million (US) includes:

Preparations for launch, but NOT the materials loaded/delivered
Launch and Docking
Undocking and Return
Post flight services (eg, safing the vehicle and delivering cargo)

The cost-per-pound (or kg) would include both legs of the round trip.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2022-03-26 19:04:56

Space costs very by type of mission and of course by rockets.

Chart: This is how much each of NASA's Mars missions have cost

https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/ … pment-cost

https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/mop/file … -costs.pdf

https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/top- … -missions/

https://spacenews.com/nasa-increases-pr … -missions/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-03-27 11:07:53

Blaming inflation, SpaceX raises Starlink and launch prices

https://spacenews.com/blaming-inflation … ch-prices/

SpaceX has raised prices for both its Starlink broadband service and for dedicated and rideshare launches, in some cases by up to 20%, citing inflation.

The company advised customers of its Starlink service March 22 of a price increase for both the service itself as well as the terminal. The cost of the service, which had been $99 in the United States, increased 11% to $110. The terminal, which cost $499 in the U.S., increased to $549 for those who had already paid a deposit and $599 for new customers, the latter a 20% increase. Starlink customers in other countries have reported getting similar notices of price increases.

“The sole purpose of these adjustments is to keep pace with rising inflation,” SpaceX said in the message to customers, which also mentioned “excessive levels of inflation.” The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported March 10 that inflation over the previous 12 months was running at 7.9% before seasonal adjustments, the highest rate in four decades.

kbd512 · 2022-03-28 10:48:05

SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 22,800kg to LEO for $67M aboard Falcon 9 (expendable), or $2,938.60/kg of delivered payload.

SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 5,500kg to GTO for $67M aboard Falcon 9 (reusable), or $12,181.81/kg of delivered payload.

SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 8,000kg to GTO for $97M aboard Falcon Heavy (reusable), or $12,125.00/kg of delivered payload.

SpaceX lists the 2017 price for 68,000kg to LEO for $150M aboard Falcon Heavy (expendable), or $2,351.10/kg of delivered payload.

ULA lists the 2016 price for 8,900kg to GTO for $153M aboard Atlas V 551 configuration, or $17,191.01/kg of delivered payload.

ULA lists the 2016 price for 18,814kg to LEO for $153M aboard Atlas V 551 configuration, or $8,132.24/kg of delivered payload.

The SpaceX prices are for brand new build rockets. SpaceX charges $12M less for a refurbished rocket, or $55M. GTO prices are for new build reusable configuration vehicles. LEO prices are for fully expendable configuration vehicles.

ULA only flies expendable rockets, so all of their rockets are brand new at the time of launch.

The supply of Russian-made RD-180 engines will be gone within a couple of years (all existing RD-180 engines within our supply chain are allocated to upcoming launches) and unlikely to ever return to production due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, so Atlas V will be forced into retirement as ULA's new Vulcan launch vehicle takes its place. Vulcan uses American-made Blue Origin LOX/LCH4 engines, rather than Russian-made RD-180 engines, a similar but new GEM-63XL solid rocket strap-on boosters as Atlas V's GEM-63 boosters (significantly higher thrust but shorter burn time by 10 seconds), and a similar but new Centaur-derived upper stage with 2 RL-10 engines. First launch of Vulcan-Centaur is scheduled for 2022. Payload to LEO is anticipated to be 27,200kg to LEO, 26,200kg to ISS, 14,400kg to GTO.

National Security Launch requirements are 6,800kg to LEO, 17,000kg to polar, 8,165kg to GTO, and 6,600kg to GEO. I believe both Falcon 9 Block 5 and Vulcan Heavy (Vulcan with 6 GEM-63XL strap-on solid rocket boosters) meet or exceed those requirements when flown in expendable mode, with the possible exception of GEO payload tonnage for the Falcon 9 Block 5. Falcon Heavy exceeds all requirements when flown in expendable mode. There are no other active launch vehicles certified for national security launches. Antares and all other smaller launch vehicles fall woefully short of US DoD requirements.

