6 ms·

They may not be able to compete on price, but they sure can when it comes to reliability and launch cadence (current strike action in French Guiana notwithstand

They may not be able to compete on price, but they sure can when it comes to reliability and launch cadence (current strike action in French Guiana notwithstanding). Ariane 5 is currently on a 77 successful missions streak. SpaceX has a long way to go to reach those numbers. If you're trying to get a $250 million satellite into space, price savings of $20-30 million can easily be outweighed by a long history of successful, on-time launches.

Tepix 10y ago
There are no fundamental reasons to believe that SpaceX can and will not reach a similar level of reliability.
- ckastner 10y ago
  Optimism regarding future performance is not the same as a proven record.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Is this a jab at SpaceX or Ariane? One of these has a proven record in conventional launches and the other has a track record of innovating. Only one of these is required today.
- nolok 10y ago
  There are no fundamental reasons to believe that Ariane space and others can and will not reach a similar level of cost cutting by the time Space X gets anywhere near them in reliability level.
  - nickik 10y ago
    Yes there is. We know the target that they are planning for it. Those targets are for 2020 and beyond and its already more then you pay for a F9 now. Yes, maybe sometime after 2025ish they might have their so far completely theoretical re-usability plan in action. Even then, they are still throwing away far more stuff then SpaceX. They throw away a very expensive upper stage, solid fuel boosters and most of the core itself. Additionally and that is not talked about enough, Arianspace can only compete on price at this level with Arian 6 because the development cost is majority funded by ESA (and co). They don't have to put that in their launch price. So Arianspace is essentially completely unable to compete with SpaceX in terms of cost. As long as the Arian 6 flies, it well simply never be competitive in cost with the Falcon 9. Even in price it will not be competitive. The architecture of Arian 6 as currently planed is just not designed for it.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    The national champions are going to have a difficult time matching SpaceX on cost if for no other reason than the respective governments will force inefficiencies on these organizations by dictating where the rockets are built and by whom. That's what made the shuttle so damn expensive. SpaceX won't be immune from this sort of meddling, but it's in a much better position to resist than, say, Arianespace or Roscosmos.
cm2187 10y ago
Probably just on the savings on insurance.
- Retric 10y ago
  20-30 million extra for insurance would take an ~85% success rate and SpaceX is well past that. Industry average being 95% and SpaceX is around 93%. Note: at ~95% you would expect very long stings of successes not just 19 then one failure repeat. But, it's reasonable for those long strings to represent an increasing probability of success over time.
taway_1212 10y ago
Is the satellite that expensive? I would have thought that the cost to develop it (R&D) would be very high, but the cost to produce one actual satellite unit (given the R&D money are already spent) wouldn't be a quarter billion dollars.
- piquadrat 10y ago
  Numbers aren't always easy to come by, but e.g. Amos 6, a more or less run-of-the-mill communications satellite that was destroyed when a Falcon 9 exploded during fueling operations, reportedly cost around $200 million. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/spacex-explosion-amos-6-satellite-owner-demands-50-million-dollars/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/spacex-explosion-amo...
  - Ntrails 10y ago
    Surely the two questions are "price to insure against failure" and "business risk involved if launch delayed by needing to build a new one"?
    - brd529 10y ago
      Insurance for a launch is currently very expensive. My friends in the industry tell me that insuring a launch increases the cost by 50%.
      - Retric 10y ago
        The wording on that is misleading, you insure the satellite AND launch and then measured things in terms of launch cost. Industry has ~95% success rate so insurance is limited to around 10% of total costs or basically nobody would use it. Further, insuring a 5% risk to a 200m satellite and a 100m launch vs a 200m satellite and a 50m launch at 10% failure rate would not be 2x because the payout is 50m less. Also, if the numbers get overly lopsided SpaceX would offer insurance for it's customers at close to the actual risk adjusted costs.
nickik 10y ago
SpaceX is already doing pretty good on launch cadence and they are gone to be way better before 2020 because they are building launch sites like crazy. Neither Arianspace or ULA will be able to keep up (they are simply not expanding their launch sites at the same rate). You have a point on reliability, but I would ask you to consider that both Arianspace and ULA is pushing hard to get a new launch vehicle. There is no way, they would be doing that if they thought reliability was their big money maker. Additionally with their new rockets, that reliability will be mostly gone. Vulcan and Arian 6 need to build up a record as well, and that will be hard because they will both be very limited in launch cadence just because they don't actually have enough commercial flights.
- ethbro 10y ago
  I made a similar comment before, but the launch cadence is key in that it enables new markets. If it takes two years to get your heavy launch payload scheduled then of course a ~$10M price difference is dwarfed by making sure nothing goes wrong on your end. If SpaceX can reschedule you in a much tighter timeline, for a competitive or cheaper price, then simply building two payloads and skipping some of the exhaustive QA starts to make sense in a way it simply didn't before. And as the market shifts to that kind of thinking, there's more business for rocket companies that can provide a quicker cadence, which allows them to grow farther, which reduces costs, etc. And anyone who doesn't have a reusable product or expandability to match isn't able to take advantage of the new market reality.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  Arianspace and ULA are building new rockets to reduce costs. So there's a datapoint for how those 2 companies balance reliability vs cost. Note that Atlas V had zero failures when it was young. So there's proof that new development doesn't necessarily hurt reliability. You're correct that the track record of reliability will be absent for the first couple of dozen launches, which will be quite a while for at least Arianspace.
  - valuearb 10y ago
    The Atlas V was built off the Atlas 3, so it wasn't totally starting from scratch. They kept the RD-180 engine, rebuilt the booster, and added strap-ons. Also the Atlas program has about 40 years of experience on SpaceX. But I should point out they've also maintained their glittering track record while regularly upgrading their rockets, so they've shown it can be done.
quickConclusion 10y ago
I checked launch cadence, and I am now thinking Ariane is in much bigger trouble than I thought. Ariane 2016: 7 launches (all successful) SpaceX 2016: 9 launches (8 successes, 1 failure) Ariane 2017: only 1 so far (don't know how many affected by the strike) SpaceX 2017: 4 successes so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ariane_launches_(2010%E2%80%932019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ariane_launches_(2010%... 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...
- nojvek 10y ago
  For spaceX they just had one failure out of 8. If they have none in 2017 and they can keep up the cadence then it will be a solid blow to rest of the industry. I feel it's a lot easier to make SpaceX's rockets safer than ULA's rockets cheaper and reusable. Once spacex finds their sweet spot in design, they can shooting them up like crazy. I am really looking forward to the moon mission. Last time it happened, I wasn't even born :(
  - greenhouse_gas 10y ago
    >I feel it's a lot easier to make SpaceX's rockets safer than ULA's rockets cheaper and reusable. The thing is that safety is cultural, not technical. It means that everyone realizes their limits, and has a conservative streak in them (if it ain't broken, don't fix it, or so least test it like crazy before putting a customers multi-million dollar payload on it). SpaceX, on the other hand, is all about moving fast and iterating fast.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      To be fair, the conservative streak cuts against safety too. I believe a large number of US launch accidents were ultimately attributed to "component or measurement out of spec, but it's worked before so we'll expect it to work again."
      - vanattab 10y ago
annamargot 10y ago
Wouldn't a price reduction of that size open up a new market for smaller clients? Companies who couldn't afford it before would now be able to consider it.
- valuearb 10y ago
  Yes. It should open up the market to stuff that most of us can't yet imagine, but I'm sure someone somewhere is.

