Comment by tsimionescu

Comment by tsimionescu a day ago

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Increased launch cadence is an operational achievement, not an engineering one.

And I'm not so sure that they actually decreased price to launch all that much. First of all, it's definitely not "several orders of magnitude", the best numbers quoted are maybe half price or so for a Falcon 9 compared to another contemporary rocket. And by my understanding, the US government at least is paying about as much for Falcon 9 as it was for a Soyuz to bring an astronaut to the ISS, at least.

inemesitaffia 19 hours ago

NASA pays both Boeing and SpaceX less than Soyuz was.

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  • tsimionescu 19 hours ago

    According to this [0] article from Business Insider, from 2006 to 2019, per seat costs for NASA from Russia rose from less than $25M ($38M inflation adjusted) to around $81M ($101M inflation adjusted). The cost per seat in 2012, the year after the USA lost crewed space launch capability entirely, was ~$55M ($75M inflation adjusted). According to this [1] article from Reuters, NASA is currently paying Boeing $90M, and SpaceX $55M per seat.

    So, NASA today is paying Boeing more than the monopoly prices Russia charged (up to 2016 or so), and paying both of them more than Russia was charging back when they were competing with the Space Shuttle. And it's paying SpaceX about half of the top price it payed Russia per seat, still nowhere close to an order of magnitude in cost savings.

    [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/astronaut-cost-per-soyuz-sea...

    [1] https://www.reuters.com/science/boeing-sending-first-astrona...

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    • inemesitaffia 2 hours ago

      Well it's less than the $81 million QED.

      I remember the talk of broomsticks and trampolines.

      The price savings are clearly evident per that article.

      The only reason Boeing ended up charging that much is the extra money NASA gave them.

      It wasn't so from the beginning

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  • pclmulqdq 19 hours ago

    Less than Soyuz charged them. Soyuz was a very cheap platform to the Russians, but they also understood when they had their customers over a barrel.

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jve 21 hours ago

I was comparing to the achievements of 60 years ago when they put people on the moon :) They are working towards that in a sustainable manner.

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specialist 19 hours ago

> ...operational achievement, not an engineering one.

How would I distinquish between the two, esp wrt rocketry?

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  • tsimionescu 19 hours ago

    An operational achievement means excellence in building the same vehicle over and over, to the right tolerances, and operating it the same way every time, without fing anything up.

    An engineering achievement means excellence in designing a new vehicle, or updating an existing one, or inventing a new procedure, and finding the right tolerances that allow that to be replicated over and over without excess cost.

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    • specialist 11 hours ago

      Aha.

      So using some wholly new process, like the continuous innovation involved in casting large parts, how would I separate ops and engr?

      Forgive my ignorance. I'm just wondering how Ford's quality circles, or the Toyota Production System would work if ops and engr were treated aa separate silos.

      Since we're kibitzing about rockets, I suppose the example above could have been ramping up production of Raptor engines to 1 per day (IIRC), while improving performance and reducing costs. If I wanted to emulate that process, using your methodology, where would I start?

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