Falcon Heavy

A detailed technical and cost analysis.

[Update mid-afternoon]

Some thoughts on reusable Falcons from Henry Spencer.

[Update late afternoon]

I just received a press notification from SpaceX on potential launch dates for the ISS demonstration mission:

NASA is working with SpaceX on our technical and safety data for this mission while coordinating with its international partners to sort out a launch schedule once a definitive decision is reached on the next Soyuz flight to the International Space Station.

As a result, we’ve submitted December 19th to NASA and the Air Force as the first in a range of dates that we would be ready to launch.

We recognize that a target launch date cannot be set until NASA gives us the green light and the partnership of the International Space Station make a decision on when to continue Soyuz flights.

Our flight is one of many that have to be carefully coordinated, so the ultimate schedule of launches to the ISS is still under consideration.

So, likely no earlier than Christmas for the actual docking, and it could slip into next year. Note that this delay is not SpaceX’s fault.

25 thoughts on “Falcon Heavy”

  1. Regarding $1000 per lb and EELV.
    Does anyone remember when EELV were first promised to be
    $500 per lb [or less]? And a few months later $1000 lb.
    The state purpose of EELV was develop launch cost at below $1000 per lb, that was the condition or “goal” of the Air force contract.
    Why they spent the 2 billion dollars to develop them in first place.

    So basically the Air force got what spent 2 billion dollar for, but it it don’t cost them much money- allow SpaceX to use it’s launch range may cost some pocket change.
    The air force got what it wanted but it prefers to buy launches from the companies that didn’t provide what they asked for.

    So NASA and military got something for basically free, which worth a couple billion dollars.

    1. The Air Force spent 2 billion dollars to develop something that did not exist at any price. Now someone promises to do it for less, a lot less. This sounds like evolutionary progress to me.
      I think the idea is to lower the costs as much as is practical, but if the capability does not yet exist, accurate cost estimates are difficult, at best.

  2. So it looks like the launcher will sit on the pad for a couple of months while the paperwork is done by NASA. SpaceX needs to find another launch site, one it controls 100%, if its going to get any kind of a decent launch rate. One dedicated to commercial flights.

    1. SpaceX could make it’s own launch site by launching from the Ocean.
      The only private launch site is the world is Sea Launch.
      I wonder if Sea Launch would lease to a competitor?

      I suppose I should mention my idea, again.
      Build a big pipe and capped one end. Have it float with capped end up.

      Unlike a barge, a large pipe floating vertically wouldn’t be affected very much by ocean waves.
      [The main cost is building a very large pipe- not cheaper than renting
      a barge, but as cheap as building one.]

      It could also be useful for Musk’s reusable rocket with tight margins.

      But simply having any equatorial launch location would also add
      to a few percentages to the payload.
      And if he doing GEO payload, one has considerable addition to payloads going to GEO.

      1. Btw, I posted this over at http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com
        And it was immediately removed:
        “I believe one could launch rockets from a large pipe.
        Instead of putting the rocket inside the pipe, the pipe would have
        one end of the pipe capped and one has the rocket on top of
        the pipe.
        One would also need tower on top of the pipe holding the rocket.
        One could also put a rocket in a pipe and that pipe could function as the launching tower. This pipe tower could function shipping container for the rocket.
        It could also seal the rocket from the environment and move this “shipping container” with rocket inside it. And one can place the shipping container with rocket in it on top of the large pipe and attaching tower/shipping container to the large pipe.
        One would unpack this container so it’s ready to launch. Fuel the rocket and do other things needed before it’s launched.
        If the payload is a satellite it could be already attached to the rocket. If payload is crew, then they could board at the launch location.

        The major cost involved is making a very big pipe. If you launching a rocket weighing 1000 tons the pipe might weigh around 1000 tons.
        This large pipe needs to be a large diameter and a long length.
        It could be made from steel or aluminum.
        A portion of the pipe needs to made from a material which heavier than water and one needs material which has tensile strength. Steel has higher density 7.9 compared to aluminum of 2.7 with water being 1. This is an advantage of steel as compared to aluminum, but probably major advantage of steel is it is cheaper.
        I call such a pipe used for launching rockets, a pipelauncher and there thread discussing:
        http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=21365.0;wap2

        The minimum size of a pipelauncher to launch any kind of rocket is in the range of 10 feet in diameter and say hundred feet long. 10 feet in diameter pipe is made, such as here:
        http://www.specialtypipe.com/steel-pipe-and-tube-inventory.aspx

        But for rockets like Falcon 9 or Altas V and Delta IV the pipe needs to be tens of feet in diameter and hundreds of feet long. And such huge diameter pipe isn’t manufactured. And so needs to be custom made.

