Posted on 07/04/2024 6:52:46 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Eleven years ago, at the Singapore Satellite Industry Forum 2013, Richard Bowles, the Regional Sales Director for Southeast Asia at Arianespace, dismissed SpaceX...
He described SpaceX as "mainly selling dreams" and limited their voice at the conference because he didn't want to hear what he deemed unrealistic.
At that time, SpaceX had a vision of building reusable rockets and an ambitious goal of launching 100 times a year—a target that seemed impossible for any private or government organization in the industry. This ambition was mocked heavily, and SpaceX was dismissed as a dreamer that no one wanted to wake up.
Facing government organizations, major private companies, and startups in the industry, SpaceX calmly responded that they would let their actions speak for themselves.
Now, more than a decade after that conference, we look back and analyze the current situation to see how SpaceX has surpassed all expectations, delivering a silent but resounding slap to its critics.
Let's assess the current state of Arianespace and SpaceX. Who is really asleep at the wheel?
Europe's Ariane 6 project, with a development cost of $4.4 billion—more than 11 times the development cost of SpaceX’s Falcon 9—has become a symbol of delay and inefficiency. The development of Ariane 6 started in 2014, and nearly a decade later, this rocket has yet to launch, raising serious questions about its competitiveness.
These delays are extremely concerning. Previously, the European Commission had scheduled six Ariane 6 launches to send up precious Galileo satellites—two in 2017 and another four in 2020, each carrying two satellites. According to the plan, three of these missions were supposed to launch in 2023. Naturally, this didn’t happen. The first Galileo launch won't occur until after the maiden flight of Ariane 6. And Ariane 6 still hasn’t made it.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Starships payload to LEO is so large you could throw 45 metric tonnes directly to GEO not GTO with a single engine third stage based on the current V2 Raptor engines. Space X says third then Raptors will be $200k range not the millon they are now. Using fuel to brake that third stage from GEO back too LEO for capture with Starship for landing and reuse only costs 3 tonnes in fuel since the stage is empty and super light in mass after payload deployment. Starship has a payload bay larger than anything humans have ever launched. Remember Raptor is the king of the rocket engines. It’s smaller and lighter than an RS-25 but higher in thrust. It’s also not $100 million each they are a million and change. So cheap SpaceX can throw away 33 on each Superheavy and 6 on each Starship. They have done four test flights and yeeted 150+ Raptor engines into Davy Jones locker. Read that again and remember these are the highest pressure engines ever created with more thrust and less weight than the RS-25 that cost $100 million each. If NASA would had yeeted 15 billion in engines just for four test flights of an equivalent rocket. The word you’re looking for is boondoggle. SpaceX is the world leader in rocket technology hands down.
Some interesting math and thoughts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/space2030/comments/19038iz/thoughts_on_a_reusable_otv_for_starship/
What about the rockets that don’t fail, like SpaceX 9?
At some point the steel is not going to be useful, but it is still recycleable.
Maybe he sells it for scrap and lets the recycling industry deal with it?
Direct to GEO Synchronous orbit is what is in question, not the other possible orbits. Starship would still require a refueling to reach it with the enormous military satellites. Starship is out of fuel at LEO, with >19,000 miles to go. No 3rd stage is planned or contemplated as of now.
As far as any one knows, the stainless ship is the only one planned or contemplated for both Moon and Mars missions. Another type of material for the skin would require another decade to test and become operational.
The demand for large fairing Direct to Geo-synchronous Orbit is now, not years and years from now.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=average+reuse+of+falcon+9&summary=1
Average reuse of falcon 9
According to various sources, the average reuse of Falcon 9 boosters is around 8-9 flights. However, some boosters have been reused up to 22 times.
Here are some key statistics:
As of 2024, SpaceX has successfully landed Falcon 9 boosters 311 times.
Individual boosters have flown as many as 22 flights.
The average turnaround time for a booster has dropped from 356 days to 72 days with the Block 5 variant.
The record for the quickest turnaround time is 21 days.
SpaceX has recovered fairings in at least 157 launches out of 254 in which they were ever used.
