I’ve been waiting for this for a while. This is a really good market niche. And being human spaceflight capable is also really good.
Peter Beck, who once claimed he’d eat his hat if they made a reusable rocket, sure made a big 180 on the topic, and I couldn’t be happier! Speaking of, watch the announcement video: https://youtu.be/agqxJw5ISdk
I’m also GLAD they copied the Falcon 9 design (which is as old as scifi and was demonstrated by DC-X and Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace) for the first stage landing concept. Better to use what works instead of just making a novel approach just for the sake of novelty or Not Invented Here. Rockets ought to land on a pillar of flame like God and Heinlein (EDIT: and apparently the Soviet Cosmists) intended: https://youtu.be/TdSxDNnqRlo
Also, RocketLab has a TON of ex-SpaceXer employees... I’ve long said that the high churn (for aerospace, but not any higher than typical tech company) of SpaceX, while not necessarily really good for SpaceX, is really good for the industry as a whole.
Elon Musk is really shooting for a self-sustaining city on Mars and SpaceX is his part of working towards that goal. He really is happy for competition and wishes there was more of it. He has stated that he is sometimes concerned that SpaceX has too many of the best people. With these other rocket companies doing well and drawing top talent, he is probably less concerned about that at this point.
He started out trying to blow some money to get a green house to Mars. His goal was to get enough interest to start another space race to Mars. If someone else gets there first I think he has achieved his original goal.
Rocket Lab is an excellent company that makes innovative rockets: flying electric pump fed engines, carbon fiber frames and 3D printed Inconel engines all the way to orbit. They've achieved a high flight rate and a nice niche for themselves in a area where SpaceX themselves have moved away from.
Rocket Lab deserves the praise it receives. More so than Blue Origin, an older company whith grander ambitions but has been unable to execute on anything beyond a few small scale suborbital hops. Their methalox BE-4 engine is admittedly pretty cool though.
It seems Blue Origin has gone almost full SLS with their New Glenn. So different from SpaceX.
The approaches could not be more different:
1. spend a lot of money on first-time-right, making no money in the process and having all risk at the end (while trying to lower it on paper). Big kudos to BO if sticks the first landing (my bet is that the first will not land OK)
vs
2. Design for first-time-close enough, spend a lot of money on many relatively cheap-ish prototypes that get blown up but improve each time. While making money with a less (but still) ambitious design
But BO has some beautiful factories built for New Glenn, whereas SpaceX is building Starship in tents. Elon says that the factory is 10-100x as hard as the prototype, so New Glenn must be way ahead of Starship, right? /s
I think what Elon wants, money alone can't buy. It's taking him time and effort, as well as money, to help humans to become a multi-planetary species. This drive is why I've been a fan of Elon for so long.
Look at all the other billionaires: This is just simply not true. They can never have enough. Their net worth is a high score to them and is an end unto itself.
I'm sure he's motivated by other stuff too but he's very clearly also motivated by wealth accumulation to some degree.
My take is Elon's goals on wealth accumulation are so that he can put capital back into the projects he cares about - he isn't accumulating for the sake of wealth.
I would argue that many of the billionaire class (outside of wall street) are more interested in their projects and goals than strictly capital accumulation. Especially those who have signed off on donating a majority of their wealth after their death.
Honestly it was a lazy comment and I should've deleted it. Rather than derail this thread with an argument about Musk, I genuinely encourage you to downvote that comment (if you hadn't already replied to it I'd delete it).
Absolutely no one would have ever suggested that electric cars and rockets were the way to become rich. Instead back when he invested in and or started these companies people would have told him it was a quick way to become poor. I really dont think he was ever seeking becoming the richest person in the world.
He didn't start Tesla and SpaceX was possible because of NASA's program to create a market for a private space industry. Both are heavily government subsidized enterprises. If I was a betting man, building government subsidized companies does not seem like a way to become poor.
It is pretty risky publicly betting on some technological progress not happening :) At least if no known laws of physics would be broken by achieving said progress.
"In 1979, Les Blank took a detour to film German filmmaker Werner Herzog honoring a vow he made to Errol Morris that he (Herzog) would eat his shoe if Morris ever actually made one of his films he was forever talking about. Stung to action, Morris directed Gates of Heaven and Herzog, true to his word, returned to Berkeley to consume one of his desert boots at the UC Theater. Blank's film documents Herzog's strongly expressed belief that people must have the gutts to attempt what they dream of."
He showed it. I take the video to be accurate (he really did eat a small part, but not the whole thing), and not misleading. I’ve eaten much worse. Now if only more people would be as willing to correct course when their previous opinion was proven incorrect. This alone is one reason I really like Peter Beck.
Scott Alexander at least chomped on his hat in response to this 2017 incident involving Maciej Ceglowski:
> 12. (4/9/17) G.K Chesterton On AI Risk was an April Fools’ joke and not meant seriously. But it did criticize Maciej Ceglowski’s piece where he accused singularitarians of not caring enough about the poor. The fake Chesterton of the piece said that if Ceglowski himself gave to charity at the same level as the people he was criticizing, he would “eat his hat”. Ceglowski pointed out that he does indeed give a lot of money to charity, including a $15,000 donation last year. Under the circumstances, I felt honor-bound to eat my hat and post a video of it on Twitter.
