- Jay Ashworth Not that this is fatal, of course, but...
Probably increases the stress on the launch services company, though, as it multiplies failures, as well, as we saw *twice* last week... - Alan Petrillo There is that.
- Alan Petrillo http://www.kosmotras.ru/en/Launch2011/
What I said about multiple payloads. - Jay Ashworth Occurs to me you have 8 times as many people who can call a hold, during launch, too.
- Jay Ashworth There were *8* birds in that Dnepr?
- Alan Petrillo Yup. And the Dnepr is not a particularly big launcher.
- Jay Ashworth I like big boo's and I cannot lie... Those smaller launchers can't deny...
- Alan Petrillo LOL!
People in the space industry scoff at, among others, SpaceX for building big launchers, like the Falcon 9. They also say that boosters with the brawn of the venerable Saturn V couldn't be built today because there's no market for them. Nobody needs to put that much mass into orbit. I disagree.
The answer is multiple payload launches. Big boosters are one of the best ways to get the price of getting to orbit down. The way to justify the big boosters is by putting more than one satellite on top. The last Ariane V launch had 6 satellites aboard. The last Dnepr launch had 2 satellites on board, for 2 different customers. The more customers aboard a launcher the more can spread out the cost. If the launcher is already reducing the cost of reaching orbit then that makes the cost of the launch that much less.
So, big launchers, multiple payloads.
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