Why Neutron Wins...
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- Опубліковано 13 тра 2024
- RocketLab has recently shared details of the upcoming new rocket, Neutron. Many people have asked how RocketLab will compete with SpaceX.
This video discusses the markets where Neutron will have the best opportunities and the design features of the Neutron that will allow them to compete with SpaceX.
@Eric_Gunnerson on Twitter
Triabolical_ on Reddit - Наука та технологія
I think you really captured the 'play to your strengths' with your analogies.
If you listen to Musk talk about stainless it makes a lot of sense as a material of the future.
Then you hear Beck talk about the complete opposite material and it makes a lot of sense too. But for a very different vehicle.
In a broader view they seem to make the same decision though: optimize cost and time over performance, and when performance is lacking make the rocket bigger.
The big drivers for stainless were its heat resistance and the fact that you can just weld it together at the launch site; CF was going to be a major issue for SpaceX because they were planning to build it on the west coast and ship it through the canal - that would reduce their test cadence considerably, though they wouldn't have spend as much time building pressure vessels. And of course SpaceX only has pretty limited experience with CF, and a hybrid vehicle (booster CF, starship stainless) would have been a bad idea.
I'd be interested to see what sort of CF fully reusable design we would see out of rocketlab. You would need a much better thermal protection system, of course, but it's not clear to me that you would end up heavier. But that's obviously not something in the near term.
@@EagerSpace Build time - I think welding stainless rings together could be faster than spinning CF. Upper stage reupse - TPS - Musk claims that CF is good for about 200C, while stainless is good for 1000C. So the TPS on CF will be definitely heavier. By how much, I do not know... Btw, don't forget Centaur is stainless too and it's one of the best upper stages around.
@@candyjaywee Welding SS is pretty fast, but to get to the finished product there are a lot of fiddly bits; you need stringers inside the engine bay, perhaps stringers in the propellant tanks, mountings for all the engines, etc. All of those things need to be properly placed and properly welded on. With CF the majority of those are integral to the design, so what you get out of the mold is much closer to the final product. The downside of CF is that the molds you use are expensive and not really something you can iterate on like you can with SS.
@@EagerSpace Yeah, I think rapid iteration was another plus for SpaceX regarding stainless. If you follow SS closely the changes they make to each vehicle batch are substantial. We will see how well will rocketlab do. I wish them much success! We definitely need a competent 2nd provider.
@@EagerSpace interesting point you brought up. I haven't seen anything regarding tps for nutron. Was there anything mentioned? Are they going to develop their own? I know they got back the first stage of electron so they must have some way of controlling the reentry heat. I don't follow rocket lab that much though.
Excellent video and information, tha ks. Ive heard of the netron rocket but didnt know much in specifics. Its a pretty exciting design
Thanks. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
Would love to see you do a general industry analysis, but in particular the interaction between the four methane-focused NewSpace companies: SpaceX, Relativity, Blue Origin, and RocketLab. The former two seem to have relatively compatible views on the future of human spaceflight. Also, I feel like the industry is a bit of a bubble, do you agree? Thanks!
If you're interested in the industry side, I highly recommend Anthony Colangelo's Main Engine Cutoff podcast.
To answer your second question, there are way too many small launcher companies and I think there's a market for maybe two. There's a lot of money going to waste there, and it kindof confuses me; launch is the part of the industry that is most like a commodity and therefore hard to differentiate on anything other than price and payload capacity.
SpaceX is SpaceX; they are an excellent company who knows how to do engineering right. Starship will probably be revolutionary, but they have a founder who is really focused on Mars and that is going to lead them to do things that are Mars-driven rather than business-driven. They will be hugely entertaining as long as Musk is in charge.
I'm obviously bullish on RocketLab; I think Peter Beck is very smart at identifying market opportunities and they are busy trying to move away from a company that just does launch. My prediction is that they are going to do pretty well, and they have a chance to use vertical integration to be able to offer full services - satellite bus + launch *much* cheaper than the other players. If they can do that, they will have SpaceX - style success in that market. The one caveat there is that Neutron is designed to be good at constellation launches, and that business could go away. But - like small launch - it seems like there are multiple companies willing to throw billions of $$$ at constellations, and that looks like a great way to lose a ton of money to me.
