Re:Rocket Lab's engine has electric turbos and 3D-printed pr...
by trose on Saturday April 18, 2015 @07:46PM
(#9401524)
Looks like it'll be more like $5-6 million per launch.
Re:Rocket Lab's engine has electric turbos and 3D-printed pr...
by acadien on Saturday April 18, 2015 @05:02PM
(#9401021)
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.
Re:Rocket Lab's engine has electric turbos and 3D-printed pr...
by x43b on Saturday April 18, 2015 @05:15PM
(#9401076)
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.
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.