I think you intended to link to a different video showing rockets landing on pillars of flames. Can you edit your comment or drop the real video link because I’m very intrigued?
It's nothing yet except for a statement of intention: we aspire to become the next SpaceX and hope to raise the interest of investors that can't access SpaceX stock. There is no talk about the engines, it's quite clear that the Rutherford won't cut it (Electron already uses 9 of them). So they have to either buy or develop an engine, expensive in time or money.
The mega-constellation sweet spot argument is not really convincing, if you have a reusable mega rocket with a relightable second stage (like SpaceX plans), you can hit multiple planes in a single launch. The 8 ton class is probably just the largest they can afford to plan at this stage.
I disagree. For mega constellations it’s about cost per kg to orbit, and for reusable it’s about launch rate. If you build too big, your launch rate isn’t high enough to get the full advantage of reuse.
I think Starship is awesome, but even Falcon 9 is so big it leaves some room for something a bit smaller.
8 tons is in the Soyuz/R7 range, which is what the other megaconstellation is using. And it has had well over 1000 launches and still holds the record (in the 70s and 80s) of the most number of launches per year for a single rocket type, which makes it a good target class for size of a reusable rocket.
8 tons is about where Falcon 9 v1.0 started out, by the way. How many customers wish they had that built the smaller falcon 5.
Additionally, a smaller rocket is useful for some human spaceflight applications. If you only need to launch two astronauts in orbit to fix a satellite, it’d be nice to have a smaller rocket option. An 8 ton first stage reusable rocket is also big enough to eventually have a reusable upper stage and still carry a a couple astronauts, their space suits, a small (Gemini-sized) vehicle (possibly integrated with the reusable upper stage), and some tools and parts to repair the satellite. Launch costs could in principle be less than $1 million, which is about the propellant costs alone for Starship.
Starship is awesome. But we don’t have JUST 757s and 777s. We also have smaller utility aircraft.
I’ve long thought that something just under 10 tons, partially or fully reusable, is a good market opportunity. Makes a lot more sense than tiny rockets for megaconstellations.
> Starship is awesome. But we don’t have JUST 757s and 777s. We also have smaller utility aircraft.
This, and the rest of your comment, is quite reasonable.
What it mostly comes down to is $/kg -> orbit. I know Musk constantly over-promises, but there's at least a good chance that Starship/Superheavy will get their total per launch cost below a million dollars. Perhaps well below that. Gwynne Shotwell, someone known for being almost infinitely more realistic than Musk, has stated multiple times that she firmly believes Starship will become a viable on-Earth passenger/cargo carrier.
And that can only happen if a Starship/Superheavy total launch/mission cost is on the order of a long-haul aircraft. That is, well less than a million dollars.
It's also possible that the fundamental physics of Earth surface -> LEO in a fully re-usable way can only be done with large machines. As an analogy: I'm not aware of any 'not large' machines that can transport anything economically across Earth's oceans. The physics, as I understand it, just don't allow it.
Having said all that, I love the hell out of all of the innovation and potential competition coming around in this area. That's the best way to really test the assumptions (many of which I've just stated) that might be holding us back.
An Airbus A380 is the closest comparable aircraft to Starship. It can handle about 82,000 liters of fuel. Until the last 5 years or so, jet fuel fuel was $3/gallon (peaking at $4/gallon) in the US, higher in Europe and Asia. It’d need about 3 or 4 refuelings to travel to the other side of the world and back with about the same payload as Starship. That’s about $1 million worth of fuel.
The rental price to charter an A380 to the other side of the world and back is about $1.3million not counting fuel or the time spent on the ground fueling and going to/from charter location.
So I’d say a couple million per Starship launch would be on the order of a long-haul aircraft price. Still has plenty of room for smaller and cheaper per-launch fully reusable rockets.
> Still has plenty of room for smaller and cheaper per-launch fully reusable rockets.
Upon further reflection, I'm getting more on board with this, with two big relevant factors: first, how quickly can these new companies work out the fully reusable mojo. SpaceX is clearly many years ahead, but having a predecessor company actually demonstrating a technology surely makes it somewhat easier to re-implement. Second: back to the physics. I don't have a good intuition for this, but I do hope that it's physically possible to efficiently do small scale orbital transport.
One way or another, I'm happy as can be that there are smart people (outside of SpaceX/Blue Origin) really pressing into this problem.
Suborbital point-to-point transport using a StarShip does not require a booster. You only need a booster stage if you need to accelerate to orbital velocities. That brings the cost down dramatically.
A major reason the StarShip is going to be more affordable per launch than a Falcon 9 is that the StarShip is (planned to be) 100% reusable. Falcon 9 (and Electron) always disposes of its 2nd stage.
Hopefully other launch companies can provide 100% reusable alternatives to StarShip just in the name of diversity and planetary capacity. Musk points out that larger ships have an advantage here due to volume vs surface area and the fixed weight cost of avionics.
Ninety nine times out of ten, launching two humans into orbit to fix a satellite is going to cost you a lot more than just launching a replacement satellite.
