Refurbished Dragon Heads For ISS – Does This Save Money?
SpaceX Dragon Headed to The International Space Station
“Major experiments that will look into the human body and out into the galaxy are on their way to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft following its 5:07 p.m. EDT launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.”
Keith’s note: NASA KSC PAO just held a post-launch media briefing – one of many events they mentioned in a media advisory. But they did not bother to tell offsite media that there was a secret dial-in option – only a few of their media pals knew about it. Yet the media advisory gives detailed information about every other way to cover/follow the launch. All other NASA centers take the time to tell news media about dial-in opportunities in advance – but not KSC. This happened with a SpaceX CRS launch in 2016 too. NASA KSC PAO’s excuse then was it was not part of their media template. They still do not seem to care about telling the media about these things.
I wanted to ask SpaceX and NASA what the cost of flying a refurbished Dragon is and if they do (or do not) pass on these savings to NASA and if there are any additional NASA requirements for certifying a previously-flown spacecraft to the ISS. Everyone is hyping how cool it is that a refurbished Dragon is being flown. OK, it is cool – but what does that actually mean? Is it actually cheaper to re-fly these Dragons or do the costs of NASA-mandated re-certification limit the actual cost savings?
I’d imagine that much like the first re-used first stage, there isn’t any actual cost savings at this point. They probably spent as much money inspecting/repairing/analyzing the old one as it would have cost to make a new one. I’m sure once they have enough data points to know what these reused items end up as once they return, they’ll actually start saving money. Till then though, I doubt there’s any real cost savings.
SpaceX does not answer media inquiries and NASA limits media access to Q&A when SpaceX people appear on NASA Tv so it will be up to someone else to find out the answer.
SpaceX is a private company. We do not have much of a right to have those sorts of insights as long as SpaceX is fulfilling its contractual obligations to the US Government. Now, during CRS-3 negotiations, NASA will certainly want to know what sort of savings it can expect by using reflown hardware instead of new. That will all be part of the bidding process and I’d expect SpaceX to provide NASA numbers at that time. But to ask SpaceX to prematurely “show their hand” publicly, would be like asking a poker player to show everyone at the table their cards right after they’ve been dealt.
iirc the last time the “reusing cargo dragons” story came up for air the general assumption was that refurbishing doesn’t save money exactly, but it saves the factory space and tooling dedicated to dragon1 production that spaceX would like/need to cannibalize in order to make the dragon 2 production line.
Hans Koenigsmann told Bloombrg that more Flight Proven™ Dragons are coming, using them up on 3 times each. With CRS-12 to CRS-20 remaining in CRS Round 2, not many should be needed.
Also, AIUI the old Dragon 1 line closed some months ago and a new “Dragon Hatchery” was opened in part of the Triumph Vought plant near Hawthorne. If they mainly use Dragon 2 for CRS Round 2, perhaps reserving a Dragon 1 or two for the odd large cargo via their CBM ports, no more Dragon 1’s need be built.
Good questions to have answered. But my view is that pressing a position that NASA should get a discount on a reused Dragon at this very early stage in learning is penny wise and pound foolish. 1) NASA is getting what they paid for (i.e. delivery of cargo to the ISS and return of cargo from the ISS). 2) SpaceX is already the lowest cost provider on every front (i.e. less than Orbital ATK for cargo and less than Boeing for crew). 3) SpaceX is, I believe far more than anyone else, plowing back profit to invest in the improvement of space access, both in terms of cost and safety.
I hope NASA aggressively supports this direction to reap the huge savings to be had once this reusable technology is matured rather than worrying about the very small savings that can potentially be had at every single increment in this journey to develop reusable vehicles for space access. The later would definitely slow the journey and could derail it.
I agree. Requiring SpaceX to pass a savings on to NASA would put the contract in the cost-plus category and encourage the contractor to create cost increases that could also be passed along. The principal advantage of Commercial Crew is the lack of NASA micromanagement. SpaceX is tasked to provide a reliable and economical service at a fixed price, and if they can reduce costs the reward to the nation will go far beyond this contract.
But why does the ISS need “dragon heads”?
No.
Cost plus does not necessarily encourage contractors to any such thing. The only time that works is when the purchaser is completely stupid about managing a contract. If that’s the case the fault lies with the purchaser.
One more thing: contracts, like war plans, often do not survive the initiation of work. But as good will is a huge part of successful contracting, people just work things out. The negativity expressed herein and elsewhere presumes an adversarial relationship between provider and contractor. This is counterproductive.
