Capabilities and Services

[anemic]

As a pricing page its missing the Most Popular! -badge.

[mholt]

^ You know, we laugh about this but in the next decade we may very well be able to deploy payloads into space just by clicking a few buttons like any other online shopping. They may even pick up the shipment right from our facilities with their drones.

[scottcanoni]

Where is the "BUY NOW" button?

[ceejayoz]

I'm just hoping for the "free forever!" tier.

[lalwanivikas]

No way to enter discount coupon code? This is outrageous!

[something123]

Where is my shopping cart anyways?

Either way - I'd wait it out. They'll drop the price for black friday

[vermontdevil]

They should offer quick buy it now sales through mobile via Stripe Relay.

[utuxia]

what? no free tier? nobody will ever use this.

[robodale]

What, no 30-day money back guarantee?!

[smpetrey]

Found the marketing guru.

[wener]

Any free trial ?

[devit]

It's interesting that Falcon Heavy costs 1.5x as much as Falcon 9, but carries 4x the payload.

Why doesn't SpaceX offer the Falcon Heavy exclusively and launch multiple payloads per launch, thus more than halving costs?

Are there payload volume or orbit separation limitations or is the pricing info not complete?

[adwn]

Arianespace does that with their Ariane V, but it comes with organizational headaches, because you need two payloads of appropriate mass, that are ready at the same time, and that go into the same orbital plane. If one payload is delayed (happens often enough), you can't shuffle the other one around on short notice.

[baq]

>It's interesting that Falcon Heavy costs 1.5x as much as Falcon 9, but carries 4x the payload.

where did you get that numbers from? the page says $60m for ~4.85t to GTO for F9 and $90m for 6.4t to GTO for FH. price for maximum performance isn't quoted; i believe without reusability it'll be about 3x F9 (there's three F9's in the FH, after all).

[LoSboccacc]

saw that a little while ago. it's fun you can now purchase a lift in LEO and with a direct quote even!

so, doing some weird math, you can get about 5000 person ashes in LEO for about 62M, so one could theoretically (I think law forbids it) run a kickstarter campaign to get people ashes in space for 15k each.

Just think of the possibilities! private launch space with a price allows all people a fair access to space (still pricey, but fair)

[ukoki]

Sounds like http://elysiumspace.com/

I think they only send up a small sample of the ashes rather than the whole urn though. They charge $2k so there's probably some good margins if you can do the same with SpaceX.

[TomGullen]

I can't think of anything more wasteful!

[Arnt]

There are many small and light relics of Jesus, both Marys etc around. How about a kickstarter campaign to send one into low earth orbit to watch over us all?

[mholt]

Rockets as a Service. We live in a cool era.

And these prices may go down dramatically after the first stages prove themselves reusable (depending on SpaceX's strategy).

[utuxia]

haha.

[phkahler]

Look like a typo. Falcon 9 up to 4.85mT to GTO. Falcon Heavy up to 6.8mT to GTO. <-- really?

But down below we see 4850kg and 21,200kg which seems more likely.

[Gravityloss]

4.85 milliteslas. Too bad the unit usage in the business is a bit wonky.

[baq]

it says $90m for 6.5t. it doesn't say how much it costs to put 21t on GTO. i'd expect that price to be in the 'call us' area.

[dougmwne]

Is this a mistake on their site? Falcon heavy is listed as 6.4 mT to GTO under the price, but 21.2 mt below in the table.

[mrfusion]

Right, that's what I was asking, but someone thought I was confused about LEO vs GTO :-(

[larrydag]

I believe that is price vs capacity. Falcon Heavy is ultimately intended to take a vehicle to Mars.

[mrfusion]

It seems to list two different weights to GTO for the falcon heavy. Could there be a typo?

[adwn]

The different payload masses are most likely for different grades of reusability: all cores expendable, center core expendable + boosters reusable, fully reusable.

Hard to tell for sure, because SpaceX has, to the best of my knowledge, never provided details regarding which Falcon Heavy configuration delivers the 6.4 mT to GTO.*

* probably a 1800 m/s to GSO, 26° inclination orbit

[vladd]

It depends on how far up you want the weight to go:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_transfer_orbit

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit

[onion2k]

Using the smaller Falcon 9 you could send approximately 1500 people's ashes in to space (assuming an average of 3kg left after cremation for each person), at a cost of $39,000 each.

I wonder if that could be a viable business.

[owenversteeg]

If you found this interesting, I would recommend taking a look at https://www.astrobotic.com/configure-mission, another "space travel pricing page" - this one gives tweakable parameters that change the price, which is nice.

Sidenote: It's absolutely amazing that we can now get a satellite orbiting the Moon for $200k.

[vinceyuan]

Cool. According to Space launch market competition[1] "Falcon 9 rockets [were] already the cheapest in the industry."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_launch_market_competitio...

[sbarre]

Under launch facilities, the one in California, that is suited for "defense intelligence" also touts a "launch path completely over the ocean"..

I guess that makes sense, if your super secret launch payload is going to fail, better that it falls in the ocean?

[jarek]

It is completely standard to seek to launch over the ocean. The spaceports in Florida and Guiana are where they are because of that and because it is easier to launch towards the east. Where launches aren't over the ocean they are usually over very sparsely populated territory (as is the case for Baikonur).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceport#Placement_considerat...

[than]

No up-selling travel insurance? They're leaving money on the launchpad.

[knodi123]

If you buy a launch ticket with your chase sapphire card, you can get free travel insurance with coverage for baggage losses. Do telecom satellites count as baggage? Some cards also offer warranty-type protections on your purchases. Seems like a smart move.

[pluma]

Flying is the safest method of transport.

Unless you're flying into space.

[marktangotango]

Judging from the landings legs on heavy center stage, they are planning to land it, but where? It will be flying much higher and faster than the side boosters I believe.

[Already__Taken]

The center landings would have to be on the barges due to the extra range involved.

[hit8run]

I would pay money to not get shot into space :D

[baldfat]

You pay I'll ride. Live vicariously through me!

[dmd]

I will gladly take you up on that.

[allsystemsgo]

I'll wait for black Friday.

[benihana]

For comparison, The Delta IV Heavy costs ~$350 million to send 28,790 kg into LEO, or 14,220 kg into GTO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy

the Saturn V, the rocket that sent men to the moon could send 140,000 kg to LEO and 48,600 kg on a translunar injection, which is a higher orbit (i.e. takes more energy) than a geostationary transfer. It's estimated that it cost upwards of a billion dollars per Saturn V launch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V

Basically, this is a powerful and freaking cheap rocket.

[rebootthesystem]

Is there an easy to understand resource somewhere that covers issues related to the rocket equation, inclination angles, low and geosynchronous orbit requirements?

I would like a better understanding of the math and physics of what it takes to get a vehicle up to various altitudes and orbits.

[idlewords]

Surprised there's no freemium tier or bulk discount.