The number of one-off, irreplaceable, you-have-to-fix-them-if-they-break satellites currently in orbit can be counted on one finger.
As launch costs go down, this is not going to change.
Yes it will. When costs change by orders of magnitude, trades change. Space hardware will always have some non-trivial cost, just like how equipment on the ground still has significant cost in spite of low logistics costs. As reuse lowers cost of space access by orders of magnitude, the relative cost of trashing vs fixing changes dramatically. When the space hardware costs 100x more than the launch, then it makes sense to fix than to trash.
Also, astronauts are MUCH faster at assembly than robots.
1. From the ground, you have no idea what is wrong with the satellite, whether or not the problem is fixable, and even if it is, what exact tooling/replacement parts need to be brought up.
2. Satellites are not designed to be easily taken apart.
3. Doing any kind of technical work in a spacesuit is incredibly difficult.
The extra cost of building your satellite with sufficient self-diagnostics, with a design that lets someone in a spacesuit take it apart and conduct meaningful repairs on it is going to be paid every single time you launch that satellite. This cost, in both design, and engineering is not trivial.
And the only time you'll ever get any value from it is if you go ahead and do another, even more expensive space launch - this time human-rated. This launch is likely to head on up, and discover that no, they don't have the right tools, replacement parts, or even ability to access the broken parts of the satellite.
The overwhelming cost of a satellite is the R&D that goes into designing it. If space launches are cheap, the correct economics to follow are "Just build two of them, and if the first one breaks, launch the second one."
> Additionally, a smaller rocket is useful for some human spaceflight applications. If you only need to launch two astronauts in orbit to fix a satellite, it’d be nice to have a smaller rocket option.
That's a nice theory. But that requires an actual capsule that is capable of all of these things. If you want to repair a sat, you need a EVA suit and so on.
Its very unlikely to be cheaper to repair a sat with human, then to simply launch another one, or launch a human controlled robot.
Also, such a capsule does not exist, and if SpaceX is any indication, development of such a capsule would cost 1-2 billion at least, do do it according to NASA spec.
RocketLab does not have that kind of money and I don't see NASA or private financing come up with that.
> Starship is awesome. But we don’t have JUST 757s and 777s. We also have smaller utility aircraft.
While that is true, its not an analog. From Starship once you are in Orbit you can do all that stuff too.
There are already companies like Momentus and others who whole business is to make connecting flights.
RocketLab might be in a good position to be 'second best' and launch stuff that people don't want to put on SpaceX rockets. They will have to compete with New Glenn for that.
I wish them luck.
Where they will get an engine that capable, in that short a time is also really questionable to me. Maybe they are already deep in development, but it doesn't seem like it.
But we do have just airplanes that are 100% reusable. So far, Rocket Lab only talks about reusing the first stage; second-stage reuse is hard, and a huge cost savings.
But maybe until Starship gets the launch rate to reach its potential, there's room for smaller rockets with disposable upper stages. SpaceX is banking on the space industry expanding well beyond megaconstellations, but that will take a few years. By the time we get there, maybe other companies will manage reusable upper stages too.
Right. Having a decent sized reusable first stage on Neutron gives RocketLab the option of a reusable upper stage down the road. It’s pretty tough to justify going for full reuse before you have even accomplished partial reuse. Something similar to the recovery method of Electron’s first stage would be appropriate for a reusable upper stage. (And at one time, SpaceX was planning it for Falcon 9’s upper stage... ballute/heatshield and parachute for Falcon 9 upper stage recovery).
On the contrary, there are MORE viable methods for reuse with a smaller vehicle. They can do mid-air recovery with such an upper stage, for instance, but no hope of that with a Starship-sized upper stage.
I doubt that. SpaceX was going to make Falcon 9 fully reusable, and it wouldn’t have been crippling. Might be too small to launch a full crewed Dragon or 60 Starlinks, but I doubt if its payload would’ve even been halved compared to partial reuse.
>> The mega-constellation sweet spot ... multiple planes in a single launch.
Mega-constellations are exactly the type of project that doesn't need multiple planes. They require multiple sat in each plane, meaning one rocket full of small sats can go to one plane and dump them all. I suspect something has been lost in translation. I think they mean to say that the relightable engines will allow access to different altitudes on a single launch, multiple orbits within a single plane.
Inclination changes are expensive, so if you want different inclinations, it almost always makes sense to use a separate launch vehicle for each inclination you want to target.
However, the longitude of the ascending node (Ω) is perturbed by the earth's oblateness, and the rate of Ω precession is a function of the semi-latus rectum (p) and the inclination (i). If you adjust the orbit altitude to tweak p, you can adjust the precession rate to swing the plane around to where you want it.
This takes a while (months), and you of course need some sort of propulsion on the spacecraft to return you to your target altitude after the maneuver, but if the launch vehicle can drop you into the higher/lower altitude above/below the target plane rather than doing that on-board the spacecraft, the delta-v cost is halved.
I would call that on-orbit maneuvers rather than part of the launch process. This rocket will drop the sat off at the contracted orbit and fly away. Multiple engine firings will mean separate customers can get at best separate altitudes.
