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SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit
- portentint 16y agoCan this eventually carry people into orbit, I wonder?
- ceejayoz 16y agoYes. https://twitter.com/spacexer/status/55291286919454720 https://twitter.com/spacexer/status/55291286919454720 > Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are designed to meet all published NASA standards to carry crew. (disclaimer: you must weigh less than 53 metric tons)
- InclinedPlane 16y agoBoth the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy are planned to carry humans to orbit. In fact, the 2nd ever test of the Falcon 9 used the Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX's in house developed capsule spacecraft capable of being manned, as a payload.
- bdonlan 16y agoI'm pretty sure they lifted a non-functional mockup with similar weight characteristics, not the final functional Dragon model...
- ugh 16y agoNo, they did lift a real and functional Dragon capsule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon#Maiden_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon#Maiden_flight
- edge17 16y agoyep, i saw it back in jan, burned from the reentry heat and all :)
- InclinedPlane 16y agoYup! If it had been a country doing it instead of SpaceX they probably would have already put a human into orbit in a Dragon capsule.
- hugh3 16y agoIs there any legal restriction preventing them from putting a person in their next test flight?
- ceejayoz 16y agoI'd imagine it's more a commercial restriction - they really, really, really don't want to kill someone on the first few dozen flights. (they don't want to kill anyone ever, of course, but an early death would be an inordinately huge blow to their potential success in the market)
- adamfeldman 16y ago"Anticipating potential astronaut transport needs, Falcon Heavy is also designed to meet NASA human rating standards. Falcon Heavy is designed to higher structural safety margins of 40% above flight loads, rather than the 25% level of other rockets, and triple redundant avionics. Despite being designed to higher structural margins than other rockets, the Falcon Heavy side booster stages have a mass ratio (full vs. empty) above 30, better than any launcher in history. By comparison, the Delta IV side boosters have a mass ratio of about 10."
- curtis 16y agoThere's no taking away from "better than any launcher in history". On the other hand, the comparison to the Delta IV isn't as informative as you might think it is. Falcon uses kerosene for fuel and kerosene is quite a bit denser than the liquid hydrogen used by the Delta IV. Liquid hydrogen not only needs a larger tank, that tank also needs to be heavily insulated. One consequence of this is that you simply can't get as high a mass ratio with liquid hydrogen as you can get with kerosene. On the flip side, hydrogen delivers a higher specific impulse, so extra tank weight is offset by fuel that is substantially lighter.
- sbierwagen 16y agoIt's all the more impressive when you realize that the Falcon series to designed to (eventually) be reusable. Now, the mass fraction won't be anything like as good as the expendable version, and the turnaround time will be significant, (you'll have to sea-recover each stage, install new seals, and reapply the heat shield; but the STS also has a turnaround time for the same orbiter measured in months, even with their reusable heat shield and dry-land capability) but they've given themselves quite a lot of margin.
- garyrichardson 16y agoWow, I like how candid they are about the pricing. It feels like they are targeting consumers more than governments -- most 'expensive,' enterprise targeted products are of the 'call us and ask for pricing' variety.
- bradleyland 16y agoMy thoughts exactly. Space X can quote a price on their website, but if I want to know what "Infrastructure Monitoring Tool XYZ" costs, I have to call and talk to some retired used car salesman. I now have hope for our future.
- modoc 16y agoI started a company that sells to enterprise customers and we thought we could differentiate ourselves by making our pricing public, simple, and affordable. It was VERY easy for anyone to figure out how much we'd charge them without having to call. There were no hidden fees, nothing tricky or weird. This has proven to be a mistake for two main reasons: Firstly, everyone expects huge discounts (since all their other enterprise contracts give them big discounts off of the list price). Trying to explain that we're already the cheapest option they're looking at does help. They all want more off. Secondly I think we're losing opportunities because we aren't making people call us. Those phone calls are missed opportunities for us to really pitch our advantages for their specific situation and needs better than our website ever could.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- nickpinkston 16y agoUnfortunately, I tend to agree with you. Sales through lack of information actually works in some markets. Is this just old man-ery, wanting special rates "cuz we're business!", or are we all susceptible to this? I feel like it is, but maybe not - I have friends who still like to walk into their bank to deposit a big check...
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- paul 16y agoApparently the Saturn V could lift 119 metric tons to LEO.
- ceejayoz 16y agoAt $1.11 billion per launch, though. SpaceX is promising $80-$125 million for half the payload.
- paul 16y agoYeah, SpaceX is super-cool. I was just curious how it compared with the most powerful rocket ever built.
- jessriedel 16y agoI'm actually surprised things haven't gotten cheaper by more than a factor of 5 in half a century. (If anyone's wondering, $1.11 Billion is in 2011 dollars.) Does anyone know what the primary costs are? People, construction, raw materials, etc.?
- daniel-cussen 16y agoI've heard it's people to make sure nothing goes wrong.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoFixed costs are usually the biggies, especially R&D and the infrastructure for supporting production. Probably the biggest impediment to lowering launch prices over that time period was the existence of the Shuttle. It was sold with promises of capabilities (especially in terms of flight rate) that it would never have, and that disrupted a lot of other launch vehicle development at the time. Worse yet, it kept billions per year of NASA funds locked up maintaining jobs for the standing army of Shuttle engineers instead of being spent on improving launch systems.