The company has achieved 93% F9/FH boosters recovery, 86% boosters reuse, and at least 73% fairings recovery since the debut of the Block 5 variant.
It’s worth noting that the reuse of Falcon 9 boosters has significantly reduced the demand for new cores, allowing SpaceX to focus on more complex and ambitious missions.
Blue Origin is only “still in the race” because of funding. The reality is, the larger BE-4 engine has been used just once, after years of delays. Its first use in the New Glenn *may* happen this year, perhaps in just a couple of months, and more space access is better than less, but only believe it when it’s seen.
Given its history, it’s optimistic at best to think B.O. will get any orbital craft human-rated within the next three years.
Starship isn’t either too heavy, or too complicated, or too costly for lunar or Mars missions. Stainless steel is indeed cheaper than any of the alternatives considered, and its resistance to high temperature is a must.
Fairing size isn’t a real issue or impediment. When the demand is there, SpaceX will produce a larger one.
:^)
A couple of weeks ago, maybe three by now, I speculated that it had already been decided that the two astronauts wouldn’t be attempting to return to Earth aboard the thing, that they’d wait for the Crew Dragon to get there, and that the Starliner would be making computer-guided reentry. I believe I also speculated that the craft isn’t expected to survive, which is why all the “testing” (of a “quiesent” spacecraft) continues — once it goes kablooey, nothing but the data stream will survive to be studied.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4244133/posts?page=56#56
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BE-4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_Centaur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peregrine_Mission_One
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn
As far as I am aware, no Falcon booster has been “retired” ... they have all been expended (and ended up in the ocean), been destroyed in a mishap (and mostly ended up in the ocean), or are still in service.
Blue Origin is only “still in the race” because of funding.
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None the less, the Pentagon awarded them the contract for their Direct to Geo Orbit satellites.
As far as the US military is concerned, fairing size is a Big Deal now.
Cost analysis by others puts the Starship program as very expensive because of all the refueling missions needed to get above LEO.
Stainless is great, but it is the heaviest materiel possible which limits the to orbit Weight, and that nearly cripples missions beyond because of all the refueling needed - as I said, to get to the Moon Starship would have to be refueled maybe 15 times - with each of those refueling stations working correctly and in the correct orbital path - all of that many, many multiple times. One screw up and mission failure.
It doesn't even have to be graft. My father-in-law was recruited by JPL, a major NASA contractor because he had the specific skillset they needed. He retired back when NASA was still a fairly well-run agency. He told me a few stories of the layers of bureaucracy which wasted money needlessly despite the best of intentions. It was just built into the system.
One can only imagine the graft and corruption now that it attracts the type of people (including DEI hires) whose objective is to milk the system.
Funding, Pentagon, two sides, same coin. Blue Origin owes its success (such as it is) to gubmint backing. It’s oh so important to split the resources to give more money to the much less productive vendor.
SpaceX’ Falcon Heavy has been putting up DoD payloads for a while now, and will meet the fairing modification requirements — not a very taxing bit of engineering — over the next few years. FH has nearly twice the payload capacity of the discontinued Delta IV Heavy (launches of which were also fun to watch) and is designed for reusability, while DIVH was entirely single use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy#Department_of_Defense_contracts
Energy requirements for getting to Mars aren’t too different from those for getting to the Moon, has to do with the starting point, Earth’s gravity well.
Refueling in space will take some extra launches, it will depend on mission. Each tanker will be able to deliver around 200 tons of fuel, retaining enough to make a propulsive landing on the Earth. The less important reason for the change to methane is cost of the fuel.
The only crewed vehicle to land on the Moon and return to orbit was the Apollo LM, which had an effective payload of about two tons, which included the fuel to return to orbit.
Everything that was needed for each lunar mission had to be on the Saturn V stack at launch. Von Braun et al began with the minimum mass for the reentry vehicle and crew at splashdown, and worked backwards, step by step, to get that launch spec. During the mission with each necessary job accomplished, vehicle mass got shed. For the LM, the landing legs weren’t needed for the ascent, for example.
By contrast, the Starship will put about 100 tons of payload on the Moon, some of which will be fuel. In some future mission, some of the payload will be habitats and vehicles left behind as a lunar base.
