I’m watching the press conference now. Clark Lindsey is live blogging it.
I’d say that the big news is that it’s got more payload than expected, and will mean previously unthinkable price per pound. It is also big enough to do any conceivable planetary mission one would want, in sufficient numbers. The one question I wish that someone would ask is fairing size.
[Update a while later]
Clark has the press release.
[Update later in the morning]
Apparently I mistitled the post. It’s not a Falcon 9 Heavy, it’s a Falcon Heavy. I’m not sure what this means, other than the upgraded engines. Is is a different upper stage as well? It’s not obvious from the press release. Time to ask SpaceX.
[Update late morning]
Here’s the SpaceX simulation:
“M Puckett Says:
April 5th, 2011 at 11:56 am
Actually, that would be the Falcon 27 Heavy Josh.”
And now you see why I’m not a rocket scientist, LoL.
“Small low cost payload development is even further behind than small low cost launch vehicle development.”
SSTL would doubtless beg to differ.
The important thing about FH is not it’s lift capacity but its price. You can use a FH to put your GEO sat in orbit for just $95M, way below any competitor’s price. And if you can share a ride with another sat so much the better. You just halved a ridiculously low launch cost.
From SpaceX’s POV it means they now cover the entire launch market with no need to do any further development on launch vehicles. Sure, Raptor and Merlin 2 are there as possible future upgrades, but the pressure is off for their development. SpaceX will do them at some point if the demand is there. If not they stay on the back burner.
I expect SpaceX in the short term to concentrate on building markets for F9 and FH and development on crewed Dragon.
But considering SpaceX as just a launch company is probably under estimating our Mr Musk. At a AIAA conference a few years back one of his engineers threw away a line something like “a lunar lander would be an easy development.” (not an exact quote) I can’t help but wonder what else they’re thinking about.
With propellant crossfeed, the side boosters will burn out much sooner than a standard Falcon 9. This means they won’t be going nearly so fast or high which might make recovery for reuse easier.
SpaceX is attending the Space Symposium here in Colorado Springs next week. My company’s booth will be close to theirs. I look forward to meeting them and hope to learn more. They’re the most interesting things happening in the space industry today. I wonder when they’re going to go public.
M Puckett Says:
April 5th, 2011 at 11:56 am
Actually, that would be the Falcon 27 Heavy Josh.
No, it would be Falcon 27. “Falcon 27 Heavy” would be redundant.
I wondered why they didn’t just call it that since it is consistent with Falcon 1, Falcon 5 (when that was planned), and Falcon 9. Probably because it sounds a little goofy.
This means they won’t be going nearly so fast or high which might make recovery for reuse easier.
Yes, I’ll be mentioning that in my Popular Mechanics piece tomorrow.
Normally, if the goal is to maximize profit, a seller will only undercut his competitors by enough to win over customers. The strategy that Spacex is using to undercut by such a huge margin is almost certainly an attempt not just to win customers, but to grow the market.
Because of this, the price difference, is even more significant than it might first appear.
Normally, if the goal is to maximize profit, a seller will only undercut his competitors by enough to win over customers. The strategy that Spacex is using to undercut by such a huge margin is almost certainly an attempt not just to win customers, but to grow the market.
No.
Well, yes, they want to grow the market, but that’s not the only reason they’re doing it. In this business, unless you offer a serious price advantage, you have no hope of getting business away from incumbents for a long time, because the customers are very conservative and risk averse. Because launch costs are not their major cost elements. This is why there has been little pressure to reduce launch costs, traditionally.
Hopefully this will make US actually competitive on the global launch market again. Its completely owned by russia right now.
“Small low cost payload development is even further behind than small low cost launch vehicle development.”
SSTL would doubtless beg to differ.
If only there were more like them.
Currently new reusable space seems to be devoting far more energy to launch vehicles than payloads, and traditionally payloads cost more than launch vehicles. Sure there are sub orbital markets and so forth but the point remains that new space launch vehicles as opposed to new space launch markets are getting most of the attention.
Maybe Rand, but making a commitment to lock in low initial prices for the longer term rather than leaving himself open to adjust in the future to market prices at the very least suggests a healthy profit margin.
