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Commercialization

The Real Cost of a Red Dragon Mission to Mars

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 1, 2016
Filed under , ,
The Real Cost of a Red Dragon Mission to Mars

Keith’s note: So what would this Dragon 2 mission to Mars cost? SpaceX would use a Falcon Heavy which they sell for $90 million. Of course it costs SpaceX a lot less to make the rocket than what they sell it for. Also, SpaceX is starting to build up an inventory of used first stages that they put into rockets and sell for something like 30-40% less than a new Falcon. Of course, they make a profit on these reused Falcons too. Conceivably they could build a Dragon Heavy for Mars mission use out of used Falcon first stages. Of course there’s the cost of a Mars-capable Dragon V2 (aka “Red Dragon”)that has to be developed and built. But by then they will have some Dragon V2 vehicles sitting around as well. Then again SpaceX could use all new hardware. With an increased launch cadence there’s going to be a lot of these stages sitting in storage making subsequent missions less expensive as well.
My point? This private Mars mission business is not going to be as expensive as some of the SpaceX doubters would have you think – especially if they also start to sell payload space for science instruments. And given the multi-billion dollar cost schemes NASA floats about how it would do sample return missions, one would have to expect that a SpaceX Mars architecture could slash the cost and complexity such that it would be in NASA’s best interest to invest. Depending on who you talk to a lot of people would like to have the Mars sample return thing done before humans ever get sent to Mars (e.g. answering the life on Mars question). NASA has a slow-motion, multi-decadal “plan” for sending humans to Mars. What is the value of accelerating the pace at which preliminary things such as sample return and large propulsive landing technology? Answer: billions of dollars and many years.
As some of these articles above start to consider, is there an actual market that investors might start to consider that involves doing things on Mars? The answer is yes since SpaceX just decided to start spending their own money on it.
SpaceX Now Quotes Payload Launch Prices – To Mars, earlier post
Changing The Way We Explore Space, earlier post
SpaceX Will Go To Mars Starting in 2018, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

64 responses to “The Real Cost of a Red Dragon Mission to Mars”

  1. Terry Stetler says:
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    Yet another disruption, this time to BEO missions. How long before they evolve Red Dragon into a dedicated, possibly larger and optimized, exploration/science/lander platform for Falcon Heavy – a BFS precursor?

    • Zed_WEASEL says:
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      Don’t think there will be a bigger follow-on Red Dragon. The USAF is partially funding a new Methane LOX upper stage for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. The new stage is suppose to be reusable and capable of being a lander or orbital propellant depot. It will be simple to add scientific payloads to it. So no intermediate vehicle between the Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy and the BFS.

  2. Steven Rappolee says:
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    This sort of thing will be a private/public venture………………it will be exciting to see exactly how such a partnership evolves

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Why? A better model would be for NASA to just buy space on a lander, just like it buys airline tickets when it employees need to travel.

  3. John Campbell says:
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    The slow development rate does improve profit margins, doesn’t it? A lot of money goes to animations and powerpoint presentations without ever having to bend metal.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      You are assuming they are doing it the NASA way. But I expect they are doing it the business way of not bragging about their research, or the metal they bending to use a space term, until they have the product ready for the market.

      Also if NASA is willing to pay them $3 dollars to do something that costs them a $1 they would be fools to cut off the cash flow early. Which was one reason fix priced government contracts were replaced with cost plus contracts when WWII got rolling.

  4. Littrow says:
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    I think Keith has appropriately outlined how commercialization works. So potentially we can get a Mars mission that is in at most the hundreds of millions $$ (probably low hundreds). What would it cost for NASA and its contractors? What has it cost for NASA and its contractors for the last several Mars missions?

    Fact is, what is evolving here, is exactly what NASA and its contractors have feared for decades and at every opportunity have tried to preclude.

    NASA needs to decide what its proper role is for the long term. 10 years ago NASA was the “operations” organization. Hardly had any interest in designing and building spacecraft anymore. Then Shuttle ended and now they have one or two crew operating at any given time and a relatively stable spacecraft in a fairly benign environment. They turned Orion over to Lockheed and ESA with minimal NASA involvement. Cost didn’t get any cheaper and schedule has only increased. So that doesn’t seem to work too well. NASA as the ops organization is a little like the FAA running the airlines. I think NASA has a role in aerospace R&D. There are a few other roles for the government. What is that supposed to consist of?

