8 ms·

One could argue whether they're truly private sector, but they still haven't quite displaced ULA. In 2016 there were 12 ULA launches, 8 SpaceX launches, and 2 b

One could argue whether they're truly private sector, but they still haven't quite displaced ULA. In 2016 there were 12 ULA launches, 8 SpaceX launches, and 2 by Orbital ATK. Looking at other countries, there were 20 Chinese launches, 18 Russian launches, 9 European launches, and 7 Indian launches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#Orbital_launch_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#Orbital_la...

jacquesm 10y ago
That's why this is so big, dropping the costs significantly could easily pull a significant fraction of those other launches to SpaceX. Pretty soon the ability to re-launch the same booster will be considered a must-have feature if you want to be in the rocket business, unless you fly missions so close the maximum payload or trajectory that recovery is impossible.
- rrmm 10y ago
  SpaceX would still have to deal with scheduling: making enough upper stages and having limited launch/landing pads they share with NASA/ULA/ATK. So those with less cost-sensitive payloads (governments) would probably still pay a premium to launch their payloads sooner rather than cheaper.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    That doesn't add up: SpaceX will be able to use a chunk of their savings to outbid their competitors for launch capacity. So any premium paid by a competitor would have to be passed on to their customers to stay afloat whereas SpaceX would merely give a slightly lower discount. SpaceX really caused some sleepless nights today with the executives of other rocket companies they are several years away from being able to begin to play catch-up. This was one very long bet SpaceX made and it paid off today and will continue to pay off for years to come.
    - rrmm 10y ago
      I agree with you: everyone else will be playing catch-up, probably for a decade. But what I mean is say I have a payload I want to launch. I go to spaceX and they say they can put my payload on their manifest for 2019 for $60 million. I go to another provider and they say they can get me up into orbit in 2018 for $120 million. If I'm a government and don't care so much about the cost, but do care about getting my payload into space, I'll go with the 2018 date. So, there will still be other non-reusable providers out there. For example, European governments want to keep Ariane around regardless of the cost to keep the launch capability around (for national security issues).
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        Yes, but those launches would be subsidized, so technically loss leaders which you should not even want to compete with. SpaceX is in business with first mover advantage of a kind you can only dream of.
- mikeash 10y ago
  SpaceX is still struggling with launching frequently and reliably. I'm hopeful that they will solve those problems, but until they do, other launch providers will have a leg up for customers who really need their payload not to be destroyed and really need it to be launched on time. Keep in mind that some of these satellites being launched cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so paying a few tens of millions extra for a more expensive launch provider isn't necessarily a big deal.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    That's true, but overall their failure rate is really not all that bad. Only the Russians are doing better and they're doing better because they are not innovating at all. I could 3 out of 33 as failures, one of those is a partial failure. The only area where SpaceX really can't compete yet is manned flight, everything else looks quite rosy.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      10% is pretty bad. ULA has launched over a hundred times with no failures. The much-maligned Shuttle had two failures in 135 flights (and, strictly speaking, only one of those failures would have prevented a payload from getting to orbit). I'm pretty sure the Russians are the only ones doing worse right now.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        But you'd have to compare their first thirty launches with these to compare. Anyway, notice has been served today I think, now let's see what it leads to. For comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launche... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovative than what SpaceX is doing because we simply had not launched any rockets of that size at all and so there were many more failures. It probably won't be the last SpaceX failure either because they plan on making fairly big changes soon and those will come with new failure modes, the best way to get to very high degrees of reliability is to stop making changes other than to fix problems but that does not square with SpaceX's way of doing business.
- phkahler 10y ago
  SpaceX did all of their landing/reusability testing with disposable rockets. When they started all rockets were thrown away, so adding a bit of fuel or grid fins was a small price to pay for the development. Once reusability becomes common any competitor would have to test by sacrificing rockets where failures will be very expense - I mean who would throw away a rocket right?
nickik 10y ago
You can not compare all launches. Most of these launches are not competitive. SpaceX mostly competes with Arianspace for the truly commercial launches. SpaceX has captured around 50% of that market and the share is increasing. ULA competes mostly on the Air Force launches. They still have capabilities that SpaceX does not have (large fairings) and some that SpaceX will not have for a long time (vertical integration). For these cases, ULA will still have a market, plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers. SpaceX will however take quite a chunk out of ULA as we have already seen with the bidding for the GPS flights. Orbital ATK will have hard time in the commercial market but they might be happy with just flying the COTS contracts. The main issue SpaceX has to solve is flight rate, that is most of the reason others can still be on the commercial market at all. SpaceX is now so far away from everybody else on price, everybody else is still in the "developing a new vehicle and we have some ideas about reversibility, maybe" stage. SpaceX can now launch a reusable core for around 50 million, and still make a nice profit. The target price for both ULA Vulcan and Arian 6 are 100 million. For Arian that does not even include the massive amount of development cost. Arianspace will survive because of the political imperative.
- acover 10y ago
  > plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers Source? Wasn't ULA the only provider for years as Boeing and Lockheed argued it would be cheaper to merge.
  - kirrent 10y ago
    The EELV program doesn't actually require two different providers to guarantee access to space. It requires two different families of launch vehicles. ULA had the Atlas V and Delta IV families.
    - greglindahl 10y ago
      ... and Delta IV Medium is being retired, because it's expensive and no longer needed as the second medium launch vehicle.

