Comment by jve
1 day ago
Decreasing price of a launch by multiple orders of magnitude and increased cadence is also an achievement that hasn't been achieved previously.
1 day ago
Decreasing price of a launch by multiple orders of magnitude and increased cadence is also an achievement that hasn't been achieved previously.
Increased launch cadence is an operational achievement, not an engineering one.
And I'm not so sure that they actually decreased price to launch all that much. First of all, it's definitely not "several orders of magnitude", the best numbers quoted are maybe half price or so for a Falcon 9 compared to another contemporary rocket. And by my understanding, the US government at least is paying about as much for Falcon 9 as it was for a Soyuz to bring an astronaut to the ISS, at least.
NASA pays both Boeing and SpaceX less than Soyuz was.
According to this [0] article from Business Insider, from 2006 to 2019, per seat costs for NASA from Russia rose from less than $25M ($38M inflation adjusted) to around $81M ($101M inflation adjusted). The cost per seat in 2012, the year after the USA lost crewed space launch capability entirely, was ~$55M ($75M inflation adjusted). According to this [1] article from Reuters, NASA is currently paying Boeing $90M, and SpaceX $55M per seat.
So, NASA today is paying Boeing more than the monopoly prices Russia charged (up to 2016 or so), and paying both of them more than Russia was charging back when they were competing with the Space Shuttle. And it's paying SpaceX about half of the top price it payed Russia per seat, still nowhere close to an order of magnitude in cost savings.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/astronaut-cost-per-soyuz-sea...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/science/boeing-sending-first-astrona...
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Less than Soyuz charged them. Soyuz was a very cheap platform to the Russians, but they also understood when they had their customers over a barrel.
I was comparing to the achievements of 60 years ago when they put people on the moon :) They are working towards that in a sustainable manner.
So…not something they achieved?
> ...operational achievement, not an engineering one.
How would I distinquish between the two, esp wrt rocketry?
An operational achievement means excellence in building the same vehicle over and over, to the right tolerances, and operating it the same way every time, without fing anything up.
An engineering achievement means excellence in designing a new vehicle, or updating an existing one, or inventing a new procedure, and finding the right tolerances that allow that to be replicated over and over without excess cost.
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