7 ms·

How does this have any hope competing with SpaceX and their upcoming fully reusable rockets? If they can do it SpaceX will be at least 10x cheaper than everyone

by jp555 12y ago

How does this have any hope competing with SpaceX and their upcoming fully reusable rockets? If they can do it SpaceX will be at least 10x cheaper than everyone else. It says of the Angara-A5: "the payload section had a mass of 25,766 kilograms", which is a bit more than the Falcon Heavy GTO payload, but does not detail how much of that is payload and rocket.

smackfu 12y ago
Well, the Falcon Heavy has yet to launch, and SpaceX has yet to reuse a rocket. Someday, SpaceX may be 10x cheaper, but until then...
- jp555 12y ago
  Good point.
  - lafar6502 12y ago
    Well, it would be worth establishing 10 times cheaper than what. I mean, it would be very naive to believe that SpaceX will charge 10% of what customers pay elsewhere to get their stuff into space.
    - jp555 12y ago
      SpaceX's reusable rocket cost is divided by hundreds of rocket-launches rather than a single launch when a disposable rocket is used.
    - adventured 12y ago
      The simple counter to that is: volume. If my competition earns $1 per X, and I earn $0.10 per X, but I'm selling ten times as many of X, then I'm not particularly upset about my circumstances. It's the Walmart retail model. Yes it takes them $476 billion in sales to reach $16 billion in profit, but they still do it.
- maaku 12y ago
  The Falcon 9 is already 5x - 10x cheaper than the competition.
  - twelve40 12y ago
    Can you please explain where this came from. Soyuz-U 7 ton payload to LEO is about $50 mil. Falcon 9 with 13 ton payload to LEO Wikipedia lists as $61.2M cost per launch. http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm
    - maaku 12y ago
      I was comparing with ULA, and should have clarified I meant Falcon 9h ($85 million). The domestic competition for that is Delta 4 Heavy ($435 million).
Lambdanaut 12y ago
I noticed that they didn't specify a limit on the payload mass too. Wikipedia says the entire family of Angara are to launch between "3,800 and 24,500 kg into low Earth orbit". There isn't a definite listing of the GEO orbit capacity, but we know it's going to be a fraction of the mass to LEO. It seems the Falcon Heavy will have more capacity to GTO.
- twelve40 12y ago
  Wikipedia lists Angara A5 as 5.4 t to GTO in one configuration (Briz-M), and 7.5 t in another configuration. Falcon Heavy is listed at 21.2 t GTO. For cost, couldn't find estimates for Angara, but to compare Falcon Heavy with Proton (same GTO payload capacity as Angara, ancient tech): Falcon Heavy: $85M per launch for up to 6,400 kg to GTO Proton/Block DM: $95M per launch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_%28rocket_family%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_%28rocket_family%29 http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I don't think it needs to compete with SpaceX, the Russians want a reliable heavy lift capability, the Proton is an older generation rocket so they bring it up to date. Unlike the US (who was willing to give up all human launch capability to a third party) I don't see the Russians as a country that would leave a capability niche unfilled by a local source. That said, I'm a bit surprised they haven't integrated some of the same things SpaceX is doing (like N+1 capability in the engines vs single engine boosters) as those seem to be generally solid advancements in the state of the art of rocketry.
- Intermernet 12y ago
  I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the Russians were experimenting with multi-engine boosters back in the 1950's - 1960's. The planned and canned (in 2011) Rus-M vehicle was to use 3 x RD-180 engines for the first stage, but the complexity seemed to be not worth the gains. >"We have come to the conclusion that we do not need a new rocket, we can continue using those we already have," said Vladimir Popovkin, head of Russia's space agency [1] I love that rocket development seems to be one of the areas where safety is a balance between redundancy and simplicity. If you put 3 highly-explosive engines with a low probability of failure next to each-other, you don't get redundancy unless you really control the failure modes :-) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus-M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus-M
jccooper 12y ago
That's a question for practically every existing launcher family, and none of them have yet to express a decent plan to handle SpaceX. Angara, perhaps, can survive as the "Russian launcher", for national payloads that they don't want to rely on an American company for. Angara's RD-191 apparently can throttle down to an impressive 30%, so perhaps they could manage to "hover-slam" land their stages similarly to Falcon (though it'd be harder). But Russian speed in aerospace development isn't high right now, so it'd take a while.
fallingmeat 12y ago
Yeah look, I get all the criticism. Point is, can this mutherfucker hover and land ass-down? That's all we want to see.