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Don’t forget that when NASA does these missions it insists on using bleeding edge technology and instrumentation. The resulting cycles of redesign, approvals of redesigns, review of the approvals of redesigns and approvals of the review of the approvals of redesigns tend to add up to real money, especially if the contract is cost plus so there is zero incentive to save.

      • Shaw_Bob says:
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        I’m not sure that I’d call most of NASA’s technology bleeding edge – a lot of it appears over-cautious and complicated, and, as you identify, over-managed too.

      • Littrow says:
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        Maybe once that was true, but not anymore at least not in the realm of human space flight. Example: Orion and SLS. Neither is new sophisticated technology. Orion is essentially an overgrown Apollo capsule. About the only thing seriously updated that NASA is working on are the computer controls and displays. The Service Module doesn’t use the hi tech Apollo fuel cells (hi tech in 1965); instead it uses solar panels; but the SM was hired out to ESA so doesn’t really count. SLS is not much different than a Shuttle ET and SRB. They’ve made some mods-extended the SRBs, put SSMEs on the ET, but nothing too significant.

        At one time, NASA was focused on design, engineering and new technology. But Shuttle kind of did them in, everyone became needlessly focused on operations and they abandoned their engineering roots. They kept telling everyone that the operations were really cutting edge, which in 1981 was probably true. But when you do it for the umpteenth time on the 130th flight after 30 years, its no longer new.

        ISS, likewise-not a terribly sophisticated vehicle, no real cutting edge technology. There would be plenty of opportunities to develop new technology and test it, advanced propulsion, etc. Not a whole lot of that going on. NASA and its contractor decided to put all its money into an ongoing sustaining engineering effort. For some reason it keeps getting more expensive even though not much new going on.

        • ForestvilLee says:
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          To be fair, unlike during the Space Race NASA has a strong impetus to be frugal. Therefore leverage existing hardware instead of expensively redeveloping every wheel is an innovation. And besides I’d wager most tax payers are focused on reaching destinations as opposed to more efficient rocketry.

          Just get us there, QUICKLY!

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Quite a few of us have been talking about 100s of $$ Mars trips for a while now and folks have said we were daft.
      “We can take you anywhere someday.” — Legacy Space Launch Industry
      “We’re goin’…you comin’?” — SpaceX

    • ForestvilLee says:
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      You’re quite right, unfortunately at the moment things are upside down with “Inspired Commercial Companies” taking the lead on R&D, which used to be the role of NACA and then NASA. Maybe we are beginning the change to where NASA gets to focus promoting ground breaking off world research with government rockets “participating” in the plan of “Inspired Commercial Companies”

      An “Inspired Commercial Company” is one with goals not just focused on fulfilling investor pockets and perpetuating itself.

    • fcrary says:
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      According to wikipedia, MAVEN was selected in an AO with a target cost of $485 plus launch costs (reported as $187 million.) MAVEN’s launch (wet) mass was about 2500 kg, with 65 kg of instruments.

      I disagree about NASA being an “operations” organization.” You may be correct for the human spaceflight side, but if you look at planetary missions, most of the money is spent before launch.

      But I think the comparison to past NASA Mars missions is tricky. At the price of a Atlas V 401 costs $187 million, people will really want to make sure the spacecraft it is sending to Mars works, and is as optimally designed for its mission. And, since opportunities for such missions are rare, including as comprehensive a payload as possible is also desirable. Even if you cut the development cost by an order of magnitude, with less optimization, less reliability, etc. you’d only bring down the overall cost by a factor of three. It would still be a $200 million mission.

      I’m interested to see what the SpaceX prices can to to that logic. If we take the SpaceX numbers literally, a Falcon Heavy could launch _five_ MAVEN-sized spacecraft to Mars for $90 million. That’s just under $20 million per spacecraft. At that price, lower reliability and optimization would be a good choice. Five $115 million spacecraft on a Falcon would have the same overall cost, and even if they were not as optimal or as reliable, you’d get more successes overall. Even the failure rate went up to 40%, that would still be three successful missions rather than one.

  5. Bill Housley says:
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    Keith, there are no SpaceX doubters. There are just reasonable people vs us SpaceX fan boys (and girls). 😉 Things have taken on a certain momentum now. We’ll just watch and see who’s right.

  6. Paul451 says:
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    Pedantic quibble:

    “SpaceX would use a Falcon Heavy which they sell for $90 million.”