It would be interesting to know if past new entrants in the space launch market needed to undercut by such a wide margin.
Looking at SpaceX past missions, they have really only launched one fully commercial non demonstration flight, a Falcon 1 for ASTB (Malaysia) back in July 2009. It would be nice to see SpaceX get a number of commercial launches under their belt and the direct revenues to justify further development. Ten years before seriously getting to market is a long time for a start up. Any thought yet on when the first falcon heavy might launch?
Beyond Dragon and the Falcon Heavy, I would hope that the next serious development priority for SpaceX would be lower stage reusability, not an even heavier launch vehicle.
How many engines can fail before they have loss of mission?
How many engines can fail before they have loss of mission?
A hell of a lot more than one, I’d bet.
Pete said:
“Beyond Dragon and the Falcon Heavy, I would hope that the next serious development priority for SpaceX would be lower stage reusability, not an even heavier launch vehicle.”
It should be noted that Musk has stated they want to have first stage reusability by the 6th Falcon 9 flight, at the latest. IIRC, he also said that if he does not get fully reeusable launch systems, he will have failed. This pretty well sets up what you wanted, Pete.
Late to the party. Earlier today I had read the Los Angeles Times story which was so poorly written I wasn’t sure whether the payload claimed for Falcon Heavy was a mistake or not. Now I have just watched the SpaceX video clip … 53 metric tons! Go SpaceX! What a step up from the first ideas floated years ago for a Falcon 5 Heavy.
The decreased cost per pound of payload is wonderful of course, but with Falcon Heavy we get it all, lower cost AND heavier payload. The beauty of that is it opens up the possibility of near term manned deep space missions. There is no need to wait for SLS or other pie in the sky. Falcon Heavy as claimed is good enough so that NASA remaining effort should be focused on actual payloads: landers, ISRU, nuclear power, space habs, prop depots, NTR, NEP, etc.
@ Rand & Andrew
On undercutting;
Not wanting to be a killjoy but how much of this could have been done 40 years ago if the politics had allowed it?
Andrew: parts of it would have been more expensive 40 years ago. The guidance and engine control systems, for example, benefit from the huge improvements in electronics. Even the technology used for joining the metal of the tanks is new (friction stir welding was invented in the early 1990s).
Yeah, but my point is that suddenly we’ve someone in the launch game that can chop a huge lump off the cost of LEO access, could that have been done 40 years ago?
On the other hand I suppose it could be argued that the existing launch service providers weren’t THAT inefficient 40 years ago, and that that’s why such an improvement in costs is achievable now, while it couldn’t have been achieved in the past.
Sometimes it sure seems like we’ve learned nothing since Explorer went up, that the technological improvements haven’t translated into efficiency gains and cost reductions.
Vehicles designed by committee don’t work. You’ve gotta have someone in charge with the running scared incentive to finish the damn project and make it fly. That same person has to have the power to fire anyone who is slowing them down, including replacing the whole damn team if necessary. Having all the funding you need to complete the project (but not much more) also helps.
I think one thing is certain: ATK won’t be producing a cross-feed launcher.
Andrew/Paul,
I don’t think this could have been 40 yrs ago. I find it odd and ironic that Spacex’s supporters give them so much undo credit. the key enabling technology is the Merlin engine, which is based heavily on the NASA’s Fastrac engine development program. The company itself seems much more humble on this front. I have seen them give credit, Elon specifically, to the pioneering work of others before them. In a way, Spacex is a NASA spinoff, that to the horror of the current beneficiaries feeding at NASA’s teat, want to crush in it’s cradle. I think Spacex has been fortunate and shrewd to pick up this technology, hire some key design folks for their own modifications to it, and parlay that into the success they have had to date.
Yeah, but my point is that suddenly we’ve someone in the launch game that can chop a huge lump off the cost of LEO access, could that have been done 40 years ago?
I’d say the capability would mostly have been there, but the answer would be “no”. Commercial launch companies didn’t even exist till the 80s and that seems to me a precondition for the sort of cost savings and capability increases we might see from SpaceX.
