> Last month, the U.S. Space Force announced a series of 21 launch contracts awarded to both SpaceX and ULA. Totaling $2.5 billion in value, the contracts were split between the leading space companies, with ULA winning 11 launches for $1.3 billion, and SpaceX bagging 10 launches for $1.2 billion.
They clarify that space x is launching some heavies in there, if it were just falcon 9 space x might expect to charge 1.1 billion which is cheaper. But good news to be in the right ballpark
Competition is good for consumer pricing! Should be fun when starship is in the mix (iirc you can fit an unfolded jwst in there. No origami necessary)
I wonder how hard it would be to make a scaled up version of JWST to take advantage of the extra space? Exact same design, but with an origami mirror 5x (?) the size.
It won’t actually built but a larger folding mirror design was explored in the LUVOIR (Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor) mission concept. Scroll down the wiki article for a comparison of the JWST and LUVOIR-A mirror size.
You would need to increase the size of the sun shield, structures, mechanisms, etc. A scaling up would cascade into a massive amount of design changes. For all we know, if JWST had been allotted 5x the volume they might not have gone with the current design.
If we wanted to naively scale it up and "patch" what needed patching we might end up with an incredibly heavy spacecraft that isn't as good as it could be.
If we're still unfolding telescopes I'll be surprised. Seems a lot easier to send segments and just assemble them robotically. Just a bit of actuation in each mirror segment, a scaffold, and then you pick and place your way to a 250m telescope that can pick out continents on exoplanets. (I have not done the math to determine if that's the right scale, but clearly multi launch and assemble scales better than bigger rocket and origami.)
For a rocket that has yet to launch against a rocket that's already mature and yet continued to improves its launch cadence by launching 96 times this year and aspires to launch 144 next years. That means SpaceX can literally compete on price.
Also, ULA is selling itself, so don't count Boeing/Lockheed stocks, unless you think the stock price will rise with sale of ULA?
Fair point, Vulcan has never launched, but all rocket companies compete with paper rockets. Relativity Space had "the cheapest rocket ever" and "the biggest manufacturing capacity of any rocket company" and that rocket ended up never making it to orbit and was scrapped entirely. Relativity pocketed billions of dollars in funding in the process.
I don't understand this statement. In this bid, SpaceX is competing with a real, proven and profitable rocket family. Everyone else is competing with vaporware?
On first glance, it seems strange to award more contracts to the provider using a totally unproven platform. I would have thought they would ramp up contract awards more conservatively in that case. I have to wonder whether the decision is in part about weighing unease with a new platform against unease with unpredictable leadership. Maybe that’s not a big factor, I could also see it being more about the lobbying power of established defense contractors.
Seems strange for an individual, or even a corporate acquisition, but not for government. The incentive structure for gov contracts has a lot of extra stuff beyond risk and cost, including spurring a healthy market or proving out new technology. And yes, creating new jobs, sometimes.
If that was the case then there would've been a period where SpaceX got more launches. Instead they had to sue to even get a piece of the pie, and ULA has gotten higher percentages of every contract since. It's just regulatory capture and government revolving door.
Oh, and of course there has been other players than spacex.
We didn't really have a space industry anywhere in the world until recently. We had government funded space exploration, which is something entirely different.
The implication of this seems to be a change of pace from almost dormant to very frequent activity. Also, an explosive increase in space junk left "out there"
And the Falcon 9 was already demolishing the competition on price before they ever landed a booster, reusability is only one of several ways that SpaceX drove down costs.
Reusable rockets have high up front design costs, as well as continuing maintenance costs. The engines themselves are also more expensive per unit, because they must be over engineered.
This is like asking why a disposable diaper is cheaper than a reusable diaper.
Yeah that weirder me out too - the price reduction is enough to merit an accurate headline. I kept reading waiting for them to justify the headline and it never happened.
It doesn’t seem like we know enough to do a fair comparison. It would be interesting to have more details on how much they are paying ULA per mission compared to SpaceX per mission, like a breakdown of cost per flight.
Readit News
> Last month, the U.S. Space Force announced a series of 21 launch contracts awarded to both SpaceX and ULA. Totaling $2.5 billion in value, the contracts were split between the leading space companies, with ULA winning 11 launches for $1.3 billion, and SpaceX bagging 10 launches for $1.2 billion.
They clarify that space x is launching some heavies in there, if it were just falcon 9 space x might expect to charge 1.1 billion which is cheaper. But good news to be in the right ballpark
Competition is good for consumer pricing! Should be fun when starship is in the mix (iirc you can fit an unfolded jwst in there. No origami necessary)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Ultraviolet_Optical_Infr...
Parts of that research could end up incorporated into the Habitable Worlds Observatory project.
https://www.keckobservatory.org/hwo/
If we wanted to naively scale it up and "patch" what needed patching we might end up with an incredibly heavy spacecraft that isn't as good as it could be.
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I think starship largest cargo dimension is 17m, jwst longest axis is >20m?
Close, but still pretty cool. Will be hard to resist the urge to go play KSP again
Also, ULA is selling itself, so don't count Boeing/Lockheed stocks, unless you think the stock price will rise with sale of ULA?
I don't understand this statement. In this bid, SpaceX is competing with a real, proven and profitable rocket family. Everyone else is competing with vaporware?
Oh, and of course there has been other players than spacex.
We didn't really have a space industry anywhere in the world until recently. We had government funded space exploration, which is something entirely different.
The implication of this seems to be a change of pace from almost dormant to very frequent activity. Also, an explosive increase in space junk left "out there"
This is like asking why a disposable diaper is cheaper than a reusable diaper.
And as pointed out, SpaceX is 90% of the way through (just the second 90% left to go!) with Starship that will drop the costs at least 1/10th.
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