Off the top on my head, I can’t think of any extra costs invented by a contractor, just to get more money from a cost-plus contract. At least not from personal experience. But I have seen lots of cases where NASA asked a contract to do something the hard way, and instead of suggesting alternatives, the contractor happily did it the hard way and took the extra profits. And cases where the contractor interpreted a NASA requirement in a very labor/cost intensive manner. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what this says about NASA as a purchaser.
Not just counterproductive, but also not exemplary of the great win-win relationship between NASA and SpaceX.
Plus, there might not even be a cost savings…and there doesn’t need to be. Just being able say, “Hey, we barbequed this capsule in a traditional ablative reentry, fished it out of salt water, and then scaped off the seaweed and successfully re-flew it…imagine what we could do with V2 that can perform a retro-burn reentry (maybe) and a dirt landing.
I was about to make that point, but you made it better.
There is just so much cool oozing out of a reused, splashed-down capsule that NASA doesn’t need a discount. Just the ability to say, “Welcome back” to a capsule and the proof of concept of being able to say that to a vehicle that costs a fraction of the cost of a throw-away Orion is priceless.
It would seem that as a fixed price contract SpaceX gets to pocket the profits. That was why the government switched to cost plus contracts in WWII, to limit the profits firms would make from large production runs that would produce huge economies of scale. So asking SpaceXto “share” the savings is basically drifting back to the old cost plus contract system.
Did you catch Listner’s latest Op Ed?
“Op-ed | A reality check on Article VI and private space activities”
http://spacenews.com/a-real…
I believe the real benefit will start once Bigelow is operational.
I doubt there are any significant, additional requirements to certify a previously-flown Dragon. That is, in addition to all the testing they would require before flying a new one. The testing before the first flight covers just about everything they can think of. Repeating all those tests before a reflight wouldn’t add any additional tests relative to a first flight, and I can’t see how they could do more than “everything they can think of.”
For the cost and passing on savings, I expect NASA and SpaceX will stick to the terms of the CRS1 contract. I suppose they could renegotiate the terms of CRS2. NASA contracts tend to have clauses allowing that sort of thing. But I doubt they would. Assuming a CRS3 comes along, I’m sure any savings from reuse would be considered when NASA makes selections and writes the contracts. That’s probably when NASA would start seeing savings from reuse.
As for the media coverage and information, I’ll buy “not part of their media template” as an excuse. Once. Now I’d like to hear why they didn’t fix the template when an omission was pointed out.
2nd launch inspection/maintenance/recert … how much damage does a launch and recovery cycle do to the rocket ?
They would certainly do things like that. To a large extent, that’s repeating the tests and inspections they did before the first launch. The first time around is to make it was built correctly, the second time would be to make sure nothing broke during the flight. But I think those are mostly the same tests and inspections.
Of course, there are other things they might want to do, as opposed to needing to do. Additional inspection and testing could provide information on how to improve the design, or extend the number of flights the hardware is capable of. I was just thinking of the work to safely turn the vehicle around, not the work involved in learning from its flight experience.
The other thing they have to worry about is latent damage. Latent damage is where some system, assembly, or part has been damaged or weakened, but not to such an extent that it cannot pass pre-flight inspections and tests. However, it is weakened to the point where it could fail during the next flight. But, I am sure those smart engineers at SpaceX have taken that into account…
I’m not sure I understand that logic. Pre-flight test and inspections are designed to make sure a system, assembly or part will not fail in flight. If it passes the tests and inspections, it is ok, whether it had been previously used or was fresh from the assembly line. If the tests and inspections are adequate, why should the item’s past history matter? If they are inadequate, then I’d think they would be inadequate for new items.
It doesn’t have to save money or time today. It’s about learning how to do it. http://Www.robert-w-jones.com
The intent of how these [added “commercial”] contracts are structured is precisely to align incentives between NASA and the contractor/partner. That a partner figures out how to save money, lowering cost, by reusability, is wholly consistent with a contract that provides incentives to provide significantly lower costs in the first place, to control costs ongoing, and to push prices down long term, growing a market. A market NASA will buy from in future contracts where new terms can be set.
By contrast, a cost plus contract would by structure, in theory, pass cost savings to the government, but in practice, in the real world, this never happens. There is near zero incentive in cost-plus to improve and to reduce costs, especially as the government is the only customer in these and there is no prospect at high cost-plus pricing for growing market and thus revenue.
Big difference.
When would someone with a cost plus contract have _any_ incentive to reduce cost? On that contract, that is. The proposal for the next one is another matter.
Profit from cost plus doesn’t have to be linear. There can still be an incentive for lower cost.
