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Comment by vtange | Hacker News Reader

Does SpaceX have any real competitors in the private sector? Would be a bummer if people decided they were a monopoly of some sort and demanded a break up.

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One could argue whether they're truly private sector, but they still haven't quite displaced ULA. In 2016 there were 12 ULA launches, 8 SpaceX launches, and 2 by Orbital ATK. Looking at other countries, there were 20 Chinese launches, 18 Russian launches, 9 European launches, and 7 Indian launches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_in_spaceflight#Orbital_la...

That's why this is so big, dropping the costs significantly could easily pull a significant fraction of those other launches to SpaceX. Pretty soon the ability to re-launch the same booster will be considered a must-have feature if you want to be in the rocket business, unless you fly missions so close the maximum payload or trajectory that recovery is impossible.

SpaceX would still have to deal with scheduling: making enough upper stages and having limited launch/landing pads they share with NASA/ULA/ATK. So those with less cost-sensitive payloads (governments) would probably still pay a premium to launch their payloads sooner rather than cheaper.

That doesn't add up: SpaceX will be able to use a chunk of their savings to outbid their competitors for launch capacity. So any premium paid by a competitor would have to be passed on to their customers to stay afloat whereas SpaceX would merely give a slightly lower discount.

SpaceX really caused some sleepless nights today with the executives of other rocket companies they are several years away from being able to begin to play catch-up. This was one very long bet SpaceX made and it paid off today and will continue to pay off for years to come.

I agree with you: everyone else will be playing catch-up, probably for a decade.

But what I mean is say I have a payload I want to launch. I go to spaceX and they say they can put my payload on their manifest for 2019 for $60 million. I go to another provider and they say they can get me up into orbit in 2018 for $120 million. If I'm a government and don't care so much about the cost, but do care about getting my payload into space, I'll go with the 2018 date.

So, there will still be other non-reusable providers out there. For example, European governments want to keep Ariane around regardless of the cost to keep the launch capability around (for national security issues).

Yes, but those launches would be subsidized, so technically loss leaders which you should not even want to compete with. SpaceX is in business with first mover advantage of a kind you can only dream of.

SpaceX is still struggling with launching frequently and reliably. I'm hopeful that they will solve those problems, but until they do, other launch providers will have a leg up for customers who really need their payload not to be destroyed and really need it to be launched on time. Keep in mind that some of these satellites being launched cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so paying a few tens of millions extra for a more expensive launch provider isn't necessarily a big deal.

That's true, but overall their failure rate is really not all that bad. Only the Russians are doing better and they're doing better because they are not innovating at all.

I could 3 out of 33 as failures, one of those is a partial failure.

The only area where SpaceX really can't compete yet is manned flight, everything else looks quite rosy.

10% is pretty bad. ULA has launched over a hundred times with no failures. The much-maligned Shuttle had two failures in 135 flights (and, strictly speaking, only one of those failures would have prevented a payload from getting to orbit). I'm pretty sure the Russians are the only ones doing worse right now.

But you'd have to compare their first thirty launches with these to compare. Anyway, notice has been served today I think, now let's see what it leads to.

For comparison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlas_launches

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thor_and_Delta_launche...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He...

Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovative than what SpaceX is doing because we simply had not launched any rockets of that size at all and so there were many more failures.

It probably won't be the last SpaceX failure either because they plan on making fairly big changes soon and those will come with new failure modes, the best way to get to very high degrees of reliability is to stop making changes other than to fix problems but that does not square with SpaceX's way of doing business.

Well no, you don't have to compare to the first thirty launches with those when we're talking about competition for launch services. Somebody choosing a launch provider for their satellite today doesn't care what the reliability of the Atlas was in the 1960s, they only care what it is today.

If I was arguing that "SpaceX sucks and they deserve to fail because they're so unreliable" then you'd have a point, but I'm not.

I think I covered that with:

"Of course the beginnings of what is now ULA were much more innovative than what SpaceX is doing because we simply had not launched any rockets of that size at all and so there were many more failures."

So of course the situation is not 1:1 comparable. But given that it is a new platform some failures were to be expected, it doesn't take a lot in rocketry to have a failure. How many launch failures would you consider to be acceptable over the course of the first 30 launches for a new platform?

You're confusing my comment with some sort of value judgment. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm just saying that some customers care more about reliability than cost, and those customers will provide a steady stream of revenue for ULA and friends until SpaceX improves in this area.

I have no opinion about what is "acceptable" or not, but my opinion doesn't matter. What matters is the opinion of the customer. There are enough customers out there which find SpaceX's ~10% failure rate to be too high to keep ULA around for now even at a hefty premium.

