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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … oment.html
Success or failure?
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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The point of a launch is to deliver a payload. Booster recovery is an added bonus if you can stick the landing.
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They still launched the payload at a fraction of what anyone else could, at least domestically.
They might eventually work out the landings for these high speed, high mass GEO payloads, or they could just use older rockets for these missions. Even the best 1st stage is only going to have a finite number of missions in it. Maybe after several LEO missions they send them "out to stud" on a GEO launch.
Should I try to get the trademark on "Poseidon's Glue Factory"?
Last edited by Excelsior (2016-03-05 16:32:44)
The Former Commodore
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013 … h/3694989/
SES would not disclose the cost of this launch, but said it is receiving a discount as the first to go with Falcon 9 for this type of mission, which SpaceX advertises online for $56.5 million.
The nearly 12,000-pound SES-9 satellite, owned by Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES, is the heaviest yet that a Falcon 9 will try to lift to an orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator, requiring all of the the rocket's performance.
Of course with the rocket business shaking up as COTs continues to grow the Iss ATK orbital cygnus launchwas another that saw a reduced cost for providing launch services on the Atlas v. http://spacenews.com/atlas-price-cut-he … s-failure/
Orbital Chief Executive David W. Thompson declined to detail the reductions the company was able to secure for the launch but said ULA’s announced effort to bring Atlas 5 prices down from $150 million to something closer to $100 million was confirmed with the new contract. -
But then again here is another cost for launching with this one via Orbital ATK to received a $23.6M contract from the U.S. Air Force’s Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office to launch the ORS-5 SensorSat spacecraft in mid-2017, using a rocket from the company’s Minotaur Launch Vehicle Family.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/2 … unch-ORS-5
So what is the real cost for launches when its a deal of the century when any one needs a ride.....
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Since SpaceX and ATK have arrived with functional launch vehicles, prices really do seem to have taken a nosedive.
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Yes and with that the likes of ULA, Lockheed and Boeing all seem to now be in a need to compete for contracts and money to which they have now just begun to experience....
But as much as we would like these three will still need to stay operative for at least the decades to come....
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ULA actually is Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. So there are really only two old space favorite contractors to NASA and USAF, not three.
And ATK which gobbled up all the big-size solid motor makers (Thiokol, Hercules, and UTC-CSD) is owned by one of them. The other owns Aerojet which in turn owns what used to be Rocketdyne, covering both liquids and solids. What used to be Pratt and Whitney is also owned by one of them.
Isn't monopoly wonderful? At least it was for a while, for Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.
However, Spacex and to some extent Orbital Sciences do now present realistic and credible competition, as well as the French, the Russians, and to some extent the Japanese and the Chinese. Competition, not monopoly, is what has recently brought launch prices down to around $2500/pound delivered, if flying fully-loaded.
For comparison, Shuttle was $27,000+/pound and Titan-3 about $8-or-9,000/pound, fully loaded. SLS will be lucky if it's only $5000/pound fully loaded. The ULA Atlas-5 family is more or less competitively-priced, but they never made the Delta-Heavy competitive, which is precisely why it doesn't fly much any more.
The handwriting is all over that wall. Falcon Heavy calculates out near $1000/pound if fully loaded.
What really needs to happen is the other recent entrants into the space flight business need to get up-to-speed and get some more launchers and "taxis-for-cargo-and-men" flying ASAP. This needs to happen whether NASA or USAF fund any of it or not. They all know that, they're just screwing around to see whether they can get government funding, without waiting so long that they get left behind.
Further, the old giants need to be broken up, so as to free all their "component parts" to be competitive businesses again, like they once were.
Just my humble opinion.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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GW,
The very first time a booster is reused, then the handwriting is on the wall. Once any company successfully demonstrates first stage reusability, then the rest of the competition either develops their own reusable boosters or become non-competitive. Either way, low cost access to space and reusable rockets are very good things for space exploration agencies, industry, and academia.
