> the Motely Fool did a couple of articles on that topic.
Motley fool did their articles before reusability. And that's what changed the game. At the time, they estimated that a first stage costs SpaceX $30M-$35M to build (let's assume $32M), leaving room for only $12M of gross profit margin per launch.
During one of her latest presentations, Gwynne Shotwell revealed that the very first first stage that flew again, cost half it's manufacture cost to refurbish. ($32M+$16M)/2 = $8M extra profit per launch. And that was the very first stage, the one that was stripped down to bolts, had every part inspected, and then put together. And that one only flew twice. Since then, SpaceX has modified the first stage to be cheaper and faster to refurbish, a few changes at a time for each launch. Now they are touting Block 5 of capable of flying 10 times between complete teardowns. I can't really give you hard numbers here because they have not been released, but how much would you expect it to cost them to refly a F9B5?
> As is Arianespace margin,
Arianespace has their rocket developement paid outside their budget by ESA, they basically only pay for the manufacture. This is rather different from SpaceX, for which R&D comes from their own budget.
> In terms of insurance premiums, everthing I found was statements from the launch, read first, customer of re-used Falcon-9s. If you have a source for real numbers I would really apprecoate that. As you said, insurance factors in.
Sadly I don't. They are not publicly available. I estimate that the prices are not substantially higher from the fact that everyone flies SpaceX anyway.
> everybody is being upsold
Up until today, they largely haven't been. Most rockets appear to launch in the standard configuration. The reason the prices are higher is simply order timing -- the prices used to be higher, and launch timing is important to many customers.
> I did find a study from the DLRG (German Center for Aerospace, crude translation) that saw a real benefit around 100 launches per year. Dated, and I would assume with experience the numbers change.
The design they are reflying also changes that. The DLRG report considered reflying their conventional designs, not designs designed from ground up for reuse.
For example, one of the major ways F9 differs from more traditional rockets is that it uses the same engine for the upper stage as it does for the lower stage. This is very inefficient, because the upper stage engine basically should be as efficient and light as possible (and it's ok to compromise on power) while the lower stage engines should be as powerful as possible (and it's ok to compromise on Isp and weight). If you put a simple cryogenic upper stage on top of the F9 booster, it would gain near +30% mass to orbit, and more the further away you're going. This was heavily criticized when F9 started flying.
The method in their madness is that doing it this way, they only have a single engine manufacturing line, reducing fixed costs and making reuse more economically viable. SpaceX has done a lot of these kinds of design decisions.
> Important to note, SpaceX is advertising reused launchers at a 30% discount.
They are not, anymore. The 30% was rolled into the overall reduced price, at this moment reflown boosters and new ones cost the same. The only benefit you get from flying reused is earlier launch date. (If you insist on an new booster, you have to wait until one is available, and others can launch in front of you with reused ones.) This is all part of the marketing push by SpaceX that reused boosters are actually better and safer than new ones. What with the "flight tested" moniker and all that.
> If they don't find enough customers (I would assume low value payloads would be a perfect market segment for those, also inlone with SpaceX mission to open space for everybody. Traditional high value missions would be a different thing) they are facing an inventory problem nobody else has in the industry.
Looking at their past launchers, customers don't seem to be thinking like this. Of the 11 reflown launches with commercial payloads, 6 seem to have been heavy (and super expensive) GEO satellites.
> I just checked on SpaceX website, future launches are at 35 / 36 if I counted correct, not sure where the 100 comes from.
SpaceX website is, err, not frequently updated. The only interesting document there is the payload users guide. To know what SpaceX is doing these days, you sort of have to either read fan sites (like /r/spacex ) or listen to all the presentations made by execs. That number is from Hans Königsmanns talk in IAC2018:
> And FUD, I think I lay out my thoughts pretty clearly using numbers whenever possible. I try to avoid cranking out statements without fact as much as possible. And since I don't have anything to do with space travel I don't think my opinion on HN changes anything.
I don't think you are trying to mislead people online. I think you have been mislead. The "government subsidy" argument is a complaint made by Arianespace and others and is simply not true. It requires using numbers from years back, or ones pulled from thin air, and comparing them to prices published today. The reality of the situation is that either SpaceX has been massively misrepresenting their numbers, or they make a healthy profit on commercial launches today, unlike literally anyone else in the industry.
Regardless, I think my thesis can be massively simplified here:
To put it simply, the anti-reusability argument is talking about what-ifs and maybes. "Maybe customers don't like the added risk of losing their payload" "Maybe customers don't like flying expensive payloads on reused boosters". Maybe maybe maybe. The reality is that a 100+ launch manifest for a launch services operator is completely unprecedented. Nothing like it has happened in history, ever. The customers have voted with their wallets, and are going with SpaceX. Billion $+ payloads are flying on reused boosters, and getting insured flying on them.
Against this juggernaut, which sucks out the volume needed by other launch service operators to pay for their fixed costs, they have rockets that are uncompetitive today, and plans for new rockets that all seem to be a decade away.
SpaceX gets to fly their current platform for a decade, milking the industry for all the money they need to build their next ones.
How is this not a reason to be optimistic for SpaceX?
There are no losses on commercial ones.
