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SpaceX
An artist's conception shows the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in flight, with two strap-on boosters.
Last updated at 2:30 p.m. ET:
SpaceX's millionaire founder says his company's "next big thing" will be the most powerful rocket in the world, putting massive payloads into orbit for much less money than its competitors. And maybe to the moon and Mars as well.
The Falcon Heavy rocket has been on the drawing boards for years — but today's announcement by Elon Musk, SpaceX's chief executive officer and chief technology officer, signaled that the concept was on its way from the drawing boards to the launch pad.
Musk told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington that the first Falcon Heavy could be delivered to the launch pad toward the end of next year, with the launch coming during 2013. Musk said the first demonstration would take place at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. That launch may be conducted at SpaceX's expense, purely as a demonstration, or there may be a payload customer. Musk said launches from SpaceX's Florida complex could begin in late 2013 or 2014
The 227-foot-tall, liquid-fueled heavy-lifter would be capable of putting more than 50 tons into low Earth orbit — which would surpass the Delta 4 Heavy's 25-ton capacity and the yet-to-be-built Atlas 5 Heavy's 32 tons. The space shuttle system, which uses a combination of onboard engines and solid rocket boosters, has a payload capacity of just 25 tons, about half of the Falcon Heavy's anticipated lifting power.
That 50-ton capacity — actually, as much as 117,000 pounds, or 58.5 U.S. tons (53 metric tons) — is a substantial increase over the Falcon Heavy's previously anticipated capability, Musk said. He said that was the result of his recent design work on the rocket.
"This is a rocket of truly huge scale," Musk said. In a news release, SpaceX noted that 117,000 pounds is more than the maximum takeoff weight of a fully loaded Boeing 737-200 with 136 passengers. "In other words, Falcon Heavy can deliver the equivalent of an entire commercial airplane full of passengers, crew luggage and fuel all the way to orbit," SpaceX said.
Back to the moon?
Musk said the Falcon Heavy's capacity would open up new horizons in spaceflight ... or reopen hoped-for horizons that have faded over the decades.
"It's more payload than any vehicle in history apart from the Saturn 5," Musk noted. The now-defunct Saturn 5, which powered NASA's moonshots in the 1960s and 1970s, had about twice the payload capacity of the Falcon Heavy — leading Musk to observe that two Falcon Heavy launches could set up a next-generation moon mission. (The Russian Energia rocket also exceeded the Falcon Heavy's projected launch capacity.)
Musk said the Falcon Heavy and SpaceX's Dragon capsule could be combined for a "really cool mission, which would be a lunar flyby." Such an operation would involve sending the spacecraft to make a loop around the moon and come back to Earth.
'Everyday low prices'
The big difference is cost: The price tag for a Falcon Heavy launch is estimated at $80 million to $125 million, compared with up to $187 million for an Atlas 5 and roughly $1 billion for a shuttle mission. The result is that the cost of putting payloads into orbit could approach $1,000 per pound, which has been a mythical price point for access to outer space. "It's not so mythical any more," Musk said.
Musk joked that traditional rocket providers treated the launch contract process "like a rug bazaar, where they'll charge you what they think you can afford." In contrast, he said, SpaceX would offer "everyday low prices."
The Falcon Heavy's first stage will be made up of three nine-engine cores modeled on SpaceX's Falcon 9 design. The heavy-lifter would be equipped with plumbing that could move propellant from the side boosters to the center core. "The net effect is that Falcon Heavy achieves performance comparable to a three-stage rocket," SpaceX said.
In the short term, the rocket would be offered as an alternative to the Atlas 5 or the Delta 4 for the U.S. Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program. For now, SpaceX isn't offering the Falcon Heavy as a vehicle for crewed flight, although Musk said the rocket was "designed to meet NASA human rating standards."
"It can launch people if need be, and do so safely," he said.
Eventually, the Falcon Heavy could take on a robotic mission to bring samples back from Mars, Musk said. "The payload to Mars would be about a quarter of the payload to LEO [low Earth orbit]," he noted.
SpaceX's past and future
The announcement of a new rocket project is usually surrounded by uncertainties. For example, will SpaceX be able to hold to its development schedule? How much of a market is there for the rocket, and what market niche will it fill?
