SpaceX Just Declared SLS To Be Irrelevant
One thing to notice about the @ElonMusk #IAC2017 presentation – no mention of @NASA_SLS. #irrelevant
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 29, 2017
Its the future everyone #IAC2017 pic.twitter.com/gBg8TYcS1i
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 29, 2017
And of course @ElonMusk wants to carry more cargo to the ISS #IAC2017 pic.twitter.com/wrAEoSMWWI
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 29, 2017
Comparing #BFR and Saturn V #IAC2017 pic.twitter.com/BvG2JV2Vt9
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 29, 2017
Live webcast from #IAC2017 with @ElonMusk describing his plans for the Moon and Mars https://t.co/0wxLf7iyGS starts at 12:30 am EDT pic.twitter.com/MFfZUjpBRY
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) September 29, 2017
That’s because it is. Musk is correct – large, fully reusable rockets are the way to go. Falcon 9, Falcon 9 Heavy, New Glenn, and BFR – that’s the future (at least until something even cooler like hypersonic aero spaceplanes become real). Who wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for a launch vehicle that only flies once every two years (at best) and then is thrown away after each flight, and can’t even lift as much as BFR??
NASA has a choice – either go back to the drawing board and design something better and more cost-effective than SLS, and eat some humble pie whilst they are getting busy – or accept being left behind in the dust, and being a passive onlooker to the new golden age of space exploration.
For years I’ve seen SLS as nothing more than a side payment to keep the old guard from suffocating SpaceX in its crib with a potential flight number between 0 and 2.
I’m not sure what NASA would need to design at all. Space X has proven so effective in terms of dollars and schedules that the best hope is to pin the US to progress on the BFR. Maybe NASA can serve to assist in some manner-not sure what since Musk seems to be leading. Maybe the government can invest in the BFR like the USAF did with the Boeing 707/C-135?
NASA get off rocket design and start making payloads for surface operations.
As soon as FH flies, I think the timing of the final demise of SLS will be easier to predict. Right now, it can be ignored because FH and SLS are both still just paper rockets.
Light a fire under some actual hardware and that’s when things get real.
SLS will probably fly at least once, and maybe twice, but if Musk hits anywhere near the timeline in this presentation then SLS will find itself competing not with a smaller FH but with BFR.
Way too much smoke and mirrors, basically just another pipe dream with lots of cartoon graphics and lame applause for having accomplished nothing they are actually clapping for except in said cartoons. Sorry fan boys but I will believe this when I see it and I’m not holding my breath.
Yea, well, a few years ago people were still saying that reusing Falcon 9 first stages was a pipe dream. Today it’s reality.
They even said Falcon 9 expendable was unreliable… Naysayers are cheaper than CH4/LOX. 😛
Tell me again, how many successful flights has the Falcon Heavy accomplished…
It is being shipped to Cape Canaveral for launch preparations.
And the launch date is…
The rocket exists. It is being shipped cross country as I type this. They transporter/launch erector needs to be updated before they can roll it out to the pad for testing and launch. Even if they blow up a bunch of them they will still launch before SLS ever does. You are just going to never believe anything that SpaceX does even after they do it, are you?
Yeah. I told Wilbur and I told Orville and I told Glenn Curtis and I’m telling you…that thing will never get off the ground! And even if it does, it won’t fly as far as the wingspan of a 747! Now, you were saying?
I could also rattle off a zillion pipe dreams that never ever happened, and your point is?
The rocket exists. It is built out of parts of rockets that have already flown. It is not a pipe dream. It is three huge shrink-wrapped trailers being hauled across the U.S.
Sorry but that really sounds much more like NASA you’re talking about than SpaceX.
That cost and capability one does not look quite right. On the A5 is he presuming a dual launch? Cause that thing can punch quite a bit more than an F9 to LEO all up, over 20 tons against the F9’s 13 tons…..
That was the previous iteration of the Falcon 9. Current version (ver 1.2) is 22800 kg to LEO with further slight performance improvement with the next and final iteration.
The only advantage the Ariane 5 ECA have is mass to GTO. About 10.5 tonnes compare to 8.3 tonnes for the Falcon 9. However one Ariane 5 ECA flight is about triple the cost of one Falcon 9 flight.
The Falcon 9 got a 30% performance reduction in the reuseable mode. But get to refly the vehicle again.
Sometimes, all technological progress requires is someone insane enough to think the unthinkable, say “Why not…?” and shrug all aside the shrieking cries of “Can’t! Mustn’t! Shouldn’t! Won’t!”
Yup, and that last five minutes showing Earth to Earth hops must have caused a few WTF moments within the aircraft Industry, and whiplashed necks in the DoD.
Going to be some interesting conversations between LinkSpace (the Chinese reusable rocketry startup), China Airlines, and the Chinese Ministry of Transport…
Indeed. My old boss used to say (and now so do i) that there’s not greater joy in this world than doing what others said couldn’t be done.
Well, that and a couple billion dollars.
Considering we’re throwing something like 3.5 billion dollars *each year* at SLS/Orion, a couple billion to develop BFR is an absolute bargain!
When SpaceX said “Why not…?” on re-usability they already had a solid vehicle that could out price the market even if expendable and had a way to test and develop thier crazy plan as they worked. It was an elegant example of incremental development. BFR is nothing like that its just the same pitfall nasa has repeatedly fallen in where they say “If we make the bright future the only option maybe they’ll cave and give us more funding?”
Unless they have enough money to make it work. They’re not waiting for someone else to give them money.
With Jeff Bezos building up steam out there, SpaceX can’t afford to stand still.
Though, not without $$$$$$…
SpaceX has three current sources of cash. Firstly the money they make on launch services, commercial cargo, and commercial crew goes right back into development. Second, SpaceX does have some outside investors even though the company isn’t public. Third, SpaceX got some cash from USAF to help develop Raptor (I believe both Aerojet Rocketdyne and Orbital ATK also got funding as well for “new propulsion” work).
In the future, Musk’s LEO communications constellation could be yet another source of cash. Again, any money made on this venture will be funneled right back into development.
And yes, the government could be a third source of direct funding if Congress ever sours on SLS and NASA decides that “commercial HLV” ought to be a thing (it should).
Indeed. GB Shaw once observed that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man seeks to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men.
A hard truth, that; at least for committee-thinkers. We took it as our homepage motto, btw. lakematthew.com
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Stop spamming sites with your thing.
If you want Keith to publicise your proposal, contact him directly with a press release and he might write an article.
Isn’t linking part of the whole internet thing?
Unfortunately, spam is also part of the whole internet thing.
I’ve seen the guy, WStewart?, elsewhere. He has a history of hijacking completely unrelated threads to promote his thing.
Point taken. Full disclosure, though: I do tend to go on and on sometimes.
I attended Elon Musk’s presentation this afternoon at the IAC 2017. Very interesting indeed…! One particular point: It was very interesting that while Elon did not mention Blue Origin, or
ULA or any other launcher, he did speak of putting all of HIS OWN other
launchers out of the marketplace and focusing only on BFR. I read this
as a clear, albeit implied swipe at every other launcher, actual or planned.
I read this as a clear message that fully reusable launch vehicles will be so much cheaper than partially reusables that there is zero point in flying them anymore. Well that and it makes sense to fly *one* vehicle instead of several products that do much the same thing.
If this hurts the feelings of the competition who are still flying completely expendable vehicles, so be it.
That was absolutely the message. I think the big question is: are there enough NEW markets to justify to new reusable carriers (SpaceX and Blue Origin)?
long distance haulers versus short range… moon versus mars… Musk didn’t put a city image on luna .. only mars.
The important thing here is that Musk is going “all in” on the plan. No half-measures.
This is both frightening and exciting.
Agreed, one of the problems faced by Falcon Heavy and a big cause of its delays is the fact it is essentially a “side project” to Falcon 9, I think Musk has realized that if he wants to have any chance of meeting his Mars deadlines the ITS has to be the number one priority and by making it essentially the successor to the F9 he can do just that.
FH is the victim of what I call the Seems Like Problem. For instance, Mr. Musk may have thought: as F9 became operational, seems like adding a couple of boosters to the side is mostly simple.
Right.
At this point, Falcon Heavy’s real importance to SpaceX’s future isn’t for itself so much as what can be learned from the operation of such a complicated launcher with so many engines, etc.
Well, both the BFR and Falcon Heavy are paper rockets too, just like SLS. The race is on!
Falcon Heavy isn’t paper anymore. It’s pretty much completely built. It just hasn’t flown yet. If we’re lucky, we’ll see it fly late this year or early next.
The Falcon Heavy is waiting for the transport erector launcher to be upgraded. The rest of the hardware is ready.
