Tag: Falcon 9

SpaceX updates its prices

9:03 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX this weekend updated the prices and listed capabilities for buying a Falcon 9 launch, while also adding the price and capabilities of its not-yet flown Falcon Heavy. Here’s the link to the SpaceX page.

The damage shakes out to $62 million for a Falcon 9 rocket launch with a payload of 4,020 kilograms (8,860 pounds) and $90 million for a ride on the much-anticipated Falcon Heavy rocket, set to debut in late 2016, which can ferry 13,600 kilograms (29,980 pounds) to Mars. In addition to adding an interplanetary destination to its wares, SpaceX has also upped the payload capacity of the Falcon 9 to low Earth orbit from 29,000 pounds to over 50,000 pounds.

The Falcon Heavy is expected to put slightly more than 50 tons into low Earth orbit, half of what a Saturn 5 could do, and about two thirds what the first version of SLS will be able to do. Yet, their price to buy a launch is actually less than what every other rocket company is charging for rockets approximately comparable to the Falcon 9 and about 500 times less than the cost to build that SLS rocket (what an SLS actually costs to launch is anybody’s guess, but it certainly ain’t anywhere near $100 million). And the upgrades on the Falcon 9 have also made it better than those other rockets because it can now put 25 tons into low Earth orbit, only slightly less than the space shuttle.

That they have added the Falcon Heavy is also more evidence that they are confident that its first test flight will be this year.

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SpaceX gets its first official Air Force contract

8:52 am

The competition heats up: On April 27 the Air Force made it official and announced that SpaceX has won its first military contract, breaking ULA’s launch monopoly.

This contract award really isn’t a surprise, as SpaceX had been certified by the Air Force as a qualified bidder, and ULA had declined to bid on this particular contract, leaving SpaceX as the Air Force’s only possible contractor.

Update: The Air Force has admitted that SpaceX’s $83 million price is 40% less than what ULA has typically charged for a comparable launch, confirming what Elon Musk and SpaceX (and many others, including myself back in 2005) have claimed all along, that the Air Force’s EELV bulk buy (giving ULA an Air Force launch monopoly) was a bad idea, discouraging innovation, forcing costs up, and guaranteed to force the government to spend a lot of unnecessary extra money.

I must add that it is definitely worthwhile reading my UPI column from 2005 again, now, more than a decade later. I predicted quite accurately what has subsequently happened following the merger of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to form ULA.

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A close look at Falcon 9’s reusable cost savings

10:33 am

Link here.

The analysis is interesting and thoughtful, though some of the negative comments quoted from a former NASA engineer only illustrate why NASA was unable to do this very well. Moreover, these comments from Arianespace’s chief suggest that Arianespace doesn’t understand basic economics.

Arianespace Chief Executive Stephane Israel, in an April 23 briefing at Europe’s Guiana Space Center here on the northeast coast of South America, said Europe’s launch sector can only guess at how much SpaceX will need to spend to refurbish its Falcon 9 first stages. Israel said European assessments of reusability have concluded that, to reap the full cost benefits, a partially reusable rocket would need to launch 35-40 times per year to maintain a sizable production facility while introducing reused hardware into the manifest.

…Israel’s argument, which he has made before, is that even if first stages can be recovered and refurbished in a cost-effective way, the launch rate needed for maximum cost savings – and hence price reductions to customers – is beyond Europe’s reach. The only nations today whose governments are launching sufficiently often to reach those rates are the United States and China, and even these government markets may be insufficient, in and of themselves, to close the business case.

The customer base is not static. If you lower the price, the customer base grows, a fact that Elon Musk understands and which has been driving his effort from day one.

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Video of recovered Falcon 9 first stage on the road

8:49 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s recovered Falcon 9 first stage was moved by road back to the company’s testing facility in Florida yesterday, a journey that was recorded by bystanders, including people in a Kennedy Space Center tour bus.