Also there’s the matter of access to capital. SpaceX exists because Elon Musk had lots of capital that he was willing to gamble on it. That in turn came from a remarkable period of capital generation in the high tech which I think has no comparison in history. As I gather, Elon Musk was thought to be a billionaire (or at least have wealth in the neighbor of many hundreds of millions) at the time of PayPal’s sale to Ebay when Musk would be roughly 30. So he had considerable capital (and business experience, since PayPal was his second successful company) at a young age, which I think will help SpaceX in the long run.
also saw many comments wishing and speculating on a Raptor upper stage engine for boosted performance. I found myself wishing Spacex could have bought into XCOR technology instead of ULA. look for ULA to be trying to sell Spacex XCOR derived upper stages in 4-5 years when Spacex has taken their market share. It will possibly be the only thing ULA gets to send into space.
As the new FH payload was announced, did anyone have one of those moments like in the movie “Jaws” when they realized they were going to need a bigger boat, in regards to the fairing size? the current faring might barely fit a fully loaded European ATV, at around 20 tons. Utilizing the full capacity of the baseline fairing will have customers trying to figure out how to stuff 53 tons of shit into a 20 ton bag. Spacex had better be ready with those custom fairings.
Stan Says:
April 6th, 2011 at 6:08 am
Andrew/Paul,
I don’t think this could have been 40 yrs ago. I find it odd and ironic that Spacex’s supporters give them so much undo credit. the key enabling technology is the Merlin engine, which is based heavily on the NASA’s Fastrac engine development program.
The Kalashnikov rifle revolutionized small arms in a paradigm that holds 60 years later yet everthing in it had been done before.
The design team was good at picking and combining technologies to make a game changer out of what already was.
Perhaps instead of a DC-3, it is a AK-47.
M. Picket,
I think we are pretty close in how we see this. I would add that given Elon’s roots in tech/silicon valley software, I would suggest he is familiar with how some hippies in a basement stole some undervalued and wildly enabling technology from the likes of XEROX and IBM. when I saw the Spacex recent video of the Dragon capsule making a powered precision landing, I couldn’t help but think that they have been mining the failed DC-X program for more tech. I wish them well.
Stan
I wouldn’t call the DC-X program a “failure.” It did everything it set out to do. NASA simply wasn’t interested at the time in pursuing a system that would undermine their empire. IMHO.
The fundamental goals of the approach could have been done 40 years ago.
That is, they wouldn’t get the same results with a pile of Saturn-V F1 engines. But by picking one and saying “Right, now let’s plan to make 1000 a year. Go over the engine and make changes intended to be more amenable to mass production and mass inspection.”
When you’re only planning on making 10/year, you make different choices.
If making paperclips, I’m perfectly happy with a hammer, mandrel, needlenose pliers and wire if I’m making 10. That isn’t how paperclips are made though.
Andrew W wrote:
Not wanting to be a killjoy but how much of this could have been done 40 years ago if the politics had allowed it?
Probably not much of it. The CAD tools, the PDM, the analysis tools — none of that existed 40 years ago. Without those tools it would have taken 8-10 times the engineering staff to accomplish this feat. That’s cost-prohibitive to anyone but a large government organization, at least at near-current market size.
Mike
April 6th, 2011 at 8:18 am
8:18 am? You’re operating in the Alaskan time zone now, Rand? 😉
Mike
As the new FH payload was announced, did anyone have one of those moments like in the movie “Jaws” when they realized they were going to need a bigger boat, in regards to the fairing size? the current faring might barely fit a fully loaded European ATV, at around 20 tons. Utilizing the full capacity of the baseline fairing will have customers trying to figure out how to stuff 53 tons of shit into a 20 ton bag. Spacex had better be ready with those custom fairings.
ISS modules are fluffy and rigid. You get better density from satellites and propellant, for example.
If they can tolerate the loss of two engines I think the engine reliability will be acceptable….
The F9 can tolerate one at liftoff, so I’m sure that among the three cores they can handle three.
Not wanting to be a killjoy but how much of this could have been done 40 years ago if the politics had allowed it?
