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We have always had too much launch capacity. You will notice that every program estimates prices based on how many launches occur a year, with the price going d

We have always had too much launch capacity. You will notice that every program estimates prices based on how many launches occur a year, with the price going down the more launches there are. Large launch vehicles are less expensive per mass to orbit than small ones. There are huge economies of scale. It isn't that SpaceX has a lot of launch capacity and so fills it with Starlink satellites. SpaceX has a lot of launch capacity because they're launching so many Starlink satellites. They only make large launch vehicles and they can only hit the prices they do if the launch regularly. If they stop manufacturing their own demand the price will rise precipitously. SpaceX is currently subsidized by investor money. The steady state remains to be seen. One of the reasons the Saturn V was discontinued was that there was no need for such a large vehicle. It was cheap per unit mass to orbit but there was not enough demand to justify it.

rbanffy 5y ago
> One of the reasons the Saturn V was discontinued What happens when launching a Saturn-V sized payload becomes cheaper than launching an Atlas V sized one?
- adfgergaehg 5y ago
  If and when that happens I'll re-evaluate. I don't buy the SpaceX marketing about the Starship for a millisecond. (And I'm baffled why a government contractor that isn't publicly-traded is marketing to the public in the first place.)
pixl97 5y ago
>. It was cheap per unit mass to orbit Cheap for whom? Governments with unlimited budgets? It was not cheap for commercial entities designing products for sure.
- adfgergaehg 5y ago
  Cheap by the metric SpaceX is optimizing for, i.e. mass to LEO / price of launch.
- cstross 5y ago
  Saturn V was cancelled in 1968. Back then, there were no commercial entities designing and launching satellites. The first two Telstar comsats were basically international collaborative experiments between national-level telcos; Telstar didn't actually get under way with operational comsats until the 1980s. Similarly, Inmarsat, the maritime comsat company, was founded in 1979. The first GPS prototypes weren't launched until the 1970s, and the civilian use of GPS didn't take off until the late 1980s. And in the 1960s, the only people with Earth Resources Satellites were national-level spy agencies. Short version: civilian space applications barely existed until 1-2 decades after the Saturn V was cancelled. The current efflorescence of communications, positioning, observation/meteorology, and broadcasting satellites were foreseeable and foreseen, but the entire manifest of commercial satellite payloads through 1990 could probably have fitted on top of a single Saturn V (although the need to deliver them to different orbits, over a 30 year period, would have made this a non-starter). Finally, NASA had a program for Apollo science missions (from 1966 onwards), the Apollo Applications Program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program Only two AAP missions eventually flew -- Skylab (plus three crew launches aboard S-IB stacks, and a spare "lifeboat" stack), and the Apollo-Soyuz Mission (IIRC ASM used the "lifeboat" stack for the US flight). The proposed Venus fly-by was cancelled, the Saturn V launcher to carry the Viking Mars lander was cancelled, and so on.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > Finally, NASA had a program for Apollo science missions (from 1966 onwards), the Apollo Applications Program: It kills me every time I remember what could have been. We could already be multiplanetary.
    - cstross 5y ago
      Alternatively, we had a near-miss: given there was a solar maximum around 1972, the Venus flyby would probably have killed the crew (who would have died of radiation sickness weeks from Earth, live on TV). The Viking landers got to Mars and the Voyager probes launched atop Titan III-C anyway: the only real need for Saturn V was for crewed missions in the absence of something cheaper/better/more reusable. (Alas, the Shuttle turned out to be a white elephant with a couple of lethal design flaws.)
codeulike 5y ago
I am still utterly baffled by the way people are impressed by a reusable launch vehicle. This stuff is old hat. This person worked at NASA! They probably worked on systems that were launched on Shuttles! I'm a bit baffled as to how you dont see how Falcon 9 and Starship are different to the shuttle. Much more re-usable, must faster turnaround. And hence much cheaper cost per kg to orbit. Granted that Starship might turn out to not work (Musk likes to gamble, thats what innovation _is_) but even Falcon 9 is reusable in a much more comprehensive way than the SLS ever was.
- macintux 5y ago
  (For anyone else confused like me: codeulike is replying to a different, dead comment by the same person.)
  - avmich 5y ago
    Let me continue here. Henry Spencer at least helped to popularize the idea (if not invented the phrase himself), that Space Shuttle wasn't reusable, but rather refurbishable system. Both 1st stage boosters and 2nd stage engines had to go through detailed inspection and maintenance after each flight.
- nsonha 5y ago
  > old hat to be fair to them the idea is not new and shuttles could not have worked the way Space X rockets do, for that it requires sensors and computing power not available at the time.