Not surprisingly, Von Braun’s planning for a single human mission to and from Mars involved multiple Saturn V launches (all expendible of course) to assemble the transit, orbiter, lander, surface-to-orbit, and Earth reentry vehicles in Earth orbit, then fuel them, send up the crew, and leave for Mars. Any kind of delay (what are the odds, eh?) would frog the whole thing.
Skylab was in part built to practice the skills needed for the Mars mission. Overall, the number of Saturn V launches to achieve this would be about the same number ultimately used for all the lunar missions plus the launch of Skylab itself.
Blue Origin can’t alter physics, all it can do (so it tells us) is build a less capable bunch of hardware that costs much more and will wind up crippling the overall project.
If memory serves, I think the investment requirements are steep, while share prices look modest.
https://www.schwab.wallst.com/Prospect/Research/mutualfunds/fees.asp?symbol=bfgix
I don’t know what to say - you are out of the loop on SpaceX and its capabilities - it has a lot of short falls that there are no plans to fix or change. The fixes and changes need to be happening right now to be in place for future missions - but they re not.
DoD contracts for Direct to Geosynchronous Orbit are let, and SpaceX was NOT chosen.
Sarcasm and snark does not change anything.
Falcon Heavy needs 2 Falcon boosters to reach Direct to Geosynchronous Orbit right now, and so the fairing size and payload is limited BELOW future DoD requirements - which is why they chose New Glenn with its huge fairing and payload. New Glenn has not flown, but the concept is old, proven and straight forward.
Starship is no where near ready. The refueling in orbit will likely come this year, perhaps with Flight 6, if all goes well with Fight 5. This is a new concept and no one knows for sure how successful it will be or how long it will take to prove the concept.
The problem for DoD is that the process SpaceX will use with the refueling is too SLOW. Launched at the same time, the New Glenn will reach Geosynchronous Orbit while Starship is just beginning its refueling process, provided it does not have to chase the refueling rocket an orbit or two to mate up.
The version of Starship planned to go to the Moon will have 200 tons or a bit more according to EM. All of the stuff needed for a Starship Moon landing, including fuel, is planned to be in-place BEFORE any landing. (What happened in the past with Apollo et al is not germane to the present efforts).
That is not what NASA plans - so a SpaceX Starship may be a separate venture later, if Artemis is successful (which again depends on EM having proved his refueling concept). In any case, the Artemis project is so delayed, troublesome & laborious with its lunar orbiter et al, that the Chinese have a good chance of getting there first.
I haven’t been the least bit sarcastic or snarky, but you must have felt the need to say it to justify the lead sentence. Bye.
I haven’t been the least bit sarcastic or snarky, but
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“It’s oh so important to split the resources to give more money to the much less productive vendor.”
Snark and sarcasm in your own words.
That was about the Pentagon, but make that about you, it seems to make you happy. You don’t have any valid response to anything I said.
Sarcasm and snark are not warranted, except when posting to Putin trolls.
Most of what you said is out of date, so what’s to respond to? Need I remark that you did not respond to the valid criticisms of SpaceX I made, but went off on some tangent to the 60 year old Apollo program?
The Starship had a recent test flight where there was a partial failure of the heat shield tiles, and despite damage, the stainless steel held on right through final decel burn and splashdown. Other materials wouldn’t have done that.
I thought you’d understand the significance of the Apollo discussion. Reusability continues to reduce space flight costs. There’s literally no similar capability on Earth, although some of the satellite launchers with low payload capacities are trying to get there.
Having to use multiple launches won’t be relevant when the lunar landings start because there won’t be any other way to deliver those large payloads to the Moon, the Lunar Gateway (which is another waste of time and money, and should be cancelled), and Mars.
Using other launch systems would mean using multiple launches, each one more expensive than at least a few reusable vehicle launches, to try to land enough payloads on the lunar surface, and that means more cost, probably less payload overall due to budgets, and probably expendable launchers.
Sources say prominent US rocket-maker United Launch Alliance is up for sale
Eric Berger
3/1/2023, 11:50 AM
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/sources-say-prominent-us-rocket-maker-united-launch-alliance-is-up-for-sale/
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