Elon Musk:

I think people tend to draw far too many generalizations on the basis of far too few examples in the launch business.

There is a long essay to be written on this subject.

I agree with this as well:

Ironically, most SpaceX personnel come from Boeing, Northrop and other space companies. It is the sometimes Dilbertian environment, not the individual engineers, that holds those organizations back.

Rand, your quotes skip the heart of Musk's point - - keep it simple:

There is a fundamental difference in architecture between ourselves and the Pegasus. I think if you were the smartest person on earth you could not make the Pegasus cheap.

The reason I say that is because it is a five stage rocket. You've got an airplane, which is a dedicated Lockheed L-1011. No matter how many times you launch, you have to maintain that plane at several million dollars per year. You have to have dedicated pilots.

Your range safety is much more complex because you essentially have a man-rated system - you are interacting a rocket and a plane with people on board, and then launching it with maybe 20 or 30 feet separating the pilot and that rocket. So I think that complicates things.

Then you have three solid rocket motor stages, including a complete hypersonic airplane in the first solid rocket stage. And then you have the fifth stage, which is the liquid apogee HAPS stage. So if you were the smartest person on Earth, I don't think you could make that system very cheap.

If you look at ours in contrast: it is a two stage rocket, no wings, no control surfaces, both stages are the cheapest propellant you can use, LOX/Kerosene.

We pay $1.90 per gallon of rocket propellant grade Kerosene...[laugh]...I can't fill my car up for that...and the liquid oxygen in Texas - unfortunately in Kwajalein it ends up being a little more expensive than I'd like - but certainly in the continental United States you can actually buy liquid oxygen for about 40 cents per gallon.

To scale up Falcon to the 5 and 9 version, Musk will simply use multiple thrust chambers, like the Russian R-7. At ISDC, Musk showed slides of the tail end of the R-7 to make the point that multiple thust chambers work just fine.

As for the business objectives, with cost-plus contracts, keeping it simple is not financially optimal.

I highlighted the points that interested me. I have no obligation to highlight points that may interest you.

I particularly liked the word "Dilbertian". I think it would work well as a verb too..."unnamed sources at Michoud state the foam application was dilberted".

The reason I say that is because it is a five stage rocket. You've got an airplane, which is a dedicated Lockheed L-1011. No matter how many times you launch, you have to maintain that plane at several million dollars per year. You have to have dedicated pilots.

He's right about the expense of maintaining an L-1011 and crew even if you only launch once per year. However, there may be a more cost effective alternative in a couple years. According to this source, the Pegasus has a total mass of 19,000 KG (41,000 pounds). That's considerably heavier than SS1 but may be closer in line to SS2. If so, then the new and much larger White Knight used to launch SS2 might also be able to launch Pegasus on a contract basis. I doubt if Burt would have any problems with that idea. After all, he designed the wings on Pegasus (and I think Scaled Composites may make them still). Even if Burt charged them a million dollars per flight (unlikely), it'd still be cheaper than maintaining an L-1011 and crew given the Pegasus's launch rate.

I suspect Pegasus is going to have to come up with something before quickreach (or worse, t/space) gets there.

Larry J,
IIRC, Orbital's L-1011 is housed here at the Mojave airport, just down the flightline from Scaled. They could do something like that if WK2 is available soon enough. It'd be a smart move, but as others have pointed out, will it be too little, too late to keep themselves competitive compared to AirLaunch and SpaceX?

~Jon

While I have high hopes for new operations like SpaceX, they have yet to prove themselves. If they have too many more failures, then low price won't be enough to draw customers from proven systems like Pegasus. There could be other possibilities like designing a lower cost Pegasus derivative (hybrid, perhaps) that didn't need so many stages and could cost less per mission.