Antares 230+ is approximately $85M per launch and thus far is used exclusively for launching Cygnus resupply spacecraft to ISS. Antares also uses Russian-made RD-181 engines, now unavailable due to the war in Ukraine, and it delivered a 7,689kg Cygnus spacecraft payload to ISS on 19 February, 2022- the heaviest payload lifted to date. That works out to $11,054.75/kg. The launch vehicle is supposedly capable of lifting 8,200kg to LEO in its present configuration, which works out to $10365.85/kg.

louis · 2022-03-28 14:30:02

Isn't the FH9 price a bit notional. How many orbital flights have there been? 2 maybe 3?

kbd512 wrote:

SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 22,800kg to LEO for $67M aboard Falcon 9 (expendable), or $2,938.60/kg of delivered payload.
SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 5,500kg to GTO for $67M aboard Falcon 9 (reusable), or $12,181.81/kg of delivered payload.
SpaceX lists the 2022 price for 8,000kg to GTO for $97M aboard Falcon Heavy (reusable), or $12,125.00/kg of delivered payload.
SpaceX lists the 2017 price for 68,000kg to LEO for $150M aboard Falcon Heavy (expendable), or $2,351.10/kg of delivered payload.
ULA lists the 2016 price for 8,900kg to GTO for $153M aboard Atlas V 551 configuration, or $17,191.01/kg of delivered payload.
ULA lists the 2016 price for 18,814kg to LEO for $153M aboard Atlas V 551 configuration, or $8,132.24/kg of delivered payload.
The SpaceX prices are for brand new build rockets. SpaceX charges $12M less for a refurbished rocket, or $55M. GTO prices are for new build reusable configuration vehicles. LEO prices are for fully expendable configuration vehicles.
ULA only flies expendable rockets, so all of their rockets are brand new at the time of launch.
The supply of Russian-made RD-180 engines will be gone within a couple of years (all existing RD-180 engines within our supply chain are allocated to upcoming launches) and unlikely to ever return to production due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, so Atlas V will be forced into retirement as ULA's new Vulcan launch vehicle takes its place. Vulcan uses American-made Blue Origin LOX/LCH4 engines, rather than Russian-made RD-180 engines, a similar but new GEM-63XL solid rocket strap-on boosters as Atlas V's GEM-63 boosters (significantly higher thrust but shorter burn time by 10 seconds), and a similar but new Centaur-derived upper stage with 2 RL-10 engines. First launch of Vulcan-Centaur is scheduled for 2022. Payload to LEO is anticipated to be 27,200kg to LEO, 26,200kg to ISS, 14,400kg to GTO.
National Security Launch requirements are 6,800kg to LEO, 17,000kg to polar, 8,165kg to GTO, and 6,600kg to GEO. I believe both Falcon 9 Block 5 and Vulcan Heavy (Vulcan with 6 GEM-63XL strap-on solid rocket boosters) meet or exceed those requirements when flown in expendable mode, with the possible exception of GEO payload tonnage for the Falcon 9 Block 5. Falcon Heavy exceeds all requirements when flown in expendable mode. There are no other active launch vehicles certified for national security launches. Antares and all other smaller launch vehicles fall woefully short of US DoD requirements.
Antares 230+ is approximately $85M per launch and thus far is used exclusively for launching Cygnus resupply spacecraft to ISS. Antares also uses Russian-made RD-181 engines, now unavailable due to the war in Ukraine, and it delivered a 7,689kg Cygnus spacecraft payload to ISS on 19 February, 2022- the heaviest payload lifted to date. That works out to $11,054.75/kg. The launch vehicle is supposedly capable of lifting 8,200kg to LEO in its present configuration, which works out to $10365.85/kg.

kbd512 · 2022-03-28 18:08:42

No, Louis, the launch costs are not "notional". They're a matter of public record.

Soyuz 2.1 can deliver up to 8,200kg to LEO at a cost of $4,268.29/kg for comparison purposes. Soyuz is cheaper than most American rockets before they hike the prices to fund their crumbling space program. Ditto for the Chinese rockets. Ariane is either on-par or more expensive than comparable American rockets.