Musk, who earned his fortune in the dot-com industry, founded SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies) in 2002 as a low-cost competitor to aerospace giants such as Lockheed Martin and the Boeing Co. (which offer the Atlas 5 and the Delta 4, respectively, through a joint venture called the United Launch Alliance). SpaceX's Falcon 1 didn't register a fully successful orbital launch until the fourth try, and the development schedule for the Falcon 9 rocket had to be repeatedly extended. But the Falcon 9 was successful with its very first launch, and SpaceX's Dragon capsule went into orbit and splashed down without a problem during the second Falcon 9 mission last December.
NASA is providing $278 million to SpaceX for the development of the Falcon 9 and the Dragon as a resupply system for the International Space Station. If SpaceX passes muster, it would be in line for $1.6 billion in NASA resupply contracts through 2016. The Dragon-Falcon 9 launch system also may be used eventually to transport astronauts to and from the station, if SpaceX receives sufficient funding from NASA's Commercial Crew Development program. (NASA may provide details about the next phase of funding in that program as early as Wednesday.)
Looking beyond NASA, SpaceX has piled up more than $2.5 billion in satellite launch contracts, including a half-billion-dollar deal with the Iridium telecom venture.
So what about the Falcon Heavy? During today's news conference, some questioned whether there was enough of a market to justify building a launcher for 50-ton payloads. Musk said the heavy-lifter would have to be launched at least four times a year to cover the overhead for SpaceX's current price schedule. He's clearly counting on getting some of the Air Force's business, in addition to heavy-lift jobs from NASA and private-sector players such as Bigelow Aerospace.
The Falcon Heavy doesn't quite satisfy the requirements that Congress laid out for the heavy-lift rocket it wants NASA to build by 2016 for exploration beyond Earth orbit. The legislation requires a payload capacity of 70 to 100 metric tons. In January, NASA signaled that it couldn't build such a rocket within Congress' budget and timetable. However, the space agency promised to provide a more detailed report after sifting through a sheaf of feasibility studies, including one conducted by SpaceX.
Musk said SpaceX has been looking into the design of a "super heavy" rocket that could put 150 metric tons into low Earth orbit, or send Apollo-scale payloads to the moon or Mars. Such a rocket would be 50 percent more capable than the Saturn 5 and easily satisfy Congress' payload requirements.
"We're exploring with NASA how to do 150-metric-ton orbit capability, but do it rapidly" and at a cost of less than $1,000 per pound of payload, Musk said.
This report has been amended to mention Russia's Energia rocket and remove a reference to Apollo 8 as a parallel for the theoretical Falcon Heavy circumlunar mission.
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Great information. Just one minor correction. The cost for a space shuttle according to NASA is $495 million, not he stated $1 billion in this article.
This is outstanding news. One thing I thought that was worth correcting though. Teh cost for a single shuttle flight according to NASA is $495 million, not the stated $1 billion in this article.
I realize that the $495 million figure has been quoted at some point, but the more widely accepted figure is on the order of $1 billion, give or take a couple hundred million:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6953606
I also address the range in this item about the cost of the Apollo mission (the table didn't survive intact):
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2008/10/03/4350473-how-much-is-that-in-apollos
Truly outstanding news, and a very nice article, Alan. Obviously the lowered payload costs are key, and something we can all be excited about. As Musk states, the capacity to assemble large components in space with 2 (such as the moon mission he alludes to) or more launches gives real credence to being able to do many of the things we've dreamed of for some time now. Ultimately, once someone engineers them, it would be really cool to get 20 or 30 tons or so of some construction robots on the moon (or perhaps even Mars) to automate some of the processes of "base building" prior to even having any humans on the surface. Alan, it would be neat to have you do a story exploring some of these angles if you haven't done so already.
2 parting thoughts: 1) Wonder when SpaceX will have its IPO? 2) Could the Falcon Heavy main booster be any more phallic? Reminds me of Dr. Evil's rocket in Austin Powers Goldmember.
From what I've read several times over the years, a complete Space Shuttle cycle has cost an average $1.3 billion since the beginning of the program, minus payload costs of course. That figure includes every aspect of cost.
I always wonder why most of the other MSNBC writers aren't as involved with reading responses, and correcting information in their articles as you are Alan. You get two thumbs up for that continuing effort. :)
yea, I think the biggest news here is that a reporter has actually responded to his readers. I've never seen that on MSNBC before. And a literate one at that.
I think you should reserve your praise strictly to Alan; he's very attentive to his bloggers.
