SpaceX Launch Pad Explosion Is Getting Expensive
Satellite owner says SpaceX owes $50 million or free flight, Reuters
“Israel’s Space Communication Ltd said on Sunday it could seek $50 million or a free flight from Elon Musk’s SpaceX after a Spacecom communications satellite was destroyed last week by an explosion at SpaceX’s Florida launch site. Officials of the Israeli company said in a conference call with reporters Sunday that Spacecom also could collect $205 million from Israel Aerospace Industries, which built the AMOS-6 satellite. SpaceX said in an email to Reuters that it does not disclose contract or insurance terms. The company is not public, and it has not said what insurance it had for the rocket or to cover launch pad damages beyond what was required by the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial U.S. launches, for liability and damage to government property.”
SpaceCom to recoup $173m, plus interest, for destroyed satellite, Times of Israel
“The satellite’s owners, Space Communication, will receive over $173 million from IAI plus interest, which provided insurance for the device, a company official said. According to Space Communication, also known as SpaceCom, the total sum from IAI is “approximately $205 million.” Under the insurance policy, IAI will have to pay the amount “in under 60 days,” a spokesperson for the quasi-governmental firm said. In addition, the Israeli company said it expects to receive either $50 million from SpaceX or “have the launch of a future satellite carried out under the existing agreement and with the payments that have [already] been made.”
SpaceX to shift Florida launches to new pad after explosion, Reuters
“With its launch pad likely facing major repairs, SpaceX said it would use a second Florida site, called 39A, which is located a few miles north at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and was used for space shuttle missions. The pad is on schedule to be operational in November, SpaceX said. The company had planned to use the pad for the first time later this year for a test flight of its new Falcon Heavy rocket. NASA spokesman Michael Curie said in an email that the site could be used for commercial and government flights, and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell in a May conference said one customer, SES SA of Luxembourg, had expressed interest in flying from the historic launch pad.”
Meanwhile, Tesla stock is cratering because of its merger with Solar City – a black hole for cash. It will be interesting to see how Musk manages this triple witching hour.
While Tesla is publicly listed, SpaceX is in private hands with a solid base of deep pocketed investors, each with an eye on the $2B in confirmed launch bookings.
It’s also possible to note Tesla stock, trading just below $200, is up from a low point of $150 in February this year.
Agreed, it’s not looking pretty at the minute for Mr Musk, but he has responded well to past challenges.
Compared to most newspace startups, SpaceX has done very well indeed.
Tesla Stock seems to have bounced back a bit, the low was $196.85 at 2pm on Friday, now it’s up 5% to $202.83
I’d expect some uncertainty in Tesla stock because so much is riding on the Gigafactory and the Model 3. That and the acquisition of Solar City didn’t help with uncertainty.
I’d never expect a company that is trying to introduce revolutionary change to an industry to have an easy time with it. Just the fact that Tesla is doing so well in the luxury car market with the Model S and the Model X is astounding. Forget about the fact these cars are electric and they’re still selling quite well in their market space.
“…and the Model X is astounding”
The Model X P100D with Ludicrous mode accelerates to 60 mph in 2.5* seconds and travels up to 289 miles per charge.
This lifts the USA from relative supercar obscurity to world leader over any car currently in production (the Ferrari LaFerrari and Porsche 918 Spyder are no longer current).
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Precisely. Model S and Model X are just insane cars to drive. They’ve combined aspects of luxury sedans and SUVs with hyper cars. No other cars on the market seem to be doing this as well as Tesla.
Musk is well aware the auto industry is highly competitive and Tesla needs to keep advancing to survive. Thanks to him, so is the launch industry.
Cratering? Nobody is surprised at the volatility of Tesla stock. And while Mr. Musk’s occasional remarks affect the price, in general the stability for a new company with new tech is remarkable:
I hope I do this right it’s the first time I’ve tried it:
Given how expensive satellites are getting I wonder it would be beneficial to develop a launch abort system for them. It may pay to do so simply in reduced insurance costs for a launch.