    No quite. That’s the price for 8.0 tonnes to GTO. Since they are listing the capacity to GTO at 22.2 tonnes, that suggests that the full price for a maxed out expendable-mode FH is closer to $250m.

    Plus the capsule. Say another $50m? So $300m all up.

    Assuming they’re running at 20% profit margin, and that NASA supplies DSN support for free, that’s $240m cost to SpaceX for the launch/landing.

    (If NASA supplies a science payload, then you need to go back to full price, plus add a 50% “dealing with NASA” tax. So $450m cost to NASA for the launch/landing. $90 profit to SpaceX.)

    Smaller quibble:

    “Conceivably they could build a Dragon Heavy for Mars mission use out of used Falcon first stages.”

    Apparently the F9 stages aren’t plug’n’play compatible with FH. On the other hand, the engines, landing legs, etc, should be mostly compatible, so that would cover most of the material costs.

    On the gripping hand, I can’t see the advantage in stripping down three recovered F9 cores to make a single FH. Better to sell them as F9 launches. Once FH has a few flights under its belt, there’ll be plenty of FH cores returning.

    • Joseph Smith says:
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      Why would NASA give the DSN time to SpaceX, when they can at least recover their costs. The cost model is available, probably on the DSN web site. The second that a Congressman complains that DSN is giving away resources, that means NASA HQ will need to charge SpaceX.

      • unfunded_dreams says:
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        NASA quite regularly trades TDRS, DSN, and NEN time for data, rides to orbit, or facilities support. Those assets cost approximately the same whether they are used or not, so it’s more of an opportunity cost (in the case of DSN – the other missions that don’t get to bring data home that pass) rather than actual cost.

    • duheagle says:
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      Way off.

      First, GTO capability is irrelevant. Red Dragon is going to Mars, not GTO. The fully expendable Mars throw weight for Falcon Heavy is quoted at 13.6 tonnes. An ISS-configured Dragon 2 is 6 tonnes. A lot of the usual inner equipment complement needed for transporting crew to ISS will not be aboard Red Dragon, but there will be a lot of instrumentation and science gear in its place so Red Dragon will probably mass about 6 tonnes also. The FH booster cores should be fully recoverable. SpaceX’s out-of-pocket for the mission will be dominated by the cost of the FH 2nd stage (expendable) and the Red Dragon itself.

      What will these components cost? Based on the price differential between F9 and FH, the build cost to SpaceX of an F9 appears to be $15 – 16 million. On this basis, FH would be no more than $40 million, maybe less. Gwynne Shotwell said that F9 reuse costs would be about $3 million, most of which would be accounted for by a new 2nd stage and a new payload fairing. So an F9 2nd stage is most likely a circa $2 million item. A Dragon likely costs about as much as the rest of the F9 it usually launches on. The Red Dragon, even if it is initially a one-off special build, should come in at about the same. A lot of expensive ISS and crew-related bits will be left off. I expect that a fair amount of the payload carried in their place will be NASA-provided equipment. I don’t see the total SpaceX hardware cost exceeding the mid-$50 millions, well over half of which will be recoverable. Total out-of-pocket will likely be in the near neighborhood of $20 million.

      It is pointless to talk of a “cost to NASA” for this mission. This is not a NASA-funded mission. SpaceX won’t be presenting an invoice or receiving any payment. It is covering the costs on its own dime. NASA, to be sure, will be making some in-kind contributions such as probably the larger fraction of the payload items and use of the Deep Space Network. It is also going to task one or more of its Mars orbital assets to watch the Entry, Descent and Landing of Red Dragon.

      If this mission comes off on time and is successful, it would hardly surprise me if lots of researchers are suddenly beating a path to SpaceX’s door to see what the company can do for them, launch services-wise. That would be especially true of researchers whose proposals didn’t quite make the cut at one of NASA’s periodic deep space mission “beauty pageants” where the one or two winners get all-expenses-paid rides and the rest get nothing.

      If this results in a lot of Deep Space Dragon Landers zipping around the Solar System a few years hence, NASA’s DSN network isn’t likely going to be able to provide the needed bandwidth without expansion of its Earthside infrastructure and deployment of space-based repeater node and navigation beacon assets. SpaceX and the FH might do a nice future business emplacing such “space buoys” in addition to boosting more and more probes BEO.

      • John Thomas says:
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        How does the Dragon get from GEO or LEO to Mars? An additional stage or something will be needed for the extra velocity (+$$$).

