RSS Feed | 
Twitter | Advertising | Archives | Support"Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Astrium announced a commercial agreement to provide dedicated launch services to the European institutional small satellite market.
Under the agreement, Astrium intends to work with SpaceX to market Falcon 1 launch capabilities to various space agencies and other institutional customers in Europe for launches to take place through 2015."
This is a LEO launcher competing with the likes of Athena, Vega (ESA's), etc. The best payload vs. cost estimate to LEO from Space-X (or Arianespace's Vega launcher) is still higher than what the Russians can provide.
The big business for commercial payloads is launching telecommunication satellites to GEO, and even Ariane-V is on shaky ground, which is probably covered by whatever fineprint there is in the Europe-Russia agreement to allow Soyuz-Fregat launches from Kourou (which considerably improves the payload capability of Soyuz-Fregat).
I've a hunch the Russians have agreed not to pilfer too many Ariane customers in exchange for launching from Kourou. Once the really enter the fray all bets are off, of course.
Lowly contractor, I think you have some facts mixed up here. Falcon 1 cannot really compete with Russian rockets or Vega, instead it is one down in the scale of launchers: 10 M$ for 500 kg rather than 20-30 M$ for 1000-1500 kg. I haven't worked out exactly the price per kilo but I think they are probably comparable.
Falcon 1 is an interesting rocket commercially, but mostly in the US, for smaller payloads. The main advantage they will likely have over Russian ones is their commercial reliability; Over the 2000s Russian rocket suppliers have proven somewhat shaky from a business point of view: Supply not guaranteed, price fluctuation, last-minute bills, etc...
A more direct competition will come from Falcon 9. Although once again this is a 4 t to GEO for 50 M$ versus 6-10 tons to GEO for about 100 M$ for Ariane 5 and others. So it could be argued this will compete with Soyuz rather than Ariane 5, Proton et al. For the Soyuz from Kourou note that this kind of hold at the moment, and note also that the noises coming from ESA on Ariane 6 are for a Soyuz-size versatile launcher.
I think the real killer internationally could be the Falcon 9 Heavy, but I somehow find it difficult to believe that from 9 to 9 Heavy it's only 50% more for > 100% more payload. Remember that Falcon 1 was 5M$ at the beginning and now it's 10.
I am a great fan of SpaceX but it's worth remembering that their prices are really low in comparison to US government or DoD offers, and not so much when looking at comparable offers from the more commercial world (Russia, ESA, India, and even China). Falcon 1 is still at 20,000$ per kilo.
The main difference is in the development costs, which for governments are sunk and in the billions, whilst they are clearly lower for SpaceX, although nobody exactly knows what the financial arrangements are here.
It is clear that ESA or Russia could probably not now develop the Falcon 1 or 9 from scratch as the guys from LA have, but then they look at a different market.
So no, I don't think Falcon 1 or 9 are going to sweep over the LEO and GEO market like Ariane 4 did in the 90s, but they will certainly take a share of the market. the future will say...
Wouarnud.
3 Comments
It's great to see SpaceX competing on the international launch market. Thanks to SpaceX, I think we will be see downward pressure on launch prices.