- hugh3 16y agoOne interesting thing I read Elon Musk saying the other day is that it's definitely not fuel -- the cost of fuelling a Falcon 9 is actually only about the same as the cost of fuelling a Boeing 747. The problem is that the cost of building a Falcon 9 is still similar to the cost of building a 747, and you throw it away after one flight. So if you could recover and re-use the booster rocket then you'd be looking at a serious cost reduction.
- iwwr 16y agoFinally, some stats on payloads and orbit altitudes. Why is it so hard to get these sorts of numbers?
- aidenn0 16y agoI don't see GTO mentioned in this paper. I know the falcon 9 has GTO specs; is the theory that you won't want to put something that large in GEO?
- InclinedPlane 16y agoHaha, nooooo. GEO will actually probably be the major market for the Falcon Heavy. I suspect specs weren't in there due to the fact that they would be heavily dependent on the performance of the upper stage, which I think is still being developed. I think the current estimate of GTO capacity for Falcon Heavy is 19,500kg. Which ironically would make the Falcon Heavy the best choice for launching a lot of the most secretive NRO payloads (due to bloated satellite size). For servicing the commercial satellite market it's likely that a lot of launches would be 2 or 3 comm-sats at once.
- benl 16y agoThe table here doesn't give cost comparisons for the other launch vehicles, but in the press conference Elon Musk said that the Delta IV Heavy costs roughly 3x the Falcon Heavy, meaning that the FH is approximately 6x cheaper in $/lb to low earth orbit. The figures quoted on the page work out to $1,070 per lb to LEO. That's less than $200k to lift the mass of a 180lb human.
- jessriedel 16y ago> That's less than $200k to lift the mass of a 180lb human. Before anyone tries to estimate how much space tourism will cost, remember that the actual weight of humans will make up a tiny fraction of the total weight of any orbiting hotel. Probably need to multiply by an order of magnitude or two.
- benl 16y agoYes, indeed. And even disregarding the mass of the destination and of the ferrying craft, the mass of life support systems and consumables for each individual on the way up and down are likely at least double this anyway. But, longer term, consider what happens if/when there is existing infrastructure in LEO and highly productive and profitable work for an individual to do there. The cost of actually getting to LEO will be a relatively minor relocation cost, even at these numbers.
- hugh3 16y agoLonger term you'd hope for another order of magnitude reduction in launch costs. If SpaceX can make a fully reusable Falcon 9 as Elon Musk has said he really wants to: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambition-spacex-aim-for-fully-reusable-falcon-9/ http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambition-spacex-... then we can start looking at paying ten times less.
- jessriedel 16y ago> consider what happens if/when there is ... highly productive and profitable work for an individual to do there. What productive work is there to do in LEO? I can hardly think of any, and NASA was scrapping the bottom of the barrel looking for worthwhile science to do on the international space station.
- ck2 16y agoThis really is impressive news. Out of curiosity, is there a plan by any government to clean up the ever increasing mess of space junk in LEO ?
- kahirsch 16y agohttp://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Russia_To_Spend_2_Bln_Dollars_For_Space_Clean_Up_999.html http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Russia_To_Spend_2_Bln_Doll...
- sasvari 16y agoplanned for precaution: http://www.weblab.dlr.de/rbrt/OOS/DEOS/DEOS.html http://www.weblab.dlr.de/rbrt/OOS/DEOS/DEOS.html
- bpodgursky 16y agoI found this chart from the Economist pretty interesting: http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2010/34/ST/201034STC150.gif http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2010/34/ST... Aside from the giant spike when China decided to blow up a satellite, it seemed to be leveling out...
- physcab 16y agoWith all their partnerships and contracts, SpaceX is now a viable alternative in the industry. Clearly they can compete on price. What remains to be determined however is if they can compete on mission success and reliability. You can bet their competitors are playing the fear card to their customers.
- pavel_lishin 16y agoHow much does a satellite cost to build? Even with a lower success rate, with a cheaper launch cost, it might end up being a better bargain launching twice as many satellites and losing half of them. Of course, that wouldn't be acceptable for human cargo.
- Jabbles 16y agoI think such an attitude would seriously harm SpaceX's future space tourism strategy. Also the environmental damage caused by failed launches could be disastrous, and outweigh the cost of the payload.
- physcab 16y agoI think it depends on the customer. Probably somewhere between $50 and $300 million [1,2]. My guess is that the more successful programs will retain their current (probably defense) customers, but SpaceX will effectively serve a new generation of private companies who can take the risk. You also have to keep in mind that a lot of this is political and regulated. Depending on how a government contract swings, it might favor SpaceX or their competitors. [1] http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_Jan06_II.pdf http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages/pdf/AA_Ja... [2] http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/July/Pages/MilitaryLookstoSmallSatellites.aspx http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2010/July/Pag...