Good. It make take SpaceX longer than predicted, but the jump from expendables to fully reusable launch vehicles will completely change the economics of manned space travel. LOX and methane are extremely cheap. A launch vehicle that can be recovered, re-stacked, fueled, and launched again has long been the “holy grail” of launch vehicles.
On top of that, the fact that SpaceX wants the BFR upper stage to be capable of being manned and able to land on the moon and Mars is going to be revolutionary, if they can pull it off.
And if they fail miserably, there’s always Blue Origin. Competition in the reusable launch vehicle market will be a good thing.
Can anyone here quote the prices of these two propellants? Assuming FOB rocket pad at the Cape, and neglecting the capital costs of on-site storage, piping, etc.
Just the delivered cost of the two propellants for BFR: LOX, 860 tons; CH4, 240 tons.
How big is the check?
That’s hard to say, especially for methane. Natural gas is over 90% methane, but a few percent of other hydrocarbons would be a problem for using it in a rocket. Not that you couldn’t, but it would cause problems for performance and maintenance. They almost certainly have requirements for purity. That drives up cost, so the cost is hard to estimate without knowing their standards. But common gases like oxygen and methane, for use in a physics lab, should be of order $1 per kilo. Call it a million dollar for the amount you mentioned, times whatever extra it costs for their required purity.
A bigger concern, I think, is sulfur impurities, which might corrode the engine even at ppm levels. I think SpaceX may gold plate the coolant channels in the engine to avoid such problems.
True. In the long run it might be cheaper to build the engines to tolerate commercial LNG than to have to keep paying for “rocket grade” LNG.
Does anyone know if SpaceX uses “rocket grade” kerosene for Merlin (e.g. RP-1)?
Separating the small amounts of heavier hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, butane and pentane is trivial. You get a tank, put LNG in it, cool it a little and the nitrogen rises up, while the heavier stuff sinks down. You tap the tank around the middle, and extract pure methane.
I didn’t say it was hard to do. But LNG costs about 10 cents per kilo (or liter; I just looked that up.) That’s so low that the process you described probably adds significantly to the cost.
Which sort of makes the whole issue pointless. While civil aviation has gotten to the point where fuel is a large part of the cost, that took decades of work and experience. I don’t think rockets are there yet. Storage and handling of the fuel and oxidizer is probably significant. All the other things associated with turning around a Falcon 9 probably cost much more than fuel and oxidizer. Of course, SpaceX doesn’t release cost and budget details, so we don’t know for certain, but that’s how I’d bet.
Storage should be the least of their problems. There are several large natural gas terminals going in on the Brownsville shipping channel which is only about 5 miles away from their Boca Chica site. Moreover, a big pipeline from those terminals is set to be run to Mexico very close Boca Chica.
A new natural gas infrastructure for KSC is also something we should keep our eyes open for since Blue Origin will be using it for New,Glenn and New Armstrong, and if BE-4 is selected as its engine ULA will need methane for Vulcan.
Let me try again… Natural gas is, relatively speaking incredibly cheap. So cheap that even very simple, straightforward things like distilling to sufficiently pure methane, or even maintenance on a five-mile long pipeline could significantly contribute to the cost. The end result would still be very cheap, just not incredibly cheap.
In the same way, if you wanted liquid hydrogen and oxygen, it would be very easy to electrolysize water and liquify the results. It wouldn’t even be all that expensive. But the end products would cost more per kilo than the water you took out of the tap, and you couldn’t base your fuel/oxidizer costs on your water bill.
fcrary: natural gas already is cryogenically separated. That’s how they get ethane out of it, for use as a petrochemical feedstock (it’s the primary feedstock for making ethylene).
The methane that goes into a rocket does not have to be pure CH4. It can have other light hydrocarbons mixed in. If a standard composition is needed, then the raw LNG feedstock can be distilled to below those limits, and then the higher hydrocarbons can be mixed back in to bring it up to spec.
It’s also possible that larger quantities of higher hydrocarbons would be useful, since they can act as freezing point depressants. One particular ternary eutectic of light hydrocarbons has a freezing point of just 67K (vs. 90.7K for pure methane).
I stand corrected. When I looked up the composition of natural gas, the references said about 90% methane, and the rest as higher hydrocarbons. In any case, my real point was that you can’t simply take the stuff out of an ordinary pipeline, and pump it into the rocket without some additional processing. And, given the cost of natural gas, that additional processing is a significant part of the fuel budget.
Last I heard, electrolysis to produce LOX and LH2 is still more expensive than producing LOX from air and LH2 from petroleum products. That was a while ago, so my guess is that today this is doubly true since natural gas is so cheap these days.
People in the aerospace industry have been throwing around figures like $0.20/kg for higher grades of methane in the quantities SpaceX will need. So purification apparently doubles the raw cost. Still trivial compared to everything else, of course. (Even LOx is closer to $1/kg, IIRC.)
However, fuel makes up a much small proportion of the dry-vehicle mass in aviation compared to rocketry.
So if fuel costs 15% of airline costs, and the fuel is just half the dry-mass of the aircraft; for a launcher with the same non-fuel running costs, the fuel costs would be over 75% of total operating costs.
(Ie, for each $1m in non-fuel running costs, the fuel cost will be 19 times higher in a rocket. That’s if they used the same fuel, obviously, Jet-A is dearer than methalox.)
Hence, even if the ops cost of a rocket is higher per-passenger than an airline, the fuel cost could still be more than 15% of the overall running cost.
| (Even LOx is closer to $1/kg, IIRC.)
It’s much cheaper than that, although the price does depend on purity.
That’s not how it works, at all. You would get negligible separation of the gases in that situation.
I’m also kind of amused you think nitrogen (MW 28) is lighter than methane (MW 16).
He’s assuming liquid methane and gaseous nitrogen.
If so, liquid methane dissolves considerable nitrogen (5 mol% or more at 1 atmosphere, depending on the temperature), so it won’ t be “pure methane”. And how does the heavier stuff fall out of the liquid methane? Ethane/propane dissolve nicely in cryogenic methane too.
It’s kind of amusing (at least to me) that the physics here is also central to understanding the lakes and rivers of Titan. Methane/ethane mixtures under a nitrogen atmosphere.
Converting at the rate of 1 metric ton about equal to one KG, the total cost of fuel would be around $1.1M.
Thanks.
LH2, propellant grade, delivered to LC-39 for Shuttle was 98 cents a gallon. LOX was 60 cents. RP-1 is about $5/gallon. The cost of liquid propellants (other than hypergols) has never been more than a few percent of the launch cost. As a comparison, the cost of the small amount of helium needed for a shuttle launch was greater than the total cost of the hydrogen or oxygen propellants, and I would not be surprised if this is true for the Falcon.
Here in Europe there is a bit of a move on for the CH4 in a few circles. Could be the usual me too stuff our betters get up to after they have been wowed by our transatlantic brethren. Can’t beat the show biz really. Although our lack of LOX/HC engines is a bit of a tender spot. Anyway was at recent conference when one of the launcher honchos from Aerojet Rocketdyne got up for a keynote and rained gloriously on the CH4 idea. True he may be grinding a particular axe on that one but his logic was impeccable and along the lines you mooted with one crucial addition. All the western launch sites have H2 handling capabilities already…. You would have to stand them up for CH4. If you view propulsion as glorified plumbing then not a big deal, right? Not much NRE there eh?
The costs of a propellant to launch from earth are ~0.2-0.6M and methane engines perform much better in terms of costs from gravity wells, whereas a launch is in the 100M range, or with lower stage reuse in the $20M range.
In space, ISP and deltaV required drive the economics absent of gravity. Consider that for a Mars like DRM 5 mission, methane based engines would require ~ 25% more propellant by mass than LH2, which is ~2 additional FH or ~4 additional F9 launches. Boiloff must be considered, but also the penalties of ISRU on gravity wells or not, especially propulsive landing penalties with Mars atmosphere. All the resources arrived from asteroids–water with minimal gravity. The trade results are interesting.
Actually, the holy grail of launch vehicles are known as CRRATS..we may still have a long way to go before CRRATS becomes a reality.
I’ll bite. What’s “CRRATS”? I’ve only ever heard of CATS (cheap access to space).
C – Cheap(it ain’t cheap, yet)
R – Reliable(it ain’t reliable, yet)
R – Reusable(it ain’t fully reusable, yet)
Access
To
Space
This is the iterated design cycle people were talking about way back on the sci.space Usenet days. The move to the single vehicle will be great for iterating on reliability in addition to focusing resources.
And I love the approach to in-orbit refueling–just add a tiny amount of thrust and let the liquid flow. How much weight do they save just in not having a pumping system for that?
