Roscosmos vs. SpaceX

[Grendal]

It looks like the Russians are feeling the heat with SpaceX. They are developing a lower cost manned system. This article specifically compares (incorrectly) to SpaceX Dragon 2 system's cost. It ignores Boeing and makes no comparison to them even though their system is quite a bit more expensive than SpaceX's. It also compares the development cost of the Russian system to the full development program of SpaceX:

Russia's Federation spacecraft 3.5 times cheaper than NASA’s SpaceX Dragon — RT News

I do like the idea of a multirole system that the video shows.

 

[ggr]

It looks like the Russians are feeling the heat with SpaceX. They are developing a lower cost manned system. This article specifically compares (incorrectly) to SpaceX Dragon 2 system's cost. It ignores Boeing and makes no comparison to them even though their system is quite a bit more expensive than SpaceX's. It also compares the development cost of the Russian system to the full development program of SpaceX:

Russia's Federation spacecraft 3.5 times cheaper than NASA’s SpaceX Dragon — RT News

I do like the idea of a multirole system that the video shows.

I could be misunderstanding, but the cost of contract to SpaceX is inclusive of some number (8?) missions, whereas it sounds like the Russians are only counting the R&D costs.

 

[Grendal]

I could be misunderstanding, but the cost of contract to SpaceX is inclusive of some number (8?) missions, whereas it sounds like the Russians are only counting the R&D costs.

Yes, you are understanding correctly. The Russians are spinning it pretty badly. Unless the person writing the article is trying to create a bizarre conflict where there is none. I don't speak Russian so I don't know what the video is saying.

 

[ecarfan]

I wouldn't worry too much about a new Roscosmos manned spacecraft taking ISS launches from SpaceX. With the crash in the price of oil the Russian government lacks the resources to do anything but scrape by.

 

[Grendal]

I wouldn't worry too much about a new Roscosmos manned spacecraft taking ISS launches from SpaceX. With the crash in the price of oil the Russian government lacks the resources to do anything but scrape by.

I'm not worried about it anyway. At this point it is a matter of national pride to get a US company getting American astronauts back into space. Paying the Russians to do it was just a necessity after retiring the Space Shuttle. The Russians had an opportunity during the interim. I find it hard to believe that ULA hadn't anticipated the need and had something prepared for when the SS retired. No question that it was shortsighted to ignore the need. Either that or ULA/Boeing/Lockheed/Orbital really expected the government to figure it out and throw a bunch of money at them before they would even consider it.

You can really see how Elon and SpaceX were able to step in at the right time to blow these companies out of the water. In another 5 to 10 years it will be utterly ridiculous how superior SpaceX will be compared their competitors. Look how far they've come in the last 5 to 10 years....

 

[RDoc]

Something to keep in mind is that Congress thinks of NASA as one of the last big pork barrels available, so they don't really like a new comer like SpaceX because they're trying to do things efficiently at low cost. That is definitely not what the Republicans controlling Congress want, so they've been consistently willing to pay the Russians for trips to the ISS rather than funding SpaceX. While American, SpaceX isn't a good pork supplier, so they pay the Russians until their favored companies can come up with a vehicle.

Had they funded SpaceX originally, we'd probably have an American transport system to the ISS by now and be independent of Russia. It remains to be seen if this will change.

 

[Grendal]

It remains to be seen if this will change.

I doubt it. I think the recent statements/talking points will run into the future that they will always want a "backup" system for whatever they do. Of course that will not be true when it is the pork barrel companies in the prime position. You won't hear that there needs to be a backup to SLS. The "backup" system will maintain the pork for the old school launch companies. Let's face it that FH, once flown, makes SLS completely obsolete. Add in any sort of reusability with FH and it becomes ridiculous.

The same is true for the Russian Federation capsule and system. SpaceX will shortly have it beat even with the savings that they are discussing.