Blue Origin is a disappointment and will continue to be one; as a company they just don't know how to engineer or R&D. They have the wrong company culture to do the kind of engineering they need for New Glenn and they've made it harder with Project Jarvis, which is a little like working on the Apollo program without every doing Mercury or Gemini. By far the best thing at this point would be for Bezos to blow the company up; stuff New Shepard in its own company so they can focus on that and see if there's actually a business there, and then spin up a new division run by somebody young and "new spacey" and pull over the best current employees but probably very little of the management. Given what I've seen Bezos do so far, I think this is unlikely (see "hubris") but it has probably become obvious how far behind they are from SpaceX and losing HLS has clearly pissed him off a lot, so maybe. I've been thinking that Blue Origin's problem was that they built New Shepard with a startup-style operation and that the problems all came from them trying to go corporate.
I don't know what to think about Relativity. I generally don't spend much time watching small launch companies until they are actually launching and then not really until they have a few commercial launches under their belt. I think there might be some interesting technology there but I'm not convinced that smallsat is a great place to develop it. And their website talks little about the rocket and mostly about how great they are, and you can't download Terran 1 payload user's guide directly - both red flags for me. I think I may come up with a new law, which says that any company that talks about the rocket *after* the one they are currently developing can automatically be flagged for lacking focus; Terran R is really just a pipe dream right now and they honestly shouldn't talk about it. Blue Origin has thankfully gotten rid of their New Armstrong stuff AFAICT.
@@EagerSpaceI really enjoy how eloquent and concise your writing is both in your videos and in this hidden gem of a comment.
Edit: Did you learn to better write from something in particular or have you always just been passionate about communication?
Dude your sound is so spot on now holy smokes. I'm amazed. Straight to Hollywood all of a sudden.
Thanks. Same microphone, but I switched to doing scripted for the whole presentation, and then I'm doing some light vocal processing when I go through and clean up the audio.
Up for a video topic suggestion?
Always. What did you have in mind?
Lol no reply
Not clear that lower chamber pressure means less refurbishment, since it's really just a matter of wall thickness, FFSC also means the turbines needn't run so hot compared to a gas generator. Definitely easier to develop though.
Less refurbishment than kerolox was my intent.
I imagine they'll have to switch to an engine with staged combustion at some point. Perhaps they'll then be able to upgrade to an even bigger rocket as well, for BEO missions. Peter Beck said his original idea was to use the fairing petals for braking/steering, which he's abandoned or at least shelved for the time being. Come to think of it, why didn't Elon consider doing the same for Starship, rather than using fin-flaps?
@@manofsan Falcon 9 has done perfectly fine with a gas generator engine. Staged combustion does give you a higher isp and perhaps lower pressures, but it will probably weigh more and that reduces some of the isp advantage. Uprating archimedes is a more likely approach than switching to a new engine, at least in the near term.
Starship wouldn't use fairing petals because it needs to survive reentering from orbital speeds, and the heating and forces are an order of magnitude higher than those experienced by a sub-orbital booster.
@Eric Gunnerson - okay, fair enough - you're saying that fin-flaps and skydiver re-entry work better than fairing petals at orbital speeds, including Mars return velocities. I dunno, I feel like if petals won't cut it, then why would fin-flaps? At least petals can be nearly closed if necessary, but fin-flaps don't have enough freedom of movement.
@@EagerSpace - F9 also achieved some performance improvements through propellant densification. Is that something that Neutron could start out with, or could it be introduced after some time?
Great video!
All points you mentioned about the Neutron are correct, because I came to the same conclusions and I also own some Rocket Lab stock and I buy more and more every month.
you just keep pumping out great content, keep it up!
Yeah, I think that this is an underrated channel that deserves more viewers. And I'm also happy that "the algorithm" had pointed me to it.
I find it interesting the number of UA-camrs that have titled their videos and deliberated why “Neutron will win”. I find it quite frustrating because it’s 3-4 years until it’s introduction. We don’t have all the facts yet on the competitors and whether they will have better vehicles.
Neutron was first announced in March, a few months before Relativity and Firefly announced their medium-heavy lift vehicles. I think Rocket Lab have done a great job keeping Neutron’s actual details quote secret, yet it won’t be without competition.
