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Everyone has a perfect launch record until they experience their first catastrophic failure. Falcon9 has had how many launches? and none were heavylift, they w

by cd34 16y ago

Everyone has a perfect launch record until they experience their first catastrophic failure. Falcon9 has had how many launches? and none were heavylift, they were all medium lift. (The answer here is two.) GSLV has had a 4 for 7 success ratio. Challenger was the 25th mission, Columbia was the 107th. Apollo 1 (which wasn't named Apollo 1 until later) was the only catastrophic failure, Apollo 13 being a successful failure. Apollo 6 experienced problems, missed its intended orbit, failed the original mission, but not catastrophically. Ariannespace has launched 200 missions, I believe 1 catastrophic failure, 2 non-catastrophic failures. In 2008, SpaceX had a failure two minutes into launch on their Falcon 1 platform. In 2006 and 2007, they lost two, with the latter making it to orbit, but being lost after five minutes. When SpaceX has more than two launches under their belt with the Falcon 9, then I think we can champion the success over other designs.

shareme 16y ago
Its not the design..its the effing process! SpaceX uses a vertical process, everything is done in-house..India outsources the rocket motors from Russia, etc.. SpaceX founder's thesis is that using a vertical process you have the opportunity to reduce both costs and failures.. In fact SpaceX's percentage of failures to successes has decrease which was one of the founder's predicts of the thesis being correct.
- varjag 16y ago
  Mind you, the vertical process was how every single space agency on the Earth was doing it until recently.
- cd34 16y ago
  The first two of four Falcon 1 launches ended in catastrophic failure -- Fuel leak and booster hitting second stage during staging. Both Falcon 9 launches have been a success. India uses the same engines that the Russians have used for their Progress supply ships and Soyuz Rockets. Tried and true, numerous launches and successes behind them - a design that has been mostly unchanged in the last 30 years. There are two parts to Elon Musk's thesis. 1) vertical process is more reliable - so far, 66% launch success rate. 2) Space cargo would be one tenth the price of existing solutions. One needs only review the Iridium contract to realize that $452 million is not one tenth of Arienespace's bid - it is about 105%. So, that cost savings is not being passed through to the US taxpayer, or, his estimate of 10% of the cost of conventional heavy lift systems was a bit overzealous. In addition, their bid for the ISS resupply contract exceeds the Progress supply flight costs. In order for any solution to be 10% the cost of an existing solution, you have to get a rocket to escape velocity with less fuel, a more efficient engine using 10% of the fuel or, fuel that is 10% the cost of existing fuel, or some combination thereof. I don't believe rocket technology can become efficient enough to meet those claims. Even the Delta IV which is the Dragon's direct competitor, had 18 launches, with one partial failure where the satellite didn't make orbit. One might contend that the Falcon project would need 36 more successful launches before he could say his process is more reliable than the Delta IV platform. If he compares it to Ariennespace, he's got another 400 launches to go.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    In order for any solution to be 10% the cost of an existing solution, you have to get a rocket to escape velocity with less fuel, a more efficient engine using 10% of the fuel or, fuel that is 10% the cost of existing fuel, or some combination thereof. I don't believe rocket technology can become efficient enough to meet those claims. I think it's clear that fuel costs are not the major part of the cost of a launch to orbit. Development, support, and manufacture of the vehicle itself are much more important, and those are areas that seem ripe for innovation, which is why SpaceX can hope to achieve major reductions in cost as they ramp up flight frequency.
    - cd34 16y ago
      You are correct. I distilled his process which gave me the conclusion that the only place he could really see any efficiency gains were in fuel efficiency or cost. He's using a 40+ year old design for his engine (with modern equipment). His engine doesn't consist of fewer parts, it has a large R&D/Engineering budget, and carries with it the same launch pad staffing/rental fees that any other launch must have. The only place he can really optimize his solution is more efficient engines, cheaper fuel or, a much more reusable system. At this point, only the first booster stage is reusable and recovered which is possibly the least expensive part of his system. As his avionics gear must continue with the launch vehicle, it becomes unrecoverable. While I'm only an observer from afar, I believe his heavy lift capabilities will result in more fuel being required to make escape velocity. There is a reason that most heavy-lift rockets use solid rocket boosters. I really hope that they can bring down the cost of putting cargo into space. From what I see now, I don't see him doing anything significantly different from Ariennespace's approach which can recover/reuse the booster stage.... which brings us back to the only real thing he can do to reduce cost is improve fuel efficiency/fuel cost.

