Very cool. For people running the numbers about launch costs, there's a lot more to it than just $/kg. There are very big constants in the cost of a launch (even though SpaceX can get 13150kg/61M$, I doubt they'll offer 1315kg/6.1M$), and having final say in launch timing and what orbit you get is worth a fair bit. For now, it's relatively cheap to hitch a ride as a secondary to the ISS (or ISS orbit), but 500km sun-synchronous is not nearly as easy to line up.
Comparable prices for small sats: Nanoracks quotes 60,000$/1U (usually ~1kg) to the ISS. Interorbital quotes 12,500$/kg at a 310km orbit (or 8,000$ to use their 0.75kg tubesat).
So... are these guys actually going to be able put up a payload and also is there anything really unique about what they're doing? 100kg seems like a pretty small satellite for a $5MM launch, though I must confess my ignorance of such matters for commercial launch systems.
I work for Planet Labs, and our satellites are 5kg[1] each, providing 3-5m ground-resolution imaging. You can do a lot with relatively little mass these days.
100 kg is small compared to some of the behemoths floating around up there. The Milstar satellites that provided high reliability communications for the USA were 4,500 kg each. GPS satellites are over 1,500 kg and are in MEO, which is higher than LEO but lower than GEO.
But a lot of smaller companies don't need gargantuan satellites like that and can get a lot done with 100 kg. If you only need to put one or two satellites up it is not cost effective to spend lots of money on a large launch vehicle, so you buy space on another launch that has spare capacity and is launching at a compatible time/inclination. When you do that, you are not given priority and will have to wait if the #1 priority delays the launch for any reason. So Rocketlab can capture a market segment by letting small companies have their own launches.
It's kind of like getting the individual packets of ketchup from McDonald's vs the family size bottle of ketchup from the grocery store. Sure, the family size gets you more ketchup for your dollar, but you don't normally need that much.
They could be attempting to demo their 3d-printing technology with the smallest launch system possible. I imagine their competitive edge is in manufacturing, and they could be looking for an eventual partnership with a bigger player.
I'm curious, given the stated figures (total thrust, rocket dimensions, payload to certain orbits), is it possible to calculate the specific impulse of this new engine (with the atmo nozzles, I suppose)? I couldn't find it on their page, and I'm not quite well-enough versed in rocketry to even know if there's sufficient information to figure it out.
Cost, according to another article I found. The article also mentioned that electric is 95% efficient while turbine-pumps are ~60%, but that is still definitely not worth the weight penalty.
I suppose it makes sense, as it is very difficult to have a turbo with rocket exhaust on one side and cryogenic oxygen on the other. Its quite creative if it is actually cheaper. It might also allow finer control over throttling back, but thats not useful unless you're spaceX.
The other factor with turbo pumps in open cycle designs is you end up burning a fair amount of your fuel and oxidizer in them, and throwing it overboard at fairly low pressures/velocities, which hurts your specific impulse.
Staged combustion motors run the exhaust of the turbo-pump into the main combustion chamber, and have far better specific impulse, but are much harder to design and build.
The the electric pump design, you can have the simplicity of and reliability of the open cycle main engine, with the efficiency inherent in not effectively throwing a percentage of your fuel overboard.
Turbopumps powered by rocket fuel require quite a bit of plumbing and design work; you're essentially building a second rocket motor to drive the bigger one. By using an electric turbopump, you just need a place to put the motor and batteries, which is a lot more simple in comparison.
Yes, the turbopump is run off its own rocket engine --- which drove a 40MW turbine, which ran a pump that could push three tonnes of rocket fuel a second.
Admittedly, the Saturn V was a little bit bigger than this rocket's going to be, and had special needs, but it goes to show that rocket fuel powered turbopumps are scary.
(Incidentally, SpaceX use a rocket fuel powered turbopump for the Falcon 9. I believe the scary-looking plume of flame that comes out sideways is the exhaust. It's a mere 2MW. Per engine.)
SpaceX lists the launch of a Falcon 9 to be $61M. But they can put 13,150 kg into LEO. Rocketlab's is much smaller, only sending 100 kg into LEO. So a Falcon 9 is ~12x more expensive, but delivers more than 125x payload to orbit. Plus you can send stuff into GEO with a Falcon 9, but Rocketlab doesn't have a chance with one their size.