 

[aronth5]

Russia vs. Elon Musk: U.S. Startup Threatens Moscow's Role in Space
This graph says it all
Russia vs. Elon Musk: U.S. Startup Threatens Moscow's Role in Space | Business

 

[Ludus]

RT is very sophisticated. They allowed comments that corrected all the inaccuracies in the article.

With corrections, the Russian agency is promising to do almost as much as SpaceX has already done for about the same price, over the next 6 years. Nobody really believes them, but if they did it would still be too little too late.

The article link that starts with a reference to relatives afraid of the Russians assassinating Musk is more accurate and that's RT also.

On balance I'd like to see discrete secret service protection for Musk.

 

[aronth5]

As you can imagine a little back pedaling going on now by the Space Minister

Russian Space Minister: Program Will “Never Catch Up” to SpaceX Innovation

 

[neroden]

The Russians are really very good at space stuff. When they fund it. Remember, Elon was voraciously reading old documents from the Russian space program when he started SpaceX.... not American space program documents!

I wouldn't consider this to be commercial competition. Russia will try to maintain a space progam and hey, maybe they'll have customers. Not *US* customers... maybe customers who the US government will not allow SpaceX to have.

 

[ecarfan]

Reviving this old thread with this news: Elon Musk offers Russia some tips on reusable rockets after Roscosmos announces $880m space plan

Roscosmos announces a plan to build a new rocket called “Amur” to replace Soyuz, featuring a reusable first stage with an non-reusable second stage. Planned to fly by 2026, which means that in reality it will be later than that.

Sounds a lot like what SpaceX accomplished five years ago. So Roscosmos will be well over a decade behind SpaceX. Though by 2026 SpaceX will almost certainly be flying Starship regularly and the Amur rocket will be obsolete and unable to compete in the international market before its first launch.

 

[bxr140]

So what would you have the Russians do then, if not follow the obvious path of reusability?

 

[ecarfan]

Start building a fully reusable vehicle now, following the SpaceX model.

By the time Roscosmos succeeds with their partially reusable rocket they will only be able to get Russian government launches. They won’t be able to compete in the commercial market, and if the ISS still exists NASA won’t use them to get astronauts into orbit. So it seems like their partially reusable rocket will have too few customers to be viable. Of course Russia could simply pour money into the program to keep it going, but Russia barely surviving right now. Will the will and funding be available in the future?

 

[bxr140]

Except fully reusable vs partially reusable doesn’t materially change your assessment that Starship will obsolete the Russian solution.

So again, what would you have them do if not follow the obvious path of reusability?

 

[Grendal]

At least the Russians are making moves toward reusability, ULA, Northrup, Boeing, and Lockheed aren't even trying. They just want their government contract money handed to them.

 

[ecarfan]

Except fully reusable vs partially reusable doesn’t materially change your assessment that Starship will obsolete the Russian solution.

So again, what would you have them do if not follow the obvious path of reusability?

Build a completely reusable rocket. No halfway steps. If they can’t get to full reusability I think Roscosmos is obsolete.

Or maybe Roscosmos is simply doomed and they should fold up now. Which of course they won’t. Putin won’t allow it.

 

[bxr140]

Build a completely reusable rocket.

So you would have them attempt something nobody else has done? You would have them attempt the thing SpaceX abandoned on Falcon? That doesn't make any sense.

Indeed, by far the best strategy for Roscosmos is the one they've chosen: Focus resources on developing a new launcher with first stage reusability at almost half the mass price of current day F9. Any rational person would quantify that as an admirable goal in any industry, regardless what improvements the SpaceX might make in the meantime. That same rational person of course would realize that the strategy in no way prohibits further exploration of reusability, which no doubt Roscosmos would commission at a later time should the opportunity arise.

I'd make the analogy that what you're asking is akin to expecting an undergraduate medical student bypassing years of study and going straight to perform a heart transplant because its been done before, but...that's not even accurate because second stage reusability hasn't been done before.