by cd34 16y ago

shareme 16y ago

Its not the design..its the effing process! SpaceX uses a vertical process, everything is done in-house..India outsources the rocket motors from Russia, etc.. SpaceX founder's thesis is that using a vertical process you have the opportunity to reduce both costs and failures.. In fact SpaceX's percentage of failures to successes has decrease which was one of the founder's predicts of the thesis being correct.

varjag 16y ago
Mind you, the vertical process was how every single space agency on the Earth was doing it until recently.
cd34 16y ago
The first two of four Falcon 1 launches ended in catastrophic failure -- Fuel leak and booster hitting second stage during staging. Both Falcon 9 launches have been a success. India uses the same engines that the Russians have used for their Progress supply ships and Soyuz Rockets. Tried and true, numerous launches and successes behind them - a design that has been mostly unchanged in the last 30 years. There are two parts to Elon Musk's thesis. 1) vertical process is more reliable - so far, 66% launch success rate. 2) Space cargo would be one tenth the price of existing solutions. One needs only review the Iridium contract to realize that $452 million is not one tenth of Arienespace's bid - it is about 105%. So, that cost savings is not being passed through to the US taxpayer, or, his estimate of 10% of the cost of conventional heavy lift systems was a bit overzealous. In addition, their bid for the ISS resupply contract exceeds the Progress supply flight costs. In order for any solution to be 10% the cost of an existing solution, you have to get a rocket to escape velocity with less fuel, a more efficient engine using 10% of the fuel or, fuel that is 10% the cost of existing fuel, or some combination thereof. I don't believe rocket technology can become efficient enough to meet those claims. Even the Delta IV which is the Dragon's direct competitor, had 18 launches, with one partial failure where the satellite didn't make orbit. One might contend that the Falcon project would need 36 more successful launches before he could say his process is more reliable than the Delta IV platform. If he compares it to Ariennespace, he's got another 400 launches to go.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  In order for any solution to be 10% the cost of an existing solution, you have to get a rocket to escape velocity with less fuel, a more efficient engine using 10% of the fuel or, fuel that is 10% the cost of existing fuel, or some combination thereof. I don't believe rocket technology can become efficient enough to meet those claims. I think it's clear that fuel costs are not the major part of the cost of a launch to orbit. Development, support, and manufacture of the vehicle itself are much more important, and those are areas that seem ripe for innovation, which is why SpaceX can hope to achieve major reductions in cost as they ramp up flight frequency.
  - cd34 16y ago
    You are correct. I distilled his process which gave me the conclusion that the only place he could really see any efficiency gains were in fuel efficiency or cost. He's using a 40+ year old design for his engine (with modern equipment). His engine doesn't consist of fewer parts, it has a large R&D/Engineering budget, and carries with it the same launch pad staffing/rental fees that any other launch must have. The only place he can really optimize his solution is more efficient engines, cheaper fuel or, a much more reusable system. At this point, only the first booster stage is reusable and recovered which is possibly the least expensive part of his system. As his avionics gear must continue with the launch vehicle, it becomes unrecoverable. While I'm only an observer from afar, I believe his heavy lift capabilities will result in more fuel being required to make escape velocity. There is a reason that most heavy-lift rockets use solid rocket boosters. I really hope that they can bring down the cost of putting cargo into space. From what I see now, I don't see him doing anything significantly different from Ariennespace's approach which can recover/reuse the booster stage.... which brings us back to the only real thing he can do to reduce cost is improve fuel efficiency/fuel cost.