Bill said SpaceX says rocket back won't get below a thousand dollars a pound. I was simply pointing out that isn't true. The argument isn't about what it will cost, but what SpaceX says it will cost.
On 2014-04-02 15:43, Nathan Mogk wrote:
The Falcon Heavy hasn't been flown yet, and changes in the final price of the launcher to a factor of 2 would not be surprising. The pricing points that Bill brought up are still valid. With a constant launch rate, the manufacturing cost of a reusable vehicle will be much higher than a disposable because of loss of learning curve benefits and fewer vehicles to spread production overhead to, so for the limiting case of 1 launch per vehicle, you lose quite a bit of cost performance. You have to increase launch rates, which isn't a certain thing and as Bill pointed out, you have to convince customers to fly on a used rocket, which also could be difficult depending on the customer. Accurate cost forecasting requires enough data to produce a trend, which for future vehicles, especially radically different future vehicles, is preciously hard to come by. On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Rand Simberg <simberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:List price for Falcon Heavy is already about a thousand dollars per pound, completely expendable ($120M for 53 tons). Gwynne recently said that a reusable Falcon 9 gets per-flight prices down to $5M-$7M. Even if reusability cuts payload in half (it shouldn't be that bad), that's on the order of a couple hundred bucks a pound. On 2014-04-02 14:31, Bill Claybaugh wrote: If you are going to make ridiculous assertions, please provide the math to prove them. Even SpaceX says rocket back will not get below $1000 per pound, and that takes hundreds of launches per reusable stage. If you are not going to provide proof of your silly claims, please stop making them. Bill Sent from my iPhone On Apr 2, 2014, at 14:00, marsbeyond@xxxxxxxxx wrote: It uses only 30% of PAYLOAD. Listen to Gwynne Shotwell's most recent interview on "The Space Show" very carefully. For what purpose would you ever fly it up range? Just land on a barge or land downrange. Actually $80 per pound is doable. Sent from my iPhone On Apr 2, 2014, at 12:53 PM, Bill Claybaugh <wclaybaugh2@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Please. Landing the first stage downrange uses 15% of the payload; flying it back up range cost 30% of payload. Even if refurbishing and relaunch were free, propulsive fly back will take four launches just to cost the same as expending. Since they are not free, it is more likely to take something between 12-24 launches for this system to cost exactly the same as the expendable version. This also means that production rates will drop and so those cost will go up. And then there's the customers who want to know why they should fly on a used rocket.... $100 per pound is not achievable with this system. Bill Sent from my iPhone On Apr 2, 2014, at 10:49, marsbeyond@xxxxxxxxx wrote: Kieth, When is Skylon supposed to fly? In less than two years, SpaceX will be using propulsive recovery to re-use the first stage, second stage, and capsule, and their cost to LEO will drop to $100 a pound! Sent from my iPhone On Apr 2, 2014, at 9:27 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:http://theenergycollective.com/keith-henson/362181/dollar-gallon-gasoline[1] $350 million committed so far to the Skylon engines. KeithLinks: ------[1] http://theenergycollective.com/keith-henson/362181/dollar-gallon-gasoline