Rutherford is really reliable. Why not use like 27 of them? Is there some reason that this is inherently bad?
It would probably be less efficient to use lots of small engines, but perhaps the reduced cost of using an already existing engine that you can mass produce would make up for it.
Its not the number of engines that is the problem.
The problem is how efficient is your engine, how is the Trust-to-Weight ratio.
To do a reusable launcher you need to be really damn efficient on every part of the rocket. Elon explains this pretty well in the talks he gave around 2014.
Tangent: a lot of the rocky planets we have found in the universe are larger than Earth.
With Earth's gravity is seems like we are just barely able to make a reusable launch system by pushing the physics of chemical propulsion to its limits. Better technology can only help so much. We are already close to the limits of physics for things like rocket efficiency, material masses, etc.
Make Earth even say 10% bigger than we'd never be able to build reusable chemical rockets. Make it even bigger still and disposable chemical rockets might be infeasible, making nuclear propulsion the only viable way to get out of your gravity well. A nuclear first stage launching from inside your biosphere is not a great idea, and making nuclear rockets reusable is harder than making chemical rockets reusable. Keep increasing gravity and it only gets exponentially harder still. At some point any kind of space flight become impractical even if you're willing to irradiate yourself.
But... make a planet smaller than Earth and pretty soon you start to have trouble holding onto an atmosphere! Look at what happened to Mars.
This could be yet another Fermi paradox answer. Earth may be right on a knife edge between too small to have a long term stable biosphere and too big to get off the thing!
Of course maybe an intelligence would eventually develop a propulsion system that could crawl out of a super-Earth gravity well using something like nuclear fusion or microwave beamed power, so who knows... it's just another possibility.
> A nuclear first stage launching from inside your biosphere is not a great idea
I disagree. There are nuclear rocket designs that don't have radioactive exhaust.
Sure, its a little bit of a problem if it explodes, but not to bad.
And actually if you do that, then you are much better set up for deep space exploration.
> and making nuclear rockets reusable is harder than making chemical rockets reusable
Not sure that is actually true. I don't see a reason why something like a NERVA engine should be just as reusable as any chemical engine.
We have way to much fear of radiation. We should be already living in the nuclear age.
Given that NERVA was a 1960 engine I don't think that answer works for Fermi, specially given how many more smaller planets there are (we just have not found them).
Read the launch history most of it the engines weren't the problem. *edit control was the problem, it just happens to be connected to parts of the engines.
I read a paper that indicated you can build them to any arbitrary size. Electric feed pump designs don't get worse as they get bigger. But turbo pumps have better performance at large sizes than electric feed pumps.
However the paper also assumed a fixed weigh battery pack. On the second stage electron tosses one of it's battery packs overboard. Also raw performance isn't as critical for the first stage.
One other thing, electric feed has much simpler plumbing than a turbo pump feed.
Interesting, do you have a link to that paper? I guess the regular engines that are running inefficient fuel cycles to power the fuel pumps aren't too weight efficient either, due to the inefficiencies of these fuel cycles. Interesting why this approach wasn't tried earlier.
If I remember correctly simple turbo pump feed engines have to run using a lot of excess fuel. Simple designs just dump the turbine exhaust overboard. That represents a fair amount of wasted energy. Advanced designs feed the exhaust back into the engine. I think they also scavenge some energy from cooling the nozzle.
IMO the reason that Rocket Lab is doing an eight tonne rocket is not because of the market for mega constellations. It's because 8 tonnes is about the minimum size for a fully reusable rocket. You need a rocket big enough to launch all the propellant and shields needed for landing and still have room for payload. And so the bigger the rocket, the more margin you have.
Once fully reusable, costs drop dramatically, so I wouldn't be surprised if the price of Neutron is similar to that of Electron. Who would use a small launch vehicle when a medium one is the same price, giving you a lot more room for maneuver propellant.
This is the size of Falcon 9 v1.0, and they once believed full reusability was possible.
Edit: they haven't announced full reusability. But I believe they're working on it.
Edit 2: I still don't believe mega-constellations are the reason for Neutron. It being the minimum size for full reusability could be one, but another explanation is it being the minimum size for human space flight.
Second stage reusability on the Rocket Lab Neutron will be much easier than the Falcon 9 because the carbon fiber frame doesn't need a heatshield. I may be wrong on this, but I believe they can just slam the second stage into the atmosphere and bring it back without even a re-entry burn, like they already do with their first stage.
If Rocket Lab achieve second stage reusability while delivering a lot of payload to orbit it would be revolutionary. Like it will take hundreds of flights for a Starship to become as cost competitive to just a few flights of the Neutron rocket.
If I was SpaceX, I would be worried. Rocket Lab is SpaceX's most fearsome competitor.
> Second stage reusability on the Rocket Lab Neutron will be much easier than the Falcon 9 because the carbon fiber frame doesn't need a heatshield. I may be wrong on this, but I believe they can just slam the second stage into the atmosphere and bring it back without even a re-entry burn, like they already do with their first stage.
That is very much wrong. A second stage always needs a heat shield, and a lot of it too. In fact, Starship moved away from carbon fiber partly BECAUSE it performance in heat.