Edit: Another interesting thing I noticed was that the nominal telescope launch didn’t have a second boost stage connected to it. Which I guess makes sense–you either launch BFR into the target orbit directly or refuel it to get to the target orbit. Then the sat can use on orbit control to leave the vehicle. Think how many missions are lost due to boost stage problems! Also, you could even have BFR linger for a few days while the satellite runs its startup procedures and if something goes wrong it could be collected for return to Earth for repair.
The thrust is to settle the propellants so that there is a clean separation between the more dense liquid fuel and the ullage gas. But you’re absolutely right, you should not need pumps to move the propellant. Moving the propellants can be accomplished by venting ullage gas in the tanks being filled to lower the pressure in those tanks. The higher pressure in the fuel delivery vehicle’s tanks will then force the liquid LOX and liquid methane into the tanks being filled. You might need a heat source in the delivery vehicle to maintain the pressure of the ullage gas in its tanks.
“ullage”= it is difficult to use that word in a sentence and maintain a straight face 🙂
True, but it is the technical term for the gaseous portion of what’s in a launch vehicle’s propellant tanks. The first definition for ullage that I found online is “the amount by which a container falls short of being full”.
Yeah, learned the hard way about ullage when I played Kerbal Space Program with the Real Fuels mod.
I wonder what the passenger g loading would be like, during take-off and landing ? What sort of passenger training ??
I wonder what they need to show to man-rate the landing of a rocket ?
Is BFR replacing the “Mars in 20xx” plans ?
You guys are very critical of SLS as a rocket without a mission. Is BFR “just” a bigger SLS ? (ok, a bigger and reusable SLS) Can it really be seen as an E2E transport ?? What’s the market ? What’s the cost ?? Do you need something this big (bigger than SLS) to build a lunar colony ? Being reusable, wouldn’t you think that something smaller, like FH or SLS, be sufficient ?
I’m not drinking this kool-aid. I’d rather wait for the Space Elevator.
BFR has no solids, so the ride will be far smoother and safer (you can’t safely shut down an SRB once it starts firing).
The biggest difference between BFR and SLS is that one is completely reusable and the other is completely expendable. Care to take a guess which one will be cheaper to fly at a high flight rate? Here’s a hint, one of them will be limited to at most two flights per year due to manufacturing and processing limitations.
SLS/Orion program will cost about $50-60 billion over it’s first 20 years from 2010, for around 4-5 flights. So more than $10b per flight for the first handful of flights. Hopefully the cost will drop a little after that, but it’s always going to be ridiculous.
BFR, even if it’s more expensive than Musk expects, will launch more payload for around $100m per flight, all up.
One percent the cost.
That’s the criticism.
ok, i’ll itemise my questions …
1) what will it take to man-rate a landing rocket ?
2) what will the take-off and landing loads be ? Pax will not have training or much in the way of strength or fitness.
3) what is the mission for BFR ? E2E transport ?? really ??? Assuming it is practical, who many pax ? (airlines are shying away from the A380 as too big/expensive)
4) and shouldn’t it be FBR ?
Still waiting on Falcon Heavy. I’d be a lot more confident in Musk’s next big rocket if his . . . next big rocket before that one wasn’t almost five years overdue on its test flight.
When you are advancing technology in any field, it can take more time than originally envisioned. I seem to recall we were supposed to have people on Mars by 1983! The days when aircraft designers could come up with a viable design for a DC-1 or a P-51 in a few weeks are long gone! NASA just slipped the James Webb Space Telescope to 2019 just to verify integration and testing. To quote NACA/NASA pioneer Walt Williams, “You don’t get medals for on-time failures!” We haven’t seen a man land on the Moon since 1972! If Musk doesn’t do it, Bezos or someone else will do it!
Illustration that shows the same type of aerodynamic shaped spaceship on Pad 39, docked to ISS, and sitting on surface of Mars looks so 1950s like Chesley Bonestell paintings from the day. Nice paintings but those don’t take into account the Rocket Equation. Yes, Musk demonstrated reusable rockets (with a big boost of govt money) but this Mars fantasy is a huge distraction.
Gee, I bet they forgot the about the rocket equation! But seriously, you’re overlooking the fact that in space refueling is part of the plan. The trip to Mars requires no less than four tanker flights to low earth orbit to refuel the spacecraft. Think of it like an extra stage.
Also, in orbit refueling is far less technically challenging and far less expensive than “exotic” propulsion concepts like VASMIR, nuclear thermal, and etc.
I guess I missed that detail of tanker flights, but so many pictures of the same type of vehicle on earth, moon, and mars… each of those bodies have different gravity wells and seems to me different vehicles. What is needed is a plan that is not so much subject to interpretation by the same 20 or 30 people that post here, and what a lively discussion! (but these illustrations are from a private company and the good stuff is proprietary).
Speaking of vintage artwork, there was the big three stage launcher from 1950s Colliers magazine (those huge wings sure is a lot of mass). Later the Dynasoar, NASP, X33… I guess all would work but only needed more money.
Each time I watched Mr. Musk, I quickly ignore his hobbled speech, recognizing that I am watching a guy who can both dream and make things happen. I am reminded of the smoothness of Mr. Jobs’ presentations. But Mr. Jobs has nothing on Mr. Musk.
Mr. Musk is, like Mr. Jobs, driven by a single (if different idea): get to Mars. Period.
And each time there’s a new concept or approach to an old idea I find myself thinking “duh!”
As I watched Mr. Musk’s charming, stumbling speech the second time, I noted what I observe to be either new ideas, or a new approach, or most significantly a new way of thinking:
• Build a single system
• reuse every single part
• Refuel on orbit
• Use CH4 (making Mars a gas station)
• Fund with existing cash flow
• Send 9 meter-wide instruments to orbit (!)
• Luna and back without in situ fuel production.
• Luna: “We should have a lunar base by now. What the hell is going on?”
• A single stage from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth!
• Anywhere on Earth < 30 minutes.
• (And I missed a few, surely).
SLS not even included, as Keith points out, in his image comparing payloads and costs.
Looking at those charts, I thought of those misled scientists, and engineers, support staff, families, and all of the folks engaged industriously by NASA on SLS, all of who are experiencing a sinking feeling; of a career, perhaps, mis-spent. I think of them whenever singing the praises of SX.
And then I look at my face, piteously, in the mirror, realizing that at age 67 this marvelous future will fully bloom in my dotage, and beyond.
The future is bright.
A few years ago I’d given up hope. But maybe Mr. Musk can bring us the future.
Musk did borrow the “one more thing” technique.
“Looking at those charts, I thought of those misled scientists, and engineers, support staff, families, and all of the folks engaged industriously by NASA on SLS, all of who are experiencing a sinking feeling; of a career, perhaps, mis-spent.”
I doubt that’s their reaction. More like: good luck, I’ll believe it when I see it.
That said, Musk is obviously throwing up a challenge that has to be taken seriously. A modern day space race if you will. Or at least he’s trying to convince those with the purse strings,that their money is better spent on SpaceX than NASA.
Competition is good. It’ll be an interesting show at least. I hope Musk is successful… and NASA too.
Agree 100%.
I do not see a hidden request for NASA funding in this presentation. He wants to tell folks how he’s going, when he’s going, why he’s going, and THAT he’s going and that he’s not giving any excuses not to. This was an appeal to professionals, entrepreneurs, innovators, and industry itself to hop on board.
I don’t think he’ll hit those specific launch windows, of course, but it won’t surprise me if he does. At a time when SLS just keeps getting kicked further down the calendar, Musk doubles down on his advertised timeline and continues to appeal to interests in industry. This presentation says, “We will beat NASA to Mars…who wants to beat them with us?”
They’ll need NASA’s partnership, but not their money, to hit that timeline. NASA money would only make it easier.
I think AIC has been basically the communication of a vision aimed to create consensous around SpaceX as a technological company more capable than NASA and its suppliers more than a project schedule or a business plan. Musk can’t do anything without a very important money return soon or late. Here the business deal is the need of NASA to find feasable solutions to place 10-20 tons on Mars surface. NASA’s and politics’ objective is to make science and to find for life or traces of ancient life on Mars. Which means to decline in so many sub-objectives from understanding Mars evolution to find the way to reach particulary sites and dig there and analyze rocks. At a certain moment they will need to bring 20 tons at once on that surface if they want to put a man there. And they do not know how to do really. This was one of the key technologies they had to develop and they have not yet done. Hypersonic paracutes were failt. Hypersonic assisted landing has never been developped by NASA’s suppliers. Every time that some one talks about criogenic fuel supply on orbit, it doesn’t follow any projects. Musk is telling “Hey, I can do that because I shall need it to colonize Mars! I already have new engines, light criogenic tanks, reusable concept thats work, hypersonic technics, so I am going to develop on orbit suppling and an economic system to carry stuff to Mars and back. Do you finance me, so you reach your targets? And people will support SpaceX because it makes their dreams one day reachable by his shared vision…
Great vision, and I hope he can achieve it – however, many of the new ideas/approaches are not new at all. Most of what is planned can trace its genesis back to Phillip Bono’s work on giant SSTOs in the 60s.