There are always some speculation over public traded companies. Eric does great job at summarizing how Neutron can evolve based on current design. It might be "bullish" take, but I feel it is correct, useful and valuable info for both fans and investors
The unfortunate reality of UA-cam is that a video titled "An objective analysis of the market opportunities of Neutron vis-a-vis the offerings of SpaceX" doesn't do well.
I agree that there are a lot of details we don't know - and now that RocketLab is publicly traded, they will be more structured in how they release details - but I think what they have shown is a very good understanding of what a second-generation partially reusable rocket should be. They are well capitalized, they have the design experience to do the carbon fiber part, and they've chosen an engine approach that should minimize the issues there. And I think they have reasonable timelines given their experience as a company.
Relativity is still in the "never flown to orbit" club. After then have some experience with Terran 1, then they may become a competitor to Neutron, but I think going straight to fully reusable with Terran R is a mistake.
Firefly is also in the same club; their later vehicles are just conceptual.
Relativity Space's 3D printed fully reusable rocket is well along in development, definitely will be competition to Rocketlab.
Due to have its first test flight this year.
@@favesongslistThey are planning on their first flight of Terran 1 this year, which is a smallsat launcher, with about double the payload of Electron. It generally takes a few tries for companies to successfully get into orbit with their first rocket.
The jump to Terran R is like the jump to from Electron to Neutron, also requiring a bigger engine and a big new vehicle. Their supposed target is 20 tons to LEO, which means this rocket is a fair bit bigger than Falcon 9 *and* is fully reusable, so arguably a harder technical challenge than Neutron.
I can't find enough information about their tech or designs to have an informed opinion and companies who have yet to launch are always hard to handicap, but if forced I'd estimate that they are a few years behind RocketLab in terms of capability right now, and Neutron will be easier to develop than Terran R.
@@EagerSpace Agreed, I with both companies well. Looking forward to the first test launch this year of Terran 1 and of Starship. What a good time to be alive. Have a great 2022.
Excellent market based summary of Neutron within likely competing markets, look forward to a deep dive into technical design assessment when that becomes available. I feel in the longer term Space economy to be driven more by private sector than government funding so should also suit companies like Rocket Lab. Will be interesting to see if any other small sat launch companies start to follow suit in the future.
Thanks. I think commercial space has a chance to do a bunch of things - especially with government money flowing in - but the last 40 years has shown that the old space companies have been hugely successful in using space to drive lots of government money into their bottom line, and I don't think they are going to go gently into handing that money over to others.
This is a superb analysis on the launch industry and it is especially nice to see someone that understands the physics involved.
Do you have any insight into the broader space industry?
Like I'm trying to understand how 3rd party part suppliers (Redwire) fit into the picture.
I see Rocket Lab is starting to compete with Redwire in a few areas, solar sails is one for example, but I have no idea how such companies interact with eachother.
Do they see eachothers as competitors/partners/dont care at all about eachother?
Space enthusiasts tend to focus on the launch side of things, but it's actually a small part of the overall space industry, and there are tons of little companies that have their own little niches.
From what I can tell, RocketLab is making a serious play to develop some vertical integration into that segment of the market - that's why they are buying other companies - and that they are going to use that to expand their overall business and drive launch business to neutron. I *suspect* that there's a significant market opportunity there, the same sort of opportunity SpaceX leveraged with vertical integration for Falcon 9.
I don't think I have much useful insight in this area, but I highly recommend Anthony Colangelo's "Main engine cutoff" podcast; he spends the majority of his time talking about the non-launch side of the industry.
@@EagerSpace Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out.
Vertical integration seems to be the direction the whole space industry is headed. Simply being a launch provider is not going to cut it.
Why run around buying your bun, patty, salad, ketchup, potatoes, seasoning and coke individually when you can buy a happy meal for cheaper and complete.
@@EagerSpace -- people are now starting to talk about "SaaS" (Satellites as a Service) in connection with Rocket Lab. But won't that also put Rocket Lab in the position of having to manage significant orbital assets? I'm worried that as space gets more crowded, there will be an increasing likelihood of collisions, and under international law it's the operator of a spacecraft which bears liability and compensatory damage costs for any mishap they cause. What is the downside risk to Rocket Lab from such eventualities?
