The Latest Space-Industry Disruption

Speaking of Russia, they appear to have thrown in the towel in their competition with SpaceX. As I told some people in the UK this week, people who think that they need to be in the launch business to be serious players in space are thinking in 20th-century terms. The future lies in figuring out what to do on orbit with cheap launch, orbital assembly, and affordable satellite technology.

25 thoughts on “The Latest Space-Industry Disruption”

  1. Dead on correct. Think what NASA could be doing and could have done with the money spent on SLS had it been used on projects that focused on priorities other than launch?

  2. I don’t agree with your thesis. First, national security essentially requires a first-rate power to have a launch capability. I won’t dwell on the underpinnings of that but it should be obvious. Nations that cannot field a launch capability which is also commercially competitive are, eventually, not going to be able to keep up as space powers. Second, the story on launch is far from over. The threshold price for significant market expansion has not yet been reached, nor has the threshold price for profitable human spaceflight been reached. Third, those who think BFR is going to achieve those things may not realize the extremely large expansion of the market that BFR is predicated on — while we may hope that this happens, we should by no means count on this happening.

    All of which is to say that I think we’re making the mainframe to minicomputer transition right now — the minicomputer to PC transition remains ahead of us, and no player (and no nation) has a lock on that.

    1. Jeff, framing this strictly in terms of national security as you do seems to fall squarely into the 20th Century thinking that Rand describes. Where I agree with you is that it is very early in the process and the market isn’t quite there yet. But when it does it may come fast and in unpredictable directions.

      Using your computer analogy, Intel doesn’t need to mine silicon to be dominant in computers. Facebook doesn’t have to build computers to be dominant in social media. A virus that could take out a comsat net would be far more powerful and effective weapon than a ground-up missile system designed for that purpose.

      What is a barrier to entry are all the 20th century restrictions governments have put on rocket technology entrepreneurs.

    2. After the war, most countries established national airlines. They didn’t build airplanes; they bought them from Vickers, DeHavilland, Boeing, Douglas, Lockheed…

      I’m pretty sure that, if Elon isn’t, Jeff Bezos will be happy to sell launch systems to other countries, including the UK.

      1. “I’m pretty sure that, if Elon isn’t, Jeff Bezos will be happy to sell launch systems to other countries, including the UK.”

        And, whoever is too small to afford their own launcher, sellers with cheap launch to their own space assembly/manufacturing facility will be willing to sell them stuff that can be launched with slow ion-powered delta-vee from that facility to wherever they need. Many financial/physical sizes can be accommodated.

        Still, Jeff’s point about MilSpace is mostly correct. As MilSpace adds more and more to military capability, not having such capability will turn strong regional powers into weak sisters, hoping for an ally with MilSpace capability to share. As that becomes more obvious in Russia, Mr. Rogozin’s cession of space launch will come under increasing criticism.

        Though as long as Rogozin’s boss insists on political allocation of resources, Russia won’t have the resources to compete because of low productivity. It has taken the death of “the socialist camp”, and another 30 years of pols dying off, to forget the 1960s’ pacifist nostrums about spaceflight, so that these changes can move forward, but they *are* finally coming.

        1. Russia can still run their launchers for military applications and while they may fall behind on some capabilities, they could also have their own space based production facilities. But the problem with Russia, and really all national programs, is what you put in your last paragraph.

        2. It’s worth keeping in mind that Russia now has a GDP smaller than South Korea.

          This doesn’t excuse the bad space policy decisions they have been making over the past two decades, which have exacerbated their decline in space dominance. But then, it’s all intertwined, isn’t it? The massive corruption, weak rule of law, anemic entrepreneurship are all contributors to that massive economic shrinkage as much as they are the state of Russia’s space program.

    3. First, national security essentially requires a first-rate power to have a launch capability.

      The quote comes off as saying they were going to make their money on activities other than launch. Since their launches are used to subsidize their space and military industries, does it matter how they generate that money? It’s not like they are going to stop developing weapons.

      I don’t think they will be able to compete in the new arena either because their system won’t allow it. The same might not be true for other countries who could become great space powers without domestic launch.

      the minicomputer to PC transition remains ahead of us, and no player (and no nation) has a lock on that.

      This is certainly true but maybe Russia is self aware of their own problems that prevent them from competing on launch? The changes required for them to compete are more than just engineering challenges.

    4. “The threshold price for significant market expansion has not yet been reached, nor has the threshold price for profitable human spaceflight been reached. Third, those who think BFR is going to achieve those things may not realize the extremely large expansion of the market that BFR is predicated on…”

      I am reminded of the recent Falcon 9 launch for the TESS mission. The TESS is so tiny compared to the ability of the Falcon 9, yet wasn’t the Falcon 9 the cheapest launcher for the TESS mission?

      Just because the BFR is enormous, doesn’t mean it would be an expensive way to launch a small payload. Not when the entire vehicle is reusable.

      It is my understanding that the economic case for BFR does not require any ‘large expansion’ of the market. Wasn’t that the whole point of the recent Musk announcement of the new BFR plan to replace Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy?

      1. The biggest breakthrough Musk has achieved is not reuse of the first stage, or another new fully reusable architecture for BFR.

        It’s greatly reducing the cost of developing a launcher. That improvement changes the calculation on when it’s appropriate to design a new vehicle.

  3. I take nothing away from the importance of the market segments beyond launch to point out that, like it or not, we have not moved past the point where launch matters. Now if you’re talking about a country which has no ambitions to being a military power, then by all means, go for the in-space segment.

  4. By the way, I think understanding that the roots of a national security launch capability that is enduring MUST be in a successful commercial launch sector (rather than the reverse) is quite different from 20th century space doctrine — though it is rather similar to Mahan’s theory of sea power.