I am going to say most of it. Some of the the Russian engines of that era were I suspect more than a match for the Merlin, in performance and cost. The RL10 is older than that and a very good engine, but more expensive and LH2/LOX (looking forward to see what XCOR come up with). Nor would I say that modern analysis tools have changed the game that much in terms of cost – empirical build a little test a little approaches kind of work and I think are much better at getting the last few percent (CFD would be lucky to get a sail within 10% of race tuning – where 0.1% matters). Guidance has become much easier, but even there some of the older systems did work and simplifications were possible – a human pilot could have worked for some systems.
The difference is I think in the commercialization of the industry and the partial escape from the NASA/defense contractor cost plus mentality that has become endemic the last 50 years (when government started throwing big money at the private sector…). The Falcon has some nice design features, some solid engineering, but it is not exactly that innovative and it is still a fairly standard ELV similar to what was around 50 years ago. I suppose it says a lot about how far we have not come during that time that it now looks so impressive.
The beauty of that is it opens up the possibility of near term manned deep space missions.
Not really, that would have been possible with existing EELV Heavies too. And EELV Phase 1 would be comparable to Falcon Heavy. The crucial points are cost and schedule, and only time will tell if SpaceX will be able to meet their targets. So far they haven’t been very good at meeting schedules, but that’s not unique to SpaceX.
Politically speaking a far more important question is whether the MSM and public will believe SpaceX’s numbers. If they do, then SLS will be in a lot of trouble. I wonder if they are at least partly bluffing.
The beauty of that is it opens up the possibility of near term manned deep space missions.
Makes me wonder too, what “missions” would these be, and who would be paying for them.
Rand Simberg Says:
April 6th, 2011 at 9:17 am
The F9 can tolerate one at liftoff, so I’m sure that among the three cores they can handle three.
I saw a thread at NASASpaceflight.com where someone said that the loss of an engine on one of the side boosters would require an immediate shutdown of an engine on the other booster due to stresses. I’m not an engineer, though, so I don’t know.
new space launch vehicles as opposed to new space launch markets…
They go hand in hand. The Falcon X will be a larger diameter (stronger) supporting a larger fairing for bigger payloads. The next surprise may be a SSTO lunar lander needing no command module. It goes from earth surface to lunar surface directly, then to LEO where crew transfer to a dragon to return to earth.
Rand says:
The F9 can tolerate one at liftoff, so I’m sure that among the three cores they can handle three.
What if two of the three are in the center module? For that matter, about 10% of the time a two-engine failure will have both failed engines in the center module.
The Falcon has some nice design features, some solid engineering, but it is not exactly that innovative and it is still a fairly standard ELV similar to what was around 50 years ago. I suppose it says a lot about how far we have not come during that time that it now looks so impressive.
I think one of the reasons why SpaceX can keep their R&D costs so low compared to the traditional companies is that they deliberately used conservative technology. When you try to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of a system, you drive up costs and usually lower reliability. Over the years, they’ve evolved the Merlin engine deliberately and methodically instead of shooting for maximum performance at the beginning. Frankly, I like this approach. When I was a professional programmer, we had some people who were so obscessed with squeezing performance out of their code that they ended up with buggy code that was unreliable and hard to maintain. My approach was “make it right, then make it fast.” I think SpaceX follows a similar philosophy.
What if two of the three are in the center module? For that matter, about 10% of the time a two-engine failure will have both failed engines in the center module.
If the outer cores are still attached, this likely won't be a problem. Losing two engines in the center core wouldn't produce too much asymetric thrust so the outer cores will likely have sufficient steering authority to keep the vehicle on track. Once the outer cores are separated, having two engines out on the center core would reduce the vehicle's acceleration but they may be able to make up for that by firing the remaining engines longer (the same as the Saturn V and Shuttle did when they lost an engine).
A greater problem would likely be if you lost two engines on one of the outer cores. In that case, they asymmetic thrust would be much greater. They'd likely have to reduce thrust on the opposite outer core to maintain control. Depending on when that happened (such as right at liftoff when weight is the greatest), it could be very bad.