Yes, that makes good sense.

So then the race is on in a way: will SpaceX be able to get their next platform stabilized before the competition catches up to being able to re-use their first stage? If they can there might be some actual competition which should drive down prices even further.

Sounds right to me. Other launchers are probably living on borrowed time at this point. ULA and others should have many more years to capitalize on their advantages, but it won't last forever. They'll either sit there, reap short-term profits, then fade away, or innovate. I'm hopeful it'll be the latter. Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, occasionally comments on SpaceX discussions and seems to be quite with it.

> It probably won't be the last SpaceX failure either because they plan on making fairly big changes soon and those will come with new failure modes

My understanding is that they are now producing and flying Block 5 Falcon 9's which means no more changes to the hardware.

Falcon heavy is obviously a different kettle of fish but the chat around SpaceX on Reddit has been that things are settling/reaching maturity with Falcon 9

There are Block 5s in the pipeline, but they have not flown yet and will only fly at the end of this year.

Even worse than the expense of the payload is the time: some payloads take several years to build and some literally can't be replaced (e.g. Webb telescope, though it could be replaced it probably wouldn't get funded).

SpaceX did all of their landing/reusability testing with disposable rockets. When they started all rockets were thrown away, so adding a bit of fuel or grid fins was a small price to pay for the development. Once reusability becomes common any competitor would have to test by sacrificing rockets where failures will be very expense - I mean who would throw away a rocket right?

You can not compare all launches. Most of these launches are not competitive. SpaceX mostly competes with Arianspace for the truly commercial launches. SpaceX has captured around 50% of that market and the share is increasing.

ULA competes mostly on the Air Force launches. They still have capabilities that SpaceX does not have (large fairings) and some that SpaceX will not have for a long time (vertical integration). For these cases, ULA will still have a market, plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers.

SpaceX will however take quite a chunk out of ULA as we have already seen with the bidding for the GPS flights.

Orbital ATK will have hard time in the commercial market but they might be happy with just flying the COTS contracts.

The main issue SpaceX has to solve is flight rate, that is most of the reason others can still be on the commercial market at all. SpaceX is now so far away from everybody else on price, everybody else is still in the "developing a new vehicle and we have some ideas about reversibility, maybe" stage.

SpaceX can now launch a reusable core for around 50 million, and still make a nice profit. The target price for both ULA Vulcan and Arian 6 are 100 million. For Arian that does not even include the massive amount of development cost. Arianspace will survive because of the political imperative.

> plus the Air Force always needs to have two providers

Source? Wasn't ULA the only provider for years as Boeing and Lockheed argued it would be cheaper to merge.

The EELV program doesn't actually require two different providers to guarantee access to space. It requires two different families of launch vehicles. ULA had the Atlas V and Delta IV families.

... and Delta IV Medium is being retired, because it's expensive and no longer needed as the second medium launch vehicle.

Also, they want Vulcan to replace both Delta and Arian family. Thanks to SpaceX they don't need two anymore.

At least in the US that is not possible anymore. The wild inconsistency (arbitrary enforcement) of Anti-Trust Law has been replaced by a consistent definition thanks to the activities of many judges and legal theorists. The new definition is basically that one needs to prove abuse of consumers to make Anti-Trust law effective.

I don't think SpaceX is in danger of being accused of that.

They really don't have any competition on price anymore, but they are yet unable to actually do as many flights as they need to. To solve that they are building even more launch sites and thanks to the re-usability they will be able to do more flights without further increasing their engine output.

Bezos's Blue Origin is on track to have a very similar system in a few years, and perhaps even better eventually with the possibility of a reusable second stage. ULA still has plenty of contracts and could compete if its parent companies wanted to spend the money to do so. Arianespace is vaguely commercial, is currently cost-competitive, and could also choose to develop a reusable vehicle, if its parent companies/countries can stand the expense. There are also plenty of small-launcher outfits currently working that could also scale up given a contract and/or investment, just like SpaceX did from Falcon 1 to F9, were SpaceX to leave any room in the market by overpricing.

> Bezos's Blue Origin is on track to have a very similar system in a few years

That's on paper, not anything they've flown has come close to what SpaceX is demonstrating as a matter of some routine now.

(1) never been to orbit

(2) never been to orbit and then back down to a landing

(3) 6 flights vs 33

(4) payload < 2 Tonnes vs 5.5 for Falcon 9 re-usable (and 8 expendable).

At this point in time Blue Origin to me looks like a slightly more serious version of Armadillo Aerospace and SpaceX looks like the company that will put the majority of tonnage into orbit in the next decade.

