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I really hope that SpaceX gets some serious competition by another partially reusable rocket. We need multiple viable launch providers in the market. I don't t
by throwawayX1 6y ago
I really hope that SpaceX gets some serious competition by another partially reusable rocket. We need multiple viable launch providers in the market.
I don't think this will happen, but that announcement reads a lot like delay announcements that shadow a future cancellation. ('we continue to remain committed ...', 'persuing other opportunities', 'growing market ...' (it isn't) ...)
There are two aspects here:
A) With the way Blue Origin operates, I highly doubt New Glenn can be competitive with Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy financially, at least without heavy discounts funded by Bezos. More so once Falcon Heavy gets the upgraded fairing they are developing for government launches.
Blue might still get some business from the US government and from Starlink competitors that don't want to help fund Spacex, but the market seems very limited. We are already at a point where Falcon 9 can handle most payloads, and there are no commercial use cases for larger payloads on the horizon.
Which brings me to the second point:
If Musks claims for Starship regarding cost and reusability come true, no one will be remotely competitive with that rocket. It's in a whole different league with a huge payload capacity and full (1st + 2nd stage) reusability.
Starship has a chance of reaching orbit maybe late this year, but more likely in 2021. The question is if Bezos will be willing to pump billions into Blue Origin for the 4+ years until they can catch up with their own second generation rocket, currently nicknamed New Armstrong.
A first New Glenn launch would probably mean start of scheduled service in late 2023, at which point Starship might already be launching regularly.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoAmazon's Kuiper constellation and Telesat's Lightspeed constellation are more than enough to ensure viability of New Glenn.
- Iolaum 6y agoWill the end product be competitive if their launch costs are 2+ times the cost of their main competitor?
- bryanlarsen 6y agoThere are enough companies that won't launch on SpaceX because SpaceX is a competitor and enough companies that spread their launch contracts as a kind of insurance that a second vendor could stay viable. But with Blue Origin, ULA, Ariane and Roscosmos fighting for that second spot thats a small number of launches spread over quite a few vendors...
- throwawayX1 6y agoThat's an interesting thing to consider. Unless they subsidize, New Glenn will have to be quite expensive. As the announcement says, they spent 3.5 billion just on a factory and a launchpad, and they are years away from launching. Amazon, as such a high visibility public company, may have a hard time justifying a 2X+ price difference versus launching on Falcons, and for Starship the difference could be significantly more. It's also questionable if Amazon is willing to wait 3 years to get any significant amount of sats into orbit. That will give Starlink a big advantage. Of course SpaceX also has an incentive to delay Kuiper, so they might not bid for it at all, or only provide very limited availability.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoThat 2.5B is sunk costs. They should be pricing based on operating costs and the market, mostly ignoring sunk costs.
- throwawayX1 6y agoSure, my point is that nothing about Blue Origin implies a lean, cost conscious way of operating or that New Glenn will be cheap to build and fly. The money has to come from somewhere. Either it's from Bezos, or it's from launches with a price that won't make it easy to win many customers in the very small market of large payloads.
- wmf 6y agoI guess the optimistic take is that Bezos believes the addressable launch market will be huge enough to amortize multi-billion upfront costs. It's definitely a hail mary.
- pseudosavant 6y ago"If Musks claims for..." Elon makes many claims, most of them never become true, or become true years later than he said. - Full autonomous driving by 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021... He said it was 6 months from release in Jan 2017. That was obviously a complete lie. - You could sleep in your car with Autopilot driving by 2019 - Tesla vehicles will be assets that make you money. "1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020" - Tesla will make a mini-sub in a couple days to save that youth soccer team stuck in an cave - There will be fewer fatalities per million miles if Autopilot is engaged than if it wasn't. Suprise, fatalities/mile is actually higher with Autopilot. - "In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY" - Tesla Roadster would be out by 2020 - Tesla Semis on the road by 2019 - Teslas will be able to swap batteries faster than you could refill an ICE vehicle instead of recharging your battery - Taking Tesla private
- throwawayX1 6y agoIt's notable that non of your quotes concern SpaceX. One should definitely be wary of Musks often inflated / over-optimistic claims, but Starship has a good chance of holding true to most of what was promised.
- shazmosushi 6y agoMusk has claimed imminent 24 hour turnaround times, Red Dragon on Mars every 2 years since 2018, second stage reusability etc. So it's acceptable to have some skepticism that SpaceX intends to drop the Falcon 9's (already very cheap) marginal cost from $1000/kg by 100 times to $10-$20/kg through Starship's fully and rapidly reusable operation. If anyone can do it, it's Elon Musk. But it's good to keep in mind his deep aversion to any sunken cost fallacies.
- garmaine 6y agoRed Dragon was killed by NASA (under congressional pressure), not SpaceX. It was never really being worked on though, more of a proposal.
- Nekhrimah 6y ago> [Blue Origin's] second generation rocket, currently nicknamed New Armstrong. Great post. Just clarifying that New Armstrong will be the third generation, behind New Glenn (second) and New Sheppard (first).
- rst 6y agoWell, if you're counting suborbital vehicles, Blue also had the Goddard research prototype. That said, while Blue will probably have something called New Armstrong if they last long enough, even they may have no clear idea what would bear that name right now. "New Armstrong" is a name that Bezos dropped for a successor at the New Glenn announcement; even if there was some concrete plan attached to it, it may still not be much more substantial than the "Falcon X/Falcon XX" plan that SpaceX presented at a conference in 2010, and ditched fairly soon after. https://spaceflight101.com/spacex-launch-vehicle-concepts-designs/ https://spaceflight101.com/spacex-launch-vehicle-concepts-de...