SpaceX's Rising Tide - Discussion of non-SpaceX launch companies

[bxr140]

I guess we kind of need one non-SpaceX thread to merge all the non-SpaceX launcher discussion, but in lieu of that...

Proton launch provider ILS embraces closer relationship with Roscosmos – Spaceflight Now

Basically: ILS, who is essentially the commercial arm of KhSC, is [again] essentially (this is Russia after all, nothing is concise...) transferring its governance away from KhSC--the manufacturer of Proton (and Angara, should that thing ever get off the ground)--to Roscosmos, who is kind of the Russian NASA.

Obviously they're really suffering from the SpaceX effect and, as one would hope from any company faced with such a competitive challenge, they're trying to make a change for the better to regain some relevance in the launcher industry. While going state-run typically is frowned upon, I think its actually a strong play in this case when you factor things like Russian politics, the way money flows in Russia, and the general non-western-ness of how it all works over there. I could imagine ILS launches being heavily subsidized in order to maintain a relevant price point.

Sidenote, tip of the hat to me for the ridiculous punctuation effort upthread.


IN other news, its a crazy rest of May for the global launch industry. PSLV went off last night and there's 4 more launches before the end of the month! Its good to be a fan of Space!

 

[Electroman]

Non-SpaceX Launch Videos

 

[bxr140]

Yeah, I figured that, despite non-video discussion in there, the spirit of that thread is based specifically in launch footage.

 

[Grendal]

I expanded your headline to distinguish this thread from the non-SpaceX launch videos.

Personally, I'm getting into Rocket Lab as the mini-SpaceX company. They aren't reusable but no one but SpaceX is.

 

[bxr140]

Personally, I'm getting into Rocket Lab as the mini-SpaceX company. They aren't reusable but no one but SpaceX is.

Yeah, reusability requires such a massive amount of capital to develop that its hard for anyone to make that leap, let alone the smaller startups who are scraping what they can from the VC community. Generally, the major problem with the smaller launchers is that development costs don't scale proportionally to launcher capability...you know, the lesson SpaceX learned with F1 like 10 years ago (or more?). Even if reusability development was financially in the cards, there's other factors like

In any case RL is obviously in the lead as far as actually having a launcher, though rumor has it they're running into cost vs pricing problems.

Either way, Firefly, Vector, Virgin...even though they're the 'big players' on the small launcher field they're all pretty scrappy/innovative...because they have to be. Its going to be interesting to see who actually makes it and who drops out, and then its really going to be interesting to see who from the minor leagues is going to step up. Zero 2 Infinity, Gilmour, ISRO will no doubt get SSLV up and running, there's a couple of Chinese companies...

Whatever happens in the future, I'm confident that someone's going to crack the small launcher egg that SpaceX passed over in favor of bigger and better things. It will be a sad day for humanity if we only have one launcher solution.

 

[A2be]

Since SpaceX brought real economic-driven competition into the global launch industry since ~2015, they have been eating the commercial launch market. See the graph in this article about how SpaceX went from zero commercial launches in 2010-2012 to near parity in 2015 and then more than any other competitor by 2017 and again in 2018. That article explains quite a bit more about the recent new competitive pressures in the launch service provider industry and some of the causes, and is well sourced.

SpaceX seems to be frequently mentioned by competitors, and by payload owners who buy launch services, as the cause for much of this.

 

[bxr140]

Perhaps more pertinent in the Starlink thread, but I'll put it here anyway:

Why Maxar Technologies Stock Popped 16.5%

Maxar closed up +17.5% today on news that Thales Alenia+Leonardo is interested in buying MDA from Maxar. While the yahoo article doesn't dig into it, this whole deal is particularly interesting because Telesat LEO is currently being bid by two groups--Airbus D&S (who of course is already building OneWeb) and...wait for it...a Maxar+Thales consortium. Moving MDA from one side of that consortium to the other could have some interesting ramifications depending on how the pieces of the pie are divvied up between Thales and the various Maxar divisions, but more importantly, the fact that the notional purchase price being floated is ~double the entire Maxar market cap means Thales/Leonardo must really believe in the success of Telesat LEO.

THEN, there's a completely unrelated element in there because MDA is building the antennas of the OneWeb satellites--owning MDA would still give Thales a path to success in the sat-internet business even if the Telesat program goes to Airbus (or just falls through). Icing on the cake for a Thales acquisition of MDA is that they'd be a thorn in the side of their arch enemies (so to speak), Airbus.

This is definitely good news for satellite internet competition, and it is really good news for the entire space industry--especially the launch industry.

 

[Nikxice]

I recently looked into buying shares of MAXR after learning NASA had awarded them a big piece of the Lunar Gateway. Turned off because of their heavy debt load, dwindling stock price, and not much else in the pipeline. Puzzled as to why NASA had chosen to partner with this financially distressed company. Barring a buyout, a MAXAR bankruptcy might be on par with the odds of a Gateway reality.