jacquesm 10y ago

That's why this is so big, dropping the costs significantly could easily pull a significant fraction of those other launches to SpaceX. Pretty soon the ability to re-launch the same booster will be considered a must-have feature if you want to be in the rocket business, unless you fly missions so close the maximum payload or trajectory that recovery is impossible.

rrmm 10y ago
SpaceX would still have to deal with scheduling: making enough upper stages and having limited launch/landing pads they share with NASA/ULA/ATK. So those with less cost-sensitive payloads (governments) would probably still pay a premium to launch their payloads sooner rather than cheaper.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  That doesn't add up: SpaceX will be able to use a chunk of their savings to outbid their competitors for launch capacity. So any premium paid by a competitor would have to be passed on to their customers to stay afloat whereas SpaceX would merely give a slightly lower discount. SpaceX really caused some sleepless nights today with the executives of other rocket companies they are several years away from being able to begin to play catch-up. This was one very long bet SpaceX made and it paid off today and will continue to pay off for years to come.
  - rrmm 10y ago
    I agree with you: everyone else will be playing catch-up, probably for a decade. But what I mean is say I have a payload I want to launch. I go to spaceX and they say they can put my payload on their manifest for 2019 for $60 million. I go to another provider and they say they can get me up into orbit in 2018 for $120 million. If I'm a government and don't care so much about the cost, but do care about getting my payload into space, I'll go with the 2018 date. So, there will still be other non-reusable providers out there. For example, European governments want to keep Ariane around regardless of the cost to keep the launch capability around (for national security issues).
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      Yes, but those launches would be subsidized, so technically loss leaders which you should not even want to compete with. SpaceX is in business with first mover advantage of a kind you can only dream of.
mikeash 10y ago
SpaceX is still struggling with launching frequently and reliably. I'm hopeful that they will solve those problems, but until they do, other launch providers will have a leg up for customers who really need their payload not to be destroyed and really need it to be launched on time. Keep in mind that some of these satellites being launched cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so paying a few tens of millions extra for a more expensive launch provider isn't necessarily a big deal.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  That's true, but overall their failure rate is really not all that bad. Only the Russians are doing better and they're doing better because they are not innovating at all. I could 3 out of 33 as failures, one of those is a partial failure. The only area where SpaceX really can't compete yet is manned flight, everything else looks quite rosy.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    10% is pretty bad. ULA has launched over a hundred times with no failures. The much-maligned Shuttle had two failures in 135 flights (and, strictly speaking, only one of those failures would have prevented a payload from getting to orbit). I'm pretty sure the Russians are the only ones doing worse right now.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      But you'd have to compare their first thirty launches with these to compare. Anyway, notice has been served today I think, now let's see what it leads to. For comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launche... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovative than what SpaceX is doing because we simply had not launched any rockets of that size at all and so there were many more failures. It probably won't be the last SpaceX failure either because they plan on making fairly big changes soon and those will come with new failure modes, the best way to get to very high degrees of reliability is to stop making changes other than to fix problems but that does not square with SpaceX's way of doing business.
phkahler 10y ago
SpaceX did all of their landing/reusability testing with disposable rockets. When they started all rockets were thrown away, so adding a bit of fuel or grid fins was a small price to pay for the development. Once reusability becomes common any competitor would have to test by sacrificing rockets where failures will be very expense - I mean who would throw away a rocket right?

nickik 10y ago

You can not compare all launches. Most of these launches are not competitive. SpaceX mostly competes with Arianspace for the truly commercial launches. SpaceX has captured around 50% of that market and the share is increasing. ULA competes mostly on the Air Force launches. They still have capabilities that SpaceX does not have (large fairings) and some that SpaceX will not have for a long time (vertical integration). For these cases, ULA will still have a market, plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers. SpaceX will however take quite a chunk out of ULA as we have already seen with the bidding for the GPS flights. Orbital ATK will have hard time in the commercial market but they might be happy with just flying the COTS contracts. The main issue SpaceX has to solve is flight rate, that is most of the reason others can still be on the commercial market at all. SpaceX is now so far away from everybody else on price, everybody else is still in the "developing a new vehicle and we have some ideas about reversibility, maybe" stage. SpaceX can now launch a reusable core for around 50 million, and still make a nice profit. The target price for both ULA Vulcan and Arian 6 are 100 million. For Arian that does not even include the massive amount of development cost. Arianspace will survive because of the political imperative.

acover 10y ago
> plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers Source? Wasn't ULA the only provider for years as Boeing and Lockheed argued it would be cheaper to merge.
- kirrent 10y ago
  The EELV program doesn't actually require two different providers to guarantee access to space. It requires two different families of launch vehicles. ULA had the Atlas V and Delta IV families.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    ... and Delta IV Medium is being retired, because it's expensive and no longer needed as the second medium launch vehicle.