rbanffy 5y ago

> One of the reasons the Saturn V was discontinued What happens when launching a Saturn-V sized payload becomes cheaper than launching an Atlas V sized one?

adfgergaehg 5y ago
If and when that happens I'll re-evaluate. I don't buy the SpaceX marketing about the Starship for a millisecond. (And I'm baffled why a government contractor that isn't publicly-traded is marketing to the public in the first place.)

pixl97 5y ago

>. It was cheap per unit mass to orbit Cheap for whom? Governments with unlimited budgets? It was not cheap for commercial entities designing products for sure.

adfgergaehg 5y ago
Cheap by the metric SpaceX is optimizing for, i.e. mass to LEO / price of launch.
cstross 5y ago
Saturn V was cancelled in 1968. Back then, there were no commercial entities designing and launching satellites. The first two Telstar comsats were basically international collaborative experiments between national-level telcos; Telstar didn't actually get under way with operational comsats until the 1980s. Similarly, Inmarsat, the maritime comsat company, was founded in 1979. The first GPS prototypes weren't launched until the 1970s, and the civilian use of GPS didn't take off until the late 1980s. And in the 1960s, the only people with Earth Resources Satellites were national-level spy agencies. Short version: civilian space applications barely existed until 1-2 decades after the Saturn V was cancelled. The current efflorescence of communications, positioning, observation/meteorology, and broadcasting satellites were foreseeable and foreseen, but the entire manifest of commercial satellite payloads through 1990 could probably have fitted on top of a single Saturn V (although the need to deliver them to different orbits, over a 30 year period, would have made this a non-starter). Finally, NASA had a program for Apollo science missions (from 1966 onwards), the Apollo Applications Program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Applications_Program Only two AAP missions eventually flew -- Skylab (plus three crew launches aboard S-IB stacks, and a spare "lifeboat" stack), and the Apollo-Soyuz Mission (IIRC ASM used the "lifeboat" stack for the US flight). The proposed Venus fly-by was cancelled, the Saturn V launcher to carry the Viking Mars lander was cancelled, and so on.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > Finally, NASA had a program for Apollo science missions (from 1966 onwards), the Apollo Applications Program: It kills me every time I remember what could have been. We could already be multiplanetary.
  - cstross 5y ago
    Alternatively, we had a near-miss: given there was a solar maximum around 1972, the Venus flyby would probably have killed the crew (who would have died of radiation sickness weeks from Earth, live on TV). The Viking landers got to Mars and the Voyager probes launched atop Titan III-C anyway: the only real need for Saturn V was for crewed missions in the absence of something cheaper/better/more reusable. (Alas, the Shuttle turned out to be a white elephant with a couple of lethal design flaws.)

codeulike 5y ago

I am still utterly baffled by the way people are impressed by a reusable launch vehicle. This stuff is old hat. This person worked at NASA! They probably worked on systems that were launched on Shuttles! I'm a bit baffled as to how you dont see how Falcon 9 and Starship are different to the shuttle. Much more re-usable, must faster turnaround. And hence much cheaper cost per kg to orbit. Granted that Starship might turn out to not work (Musk likes to gamble, thats what innovation _is_) but even Falcon 9 is reusable in a much more comprehensive way than the SLS ever was.

macintux 5y ago
(For anyone else confused like me: codeulike is replying to a different, dead comment by the same person.)
- avmich 5y ago
  Let me continue here. Henry Spencer at least helped to popularize the idea (if not invented the phrase himself), that Space Shuttle wasn't reusable, but rather refurbishable system. Both 1st stage boosters and 2nd stage engines had to go through detailed inspection and maintenance after each flight.
nsonha 5y ago
> old hat to be fair to them the idea is not new and shuttles could not have worked the way Space X rockets do, for that it requires sensors and computing power not available at the time.