Mind, that's all before we consider the fact that we're talking about a state run space entity who's charter is to maintain space sovereignty for its benefactors vs a private, western, aggressively run space entity who's charter is to go to Mars.

What remains to be seen is the conviction of The Russians to actually see this one through. Its clear Rogozin's primary goal is to stay Rogozin (as opposed to, you know, grow Russian Space); it is unclear whether this is another vaporware concept intended to enable Rogozin staying Rogozin.

 

[ecarfan]

Indeed, by far the best strategy for Roscosmos is the one they've chosen: Focus resources on developing a new launcher with first stage reusability at almost half the mass price of current day F9.

If Roscosmos achieves that price target it will likely only be because they are massively subsidized by the Russian government an the price is arrived at by disregarding those subsidies. I don’t see how Roscosmos could beat SpaceX so decisively in launch costs in 2026 with what is a copy of an F9, more than a decade after SpaceX perfected F9 reusability. And by 2026 SpaceX will very likely be flying 100% reusable rockets, further lowering their costs to orbit.

To use a relevant hockey analogy, Roscosmos needs to skate towards where the puck is going to be, not where it is right now.

It would be like an EV competitor to Tesla saying “In 6 years we will launch a car like the Model 3 for the price of a Model 3 in 2020, isn’t that great!”. No, it’s a losing strategy because in 6 years Tesla will have dramatically reduced their kWh pack costs and be operating at much higher production volumes, further lowering their per unit costs.

I would describe Roscosmos as a dead man walking. But we can agree to disagree.

 

[bxr140]

If Roscosmos achieves that price target it will likely only be because they are massively subsidized by the Russian government an the price is arrived at by disregarding those subsidies.

There is no evidence to support an assertion that Amur launch prices will be state subsidized to achieve $22M to the customer. In fact there is plenty of evidence to the contrary:

--Russian launches are NOT currently state subsidized to any significant degree. Among other things, that's a major reason Russian launch rates have been terrible for the past few years--Putin isn't bailing them out of their crappy reliability by giving Westerners sweetheart deals to come back and get the launch rates back up.
--There's really no history of state subsidized commercial launches. In fact, Proton was at one point famously a massive profit center because of existing hardware from the old ICBM program. When they opened up in the 90's it was almost literally just bolting some western satellite onto a mothballed ICBM and charging $80 or $100M (or whatever it was back then) to do so. And at last check, the US is paying $90M or something to launch an astronaut on a Soyuz that hasn't had significant development investment for decades and, at least in commercial satellite trim, costs ~$50M. For the whole rocket.
--$880M is actually a pretty reasonable amount of funding a program that's that's using some existing components so its not like the claims of reusability can be dismissed as pure fantasy. To elaborate, Amur will use the Fregat upper stage, probably Soyuz evolutions for the second stage and fairings, and the RD-169 main engines which have been in development for at least a few years now.

Please explain how the above list translates into "likely" state subsidies.

To use a relevant hockey analogy, Roscosmos needs to skate towards where the puck is going to be, not where it is right now.

It would be like an EV competitor to Tesla saying “In 6 years we will launch a car like the Model 3 for the price of a Model 3 in 2020, isn’t that great!”.

Please explain the relevance of these analogies to this discussion. Those analogies imply Roscosmos is developing a product that will in many years match that of SpaceX's 2020 product. The information you linked explicitly states otherwise. The post you quoted when making those analogies explicitly states otherwise.

I would describe Roscosmos as a dead man walking.

There's no evidence to suggest this is in any way accurate analysis. Roscosmos is the state rocket company. The claim of "dead men walking" is as valid as describing ULA or Mitsubishi or Ariane or ISRO as dead men walking and, whether anyone likes it or not, they're ALL going to be around for a LONG time, because governments want to pay their own people to launch government things. (Mitsubishi is probably the most likely to fold their rocket shop, but I digress)