So Rocketlab comes out sounding like a worse deal in the cost/payload ratio, but if Rocketlab can deliver on their launch frequencies then they can capture the market of smaller companies having to buy a secondary spot on a large rocket, and then wait for the whims of the other people to be ready to launch. The smaller company can fork over $5M and have the #1 priority and only payload on the rocket.
SpaceX will achieve reusability in multiple steps, first recovering the first stage, then the second stage and so on. The cost will go down, but probably not very soon and not so fast.
Another point of reference is Planet Lab's Dove cubesats are ~4kg and fly in LEO (~400km). This would be an ideal launch platform for ongoing maintenance of the constellation. Falcon 9 still makes sense for the initial launch as they normally ride up in large groups. The most recent Falcon 9 carried 14.
I'm just reciting this from memory but I think spaceX launches are currently $50-100 million per launch. If they can achieve reusable rockets it'll be on the order of a few hundred thousand per launch though.
" If they can achieve reusable rockets it'll be on the order of a few hundred thousand per launch though."
Do you have any sources I can read on that? I know reusing some of the hardware will have cost savings, but you are more than an order of magnitude cheaper than I have heard claimed. I would be very surprised that even if all of the hardware was 100% free that there would not be a few hundred thousand in labor costs alone for analysis and launch operations.
I think the above comment of it cost only a few hundred thousand dollars is just the cost of the fuel. Ancillary costs like moving the rocket, repairs, refueling, launch planning etc would also cost some money but it is still orders of magnitude cheaper than building new rockets or heavy repairs from crash landings.
Thank you for the response. However, that is exactly my point. Orders of magnitude, plural, means the rocket will be 1% of the current cost. That means a $61 million rocket is on the order of $610,000.
I do not believe that raw material procurement and manufacturing account for 99% of current launches or 97% or 90%. Even if it did, I believe there would be significant amount devoted to quality inspections and testing before you could trust a used rocket that not only fired, but impacted the ground to be used again.
But this is just a minimum. In practice, everything depends
on our means of transportation. If we’re using rockets,
it’s going to take a lot more. This is because of a
fundamental problem with rockets: they have to lift their
own fuel.
If we want to launch a 65-kilogram spaceship, we need to
burn around 90 kilograms of fuel. (Gasoline has an energy
per pound comparable to that of rocket fuel, so we’ll
stick with that example). We load that fuel on board—and
now our spaceship weighs 155 kilograms. A 155-kilogram
spaceship requires 215 kilograms of fuel, so we load
another 125 kilograms on board ...
Fortunately, we’re saved from an infinite loop—where we
add 1.3 kilograms for every 1 kilogram we add—by the fact
that we don’t have to carry that fuel all the way up. We
burn it as we go, so we get lighter and lighter, which
means we need less and less fuel. But we do have to lift
the fuel partway.
A rocket is essentially a series of very large tanks stacked on top of each other. The economics work out in such a way that you make the tanks as lightweight as possible, and then pressurize the combustion chamber with turbopumps.
The pressures are very high (you are pumping the fuel into the combustion chamber of the rocket engine). A tank that could be pressurised that highly would be uneconomically heavy. Edit: this says it better http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/73571-rocket-engine-with-...
I'm guessing the fuel will be pressurized, and a pump is necessary on top of that to get as much thrust as you can; it's probably cheaper on a weight basis to make a good pump versus a very thick fuel container at some point.
Somehow for a product of rocketry class, a video of its CEO talking about just photo selfies and video streaming/other solved problems seems downright lame.
Talk about the capabilities of the rocket instead! The rocket looks cool though.
Unless they make their schematics and blueprints open-source, this isn't worth my time. Space needs to be fundamentally open, driven by visionaries like Musk and Bolden who care far more about the future of humanity than selling product. The hackneyed "open for business" commentator for the video and the seemingly copious patents they've filed for this vehicle don't give me much hope. A far more interesting venture is Copenhagen Suborbitals -- they've lost many key people over the years, but their vision is much more altruistic and deserves much more support than some VC-backed team who decided to apply the startup cash-grab culture to rocketry. (and yes, I do know that's an incredibly loaded thing to say on a web forum run by a VC)
Comparable prices for small sats: Nanoracks quotes 60,000$/1U (usually ~1kg) to the ISS. Interorbital quotes 12,500$/kg at a 310km orbit (or 8,000$ to use their 0.75kg tubesat).