@@manofsan I see that as a trend as well, though it's not clear to me how much of the satellite operation will stay with RocketLab and how much will end up with the customer.
They would likely need to build something similar to what SpaceX has built for Starlink, though it might be more careful.
I don't think the downside risk is big, but we don't really know enough yet to guess. I think we will see evolution in both the launch and insurance areas.
Once thing that I really like at the Neutron concept is that in theory they can build a prototype that can be used for small hops at the beginning which can then be extended to higher and higher altitudes with very few costs, since (at least on successful tests) they don't have to built new prototypes.
Also I think that SpaceX did a mistake by not creating some Neutron like ship as an intermediate step (and test bed) between F9 and Starship. This is especially the case, since they have got everything at hand like the engines and materials.
Neutron has a lot of POTENTIAL advantages, but, until they demonstrate an ability to actually launch and reuse at a reasonable operational tempo, they aren’t competing with anyone.
That said, IF they are able to deliver on their promises they will be serious competition for falcon.
UNFORTUNATELY, (for everybody except SpaceX) once starship becomes fully operational (at tempo) they become the only semi truck in a world of cargo vans.
So while neutron COULD be competitive with falcon in the future, by the time they reach that point SpaceX won’t care as they will have moved on to (or even beyond) Starship.
None of this is to say that neutron won’t be successful, they very likely will be (especially considering the high probability of SpaceX abandoning the entire market segment). Just that they are not even playing the same game as SpaceX. Though I definitely agree with asking the question “Who will compete with neutron?”
You have answer to your own points of criticism. They won't be competing with Starship. Idk why everyone keeps getting at this. An 8 ton rocket vs an 150ton rocket...clearly built for different purposes and both PB and Elon know this. Jeff Who and Relativity Don't.most likely, Rocketlab's Neutron will take FALCON 9's spot as the main mid/heavy launch segment vehicle of the world and SpaceX eill retire it's FALCON 9 and instead focus more on Stsrship and Mars.
@@deeptoot1453 That was my point though. Not criticizing neutron just criticizing the points in the video. Neutron likely won’t compete with SpaceX (even the falcon) because it’s likely SpaceX will simply abandon the falcon and that entire category of launches in favor of the superheavy market
While I think you have a lot of good information here, you very much danced around the core elephant in the room question which is: will Neutron be cheaper to launch than Starship? Assuming the best timeline in which both systems are operational, I just don't see how Neutron could be cost competitive against Starship. The reason is in your equation of cost of second stage and refurbishment. Neutron will have a revolutionarily light second stage, this is true, but Starship will literally recover their second stage and refly 100%. How are you supposed to beat a reusable second stage? As for the cost of refurbishment, that is a very open question which I will not pretend myself or anyone has the answer to. But the core question of Neutron vs Starship cannot be simply ignored by saying we just don't know yet. In a perfect world, I just don't see how Neutron can compete with Starship when Starship can literally just open up its second stage doors after delivering absurd amounts of delta-v into any payload it carries. When complete, Starship should be able to inject 100T into nearly ANY possible orbit. How are you supposed to compete against that?
Yes, I did dance around that question. I've gotten enough comments that I might need to do a follow-up ("Does Neutron REALLY win?")
It's not inherently true that a reusable system is going to cost less than an expendable one; the shuttle is the obvious counter example to that, where the orbiter was reusable but the refurbishment cost was very high. I'm expecting that Starship won't need the full rebuild that the orbiter did, but we don't yet know the refurbishment cost of their thermal protection system. We also don't know how many flights its good for; if Starship is $20 million and it flies 50 times, allocated vehicle cost is low, but if it only flies 5 times, it's much higher.
My point is that I can make assumptions that make Starship look great from a cost basis or I can make assumptions that make it look poor from a cost basis. I've done that sort of analysis before - see "Starship: A $2000 ride to orbit" - but I'm not sure the result generated anything useful. Though I might do it just to show how different assumptions yield different results.
Beyond cost, there's a lot more uncertainty about *price*, and I have no idea of what SpaceX's business strategy might be.
It could be anywhere from "Price Starship 50% cheaper than Falcon 9 on cost/kg", "Price starship comparable to Falcon 9 but with a much large payload" to "Price starship to grab as much business as possible". The one they choose will have a drastic effect on how Starship affects the market, and while I have some ideas on how they might do it, I could easily be quite wrong because I don't understand their internal finances, their priorities, their 5 year projected budgets, or the attitude of their investors.