It's easy to confuse Blue Origin with other companies with paper plans, but they're the real deal. Besides having demonstrated clear competence with New Shepard (with an LH2 engine no less), the orbital version is well underway. They've leased the pad, are currently building the factory, and are testing the engine. And Bezos definitely has the money. They may not be flying the New Glenn yet, but they will.

Yeah. Blue Origin is probably at least 4 years behind, but Bezos has more money than God and Blue Origin's approach is technically sound, so yeah. I don't think SpaceX will indefinitely be the only reusable launch provider, and I don't think anyone would want that anyway.

We are a decade away from even knowing the reliability rate for BO orbital rockets.

As far as I can tell, Blue Origin is taking their time to ensure the reliability and re-usability of their rockets before they take a shot at reaching orbit. Different strategy that's way less flashy, but I think they end up with a better track record and and a more clearly proven reliability (compared to SpaceX).

There is no substitute for launching. Whether or not Blue Origin will have a better track record and more clearly proven reliability is a complete unknown at this point and if they wait another 3 years before they start launching they'll be roughly a decade behind SpaceX.

The Russians are doing more private launches with Soyuz and the Indians are also likely to do the same.

From what I can tell, that's not true. Last year, SpaceX did 5 commercial launches (i.e. non-government) with Falcon 9 while Soyuz only did 2 or 3 (depending on how you count "commercial").

They wouldn't have a monopoly since there are plenty of other launch services out there (ULA,Russians,ESA,etc). The fact that SpaceX will probably be able to do it for much cheaper doesn't factor into it.

Arianespace is their biggest competitor, they are the de facto rulers of the commercial launch market, with SpaceX hot on their heels. The Ariane 5 launches twin payloads about 7 times a year, for a total of about 14 total spacecraft launches per year. SpaceX is about at a similar cadence but has yet to hit the overall schedule and mission reliability figures that Arianespace has achieved so it's still a bit of a race. Launching on Ariane is the easy, safe choice. Launching on the Falcon 9 is still considered to be a little bit risky, more so from a schedule perspective (which is still a big deal in the industry).

SpaceX is increasing its launch cadence and reducing its prices substantially (through reusability) so they are becoming more competitive by leaps and bounds every moment. If they can follow through on their cadence increases (right now they are around an average of 3 weeks between launches and a minimum of 2 weeks) and cost reductions (see recent flight) no one else will be able to keep up with them. Their internal cost reductions on reuse are unknown but their current price reductions are around 30%, which is off of their already incredibly aggressive low launch prices. If SpaceX can provide launches at around $45 mil and can launch often enough to satisfy demand reasonably then they'll end up with the majority of the commercial launch business eventually. If you can put your satellite in orbit reliably and save on the order of $50 million then you'd be insane not to do so. There's a bit of an insurance premium with launching on SpaceX currently but that should even out after a while and the huge cost reductions swamp that difference regardless (even if, for example, SpaceX were to blow up another rocket tomorrow).

The only realistic competitor for SpaceX in the near term is Blue Origin, once they develop their orbital launcher which will also have VTVL first stage reusability. The timeline on that is sometime before 2020, but that's likely to be the soonest any real competition for SpaceX's business model shows up. Once it becomes commonplace for launches to involve first stage reuse (which will probably happen over the next 5 years or so) I'd expect a lot of the other rocket companies (like Boeing and LockMart) to come out with similar designs (or go out of business or be relegated to national payloads only). It's a lot easier to put forward some hypothetical "better" design for your next generation rocket when everything is on paper, it's a lot harder to pretend your rocket is still better when you're getting your face pushed in by the competition on price by huge margins on a regular basis.

Once SpaceX has the Falcon Heavy running (which will be even more reusable since the upper stage is a smaller proportion of the rocket) they'll be able to launch nearly anything anyone else can, and at dramatically lower costs. Once they're able to launch GPS satellites (which they've already got orders for) as well as the big national security birds (on the FH) for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars less than ULA then almost all of that business is going to flow to them and LockMart/Boeing are going to have some tough times.

They will not do Vertical Integration, neither will Blue Origin. It looks like ULA Vulcan will survive on a few specialized launches.

Arian will still have non competitive flight that SpaceX can not take away. They will probably survive.

SpaceX will be doing vertical integration on pad 39a for national security launches.

The one part of the market where they will continue to see competition is for those payloads/trajectories where there is no way to land the booster.

Firstly, even without reusability they still have an industry leading cost-competitive launcher.

Secondly, it's my understanding that with the performance upgrades from the Block 5 iteration that will become the dominant configuration later this year there will no longer be a need to fly the booster in expendable mode. And with the ability to launch much heavier payloads on the Falcon Heavy for extremely low prices, there won't be much of any performance window anywhere that competitors could wiggle through.

