
At Astra, failure is an option - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/at-astra-space-failure-is-an-option/
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bryanlarsen
$2.5M for putting 100kg into orbit. Versus SpaceX's price of $1M for 200kg
into a Starlink inclination LEO. And since Astra didn't specify the orbit,
it's probably an easier orbit, so an equivalent orbit is probably about 60kg.

And that price assumes a volume of 100 launches per year. Sure there's a
market for cubesat's into bespoke orbits, but it isn't that big, AFAICT. If
there was, RocketLab would have a lot more than 10 launches scheduled for
2020.

Astra says "constellations", but that makes even less sense. If you have a
bunch of satellites to launch into the same orbit, a Falcon9 at $50M will get
you 13000kg into LEO.

To make things worse, RocketLab is working on reusability, which gives them
the potential to drop their prices significantly. They're already at just over
twice the price for significantly more than twice the capability, and they
don't consider 95% success rate "good enough".

I wish them luck, but it's a tough market.

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bryanlarsen
Normally I'd just tell people to read the comments on a Ars Space article. Ars
comments are my source of information for the my parent comment. But this
article requires a bit more wading through crap comments to get to good stuff
than an Ars space article usually has.

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gandalfian
Little surprised no one objected to their name. Confusing to a European
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_(satellite)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_\(satellite\))

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thatannoyingguy
Yeah I was about to write that as well.

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blueboo
A lovely process embraced by NASA is celebrating their best failures -- the
"Fail Smart" award.

[https://nasapeople.nasa.gov/awards/eligibility.htm](https://nasapeople.nasa.gov/awards/eligibility.htm)

Dava Newman explains:

[https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/nasa-leader-
exp...](https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/nasa-leader-explains-why-
failure-sometimes-option)

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lamchob
Is there any information on their stance regarding the environmental impact of
failed launches? The propellants alone are usually toxic, plus the amount
debris of each failed launch. Did they factor these externalities into their
cost as well? At 1 million dollar per launch and 250k$ manuracturing cost
alone, I am not sure this part of their cost model.

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londons_explore
I'd like to see companies have to pay some kind of 'litter tax'. Any item
which is lost track of or dumped in the environment pays some $X per kg fee.
The fee could vary based on the hazardous/non-hazardous/biodegradable nature.
Then allow anyone else to get paid the same fee for collecting the litter, as
long as they can show with reasonable certainty most of the stuff they
collected is litter someone else paid tax on.

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numpad0
Means it’s free if you build a all-Aluminum rocket and fill it with alcohol?

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pojntfx
Awesome to se the startup mentality arrive in space engineering! Those cheap
rockets would be great for deploying things like CubeSats.