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If you want to talk about foreign launchers, when the Mars Society was first formed, many talked about the Russian Energia. Robert Zubrin first raised the idea in his book. Energia was able to lift 88 metric tonnes to 200km altitude. That's without the upper stage. Since no one asked the Russians if it was available, I did. I called their US subsidiary in December 2000. (They had one at that time.) The person I talked to said NASA had contacted them "a few years ago" about using that rocket to send American astronauts to the Moon. They completed a study to determine what it would take, and were upset that NASA never paid for that study, nor gave them any contract. He said the cost was between $60 million and $100 million US dollars to restore infrastructure. I later found a NASA website that listed Energia, with a cost of $120 million per launch including the upper stage. All in 1994 dollars. Ok, so that tells me what "a few years ago" meant.
Robert Zubrin's book said each mission of Mars Direct would require 2 launches of his Ares launch vehicle, or 3 launches of Energia. His book cited an estimate for Energia by Stanford University; he hadn't talked to the Russians directly.
My inquiry got a response from the Russian corporation Energia. (Their big rocket was named for the company.) The director of the international division confirmed Energia was available, for anyone willing to pay for restoration of "certain elements of infrastructure", but didn't confirm the cost.
All that was when Boris Yeltsin was president. Then Vladimir Putin got in, and relations got bad again. Ownership of the Baikonur Cosmodrome (launch site) was handed over to Kazakhstan in January 2000, as part of the breakup of the Soviet Union. In May 2002 they re-roofed the big vehicle assembly building. They had a problem with theft from the site, so left 10 metric tonnes of roofing material on the flat roof. A major rain storm happened while it was up there. The roof collapsed. All remaining Energia stages and the Buran orbiter were in there; they were destroyed. One of the high bays have a new roof now, the bay used to stage modules for ISS. But Russia insisted Kazakhstan pay for the other two, bays with tracks to launch pads for Energia. They haven't been repaired.
So now Energia requires cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan. They don't get along well. And it gets worse. Engines are manufactured in Russia. Fuel tanks for the core stage are manufactured in Russia, the same factory that manufactures Soyuz launch vehicles. But strap-on boosters were manufactured at a factory called Yuzhmash, in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, in an oblast also called Dnipropetrovsk. That's in east Ukraine. And fuel tanks for the core stage were transported from Russia to the launch site using the An-225 aircraft, built and owned by the Antonov aircraft company in Kiev. So this requires cooperation of Russia, Kazakhstan, east Ukraine, and Kiev. I would love to see them get along and work together again, but good luck with that.
The reason I mention this, is look at the price. In year 2003 I tried to estimate how much it would cost. In February 2002 I sent an email to the manufacturer of RD-0120 engines. They still had plans and jigs, where able to restore production. Would require a new CNC milling machine, but were willing to swallow the cost of retooling on condition they get a solid order for new engines. That was before the roof collapsed. A year later I estimated cost. Assuming repair of the building would be the same as Canadian cost to construct a new industrial building with that same floor area, but lower roof. After all it would be repair, not replace. And assumed remaining cost is the same as the previous estimate by Energia, using the higher end of their estimate plus inflation from 1994. The result was $160 million to restore infrastructure, plus $150 million per launch. Today it would be higher. Assuming increase for inflation only, it would be $200 million for infrastructure plus $190 million per launch. Again assuming the 1994 estimates are still valid.
But notice what I said: cost is in millions of US dollars. Millions with an "M". For a rocket with more lift capacity than SLS block 1. Ohhhhh, if only, if only, if only, if only.
the old giants need to be broken up, so as to free all their "component parts" to be competitive businesses again, like they once were.
Ok, do that. Again, good luck with that.
Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-03-06 18:59:07)
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We in the US haven't broken-up any monopolies since the first decade of the 20th century. I was telling you what what needs to be done, not what is likely to be done.
Sorry about the confusion.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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The only monopolies that I recall are for the phone companies in AT&T and Verizon which were broken up and monitored for cell phone buy ups to keep competition going....
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What I was referring to was the Teddy Roosevelt "trust-busting" activities about 1900. I guess the most notable of those was the breakup of Standard Oil, although it has almost reassembled into today's Big Four.
During my lifetime, it was "Ma Bell" that was most famously broken up. She, too, has since partially reassembled.
That reassembly ability after being hacked apart is something human individuals cannot do. Neither do humans live forever. Those attributes are why I think there ought to be some modifications to the laws that treat corporations exactly like people. They really are fundamentally different in a couple of very significant ways.
Just my humble opinion.
GW
GW Johnson
McGregor, Texas
"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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