Except for commercial satellites, governments are the most frequent customers. Sometimes they bid contracts because they want the lowest costs and sometimes they bid based upon track record or national pride or other things that don't have much to do with getting the job done at the lowest possible cost to the tax payers.

The $150M that SpaceX charges US DoD for a national security launch is due to the fact that the US government refuses to purchase launch insurance for their missions. To compensate, the service providers purchase insurance at steep rates to cover their rear ends if something goes wrong. Naturally, the tax payer foots the bill. If a corporation had to foot the bill, that otherwise intractable problem would be resolved the very next day.

ULA and the US government painted itself into a corner to "assure" the availability of a rocket for national security launches.

The solution has always been to mass manufacture rockets from cheap materials, make the boosters reusable as SpaceX already has, and to make the upper stage as cost-efficient an expendable proposition as is feasible.

All the SSTO nonsense that's had money thrown at it for decades has utterly failed to produce anything usable, much less something less costly than a two-stage conventional orbital class rocket using an energy-dense booster fuel and a high-Isp upper stage (LCH4 or LH2).

Two stage rockets with reusable boosters or engines are here to stay. Whether an upper stage that has to do a reentry will ever be as cost-effective as SpaceX is hoping remains to be seen. I certainly hope it is, but let's see where that takes us.

The use of nearly any kind of steel will always be cheaper than Aluminum or Magnesium alloy and Carbon Fiber composite. The engines are forever and always the most expensive subsystem to manufacture. The propellant tanks, if made using robots on an assembly line, wouldn't cost much more than the tonnage of base material consumed. The CFRP tanks that Rocket Lab makes for Electron are already made that way- 12 hours total fabrication time vs 400 hours of hand-layup work. If they used Lamborghini's "Carbon Forging" technology, that could be reduced to mere minutes.

SpaceX knows a thing or three about complex mass-manufacture, so I expect tankage fabrication times to be reduced to a minor footnote in the fabrication cost breakdown structure in the next 5 years or so. Similarly, the steel balloon tanks that ULA makes for Centaur are a minor fraction of the fabrication and assembly time of the machined Aluminum core stage fabrication time.

Rocket Lab Electron is 300kg to LEO at $25,000/kg. They seem to have a crazy amount of launch facilities overhead baked into their launch costs, though. Firefly Alpha, a very similar rocket, is 1,000kg to LEO at $1,500/kg. Both rockets use very similar technology sets. So, that's how cheap robotically-fabricated CFRP propellant tanks and 3D-printed engines can make a LOX/RP-1 rocket. Both rockets cost $100M to develop, so that's your "price of entry" for playing in the orbital space flight market. For comparison, Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne cost $700M to develop, can deliver 500kg to LEO at a cost of $12M, so $24,000/kg (not much better than Electron).

Moral of the story?

Big rockets cost less money per kilogram delivered to wherever, because the cost to design and fabricate any kind of reliable rocket is quite high, the materials and propellants are all relatively cheap by way of comparison, and what you're really paying for is salaries and facilities. The rockets are almost an afterthought. Elon Musk was absolutely correct when it said that "the machine that builds the machine" is the most complex and expensive part of the manufacturing process.

louis · 2022-03-28 18:24:07

I was referring specifically to FH9, my point being that there aren't a load of FH9 rockets lying in some warehouse ready to go. I suspect if you really wanted an FH9 launch you might find it has a very long lead-in time and you'd find there were all sort of cancellation and substitution clauses in the contract. I don't believe the FH9 is being pursued as a commercial proposition by Space X - it was a great PR success, that is all.

kbd512 wrote:

No, Louis, the launch costs are not "notional". They're a matter of public record.
Soyuz 2.1 can deliver up to 8,200kg to LEO at a cost of $4,268.29/kg for comparison purposes. Soyuz is cheaper than most American rockets before they hike the prices to fund their crumbling space program. Ditto for the Chinese rockets. Ariane is either on-par or more expensive than comparable American rockets.
Except for commercial satellites, governments are the most frequent customers. Sometimes they bid contracts because they want the lowest costs and sometimes they bid based upon track record or national pride or other things that don't have much to do with getting the job done at the lowest possible cost to the tax payers.
The $150M that SpaceX charges US DoD for a national security launch is due to the fact that the US government refuses to purchase launch insurance for their missions. To compensate, the service providers purchase insurance at steep rates to cover their rear ends if something goes wrong. Naturally, the tax payer foots the bill. If a corporation had to foot the bill, that otherwise intractable problem would be resolved the very next day.
ULA and the US government painted itself into a corner to "assure" the availability of a rocket for national security launches.
The solution has always been to mass manufacture rockets from cheap materials, make the boosters reusable as SpaceX already has, and to make the upper stage as cost-efficient an expendable proposition as is feasible.
All the SSTO nonsense that's had money thrown at it for decades has utterly failed to produce anything usable, much less something less costly than a two-stage conventional orbital class rocket using an energy-dense booster fuel and a high-Isp upper stage (LCH4 or LH2).
Two stage rockets with reusable boosters or engines are here to stay. Whether an upper stage that has to do a reentry will ever be as cost-effective as SpaceX is hoping remains to be seen. I certainly hope it is, but let's see where that takes us.
The use of nearly any kind of steel will always be cheaper than Aluminum or Magnesium alloy and Carbon Fiber composite. The engines are forever and always the most expensive subsystem to manufacture. The propellant tanks, if made using robots on an assembly line, wouldn't cost much more than the tonnage of base material consumed. The CFRP tanks that Rocket Lab makes for Electron are already made that way- 12 hours total fabrication time vs 400 hours of hand-layup work. If they used Lamborghini's "Carbon Forging" technology, that could be reduced to mere minutes.
SpaceX knows a thing or three about complex mass-manufacture, so I expect tankage fabrication times to be reduced to a minor footnote in the fabrication cost breakdown structure in the next 5 years or so. Similarly, the steel balloon tanks that ULA makes for Centaur are a minor fraction of the fabrication and assembly time of the machined Aluminum core stage fabrication time.
Rocket Lab Electron is 300kg to LEO at $25,000/kg. They seem to have a crazy amount of launch facilities overhead baked into their launch costs, though. Firefly Alpha, a very similar rocket, is 1,000kg to LEO at $1,500/kg. Both rockets use very similar technology sets. So, that's how cheap robotically-fabricated CFRP propellant tanks and 3D-printed engines can make a LOX/RP-1 rocket. Both rockets cost $100M to develop, so that's your "price of entry" for playing in the orbital space flight market. For comparison, Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne cost $700M to develop, can deliver 500kg to LEO at a cost of $12M, so $24,000/kg (not much better than Electron).
Moral of the story?
Big rockets cost less money per kilogram delivered to wherever, because the cost to design and fabricate any kind of reliable rocket is quite high, the materials and propellants are all relatively cheap by way of comparison, and what you're really paying for is salaries and facilities. The rockets are almost an afterthought. Elon Musk was absolutely correct when it said that "the machine that builds the machine" is the most complex and expensive part of the manufacturing process.

kbd512 · 2022-03-28 18:32:31

Louis,

Maybe so, but it's a real rocket that's been to space and there are 5 Falcon Heavy launches scheduled for 2022.

louis · 2022-03-28 19:05:56

Well I didn't think there were so many coming up. They better get a move on as there are only 9 months to go!

There's only one Heavy launch specified here - for June 2022...

https://ihrpoe.co.in/spacex-launch-schedule/

Another Defence Department load.

kbd512 wrote:

Louis,
Maybe so, but it's a real rocket that's been to space and there are 5 Falcon Heavy launches scheduled for 2022.

SpaceNut · 2022-03-28 20:15:39

Most launch of the falcon 9 do not require the capability of the heavy.

https://spacecoastlaunches.com/launch-list/

https://www.spacelaunchschedule.com/cat … con-heavy/

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#1 2022-03-26 18:55:25

Cost of Spaceflight

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Re: Cost of Spaceflight

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Re: Cost of Spaceflight

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