And we don't know if Neutron is carbon fiber, doesn't look like it from the picture.
> If Rocket Lab achieve second stage reusability while delivering a lot of payload to orbit it would be revolutionary.
They have not even announced that they are working on that. They are planning for first stage re-usability in 2024.
Lets not jump to wild conclusions.
If anybody is gone achieve second stage re-usability anytime soon its SpaceX Starship.
> If I was SpaceX, I would be worried. Rocket Lab is SpaceX's most fearsome competitor.
Actually no. RocketLab is not a competitor in any meaningful way. The whole history of launches on RocketLab rockets could fit easily without in a single Falcon 9 rocket.
The have now announced that they might have something in 2024 that might compete with the price of Falcon 9 for some applications. And that is likely gone slip like most rockets do.
And if you make the argument that RocketLab is the best competitor of SpaceX that just shows how absurdly far away removed from everybody else SpaceX is.
Good point on the carbon fiber thing. I forgot it's max operating temperature is 150 degrees Celsius (bursting to 180 degrees), while stainless steel can go to 820-870 degrees Celsius.
Rocket Lab never wanted to do first stage recover on the Electron, but they later chose to and have succeeded in soft ocean landings under parachutes and will soon try and catch the parachutes with helicopters.
I fully expect they're are running the numbers on second stage reusability but unlike SpaceX [1] they don't tend to announce things until they are sure that's what they will pursue.
Rocket Lab only promised the Neutron will do 8,000kg to low-Earth orbit, and people are suggesting the rocket tanks can be stretched for added performance.
If SpaceX wasn't pursuing Starship they would continue to spend resources on second stage reusability for the Falcon 9. Even less than 2 years ago Elon Musk was still talking about using a ballute to recover the Falcon 9 second stage [1], but they later decided to put all their resources into the Starship.
But yeah 2024 far enough away that Starship (and New Glenn) should be operational by then, so the competitive landscape may be different. But that's all the more reason for Rocket Lab to pursue second stage reusability.
The good thing about the first stage is that you can go 'ass' first and fly the rocket threw a corridor of relativity ok environment.
The problem with second stage re-usability is that it is like 25x harder then first stage.
> Rocket Lab only promised the Neutron will do 8,000kg to low-Earth orbit, and people are suggesting the rocket tanks can be stretched for added performance.
Like the Falcon did too.
> If SpaceX wasn't pursuing Starship they would continue to spend resources on second stage reusability for the Falcon 9. Even less than 2 years ago Elon Musk was still talking about using a ballute to recover the Falcon 9 second stage [1], but they later decided to put all their resources into the Starship.
Yeah but a big part of that choice was that they realized they would reduce their payload so much it not really worth it in the majority of cases.
> But that's all the more reason for Rocket Lab to pursue second stage reusability.
Agree overall. Personally I am kind of a fan of the idea to try to reuse them in Orbit. I think there are a couple interesting things that could potentially be done.
So what changed to make re-usable rockets reality? Is there a specific advance in materials science or computing that made this possible not just for SpaceX but other companies too? Or is it just an array of advances in a variety of fields that came together?
Propulsive landing has been possible since the 70s. But cheap and easily available sensors (especially but not exclusively navigation--gyroscopes, accelerators, altimeters, GPS), cheap and light high-performance compute hardware, and existing packaged software and other advances in stuff like convex optimization and fluid dynamics make a real difference in practicality of doing so, both on the rocket and during design.
There's also significant improvements in metallurgy that make it easier to do things like long-life turbopumps, carbon-fiber composites help with mass fraction, CNC machining and additive manufacturing that make complicated parts affordable, and other such things that also help. But really it's pocket-sized sense-and-compute that really kicked off the low-cost retro-propulsion thing.
Also, SpaceX being the first to demonstrate it was feasible. There were naysayers even after they landed their first booster in December of 2015. ("refurbishment will cost too much!")
Now that SpaceX regularly flying a booster 5 times or more and have at least 10 boosters in the fleet, the only people arguing that reusable space hardware is not worth doing are people with a vested interest in old-space-hardware designs.
That argument really doesn't work. Most of those censors are needed in orbital rocket too.
Shuttle software was far more complex then Falcon 9 and it runs on 70s computers.
GPS is not really needed, its just there as a backup. Launching on a ship might be tricky, but on land you can target a pretty big landing area.
> advances in stuff like convex optimization and fluid dynamics make a real difference in practicality of doing so, both on the rocket and during design.
True, but if you do more iterations on first stages that you drop into the ocean anyway, you can build design and iterate.
Shuttle didn't fail because of they could figure out reentry conditions.
> There's also significant improvements in metallurgy that make it easier to do things like long-life turbopumps, carbon-fiber composites help with mass fraction,
SpaceX uses very little carbon fiber.
There is truth to the improvements in metallurgy but its not metal issue that caused the RS-25 to not work well in practice is not really the metal.
> CNC machining and additive manufacturing that make complicated parts affordable
While true, that makes the benefit of making it reusable even more worth it.
It seems to me that SpaceX simple had the right design and the right setup to test and iterate. There was nothing fundamentally stopping NASA from doing this instead of the Shuttle. Nobody else even tried to make a reusable rocket.
