No we can't.
They do not specify what configuration each of them were going for. All we can see is that the end result was a reusable falcon heavy. Where they considering a reusable falcon 9 or an expendable one?
As their satellite is well within the capabilities of an expendable Falcon 9, it seems they were comparing it to a reusable Falcon 9 (which would have put it into a lower energy GTO), as if they had already chosen to go with a reusable rocket, and just need to pick which one.
I do know it was at a very high inclination, so not so sure if it was F9 disposable capable.
There is more to orbits than reaching the reference orbits!
They talk about giving the sat multiple years of additional life, meaning orbital insertion from the second stage was very important for them.
And did you notice who was building it?
Airbus, which you claim has been building its own satellites for decades.
Airbus HAS been building its own sats for years. It does not mean they cant import parts. Here they did possibly because they thought the imported parts wont have spy software on.
But now UAE can build their own sats. They still need to import some components, because very few countries make certain things. For eg, Solar for Germany, computers from Taiwan ext. The US also imports parts, does this mean they cant build sats?
"Parts" does not make a satellite. Otherwise no country can make a sat according to your definition. Even US spy sats need components imported from other countries.
Government contracts.
Income for Starlink.
You literally provided another source of income below your claim.
Lets go over this again.
You say that reuse is cheaper because they are subsidizing their re-use launches with other things. This means they need at least $17m dollars extra from somewhere else per launch, or about $2-3B spare change somewhere.
We know its not investor money because they dont have all that much relative to how much they are developing.
Its not starlink, because they only have about 300 000 customers at $100 each right now, while selling user terminals for less than it costs to make. All of their customers income a month barely pays for one launch.
All their Gov contracts are substantially cheaper than the ULA or Boeing alternative, so they are already undercutting there, plus they still need to actually deliver on these services, its not free money.
So where are they getting this $2 - 3 billion?
Really?
It has a proven capacity of 180 kg, and an initial claim of 600 kg, which was later reduced to 420 kg.
That sure sounds like quite a lot less than the various rockets we have been discussing.
It had very few launches, and SpaceX even admitted "We could not make Falcon 1 work as a business."
So not really anything to brag about.
That was before the merlin saw any upgrades, so it could probably reach its 600kg.
Electron, the rocket that launched the Capstone mission mentioned earlier only has a LEO capacity of about 300kg.
Vega, Soyuz and PSLV are closer to launch mass to Falcon 1 than Falcon 9.
I agree, F1 is not impressive, yet its closer to a lot of the commercial alternatives than F9.
If they actually developed crossfeed, you would have a point.
Instead, what you have now are 3 boosters, strapped together, with nose cones on 2 of them and the second stage on the core one.
The change to the launch profile is the core booster has a more complex profile where it is initially at full thrust, then throttles down until booster separation.
So not really all that complex.
Compare that to the SLS, which while using components of the reusable boosters from the shuttle, is still redesigning them into 5 segment boosters instead of the 4 segment boosters the shuttle had, It is using a similar but still different fuel tank to the shuttle, with a configuration entirely different from the shuttle, where now fuel needs to be fed to the bottom of the stage to the engines mounted there instead of flowing fuel into the shuttle to go to its engines, with obvious differences in where the engines are mounted, and it has a second stage where the shuttle was effectively a single stage with boosters.
So drastically different.
FH cross feed was very complex. It needs to work with a common booster design which would make the common booster worse or far more complex. And at the end of the day, Falcon Heavy is restricted by its fairing size, so more up mass is pretty much useless. As proof, go see how many FH disposable launches are on the manifest. Not too many to justify the sacrifices that will need to be made.
And SLS, while it DID need a lot of upgrades, took more money to develop than what has passed through SpaceX doors to date. Just for the single vehicle.
In the same way a 1990 Mustang is different to a 2000 Mustang.
They have a different structure and size
Different Parachutes
Different heat shields
Different avionics
Different trunk and energy management system
D2 has super dracos not on D1
D2 has a LES not on D1
D2 has can auto dock, while D1 needs to manually berth
D2 has a ECLSS system while D1 does not.
Please tell me, where are they they same?
But it doesn't mean they are getting so much less money than the competitors.
And what will happen if they don't meet the bid price and need more money?
Lots of government contracts start out cheap then end up getting more money.
Charging less for a service means you get less for a service. Im guessing your not an account.
If they need more money, then they need to self fund to deliver or get penalised for failing to deliver. Boeing's starliner is in this position right now. Boeing is self funding additional dev of starliner as it cost them more than the bid price to develop, while NASA is rejecting them on other bids due to bad performance.
These bids are all fixed cost bids. Means you deliver at that price, end of story.
SLS is on a cost plus bid. Meaning if it costs more, the US gov pays more.
Cost plus makes sense when there is only one bidder and NASA has direct control of the contract.
Which is no better than the fantasy I provided.
You are speculating that it will be massively cheaper to try and prop up your claim that reusability is massively cheaper.
We know reusability is cheaper, because we have real figures to use.
Your developing conspiracies to justify otherwise.
In what world is building a new rocket cheaper than fuel and repairs?
Each Space Shuttle cost about $450m to launch. A lot sure, but they cost over $2b to build.
The RS-25s that SLS will dump in the ocean each cost more than an entire FH disposable launch.
There are conditions where single use is cheaper, for ex, where launch cadence is very very low. Which is where the world was from 1970 to 2010's. We are not there anymore.