I was last buying the non-coking kero around when gasoline hit $5 a
gallon in Cali, so I'm not shocked it's come down a bit. More like a
buck and a half a pound by the barrel back then, as I recall.
FWIW, plain-jane US market natgas has mostly been running between $2.50
and $3 per million btu's (MMBtu) the last few years. There's ~12
gallons of LNG per MMBtu, at ~3.5lb/gallon, so that's 6-7 cents a pound
for the raw natgas feedstock.
Chances are there'll be markups for vehicle grade (high CH4, low sulfur,
from selected wells) natgas, and for liquefaction. But there's till
quite a bit of room for rocket LNG to come in significantly cheaper than
highly refined kero.
And given the fracking revolution in domestic natgas, that's likely to
remain so for a long time.
But yeah, if the kero drops to under a buck a pound, the differential
won't remain a buck a pound.
For a smallsat launcher, the difference isn't enough to override the
simpler operations with kero, I tend to agree. For vehicles where
you're buying fuel hundreds of tons at a time, LNG can make a
substantial ops cost savings.
Henry
On 2/25/2018 8:04 PM, Ben Brockert wrote:
Fancy non-coking kerosene is currently $1.18/lb when bought at single
barrel quantities. It varies with oil prices, cheapest I saw last year
was $1.08/lb. Another advantage it has is that it's cheaper than RP-1
at barrel quantity and more available.
I haven't gotten it priced at tanker quantities yet.
On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 2:44 PM, Henry Vanderbilt
<hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And Blue may well be thinking that when they'll be buying fuel in
half-million pound lots for each New Glenn flight, the buck a pound
difference between rocket-grade kerosene and vehicle-grade LNG will add up
to worthwhile savings.
Henry V
On 2/12/2018 3:22 PM, Rand Simberg wrote:
SpaceX is thinking that they can manufacture methane on Mars much easier
than they can manufacture RP-1.
On 2018-02-12 14:19, Paul Mueller wrote:
But some rockets that first flew over 50 years ago are still flying
today. They are upgraded, but the propellants are the same.
Fundamental design decisions made today (such as propellant choice)
can have long lifetimes.
On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 3:01 PM, <Nels.Anderson@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Gesendet: Montag, 12. Februar 2018 um 22:26 Uhr
Von: "William Claybaugh" <wclaybaugh2@xxxxxxxxx>
Careful. Cost will *eventually* be dominated by propellant, but
it is very
unlikely any rocket being built today will still be operational
when that
day arrives.
I inclined to agree. I'm just reporting what I think SpaceX is
thinking.