How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?(getmeflyingcars.medium.com) |
How much does it cost to send 1kg to lower earth orbit?(getmeflyingcars.medium.com) |
I think they are inflation-adjusted. Here's an inflation-adjusted source that explicitly lets you pick FY2021 dollars as the reference:
https://aerospace.csis.org/data/space-launch-to-low-earth-or...
It puts the Saturn V at $5k USD/kg, the same as this article.
What's interesting is that it shows a general downward trend a little more clearly than this one does, but the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are still very shocking outliers.
https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/InflationAdjust.h...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1TPewJ64QNVtM5sbR...
There's a column there for inflation-adjusted prices, but not much data in it.
Edit looks like it was updated minutes ago
I was a bit sad not to find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_(rocket_family) in the list ! I'm really not expert enough into space race matters to know if it's relevant, or if the tiny french LEO platform would be worth charting ?
What it has going for however is a near perfect track record.
Falcon 9 and Heavy lose most of their performance advantage when going to higher orbits, IIRC because their first stages stage lower, and their upper stage has an ISP disadvantage vs. hydrogen rockets.
To maximize payload percentage to both LEO and higher orbits the most optimal rocket configuration is a first stage burning a dense fuel like RP-1 or Methane to minimize your largest tankage size/weight, and use hydrogen on your upper stage to maximum ISP without incurring too large a cost in heavier tankage. That’s how the Saturn V could lift 150 metric tons to LEO and 50 to translunar injection.
But instead SpaceX decided to use the same fuel and engines for both stages to get economies of scale in engine production, and dense fuels to save the most dry mass.
They could have optimized the next generation Falcon platform with a cryogenic hydrogen upper, and increased their GEO payloads 10-20%, at the cost of dual engine designs with less economies of scale and increased fueling complexity and infrastructure.
Instead they decided to brute force the same simple design architecture and build a 10x larger booster/second stage with Starship/SuperHeavy with 3x times the engines. One engine type, one fuel type and bigger rockets with enough brute lifting capacity that you can still put 100 metric tons in LEO while conserving enough to fly back your first stage and make your second stage out of heavy stainless steel so it can re-enter and be reused too.
So probably two thirds the payload to orbit capacity as a Saturn V style rocket, but 1/100th the cost per launch.
And in fact, the source spreadsheet [0] lists a few members of the Ariane family - so I think it's charted.
0: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TPewJ64QNVtM5sbRDIXu...
I'd rather fund Starship to get that massive launch cost reduction and then start looking at returning to the moon.
Being able to ship more hardware means you don't have to make it as reliable since you have spares. That further drives down the cost of R&D.
While Starship (and maybe New Glenn) does look more attractive than SLS now, a effort as large as Artemis is more concerned with capability than immediately driving the cost down. SLS is a capable vehicle moved forward by proven methods by experienced vendors. The lower risk drives higher and more predictable up front costs.
Check out Everyday Astronaut for some interesting perspective on what is going on with SLS and Starship:
Using hydrogen to fuel the first stage required building a massively heavy cryogenic tank, impairing performance so greatly the RS-25s cant lift the SLS without SRBs.
And not only will it cost $20B before it’s first launch, but each flight will destroy over a half billion in engines alone. So the minimum cost per flight is over $1B without counting the R&D, about $3B to $5B per flight in total depending on how many flights are flown to amortize the R&D.
And with all that, SLS has very limited capabilities. The block 1 will be the largest heavy lift launch system (until Starship launches), but it’s only about 30% more payload mass than a $150M falcon heavy expendable.
But worse is the maximum possible cadence for the SLS is twice yearly, making it both useless and unnecessary for more ambitious missions that will rely on in orbit refueling. It’s just an archaic dinosaur built out of nearly 50 year old parts.
I don't know enough to know what all would be required, how / if you could communicate with other networks, etc., but even just having your own personal LEO satellite-based communications network seems relatively plausible based on these launch costs and piggybacking on other, larger launches.
No, I can't see that... because I'm not a satellite communications expert. My training is evolutionary biology and international business.
I don't know how many satellites it would take to provide private communications across the United States, or the globe, or any section of area. It sounds like you might though.
Let's say one wanted to create their own personal satellite communications for telephone and data transmission. How many would you need?
This is speculation to a degree, but I think Elon has tweeted that the internal SpaceX cost for such a mission is around $15m. So yes, even at $1450/lb to LEO, SpaceX is making a significant margin. See this article for more info: https://www.elonx.net/how-much-does-it-cost-to-launch-a-reus...