        A pipelauncher needs to be long to remain vertically stable- the length acts like keel of a sailboat. A portion of the pipe is filled with air and most of it is filled with water. The section which filled with water is pulled by gravity, and part of air is “pushed” by gravity- causing it to be vertical.
        An exciting name for pipelauncher is an anti-gravity machine. The more gravity the better it works. A more mundane description is a balloon for water environment [rather than air] it’s a lighter than water machine.

        A pipelauncher needs a larger diameter to increase it’s buoyancy- requiring the air inside the pipe to have a lower air pressure to lift weight [the weight of pipelauncher and rocket {and whatever acceleration is needed}]. With a large diameter pipe and large rocket the air pressure inside the pipe could around 20 psi.
        Increasing or decreasing this pressure causes pipelauncher to go up and down. Increasing the diameter increases the area- double the area and it lifts twice the weight or with same weight halves the pressure needed. That air pressure is depressing the sea level of the water inside the pipe- 14.7 psig is depressing the water 33′ below sea level.

        A pipelauncher can accelerate a rocket, and how fast it can accelerate a rocket could be endlessly fascinating, but want to focus on a pipelauncher used as a ocean launch platform.
        Merely as ocean platform, a pipelaucher would probably *need* to accelerate a rocket by some amount. If a pipelauncher accelerates a rocket it can aviod the pipelauncher smashing into the rocket as it lifts off. You could “tie down” the pipelauncher in various ways to avoid this, but accelerating the rocket is simpler.
        Like an office elevator, a pipelauncher can create “artifical gravity”. It could make something weight twice as much as it’s normal weight or it make it weightless or even provide negative gees- if you not tied down it could throw you off it.
        Providing negative gees is not necessary to safely launch a rocket, zero gee [free fall] is all that’s needed, so something as little as 5 mph would work. Though 50 mph or more might be used.
        To power the pipelauncher you need to add air inside the pipe. If want only modest speed you can dump a ton or so liquid air inside the pipe and the heat of ocean water will turn it into air.

        So to get an ocean launch platform the major cost is the cost of making a big pipe.”

        A reply before it was removed was:
        “Why are you wasting the forum’s time and resources with this nonviable idea?”

        Could anyone provide reason why it’s nonviable?

          1. “…with a number of new (non viable) structural problems”

            What is one of these structural problems?

          1. The purpose is to allow a rocket to be launched from the ocean.
            So it’s function is like oil platform used by Sea Launch.
            The sea launch oil platform:
            “The vessel is one of the largest semi-submersible, self-propelled vessels in the world at 436 feet long, about 220 wide, with an empty draft displacement of 30,000 tons, and a submerged draft displacement of 50,600 tons.”
            http://www.sea-launch.com/slfacilities.htm
            This oil platform displaces 30,000 tons- which means that’s how much it
            weight or it’s mass- about 30,000 tons of steel.
            A pipelauncher could be about 1/30th of this mass.
            And a pipelauncher could accelerate a rocket before it starts it’s
            engines.
            A pipelauncher unlike that oil platform is not self-propelled nor would be called
            a vessel- or a ship. A pipelauncher be could moved fairly easily if one were to use a tug.
            The size of the rocket would determine how big you would need to make
            the pipelauncher, other factors as to how large it would be depends upon
            how much speed you want add to the rocket.
            If you simply want a platform to launch a rocket rather add much speed to the rocket, it might be the simplest and cheapest way to get a launch pad on the ocean.
            It’s one pipe with one end capped.
            The basic idea could also be used to float wind mills in the ocean.
            Or foundation of house on the ocean. Or a foundation of space elevator.
            These three things don’t need to be acelerated- though perhaps it might be useful to be able to lower or raise the height of a ocean house- for various reasons.

