17 thoughts on “The Space Transport Conundrum”

  1. I love the reaction to “reader” in the comment section. Someone suggests that we actually wait for SpaceX to succeed before declaring them the victor and they’re called a crazy person, or a shill.

  2. The annual revenue on launching those payloads will shrink significantly since the launch price per payload is now small

    This is only true if the competition can cut their costs as well. If not, they have no reason to significantly cut prices if this doesn’t increase their share of the market to make up for the lower profit.

    1. There’s an assumption in all RLV analysis that either there is significant competition, or there is a non-profit motive to lower launch prices. In the case of SpaceX, it’s the latter. Either way, we’re not going to see a hard takeoff of space applications just because prices go down – that was the lesson of NASA’s get-away-special program: supply has to go up too!

      1. I think the GAS program had plenty of other issues in the form of red tape and a long period of time (weeks to months, if I recall correctly) between dropping off your payload and seeing it fly. The number of people building CubeSats seems to be a decent indicator that a standard profile with a reasonable launch cost will bring new players to the table.

  3. Interesting article.

    If SpaceX (or anyone) can succeed in making the F9 1.1, or even just the boosters of the FH, reusable, that would be huge IMHO.

    My guess; the FH boosters will be first, as they are easier. They sep at a lot lower velocity, especially if using crossfeed.

    I’m a bit skeptical on boostback; it seems to me that it’d be far harder than simply landing the first stage at the end of a ballistic path due to the higher delta/v (and thus fuel mass) needed. Even if some braking fire is needed to make the ballistic trajectory survivable, it’d still be a lot less than boostback to the pad, I think.

    Question for those who have a better grasp of this than I; would it really cost all that much in additional costs to land on a barge (or a retired mobile deepwater oil rig if stability is needed) and tow back to the pad vs. pad landing? In other words, is it really worth the payload hit to do full boostback?

    Second question; any idea roughly how far downrange the FH boosters would impact on a ballistic trajectory?

    1. If you goal is gas-and-go reuse then you’re not going to get it by landing downrange. If your goal isn’t gas-and-go reuse then reuse is possibly not worth the trouble.

    2. If your stage is truly re-usable (as opposed to refurbishable) then I’d land on a predetermined downrange pad, refuel, and fly back to the initial launching point. There are some design points where it would make sense to have bases scattered across the globe, sharing first or second stage boosters and just passing them eastward launch by launch.

      For a short range first stage, where ocean launches wouldn’t be simple, you could just backstep to the first site, such as launching from Texas and recovering in Florida, launching from Florida and recovering somewhere in Atlantic, then flying the empty stage all the way from the Atlantic retrieval site back to Texas. It’s a bit like trying to plot an eastward only airline route map with as few repositioning flights as possible.

    3. Landing on a mobile platform would be the only real option I can think of, because any change in inclination for your destination orbit would move your ballistic landing point by miles. The rest of the story (float back vs. fly back) would depend on the amount of turnaround maintenance required.

      For a first order approximation of FH booster downrange distance, the Shuttle’s SRBs landed 122 nmi downrange. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster#Overview

      1. That’s why I see a mobile barge as the best option. No need for landing gear on the rocket, have a capture tower on the barge. Think of the red tape needed by the FAA to fly back.

  4. If SpaceX gets the first stage reusable (especially for FH), they’ll be printing money. They’re already the best launch value anywhere, so they don’t need to lower launch prices to take the whole market over.

    With an RLV, not only would they have lower costs, they would have higher flight rates than any expendable rocket maker could build new rockets. “Who’s next?”

    Eventually they’d lower prices to broaden the market and suck the profit motive out of their competitors, but for a couple years anyway I bet they’ll be rolling in cash.

    1. . They’re already the best launch value anywhere,
      I hope that doesnt come off as crazy or shilling, but citation needed.

      1. SpaceX lists prices on their public website. Difficult to compare to others who are more closed lipped on what they charge.

        2. You can only have launch value if you actually launch and put a payload on orbit, and launching on time has its own value, depending on payload.
          List prices dont mean anything if you cannot actually obtain the listed service.

          1. Was I the only one who saw them dock with ISS twice now? I wasn’t imagining that, was I?

            I think we can safely say the Falcon 9 works as advertised. The fact that NASA has dominated the launch manifest up to now doesn’t imply the rockets are somehow unavailable. Of the next seven scheduled flights in 2013, NASA is the customer for only one of them.

          2. I think we can safely say the Falcon 9 works as advertised.
            A particular configuration of the rocket worked, yes, on multiple occasions. Whether SpaceX as a launch operations company is able to operate it on time, within their intended cost structure, integrate commercial customers payloads, reach required orbits for these payloads, deal with range availability issues, etc etc is entirely unproven as of now.

            Razaksat is the only track record they have there, and that did not work out so well for its operators.

            And if you really believe they are going to fly six commercial payloads this year you seriously need to stop drinking the kool aid.

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