Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2009
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Yeah, if only ALL "welfare queens" were like this:
April 18, 2011
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1826/1
While SpaceX had made no secret of its plans to pursue a heavy version of the Falcon 9 booster, the numbers attributed to it did come as something of a surprise: 53,000 kilograms to LEO at about $100 million per launch for commercial customers.
No doubt it was a surprise United Launch Alliance (ULA) officials were not very happy to hear, given the fact that the Delta IV served as Musks point of comparison, and it wasnt pretty. In short, according to Musk, the Falcon Heavy will offer approximately twice the performance of the Delta IV Heavy at approximately one third the cost; or, as he helpfully added, six times the value. Determining the actual price of a Delta or Atlas is not an easy proposition, a tactic Musk compared to a rug bazaar in that the price is determined by what the vendor perceives the buyer can pay. At the moment, the buyer is the US government, and it is paying dearly.
Assuming the Falcon Heavys numbers are accurate, the pricing and performance figures offered in Musks presentation raise a number of very interesting and, no doubt to some, uncomfortable questions. They also have the potential to completely alter the basis of what currently passes for space policy.
First, the uncomfortable questions. Given the fact that the SpaceX Falcon rockets are not based on any radical technological breakthrough that lowered their costs, one has to ask just how bad a deal has the taxpayer been getting from the Atlas V and Delta IV, products of the legacy aerospace establishment? Soon to be deprived of the hyper-expensive Space Shuttle as their own point of comparison, the answer would appear to be much worse than we ever imagined.
Using the figures in the old article above, that's $1887/kg to LEO for the still theoretical FH.
F9 v1.1 - 13,150 kg to LEO for $62 million = $4715/kg to LEO (and they haven't even begun the reuse of 1st stages)
Cheapest ULA cost to LEO using lowest end Atlas V (401): 9,800 kg to LEO; in 2015, an Atlas V 401 cost $132.4 million; $13,510/kg to LEO.
And they (ULA and the previous concerns before the merger that are now part of it) have been getting away with those prices and worse for how many decades now?
