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Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Costs and catastrophic failures:[1]

* United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin): 0 "outright failures" and 83 successful launches, ~$110 million/launch

* SpaceX: 1 failure and 18 successful launches, $60 million/launch

If you are looking for someone to launch your assets into orbit, who do you choose?

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-destroyed...

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Average cost for successful launch:

* United Launch Alliance: $110 million

* SpaceX: $63.5 million ($60 million * 18 total / 17 successful)

So SpaceX saves you $46.5 million per successful launch. If we assume that 1/18 SpaceX launches fail, then in the long run SpaceX wins as long as your typical payload cost is less than $46.5 * 18 = $837 million.

If we assume that the cost to replace the payload for a failed launch is less than the original payload (R&D costs are amortized, so it's likely that building a second payload is much cheaper than designing and building the first payload), then the break-even payload cost can be even higher.

One additional variable would be the cost to replace any assets lost on the 1 unsuccessful launch, although I'm not sure who ultimately picks up the tab for that.

Yeah, my back of the napkin analysis is probably missing a bunch of important stuff. I just wanted to highlight the fact that simply looking at the failure rates is not enough -- you have to consider the amortized cost of getting your stuff into space successfully. Maybe tolerating a few failures saves money in the long run.

(Of course this all assumes a replaceable payload. I am sure the analysis would be quite different for carrying people into space.)

Does this formula apply to manned spacecraft? What's the payload value of an astronaut?

(Not trying to be snarky here, just thinking that the 1/18 vs 0/83 comparison seems moot when you have humans on board)

With manned spacecraft, you have to factor in the chance that the crew would survive a failed launch. Specifically, in the press conference following this latest failure, it was stated that the planned crew escape system would have been capable of saving the crew. To my non-expert eyes looking at the event, there seemed to be a fair amount of time between there being an obvious problem, and complete disintigration.

Clearly, manned vehicles demand a higher level of reliability than cargo carriers. However spaceflight even after decades of experience is still pretty risky. From a life safety perspective, non-manned, robotic missions are preferable. But our drive as a species to explore and populate new territories means that we'll need vehicles safe enough to travel in, and/or people who want to do it regardless of the risk. 1/18 is still probably decent odds compared to the ones facing people 300 years ago, who set out in wooden sailing ships to explore the unknown.

For manned space flight, so far 18 people have died out of 430 that went to space. (14 Americans in two shuttle accidents, and 4 Russians in two separate incidents)

That's only slightly lower than 1/18.

The shuttle had a 40% vehicular failure rate (2 out of 5) and a 1.5% flight failure rate. That's better than 1/18, but not by that much.

At some point, yes, there is a monetary value to human life. During the early days of space flight, it was something like $1 million per astronaut. These days, it's up to something more like $50 million per astronaut (inflation would put it as more like $7 million).

I don't have my original source on this, but here's a good article discussing that and the concept of "mission success": http://reason.com/archives/2012/01/26/how-much-is-an-astrona...

ULA's record with its current generation of Atlas 5 and Delta 4 boosters is 83 successful launches and no outright failures.

This is an impressive reliability record, no doubt about it. However, it is fair to note that this is the "current generation" Atlas and Delta. The first Atlas was used during the Mercury program, so they've had more than 50 years of design refinement to get to that point.

Also what does "no outright failures" mean?

I assume they mean "failure to accomplish mission", as opposed to "things didn't work correctly but the outcome was still successful."

There is some wiggle room, payload achieved orbit, but not nessisarily the desired orbit.

> it is fair to note that this is the "current generation" Atlas and Delta. The first Atlas was used during the Mercury program, so they've had more than 50 years of design refinement to get to that point.

This perspective surprises me. From my perspective, I wonder why it matters to me how long SpaceX has had to design their rocket? Wouldn't I prefer the one with 50 years of refinements?

Someone else posted a similar comment. It implies a 'my team is better than yours' competition, rather than a competition over which rocket functions better.

The SpaceX design should be dramatically suprior to the aging Atlas and Delta designs because they are designed to be cheaper to build in the first place and they will be game changing if they manage to land the first stage and immediately turn it around for multiple launches.

Atlas and Delta are certainly good platforms for high reliability but they are expensive and they aren't making much effort to bring the costs down. Bringing the costs down would require design revisions that might undo that 50 years of design stability.

If SpaceX or someone else comes up with a reliable design at a dramatically lower price point ULA wont be able to sell their launchers unless its to a money is no object customer like the U.S. military.

Recovery and rapid turnaround of the first stage could make space access cheap enough many things would become possible and affordable that are not currently, due to high launch costs, like expeditions to Mars or large space structures.

ULA is already dead in the water. The only reason why they're around is because of the monopoly they have with US military launches.

Looking at SpaceX's and Orbital Science's recent performances, ULA seems to be in good shape.

With the sheer amount of money backing ULA, there's no way they can be considered dead in the water. Their launch vessels are incredibly reliable, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

They're not just viable competitors, they're the current market leader. SpaceX is the peppy young upstart here (and still, failures like this are stepping stones to future reliability, if they're spending the time learning from their mistakes like they should be).