 

[bxr140]

Puzzled as to why NASA had chosen to partner with this financially distressed company.

Best guess is NASA sees sustainability in the imaging division of Maxar. Best guess is NASA is also trying to [finally] take a meaningful step away from The Establishment by selecting a company who’s main goal is something other than extracting maximum pork from government finding. I recall the Maxar price being 1/3 or 1/2 less than bids from the usual suspects for the lunar gateway thing.

 

[Grendal]

Rocketlab's kick stage gets a name and explains how innovative it is.

 

[bxr140]

Lol: RocketLab - low cost, low orbit

Just to reiterate, I'm not that smart.

Its super cool that they're doing something really innovative [in a different way from SpaceX] with launchers. There are certainly some downsides to using the upper stage as the spacecraft bus (mostly vibration related, and you also end up with a heavier satellite that is harder to control on orbit), but the upsides of not having what are--at least if you squint--redundant subsystems between the upper stage and the payload bus are pretty compelling (things like attitude control, propulsion, power, data handling, T&C).

 

[ecarfan]

I watched the video but I thought it was somewhat vague, and it is not clear to me what is innovative. Is it simply the idea of a small “kick stage”? BTW, I’m in New Zealand right now, on the North Island. Visited the Tesla Showroom in Auckland and chatted with the staff. They were only barely aware of RocketLab.

Rocketlab's kick stage gets a name and explains how innovative it is.

 

[bxr140]

...it is not clear to me what is innovative.

They are:

...using the upper stage as the spacecraft bus...

That is not something that's been done before vs a traditional satellite.

 

[Grendal]

SpaceX has a lot of extra capacity when they aren't lofting the really big GTO satellites. I've always wondered why they didn't offer a kick stage for a NASA exploration satellite. I expect it has something to do with just using extra boost on the upper stage. SpaceX is strongest at LEO because the Merlin vacuum isn't as good as other second stage engines. It made sense to add a kick stage to make up for that weakness. I'm sure there are reasons they didn't and it does give a nice advantage for Rocketlab in the smallsat arena to have one.

 

[bxr140]

I've always wondered why they didn't offer a kick stage for a NASA exploration satellite. I expect it has something to do with just using extra boost on the upper stage.

Yeah, it really comes down to where the mass goes. Its hard to downsize the second stage so, despite any inefficiency, its hard to close the trade on putting a third stage in there. Most bigger satellites (and pretty much any NASA mission to-date) are going to have on-board propulsion systems capable of signifiant orbital maneuvers (as opposed to just station keeping) which have really absorbed the role of the traditional kick stage.

The RL application is really innovative because its leveraging the forward looking (and sometimes 'not smart enough to be stupid') mentality that's pretty pervasive amongst their likely customer base. Most of the people in that...uhh..space...could really care less about the platform--what they're interested in is their gizmo and getting it on orbit to do the thing, and they're willing to compromise on things like edge-of-the-envelope satellite performance and even reliability if it means they can get their gizmo up there faster and cheaper. Contrast to NASA, who is 'smart' enough to know how to build a super-duper bespoke platform around their gizmos to ensure they maximize the Nth degree of performance.

 

[Grendal]

Arianne just lost one of their Vega rockets.

Arianespace Vega launch fails, Emirati satellite lost - SpaceNews.com

 

[bxr140]

This Just In: China Plans to Stop Bombing Citizens
China launches three military satellites, tests new rocket steering fins – Spaceflight Now

Honorable mention for the use of quotes in the article.

 

[ecarfan]

This Just In: China Plans to Stop Bombing Citizens
China launches three military satellites, tests new rocket steering fins – Spaceflight Now

Honorable mention for the use of quotes in the article.

Quote: “The new system is designed to control where the booster falls back to the ground. Rockets launched from China’s inland spaceports typically drop their stages, still containing toxic propellant vapors, near villages and towns.”

Incredible.

 

[bxr140]

Incredible.

Mind bogglingly so. Same goes for Russian launches from Baikonur...but at least those stages are just dropping in sparsely populated northern Kazakhstan and Siberia.

This is one of the watershed moments in Space; this (plus the Apstar 2 failure, which wasn't so fatally catastrophic) is what reclassified all American satellites as defense articles.
Intelsat 708 - Wikipedia
Chinese Rocket Failure Plus Aftermath

 

[Grendal]

Rocketlab got hammered in yesterdays announcement of the ridesharing program by SpaceX. Personally, I doubt it was SpaceX's intention to target Rocketlab but they will be impacted nonetheless. Rocketlab is giving a livestream update today about 1 hour before the Amos 17 launch.