If somebody can tell me how much a Starship launch will cost and why that's a solid number, I'd be interested. But I think we're probably a couple of years away from that number.
The real flaw that is danced around is "Will Neutron be cheaper to launch than Falcon 9 in 2025?" (most likely 2026). And, despite claims that Starship is "hard" (so it should ignored), Neutron is also extremely complicated as a reusable (and costly vehicle). How many times can Rocketlab afford to lose a Neutron? Certainly not as many as SpaceX did with Falcon 9 while attempting to land propulsively
@@EagerSpace Agreed, with what you said. I'm not trying to bash your video or anything. It's just probably going to be very difficult to come up with any sort of educated guess for a few years at least because no one (not even SpaceX or Rocket Lab) have any idea how much their launch and recovery costs are going to be. Plus SpaceX will need to recoup the cost of all that ground equipment at Boca Chica first before they can make a profit off of launching Starship.
@@shaungarry8038 I ignored Starship not because it was hard, but because there are no good estimates for how it will be priced, I don't know how to evaluate it from a market perspective.
Can you tell me why you think Neutron is extremely complicated?
Given RocketLab's experience with carbon fiber, I'm not sure that building Neutron is significantly harder for them than building Falcon 9 was for SpaceX at the beginning.
@Shaun Garry - bear in mind that Electron is Rocket Lab's cheap test run for reusability - even cheaper than Falcon9 has been in relation to Starship. I'd dare say that Starship is a much greater leap beyond Falcon9 than Neutron is beyond Electron. Neutron is made of largely the same materials as Electron, with the engine and body design being new. Starship is totally new and different from Falcon9 in all sorts of ways, including the mission profile itself. All sorts of compromises have been put into Starship just for the sake of enabling it to land on Mars and return - things which are not likely to pay returns to investors in the near or medium term.
But how large is the potential customer base for Neutron? How many launches per year, during those first early years when it becomes operational?
Predicting markets is always challenging even if you have a lot of data, and I don't.
But clearly RocketLab thinks there's enough market there to make the development cost worthwhile.
I think the big open question is how much constellation launch business there is going to be. If OneWeb moves forward, there's a good market there by itself. If project Kuiper moves forward and New Glenn isn't available, there's a big market there. And there are others - see here: www.parabolicarc.com/2021/11/08/planned-comsat-constellations-now-exceed-94000-satellites/
There definitely will be a market for commercial space stations, but it's really not clear what that will be. But it's probably going to be 5 years before there's a lot of movement there because ISS is extended to 2030, and Neutron should be flying by then.
@Eager Network - Eric Gunnerson - I guess it's not only the quantity but also the quality of the launches that matter - ie. there are already missions planned in relation to the Artemis program, and also for Venus. If Neutron evolves to the point of being able to do crewed missions, that would be a big cash cow too. I suppose they'd probably have to launch somebody else's crewed vehicle, since designing and building their own could prove to be rather expensive.
@@manofsan Crewed could be lucrative if Boeing doesn't continue Starliner longer term, and I don't expect there to be a lot of money there for them. I suspect that launching crew with neutron would either require a custom capsule or a modified neutron that could support an existing capsule. Either would be big projects.
@@EagerSpace they talked about crew capability. But yeah, this is a completely new chapter. In my dreams I see a crew capable Dreamchaser on top of a Neutron.This would be an awesome looking combination. (when the Dreamchaser could launch without being protected by a fairing)
You mention that incorporating stringers in starship take time to do. How does this compare in time to the process of laying out the carbon fibers? Seems to me putting stringers in would be faster than laying out the fibers.
You also mention that starship has problems because it is constantly being iterated upon. Do you really think there will be no design changes in neutron? I think there will be and I think they will slow down development as I believe that carbon fiber requires laying down fibers on a mold and that if you make a change you may need to scrap the mold and start over.
Also starship will have a fully reusable second stage so less throw away parts compared to the expendable second stage of neutron. So that according to your formula will set the floor of the cost. Do we know how much that second stage will cost?