An interesting point, in both the F9 accidents this would almost certainly have saved the payload. In both cases the payload survived seemingly relatively intact for sometime after the initial explosion. I imagine though a launch abort system for a satellite payload could be a fairly complex and costly affair.
Seems like there would be too many complexities and weight penalty since they would essentially have to replace the payload fairing with a watertight capsule with LAS. One challenge would be designing a watertight capsule that can break apart during a nominal launch. Not impossible I suppose, but from a purely financial viewpoint, even factoring in lower insurance cost, it may not be worth it considering the overall reliability of launchers. And for a particular launcher it would reduce the weight and volume of payload that it can carry, requiring a satellite customer to either reduce the size (and thus capability) of their satellite, or else move up to a larger, more expensive launcher.
However, many satellites especially scientific are not easily replaceable, and even if replaceable the impact of a lost satellite can potentially be huge. So maybe for an increased launch cost and reduced payload weight and size, a satellite company could choose to purchase a recoverable “capsule” launch, whereas others would accept the risk of a payload fairing, which allows higher weight and larger volume at a lower cost.
A launch abort system for satellites is pointless. Since you probably not be able to re-certified the satellite as being flight worthy after the RUD (rapid unscheduled disassemble) of the launcher vehicle. It probably is cheaper to build a new satellite.instead of trying to re certified the satellite.
Existing satellites that could be true since they are only designed to withstand the stresses of a nominal launch, not the additional forces of an abort and whatever jostling might occur during splashdown. But that doesn’t mean that a satellite couldn’t be designed to that specification if that capability was needed. While the capability doesn’t exist yet to recover a satellite during a launch anomaly, and is probably considered impossible by some, so was recovering a first stage not all that long ago. Perhaps a future visionary entrepreneur will decide to take on this challenge and be able to offer this capability to those who need it.
Obviously all of this would be at higher cost, but I think for many satellites this goes beyond just the normal economics. As I mentioned, many satellites are not easily replaceable. This is especially true for one of a kind satellites which have a decade or so of development, all geared for this one mission and this one satellite. Many of the people involved in the development may have moved on to other projects or retired when the mission finally does launch. And the project is possibly funded by one-time grants which don’t include funds for building a replacement satellite.
Commercial satellites are usually more replaceable, but in many cases the satellite is planned to fill a vital communication, weather monitoring, etc. role in a certain part of the world, and the loss can impact millions of people. The point is that losing a satellite in many cases is much more catastrophic than just a simple financial loss that can remediated through an insurance payment.
Of course some failures relate to the satellite itself, or failure to reach intended orbit. Hopefully in the future the satellite recovery and repair techniques that were demonstrated by the Shuttle will become possible again as the capabilities to operate in space continue to grow.
As I recall a communications satellite that was damaged by a falling crane hook at Cx-17 in 1988 or so was declared a total loss by the insurer for just this reason but was eventually sold to another country, repaired, and launched. That said, launch aborts where an abort system would work are not that common, the payload would have to be protected from salt water immersion, and it would probably end up cheaper to buy insurance. In this case the risks had been incured in part because of the rapid evolution of the design, which has allowed cost reductions that are greater than the cost of launch insurance. Except maybe for the next launch, when everybody will be a little nervous…
Getting hit by a falling crane is not quite the same as getting RUD during launch plus a high G launch abort boost afterwards. All the internal satellite components have to be re-certified with no legacy knowledge. In other word someone have to make up the re-certification rules in the first place. It is cheaper to build a new satellite and also not have payload mass reduces by a launch abort system.
Of course, I agree, that is why the satellite in the Cx-17 incident was totaled and never, SFAIK, “recertified”. I’m just saying that there is a difference between being “recertified”, and actually being usable and reliable according to good engineering judgement. Certification is an administrative process that has engineering components.
In this case however, the explosion had a determinate cause. It was not a random failure. SpaceX has had its failures but they have a good record of determining the actual cause and changing the design to eliminate the failure mode without an excessive load of paperwork. In the long run this yields a system that is simple, efficient, and reliable.