Remeber that SpaceX still has to recoup the investment in developing the Falcon9 as well as reusability. In the linked article above, they mention that Elon said developing reusability cost about $1 billion. So lots of this margin goes to paying that invest back.
It seems like it would be cheaper to send it to LEO using the SpaceX Starship.
$5k sounds abit accessible
Furthermore, SpaceX’s upcoming rocket can be carbon-neutral since it burns methane, which can be extracted from the earth’s atmosphere.
A falcon 9 launch burns roughly 260 metric tons of liquid oxygen [1]. CO2 is 1.375 times the weight of O2, so assuming complete all that oxygen turns into CO2 we're looking at 357 metric tons of CO2 (which is an exaggeration, because a good portion of it turns into H2O instead... but the H2O is actually slightly concerning because it's in the upper atmosphere... so whatever).
Canada wants it's Carbon tax to reach $170 CAD per ton by 2030, which seems to be considered a pretty agressive carbon tax [2]. At this rate the fuel burnt in flight would cost a whopping 61 thousand dollars CAD... or 48K USD. On a multi million dollar launch.
[1] https://spaceflight101.com/spacerockets/falcon-9-ft/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada#2020:...
My understanding for why we don't use those for spacecraft is because people and fine machinery can't take the Gs.
Trash could.
Trash disposal here is great; free unlimited household trash disposal if you drive it to a dump, with only larger things like tires and mattresses costing money (but a very reasonable amount, like $2/tire).
One approach is to capture a number of related issues in one fee at a natural point of contact that is easy to measure. It's not a crazy idea.
I've been a ham a long time and its interesting to see the progress. Back when I was a gen-x kid amsat was about 20 years old and had just barely broken two digits of launched satellites and there were never more than a couple in orbit at a time. Now a days there's two digits of ham radio satellites launched per year...
The satnogs project is pretty interesting to see what goes into the ground station for a small satellite. Maybe start there.
AFAIK other than some obscure situations involving the ISS and some APRS satellites, there has never been any AMSAT multi-satellite networking, but at the current incredible rate of expansion I'd expect to see hobbyists having something like that by 2030 or so.
Pretty much all money can be bought for very slightly more money. Thus, a price can be cheap.
Demand. The market price for sending stuff to space will be significantly higher, pricing out _almost_ all of the useless shit.
Also, you can send the turd alone, you need to attach it to a launcher, and have a deployment mechanism. You are looking at a few thousands $ minimum regardless of the weight.
I wonder if the market or human incentives will increase some other variables which will make it just as inaccessible to the lowly (as it should - Even Elon Musk shouldn’t be able to send non-necessary stuff up in low orbit), such as: Increasing testing requirements to ensure it does ejects itself away from the LEO, or increasing legal authorizations required.
On the other hand, assuming we could indeed send our manure for $1400/kg, would it be the most reasonable way to get rid of radioactive waste? It sounds like a Simpsons episode, but the cost seems so low that it sounds like the next step.
There is also politics involved, any country putting nuclear 'waste' in high orbits would be a suspect for putting nuclear weapons in space as well.
You actually specifically want things to go to LEO before they die; when they're sufficiently low, atmospheric drag takes care of them quickly.
I agree with the overall direction of your point-that we need to be careful about our space junk-though :)
It sounds awful at first glance, but I wonder what the environmental impacts actually are of nuclear waste de orbiting and spreading evenly over the atmosphere. Normalized out per kwh, environmental radiation release might be less than the equivalent coal power plant? I'll have to break out an excel sheet later.
Now I wonder what exactly about the headline made all three of wonder about sending poop to space? I guess poop is a universal answer to "most ridiculous thing that weighs under a pound"?
The more relevant number is the all-in immediate price per launch, the rate where one could simply wire the money and SpaceX would launch next week, divided by the actual thing(s) launched, which will weigh some intermediate amount. And compare that to the same for the other rockets.
I mildly disagree with you, but I can't even begin to take the other side of the argument without knowing why you think the price estimates given aren't plausible (or even basic facts like what the cost you are using for the Falcon Heavy is...). Other responses to you spew out random facts trying to argue that Falcon Heavy is expensive in ways that Starship isn't, but I really can't tell if those random facts are even closely related to why you think it's implausible.
The other responses did help clarify how it can occur with Starship.
″[The rocket] costs $28 million to launch it, that’s with everything,” Couluris said, adding that reusing the rockets is what is “bringing the price down.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/16/elon-musk-spacex-falcon-9-ro...