With the fins also being the landing legs and made out of carbon fiber, one harsh landing will likely mean they have to scrap the whole vehicle. As far as I know, once the integrity of a carbon fiber structure is compromised you can never get it back to its original design specs.
You also mention that neutron's second stage will be fueled through the rocket. This was what spacex was planning to do as well but their plans changed. It will be interesting to see of Neutron can do it or if they will need to change that concept like spacex did.
I think spacex was smart to go with stainless steel as it will make the rockets cheaper to produce. Importat for spacex that wants to make 1000s of rockets, but not so much for rocket lab that will only want to make maybe a dozen or so.
I think neutron will be an option for launchers but I don't see it being a first choice.
Starship will likely go orbital next year. I mean it could be delayed but certainly will be orbital before neutron. How is a rocket set to compete with spacex's last gen rocket able to compete 5 years from now when neutron flys and starship has likely been flying for years and will most likely be cheaper.
The only reason I can think of is as you said "Customers will want options and diversity of vehicles."
Lots of good questions...
WRT stringers, I don't know what process SpaceX uses; they are probably welded but I don't know whether it's done by hand or by machine. It's something you don't do with CF because you design the CF to not need that sort of support.
WRT iteration, there's a two-edged sword. SpaceX iterated a lot on Starship with a material that is fairly easy to do iteration, so they could test their way to find out what was best. CF doesn't provide the same degree of flexibility, so I expect Neutron to be closer to the final design. For CF, there are two kinds of changes. It's generally fairly straightforward to change the fiber layout - to change the alignment of fibers or add/subtract fibers as necessary. It's pretty painful to create a new mold, so changing shape is time consuming and expensive. So I expect that unlike Starship, the tanks they build will just work and that the overall shape will come together pretty easily - none of this is new ground for them. But they will have invested a large amount of design time in the shape ahead of time.
WRT second stage cost, no idea and that is the real wild card relating to the economics. The Falcon 9 second stage is reportedly somewhere around $10 million, so that's probably a decent upper bound, but the Neutron design takes out a lot of weight and complexity. RocketLab is pricing the entire electron at somewhere around $5-7 million and that's a customer price with some profit built in, so I could see $5 million pretty easily, and they may even get cheaper than that, down to around $3 million. Even at $5 million, that has the potential to be a very cheap launcher.
WRT landing legs, it's actually pretty easy to repair carbon fiber, though the resulting part will end up heavier. But I fully expect that they aren't going to be landing right on the carbon fiber; there will at least be small feet that likely have the same sort of crushable cores that SpaceX uses.
Stainless for Starship made a ton of sense, just to deal with reentry of the second stage is enough reason to switch. The factory right next to the launch pad is so much better than the approach where the would build the tanks somewhere on the west coast, assembly them in LA, and then presumably ship them through the Panama Canal to BC to launch. Their choice makes so much sense for the kind of vehicle they are building.
As far as competition goes, I suspect that Neutron is going to be a lot cheaper than Falcon 9 is, cheaper than many people expect. Lots of people are focusing on the very aspirational sometime-in-the-future numbers that Musk talks about WRT Starship, but it's important to remember that he's talking about costs, not talking about prices. Even if Starship is a $10 million / flight rocket in terms of cost - which would be phenomenal performance - SpaceX will want to be pulling quite a bit of profit out of Starship so that they can use it to drive their overall vision. I can see a world where Starship and Neutron end up being complementary, where Starship gets a lot of big work and medium work and Neutron ends up covering the medium to small part of the market.
I'll also note that Neutron isn't the only thing that RocketLab is doing - they are building what looks like a vertically-integrated service where they provide an end-to-end solution to their clients. Photon is the start of that, but they are clearly planning on going farther than that. For customers that want that kind of service - and I suspect there are a lot of them - it won't be about launch price.
If that's what ends up happening, they are collectively going to put a serious hurt on the existing launch companies out there. I also suspect that with Photon and SpaceX's supposed move into the satellite bus business - based off of Starlink - this is going to put a crimp on the satellite bus makers as well.
Very interesting times.
@@EagerSpace -- constellation-based satellite services are where the real profits are for the foreseeable future, not BEO missions like Mars. If Neutron can nimbly compete in that field, they could put a dent in SpaceX's recuperation time for its existing investments. I think Musk will have to do his best to get a lock on the big payola missions, like for Artemis, or Mars, or some successor to JWST (FIRST?), which only Starship can do. Musk will have to leverage his political lobbying muscles to light a fire under such projects.