Keep in mind that Mr. Musk is a foreigner trying to speak in the American dialect. This accounts for his “hobbled speech.” So, let’s cut him some slack.
The title of this article ought to be SpaceX just declared ITSELF to be irrelevant.
The company that is years late in developing something as “simple” as a tri-core Falcon 9 Heavy and which has had a number of catastrophic failures (and only a 93% success rate compared to Atlas V and Delta IV’s 100%) is now going all out to develop a huge rocket that will be totally reusable and applicable to going to Mars or Shanghai – yeah, right! Does he offer any quantitative analysis to support his idea – how much will this cost to develop? (the far simpler Saturn V cost about $40B in todays dollars), what is the economics of its reuse, how much propellants will it need and how much per passenger and of course, how does its reliability stack up to commercial jetliners where the risk of losing your multi-millionaire life on any given flight is 10 to minus ninth! Is it worth dying to get there hours earlier and in the middle of the night? Even if is eventually possible to be comparably safe, how many decades will it take to get there? And how does he keep SpaceX going when his new rocket will take years to prove its reliability for NASA and Air Force missions?
Musk is seriously losing his credibility egged on by his fans and the increasing celebrity afforded to him by venues such as the IAC.
Heavy was postponed mostly due to other more pressing issues. But yes, even Musk admitted it was harder than anticipated. For example, separation of boosters at supersonic speeds is decidedly non-trivial (e.g. D-21 “recontact” with the mothership).
That “point to point transport” thing was surely thrown in there to entice the US Air Force. If you look closely at space history, this is something they’ve been studying since the 1960s, so this isn’t an original idea. If SpaceX could get them to “bite”, that could be a huge source of development money.
Yes there were several huge troop transporter concepts on aerospike engines that Lockheed-Martin (separately) tried to peddle to the armed forces through the mid-70s. Nowadays it’s all drones, move targeting cross-hairs not people. Boots on the ground just fill body bags.
When the US Army is fighting in an urban warfare environment (e.g. driving ISIS out of a town/city) there does not currently seem to be a substitute for “boots on the ground”. We’re not quite to the level of technology seen in the movie “Chappie” for on the ground urban fighting.
We need a new way to measure financial expenditures in the space industry.
For instance, SX spent around $1B and 5 years, starting from scratch, producing an expendable booster and a new engine, as well as building an integrated factory. And a capsule.
On the other hand, SLS has consumed more than ten years to date. By 2025, about 15 years into the project, costs will be about $40 Billion (this includes 4 launches). No new engines were developed.
This is what I mean about how these things are measured. Surely a SLS dollar and a SX dollar are entirely different things?
A dollar is a dollar but SpaceX didnt build everything from scratch like the Saturn team – the Merlin pintle lox kerosene design concept was around since the 1960s when it was developed for the lunar module and the same is true for other systems and components; Saturn was truly bootstrapped; yes, BFR would be cheaper for that reason as well but not much – moving gigantic vehicles is costly with all kinds of safety challenges for the ground crew. SpaceX also saved money by funding it commercially and not having the funding back and fort, delays and under funding that SLS has had to deal with. Still, in the end, it’s not gonna cost $2B; this will be a lot more money and unless he sells Tesla stock like Bezos does with Amazon, he’s going to have investors who want money back. No way does this fly to Mars in five years and start taking passengers to China – that’s absurd.
I always love these “SpaceX didn’t invent [anything]” snipes. It only condemns the existing players yet more.
Everything that SpaceX did was available to every other player on the market. Moreso, the Primes had vastly higher revenues to fund this development. All your criticism of SpaceX does is show how pathetic all the Primes have been over the last 40 years.
Well, actually, if you do just a tiny bit of research, you’ll find that Lockheed Martin and Boeing collectively invested over $4B in developing the Atlas V and Delta IV on top of the $1B they got from the Air Force for EELV. And LM just announced they are building a brand new $350M satellite factory. Plenty of big dollar investment; my point is not to denigrate SpaceX though – they’ve done a lot, especially on reusability, and they’ve been smart in buying old facilities and reusing them. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t benefit from a lot of work NASA and others did before. And Saturn DID start from scratch – there wasn’t anything like it before!
They received millions in research and study grants prior to 1994 and they also received over 100 mil each in additonal funding after the intial award of 500 million and more awards for other infrastructure .. if you read global securities website on the eelv programs you will find better total numbers..
https://www.globalsecurity….
All well and good – but these don’t come close to outweighing the more than $4B invested; the idea that only SpaceX invests in launch and the older primes haven’t is nonsense.
Can you provide a source link for the 2 billion they each invested .. I can not find numbers that large.
I’m sorry to say I have not yet found a single summary – though I worked on EELV at the time and I clearly recall the Boeing investment at about $3B and LM at about $1.9B (they spent less on development since they kept using the existing Atlas production line, did not build a Heavy and used the RD-180).
Public data that I haven’t found yet would include an early 2000’s EELV report by the USAF that said EELV had reduced launch costs for the government by 25% (compared to the old Atlas, Delta and Titan IV architecture) and also write offs of investments by both companies leading into the creation of ULA in 2006.
Agreed. The tech that SpaceX used to build Merlin was available to everyone else in the industry. But ULA is still waiting for a “suitable” engine to be developed for Vulcan so that it can stop buying Russian engines for its Atlas V first stages.
Falcon 9 is proof positive that “suitable” engines could have been developed in the US at any time (arguably starting with the founding of SpaceX). ULA just didn’t want to pay for that development on their own dime. Neither did Aerojet-Rocketdyne. Neither did Orbital ATK (who also bought existing Russian engines for Antares).
SpaceX spent less for their whole program than the money NASA burned in the parking lot on Ares I and the utterly pointless Ares I-X launch.
When I was 10 I watched an astronaut step onto the surface of the moon. Soon I will be 60. I don’t care who gets us back out there. I’ll cheer on Musk, I’ll cheer on Bezos, I’d even cheer on Trump. I don’t care anymore who gets us back to the Moon and then onto Mars. Just get it done!
Before I die I want to see us back out there where we belong. To quote Daniel Burnham “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram
once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone be a living
thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our
sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let
your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”(Moore D..(1921). Daniel H. Burnham, Architect, Planner of cities. Vol. 2, p. 147. Houghton Mifflin Co.. Boston & NYC.)
Increasingly I find it actually hurts to see a dream that I saw blossom as a child be left undernourished in my approaching seniority. So go SpaceX, go! Onward Blue Origins, onward! Up and at them SLS! Get moving dang it, “Sic Itur Ad Astra!”(Virgil.(19BC). Aeneid, boox ix, line 641)
Mr. Musk is visionary leadership with a brain. Sharp contrast to what we’ve been watching. I guess the race is on: good ole American innovation and capitalism versus the Military-industrial-NASA complex predicted by Eisenhower.
Nice idea – I seem to remember some Reagan-era plans for a hyper-velocity suborbital passenger vehicle. But then I also see a rocket taking off in remarkable proximity to a city and I remember all the issues just trying to fly Concorde. I wouldn’t want a rocket that size anywhere near my home.
I agree this only makes sence if landing a long way from civilization, however for most long haul cases you have a lot of time to play with, after a 30 min to 1 hour flight you could take off and land 50 to 100 miles or more offshore and with a fast ferry service to and from shore still beat airline times hands down.
I’ve been wondering about that, and I don’t think this is correct. What really matters to passengers isn’t the the time in the air. It’s the time going from your home to your hotel. Even for really long distances, I don’t think a suborbital hop is the way to go.
We are talking about takeoff and landing from an offshore platform. I don’t know what sort of fast ferry service you’re thinking of (helicopter?) but if it’s 50 or a 100 miles, you’re talking about an hour, even so. More if it’s a boat. Plus something like a half hour to get the passengers off the ferry and onto the rocket (and move checked luggage…) That’s an extra hour and a half at each end. So it’s three and a half hours, not half an hour. That’s not bad, and certainly better than current aircraft. I think 14 hours is about as long as flights get.
Except for the shore part. If you think about it, a large number of cities aren’t on the coast. I suppose Lake Michigan is large enough to service Chicago. But what would a Denver to Berlin trip by SpaceX rocket involve? A subsonic flight to the nearest costal city (two to two and a half hours plus layover to San Francisco), and then I guess it would be another subsonic connection from Hamburg to Berlin. I think that’s more like an hour and a half plus layover. Except for certain routes, connections would add three or four hours to the trip. In that case, we may be comparing seven hours to 14 hours.