I would argue this could have been done in the 70s and it would have worked nearly as well.
Yes; someone willing and able to try was also a missing ingredient. None of the incumbents seemed interested in trying anything particularly different (and for the most part, still aren't) so who knows how long we'd have waited for a new stab at reusable launch without SpaceX.
NASA is a government agency. It isn't in governments' interest to lower the cost to orbit since the space-capable large governments enjoy a monopoly on space when it is expensive. Once NASA opened up commercial resupply contracting, a door opened a crack for people and organizations without a similar monopoly interest and with ideas for cost reduction.
It was possible. Like others have commented already, it's much more affordable to do that today, given sensors, computing and advances on our understanding of the whole field. But given large enough pockets, I'm pretty sure by the time we had the capability to build Space Shuttles, we could do reusable rockets instead.
There's one point I would like to add. This is something that's very difficult to do for well established companies. They tend to have their workhorse rockets - which were NOT designed with reusability in mind. Modifying these rockets is not feasible in many cases. Even when it is, it may not be cost effective. So the usual solution is to design a new "reusable rocket program".
Now, the problem with such a program is: the success criteria is reusability. If the new rocket cannot be put into service quickly enough and demonstrates reusability successfully, it will be scrapped. If it delivers payloads just fine but can't land (or can land but refurbishment is costly), it will be a failure. After all, on one hand you have a working system, which is generating revenue. On the other, you have a problematic R&D program that's draining resources and engineering cycles for the promise of potential savings. They end up getting scrapped on the first resource crunch.
SpaceX was developing their rocket. Their success criteria was that it would deliver payloads into orbit. Given that they started from scratch and had no existing workhorse, they also added reusability as a goal and designed the rocket to allow for that. If it achieved reusability, great! If not, it's just another single-use rocket. They also got "early" adopters, companies that were willing to launch their payloads on SpaceX, on new rocket designs, that only had a handful of flights. So they were, by definition, a little less risk-averse.
On every flight, SpaceX got closer and closer to the reusability goal. But that didn't matter to most customers (they would pay for new boosters anyway), because that part of the mission happened after their payload was already on its way by the second stage, so who cares what happens to the first. All the while cementing their reputation.
In essence, SpaceX got companies to finance the R&D for the reusable boosters, because they only had one rocket. If they tried to start with a single-use rocket, and then created a "Falcon 9-reuse" version, they would have faced the same difficulties. Namely, who would fly on the untested new design?
Rocketlabs might be able to pull it off still, because - while it's a new booster - it's also one that's intended to increase their capabilities (much like Spaceship), it's not just a "reusable rocket program". If it can't be reused, then it's a more expensive rocket, but one that still adds value.
Starship moved to tiles too, instead of transpirational cooling, it will likely require refurbishment.
If shuttle had continued on tile inspection could have likely moved to machine vision based approaches, maybe they will be able to use something like that to keep refurb costs down on spacex's shuttle/starship.
They are created with better materials and also do not require special one offs for every single tile, unlike the shuttle.
Replacement is supposed to be "break it and attach a new one" without needing special glues, curing times which was the reason why shuttle heat shield refurbishment took so long at high cost.
That sounds like an improvement, but not enough for passenger air travel replacement between the cost of coach and business class (New York to shanghai), promised for 7 years from now. They need many orders of magnitude of reliability improvements over shuttle for that, though it would be slightly suborbital reentry.
The Dear Moon mission in a couple years will have full reentry at extreme speeds, assuming they weren't just ripping off that Japanese billionaire guy. I think they still planned transpirational cooling at that point?
Dragon was supposed to have at least one mission to Mars every transfer period from 2020 onwards and that seems to have been scrapped.
I dont understand where this comment is coming from. What sources are you using the make the cost claims you are making and/or the reliability requirements and/or heatshield requirements?
> Shotwell estimated the ticket cost would be somewhere between economy and business class on a plane — so, likely in the thousands of dollars for transoceanic travel. “But you do it in an hour.”
I based reliability requirements on passenger jet travel and the risk people would be willing to take for non space-tourism transport.
Also, I don't see how the tiles can be fully uniform except on the cylindrical part. The geometry of the nose part I don't think would allow it mathematically. Shuttle tiles often only differed in thickness based on needed heat withstanding, and could be generated by cnc processes automatically. Spacex may want something similar to optimize weight, especially since they are planning computer controlled install as well for most of them.
The shuttle required refurbishments on the thermal protection system. Every single one had to be inspected.
The engines also required refurbishment.
The boosters had to be fished out of the ocean. Those same boosters that used solid fuel and that could not (and cannot) be shutdown in case of issues. And the Shuttle happened to have two of them, with a decent moment arm on each, so a solid booster failure (even a partial one, with less thrust than expected) meant a mission failure. They had to be highly scrutinized. Given that the Shuttle was also a jobs program, they were built in segments, to allow for transport across long distances. So the o-ring seals were also problematic.
All in all, the Shuttle was very brittle. If they could have been mass-produced, it would have probably been more economical to just throw them away on every flight and rely on economies of scale. At least, that way, one would only have to account for manufacturing issues, not every conceivable stress that could happen during a mission.