        • fcrary says:
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          I don’t think an upper stage is required. If you put less mass on top, the same rocket (second stage) will burn out with a higher velocity. I can’t find the all the relevant specs, but I can take some reasonable guesses. And even if the numbers are off, they illustrate the idea.

          I make the fully-fueled mass of the second stage as about 125 tonnes, 110 of which is fuel/oxidizer. With a 50 tonne payload on top, that’s a mass ratio of 2.7 and a delta-v of 3.4 km/s. (That sounds low, but this is just an illustration.) With 12 tonnes on top, the mass ratio is 5.1 and the delta-v is 5.5 km/s. No extra stage. (Although this approach does give an acceleration at burnout of 14 g…) Of course, the real analysis is more complex; but that’s the basic idea.

          • John Thomas says:
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            SpaceX is stating 8mT to GTO for $90M which is what Keith had speculated on. If you’re going to have it go to Mars, then your payload weight would decrease probably probably preventing them from launching an unmodified Dragon 2.
            To launch a 12 mT payload, the quoted launch cost would be higher, how much is unknown.

          • fcrary says:
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            The SpaceX web site has more details than most corporate sites, but there are quite a few things they leave out. (Not that I blame them.)

            Let’s be clear. They say they will _charge_ $90 million for a Falcon Heavy putting 8 tonnes on a GTO. They do not say that it costs them $90 million to do so. They also say they could put 22 tonnes on such an orbit with a Falcon Heavy. I’d expect them to charge more for that, but I don’t know how much more it costs them. The main issue might be recovery of the stage 1 core.

          • Paul451 says:
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            SpaceX is stating 8mT to GTO for $90M which is what Keith had speculated on.
            To launch a 12 mT [mars] payload, the quoted launch cost would be higher,

            You’re making the same mistake that duheagle made.

            You can’t compare payload masses to different destinations. You have to compare what proportion of an FH launch you are buying.

            13 tonnes to Mars is the maximum capacity of FH. So you are buying a full, expendable FH launch.

            OTOH, 8 tonnes to GTO is about 35% of the maximum capacity to GTO. You’re either buying one-third slot in a fully expended launch, or half a slot in a recoverable launch.

        • duheagle says:
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          A Red Dragon would go straight into a Trans-Mars Injection trajectory. It wouldn’t go to either LEO or GEO first. Apollo didn’t do any Earth orbiting on the way to the Moon. Same deal going to Mars.

          Both F9 and FH are capable of achieving Earth escape velocity for particular maximum payloads as given on the SpaceX web site page that was shown. One F9 – and not even a new Full Thrust model – already did this in deploying the DSCOVR (Goresat) mission to a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L1 point.

      • EtOH says:
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        so Red Dragon will probably mass about 6 tonnes also.

        Probably more like 10 tons+. Attached is a link to a very detailed lecture on the Red Dragon concept, in particular EDL. It’s an hour long, but very worth watching. But the TLDW, as it pertains to this topic, is that for landing payload with Red Dragon they want it to be as heavy as possible. Most of this extra weight is fuel, stored in added internal tanks. More fuel -> more landed payload, and the base Dragon V2 has much more internal volume than they need.

        https://www.youtube.com/wat

        • fcrary says:
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          I think we need to be careful about what a “Red Dragon” means. As far as I can tell, there are two, potentially very different “Red Dragon” s. There is a NASA/Ames and SpaceX concept study, done partially in preparation for a Discovery proposal. There is a fair amount of information out there on this concept. There is also the “Red Dragon” SpaceX announced plans to fly last week. We have very limited information about that mission. Other than using a Falcon Heavy for the launch, and a modified Dragon for the lander, we do not know how much they have in common.

          The use of the same name is no assurance of similarities. “Voyager” was the name of both a cancelled Mars mission, to be launched on a Saturn V, and the name of the outer planets mission which actually flew. At an early stage in mission development, a common name does not imply similarities.

          • EtOH says:
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            Agreed that they are not the same proposal, the video specifically discusses a sample return mission. But they both use the Dragon V2, and the same physics, so the same lessons apply. If they aren’t interested in landing much, it may be lighter as you say, but if they are planning on putting down significant payload, they will also be outfitting the cabin with extra fuel tanks.

          • fcrary says:
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            The only thing I say in last week’s announcement was an engineering test of entry, decent and landing systems. No scientific experiments were mentioned. I hope they fit some in, but that isn’t clear.