In a way, this is the same thing that made the Concorde uneconomical. Due to noise (sonic boom) restrictions, it could only fly supersonic over water. That limited the routes, required connections for most passengers, and really spoiled the market. That sonic boom problem is something people are actively trying to solve, and assuming they can, that could turn a 14 hour, direct flight between major cities to something like six hours. That’s in the range of the travel time for a trip on the suborbital, when you include connections and getting out to the offshore platform. Somehow, the commercial supersonic sounds easier to me.
Or take a Hyperloop from somewhere in the land-locked boondocks. Mr. Musk likes to “reuse” systems.
Having witnessed more than one S5 launches, I wouldn’t, either.
Let’s put this in perspective. In the local news, we have some complaints about noise from aircraft flying over south Boulder. That’s the Denver to San Francisco route, and the aircraft pass over Boulder just before the flight attendants announce that you can turn on your laptops (which is 10,000 feet altitude.) Therefore, some non-trivial number of people _will_ complain about noise from a subsonic aircraft a hair under 10,000 feel overhead.
I’m not old enough to have witnessed a Saturn V launch, but I have been to a couple Delta or Atlas launches. From a couple miles away, that’s much, much louder than an aircraft at 10,000 feet.
One of the problems with Concorde (or anything similar) is overflight. It is noisy along its entire route, not just take-off and landing. That limited it to coast-to-coast trans-ocean routes. Since it didn’t have much range, that pretty much limited it to the Atlantic.
You couldn’t even fly US east-coast/west-coast routes (which would have been a gold-mine) because you couldn’t fly over the US.
OTOH, BFR would take off from (and land on) its launch platforms far enough away from cities to avoid too many noise complaints. For the rest of the flight, it’s above the atmosphere, absolutely silent.
That lets you fly across any continent, any city, without them even being aware of you. It vastly increases the number of possible routes you can fly that are closed to any supersonic/hypersonic alternative. You are still limited to launch/landing sites you can control the range-safety, but overflight is nearly unlimited.
As described, point-to-point BFR flights would also be limited to coastal cities. Mr. Musk did mention launching from an offshore platform. That’s almost as limiting as the rule against overland supersonic flight which the Concord faced. For example, it virtually rules out the European market. I’d have to check a map, but I’m not sure if any major cities in the UK qualify (Liverpool and Belfast?) And Hamburg is the only city in Germany I can think of. France is a bit better off, but Paris isn’t viable.
USAF doesn’t have to meet the same noise rules, do they? This “point to point” transport bit of the presentation may not make any sense for civilians, but it sure as heck makes sense for the USAF.
Outside of declared enemy territory (or hybrid cases like Syria), the USAF needs permission to overfly foreign countries. (Just as airlines do.) Generally that’ll come with conditions of where and how (or how fast), potentially restricting supersonic flight.
(Obviously, in reality, sometimes it’s better to (have the State Dept) beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. But that’s the basic idea.)
Similar within US territory (from what I’ve heard), they’ll usually try to play nice with their neighbours. No supersonic flights outside of approved areas, no buzzing controlled airspace without alerting the ATC, obeying normal aviation rules (altitude/right-of-way/etc) when in densely packed civilian airspace, etc.
Under the OST, a p2p BFR flight doesn’t need permission to overfly other countries once it’s above the Karman line. For launch/landing, it will have hard restrictions; but for the rest of the flight, it’s “in space” and not connected to puny Earthly territorial laws.
The typical launch vehicle failure rate of ~2% is too high for commercial travel. The time saved is not worth the risk. What breakthrough has SpaceX acheived to make the BFR a million times more reliable so that people besides space enthusiasts will buy a ticket?
I tend to agree that particularly for the “point to point” earth transport system Musk envisages the BFR would have to achieve a failure rate approaching that of commercial airliners to stand any real chance of being a serious competitor in the field of commercial air travel, most people would rather spend 24h getting from point A to point B in a plane that had a 1 in 1million failure rate than 30 mins in a rocket with a higher failure rate, however with the wealth of technical knowledge gained from returned boosters achieving an airline type failure rate may not now be such an unachievable goal as it once might have been.
One way to think about this is that the rich will tolerate a couple of orders of magnitude more risk in general aviation for the convenience of direct connections.
Steve, there is no breakthrough. A lot of these SpaceX goals are pie in the sky. Yes, they’ve done a great job making their rockets partially reusable but they’re a long way from sending humans anywhere on rockets.
Is this true? The part about being “a long way” from man-rating? Certainly lots of behind the scenes ratings of different parts is simultaneously occurring.
However, disallowing the nature of this proposal by characterizing “their rockets” as “partially reusable” is at best disingenuous. I’d point to a hanger full of recovered boosters (from memory, 16 all together, perhaps); I’d point to the incremental changes that made this collection possible; and I’d figure the process will continue.
We are now at the point in the history of SX that past performance is a predictor of future success. This includes incrementally improving reusability. It also includes constantly slipping schedules, alas.
Do we believe that an astronaut will fly on one of Musk’s rockets 7 months from now? It might be years, not months, until this happens. More realistic is next decade.
I don’t think Musk can recover his 2nd stages, although I’m very impressed he might get his fairings back.
Yes, it’s the slipping schedules that you have to watch. These delays give you a very good indicator of how long it will take for HSF, BFR, et al. Falcon Heavy launch delays being the prime example here.
Years or decades until someone flys on a SpaceX rocket? Both SpaceX and Boeing are under contract to transport astronauts to the space station. The current schedule is for the first SpaceX manned flight to happen in June, 2018, and the first Boeing flight in August. I suspect that schedule will slip, but by months, not decades. Do you have any evidence that this will not happen for decades?
It’s not like it’d be something new if Elon has numerous delays. 2020 or 2021 perhaps.
“Man rating rules” were invented by NASA. Note that with NASA vehicles, NASA has also gotten to write *all* the waivers it needed to those very same rules. No spacecraft which NASA has flown astronauts on has *ever* met all of the “man rating rules”. They have all required waivers for one reason or another.
May 2018 is “a long way” from now? That’s the current schedule for the first manned test flight of Dragon 2, and it’s a test flight to the space station. That’s not the Moon or Mars, but it certainly counts as sending humans somewhere on their rockets.
Full reusability will be the breakthrough. No one flies paying passengers on “expendable” commercial aircraft.
Full reusability. You test fly BFR once to identify any problems, then you keep flying that same copy of the hardware over and over. You keep a close eye on the hardware and replace any bits that need it before they fail. Furthermore, if BFR has an “engine out” on launch, it has enough engines to continue flight without it.
Expendables don’t have that luxury. If there is a problem with a part during its manufacture, it will fail on its first and only launch! That’s why expendables can never have as low of a failure rate an a reusable.
100-150 Billion dollars: Estimate to land humans on the Moon
500 Billion dollars: Estimate to land humans on Mars
Plu-eze. Those numbers simply no longer wash. They have been trotted out over and over again.
But now we can ground-truth those numbers.
Still, it’s an enormous, expensive, and dangerous proposition. I don’t forsee anyone(NASA, SpaceX, Russia, China) landing humans on the Moon or Mars by 2030.
I take your first point; but I prefer an emotional “A-OK!” when contemplating feets on Mars 🙂
That’s a bit discouraging. When Kennedy made his speech committing the country to a manned Moon mission, we had only launched one person into space, in a 1.8 tonne capsule and on a suborbital trajectory. Eight years and two months later, we landed two people on the Moon. Are you really saying you don’t think we could repeat that in thirteen years?
I know Apollo-level funding is a fantasy, but the state of the art in almost every relevant field has improved by orders of magnitude in the past fifty years. I would hope the cost of an Apollo-like mission would be vastly lower today than it was in the 1960s. SpaceX does have plans to (in effect) repeat the Apollo 8 mission in just over a year, and funded by paying passengers.
Just as a thought experiment, what would it cost to repeat something like the Apollo landings today? The program was canceled because the cost, using 1970-level technology, just wasn’t sustainable. Today, we are funding ISS operations and nominally doing so for the sake of science. With late 2010s technology, would the price of one Apollo-like mission per year be on par with the operating cost of ISS? Or lower?
Thinking of what we already have, a Dragon 2 is a fine replacement for an Apollo Command Module. With some modifications and a little more fuel, with its SuperDracos, it might even be able to land and take off from the Moon, replacing the Lunar Module as well. If not, developing a new one isn’t all that hard (i.e. on par with developing the Dragon itself; years nor decades, and nothing like Apollo-level funding.) With the development of a propulsive stage to replace the Service Module, I’d think we could pull off an Apollo-style landing without too much work.
Since all that hardware is, or could be, reusable, subsequent missions would require turning around a Dragon 2, relaunching it, launching fuel for the SM (and LM, if needed) and doing on-orbit refueling (which SpaceX already wants to learn how to do.) That could let something like three field scientists spend a week on the Moon.
