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Elon has said that the engines are the biggest cost of the rocket. Having these engines exposed to salt water would drive the costs up. See the SRB from Space
by vermontdevil 11y ago
Elon has said that the engines are the biggest cost of the rocket. Having these engines exposed to salt water would drive the costs up.
See the SRB from Space Shuttle launches. NASA thought the ocean splash and recovery would keep the costs down. It didn't. Ended up the cost to refurb and launch is almost equal to building a new one.
Elon wants to avoid this hence these barge or land returns.
- AmitShipEasy 11y agoTell me again which engines get corroded by sea water but not by combustion and re-entry
- CydeWeys 11y agoYou really don't see how being dunked in water is different than going through the atmosphere? You could pretty easily put a heatshield on a car and have it survive high atmospheric speeds, but dunk it in water and you'll fry out the electronics and destroy the engine. You're arguing against decades of actual experience in rocket technology. Just read up on what happened with the space shuttle SRBs.
- stcredzero 11y agoAnd those were really just sections of stout metal tube. They didn't have things like high precision turbopumps in them.
- CydeWeys 11y agoGood point. Solid fuel rockets are quite different in construction than liquid fuel rockets. They are less worth reusing because what is left isn't as valuable as a liquid fuel rocket, but they are also easier to reuse post-dunking because they aren't as complex. It's still a wash for them. Still, it says something that no actor has ever even bothered attempting to reuse a liquid fueled rocket that is landed in water. The only successful track record of reuse of liquid fuel rockets is the space shuttle, and those landed on a runway. And that isn't preserving the fuel tanks for reuse, mind you, just the engines.
- stcredzero 11y agoSolid fuel rockets are quite different in construction than liquid fuel rockets. Hell, when they fell into the water, the impact bent the sections into ovals. They actually had a giant vise that they used to bend those things back into round. (Feynmann noted this in one of his autobiographical books.)
- mikeash 11y agoThe ones on the rocket.
- rkangel 11y agoWhen designing your rocket engine, you very carefully control where the combustion is, where the heat is, which bits will get burned away. Dunk the whole thing in seawater and suddenly you have corrosion everywhere.