  5. “figuring out what to do on orbit”

    That’s the easy part, as I outlined years ago in “The Cislunar Econosphere” and EML-1: Next Logical Destination” articles at The Space Review:

    Use suborbital to foment a pipeline of micro-g R&D that in effect acts as an electrolytic process through experimentation to identify the most promising avenues of research for further on-orbit work.

    Enable the establishment of private facilities on-orbit at promising inclinations (Kourou, Kennedy, 41-ish for U.S. private spaceports, &c.). Use these to advance whatever private interests those who rent them might have; mine would be micro-g materials sciences – lots of unrealized potential there because we haven’t had good access to the lab. [rental of facilities, generation of info]

    Step out to EML-1. First with instruments (eye-in-sky view of cis-GEO space [of military and NGO interest], lighthouse asteroid hunter [rotates on Earth-Moon axis to sweep out full sky over course of a month {sell data by subscription}], then with crewed facilities:
    > garage for retrieval of dead GEO and eventually LEO sats [salvage, forensic data]
    > engineering facility for check-out and servicing of probes sent out on Inter-Planetary Superhighways (IPS) [engineering services]
    > logistics node for Lunar sorties while we figure out where the good places to set up shop on the Moon are [logistics services]
    > logistics node for NEO forays [storage/docking fees]
    > Deployment of Solar Sails [engineering services]
    >Transshipment node for cislunar goods [freight forwarding]
    >Transport node due to all-LEO-inclinations access

    and I could go on (and on, and on…), but you get the point. Oh, and the one thing that NASA has ever considered it good for – staging area for a trip to Mars due to the lowest dV access in cislunar space to translunar space.

    Once you have access to the Moon there are many things to do and see:
    >LUNOX, duh, the earliest identified potentially commercially viable product to be exported from the Moon. Use of EML-1 as a transshipment point allows delivery to any LEO inclination for the same dV (and thus cost) [medium value added)
    >Raw regolith. For research and agricultural use [low value added]
    >Raw metals from regolith/vacuum processing [low value added]
    >Anhydrous glass for optics and other applications [high value added]
    >SWIEs (incl. CHONs) from regolith processing [low value added]
    >Formed/Extruded metalwork [medium value added]
    >REEs concentrated out of regolith processing [medium value added]
    >Heatshields formed of slag from regolith processing [medium value added]
    >Agricultural goods (and eventually products) from the terroir of Lunar greenhouses [medium/high value added]
    >Abundant Solar cells [high value added]
    >Vacuum/Low-g research facilities [medium value added]
    >Good-ole Giant Radio Telescope facility on the far side [high value added]
    >Pole-sitting Solar Sails for comm links with polar bases and equipment [high value added]

    And so forth and so on. It’s easy to “figure out what to do”, the hard part is the pace (which right now barely achieves measured) of actually bringing this stuff to fruition. There’s stuff to do in orbital labs, but there’re no labs but ISS, and few can get to the ISS because there’s no good to-orbit transport available, and repeat business is even harder.

    If you can’t get to LEO (i.e. haven’t mastered cis-LEO space), then you can’t get trans-LEO, and things like EML-1 facilities and Moon bases are nought but ephemera. Now if only we could get our act together, and that can’t be done on Twitter…

  6. I’ve been thinking this for a while. Launch is incredibly expensive and complex to get into and no one should have to build a launch company just so they can achieve their primary goal of some space based activity. It isn’t about how you get to space but what you do in space.

    Russia is perfectly capable of developing things other than launchers. Why wouldn’t they seek to maximize their own limited budget to do the most with it? The same is true for countries with no domestic launch capabilities. The only reason to have domestic capability is pride. Rational people will use whatever system best meets their needs and allows them to do things in space.

    Isn’t this the whole point of new space? Commercial providers will open space up to customers previously cut off. This means that countries without domestic launch will go to space and also many groups and individuals.

    There is no need for Russia to throw money away when they know they can’t compete in a market. They can still spend however much they want on developing weapons. The problem for Russia is that they haven’t learned the lesson they need to and will continue with a top down government controlled program rather than embracing the free market for their own side of their endeavors and eliminating the corruption that hamstring’s their operations.

  7. I look forward to the day when we have space lines independent of manufacturers. Like Pan Am in 2001.

  8. “The future lies in figuring out what to do on orbit with cheap launch, orbital assembly, and affordable satellite technology.”

    If true, that seems to place Bigelow Aerospace as one company which is ahead of the business curve.

    1. Hopefully not too far ahead of the curve. IIRC, they have a flight on the FH manifest, so hopefully commercial crew doesn’t have too many more delays. Can’t be cheap treading water.

  9. Maybe national security requires spaceport and frequent launches, rather than a launcher.
    Or number of spaceports and lots launches per year. Or in terms of national security, one can use any spaceport and launcher which is in a nation (assuming it is actually an national security matter).

  10. SpaceX has at least two routes to further disruption of the launch market.

    The first is BFR. The second is if they can make the F9 fairing and second stage reusable (these being the remaining major expendable components). Musk tweeted a few days ago they’re going to try to use a large inflatable decelerator to recover it from orbit (with low ballistic coefficient, the heating could be kept low enough for the stage to survive.) Such decelerators could even recover a stage from GTO, if the stage can be kept alive long enough.

    1. Its cool how the Block V is the final version and the F9 is supposed to retire but they still keep testing ways to recover fairings and the 2nd stage. And they continue getting customers to fund all of their tests.

      1. And they continue getting customers to fund all of their tests.

        This is one of the key innovations of New Space some tend to overlook.

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