      • Paul451 says:
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        Way off.
        First, GTO capability is irrelevant. Red Dragon is going to Mars, not GTO. The fully expendable Mars throw weight for Falcon Heavy is quoted at 13.6 tonnes.

        <sigh> Let me try it slowly for you.

        Keith quoted $90m commercial sale price for FH.

        But that is not the price for the full FH. It is the price for 8t-GTO.

        $90 million is 8 tonnes to GTO.

        So what proportion of a full FH launch is that? Hence, what proportion of a full FH launch sells for $90m?

        For that we look at the full capacity to GTO. Why GTO? Because that’s the destination that the $90m relates to. And the full capability to GTO is 22.2 tonnes.

        So the $90m price-tag is for 35% of the full FH capacity.

        That implies that the commercial price for a maxed out FH launch regardless of destination is around $250 million.

        $250 million to send 50 tonnes to LEO.

        $250 million to send 22 tonnes to GTO.

        $250 million to send 18 tonnes to LTO.

        $250 million to send 13 tonnes to MTO.

        Capiche?

        JimR’s suggestion that the price doesn’t scale linearly may be correct. But your objection isn’t.

        What will these components cost?

        The cost of the hardware is irrelevant. The cost of the total launch is all that matters. Trying to work out launch costs from raw hardware costs is impossible.

        It is pointless to talk of a “cost to NASA” for this mission.

        I was clearly talking about SpaceX flying a NASA supplied-payload on a Red Dragon-type flight. Not about a purely SpaceX-funded test flight, the cost of which I had already estimated.

        If this results in a lot of Deep Space Dragon Landers zipping around the Solar System a few years hence

        SpaceX is not going to fund an exploration of the solar system out of their own pocket. Elon is interested in Mars. Talking about other destinations is to sell those missions to space agencies, like NASA. Hence the cost-to-NASA becomes irrelevant.

        Capiche?

        • fcrary says:
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          You are scaling the $90 million cost for a 8 tonne to GTO and scaling linearly up the the 22.2 tonne performance to GTO. Then you are assuming the 13.6 tonne to Mars (actually, I think that should be Mars transfer orbit) will have the same cost as the 22.2 tonnes to GTO. I see no reason to assume the costs scale linearly or that 22.2 tonnes GTO and 13.6 tonnes MTO would have the same cost.

          • Paul451 says:
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            you are assuming the 13.6 tonne to Mars […] will have the same cost as the 22.2 tonnes to GTO.

            I definitely concede the issue about linear scaling. But I see no reason for the quibble over GTO vs MTO mass. The issue is what proportion of the launch-vehicle you are buying, and in what mode (reusable vs expendable.)

            I am assuming that 13 tonnes is the maximum available payload to Mars. Just as 22 tonnes is the maximum available payload to GTO. Just as 50+ tonnes is the maximum available payload to LEO. Full vehicle, expendable mode.

            Hence, whether it’s LEO, GTO or MTO, you are buying a full Falcon Heavy launch, probably in expendable mode. Hence the starting price will be the same.

            $90m would only buy you a one-third slot on an expendable launch, or maybe a half slot on a reusable launch. But for a Mars mission, you need a second/third payload going in roughly the same direction. But even if you do, you’re limited to maybe 4.5 tonnes to MTO.

            As for linear scaling: I have no other measure.

            It’s likely that launching two or three payloads on one launch is more complex for SpaceX than launching a single max-mass payload. I suspect that if you are launching a single 22 tonne payload to GTO, they’ll charge you less than $250m.

            However, a Mars mission is likely to be more complex than Earth-orbit, particularly when it’s their own capsule. So I suspect it’s swings’n’roundabouts. I stand by $300m for a customer, $240m costs for SpaceX; $450m for NASA, $360m costs for SpaceX.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            All assuming shiny new metal, of course, and there being no reason to think they’d use anything but refurbs; in fact the mission is ideal for showing off the use of previously owned rockets.

            This would drop the price down into an entirely different category.

          • Paul451 says:
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            FH cores are not interchangeable with F9 cores. And I doubt they’ll have enough recovered cores from FH launches for it to have significantly altered their costs by 2018.

          • duheagle says:
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            That’s your story and you’re sticking to it. Gotcha.