Even if I think the Moon isn’t the most exciting destination in the solar system, we’ve only briefly explored six places on its surface, and never really explored more than a tiny region around those landing sites. If the price tag is under $500 million per year, I think a case could be made for this.
Unfortunately we can’t go to the moon for under 100 billion dollars, probably more like 150 billion. There isn’t even a human moon or mars program in existence today. The infrastructure, development, engineers, rockets, spacecraft, communications..there are bits and pieces here and there but you have to have a program run by officials with funding. Elon probably couldn’t come up with 10 billion, which is less than 10-15 times the 100-150 billion required. 20 billion? 30 billion? this still isn’t enough. How about 50 billion? It’s just not enough.
Please excuse me I’m trying to be a realist instead of a pessimist. I’ve been following this stuff for over 45 years and it’s taken me a long time to face the truth. I remember when Venture Star got cancelled, when President Bush #2 cancelled his huge space vision, VSE? what a joke that was.
Right now we’re stuck in LEO with the ISS but hey, that’s something.
I have to admit Elon has done some great things, he’s making his rockets at least partially reusable and he’s on the verge of taking over the launch industry. He’s inspiring a lot of people..but man, people need to know he’s not going to send a human around the moon next year or to mars in 6 years.
“we can’t go to the moon for under 100 billion dollars”
That’s an assertion without any facts or evidence behind it. Past NASA concepts have been that expensive, but they were all much more ambitious than Apollo-like missions. My thought experiment was about what it would take to do a series of Apollo-like missions with 2010s technology. What’s missing? Don’t just say “rockets” without explaining why existing ones are inadequate. Don’t say “engineers” without specifying the number of engineer-years required. (Obvious some, but $100 billion worth? Even fully burdened and at aerospace industry rates, that’s about 200,000 engineer-years.) Communications? Really? Unmanned spacecraft send down data at, or above, the rate required for voice-only communications from Mars. I’m curious what the real, hundred billion dollar obstacles are, and you have simply asserted that they exist.
The going rate is 100-150 billion dollars, unless you can come up with a plan to do it for less. Then you have to convince somebody to fund your plan.
I know it’s frustrating but these endeavor’s are mind boggling huge. Apollo was one of the greatest achievements of humankind, and unfortunately people died making it happen. Predicting when it’s going to happen again is just folly, especially when there’s no real official program out there to even start these endeavor’s. Let me ask you this, what do you think of former NASA administrator claiming time and time again that NASA is going to Mars “sometime in the 2030’s”. Truth or fiction?
The phrase “going rate” for something we’ve never done (in the case of Mars) or done once, fifty years ago (in the case of the Moon) is absurd.
You are referring to a large number of entirely hypothetical, paper studies, and every single one assumed that a future lunar mission _must_ be vastly larger in scope or capability than Apollo. You are ignoring the fact that I am asking a completely different question: _Without_ making the project “mind boggling huge” what could be done? In stead of considering that, you’re simply repeating the mantra that it must be a huge NASA project costing tens or hundreds of billions, simply because it has to be. Give a reason.
Let’s get specific. SpaceX developed both the Falcon 9 and Dragon (unmanned version) for less than $1 billion. The work on Dragon took four years from start to first flight. Given this fact, how much would you say it should cost to develop a propulsion module to get a Dragon from Low Earth Orbit to lunar orbit and back? Could you credibly say it would be even $10 billion? When we have proof that an entire spacecraft _and_ launch vehicle can be developed for a tenth of that?
There’s just no cheap way to launch humans to the moon. Of course, it would be cheaper to do a flyby or orbit verses landing but it’s still prohibitively expensive. Also, it’s doubtful a private company would do it because of the danger and no profit incentive.
“Going rate”?
How much was the “going rate” at NASA for a flyback first stage before SpaceX did it? $10 billion? More?
150 BILLION to land on Luna? Only congressional porkonauts would spend that insane amount.
USAF. They’ve been looking at this sort of thing since the 1960s. Doesn’t mean they’ll buy into it, but if they did, that’s a potential source of development money.
Remember NASP? It was also nicknamed Orient Express, if memory serves. This sort of point to point transport “marketing” of a vehicle which has launch/military purposes is nothing new and is most definitely not unique to SpaceX.
Seems like Mr. Musk has just declared not only SLS but a lot of NASA as irrelevant. What about astronauts? Are astronauts now just the passengers, so anyone can be an astronaut for the cost of a tourist class ticket? Maybe the astronauts are the pilots, except that as Musk points out, these vehicles are not flown by pilots. Of course none of the space rockets have actually been flown by astronauts, except I hear that one Shuttle landing was once-one time-flown by Joe Engle.
What about NASA astronauts? If they are doing something useful at the destination, then they would be just like any other government employee traveling on business: A passenger on the trip to the destination, and then doing their job once they get there. The difference from a tourist is that they would probably be taking more gear with them (although some tourists don’t exactly pack light…) If the astronaut isn’t doing something useful at the destination, why is he going there in the first place?
Getting rid of the cost of the launcher frees up more money for boots-on-ground exploring.
(Even probes. What could the Cassini team have done with 150t-to-LEO equivalent mass budget, at $100m per launch? How much could you have saved on development if you had that much mass to waste? No more shaving grams off components.)
Interesting point about Cassini. But I’m not sure if we can use _that_ much mass growth. On the other hand, multiple spacecraft would be nice. Also, if the launch is only $100 million, I’d be more than willing to only use a fraction of the maximum payload mass.
But I might be an exception. Something similar came up at the past couple OPAG meetings, about the recent Ice Giant (Uranus/Neptune) mission study. The report concluded that some things (SLS or aerocapture) could significantly increase the mass of a Uranus or Neptune orbiter. But that, if we went that way, building such a large orbiter would exceed the expected budget.
They are thinking in terms of this being a once-in-a-lifetime mission. As such, the idea of wasting such an opportunity wasn’t really considered. That means cramming in all the capability possible, and optimizing to the greatest extent possible. Regardless of the mass available.
In a few off-line conversations, I tried suggesting that the mass could be used to _reduce_ cost, in exactly the manner you suggest: Just throw mass instead of dollars at the various design problems. The closest thing to a positive reaction I got (after struggling to explain what was clearly an alien concept) was a grudging admission that this was theoretically possible but it wouldn’t enhance the mission. So why bother.
With that sort of mind set, I’m not sure if I trust some of my colleagues with a 150-tonne mass budget.
Can you characterize the current thinking on the Ice Giant platforms? Are these fly-bys, or orbiters? Same capability as Cassini?
And this: If BFR becomes reality in, say, five years, what happens to this mission? Does the huge increase in mass capability mean the studies go forward, or change direction to take advantage of the much more capable rockets?
I suppose that given the very long lead times of these types of missions the design could be designed for a rocket that is assumed to become available at the end of a ten year design cycle. Or something.
In theory the unmanned BFR tanker could be a Outer System probe by itself with multiple propellants fill ups from LEO departure.
Just add a small nuclear reactor like the Kilopower or lots of RTGs along with many atmospheric probes.
On a five year mission to explore strange new worlds… ?
Depends on which of the outer system destination you are heading towards. Also if the BFS tanker got an ion drive and how many buddy tankers is in the mission. After all you going have many retired tankers after 2029.
Jupiter might be 3 to 4 years in travel time. Pluto might be 9 to 12 years. Eris and Sedna will take over 20 years just for a flyby.
Just thought of something. The BFS tanker might be able to do aero braking and/or aero capture at destinations with atmosphere.
Yes, I get the ST:TOS reference.
If you were going to develop a mission based around NEP propulsion, I think it would be a standalone design. Assembled in orbit by BFRs, not by modifying a BFS. Too much parasitic mass.
It should be able to The shape should be able to provide lift/control during the aerocapture manoeuvre, allowing higher speed entries.
Didn’t say anything about NEP as primary propulsion. Was thinking more along the lines of a few kilowatt range Hall thrusters powered by tanker’s solar arrays and onboard RTG/mini-reactor. Mostly to decelerate toward the targeted destination for maybe many months.
The recent ice giant study was pretty broad. A summary presentation and the full report are on line. Just do a search for “Outer Planet Assessment Group” and follow the link to the “Agenda and Presentations” for the Sept. 6-7 meeting. A link to the full report is in the presentation.
They looked at a whole lot of permutations. Flybys, orbiters and atmospheric probes. Three payload sizes ranging from very minimal (why bother, to my mind) to something that isn’t as capable as Cassini but isn’t too far less. Options for getting there including chemical propulsion, electric propulsion, SLS, and aerocapture.