I feel like this video needs at least a partial update, since Archimedes got changed to a ORSC cycle and they will be doing downrange recovery with sea assets.
The overall place in the market is interesting, but I'm also curious how well they'll do when Relativity's Terran R is going to debut around the same time.
Also, I like your point about how Starship can't eat the entire market. Especially for high value payloads, so much of design is driven by the need to have backup launch options available. I've been saying for a while now that the most important rocket of the next decade isn't Starship, but Starship's best competitor. If New Glenn actually works with limited reuse, then we could see the default module size for future space stations go to 7 meters instead of 5. Also, competitors can actually get SpaceX to decrease their price, helping drive down the overall cost of launch.
I've been thinking about an update, especially since Rocket Lab is now much more than a rocket company and releases much more information now that they are publicly traded. Not sure when it might show up.
Starship is a weird rocket because the size is driven not by what any customers have ever requested but by what SpaceX wants to do on Mars. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of that capacity.
I expect New Glenn to continue to underperform; even after they get it launching I have pretty much zero confidence that they can actually make money on it and if they want to launch often they can't afford to lose money on every launch. And I could see a lawsuit from some of the other launch companies if they are consistently launching for less than their internal costs.
@@EagerSpace I think the real question becomes what other contracts Blue Origin wins. They can likely undercut ULA and Arianespace on price, and if they win a spot in the Commercial LEO destination contract they might have enough "internal" demand to offer additional flights for not too much.
And I think they'll pursue NASA and NSSL certification as well, as they're better positioned with New Glenn for either than Neutron or Relativity. I've taken to looking at launchers as core market vs additional addressable markets. SpaceX has Starlink and HLS as their core. Rocket Lab has their satellite manufacturing customers as their core. Blue Origin has Kuiper and Orbital Reef. With a healthy core of demand they can then address other potential customers with most of their fixed costs already covered, and pricing launches closer to their marginal launch costs.
Still, they're the most direct challenger to Starship, and that might be a very dangerous road to take. On the other hand, being the first in line for everyone wanting launcher redundancy to Starship could be a lucrative spot if they can control costs.
@@jamesrwinters Why do you think they can undercut ULA and Ariane on price?
@@EagerSpace Being able to reuse the entire first stage, rather than maybe eventual partial (ULA) or none (Ariane). Not sure about Second stage reuse, but they do have the money to throw at it, and the biggest first stage that's likely to have the mass margin needed for second stage reuse.
If they can actually get first stage reuse pretty quick out of the gate, Amazon will probably be feeling the pressure to get satellites up as quickly as possible, and they'll need as many launches as Blue Origin can ramp up for.
Concerning new competitors I guess that Rocket Lab has got the advantage of already being a successful rocket launching company. So they already demonstrated their reliability. Although the first Neutron launch of course still can be a RUD, it's more than likely that at least this will not be caused by inexperience or lacking procedures of the ground crew. Also Rocket Lab is now much more than a rocket launching company. They are now really deep in the whole component market as well. I can imagine that this also will add up to the confidence that companies will have to launch their payload with them. (Also they will most likely extend the Photon concept to Neutron as well with in-house built satellites where customers only add their specific part).
So… Starship is the A380 of rockets? Yeah… i can see that now… thanks 🙏
Oh and… Falcon 9 is the 737 and Neutron is the A320 😂
@@gorgonbert Falcon 9 might be the Bombardier Dash 8 and Starship the 737.
The analogy is a bit strained because starship and falcon 9 will be fundamentally different if starship manages to make full reusability work.
@@gorgonbert With just those two, I suspect Falcon 9 is the early 737 and Neutron is the 737-800 - the economics on neutron are likely to be significantly better on a per flight basis than Falcon 9 (fixed costs will complicate that).
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You forgot the cost of inspection and maintenance. I think that starship will have a huge cost of inspection and maintenance becasuse is big, and because the raptor is way more complex than current Merlin or the futurre Archimedes. Also they will have 39 engines. You ever asked why nasa drop reusability after 30 years of the Space Shutle program? Because inspection and maintenance costs.