True, but being a public company brings along incentives of its own which can also run counter to providing products at lower costs. Lower costs generally means lower revenues, which is a number stockholders care about almost as much as profits. Stock price can be a big motivator for upper management since much of their compensation often comes in the form of stock options.
The only time might have been true was during WW-II when everyone was motivated to win the war. For example, during WW-II the many companies who were building bombers were all motivated to build as many bombers as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, in order to win the war. There were more B-24 bombers produced during WW-II than any other US military aircraft type ever. The exact total was, according to Wikipedia, 19,256. That’s a hell of a lot of bombers.
But during times of relative peace? Cost-plus contracts provide zero incentive to reduce costs. In fact, it incentives exactly the opposite. Once the contract is won, the more hours you can charge the government, the bigger your revenue and profits. Similarly, delays to the schedule aren’t a problem for the contractor, as long as they don’t get so bad that the military tries to cancel the contract or Congress pulls funding.
A huge over-simplification.
Nobody enters into the kind of cost-plus you are describing – one that is essentially a blank check. Cost-plus agreements have any number of useful safeguards for both sides, including close observation, clearly stated goals, “not to exceed” cost figures, deep knowledge of an industry and the time required for a job, well-written specs- the list goes on and on. In fact most SF homes in this country are cost plus for many of those very good reasons.
For government, cost plus can be sensible in a host of situations, particularly when the cost of materials is either high, or unknown, or of variable source, or non-COTS, or other reasons. Cost plus can give the government (or anyone else) much more control over the bottom line.
Moreover in many situations separating labor and materials is hugely beneficial, allowing an entity to shop for the best price, paying a contractor only for his work, not a materials mark-up.
There are such thing as government programs which are so important that the responsible agency considers them “to big to fail.” JWST comes to mind. “Not to exceed” cost figures tend to disappear or be waived in those cases.
I take your point – but surely this is an extreme case. Or let’s hope so (thinking of Keith’s reporting on WFIRST).
The problem with the vast array of controls in a modern “cost plus” contract is that it takes an army of costly accountants to make sure they are followed. The only solution i can see is for the government to stop micromanaging, as was the intent of the Commercial Cargo and Crew programs.
Of course, the army of accountants is part of complying with a government requirements. So the contractor can legitimately include their salaries in the cost of the contract, and therefore increases the “plus” part of a cost-plus contract. I don’t think many contractors complain about that.
And yet NASA’s own cost estimations say that if NASA did commercial cargo in the traditional, cost plus, way with strict NASA oversight of the project it would have cost the US Government 10x what commercial cargo cost. I know “cost plus” is not all to blame, but quite a lot of it is the oversight NASA has on a typical project where they “own” the hardware. Reportedly 70% of the money being spent on SLS is being spent inside NASA, not by the contractors who are the ones actually bending metal.
I worked on a NASA cost plus contract that had ways for us to capture a chunk of any cost savings above a certain dollar value. The payout, IIRC, exceeded the profit margin on the contract.
I always believed that SpaceX had a contract with NASA for a service ( ” delivery of X tons of supplies ” ) , not a tangible product. What do I care if UPS delivers my Amazon shipment in a big brown truck or a Volkswagen minibus, so long as I get the goods by way of service ? When both Amazon and UPS are able to lower costs with efficiencies and volume scaling, should the customer expect comensurately lower prices ? Good luck with that. NASA should not apply a coefficient to the pricing of its service provider. That portion comes under the category of None Of Your Business.
Of course NASA has an obligation – on behalf of it’s employer the People – to protect the valuable cargo and get firm assurances on it’s handling while in the possession of the carrier. Maybe not fully to the extent of being reckoned as a Common Carrier providing an FOB transportation freight service, for the cargo runs anyway. The manned Dragons are another situation altogether. NASA can and should negotiate the terms of service , but not as based on pricing. Does NASA have hard price points with Russia, JAXA and ESA for resupply runs ? – I doubt it. Dunno for sure.
I note that Boeing and Lockheed do not have a similar commercial contract to deliver freight to ISS by way of their progeny ULA . The SpaceX contract business model does not fit the ULA military-industrial complex mindset even after allowing for the nuances of spaceflight and national security. Thankfully , SpaceX is forcing them to do market pricing instead of monopoly pricing these days. The taxpayer is getting a great deal from SpaceX , fair and squarely for the most part. Allowing them to reinvest their supply side cost savings should remain an incentive, not a caveat.
To Keith I would say he suggests fair questions and it’s OK to ask about these things… in the context of qualitatives , not quantitative$. Too bad NASA monkeywrenches the context.