> the Motely Fool did a couple of articles on that topic.
Motley fool did their articles before reusability. And that's what changed the game. At the time, they estimated that a first stage costs SpaceX $30M-$35M to build (let's assume $32M), leaving room for only $12M of gross profit margin per launch.
During one of her latest presentations, Gwynne Shotwell revealed that the very first first stage that flew again, cost half it's manufacture cost to refurbish. ($32M+$16M)/2 = $8M extra profit per launch. And that was the very first stage, the one that was stripped down to bolts, had every part inspected, and then put together. And that one only flew twice. Since then, SpaceX has modified the first stage to be cheaper and faster to refurbish, a few changes at a time for each launch. Now they are touting Block 5 of capable of flying 10 times between complete teardowns. I can't really give you hard numbers here because they have not been released, but how much would you expect it to cost them to refly a F9B5?
> As is Arianespace margin,
Arianespace has their rocket developement paid outside their budget by ESA, they basically only pay for the manufacture. This is rather different from SpaceX, for which R&D comes from their own budget.
> In terms of insurance premiums, everthing I found was statements from the launch, read first, customer of re-used Falcon-9s. If you have a source for real numbers I would really apprecoate that. As you said, insurance factors in.
Sadly I don't. They are not publicly available. I estimate that the prices are not substantially higher from the fact that everyone flies SpaceX anyway.
> everybody is being upsold
Up until today, they largely haven't been. Most rockets appear to launch in the standard configuration. The reason the prices are higher is simply order timing -- the prices used to be higher, and launch timing is important to many customers.
> I did find a study from the DLRG (German Center for Aerospace, crude translation) that saw a real benefit around 100 launches per year. Dated, and I would assume with experience the numbers change.
The design they are reflying also changes that. The DLRG report considered reflying their conventional designs, not designs designed from ground up for reuse.
For example, one of the major ways F9 differs from more traditional rockets is that it uses the same engine for the upper stage as it does for the lower stage. This is very inefficient, because the upper stage engine basically should be as efficient and light as possible (and it's ok to compromise on power) while the lower stage engines should be as powerful as possible (and it's ok to compromise on Isp and weight). If you put a simple cryogenic upper stage on top of the F9 booster, it would gain near +30% mass to orbit, and more the further away you're going. This was heavily criticized when F9 started flying.
The method in their madness is that doing it this way, they only have a single engine manufacturing line, reducing fixed costs and making reuse more economically viable. SpaceX has done a lot of these kinds of design decisions.
> Important to note, SpaceX is advertising reused launchers at a 30% discount.
They are not, anymore. The 30% was rolled into the overall reduced price, at this moment reflown boosters and new ones cost the same. The only benefit you get from flying reused is earlier launch date. (If you insist on an new booster, you have to wait until one is available, and others can launch in front of you with reused ones.) This is all part of the marketing push by SpaceX that reused boosters are actually better and safer than new ones. What with the "flight tested" moniker and all that.
> If they don't find enough customers (I would assume low value payloads would be a perfect market segment for those, also inlone with SpaceX mission to open space for everybody. Traditional high value missions would be a different thing) they are facing an inventory problem nobody else has in the industry.
Looking at their past launchers, customers don't seem to be thinking like this. Of the 11 reflown launches with commercial payloads, 6 seem to have been heavy (and super expensive) GEO satellites.
> I just checked on SpaceX website, future launches are at 35 / 36 if I counted correct, not sure where the 100 comes from.
SpaceX website is, err, not frequently updated. The only interesting document there is the payload users guide. To know what SpaceX is doing these days, you sort of have to either read fan sites (like /r/spacex ) or listen to all the presentations made by execs. That number is from Hans Königsmanns talk in IAC2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IU41zpzWUE&t=46s
And oops, it was just a >100, not exact 100.
> And FUD, I think I lay out my thoughts pretty clearly using numbers whenever possible. I try to avoid cranking out statements without fact as much as possible. And since I don't have anything to do with space travel I don't think my opinion on HN changes anything.
I don't think you are trying to mislead people online. I think you have been mislead. The "government subsidy" argument is a complaint made by Arianespace and others and is simply not true. It requires using numbers from years back, or ones pulled from thin air, and comparing them to prices published today. The reality of the situation is that either SpaceX has been massively misrepresenting their numbers, or they make a healthy profit on commercial launches today, unlike literally anyone else in the industry.
Regardless, I think my thesis can be massively simplified here:
To put it simply, the anti-reusability argument is talking about what-ifs and maybes. "Maybe customers don't like the added risk of losing their payload" "Maybe customers don't like flying expensive payloads on reused boosters". Maybe maybe maybe. The reality is that a 100+ launch manifest for a launch services operator is completely unprecedented. Nothing like it has happened in history, ever. The customers have voted with their wallets, and are going with SpaceX. Billion $+ payloads are flying on reused boosters, and getting insured flying on them.
Against this juggernaut, which sucks out the volume needed by other launch service operators to pay for their fixed costs, they have rockets that are uncompetitive today, and plans for new rockets that all seem to be a decade away.
SpaceX gets to fly their current platform for a decade, milking the industry for all the money they need to build their next ones.
How is this not a reason to be optimistic for SpaceX?