Raptor is certainly a more highly stressed design than Merlin and both are more stressed than Archimedes will be - at least in the first version of Archimedes. How much inspection and maintenance it will require is something that remains to be see; modern airplane engines are quite highly stressed from a materials perspective but are exceedingly reliable. As are powerplant turbines.
I understand your point about shuttle, but NASA didn't have a goal to make it cheap and easy to operate. If they had, they would have done follow-on versions that addressed the problems that they ran into with the original design, but they chose to fly the original prototype version for 30 years.
"Ark-a-me-deez" btw 🤭
Starship is a bit like a cargo ship capable of delivering 20000 containers to Antarctica. There is no demand for that capacity in the scientific research stations there.
I like spacex and I follow it in excitement. But I cannot ignore reality. Perhaps starlink will be a massive success and and will generate enough demand to justify starship. But there are lots of risks and ifs along the way.
I get that Elon wants to colonize Antrarc… um… Mars. But just building the ship does not guarantee that it will be profitable to operate it.
If it can be delivered to Antarctica, it can also be delivered to any where else. Mars is the goal, but currently the U.S. wants to make a permanent settlement on the moon. It can supply that as well. It can also help bring up parts to make new space stations. Also, it seems the payload fairing is only 4.5m vs 9m for starship and 5.2m for f9. So if you need bulk f9 or starship would be the better option.
@@thomasbaleno5822 a lunar base would still be the equivalent of an antarctic research station, not the North American consumer market. Only the latter justifies a 20000 container superfreighter.
At the cadence and remarkably low cost predicted by Musk it will be cheaper to launch a single small sat on a Starship than on Rocketlab's Electron.
Star ship when it works will be game changing.
@@favesongslist when Mars colonization is a thing and Starships are flying at extreme launch rates of course it will be cheaper. I just don’t see it happening so soon. In the mean time, launching a single 8 ton satellite to an orbit of your choice by Neutron will be cheaper.
@@OrenTirosh SpaceX's goal is to have launching satellites this year, also this year Relativity Space's 3D printed fully reusable rocket. It is well along in its development.
definitely will be competition for Rocketlab.
The best way to compete: don't.
Instead of competing with Falcon 9 or Starship, Neutron will murder Soyuz (on the international market).
Falcon 9 already killed Proton, and I think you are right about Neutron and Soyuz, but Roscosmos is pretty much falling apart at the seams over the last year, so it's not clear to me that Soyuz will be around much longer. Maybe the Ariane launches...
@@EagerSpace - Roskosmos does have their own reusable methalox rocket planned, called Amur (aka. "Soyuz-7"). It's not like the Russians are lacking in aerospace brainpower, where they have a long heritage. As I recall, the case for methalox was debated at SpaceX using Russian research publications. If the Russians and/or the Chinese make the transition over to even partial reusability, then will private launchers like SpaceX or Rocket Lab automatically be able to claim market dominance?
@@manofsan Roscosmos is unfortunately falling apart and their funding has been cut significantly. That combined with SpaceX taking away the majority of their hard currency from Proton launches and astronaut launches to ISS makes it likely they will be unable to keep up their current launch program, and I expect them to pull out of the ISS because of that. See article here: arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/putin-slashes-russias-space-budget-and-says-he-expects-better-results/
China is more of a wild card; they are putting a ton of money into space right now but they will have the same problem NASA has - space stations are really expensive to own and operate. They do of course have a program underway and since they don't really talk about it, it's hard to come to any conclusions about their status, but I haven't seen anything so far that makes me think there are competitive. There are also real concerns in the West about their intellectual property controls; if you put anything technical into chinese hands you can expect that they will do their best to steal your technology.
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Most of Your points about starship are just plain wrong. No one knows the cost or capacity ? Really ? As opposed to neutron … which u know ? Lol . Neutron is STILL a paper rocket sir.
Until relatively recently, Starship was also a paper rocket. I think that Rocket Lab has a high likelihood of bringing Neutron to fruition, given its already impressive track record. Starship is a much bigger challenge being grappled with, and is meant for far more ambitious things which won't necessarily return a profit for a long time. I don't know who outside of a govt is willing to fund/invest in missions to Mars, when they can't receive any returns on that investment for the foreseeable future.