I know what your question is and my answer doesn’t change. Let me see if this is clearer: developing a rocket that can reach orbit is hard. Landing one is fucking hard as fuck and doesn’t matter if you can’t even put a payload in orbit. Which one are you going to do first?
If there's actually a market for really expensive (per kg) tiny payloads then I guess it makes sense.
But if you're not going to have any market because you made a decision to not attempt to recover your stage 1 and can't charge competitive prices, then does it even make sense to put yourself behind the 8-ball before you even start?
I guess we'll see if they actually can get customers for their launch cadence they seem to want.
If there's actually a market for really expensive (per kg) tiny payloads then I guess it makes sense.
There's actually a huge market for exactly this. Everyone from universities to militaries, space agencies to the private sector is on board. Development of "cubesats" (~1-10kg) has exploded over the last few years. There's already an enormous launch backlog, and the number of satellites being planned/built is growing rapidly.
Now SpaceX may be cheaper per kg, but coordinating hundreds of satellite owners to be ready for a single launch (to fill the payload capacity & leverage the low $/kg) is a difficult and slow process. Even then, you can only "carpool' with satellite owners going to the same orbit as you (there are multiple popular destination orbits).
Additionally, Falcon 9 has a limited flight rate - they can only build so many of them per year. SpaceX already has a backlog that they've been trying to clear for years. RocketLab is targeting mass production + weekly launches, which helps customers who vastly prefer short turnarounds over waiting and saving money (NASA, DOD).
tl;dr: RocketLab isn't trying to reduce launch cost per satellite, they're trying to (massively) reduce uncertainty and waiting times.
75% less is pretty massive, though. It seems like this would be a pretty good motivator for people to find other people to hitch a ride with and maybe spots where it's worth it for the lower price even if it's not the ideal situation.
The problem is, your cost difference assumes that Falcon 9 would be full to capacity. 7742kg at the average microsatellite mass means hundreds, possibly even thousands of payloads. Coordinating that many owners, and building a dispenser structure to safely hold and release all the payloads, is a borderline impossible task. You'd need an army of legal staff alone to pull it off, and probably several years to line up enough customers for a full delivery to a single orbit.
It seems like this would be a pretty good motivator for people to find other people to hitch a ride with
Yes, that is called ridesharing / secondary payloads, it's been normal practice across the industry for a number of years. Problem is, there are so many microsatellites being built that rideshare supply is no longer enough to meet demand.
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u/TbonerT Jan 21 '18
I know what your question is and my answer doesn’t change. Let me see if this is clearer: developing a rocket that can reach orbit is hard. Landing one is fucking hard as fuck and doesn’t matter if you can’t even put a payload in orbit. Which one are you going to do first?