Falcon Heavy cost

[johnfosteruk]

Elon's been chatting on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/doug_ellison/status/959614237768261632

Most interesting

 

He goes on to say:

 

Most interesting of all he says further down the thread: 

obviously recovery of that centre core is a costly affair.

 

 

And some price per kilo info, look at the difference between highest and lowest!! 

Rocket	Thousand $USD per kg to GTO
F9 recoverable	11.3
F9 expendable	10.8
FH recoverable 3/3	11.3
FH recoverable 2/3	4.0
FH expendable	5.6
Atlas V 401	22.9
Atlas V 431	16.9
Atlas V 501	31.8
Atlas V 551	17.2
Delta IV M+*	23.8
Delta IV Heavy	28.1
Ariane 5*	19.8

 

[Ags]

He also mentions that SpaceX might enlarge the FH second stage or the fairing, if BFR is not available on schedule (highly likely, methinks!). So possibly some plans to further develop FH.

[johnfosteruk]

16 hours ago, Ags said:

(highly likely, methinks!)

Really?? No??? Surely not!!!

 

[Ags]

It's an exciting time for rocketry. If you consider the the space shuttle as a wasteful digression, there was basically no significant advance in launch technology since the 1970s. Some new rockets came into service, but they were little more than modernized versions of what we already had. But with SpaceX's reusability, advances in payload capacity, and high launch frequency, things are radically different now. It's like SpaceX are flying jets while the rest of the industry are still using biplanes. SpaceX's rockets are cheaper that the competition even if they are not re-used - to me it's amazing they can hit a lower price point and pack in the technology, infrastructure and extra fuel required for reuse.

Musk claims that BFR will get off the ground next year (in the form of a very short distance atmospheric hop) - but we'll see!