Artists conception of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft in orbit
The Examiner has a Q&A with SpaceX founder Elon Musk in which he talks about how much cheaper it will be once his company’s Falcon 9 rocket begins launching Dragon spacecraft into orbit:
SA: A manned flight to the ISS aboard a Soyuz currently costs about 50 million dollars. Where do you see this price in a few years when the Falcon 9 comes online and what are the benefits to US taxpayers?
EM: In contrast to the existing manned systems, a seat onboard the Dragon Spacecraft launched by the Falcon 9 rocket and would cost less than $20M per seat and it is 100% manufactured and launched in the United States. We are estimating that it would create well in excess of a 1000 high quality jobs at Cape Canaveral and an equivalent number in California and Texas, where we do our manufacturing and testing. Moreover, the total cost would only be $1.5B, so taxpayers would save $2B.
The “made in the USA” comment is probably not just as dig at the Russians. SpaceX’s other competitor is Orbital Sciences Corporation, which like SpaceX is developing a new rocket and spacecraft with funding under NASA’s COTS program. One of the engines for Orbital Sciences’ Taurus II rocket is being built in the Ukraine.
Read the full interview.
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“Costs” $50M — is that right? Or is that merely the (temporary monopolist gouger) *price*?
I’d say: clearly, the latter. That’s what they will *charge* NASA per seat. But what are their actual costs per seat? Here’s how I estimate it.
Recently, the Russians increased the price for “private space explorers” (or whatever they are calling themselves now) to about $35M, from a (rumored) $20M — again, for one seat, r/t. Were they running at a loss before? Were the first half-dozen-or-so passengers all loss-leader promotions? Hardly.
At the previous $20M, as I understand it, the ticket price was covering not just the costs of a round-trip for one astronaut, but rather the cost for the entire round-trip for ALL THREE onboard. Which is to say, Russian *costs* per seat might have been as low as $7M. Costs of living have gone up somewhat since Dennis Tito, but not so dramatically — maybe at most 30%. So call it $10M. Even in scaling up to more passengers per launch, Musk is still saying $20M per seat.
Look, it’s really basic: space travel costs a lot because you have to pay a lot of people to do a lot of work, almost all of which is recurring engineering and technician labor. So of course you look at labor costs as the first approximation. The median for this type of work might be $60K/worker/year in the U.S. In Russia, it’s probably 1/10th as much. (Generic ancillary support? Kazakh truckdrivers and cafeteria workers don’t make much at all, being basically third-worlders, so their contribution to labor costs is might as little as 1/20th as their equivalents in the U.S.)
“Made in America” *and* “cheaper than what the Russians can do, even with their long head start, and lots more experience with evolving their vehicles to make them reliable” — excuse my skepticism, but this is just not a credible proposition, and somebody as smart as Musk has to realize it. ITAR means that, basically, Musk will not be able to move his launcher construction to another country. “Sourced entirely from within the U.S.” gives you one advantage — no objection from Congress to buying your stuff for USG purposes — and one major and obvious disadvantage: price sensitive customers who are not bound by ITAR will go to the Russians or other low-cost providers. Which means Musk will really have exactly one customer (in varying guises): the U.S. government.
Michael,
Right now, RSA is looking at charging NASA 50 million per sear. They WILL charge NASA 100 million for 2 seats. Cost estimates for a Soyuz runs at 70-100 million. Is it accurate? No idea. When russia spoke about the 20 million, they said that it was paying for the costs of the seat and that was nearly 10 years ago, and a much worse Russian economy. Basically, Russia is probably charging right at 35-40, and ripping us off at 50.
As to SpaceX, it is already regarded as one of the lowest launch costs. In addition, they will almost certainly be the main system for Bigelow’s systems. That means that prices WILL stay low.
Actually, Tito’s trip was even cheaper. The Wikipedia page on him states:
Part of the increase in cost is probably due to the strengthening of the ruble and the sharp fall in the value of dollar. The Russians also realized they could charge whatever they wanted. However, it wouldn’t surprise me (given past history) if the $35 million figure is inflated. Difficult to say.
The NASA charge might include more more intensive training as well as possible trade-offs in use of ISS. There’s all sorts of deals that are going on between the partners. So, there may be more to it than that.
It’s interesting to do the math. NASA pays for single seats on seven Soyuz flights, and you’re talking about $350-360 million for NASA to launch seven astronauts who could have been on a single shuttle mission. (Of course, there will be 21 astronauts in those 7 Soyuz flights, the equivalent of three shuttle flights.) So, Soyuz is a lot cheaper, although that doesn’t include cargo which will be sent up separately on Progress, Dragon, Cygnus, HTV and ATV. I’m not sure what the cost sharing is on these freighter missions.
If SpaceX human rates its Dragon, then there would be 7 passengers in a single flight for $140 million. Providing that Musk isn’t severely underestimating costs here.
Then there’s this, from ESA’s News From Moscow newsletter, Issue 7, 2005:
—
The cost of Soyuz manned ships for NASA, in case the United States decides to buy them from Russia for safety insurance of the ISS crews, may come up to 400 million rubles (~14.5 million at $1=R27.7 rate), the Russian Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov said in the RIA Novosti interview.
In Russia a Soyuz costs about 400 million rubles plus the same price of its launch vehicle, which totals 800 million rubles. “For the United States the price will be about that”, Perminov noted
—-
http://suzymchale.com/kosmonavtka/soyfeature.html
I read that as saying, “Since any such craft is likely to rescue cosmonauts as well, we’re willing to do the job at cost.”
Flying two U.S. astronauts to ISS would gross $100M for the Russians. They might be able to build AND launch for as little as $30M. Net $70M. Let’s say (to make things easier for Elon) that this $70M could buy only about twice as much aerospace engineering labor as it would buy in the U.S. This would mean the Russians can effectively earn significantly more capital — as pure profit — than has been poured into SpaceX so far, from one single flight. And there will be more than one single flight.
Somebody tell me what I’m missing here. (“Patriotism”? Go ahead, make my day.)