It is interesting to see how the legacy of throw away boosters and no in orbit repair has built so much high costs into the system.
In many ways it is like the automobile industry before the Model T, a simple standard vehicle that could be built by unskilled workers, fixed by the average farmer and take whatever punishment the primitive roads between towns threw at it. This was in contrast to the existing standard of automobiles that required skilled labor to build, usually required a highly skilled mechanic to repair and were mostly limited to drives within the town, often by a chauffeur that was often trained as a skilled mechanic.
It also recalls the contrast between mainframe computers that needed specialists to operate versus the PC that a teenager could run.
I expect some startup firm will make good money creating a similar revolution for satellites, perhaps starting with mass produced cubesats with interchangeable sensors conditioned to rough handling.
…or even find a way to mate the payload after the WDR is complete.
Not feasible. None of the satellite buses would be capable of withstanding the environment. And satellite bus development is expensive, long process and takes about a decade. Also, newly redesigned buses have significant insurance premiums, as insurance companies are watching satellite performance and failures even more carefully than launchers. We have seen some disastrous roll-outs of newly redesigned buses previously, like Boeing 601
For people saying ‘it’s cheaper to rebuild a new one’ – yeah but not really, either. The lead times to get a fully built GEO bird crammed full of transponders through the production pipeline are years, and years of lost revenue can add up to a ton.
At best, you could tear down the sat to components and perhaps re-qualify and reuse some of the most long lead critical pieces like TWTa’s.
I suspect communications satellites will start becoming less expensive once the implications of lower launch costs. When it cost $200 million to launch one, it made sense to spend $300 million to make it as capable, reliable and efficient as possible. If the launch only costs $70 million, that may no longer make sense.
There is a slo-mo of the explosion on You Tube. By pause and moving to different spots a near frame by frame is possible. The 1st stage vent was off. Flight Pressure? So the 2nd stage should be also? I see no vapor from the sides of the 2nd. stage as there is from the 1st. There is not any LOX in the 2nd. stage. So the point source is still condensation. That is a leak. It exploded, without LOX though ? One frame looks like a black feed line is leaking. So a leak instead of a vent. I see 2 explosions. One from the leak and then the 2nd stage goes. It doesn’t look like a bird, but an object appears in line with the nose cone at ignition. Interesting but I don’t think it had anything to do with it. Could be a SpaceX drone or an illegal one.That feed line is flexible. Rubber? Which makes good rocket fuel when LOX is sprayed inside. The LOX oxidized the rubber which was set off by static electricity. Not by an invisible laser from that object. It was leaking before that object appeared. I measured before and after and the center of the explosion is near the fill plate. In one frame on the edge of the explosion there is an object going up and one going left. Could be the plate. If the objects are on the edge, that means when the explosion started they were there. The fill plate could have exploded underneath.
I checked to see where the vent was. It is on the other side near the fairing. So the vapor is not coming from the vent. I did some image inhancements. Not much. The vapor is coming from several feet blow the fairing on the strongback. Again it looks like a leak.
LOX flex lines are usually stainless steel bellows. I would not think rubber would have the required flexibility at low temperatures. Some composite materials are compatible with LOX but not something that would be easily ignited. If there is a LOX line leak the escaping LOX with instantly vaporize or disperse as droplets and cause the condensation of any water vapor in the surrounding air, causing the typical plume seen when an oxygen tank is venting.
Ok. The kerosene and LOX look to be on the same umbilical. Both could leak and mix, a spark and boom! If that all it was, such as material or installation failure they will fix it and keep launching. In any case I think they should move the kerosene fill to the top of the kerosene tank at some point. I read that the lattice work, metal screen I suppose, at the top of the strongback was mangled. Could be another cause, but the plate could have hit it. I am probably completely wrong and it is something else.
It makes business sense although not engineering sense. With insurance unwilling to cover the cost of recovery, and the replacement likely having newer technology, it is probably something there is no market demand for. Same with satellite repair. Why pay to repair a commercial satellite when the insurance will pay to launch an updated replacement.