Ed:
Careful.
Development costs are irrelevant when they are written off, as SpaceX has
done (and as is the case in all government developments).
The only factor determining their competitive position is their production
cost.
I am also--from experience--extremely skeptical of top level cost modeling
of what might have been; such efforts never have anything close to the
fidelity of a serious project cost estimate...which are themselves
characteristically too low.
Finally, there appears to be a discrepancy between the $300-400 million
development cost number and the amount of cash the company burnt--including
the non-public funding--in the relevant timeframe; not to mention all the
money that has gone into further development since these estimates were
made many years ago.
Bill
On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 11:01 AM Ed LeBouthillier <codemonky@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Mon, 2016-11-14 at 00:31 +0000, William Claybaugh wrote:
It is at least lazy to be suggesting that SpaceX's cost are 1/10 of
others; simple inspection of there pricing establishes that they are
no better than 1/4 that of competitors.
There seem to be several reports making the claim of upwards of 1/10th
of the cost (for development, not operations). Here's one:
For the Falcon 9 analysis, NASA used NAFCOM to predict the
development cost for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle using two
methodologies:
1) Cost to develop Falcon 9 using traditional NASA
approach, and
2) Cost using a more commercial development approach.
Under methodology #1, the cost model predicted that
the Falcon 9 would cost $4.0 billion based on a
traditional approach.
Under methodology #2, NAFCOM predicted $1.7 billion when
the inputs were adjusted to a more commercial development approach.
Thus, the predicted the cost to develop the Falcon 9 if done by NASA
would have been between $1.7 billion and $4.0 billion.
SpaceX has publicly indicated that the development cost for Falcon 9
launch vehicle was approximately $300 million. Additionally,
approximately $90 million was spent developing the Falcon 1 launch
vehicle which did contribute to some extent to the Falcon 9,
for a total of $390 million. NASA has verified these
costs.
Commercial Market Assessment for Crew and Cargo Systems Appendix B.
So, although it depends on which cost model is being referenced, it is
fair to say that SpaceX's development cost might have been 1/10th of
Nasa's.
How they relate to their competitors depends on a couple of
factors. Since no competitor has built anything exactly like the Falcon
9, it would be an extrapolation from costs to build other similar
systems. But my initial look suggests that the cost differences are
quite substantial.
