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There's this 10-year-old infographic from the AP about NASA's space shuttle launches: http://i.imgur.com/HVJtlTR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/HVJtlTR.jpg The shuttl

There's this 10-year-old infographic from the AP about NASA's space shuttle launches: http://i.imgur.com/HVJtlTR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/HVJtlTR.jpg The shuttle launched on its scheduled launch date only 40% of the time. 56.2% of the delays were due to technical reasons, not weather.

voltagex_ 9y ago
How serious is a scrub, in terms of lost revenue and loss of "face"? I get that it's much less of a problem than losing a rocket/payload, but it must still be bad.
- TaylorAlexander 9y ago
  Imagine you're paying $300m to put a satellite in to space (SpaceX nominally charges $60m for private customers, and satellites are often hundreds of millions of dollars). The satellite will be in service for 5-15 years. Imagine that, due to price (you save, I'm guessing, $40m or more) you choose a young rocket company that has experienced two serious failures that destroyed the payload. Imagine that company is very cautious and will happily abort any launch that looks odd. I imagine the caution is a positive aspect.
  - jgalt212 9y ago
    I don't think you came even close to answering the question.
    - Neliquat 9y ago
      Answer: Depends on the Launch/Payload. Some more publicly popular launches during good viewing times, with time sensitive cargo will look pretty bad, and cost a lot, but these are part and parcel of the process. Overall, the economic losses are well acceped even from catasropic events with careful, risk aware insurers. A pushed launch makes people nervous, but not much else but extra pay for another week of hundreds of specialists, and fresh purging gases. In extreme cases the payload may need offloading for service, whivh is not a cheap proposition but I am unaware if Spacex has particular policies on this.
    - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
      That's fair. I think an insiders perspective would be needed to provide a real answer - all I can do is take the basic facts I know and speculate. The head of a global telecommunications company will have a very different outlook than I would, but we're all human and my imagination seems at least like one plausible view. To the second half of the question: I know the fuel is nominally $300k - or that's the number Elon uses. I don't know if they can recover the fuel or have to vent it in the event of a scrub. And the ground crew and launch prep has some cost. We could speculate that the total cost of launching is on the order of $5m (not including the vehicle and associated engineering), but that those costs do eventually result in a launch. A scrub costs salaries and hotel stays of ground crew, fees paid to overseeing agencies for range patrol, and any lost fuel - maybe $1-2m. This is all speculation. I don't have real answers. I'm also reasonably sure the parent wasn't in dire need of a critically accurate answer so I hope my efforts to estimate an answer might be helpful to someone.
deleted 9y ago
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voltagex_ 9y ago

How serious is a scrub, in terms of lost revenue and loss of "face"? I get that it's much less of a problem than losing a rocket/payload, but it must still be bad.

TaylorAlexander 9y ago
Imagine you're paying $300m to put a satellite in to space (SpaceX nominally charges $60m for private customers, and satellites are often hundreds of millions of dollars). The satellite will be in service for 5-15 years. Imagine that, due to price (you save, I'm guessing, $40m or more) you choose a young rocket company that has experienced two serious failures that destroyed the payload. Imagine that company is very cautious and will happily abort any launch that looks odd. I imagine the caution is a positive aspect.
- jgalt212 9y ago
  I don't think you came even close to answering the question.
  - Neliquat 9y ago
    Answer: Depends on the Launch/Payload. Some more publicly popular launches during good viewing times, with time sensitive cargo will look pretty bad, and cost a lot, but these are part and parcel of the process. Overall, the economic losses are well acceped even from catasropic events with careful, risk aware insurers. A pushed launch makes people nervous, but not much else but extra pay for another week of hundreds of specialists, and fresh purging gases. In extreme cases the payload may need offloading for service, whivh is not a cheap proposition but I am unaware if Spacex has particular policies on this.
  - TaylorAlexander 9y ago
    That's fair. I think an insiders perspective would be needed to provide a real answer - all I can do is take the basic facts I know and speculate. The head of a global telecommunications company will have a very different outlook than I would, but we're all human and my imagination seems at least like one plausible view. To the second half of the question: I know the fuel is nominally $300k - or that's the number Elon uses. I don't know if they can recover the fuel or have to vent it in the event of a scrub. And the ground crew and launch prep has some cost. We could speculate that the total cost of launching is on the order of $5m (not including the vehicle and associated engineering), but that those costs do eventually result in a launch. A scrub costs salaries and hotel stays of ground crew, fees paid to overseeing agencies for range patrol, and any lost fuel - maybe $1-2m. This is all speculation. I don't have real answers. I'm also reasonably sure the parent wasn't in dire need of a critically accurate answer so I hope my efforts to estimate an answer might be helpful to someone.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]