by jp555 12y ago

smackfu 12y ago

Well, the Falcon Heavy has yet to launch, and SpaceX has yet to reuse a rocket. Someday, SpaceX may be 10x cheaper, but until then...

jp555 12y ago
Good point.
- lafar6502 12y ago
  Well, it would be worth establishing 10 times cheaper than what. I mean, it would be very naive to believe that SpaceX will charge 10% of what customers pay elsewhere to get their stuff into space.
  - jp555 12y ago
    SpaceX's reusable rocket cost is divided by hundreds of rocket-launches rather than a single launch when a disposable rocket is used.
  - adventured 12y ago
    The simple counter to that is: volume. If my competition earns $1 per X, and I earn $0.10 per X, but I'm selling ten times as many of X, then I'm not particularly upset about my circumstances. It's the Walmart retail model. Yes it takes them $476 billion in sales to reach $16 billion in profit, but they still do it.
maaku 12y ago
The Falcon 9 is already 5x - 10x cheaper than the competition.
- twelve40 12y ago
  Can you please explain where this came from. Soyuz-U 7 ton payload to LEO is about $50 mil. Falcon 9 with 13 ton payload to LEO Wikipedia lists as $61.2M cost per launch. http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm
  - maaku 12y ago
    I was comparing with ULA, and should have clarified I meant Falcon 9h ($85 million). The domestic competition for that is Delta 4 Heavy ($435 million).

Lambdanaut 12y ago

I noticed that they didn't specify a limit on the payload mass too. Wikipedia says the entire family of Angara are to launch between "3,800 and 24,500 kg into low Earth orbit". There isn't a definite listing of the GEO orbit capacity, but we know it's going to be a fraction of the mass to LEO. It seems the Falcon Heavy will have more capacity to GTO.

twelve40 12y ago
Wikipedia lists Angara A5 as 5.4 t to GTO in one configuration (Briz-M), and 7.5 t in another configuration. Falcon Heavy is listed at 21.2 t GTO. For cost, couldn't find estimates for Angara, but to compare Falcon Heavy with Proton (same GTO payload capacity as Angara, ancient tech): Falcon Heavy: $85M per launch for up to 6,400 kg to GTO Proton/Block DM: $95M per launch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_%28rocket_family%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_%28rocket_family%29 http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm http://www.astronautix.com/articles/costhing.htm
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I don't think it needs to compete with SpaceX, the Russians want a reliable heavy lift capability, the Proton is an older generation rocket so they bring it up to date. Unlike the US (who was willing to give up all human launch capability to a third party) I don't see the Russians as a country that would leave a capability niche unfilled by a local source. That said, I'm a bit surprised they haven't integrated some of the same things SpaceX is doing (like N+1 capability in the engines vs single engine boosters) as those seem to be generally solid advancements in the state of the art of rocketry.

Intermernet 12y ago
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the Russians were experimenting with multi-engine boosters back in the 1950's - 1960's. The planned and canned (in 2011) Rus-M vehicle was to use 3 x RD-180 engines for the first stage, but the complexity seemed to be not worth the gains. >"We have come to the conclusion that we do not need a new rocket, we can continue using those we already have," said Vladimir Popovkin, head of Russia's space agency [1] I love that rocket development seems to be one of the areas where safety is a balance between redundancy and simplicity. If you put 3 highly-explosive engines with a low probability of failure next to each-other, you don't get redundancy unless you really control the failure modes :-) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus-M http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus-M

jccooper 12y ago

That's a question for practically every existing launcher family, and none of them have yet to express a decent plan to handle SpaceX. Angara, perhaps, can survive as the "Russian launcher", for national payloads that they don't want to rely on an American company for. Angara's RD-191 apparently can throttle down to an impressive 30%, so perhaps they could manage to "hover-slam" land their stages similarly to Falcon (though it'd be harder). But Russian speed in aerospace development isn't high right now, so it'd take a while.

fallingmeat 12y ago

Yeah look, I get all the criticism. Point is, can this mutherfucker hover and land ass-down? That's all we want to see.