At least it was unmanned.

ULA wins very little commercial business. So yes, they're the market leader for US government launches of extremely expensive satellites. The rest of the market, commercial and US government launches of less expensive stuff, is where SpaceX is way ahead of ULA.

My point was that Atlas/Delta have had a lot of time to get their bugs found and fixed, while the F9 has had 20 launches overall. It seems reasonable to me to expect that the reliability of F9 will rise with time as more bugs are found and fixed. So if you wanted to launch something today, you would reasonably consider this record to be a reflection of current risk. But I don't think it makes sense to extrapolate and say this will remain constant in the future.

But then again, I am partial.

SpaceX still looks better than its direct competition, Orbital ATK:

Antares CRS-3 turbopump failure, vehicle FTS was activated and launch vehicle impacted very close to the launch pad. $200 million vehicle lost, approximately $30 million in damage to launch facility.

Loss of the $424 million Glory satellite due to payload fairing separation failure.

*Loss of the $273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite due to payload fairing separation failure.

And I don't think the comparison between ULA and SpaceX is necessarily a fair one. ULA is the beneficiary of inheriting solid engineering teams and practices from very mature programs run by large defense corporations. SpaceX is comparatively very young (I feel this makes their overall record even more impressive).

> I don't think the comparison between ULA and SpaceX is necessarily a fair one. ULA is the beneficiary of inheriting solid engineering teams and practices from very mature programs run by large defense corporations. SpaceX is comparatively very young ...

Another commenter said something similar. If I am awarding merit badges, then I agree it's unfair. Otherwise, if I'm looking for someone to launch my satellite, the comparison is perfectly fair (not that 'fair' has anything to do with it).

> if I'm looking for someone to launch my satellite If you're looking for someone to launch a satellite, then you have good ideas about how much you have to spend, your willingness to accept risk, and the services you desire. Depending on how you feel about these and other factors, your decision might not be as straightforward as you are portraying here.

You're focusing on launching a satellite today. Those commenters are looking at satellite launches across the next decade, as ULA reliability doesn't change and SpaceX reliability grows (in theory).

>If you are looking for someone to launch your assets into orbit, who do you choose?

It heavily depends on the cost of the asset. If a satellite costs close to 1bn, it worth to use $110/launch but more reliable rocket.

True. Also don't forget the opportunity cost of the time lost: 1) building a replacement and waiting for a spare slot in which to launch it, 2) engineering, manufacturing, and other resources which could have been used for (and likely were planned for) something else, but now are used for the replacement, and 3) the project the asset was used for, and its output (revenue, research results, etc.), now put on hold.

Many organizations don't have the spare time and capacity to afford all of that; they or their project may simply be done.

Keep in mind that several copies of a satellite will be built during production. Some are mockups of a few subsystems (e.g. structure), some are used for tests (e.g. thermal, electrical, interference), often there's also a "flight spare" which is an exact copy of the satellite in case something goes wrong with the flight hardware (e.g. broken during testing, launch failure).

E.g. Curiosity has such a spare (I'm not sure if it's the same as the flight hardware or close enough) which will be sent in a future mission (I think 2017, though I don't have any sources at hand) with (some) different experiments on board.

For some context, that's roughly the cost of a single instrument for the Hubble (~$100M). There's no free lunch in the space business...

But do realize that the replacement cost of an instrument is much lower than the original creation cost; most of the cost of these things is designing and tooling, and not part of the unit cost of the actual article.

There're much more expensive satellites. See, for example, http://www.space.com/11606-rocket-launches-missile-defense-s...

And if I recall, some of the SpaceX launches are pricier (though not that level) for the more sensitive payloads--as in there is a Secret-Spy-Satellite optional charge package.

The extra charge is due to the paperwork requirement for these launches... which were imposed after a series of launch failures by LM and Boeing rockets carrying very expensive US Government satellites.

And the paperwork is (in part) because the US Government doesn't purchase insurance on their launches.

>If you are looking for someone to launch your assets into orbit, who do you choose?

The first thing you do is be very glad that you have a choice. Then you can start price shopping. If there is only one domestic option, then you either pay what the sole-source wants, or you pursue international options if those are available to you, many times they will not be.

Is there insurance for the payloads? I know very little about rocketry and launching satellites, but with the costs so high, I would imagine that there is some form of risk mitigation, but I've never heard of such a thing.

edit: If I had read down further, I would have seen a discussion about this very question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9793697

Yes, that is if you can afford it. The Zvezda service module for the ISS was launched without insurance or a backup because of financial problems. Embarrassingly they even had to turn to Pizza Hut for help:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/pizzahut-00b.html

What about the ULA rocket that blew up on the pad a few months ago?

Do you mean the Orbital Sciences rocket, last October? Orbital Sciences is a different company than ULA. However, it's very possible that I don't know about the incident you're referring to; I'd be interested because it changes the picture dramatically.

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