Exactly. This is a service contract. As long as SpaceX meets the minimum NASA requirements, they can and should be able to fulfill the contract any way the please.
So I actually disagree that this is a fair question from Keith. When you purchase a product or service you do not get to have insight and ask for a cheaper price just because the supplier saved some costs. To suggest otherwise is to not understand market economics.
If someone wants to put price pressure on SpaceX, then a competitor needs to provide the same service at lower cost. Competition and all that.
Asking about the real cost to the supplier is part of market economics. Then they get to refuse to say, and people get to guess or estimate. If the profit margin seems excessive, it’s bad press and people may refuse to buy the product. Or, if they need it and there are no other suppliers, buy it anyway. That all falls under the heading of marketing and corporate image, and the buyers’ response is part of market economics.
… which is done when contracts (new ones) are negotiated. So for CRS-3 in this case. (should it happen)
But in the middle of an existing negotiated contract – asking for a cheaper price if the contractor lowered their costs – heck no.
To use the delivery analogue again, you don’t get to demand a cheaper shipping cost after the fact if you find out that UPS somehow used a cheaper (not brand new) truck to deliver it to you.
True, if the price of jet fuel and gasoline drops right after you pay to ship a package, you don’t get to ask for part of the “cost savings” back. You’re paying for a service at a price agreed upon when the contract is signed (or payment is made).
thank you for being reasonable and logical
Actually, if UPS finds a good way to reduce costs, they probably will pass some of it on to their customers. That’s how they attract business from FedEx and DHL. And if they didn’t pass on some of the savings, their competitors might adopt the same methods, pass on the savings, and take business from UPS. Similarly, the next time commercial resupply is up for rebids, SpaceX may need to pass on savings to remain competitive. CRS3 is about five years down the line, and who knows what the competition will be like. Would Blue Origin want in?
Concerning the cost of flying a “new” versus a “gently used” Dragon: I suspect that the first time will be dominated by learning how to do the recovery and refurbishment, figuring out what specialized tools or instruments might be needed, establishing processes and staffing requirements, etc. etc. Whatever the cost was for this first time refurbishing, it was almost certainly cheaper than the cost of the first new Dragon some years ago, and the mature cost of Dragon reuse will almost certainly be cheaper than the current cost of a new Dragon off the assembly line. And, of course, the probability of problems during launch or in flight must be very nearly the same in either case. At any event, IMO if the cost of capsule reuse is 50% or less than the cost of a new capsule, then the numbers probably work. If the cost is 25% or less, then it’s very exciting.
From a standing start to 17,500 MPH in about 10 minutes. Yep, ‘gently used’!
The real wear and tear is only about the first minute when the vehicle is in the atmosphere facing forces from the air, vibration and frictional heating. Once you get past the atmosphere, its not too much different from test firing in a controlled test stand on earth-in fact maybe more benign since there is no atmosphere pushing the hot exhaust gases back towards the engine.
Coming back in to land, the Falcon stages are basically a big sheet-metal tube; extremely lightweight. They are pretty easy to slow down quickly at altitude using minimal fuel. Their terminal velocity as they fall back through the atmosphere is pretty low, so the stages are probably undergoing a lot less force and strain that say the typical airplane.
Excellent point – watch the speed of Stage 1 on the SpaceX webcast as it falls to earth and gathers a hell of a lot of speed that is quickly shed when the fins come out and the rocket fires.
However there is aerodynamic heating during entry that depends a great deal on how hot the trajectory is. Some of the returned stages from launches to GEO have had considerable thermal damage.
This will be especially true for Dragon V2 when it starts landing propulsively on a concrete pad instead of being splashed in the ocean’s highly corrosive salt water after each flight.
There are lots of things in modern life that, once upon a time, seemed amazing, even magical; I give you the modern ‘cell phone’ as an instance.
But this? Landing a rocket back on earth after reaching near-orbital speed? A rocket??
This. Never. Gets. Old.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
No, it does not. It still amazes me. Just 4 years ago I was totally laughing at the whole idea of using fuel to return a rocket. “Wouldn’t parachutes be simpler??” Now it seems obvious and other companies and even other countries are hurrying up to copy it.
Is anyone even *close*??
Not really, it’s a race for 2nd place and this is only the beginning.
I have not read of anyone. India, ESA, have done some glider flights. DARPA has a glider 1st stage to be built by Boeing.
Blue Origin might be closest. They have the landing part down at least, if admittedly from much lower energy trajectories.