I have embedded the longest video below the fold, because it provides the best closeup view of the booster. Look especially at the booster’s top, where you can see practically no damage. This thing looks ready to fly.
» Read more

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An update on SpaceX’s recovered first stage

8:07 am

Link here. The story not only gives a detailed description of the prep work done to get the stage, dubbed CRS-8 S1, ready for transportation to the test facility where it will undergo static fire tests, it also gives an update on the status of SpaceX’s upcoming launches. This one sentence sums it up:

The frequency of SpaceX launches is expected to pick up the pace in June with up to three launches planned, potentially including the historic reuse of the CRS-8 S1.

If SpaceX can get three rockets off the ground in one month, a first for the company, they will help ease their launch backlog while also demonstrating that they can launch at a fast and reliable rate.

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The history of Falcon 9’s recoverable first stage

11:43 am

This is a beautiful short supercut of the history of SpaceX’s effort to develop a recoverable first stage. Hat tip Rand Simberg.

The video notes that it took less four years, from the first flight of Grasshopper to the first successful landing by a Falcon 9 first stage. This is the kind of pace I remember as a child in the America I grew up in. New ideas were fast and continuous, and things moved. I pray we are heading for a new renaissance where things will move again.

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April 12, 2016 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

11:25 pm

Twenty minutes of fun, talking first about the new American space industry, about to burst out to settle the solar system, then followed with a segment on the increasingly sad state of the Russian space program, run by top-down centralized rule from Moscow, with a failing economy that is very strapped for cash. The embed of the podcast is below the fold.

» Read more

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Falcon 9 first stage returns to port

8:34 am

The competition heats up: The recovered first stage of last week’s Falcon 9 launch has returned to port, and is being prepared for tests and eventual reflight.

The Falcon 9’s destination is unconfirmed, but SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said Friday the rocket’s first stage will likely go to launch pad 39A — a former shuttle launch facility now leased by SpaceX — for a series of engine firings to verify its flight readiness.

The objective: Fly the first stage booster again, perhaps as soon as June. “We’re going to do a series of test fires,” Musk told reporters after Friday’s launch. “We’re hoping to do that at the Cape, rather than transport it to Texas (SpaceX’s rocket test facility), and then bring it back. Our plan is to basically fire it 10 times in a row on the ground. If things look good at that point, then it’s qualified for reuse and launch. We’re hoping to re-launch on an orbital mission in … June.”

SpaceX already has one customer, satellite-maker SES, quite eager to pay the discounted price to fly one of its satellites on this booster.

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Dragon arrives at ISS

9:06 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has been berthed with ISS, bringing with it Bigelow’s privately built inflatable test module.

This berthing also makes it the first time the two American cargo freighters, Dragon and Cygnus, are docked at ISS at the same time.

In a related non-news story, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, which now controls that country’s entire aerospace industry, claimed in a television interview today that Russia is the world’s “undisputed leader … in launch vehicles and launch services,” noting that they launch about 40% of all launches worldwide.

That’s nice for him to say, but just because you say it doesn’t make it so. I expect that 40% number (which includes all Russian government launches and is thus inflated from their actual market share) to shrink considerably in the coming years, as the Russian space industry has shown a complete inability to innovate in the last twenty years. With the consolidation of that industry into a single corporation all run by the government, I do not expect that inability to go away anytime soon.

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Video of Falcon 9 first stage barge landing

10:57 am

This is so incredible to watch that I must post it on the webpage. I think I’ve already seen it a dozen times, and still cannot get over how the rocket, coming in fast and on an angle, rights itself, lands, bounces slightly, and then settles upright into place.

The future here is rushing up on us, fast, in the best way possible.

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SpaceX lands its first stage on a barge

1:56 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX has for the first time successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a barge, even as it has successfully launched Dragon to ISS.

Go here to see the stage on the barge, even as I type. More here, including images.

That makes two first stages recovered, suggesting that this is going to become increasingly routine for the company. Now comes the next big step, using one of these used stages a second time to launch another satellite.

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