SpaceX Smallsat Rideshare Program

[Rebelgecko]

With these prices it looks like they're not targeting cubesats, which I'm sure is a relief to the existing rideshare companies. It will be interesting to see how good they are at launching on time. Since SpaceX can shift around Starlink launches to help their schedule, they might have a bit of an advantage over conventional rideshare companies.

>For payloads who run into development or production challenges leading up to launch, SpaceX will allow them to apply 100% of monies paid towards the cost of rebooking on a subsequent mission (rebooking fees may apply).

Without knowing the magnitude of the rebooking fees this isn't a very informative statement.

[tlrobinson]

How large is the CubeSat launch market?

Also, they do say this:

> Cubesats can be aggregated and launched on a customer provided, ESPA-compatible deployer.

[_Microft]

Eric Berger (Ars Technica) on this:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/spacex-enters-compet...

[TeMPOraL]

Sun-Synchronous Orbit... huh, that one you can't do in Kerbal Space Program.

Turns out SSO is exploiting the fact that Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and so you can use the non-spherically-symmetric gravity field to induce precession in your orbital plane. If you tune the precession go 360° per year, you get a Sun-Synchronous Orbit.

Decent.

--

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun-synchronous_orbit#Technica...

[EdwinHoksberg]

Indeed it doesn't work in stock KSP, but it works using a mod called Principia[1] which implements N-body physics!

--

[1] https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/162200...

[ortusdux]

What does L-12 and L-6 from the pricing section refer to?

[ExodusOrbitals1]

Launch date minus 12 or 6 months.

[bobbles]

The page talks about launching for a fraction of prior costs.

Does anyone know what a traditional cost would be vs the $2.25M quoted?

[tzfld]

Pegasus can lift ~300 kg into SSO of that altitude (https://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/Pegasus/Documen...) and it costs over $50 million. But it is known for the unusual high price even among old style launchers.

[philip1209]

Because they are posting pricing, I'm curious about the details. What happens if the rocket fails and loses the payload? Is there insurance included/available? Does the customer get a refund?

[dr_orpheus]

Satellite insurance is a fairly big industry. The owner of the satellite being launched is responsible for getting said insurance against the satellite. This can cover anomalies during launch [1] or anomalies on orbit where the satellite is lost or can no longer perform its mission [2]. Pretty much all commercial companies will have insurance on their satellites, government satellites are typically "self-insured".

[1] https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/us/news/breaking-news/s... [2] https://spacenews.com/digitalglobe-loses-worldview-4-satelli...

[hobofan]

If I'm not mistaken, the company supplying the payload usually has to insure the payload, and depending on the launch companies track record (and therefore risk) they get better/worse conditions. Of course the insurance company will then try to get their money from the launch company in the case of failure.

[starik36]

Coincidental that you mention this. AMOS-6, launching tomorrow on an F9 is getting a free ride, since the previous version of the satellite blew up on the pad.

[greedo]

As with a regular satellite launch, the customer usually buys their own insurance? SpaceX would be on the hook for the launch costs though.

[b_tterc_p]

Is rideshare an industry standard term or is it just clever?

[mholt]

Pretty standard. Rocket Lab:https://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/

[garmaine]

Industry standard, and in fact predates Uber.

[varjag]

Heliosync orbit suggests focus on visual Earth observation and surveillance type missions.

[garmaine]

I think you are thinking of geosync?

[dnjdrbdhdbs]

What is the rough breakdown of applications for all these cubesats and other satellites?

[pardavis]

https://sites.google.com/a/slu.edu/swartwout/cdw2019

[vonseel]

Also curious what the rough breakdown of applicTions is... somehow you have several replies and most about a hamburger menu.

What are satellites even used for these days besides navigation and espionage (limited to a handful of large players, I assume)?

[eznoonze]

UberSat LyftSat

[Cthulhu_]

I'll bite; the cpu power needed to operate and render that hamburger menu is many times more than was used on the Apollo missions to the moon. :p

We've been going into space for 60 years, we've only gone to cyberspace for 30.

[mholt]

I've asked the same thing about HTTPS vs. going to the moon: https://twitter.com/mholt6/status/1126717673620922369

[ntpeters]

SpaceX has one deployment target, how many do front-end devs have? :P

[paxys]

How much money is SpaceX putting into rocket science vs front-end development?

[ideasRgood]

The hard part about rocket science is fluid Dynamics, and it's only hard to land.

But my God do the engineering equations for fluid Dynamics are nuts when you have an open, changing, turbulent system.

[penagwin]

The Engineers are clearly busy making rockets :P

[tehlike]

Css is hard, by proxy, ui is hard :)

[jonplackett]

Haha. I had the exact same thought. Lots of images with blocks of white behind white text. And the font is horrible. I guess sacrifices have to be made somewhere when you’re changing the world.

[ExodusOrbitals1]

They are definitely in the need of extra cash from smallsat market.

[rtkwe]

The transferable nature of the ride seems like a big gamble pared with their statement that launches won't be held up by co-passengers. Guess they're just counting on the odds that enough passengers will drop out to make the launch uneconomic will be fairly low.

[mlindner]

This is one launch per year. They already launch about 20 per year for the last few years. The extra cash here is minimal.