Always thought it was a shame they didn’t push the main tank into orbit. Just think of an ISS made from a few of them rather than what we have now or the Ares from Red Mars.
There were some orbital concepts that basically inflated a living space inside of an orange tank and stuck a few solar panels and radiators on the side. Shuttle trips were just too expensive to make it practical and with the ISS it would have been redundant.
I've always been a big fan of rocket lab (Carbon Fiber layup + Metal 3D printing + electric rocket turbo sound amazing). But this announcement seems to coincide to their SPAC merger announcement so not sure what to think of it.
Not quite as capable as Falcon 9 (16.kT to LEO, 5.2m fairing diameter) but it will certainly cut into SpaceX's cake once it is online.
While they are currently spending a lot of effort on recovering the 1st stage of the Electron via parachute the Neutron is going to land on a drone ship just like SpaceX does it. Clearly due to the different size of these two first stages.
Looking forward to their design, particularly the engines they will be using. Is there any info out there yet?
>but it will certainly cut into SpaceX's cake once it is online.
Doubtful. And that isn't a knock against Rocket Lab, targeting a different niche is smart business, but still doubtful. Because the target of any rocket under development right now that wants to directly compete with SpaceX can't be F9, it needs to be Starship. The fundamentals along with the iterative capability and in-house demand built into the core of the design plan indicate they're going to be about to push costs below $200/kg and eventually even below $100/kg, along with enormous other sets of capabilities. That will represent just a mind blowing paradigm shift in cost to LEO, and SpaceX will probably want to retire F9 completely as soon as they're done with contracts and SS/SH is fully certified.
Rocket Lab should still be able to find a healthy market, like now, for customers who want specific orbits and times for smaller payloads that don't line up well with ride sharing on a big rocket. But it just won't be in the same market slice at all. Which is fine! The entire space market is set to grow a lot, no zero-sum games for a good long while, and in a growing market there can be room for many players to grow together. But everyone not on the leading edge is going to have to stay nimble.
I Just read this press release, Only first stage of Neutron is reusable like Falcon 9. So No it will not be fully reusable like Star-ship.
Relevant paragraph: The medium-lift Neutron rocket will be a two-stage launch vehicle that stands 40 meters (131 feet) tall with a 4.5-meter (14.7 ft) diameter fairing and a lift capacity of up to 8,000 kg (8 metric tons) to low-Earth orbit, 2,000 kg to the Moon (2 metric tons), and 1,500 kg to Mars and Venus (1.5 metric tons). Neutron will feature a reusable first stage designed to land on an ocean platform, enabling a high launch cadence and decreased launch costs for customers. Initially designed for satellite payloads, Neutron will also be capable of International Space Station (ISS) resupply and human spaceflight missions.
There is a lot more to Starship than just full reusability, and "full reusability" encompasses a lot of variables too. How quick is turnaround? What sort of refurb is required? How many times is it reusable? For SS/SH construction is also cheap, the raptor is a really efficient engine, they will have high cadence given a lot of room for mass manufacturing efficiency gains, they're intended to be durable, and even the fuel is really cheap. Methalox is really economical to work with, and fuel definitely matters for a fully reusable design aimed at lowering costs as much as possible. RP-1 isn't cheap, and also has coking issues unlike methane.
Of course with Neutron not expected to launch, even under Rocket Lab's target, before 2024 they may have answers for a lot of this. I see nothing about fuel for example, maybe they've been working on their own great methalox design. But either way, F9 isn't going to be the comparison by the time they really get going.
Relativity is claiming to be working on a fully reusable, Methalox burning, competitor to the Falcon 9. Of course Relativity has yet to put something into space so Rocket Lab seems better positioned but these companies are all competing for the same funding and launch contracts so they can’t sit back and let another company steal the lime light for long. Really exciting times in the space industry, the US could have four different companies making reusable rockets in the next 5-10 years.
I think both Rocket Lab and Relativity Space realize that even with 3d printing they can't compete on price without reusability. If SpaceX is even close to hitting their costs per launch with Starship/Superheavy they can undercut everyone, even to launch small satellites. SpaceX is shooting for $2 million per launch with Starship, that's cheaper than Electron today and Relativity Space's Terran 1 is planned to cost. Heck for small sats SpaceX could probably put them into orbit with just Starship and a kicker stage and not even have to fire up Superheavy.
>> but it will certainly cut into SpaceX's cake once it is online.
Not until it is certified for national security launches and/or becomes man-rated. Spacelaunch is about more than cost per pound to orbit. Security, insurance, even politics often trumps cost.
Not likely. Everything to do with misses/rockets is very restricted. Put GPS guidance on your model rocket and you can expect a visit from the FBI. Sell rockets with GPS/FLIR/INS/TV guidance and you should expect swat teams.
Their very public use of New Zealand launch site led me to incorrect assumption they were less married to USA.
And yes, ITAR-Free is becoming a bigger and bigger selling point both in military and space industries (also, besides ITAR, such high-profile contracts with USA entities are generally bad for you...)