        • duheagle says:
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          Yeah, I capiche. I see exactly what you did there. Problem is, your price scale-up assumption is just wrong. The FH publicly posted launch price has been $85 – 90 million since prices started appearing on the SpaceX web site. That price was, and is, for an expendable launch since SpaceX has only been demonstrating recoverability since last Dec. The full impact of recoverability has not been cranked into SpaceX’s publicly quoted prices yet.

          SpaceX, Arianespace and ILS vehicles have a single configuration regardless of payload mass. Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Ariane 5 and Proton are all priced at a given amount per launch regardless of the fraction of their total lift mass capabilities the customer uses.

          ULA is the only launch services provider I know of that charges progressively more for heavier payloads. That’s because its Atlas V and Delta IV vehicles employ additional strap-on solid boosters, in various quantities, to handle progressively heavier payloads. More cost yields a higher price. Thus “pizza by the slice” pricing makes sense for ULA because of the basic architectures of their vehicles.

          It doesn’t make sense for the other major providers in the industry and they, perforce, don’t do it. They are providing, in essence, a “large pizza box” every time. The customer doesn’t have to put a large pizza in the box, but he has to pay the same price as someone who does.

          In the case of Ariane 5, two customers can launch different-sized “pizzas” in the same “box.” That can be done for certain types of “pizza” on the F9 as well – two customers launching two “medium pizzas” for the price of a large.

          The rest of your objections don’t make a lot of sense. I wasn’t extrapolating SpaceX’s probable costs for the proposed Red Dragon mission by starting with “raw hardware” – whatever that means (the per-ton price of Li-Al alloy sheet, maybe? I dunno.). I was working based on the costs of major F9/FH components, strong hints about which are contained in the pricing of the two vehicles and statements made by SpaceX management.

          The derivation of the $15 – 16 million cost for a full-up F9 in satellite launch trim we already went through. My assumption is that a Dragon capsule costs SpaceX about the same to build as the F9 it rides on based on their CRS mission price which is roughly twice its commercial satellite launch price. I simply assume that SpaceX’s 250 – 300% gross margins on rocket hardware also apply to SpaceX-supplied payload hardware.

          Again, recoverability and reusability are likely to have significant impact on future SpaceX prices, but that hasn’t happened yet.

          As for SpaceX exploring the Solar System on its own dime, I wasn’t suggesting that would happen. What I was suggesting was that SpaceX might well find it to be in its own expressed interests to do more Red Dragon-type missions at cost for researchers who can address one of more of the many to-do-list items still awaiting solution with respect to SpaceX’s plans for Martian settlement. Perhaps a modestly higher price could also be offered for missions that involve landing on other significant Solar System bodies than Mars. I’m not saying either of these things is a lead pipe cinch to happen, just that SpaceX could do either or both for reasons that would seem to make perfectly good sense based on Elon’s long-term plans. I never bet against enlightened self-interest.

          • Paul451 says:
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            The FH publicly posted launch price has been $85 – 90 million since prices started appearing on the SpaceX web site.

            $90 million is the price for 8 tonnes to GTO. Which is a third of an expendable vehicle payload.

            So that is either a single payload in a three payload launch, or the maximum payload of a full three-core recovery.

            In either case, it means you would be limited to 4.5 tonnes to MTO, which is less than would be required to launch a fuelled Dragon capsule without any payload. Therefore you cannot use the $90m quote and then talk about Red Dragon, it’s stupid.

            To talk about a Red Dragon-type mission, you need the price for a full Falcon Heavy launch in expendable mode.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      As I followed Keith’s argument he’s taking about used cores, meaning the costs are simply fuel/refurbishment and these are negligible. The capsule will be pricey, but the whole program is a lot less than perhaps thought.

      As to a NASA tax, were I Elon (which I would be if there was any justice in the world), I’d just tell NASA they can put stuff in the capsule and we will do our best to protect it. Period.

      It’s like transplanting a tree: contractors will do the best job and follow professional procedures but there is no warranty.

      So here we are with a company mulling a trip to Mars as a way of disposing with used inventory. Who would have thought?

      • Shaw_Bob says:
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        Why will the capsule be expensive? You’re talking about a stock item, with some stuff added and some stuff taken away. And the capsule itself could be secondhand.

        • John Thomas says:
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          Adding and taking away costs money.

          • fcrary says:
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            There are good and bad ways to do that. A Dragon is designed to carry different cargos. So there is a certain amount of adding and subtracting they can do without massive analysis, re-testing, etc. If they stay within that envelope, it might not be too expensive. If they want to make the Red Dragon “better” by going outside that envelope, it just got a whole lot more expensive.