And remember even a booster with a 10-launch lifetime can do a reusable-priced expendable launch on the final flight before "retirement" :)

> Does SpaceX have any real competitors in the private sector?

They do, such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance, and others I can't think of off the top of my head.

However, Musk appears to have a major advantage: At least two major investment banks [0][1][2] and many other observers and investors [3][4] believe a major advantage Musk has over competitors is his relationship with President Trump. They claim it has greatly increased investment in Tesla (and investment indeed has greatly increased since Musk embraced Trump after the election, but of course the cause is impossible to prove and U.S. stocks in general have rallied). If you doubt this is an issue, not only see the cites but search a news index for "musk trump" - it is widespread outside HN.

I don't know about the effect on SpaceX (are they public?), but the space business is highly dependent on government contracts, project funding, and regulation; you can imagine what the appearances are. Compare that with competitor Jeff Bezos, for example, who owns a major newspaper that regularly criticizes Trump; will the competition for government contracts and other benefits be free and fair?

It would be bad for the space industry, the economy, the U.S. as a nation, and the fight for the free market and against corruption if that relationship decided or even appeared to decide the winner in this competition. Appearances are reality on the public stage; if people merely perceive corruption helped him, the (many) unscrupulous people will try to use that tactics themselves and many others will doubt Musk's legitimacy.

I think he has what it takes to win on his own; the other stuff could undermine him unnecessarily, and be bad for everyone else.

----

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/business/elon-musk-donald...

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/20/technology/elon-musk-trump/

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/16/ubs-analyst-says-he-cant-und...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/musk-s-su...

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/elon-...

[Mods: Last time I mentioned Musk's relationship with Trump, you objected but the problem wasn't clear to me; I responded and asked, but probably too late to for you to see it. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13880838 ) If this post is somehow objectionable, please tell me the problem so that I can avoid it in the future. This seems like many other posts on HN, except its content criticizes a very popular figure and includes a controversial one; hopefully popularity doesn't preclude criticism and the POTUS can be discussed. I am speaking plainly and documenting it very well.]

Blue Origin does not currently belong in the list of competitors. They are (not yet) in the same class (and may never be).

Blue Origin doesn't count /yet/, but they almost certainly WILL. Bezos is the second richest person in the entire world, and the only thing he really cares to use that wealth for is space.

Does Blue Origin count?

I believe they are currently doing sub-orbital flights while they are working up to re-usable orbital flights.

Please correct me if i misremembered.

You know there is absolutely no reason for you to "believe" anything about Blue Origin, right? Google, Wikipedia and Blue Origin's own website is 3 seconds away.

This is correct. Their current launch stack is and will remain sub-orbital hops above the Kármán line.

They are actively working on their next gen launch stack (New Glenn), which is set to have its first launch before 2020. New Glenn will be a reusable launch stack capable of inserting payloads into orbit. It will be roughly similar to the Falcon Heavy in terms of mission capabilities.

No. Not even close to this.

I'm not sure how valid it is, but i read somewhere that Blue Origin and SpaceX are both shooting for the same target, but taking different paths. Blue Origin is doing Reusability first and orbital second. SpaceX went Orbital first and Reusability second. although to me it seems spacex is clearly ahead.

The difference between launching something to space and to orbit is roughly the difference between a bicycle, and a motorcycle.

Blue Origin can go to space. They are nowhere close to going to orbit.

We've sent things to space and back a long time ago. We call them airplanes. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15

Blue Origin isn't as far back as it may seem.

They're new engine (BE-4) that will power New Glenn is going through test firings now. Additionally, they're angling to get BE-4 sold into other launch stacks than just their internal hardware.

If they are able to get BE-4 out into other launch stacks in the next year or two, it's very possible that New Glenn will launch it's first mission before 2020.

New Glenn will be comparable to the Falcon Heavy in terms of lift. The Falcon Heavy won't have it's demo flight until later this year.

I'd agree that Blue Origin is behind SpaceX. Still, though, I think they are on a pretty good track to take second place in the reusable launch stack to orbit.

SpaceX Merlin 1C completed its first full duration firing in 2007, a decade ago. Blue Origin is trying to go straight to a large engine with more than twice the thrust of the Merlin 1 AND using a fuel that has never been used in rocketry for an engine this size. I'm impressed that Blue Origin has come this far, but they are most likely 5 years behind SpaceX, and probably more.

No: SpaceX is launching satellites into various orbits, which Blue Origin cannot do yet (and cannot do with their current rocket).

They are still a ways off from having something comparable to SpaceX. New Glenn might have a test launch in 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Glenn

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