I'm very impressed with Alan. As GendoIkari put it, he deserves 2 thumbs up for his true effort, accuracy, and thoughtful interaction with his readers.
If I'm not mistaken, the Russian heavy lifter Energia can haul a 100-ton pay load into orbit. But still, 50 tons is so much better at $ 125 million than 25 tons at a billion dollars. Rifat Afeef from the Maldives
That's a good point, I should change that to read "U.S. rocket" ... I think SpaceX must have forgotten about the Energia.
Cool beans! I live in California and would definitely go see this launch. Florida's a little far to go from here, but then, so is the moon.
The overall price figures of a launch can be confusing, sometimes they include things like range safety costs and insurance, sometimes they don't.
I can't get excited until Musk is flying back and fourth from the ISS with humans. But i'm glad we are looking ahead.
I like it. The costs are being forced down, reliability is improving, and the potential for many flights happening throughout a year is increasing.
Maybe this privet spaceflight gamble will pay off after all...
Have to correct a glaring error that is often made regarding proposed lunar "fly-bys". The Apollo 8 mission did not do a "loop around the moon and come back" it performed a Lunar Orbit Insertion burn and orbited the moon 10 times before performing a Trans-Earth Injection burn for the return to Earth. The lunar flyby does not require those long duration burns from the Dragon's service module or propulsion system. It is launched toward the moon in a figure 8 shaped "free return trajectory" which uses the moon's gravity to slingshot the spacecraft back to earth. Big difference in missions and the amount of consumables needed to be launched.
Good point, will fix.
Similar to what they did with Apollo 13 to get the crew back as soon as possible.
Musk says a lot of things that are pie in the sky. They finally managed to get Falcon 9 off the ground after 6 months of delays. Who honestly thinks they will get this over-sized Falcon off the ground in the time he says. Furthermore, they did not have a full load on Falcon 9. Why? They are not playing by the same standards ULA is held to like comforming to all the Air Force and NASA requirements. Of course they can launch something cheaper for now, but when the playing field is leveled I'll bet their price will double. And last but not least, they have not proven they can even get a supply ship to the space station yet. The Delta and Atlas launch records are unbeaten with hundreds of successful launches and decades of experience flying rockets.
Its naysayers like you that keep us in the bronze age of spaceflight
Musk will say anything that makes his company sound like they can do anything. It's not that easy as I'm sure they will come to find. Sure they can launch a nearly empty Delta 2 class vehicle six month late into space and spash it down somewhere back on Earth. It's another story to successfully launch large satellites and probes which will constrain the launcher to its max, require an absolute target, and must go without a hitch on time. Right now he's all talk and has not followed any schedule to date. How does he think they will be ready to launch an over-sized Falcon within five years? We do it every year. Go Atlas, Centaur and Delta! ULA- America's Rocket.
Agreed. While I wish them well, you don't just go from the drawing board to production without some (or many) glitches. That's why they call it 'rocket science'. If they can eventually achieve something on the order of $1,000 per pound, though, that would be a highly welcome improvement.
Which company do you work for? Lockheed or Boeing? Maybe a SSRB manufacturer.
You got the "Apollo" part right, but it was Apollo 13 rather than Apollo 8 that followed a "free return" trajectory.
You're correct, Apollo 13 did use the free return trajectory (with course corrections provided by LM descent stage). As I stated, Apollo 8 did not use a free return trajectory. It did a LOI burn and orbited 10 times followed by a TEI burn to return. Alan corrected the error in the article.
Just wonder about the reliability of multi-engine boosters. A total of 27 engines. That's a lot of fallible hardware. One catastrophic engine failure in the cluster, and Ka boom! Better off using fewer motors with a proven design and success rate. To build a new vehicle, you don't always have to re-invent the wheel.
Indeed, one of the shortcomings of the Soviet N1 was the large number of engines it had. Its control system automatically shut down the mirror image engine if one stopped to control thrust vector. That accounted for at least one of the 3 failures.
I still am not convinced canceling Constellations is in any way going to improve the US space program. I think ultimately it will cost the tax payers more for less. Bad Leadership!
Constellation has already cost over 10B dollars and Ares hadn't even been flown yet (Ares I-X was old hardware in Ares configuration but was not Ares hardware). Even if it wasn't spectacularly over budget it would have cost an estimated 1B just to launch. It should tell you something when even NASA doesn't want the rocket.
