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It's interesting that Falcon Heavy costs 1.5x as much as Falcon 9, but carries 4x the payload. Why doesn't SpaceX offer the Falcon Heavy exclusively and launch
by devit 11y ago
It's interesting that Falcon Heavy costs 1.5x as much as Falcon 9, but carries 4x the payload.
Why doesn't SpaceX offer the Falcon Heavy exclusively and launch multiple payloads per launch, thus more than halving costs?
Are there payload volume or orbit separation limitations or is the pricing info not complete?
- adwn 11y agoArianespace does that with their Ariane V, but it comes with organizational headaches, because you need two payloads of appropriate mass, that are ready at the same time, and that go into the same orbital plane. If one payload is delayed (happens often enough), you can't shuffle the other one around on short notice.
- baq 11y ago>It's interesting that Falcon Heavy costs 1.5x as much as Falcon 9, but carries 4x the payload. where did you get that numbers from? the page says $60m for ~4.85t to GTO for F9 and $90m for 6.4t to GTO for FH. price for maximum performance isn't quoted; i believe without reusability it'll be about 3x F9 (there's three F9's in the FH, after all).
- kogepathic 11y agoThere's an inconsistency on the page. The pricing subtext for the FH says 6.4mT to GTO, but lower on the page the FH specs say 21,200kg to GTO. For the F9, it's clear that 4.85mT to GTO is the same as listed below. So I'm assuming the 21,200kg to GTO for the FH is incorrect. Or there is something I'm missing? (additional weight required for GTO and which subtracts from the 21,200kg?)
- votingprawn 11y agoThe Falcon Heavy can take 21 tons to GTO, but for $90 million you can only take 6.4 tons. I.e. 21 tons is the max payload, and the guide price they're giving is just for 6.5 tons.
- piquadrat 11y agoI guess the reason for that discrepancy is that for the $90m price tag, SpaceX wants to re-use the first stage cores. In re-usable configuration, quite a bit of the fuel has to be used for the re-entry burns. Still interesting that they advertise the re-use price, while not having successfully landed a single core yet (admittedly, they came really close to a successful landing a couple of times).
- gilgoomesh 11y agoNo inconsistency. The price is: 1. 12 million per tonne to GTO on Falcon 9 with a maximum load of 4.85 tonnes 2. 14 million per tonne to GTO on Falcon Heavy with a maximum load of 21.2 tonnes If you buy the 6.4 tonnes to GTO on Falcon Heavy package, Space X will sell the additional space to another two customers on same launch.