Then they did cost estimates and estimates of the relative science return. Based on that, they crossed some permutations and combinations, and left a sizable list possibilities which seemed to have a good benefit-to-cost ratio and a cost in a sane range for a flagship mission. But their favorite was a Uranus orbiter and probe, with the medium-sized to large payload.
If you add BFR to that trade space, or (I think) even Falcon Heavy, that could change the trade space. I think it might be a easy update, and they may want to do that. The purpose of the study was to inform the next decadal survey, which is going to start work in a few years. We’ll much more confident about Falcon Heavy by then, and have more of a feel for BFR.
But, following the approach taken by the Europa Clipper, I think they won’t design to the full, alleged capabilities of the BFR. A more likely approach would be to design something that they believe they can count on (the SLS in block 1 or 1B configuration, even if counting on that may be wishful thinking.) And then say, “And, if available, we could launch on BFR instead and save $X.”
The Falcon Heavy is not as capable as the SLS Block-1B for outer system missions. Of course it will be a lot cheaper about one sixteenth of the marginal cost.
All shuttle landings were manual.
I’m wondering about the capacity of BFR and how it will affect markets. Consider, for instance, the big and heavy geosynchronous birds.
Some authorities point out that the mass of geosynchronous satellites is about 4000 kg these days (and declining, for a variety of reasons).
BFR can, as near as I can tell, loft about 150 tons, or 136,000 kg to the same orbit (this isn’t clear but it’s back-of-the-envelope close enough). This is about 34 geosynchronous birds. At once.Yikes!
And even if I left something out, a factor of two or even three leaves a lot of up-mass. And the big satellites aren’t the entire market, of course.
More to the point: how does Mr. Musk find sufficient cargo to launch his BFR with something approaching maximum mass and, I assume, sufficient financial margin to make the exercise worthwhile? Currently he’s launching at a prodigious rate with F9, and says that he will use the profits from launches to make BFR work. At the same time he expects BFR to replace F9.
But BFR is hardly a replacement for F9.
How does a market accustomed to filling the hold of a few Piper Cubs each year adjust to multiple A380s becoming available?
Quite a bit of time and money goes into reducing the mass of communications satellites (or any satellite). You could dramatically reduce the cost of one by allowing the mass to grow by a factor of five or ten. But that’s still half a dozen satellites per launch. Some of the commentary since Mr. Musk’s speech has mentioned this issue. His business model depends on reuse and lots and lots of capacity on each flight. That implies lots of payloads, and it isn’t clear if the market is there.
Exactly my point (but phrased more clearly). Again, perhaps BFR will answer the oft-quoted point that cost to orbit is the chief limiter of space activity.
We shall see.
On second thought, that 150 tonnes might not be unreasonable. In his talk, Mr. Musk mentioned that there are about 60 launches per year. In context, I think he meant in the ~10 to 20 tonne to LEO class (about 5 tonne to GTO.) If you had a very easy to develop, but mass-inefficient system, you might need 150 tonnes to send a dozen spacecraft to a diverse range of orbits, including both LEO and GTO. This is pure speculation, but if he cornered the entire, current market, after figuring in the inefficiency of dispersing those satellites to the desired orbits, he might conceivably expect five commercial BFR launches per year.
No, Musk is aiming for a total launch cost lower than F9. Not per-kg, but total. (Thanks to full reusability.)
That means that even if a launch is carrying a single 5 tonne GEO bird, it will still be cheaper to fly on BFR than F9. Likewise, you can bring entire satellites home. Or launch crew to service the more irreplaceable bespoke, expensive satellites.
We might see multi-sat launchers standardised around a specific size/mass, a giant version of cubesats, low cost from mass-produced COTS components, and spat out by the dozens from every launch. Being able to buy the parts for a 5 tonne satellite for $100k and launched for a few $m would be fairly revolutionary.
(And if the market doesn’t grow to use up that 150 tonnes. SpaceX will presumably hybridise its sat launchers as passenger ships. If the main payload funds the launch, you can sell 50 tickets to orbit for tourists as 100% gravy. People currently pay $5000 per person to fly on vomit-comets for 15 arcs of 20-30s zero-g. 7 minutes of intermittent weightlessness for $5k has enough demand to support a small industry. How much would people pay for a few hours in space?)
It’s possible that markets are the key to SpaceX’s every move.
Mr. Musk did briefly point out that SX looked at many different ways to fund this effort.
It’s obviously true that he needs a way to pay for it.
Never forget: Mr. Musk is informed, and motivated, by his desire to go to Mars. Simple.
I just don’t buy the whole sending humans to mars thing anytime soon. Certainly not 2024 and I expect not before 2030 and maybe much longer than that. Elon is much more likely to continue targeting govt/commercial markets, he’ll probably retire very rich in about 15 years..on Earth.
In a sense, you could say Mr. Musk has already “retired very rich… on Earth” and his current endeavors are a hobby. He is focusing companies like SpaceX, Tesla, etc., none of which were initially an obviously lucrative investment. If he were in it for the money, that would be a bit quixotic.
True except for the bit of time where he had literally dumped all of his money into his “hobbies” like Tesla and SpaceX and neither one was making him a return on that investment.
Bezos is the guy who “retired very rich… on Earth” and is funding Blue Origin by selling some of his, quite valuable, stock. Bezos is not risking his entire fortune like Musk did.
At the very least he’ll send a bunch of his own employees there to set up an initial base and say “come and get it! Rent is cheap!” to the rest of the world.
It’s 150 metric tonnes, not 136,000kg, which is 136 tonnes.
Thank you!
I based my discussion around
1 metric ton = 1,000 kg.
I’m not sure how 136,000kg crept into the conversion.
150 metric tons is to Low Earth Orbit, BFR’s payload to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit is fairly small, I think it’s about 20 metric tons without refueling, still higher than operational launchers today, but not that high.
Thank you. I was thinking that since BFR was capable of direct-to-Mars, it would carry the same mass to any orbit, neglecting the small provision of on-orbit refueling!
20 tons to GTO, divided by 4000kg per device, yields a much more manageable 5 devices per launch. A much more imaginable scenario.
This arithmetic error moots much of my question, but not completely; it’s still a lot of mass available for a single launch from an industry that irregularly launches 2 at a time.
If the long-held argument that cost to orbit is the space-utilization gatekeeper is true, then BFR will indeed change the entire industry.
I don’t get the obsession with mass. The point of BFR is price.
Even if you are launching 1 tonne, it’s cheaper to hire an entire BFR to yourself that to fly alternative expendable (or SpaceX’s semi-reusable) launchers.
Where did you get 20 tonnes from? Typical reduction to GTO is a third of LEO (especially since BFS is using a high-Isp methalox engine). So 50 tonnes to GTO, 40 tonnes to escape, would be more reasonable.
It’s from the chart Musk showed to explain orbital refueling, there’s a delta-v beyond LEO vs payload mass graph for no refueling, one refueling, two refueling, etc. Without any refueling, it can send 20 metric tons to 2.5km/s delta-v beyond LEO.
The problem here is that the ship has high dry mass, it’s basically like a Shuttle Orbiter, so you’re sending near 100 metric tons to GTO, but most of that is the ship.
It will also allow for designs that do not have to be folded up so small to fit in farings. .
While I like the idea of fast design cycles, and replacing the Falcon just after only a few years of service is certainly fast, I’m not sure if NASA can keep up with this. For (unmanned) scientific missions, I was looking forward to seeing a Falcon Heavy as a launch option for the next Discovery AO (allegedly due out in early 2019.) Now I’m not so sure.
The time from initial AO to launch is about eight to ten years. While the proposals don’t include selecting a launch vehicle, they are expected to show the mission could fly on something knows will be available and available at an acceptable cost.
I’m concerned about how NASA will respond to SpaceX discontinuing the Falcon line. Building up a stock of them before terminating production is a fine idea, but will NASA be confident that, in 2027, all those vehicles won’t be spoken for? Especially if the mission involves expending cores. If not, then they would be counting on SpaceX to have the BFR available on time and with demonstrated reliability. I’m not sure that’s something NASA management would be comfortable with.
Just as F9 becomes a dependable workhorse- I predict the F9 will be around for a very long time.
If they stopped production today, got ten flights out of each vehicle, and recovered all of them (and convinced NASA that reused cores are ok for station supply and crew transfer), they would be out of Falcon 9s in five years. Of course, they won’t stop production immediately, but I’m worried about very conservative (risk-wise, not politically) NASA managers being convinced three cores for an expendable Falcon Heavy launch will be available a decade from now. It’s possible, but I’m still concerned.
SpaceX won’t need the production space until BFR is ready for production. (They’ll be freeing up dev space as FH and Dragon primary development ends. Plus they are already freeing up people from F9/Merlin maturation.)
From first launch until reliable flight, given SpaceX’s history, shouldn’t take more than two/three years, so a five year backlog of F9/FH cores should be plenty even with a few setbacks.