Tepix 10y ago

There are no fundamental reasons to believe that SpaceX can and will not reach a similar level of reliability.

ckastner 10y ago
Optimism regarding future performance is not the same as a proven record.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Is this a jab at SpaceX or Ariane? One of these has a proven record in conventional launches and the other has a track record of innovating. Only one of these is required today.
nolok 10y ago
There are no fundamental reasons to believe that Ariane space and others can and will not reach a similar level of cost cutting by the time Space X gets anywhere near them in reliability level.
- nickik 10y ago
  Yes there is. We know the target that they are planning for it. Those targets are for 2020 and beyond and its already more then you pay for a F9 now. Yes, maybe sometime after 2025ish they might have their so far completely theoretical re-usability plan in action. Even then, they are still throwing away far more stuff then SpaceX. They throw away a very expensive upper stage, solid fuel boosters and most of the core itself. Additionally and that is not talked about enough, Arianspace can only compete on price at this level with Arian 6 because the development cost is majority funded by ESA (and co). They don't have to put that in their launch price. So Arianspace is essentially completely unable to compete with SpaceX in terms of cost. As long as the Arian 6 flies, it well simply never be competitive in cost with the Falcon 9. Even in price it will not be competitive. The architecture of Arian 6 as currently planed is just not designed for it.
- gozur88 10y ago
  The national champions are going to have a difficult time matching SpaceX on cost if for no other reason than the respective governments will force inefficiencies on these organizations by dictating where the rockets are built and by whom. That's what made the shuttle so damn expensive. SpaceX won't be immune from this sort of meddling, but it's in a much better position to resist than, say, Arianespace or Roscosmos.

cm2187 10y ago

Probably just on the savings on insurance.

