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Interesting news. All this newspace startup competition in the rocket launch industry is huge. One concern: > The Terran booster will hit what the company bel

Interesting news. All this newspace startup competition in the rocket launch industry is huge. One concern: > The Terran booster will hit what the company believes is a sweet spot between smaller rockets under development by Rocket Lab (and others) and the much larger Falcon 9 built by SpaceX. The market is moving very quickly right now. I'm not sure the Falcon 9 will even be flying by the time this launches. Maybe that will mean more opportunity for them, it is hard to say. But it seems to me that all these small-rocket companies are banking on one specific idea: that the convenience or dedicated customer service they provide will exceed the pros of going with a more established low-cost provider like SpaceX. With BFR flying regularly in the same timeframe as this rocket gets its first launch, their only hope is that customers will not want to ride along as a 90th payload in a BFR but will want a dedicated ride themselves. Or perhaps I am being close minded, perhaps the market will grow sufficiently such that SpaceX will not even be able to suck up all the new launches and new demand, and the small-rocket companies will thrive. I just don't want to see them left in the dust. A $10M price tag is incredible (I mean, wow, that's low! for a dedicated launch!). But will that be the expensive option by the time their rocket is ready for use? Two concerns, it turns out. Will these rockets be reusable? I'm guessing not, since the article didn't mention it and these days in the rocket world, if you're not reusable, then who cares? You will be left in the dust. Edit: Wait a minute. I just went to their website. It says nothing about reusability either. But it exclaims how great it would be to build and fly rockets in days instead of years. Are they very specifically making a disposable rocket? If so, fuck this company and fuck everything about it. It's not the way of the future to build large objects and throw them away. It's evil in fact, to research something like this in the modern era with an attitude of 'fuck you' to the materials' sources where they are mined from the Earth. I'll hold off on an actual opinion until I know more. But I sure hope Y Combinator didn't invest in a fake-new-space-actually-oldspace company. I hope this is better than it looks because it looks awful. Edit 2: What does the success case of this startup look like? Will they ever research reusability? Or are they aiming to make 1,000 new rockets per year? That's the success case based on the financials (=$10B revenue/year) and it sounds gross. Without reusable rockets that whole thing is extremely wasteful. The efficiencies of 3D printing things quickly are not correctly accounted for in the loss that the planet takes due to increased mining and wasteful dumping that would have to occur (and which the investors and company do not pay for).

baybal2 9y ago
>just don't want to see them left in the dust. A $10M price tag is incredible. But will that be the expensive option by the time their rocket is ready for use? Just before Russian rouble crashed, Soyuz 2 was estimated to cost USD $5.5 in materials and labour. With current rouble fx rate, it should be well lower. If they will get squeezed much, they may well remarket disposed ICBMs again. And at that point, I don't see any Western competition having a chance. Maybe Chinese will deliver bearable launch service on solids by then. Pure material costs play a rather small part of considerations for a launch service provider. This is why Space X is not booked for years ahead, and launch services companies still line up for Proton that had 4 successive failures, and launch on ULA vehicles for twice the Space X cost. Only companies for which launch cost is a genuine issue or which simply want to get to space by any means possible (startups, 3rd world countries) will be going for them.
- varjag 9y ago
  You must be confusing something, Soyuz was never priced anywhere that low. Russian Wikipedia puts it at 35 to 78 million USD depending on configuration.
deleted 9y ago
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tlb 9y ago
One extra efficiency to keep in mind: the rocket can be custom-made for each launch to exactly the right size for the payload. If you only have a few standard rocket sizes, launching small payloads is wasteful unless you can bundle them together, which means they have to be on the same orbit (or else carry extra fuel in the satellite to shift orbits). The metal in a rocket isn't the most expensive part (it has to be well under 5% the weight of fuel). The expensive part is fabrication. So reusability is important iff fabrication is expensive. Reusability also requires adding extra launch weight for landing fuel and struts and guidance fins. So it's too early to conclude that reusability is mandatory. For heavy repeated lifts to a standard orbit, maybe. For small lifts to custom orbits, maybe not. It all depends on the costs of fabrication.

baybal2 9y ago

>just don't want to see them left in the dust. A $10M price tag is incredible. But will that be the expensive option by the time their rocket is ready for use? Just before Russian rouble crashed, Soyuz 2 was estimated to cost USD $5.5 in materials and labour. With current rouble fx rate, it should be well lower. If they will get squeezed much, they may well remarket disposed ICBMs again. And at that point, I don't see any Western competition having a chance. Maybe Chinese will deliver bearable launch service on solids by then. Pure material costs play a rather small part of considerations for a launch service provider. This is why Space X is not booked for years ahead, and launch services companies still line up for Proton that had 4 successive failures, and launch on ULA vehicles for twice the Space X cost. Only companies for which launch cost is a genuine issue or which simply want to get to space by any means possible (startups, 3rd world countries) will be going for them.

varjag 9y ago
You must be confusing something, Soyuz was never priced anywhere that low. Russian Wikipedia puts it at 35 to 78 million USD depending on configuration.

deleted 9y ago

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tlb 9y ago

One extra efficiency to keep in mind: the rocket can be custom-made for each launch to exactly the right size for the payload. If you only have a few standard rocket sizes, launching small payloads is wasteful unless you can bundle them together, which means they have to be on the same orbit (or else carry extra fuel in the satellite to shift orbits). The metal in a rocket isn't the most expensive part (it has to be well under 5% the weight of fuel). The expensive part is fabrication. So reusability is important iff fabrication is expensive. Reusability also requires adding extra launch weight for landing fuel and struts and guidance fins. So it's too early to conclude that reusability is mandatory. For heavy repeated lifts to a standard orbit, maybe. For small lifts to custom orbits, maybe not. It all depends on the costs of fabrication.