As SpaceX uses their Falcon 9s more, the cost will continue to fall and approach consumables plus the amortized cost of the 1st stage.
The Starship is the same idea, but with larger payload and better reusability. Realistically it'll be somewhat expensive initially, but as they improve the design and reuse, costs will drop.
Yes, this one is better because it starts from 0, but there are plenty of reasons to offset a graph. For example, when you want to look at curves correlation (you may even want more than one offset at the same time), or study the change behavior.
Let’s say you’re a member of congress accustomed to how programs work and someone says to you, pay me to make a rocket that is totally reusable to make the moon so cheap that tons of people will do it.
For one, cheap? Full stop. In whose interest is it to make space exploration cheap? Does the government want access to space cheap enough that someone might do something destabilizing or disruptive in any way?
Ok, let’s skip past cheap and the Congress-critter looks at the shiny Starship and asks, “How much stuff can it take to the moon?” The answer is “lots if we figure out orbital rocket refueling, otherwise nothing.” To get into TLI and beyond, SpaceX or somebody needs to figure out how to do that. Sure there have been some experiments, but nothing concrete yet.
Ok, you skip past the sci-fi orbital refueling and the suited person says, “I love it and I’ll vote for it, but tell me where all is it going to be built so we now which senators will speed this along.” You say, well, design and manufacturing in CA, and a KSC processing facility, engine tests in Central TX countryside and a new space-port in Boca Chica. Response is “oh come on man—CA, FL and TX already have tons of stuff going on and their reps won’t care about something this small! We need Idaho, Missouri, Mississippi, the kinds of places where a rep will burn down their grandma’s house for a project this size. Come back when you have a real plan.”
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining#Proposed_minin...
Is that by treaty?
"Cheap price" literally means "a price that costs less".
You can certainly say that, but it makes no sense.
Rockets have a huge advantage in that they go slow near the ground, where the atmosphere is thick. They're not dealing with as much air resistance. As they reach altitudes with less atmosphere, they can throttle up. This saves a lot of fuel, mass, energy.
A rail gun, however, can only add velocity, energy, at the beginning, and will slow down every moment for the rest of the launch. This is the worst possible condition. You're at your highest velocity while you're in the thickest part of the atmosphere. You'd need to put an incredible amount of extra energy into the system because of that.
So maybe you put the end of your rail gun on the top of a very high mountain. But the construction costs, the transportation costs, all of this, probably makes it simpler to just use rockets instead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon
[Edit] Also the German V-3. An important note is that the V3 and Babylon (unsure of HARP) were designed to have multiple charges go off as the projectile proceeded down the barrel, which gives an acceleration profile more like a railgun than a traditional cannon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon
Solid-fuel rocket boosters were used instead of explosive charges because of their greater suitability and ease of use. These were arranged in symmetrical pairs along the length of the barrel, angled to project their thrust against the base of the projectile as it passed. This layout spawned the German codename Tausendfüßler ("millipede").
Edit -- turns out this is a thing, already, I just didn't know. SpaceX apparently does not mind. Flights to the moon are planned.
The advantage of re-using slag isn’t that it’s richer in metal, iron oxides being pretty easy to get, it’s that it would take less energy or Oxygen to finish refining.
Recommended reading: Bret Devereaux’s blog series about iron & steel production. https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
That or slag is much lighter per lb of refined product, reducing the transit cost. Iron ores are incredibly common, but they’re also very heavy, what with them being literally rocks.
Only about a quarter of « new » silver comes from silver mines. The rest as a byproduct of other mineral mining where they separate out the silver.
For order of magnitude comparisons we can ignore all that, for finer grained comparisons it really is comparing apples and oranges.
In the ideal future world launches should be done without the need for secret contracts, something like the private jet industry where planes can chartered, almost at the push of a button, at short notice.
Hold up.. This not only varies by state, but by county and city. Some places have this built in to special assessments on property taxes, some contract with a trash company that collects fees directly, and some are a bit of a free for all with multiple trash companies providing pickup and or/dumpster service (this is more common in rural areas).
I had a place up in the mountains where we had to buy special $6 trash bags and haul it to a central dumpster ourselves, and there are those in large cities who have to deal with mob-run collection companies who bribe local politicians for monopoly rights.
TLDR; To generalize "In the USA" for something like this is impossible.
It might happen for other reasons like remediation or whatever.
In a modern landfill it already gets recovered (there's a liner underneath, so they have to have a way of dealing with water).
If you search on YouTube for "deskulling slag pot", you'll find a bunch of videos showing slag trains going maybe a couple miles from the mill to a pit to deskull?