"One catastrophic engine failure in the cluster, and Ka boom!"
SpaceX evidently dropped a nut through the turbopump of the Merlin engine to try to get the engine to explode.
It didn't. It just kept working. Even so kevlar shields are provided between the engines so that if one engine did explode it would not take out the whole cluster. And with one engine out Falcon just keeps flying.
If consistency of manufacturing can be achieved, 27 won't be much different than 9. The fuel feed from side tanks into the main tank is pretty neat.
SpaceX will probably be material for case studies for a long time on what makes a small savvy company able to accomplish something that mega aerospace corporations and government (NASA) could not.
Perhaps we are seeing the beginnings of how industry will look with rapid prototyping 3D printing technologies and vertical integration of production. Soon, when many of your parts are just as cheap to produce one as when you produce many, new horizons open up.
I hope!
The hard part for a lot of mega-corporations will be to operate on an ROI timeline that exceeds 5years!
Too many companies do not want to take those kinds of risks when they are established and comfortable.
It's the reason why none are attempting to achieve the ability to mine the asteroid belt. There's literally trillions of dollars worth of minerals just floating around between Mars and Jupiter! Some of which doesn't even exist on Earth except for microscopic amounts in cyclotrons and particle accellerators (helium 3 and more!).
But because even with a concerted R&D endeavor of $1bn/year, the tech is probably at least 20 years out, hence why most mega corporations won't touch it.
The silly thing is that running an NPV calculation, assuming 12% WACC, 20yrs of -$1bn/year in R&D for 20 years, followed by a perpetuity of +$500bn/yr after launch (assuming the 20yrs is both R&D and implementation), the NPV, or adjusted PRESENT DAY VALUE of such an endeavor is over $177bn! Even if I gradually increase the year 21+ income as 100bn yr1, 250bn yr2 then 500bn yr3 and onward, the NPV of the endeavor is still over $60bn!
Too bad long term investment isn't on the corporate agenda ;P
*shrug*
Public corporate agendas mostly reflect those of investors, which is everybody with a 401k and then some.
Private corporations tend to be more "experimental".
Mining space for bulk materials to bring back to Earth isn't going to make economic sense for a really long time for a long list of reasons, among them being humans can't survive very long in space so we first need fully capable remote actors (robot-ish) mining here on earth before using them for mining off of it. The best chance for "profit off Earth" is research data and "public participation".
What was wrong with putting a small payload on a Atlas, Centaur or Delta to the ISS?
Simply because Spacex gave large sums of money to Obama's Champagne. ULA is the most logical choice to get American astronauts to the space station using American rockets. It should have never got to this point were we need the Russians to get us there at the tune of 63 million per astronaut. Blame that on Congress.
Nothing wrong with payloads, the problem with those launchers is that none of them are rated for human spaceflight. Resupply missions with cargo only for the ISS are already subcontracted out to the Russians, Europeans and Japanese. NASA is looking to SpaceX because it's designed for human flight from the beginning. It would take as long or longer for the builders of those other launchers to get their systems rated for human spaceflight as it will for SpaceX to complete theirs.
...wishes we would dust off the Venture Star and get that ball rolling as well.
But good luck to SpaceX. If they can pull this off, I will happily change my opinion of private-sector space exploration.
Jimbo wrote:
"It would take as long or longer for the builders of those other launchers to get their systems rated for human spaceflight as it will for SpaceX to complete theirs."
Can you explain that? I'm not doubting, but I sure don't understand.
We can give some blame to obama. Where would we be if we were still rolling with Ares 1? Notice how the russians have been raising the price the last couple of years?
Where would we be with Ares 1? Nowhere, it wasn't scheduled to test fly till 2014. When Bush cancelled the Shuttle, good move, he knew there would be this gap. Don't blame that on Obama since we knew we'd have to use Russian rockets for awhile the day Constellation was started.
@ Pro Ares,
Blame Obama? Constellation never had enough funding to go anywhere! GWB never requisitioned anything close to what they needed even just for servicing LEO, let alone a moon base.
However, we can blame Bush for killing Venture Star, which had an 80% complete prototype and the fantastic Aerospike engines. Imagine replacing the shuttle with something that would be single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) AND carry the same amount of material for far less of a cost.
However, that's not to say that all was a loss with Constellation. The Ares V engines are remarkable!