      2. The Sea Launch Platform is simple a modified ocean drilling platform. There are many surplus ones around, cheap to buy and modify. Sea Launch may have some patents on the process, but they should be running out shortly, if they haven’t already.

    2. SpaceX needs to find another launch site, one it controls 100%

      It would not surprise me to find that they already own the land for that. Right now he seems focused on dealing with the DOD ULA issue.

  3. At the National Press Club Elon Musk did mention that it would make sense for SpaceX to have three launch sites — CCAFS, principally for NASA launches, VAFB, principally for DoD launches, and a third (not Kwajalein), principally for commercial launches.

    1. 3 launch sites means 3 facilities to maintain, not good for cost unless there is that much traffic. A single launch site close to where the rockets are built (or eventually maintained) makes sense to me.

    2. http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=31809

      It would be a purely commercial launch site, whereas Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg are actually Air Force bases — in the case of Cape Canaveral, it’s sort of a joint NASA-Air Force activity. So it makes sense to have NASA and Defense Department launches occur from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg, but then probably shift most of our commercial launches to a purely commercial launch site that’s really aimed at being the best customer for a commercial launch provider. Just as there are Air Force bases and commercial airports … there’s some logic to separation.

  4. Grumble, grumble, grumble. The idea behind combining C2/C3 was to accelerate resupply of the station…. as a result of this decision SpaceX has launched nothing this year and by the looks of it they won’t be. If they had just gone ahead with the C2 mission in June it would have cut the legs out from under the Russian attempt to block the SpaceX threat to their monopoly. Meanwhile, their first real customer is left waiting for their launch.

    1. Astute observation Trent. You live and learn. It would have been very difficult to predict the path that resulted. At the time, combining the two seemed to make a lot of sense. He has to balance tests with income. Did any imagine beforehand that combining flights would lead to delay? That’s very counter intuitive. I think grasshopper, et. al. shows he’s capable of multitasking.

    2. Good catch, Trent. I think there was some other stuff going on at the beginning (SpaceX not having their trunk/solar panels ready to go) but this later delay is not their problem. I think for PR purposes, doing a Dragonlab flight with the F9 earmarked for the C2/C3 flight would have been a good call. Of course, that depends on how fast they could get another F9 ready to fly the C2/C3 flight…

      1. Seems to me if NASA is not ready they shouldn’t complain if they get kicked down the line while SpaceX makes some money from real commercial activities.

        And since DragonLab is basically orbit independent, they might even do a rendezvous with Genesis II to show Mr. Bigelow they haven’t forgotten those who believed in them before NASA.

  5. I turned over a fantasy in my mind this evening. I guestimate it would cost 3-4 billion to replicate the Apollo program using Falcon Heavy, a BEO Dragon, and a minimalist lunar lander. Per mission costs under a billion, maybe 500 million. Google says there are about 1200 billionaires in the world. Get Musk to sign a MOU that he’d offer his products for cost, use that to help entice a billionaire or two or three to sign MOUs and bankroll the venture. Beat NASA to the moon. I’ll dream of that tonight instead of sheep and sleep easy.

    1. stopped production of the Falcon 1

      Which means nothing. Falcon 1 customers can take fractional F9 rides for less. They could also restart production in a microsecond if they need to because it’s the same process as the F9. We may have concerns about the future of SpaceX because we’ve seen so many other ventures fail and we don’t have inside info; but they have a sound strategy and are not going to fail to serve other customers besides the government. Elon may seem to be too cozy with the government, but that’s just smart business because we taxpayers let them spend money like a drunk sailor. Could Thomas be right about a govt. SpaceX downfall? Sure. But don’t bet on it.

      If there were enough demand for F1e I would think Elon would make that a separate business unit; but I don’t know his management style that well.

  6. Meanwhile, time is money and SpaceX is not getting any compensation for this delay, including any impact it haves on its commercial business, a lesson of why Old Space favors cost-plus contracts – when NASA delays you, you just add the cost of the delay to the contract 🙂

    1. The question of cost plus isn’t if it’s a good deal for the contractor. It’s if it’s a good deal for the tax payer.

      SpaceX would have been smart to both get a cost plus contract and pad it as much as possible, but then you’d point out it makes them ‘just as bad or worse.’

      Face it Thomas, they are a private company that happens to make something the government is interested in purchasing, not just another government zombie.

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