Blue has a complete design and plan for landing the Glenn using six legs and an offshore barge when needed. Blue has a bit more configuration control than SpaceX without the paperwork burden of the traditional NASA approach. The BE-4 is an impressive engine, a little more expensive than the Merlin but using staged combustion with a fairly simple single-shaft powerhead and lox/methane to achieve somewhat better Isp. While SX had to design the Falcon to be road-mobile, Blue is manufacturing the Glenn at KSC, allowing it to use a larger core that will carry the bigger Comsats without strapons. Also the seven-engine cluster on the Glenn just looks a little more esthetic than the Falcon’s octoweb. Of course SpaceX owns the market today and still has the Heavy ready to go and the Raptor under test. We live in interesting times.
Well, SpaceX wants to be Interplanetary. It’s in their blood and their name. Everything they do now is just a rung on that ladder. By the time New Glenn is flying to LEO and GTO, SpaceX will be Mars-bound and probably other solar system stuff and once they have revenue from that they might not care so much about Earth-orbit markets anymore.
Plus, what they are doing now grows the market…more possibly than they will be able to grow their capacity to supply. I think there’ll be room in their expanded envelope for more than just them and Blue Origin to grow.
In fact, it just occurred to me today that the price point that they’ve set seems to have stimulated growth in the CubeSat market that they don’t seem well positioned to fill. This has created a foothold niche for newcomers that might pinch someone someday. I read yesterday that the F9’s Lunar XPrize payload to the moon may have postponed to 2019…effectively dropping out of the competition. The remaining lifters are an India rocket and a new lifter that is being developed to lift CubeSats. Those launches happen this year.
“This. Never. Gets. Old.”
ULA is probably tired of watching it by now
I wonder if those ULA engineers wonder ..”why won’t they let us do that?”
According to the boss there’s no money to be saved. Go figure.
For ULA, and Atlas, and Delta, I’m pretty sure the boss isn’t lying. Are they working in secret to adjust to this new world? I hope so. Can they save money doing it with their current designs? Probably not…not when you compare any cost savings to the lost sale of a new rocket at those prices.
Because it can’t do that. If you could swap-ends on an Atlas at supersonic speeds without it folding in half, if you could relight the engine for a retro burn, if you could make the engine throttle back to a fraction of its output for the landing burn, if you could reliably reuse the engine for another launch, if you could add all these abilities to Atlas without having to recertify it (and without accidentally blowing one up…thereby destroying your perfect safety record and with it one of your last big selling points), then ya I’m sure they’d get to do that.
They are doing a clean sheet design to replace the atlas …
Cool. I hope it’ll be able to do all those things I just said…plus some other things to add value above the F9 and BO’s upcoming medium lifter. That is what they will need to compete in future markets.
The most obvious advantage to SpaceX right now, ti seems to me, is to bring forward the time when they can terminate the Dragon 1 production line, and focus on Dragon 2’s.
The “cost saving pass to NASA” question was asked during pre-launch press conference, I think the NASA guy basically dodged the question and didn’t answer any specifics, he did say the contract would allow negotiations regarding changes like reuse, and in principle NASA could get something back, although it sounds like that something is not necessarily money.
It’s too easy, particularly by arm-chair ‘experts’ who have no real experience with any sort of contracting and especially governmental contracting to summarize the process, seeing it in simplistic terms.
My own experience, both contracting my professional services and as a third-party manager, tells me that it’s neither simple, nor are the terms of the agreement always written. Lots of things affect a contract, including for instance the current work load, the desire to establish a relationship, and, yes, unforeseens.
Interesting discussion, I was originally just going to post that since no one is mentioning the dollars cost, perhaps the reused Dragon saves significantly and they didn’t want anyone to know about it. However, since the contract is service based, then it doesn’t matter as much. SpaceX is under no obligation to pass cost savings along, but will probably factor into reducing cost on next round of negotiations.
Would also be interesting to see discussion on whether a reused spacecraft needs more or less inspections. If it goes up and down at least once safely, how rigorous do subsequent inspections need to be. As an example, the rule for an aircraft in commercial service was an inspection every 100 hours of use, maybe something similar should be developed for spacecraft as well. Perhaps different levels for manned/unmanned craft.
For astronauts accustomed to every piece of space hardware arriving shiney-new: I wonder what they will make of a scuffed up Dragon! And after a few uses, I’m seeing them fussing with fittings or hatches or whatever that are just the tiny bit out of spec, pushing and shoving them to make them seal…
“Where did I put that damn hammer!”
The Shuttles weren’t shiny new, and certainly the ISS isn’t.
Yea. Duh. I was thinking (or not thinking, more like it) of Cygnus et. al. Good point.