Retric 10y ago
20-30 million extra for insurance would take an ~85% success rate and SpaceX is well past that. Industry average being 95% and SpaceX is around 93%. Note: at ~95% you would expect very long stings of successes not just 19 then one failure repeat. But, it's reasonable for those long strings to represent an increasing probability of success over time.

taway_1212 10y ago

Is the satellite that expensive? I would have thought that the cost to develop it (R&D) would be very high, but the cost to produce one actual satellite unit (given the R&D money are already spent) wouldn't be a quarter billion dollars.

piquadrat 10y ago
Numbers aren't always easy to come by, but e.g. Amos 6, a more or less run-of-the-mill communications satellite that was destroyed when a Falcon 9 exploded during fueling operations, reportedly cost around $200 million. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/spacex-explosion-amos-6-satellite-owner-demands-50-million-dollars/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/spacex-explosion-amo...
- Ntrails 10y ago
  Surely the two questions are "price to insure against failure" and "business risk involved if launch delayed by needing to build a new one"?
  - brd529 10y ago
    Insurance for a launch is currently very expensive. My friends in the industry tell me that insuring a launch increases the cost by 50%.
    - Retric 10y ago
      The wording on that is misleading, you insure the satellite AND launch and then measured things in terms of launch cost. Industry has ~95% success rate so insurance is limited to around 10% of total costs or basically nobody would use it. Further, insuring a 5% risk to a 200m satellite and a 100m launch vs a 200m satellite and a 50m launch at 10% failure rate would not be 2x because the payout is 50m less. Also, if the numbers get overly lopsided SpaceX would offer insurance for it's customers at close to the actual risk adjusted costs.

nickik 10y ago

SpaceX is already doing pretty good on launch cadence and they are gone to be way better before 2020 because they are building launch sites like crazy. Neither Arianspace or ULA will be able to keep up (they are simply not expanding their launch sites at the same rate). You have a point on reliability, but I would ask you to consider that both Arianspace and ULA is pushing hard to get a new launch vehicle. There is no way, they would be doing that if they thought reliability was their big money maker. Additionally with their new rockets, that reliability will be mostly gone. Vulcan and Arian 6 need to build up a record as well, and that will be hard because they will both be very limited in launch cadence just because they don't actually have enough commercial flights.

ethbro 10y ago
I made a similar comment before, but the launch cadence is key in that it enables new markets. If it takes two years to get your heavy launch payload scheduled then of course a ~$10M price difference is dwarfed by making sure nothing goes wrong on your end. If SpaceX can reschedule you in a much tighter timeline, for a competitive or cheaper price, then simply building two payloads and skipping some of the exhaustive QA starts to make sense in a way it simply didn't before. And as the market shifts to that kind of thinking, there's more business for rocket companies that can provide a quicker cadence, which allows them to grow farther, which reduces costs, etc. And anyone who doesn't have a reusable product or expandability to match isn't able to take advantage of the new market reality.
greglindahl 10y ago
Arianspace and ULA are building new rockets to reduce costs. So there's a datapoint for how those 2 companies balance reliability vs cost. Note that Atlas V had zero failures when it was young. So there's proof that new development doesn't necessarily hurt reliability. You're correct that the track record of reliability will be absent for the first couple of dozen launches, which will be quite a while for at least Arianspace.
- valuearb 10y ago
  The Atlas V was built off the Atlas 3, so it wasn't totally starting from scratch. They kept the RD-180 engine, rebuilt the booster, and added strap-ons. Also the Atlas program has about 40 years of experience on SpaceX. But I should point out they've also maintained their glittering track record while regularly upgrading their rockets, so they've shown it can be done.

quickConclusion 10y ago

I checked launch cadence, and I am now thinking Ariane is in much bigger trouble than I thought. Ariane 2016: 7 launches (all successful) SpaceX 2016: 9 launches (8 successes, 1 failure) Ariane 2017: only 1 so far (don't know how many affected by the strike) SpaceX 2017: 4 successes so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ariane_launches_(2010%E2%80%932019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ariane_launches_(2010%... 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...

nojvek 10y ago
For spaceX they just had one failure out of 8. If they have none in 2017 and they can keep up the cadence then it will be a solid blow to rest of the industry. I feel it's a lot easier to make SpaceX's rockets safer than ULA's rockets cheaper and reusable. Once spacex finds their sweet spot in design, they can shooting them up like crazy. I am really looking forward to the moon mission. Last time it happened, I wasn't even born :(
- greenhouse_gas 10y ago
  >I feel it's a lot easier to make SpaceX's rockets safer than ULA's rockets cheaper and reusable. The thing is that safety is cultural, not technical. It means that everyone realizes their limits, and has a conservative streak in them (if it ain't broken, don't fix it, or so least test it like crazy before putting a customers multi-million dollar payload on it). SpaceX, on the other hand, is all about moving fast and iterating fast.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    To be fair, the conservative streak cuts against safety too. I believe a large number of US launch accidents were ultimately attributed to "component or measurement out of spec, but it's worked before so we'll expect it to work again."
    - vanattab 10y ago

annamargot 10y ago

Wouldn't a price reduction of that size open up a new market for smaller clients? Companies who couldn't afford it before would now be able to consider it.

valuearb 10y ago
Yes. It should open up the market to stuff that most of us can't yet imagine, but I'm sure someone somewhere is.