          • John Thomas says:
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            Adding hoists and doors (as has been suggested) to do things on the surface is more than changing internal payloads.

          • Jeff Havens says:
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            Other costs to consider — if Dragon is to follow the Planetary Protection rules, chances are it will have to be shrouded at launch. Will the current SpaceX shroud work w/Dragon, or will mods (costs) be incurred? Sterilization and specialized handling of RD in a clean room environment will incur costs. Then you get to how RD will be powered on the surface. Some have said that an RTG is out due to nuclear material unavailability; so are we looking at deploy-able solar, batteries, etc.. cost. And will a mars-bound Dragon have a modified trunk? Another cost.

          • Shaw_Bob says:
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            True. However, Dragon already has doors, both for humans and for instruments. We’re not talking about reinventing the wheel here.

          • fcrary says:
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            No, you’re talking about changing the mechanical structure. That means all sorts of re-analysis and re-testing. That’s expensive. You might be better off figuring out how to fit an experiment through the existing hatch, rather than asking them to build a new, wider hatch.

          • fcrary says:
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            Which is why I wouldn’t recommend that. Now we have an interesting engineering problem: What could you do without significant modifications to the Dragon. That’s both possible and the criteria for doing something without driving the costs through the roof.

  7. Joseph Smith says:
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    The Dragon V2 is a pressurized vehicle, designed to carry a crew. That said, if a Dragon can get to the surface of Mars, and then the instruments are stuck inside a vehicle and aren’t exposed to the Martian environment that they are suppose to be studying? Why go?

    • Shaw_Bob says:
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      Doors. Ramps. Hoists. Heard of them?

      • John Thomas says:
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        Added cost and weight and never flown before. Keith talks about existing Dragons but those changes would make it significantly different and cost more to change and qualify.

        • Shaw_Bob says:
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          You’ve got tens of millions of dollars to spend on nice, simple ramps. How difficult is a ramp?

          • fcrary says:
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            I, personally, do not have tens of millions of dollars to spend on it. If you can find someone with that sort of money, they may want you to be sure it will work. That probably can’t be done in the available time (i.e. selecting, developing and integrating a payload as Class A hardware, which is what NASA expects when it pays tens of millions for an instrument.)

      • fcrary says:
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        You don’t even need a ramp, unless you happen to like rocks. I can think of some fine instruments that can use the hatch on top. Just open it and raise a 0.7-m wide deck with the instruments on it.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        I made an image…

    • Michael Reynolds says:
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      The primary science payload for this mission is the Dragon itself testing and collecting data on propulsive landing a large capsule on the Martian surface. I am assuming the dragon itself could easily be modified to accommodate and deploy these “icing on the cake” science instruments.

    • Jeff Havens says:
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      Wouldn’t it be more correct to say that it is pressurized *while* carrying a crew? Does it have to be pressurized? Dragon doesn’t strike me as being a ballon-tank design from the old Atlas I series.
      One thing that does puzzle me, though. I asked in another thread about what could be the science package. One response said that a core-sample retrieval would be made, with drilling *thru* the TPS and to the surface. I wonder if Red Dragon could be made to dispose of it’s TPS before landing, like many of the other Mars landers have done. Drilling thru just seems.. silly.

  8. John Thomas says:
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    I wonder how accurate the $90 million FH cost is. They just got a contract for a F9 GPS launch of $83 million. Could be the $90M is a loss leader.

    • Panice says:
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      $90 million is the bare-bones, no options, no extra services price that never happens in real life. The bare-bones, no options price for a Falcon 9 is $62 million vs. the actual $83 million you quote for GPS. YMMV.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      GPS launch is a National Security payload I believe, SpaceX, before a Senate committee stated that those payloads, Like ULA, cost more than a simple commercial sat launch and would be about 90 million, about 50% more than a standard rate.

  9. Michael Spencer says:
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    They would use recovered cores. It’s a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that they work.

  10. Vladislaw says:
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    You can deliver a science package in multiple ways. I did a napkin sketch of different ways

    • Paul451 says:
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      The ramp won’t work as shown. The angle from the hatch to the ground is either too steep for a driven rover, or the ramp will require too many folding platforms and will take up too much space. There’s about 2m between the hatch and the opposite wall. The hatch will be nearly 2m from the ground. A rover would be limited to a 15° slope. Do the maths.