Launch companies specifically need the anchor customers of nasa/airforce, or the equivalent in their own country.
This is, I assume, why Rocket Lab eventually became a USA company
The revenue potential of selling to the entire US government far outweighs the revenue potential of the rest of the world combined as Europe, China, and Russian already have national champions and closed launch markets.
Going with ITAR, and US sales, and US investors, is exactly why RocketLab became a US company. If you look at their flight manifest so far, it's certainly worked out for them!
Indeed, you can argue that ITAR is the single most effective industrial policy in the US by comparing the health of the US rocket manufacturing base to the relative health of all other US manufacturing industries.
I've understood that the US places restrictions on payloads that carry cameras, and from that alone, I could see that getting out from under those restrictions could be valuable.
(1) Rockets, SLVs, and missiles capable of delivering at least a 500-kg payload to a range of at least 300 km (MT);
(2) Rockets, SLVs, and missiles capable of delivering less than a 500-kg payload to a range of at least 300 km (MT);
[...]
(12) Thrusters (e.g., spacecraft or rocket engines) using bi-propellants or mono-propellant that provide greater than 150 lbf (i.e., 667.23 N) vacuum thrust (MT for rocket motors or engines having a total impulse capacity equal to or greater than 8.41 × 10^5 newton seconds);
(13) Control moment gyroscope (CMG) specially designed for spacecraft;
Just talking with a supplier while integrating your payload under ITAR can bring enough problems. Hell, US military sales, directly approved by Department of State, ended sometimes canceled because despite the usual circus of bribery involved ITAR was just that much of an impediment.
> Neutron will feature a reusable first stage designed to land on an ocean platform, enabling a high launch cadence and decreased launch costs for customers
10 years ago this was totally crazy and is now table stakes. Exciting times.
Until spaceX goes public (if they ever do), this company seems pretty close in their intentions of providing a great space service in the 2030s, (they are also exposed via a SPAC deal announced just this morning).
Regarding the SPAC deal. How does that work? Do the two companies merge into one and then are renamed, while also renaming the ticker from VACQ to RKLB.
Does that mean that VACQ stock owners will become RKLB owners when the deal goes through?
The discipline in terms of orbit cleanup is actually far better. All sats need to have a de-orbit plan.
We are also getting far better at monitoring both systematic and individual high accuracy measure. Both US and ESA are improving that technology. Commercial startups are also starting to work on it.
ESA is already setting up technology to move objects from the ground with a laser. This is needed for moving dead objects.
The first garbage truck mission is already financed by ESA.
With Starship coming, garbage truck services will be pretty affordable and in 10-20 years removing your own dead sats will very likely be a requirement as well.
Its a problem that needs to be worked on, but I am a bit sick of the endless doom and gloom and everytime anybody does anything in space everybody talks about Kessler syndrome.
It's exciting to hear about all these companies trying to bring more to the table but while they (Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic) talk about what their plans are, SpaceX continues to push forward with real world results. It's the dollar short and the day late scenario.
Maybe at some point these B and C companies (Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic) can take over the low tier/mundane stuff, while SpaceX is taking us to the Moon/Mars or beyond on a daily/weekly/monthly schedule.
Rocketlab does have "real world results" - they've launched customer payloads to orbit 18 times in the last few years. AFAIK, blue origin has not achieved orbit, and virgin orbit is still doing (years-delayed?) demonstration missions (which have achieved orbit), so I don't think it makes sense to lump all "not spacex" together.
Interesting thing to me is they haven't had any failures of primary components either. 18 launches, 10 engines per rocket, 180 total, no failures as far as I've read.
Don't know if they are going to stay with the electric pump-fed engine design or not for the neutron.
Yeah but that was far as I understand a loose connector.
I think my thought is that with conventional turbopumps you're uncomfortably close to fatigue and thermal limits. Where with electric pumps you may much farther way.
Virgin Orbit launches their LauncherOne to orbit from a 747 Jumbo Jet. Virgin Galactic aspires to launches people for suborbital tourism on SpaceShipTwo. Different companies.
As far as I know SpaceX don't offer substantially low prices for launching reused rockets yet. Why should they - there's no competitor forcing them to do it.
While the extra money is certainly well invested in SpaceX, there's still the potential to lower prices through competition, if nothing else. The different approaches are also great to see. So far the pie looks big enough for everyone.
Peter Beck, who once claimed he’d eat his hat if they made a reusable rocket, sure made a big 180 on the topic, and I couldn’t be happier! Speaking of, watch the announcement video: https://youtu.be/agqxJw5ISdk
I’m also GLAD they copied the Falcon 9 design (which is as old as scifi and was demonstrated by DC-X and Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace) for the first stage landing concept. Better to use what works instead of just making a novel approach just for the sake of novelty or Not Invented Here. Rockets ought to land on a pillar of flame like God and Heinlein (EDIT: and apparently the Soviet Cosmists) intended: https://youtu.be/TdSxDNnqRlo
Also, RocketLab has a TON of ex-SpaceXer employees... I’ve long said that the high churn (for aerospace, but not any higher than typical tech company) of SpaceX, while not necessarily really good for SpaceX, is really good for the industry as a whole.