Depending on when that happened (such as right at liftoff when weight is the greatest), it could be very bad.
Well, I’m thinking that the cross-feed strategy means that the center core will be at full liftoff weight at staging when the side cores separate. And this will happen at lower total energy than normal staging because the vehicle will have had only 25/27 = 92.6% thrust during boost phase. Plus, with two engines out in an array of nine, about nine times out of ten the two out will be asymmetric, raising the possibility that furthering throttling would be required to maintain controllability….
Hey MPM
I’m going to assume I didn’t explain things very well as opposed to you cherry picking my comment to set up a strawman.
“[The beauty of that is it opens up the possibility of near term manned deep space missions.]
Not really, that would have been possible with existing EELV Heavies too. And EELV Phase 1 would be comparable to Falcon Heavy…”
Oh? Allow me to rebut.
As Rand says, what SpaceX has proposed is ‘A Launch Industry Earthquake’. It isn’t just the payload, it’s the price breakthrough. A price that ULA can’t touch. And EELV Phase I remains a powerpoint rocket. In fact I doubt ULA would ever use their own money to develop it to flight status, in contrast to the SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
“… The crucial points are cost and schedule, and only time will tell if SpaceX will be able to meet their targets…”
To which I already admitted. This only pans out if the Falcon Heavy works as advertised. Who knows? Maybe 27 engines will prove too unreliable for practical use.
“… Politically speaking a far more important question is whether the MSM and public will believe SpaceX’s numbers. If they do, then SLS will be in a lot of trouble…”
Sadly, the MSM and public are irrelevant. They just aren’t interested enough in space policy to make a difference one way or another. Congress on the other hand… Between the value that Falcon Heavy provides and the suicidal level national budget deficit it’s hard to see how SLS survives.
When considering engine out performance don’t forget they turn engines off normally because the acceleration becomes too great as the fuel is used up. So they have plenty of reserve and can choose which engines if some are faulty. Depending on when they could probably have all but one engine out and still complete a mission.
I’m going to assume I didn’t explain things very well as opposed to you cherry picking my comment to set up a strawman.
Well, I certainly wasn’t setting up a strawman, so maybe I’m the one who didn’t explain things very well. I didn’t realise you were considering price in your argument, I thought you were only thinking about throw weight. Let me try again.
Considering throw weight first, to the degree it is a factor, it would apply to EELV Phase 1 too. It is true that that remains a Powerpoint rocket for now, but only for a lack of funding. That’s a formidable obstacle of course, but at least there is no doubt ULA could pull it off within a reasonable timeframe and the same could not be said for MSFC and SDLV for instance, although that may not be saying much. But even SpaceX with its impressive achievements (economically speaking) so far has not racked up the track record of ULA and its predecessor companies.
But more importantly (and I now understand you were focussing more on price, which I’ll get to in a moment), throw weight isn’t the decisive factor. Both near term deep space missions and commercial funding for RLVs could be achieved with existing EELV Heavies and if we’d be prepared to forego the opportunity to maximise RLV funding for now (and I wouldn’t be) then just EELV Medium class vehicles would be enough. And even that would reduce launch prices. Maybe enough to make Bigelow’s dreams come true. Maybe even enough for those commercial RLVs if Bigelow is successful.
Moving on to launch prices, even there I don’t see how SpaceX has enabled near term missions that weren’t possible or practical before, even though the price reductions if achieved would be impressive. In addition, schedule and costs for Falcon Heavy remain uncertain. Promising perhaps, but still uncertain. And while the same can be said of EELV Phase 1, that is not true for existing EELVs. And while launch prices are high, they are not so high that NASA couldn’t afford to do exploration with them if they stopped trying to maintain the Shuttle political industrial complex. And with higher flight rates, EELV launch prices would come down significantly.
I’d say both SpaceX and ULA would stand an excellent chance of achieving a breakthrough in launch prices if NASA were to embark on an exploration program based around propellant transfer soon and a much smaller chance of doing that without such a program. Of the two I would suspect SpaceX would be better positioned in the sadly very likely scenario there won’t be such a program soon, but I think the odds are still against them.