- jasongullickson 16y agoThis is extremely cool but I have one question about the website design; what's with using Flash for the headings (I only noticed because I have click-to-flash turned on)?
- burgerbrain 16y agoThe build rocket ships, who cares about their website?
- iwwr 16y agoThis is HN, we care about the website almost as much as the product itself.
- robryan 16y agoNot in this case, would rather they spend the time money making the rockets than the website.
- wanderful 16y agoThey're not mutually exclusive. Most web designers can't make rockets.
- burgerbrain 16y ago"Most web designers can't make rockets." Probably explains why they're not too into hiring web developers...
- lftl 16y agoIt's sIFR - a somewhat older design technique that uses flash to replace bits of text on your site with a custom font. Now that web fonts are more widely supported, and other methods such as Cufon have gained popularity, sIFR isn't used nearly as often. The most perplexing thing about the usage here is that at the size used the font isn't even that interesting. I would have just stuck with Helvetica bold and called it close enough if that's all they wanted.
- jasongullickson 16y agoElon Musk seems to be someone who really knows how to do cool things with the spoils of a successful software company. Are there any other good examples of people like this that have taken one big win and parlayed it into investing in seriously futuristic technology?
- arctangent 16y agoRichard Branson is a good example of an "adventure capitalist". Here is his Wikipedia profile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson Here is the Wikipedia page for his space tourism company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Galactic Also worthy of a mention is Mark Shuttleworth, who was the world's second space tourist (and also the founder of the Ubuntu Foundation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth
- iwwr 16y agoDon't forget Anousheh Ansari: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anousheh_Ansari
- hugh3 16y agoPerhaps the ur-example would be Howard Hughes. Got rich selling drill bits, plunged it all into much more interesting ventures like aeroplanes and motion pictures.
- benologist 16y agoAnd Richard Garriot aka Lord British - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott
- arctangent 16y agoEveryone on the list of space tourists has an interesting past: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism#List_of_flown_space_tourists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism#List_of_flown_spa...
- hugh3 16y agoThere's only one thing I don't like about this, and that's the name. Falcon Heavy? Doesn't sound cool. SpaceX has done an excellent job of coming up with cool-sounding names for everything they do, second only to US muscle car manufacturers of the 1960s. Falcon! Merlin! Draco! They even skipped straight from Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 because the numbers in between just don't sound nearly as cool. But "heavy"? Sure, it's descriptive, but it's boring. Falcon X would be much better. Or Super-Falcon. Or ThunderCougarFalconBird...
- sbierwagen 16y ago"Rocket name"-heavy is standard aerospace nomenclature for uprated rockets, derived from such launch systems being described as "heavy lift" rockets. Since there is no such thing as a casual buyer of a 80 million dollar rocket, how cool the name is doesn't matter at all. It also puzzles me why they're "announcing" this, since a heavy lift version of the Falcon 9 has been planned since day one.
- hugh3 16y agoSince there is no such thing as a casual buyer of a 80 million dollar rocket, how cool the name is doesn't matter at all. You'd think so, and yet SpaceX has always done such a good job of making things sound cool. As Doc Brown says, if you're going to build a time machine out of a car you might as well give it some style. And if you're going to build a huge fricking rocket that goes to space you might as well give it a cool name.
- kragen 16y agoAfter OS X, the Xbox, ActiveX, DirectX, X Windows, the owl on Mr. Rogers, Ecstasy, Xanax, and now SpaceX, aren't you getting a little tired of X yet?
- JshWright 16y agoSkipped the boring numbers? Count the number of engines on first stage of the Falcon 1... now count the number of engines on the first stage of the Falcon 9...
- jcasman 16y agoGreat details, got a chuckle out of the address for questions. sales@spacex.com "Uh, it says here prices range from $80M to $125M. Would you consider going down to $75M?"
- bfe 16y agoThis is excellent. Isn't 53 tonnes to LEO also somewhere around 12 tonnes to the surface of Mars?
- hugh3 16y agoWouldn't be surprised. That'd probably be enough for a sizeable unmanned sample-return mission, though not nearly enough for a manned mission.
- nikcub 16y agoI am totally blown away by how a private company has done this, especially at a cost much lower to what government programs have managed to achieve. I was recently watching a documentary about the early jet era and I remember being amazed at the innovation showed by those at De Havilland, Boeing, DC and thinking 'this would never happen again, everything is too expensive' - and here we have a private company getting us into space at 20% of the cost.
- Adam503 16y agoYou better not let a US military-industrial corporation like Boeing acquire SpaceX. Those low cost launches will disappear instantly.
- nikcub 16y agoThat is a great point. I hope it is structured in such a way so that post-IPO (I assume there will be one) there would be a poison pill of some description to prevent a hostile takeover. They have a number of government contracts now, in the value of billions of dollars. They have only raised $125M total, so they may not need to raise much in an IPO.
- Vitaly 16y agoIt might be the most powerful that can be used now, but it is not the most powerful ever ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia could lift up to 100 tons to LEO in the tested configuration and up to 200 tons in Hercules configuration (which never tested though).