      There is an alternative. Have the rover upside down when it deploys.

      To maximise the size of the rover, I would expect we’d want it to be the full length of the available horizontal space, around 1.5-2m. Place it upside down on a pair of rails. After landing, the rails are pushed out of the side-hatch, carrying the upside-down rover with them. Once the rover is clear of the top of the hatch, it deploys its wheel-assemblies, expanding to its full width. (This is standard rover packing. See, MSL’s deployment. The difference is that at this point, the rover is upside down, wheel sticking up in the air like a dead beetle.)

      Once the wheel-assemblies are expanded and locked, the rails are allowed to pivot down the side of the capsule, reaching or almost reaching the ground. The rover is now being held nearly vertically, it’s wheels pointing away from the capsule.

      The entire rover then pivots around a hinge at the base of the rails to lower its wheels to the ground. Ie, the rover itself acts like the second “plank” of a ramp.

      Once the wheels of the rover touch the ground, the pivot-end releases from the rails and the rover goes on its way.

      The two stage deployment means that if there’s uneven terrain, the rails can pivot less than the full amount, and the rover can pivot either more or less, in order to match whatever slope it’s deploying onto. (Or to avoid rocks.)

      It sounds a bit Rube Goldburg, but it actually keeps the number of moving parts to a minimum. The rover can’t slip off a ramp, the slope of the not-ramp doesn’t matter (the steeper the better).

      Borrowing your sketch:

      https://uploads.disquscdn.c
      This still leaves 5-6 cubic metres of capsule for additional instruments. The rover won’t leave much space at the top of the capsule for an instrument package to telescope through the top. But you could “petal” a bunch of solar arrays. Without a docking adaptor, the opening at the top of the capsule is about 1.8m across. So, say 4 x 2m² panels, about 8m² of panel area. With batteries in the base of the capsule.

      Then you could have the rover be battery powered, and plug in somewhere on the capsule at night. (Perhaps the same rails that lowered it.) That lets you dump the main solar+batteries onto the capsule. The rover plugs in at night for recharging and instrument-heating.

      You might even have some way to transfer samples back to the capsule each evening, for processing the next day. A 1.5-2m long rover could carry a fairly decent robot-arm, to pass samples back through the hatch to a sample intake tray just inside the capsule. (This arm could also be the motor for the final pivot during the rover deployment.)

      Battery reduces its range, of course, keeping it trapped near the capsule, but the large solar panels and batteries of the capsule, and the increased volume available for sample analysis, should increase the amount of science.

      I don’t like the crane, because there’s too many moving parts needed to deploy the crane itself, even before you worry about getting the rover out of the capsule.

      Balloon sounds interesting, gives you data on the atmosphere between ground and satellite. Plus a large amount of mid-resolution imaging. But looking at weather balloon deployments on Earth, I’m not sure you could automate it for sub-$billions. Weirdly, balloons seem like they would work better if they deployed during descent, before reaching the ground.

      As discussed with fcrary, I like his idea for poking instruments through the top hatch. It’s probably the cheapest possible Red Dragon mission.

      The plank seems a bit pointless. If you mean it as an instrument platform, then the top-hatch idea is better.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        For the steep ramp, I was figuring on using a wire on the back as it drives down .. when it reaches the ground the guide wire would unsnap and free the rover. That way the rover could not slide down the ramp… The rover size I was thinking on was more of the Sojourner rover, it was only 25 pounds…. it would only do a quick 30 day run around the capsule with the capsule acting as the data base. A very inexpensive rover because of the high risk.

        • Paul451 says:
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          Because of the steepness of the ramp, even with a cable/wire to lower the rover, it’d still risk coming off the side. So you’d need guide-rails around the wheels. If the ground is uneven at dismount, being lowered nearly vertically may prevent the rover from changing to horizontal.

          So even with a small rover, I still think the flip manoeuvre would be the most parsimonious.

          [My reason for suggesting a large rover is because the available landed mass is pretty substantial. No reason to not use as much as possible. Not so much to squeeze more equipment into that payload-mass, but to allow you to be fat’n’lazy with the design. More mundane, off-the-shelf parts, lower-grade but cheap construction; rather than aerospace-grade parts shaved to the minimum possible mass. Welded steel bars, instead of bespoke machined aluminium isotruss-lattice. Off-the-shelf electronics wrapped in 100kg of bulk polymer, instead of radiation-hardened milspec gear.]