And as BFR comes on line, many F9 and especially FH customers will jump over, even at the risk of a delay; that frees up Falcon cores for conservative customers like NASA.
(And I suspect that even NASA will see the advantage of having a launch vehicle that can bring your multi-billion probe/telescope back to the ground if there’s a problem with deployment; rather than letting it burn up.)
You are describing what will probably happen (and I’m inclined to agree) and being optimistic about NASA “seeing the advantage.” I’m being pessimistic about management conservativism and people not seeing the advantage until the launch vehicle has actually flown.
That’s what I meant by “as BFR comes on line”. There will be a couple of years between the first launch and a reasonable expectation of reliability for high-value payloads, even if everything goes well. During that time, the launch rate will be low. (At least, judging by F9 development.)
Commercial payloads then booked for F9/FH will be sniffing around for a cheaper BFR launch, even if puts delays their launch by a year or two. That frees up more cores for NASA/DoD, buying time until NASA/DoD to approve the new launcher.
My speculation at the end is merely that the acceptance process will be made easier once NASA (and the DoD) can see the advantage of a multi-billion dollar payload being able to be brought home if the deployment isn’t a success.
I’m not suggesting that NASA will commit to the new-shiny before it flies. Or even the first twelve months after it first launches. (The DoD might throw some money early, given that rapid response launch is a big deal for them.)
I just noticed something else about SpaceX’ new Mars plans. Mr. Musk is talking about putting the first in situ fuel/oxidizer plant on the same trip as the first manned landings (in 2024, according to his schedule.) Since the in situ fuel/oxidizer production is necessary for a return trip, that would mean the crew is stuck on Mars if production doesn’t work as planned. In contrast, Zubrin’s idea was sending an automated plant out two years earlier and verifying that the stuff is available before sending people. That strikes me as more reliable and robust.
The problem is mining water and generating power. They need a lot of water, and mining it at large scale on another planet with automation alone may not be realistic. They also need to deploy a big solar farm to provide power.
Zubrin got around these by shipping hydrogen from Earth and use nuclear power plant, which has its own issues.
Shipping hydrogen on the first trip might be a good idea. In any case, they need a viable plan B, in case something goes wrong with the in situ fuel/oxidizer production. It could just be 26 months of supplies, so they can wait it out until the 2026 missions get there. But they need something.
Yes, I think they’ll just take enough supplies and spare parts to last until the next window, if not beyond. The cargo capability of this thing is enormous, I think the total cargo mass sent to ISS each year is around 30 metric tons, so they can take 5 years worth of ISS cargo supply in one ship.
Bringing hydrogen makes sense, because then the only raw material you need from Mars is CO2, which can be obtained from the thin atmosphere.
If the first liquid methane/LOX plant fails, I think plan B would be to stay on Mars until help arrives. That help would be another BFR with a “new and improved” methane/LOX plant.
Elon didn’t mention SLS because NASA asked him not to mention SLS. The perception that BFR is an SLS replacement is a sensitive issue for NASA. NASA has been good to SpaceX and Elon frequently goes out of his way to play up the mutually beneficial relationship between their organizations. Leaving SLS out of his presentation made his best customer happy the next morning.
The economics of the fully-reusable BFR are going to speak for themselves. Poking fun at SLS is not going to get it cancelled any faster and certainly isn’t going to win any political support in Congress for funding NASA contributions to BFR Mars missions. As Teddy Roosevelt suggested: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
He seems to have some parallel goals, at least. Bridenstine’s American Space Renaissance Act is a pretty clear statement of desire for acceleration of commercial ventures, and it assigns treaty responsibilities at the federal level. That clarification could help SpaceX quickly clear the international legal hurdles for HSF Mars ventures, by offloading most of the legal burden to federal workers.
http://spacerenaissanceact….
I noticed it too. Why not? SLS timelines, and soon maybe even NASA priorities, don’t seem to play any part in SpaceX long game anymore. It’s like they’ve acknowledged that Government will do whatever it will do. SpaceX should show appreciation for Government help and business, but should plan without it.
I think that by the time Mr. Bridenstine moves into NASA hq he will have made so many promises and trades that lateral movement will be very difficult.
I don’t understand your second point, though. Are you saying that the two devices are so different that apples and oranges apply?
I find it very difficult to imagine how point-to-point rocket transport will get past some very real, mundane considerations. The launch azimuths for point-to-point flight will certainly pass directly over heavily populated areas, particularly in the New York-to-Shanghai example shown in the video. Are we ready to have a Saturn V-class vehicle ascending into space with the risk that if it were to catastrophically disintegrate (and don’t tell me that it couldn’t) that the debris pattern would potentially kill thousands of people on the ground?
It’s a miracle that the disintegration of Columbia didn’t lead to casualties on the ground. In Musk’s scenario there would be scores of rockets flying trajectories every day whose debris pattern would endanger thousands of lives. I just can’t see it happening, ever.
I suspect the range safety issues would not be a problem. Aircraft run about 0.5 fatalities per million flights. I’m not sure about the number of fatalities per accident, but we’re probably talking about saying that it’s only one accident per 50,000 flights probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark.
As others have noted, using commercial suborbital rockets for transportation has to compete with that. Before people would be willing to buy tickets on the rocket, it would be reliable enough that overflying urban areas wouldn’t be a concern.
Some of the naysayers predict the demise of NASA at the hands of market forces (read “SX”).
Perhaps Keith is contemplating something like spacexwatch.com?
Some are. But I see the demise of SLS and Orion coming. Hopefully this will free up NASA money to be spent on things like actual lunar and Mars bases. If NASA “gets there first” on a BFR, they’re still “first”, right?
While I am hopeful that the new Musk concept will work, even if its delayed a couple of years (as his projects often are-they are after all aspirational) I think Space X and the commercial process is already writing the demise of NASA. Take a look at the ridiculous expenditures of NASA in dollars and time frequently producing things they have no plan for their use, whether it is Orion and SLS in another few years or ISS today or even Shuttle a decade ago. Shuttle was meant to be the first step of a transportation system. But once NASA got it going NASA assumed Shuttle was finished, and killed a number of people needlessly. ISS was intended to be an orbiting lab, and yet NASA decided the agency did not need to pursue potential uses of a space lab. I mean really, they’d been aiming at the idea of figuring out the value of people in space and maybe advancing science and utilization in weightlessness since the very beginning, and now they figure they are done once they build the thing and someone else will figure out what to do with it. Musk is figuring out an end to end plan. Yes, I would say that NASA’s days are numbered. They were heroes once but they have long since lost their way. Those astro-heroes, really, no one knows their names and no one cares-its not even Americans putting them in orbit anymore. SLS and Orion are pointless; they are the wrong solution for the wrong era. ISS, I hope that they can find some organization to take it over and manage it appropriately. Shuttle’s ending was premature, before they even figured out how to make it work.
Well, if so, that would only be a part of NASA. HSF and launch are maybe a large part of the budget, but less so by other measures. Who is going to send science probes to Jupiter, Saturn, etc., space telescopes, etc etc.? It’s just the launch. Companies have launched NASA stuff up forever anyway. There would definitely be different dynamics for exploration of the Moon and Mars though.
Agreed. After Challenger NASA was instructed (by law) to only use the shuttle for missions which could not fly on other launch vehicles. Unfortunately, there was a loophole in that law which allowed them to develop their own vehicles if they had “unique” requirements. Maybe sometime in the distant future we’ll need to fly “large payloads” is not a unique requirement, IMHO.
Depends on the enemy. Russia would see it coming in time to possibly do something about it (it would show up on their ICBM early warning system and they could deal with it in the same way they would an incoming ICBM).
But, what about an enemy like North Korea? I doubt NK would spot BFR “coming in hot” until the last minute or so (when they picked it up on radar) and by then it’s too late to do anything about it.
Further down the line, an enemy like ISIS wouldn’t see it until they saw (or later heard) the landing burn and by then it’s definitely too late to stop it from landing.
By the way, has anyone looked at the availability of Methane at Mars? Its well under 1% of an atmosphere that’s less than 10% of Earth’s – even if you could extract it, it may be a LOT more difficult to use it as a propellant than Musk’s plan assumes…
Musk’s plan is to manufacture methane on Mars from atmospheric CO2 and mined water, with Solar power as the energy input.
That’s something I’ve wondered about but haven’t seen a side-by-side comparison.
And aside from reusability and cost, what else matters, other than KG to orbit? Flexibility in making the pointy end go where you want it to go, sure.
Reliability, size of the payload shroud, likelihood of launch delays. But I’d say reusability may be secondary. It’s an excellent way to reduce cost, but if someone came up with an extremely low cost, expendable solution, I wouldn’t complain. (Although I might think it was inelegant.)