Musk is commited visionary with money, and the managerial talent to execute. Has space ever produced one before? I can't think of one. Even Paul Allen takes a back seat to Musk. You're watching history being made. Enjoy the view. This doesn't happen very often. It's amazing.
It doesn't matter who I work for, the facts of the matter is that the Falcon9 and Spacex have not put anything into orbit other then the vehicle itself which puts them about 50 years behind ULA.
Apollo 13 had left its free return trajectory before the explosion, and an engine burn was needed to get back onto it.
"Kranz and Flight Director Chris Kraft chose the circumlunar "free return" option, using the Moon's gravity to return the ship to Earth, with an acceleration burn shortly after pericynthion (closest approach to the Moon, "PC+2 burn") to help speed the return. However, Apollo 13 had left its initial free return trajectory earlier in the mission, as required for the planned lunar landing at Fra Mauro."
-Paradox Olbers
If I'm reading this right, the Falcon Heavy can carry twice what our best current rockets can, but that's still only half what a man-rated rocket built in the late 1960s could carry. This is progress? Why not build the Saturn V again?
It's progress because the Saturn V launches were incredibly expensive. $1,000 per lb is FAR AND AWAY cheaper than what the Saturn V could lift.
Next, the F-HLV can fit on both shuttle pads, and Vandenberg, meaning that we could do many simultaneous launches to put gear in orbit (though likely not from Vandenberg).
However, the real power-house was the Ares_V, which would have been able to do 410,000 lb to LEO and 71,000 lb to TLI (trans-lunar-injection), which dwarfs what was used in the Apollo program.
Here's a handy comparison_of_super_heavy_lift_launch_systems
According to the article, the Saturn 5 had the largest pay load capacity with the longest range. Why did we stop using it?
Mr. Seriously? No...Really?, sorry I missed your comment before I made mine. Is the Shuttle really cheaper than the Saturn V ?
Apples and oranges I'm afraid.
The Apollo program had a far different mission and scope than the Shuttle. Apollo being to get humans to and from the moon, the Shuttle dedicated to LEO and polar orbits.
The Apollo program had 20 launches from 1969-75 and its total program cost was $25.4 billion in 1975 dollars, or $170 billion in 2005_dollars
The Shuttle has had 134 launches to date from 1981 to present and its total program cost is estimated to end at $174 billion by final launch in 2011
Adjusted for time-value, the shuttle is probably a few billion more than the $174 billion hard-number.
However, I don't think its fair to judge the two programs side-by-side because their objectives were so radically different.
If we were to ONLY take the per-launch cost. The shuttle's 134 missions beats Apollo hands-down at 1.34 billion per flight (I rounded up 174 to 180 billion for time-value)
Apollo's adjusted per flight cost was 8.5 billion per launch (170 divided by 20 launches). However, a couple of those were moon missions, which the Shuttle is incapable of doing, so how much is a moon mission worth compared to a LEO mission?
Also, considering the fact that Apollo could do LEO and TLI (Trans Lunar Injection) means that it's entire design needed to accommodate both capabilities, the Shuttle cannot do TLI, even just a one-way trip, it's incapable of completely escaping earth's gravity with only the gear that it takes into orbit.
Lastly, it's unfair to compare Apollo and Shuttle because the Apollo is partly a technological progenitor of the Shuttle. A lot of the things learned in the Apollo Program were applied in the Shuttle (both design and mission capabilities).
Ultimately, in the long-running debate between disposables vs. reusables, I think that materials science has not yet yielded something that we can make an aeroshell out of that can routinely survive the punishment of launch/re-entry that would be cheaper than just making disposable launch-vehicles. On top of that, from a cost perspective, we get more mission flexibility with disposables because the vehicle(s) at hand can be tailored to the mission rather than vice-versa.
From my point of view, I think we should seriously look into alternative means of getting people and tonnage into orbit, as rockets are quickly approaching decreasing marginal returns.
My interest at this point is a linear-accelerator/SCRAM-jet combo to get tonnage into orbit as the mass constraints are far different (you don't have to carry all of your unspent fuel with you while trying to lift into orbit...the classic Faustian Bargain of rockety).
Also, I don't think space elevators have much of a future, both because of the tremendous inherent danger if there were a collaps, AND, if we've got nano-fibrous materials that can withstand that type of continuous onslaught, we could design a reusable aeroshell that would make a Space Shuttle-type program more cost effective to maintain.
it's nice to have input from someone "in the know"