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[SpaceX's Musk: We'll reuse today's Falcon 9 rocket within 2 months • The Register](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/09/falcon_9_rocket_reused_in_two_months

[SpaceX's Musk: We'll reuse today's Falcon 9 rocket within 2 months • The Register](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/09/falcon_9_rocket_reused_in_two_months/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/09/falcon_9_rocket_reus...)

cryptoz 10y ago
For the record, it looks like Musk never said "we will do it in two months". He said SpaceX would aim for June and even mentioned likely delays in the same sentence. There's a huge difference, and the headline you linked to was written as clickbait.
ufmace 10y ago
More recently: "Aiming for first reflight in Sept/Oct." as of June 7th. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/740296489532948480 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/740296489532948480
jessriedel 10y ago
...more than 2 months ago...
mrep 10y ago
That's musk time though so you need to multiply by 2.
rgbrenner 10y ago
It's been 2.5 months. Last week, it was pushed back to the fall: http://www.space.com/33145-spacex-to-refly-falcon-9-rocket-fall-2016.html http://www.space.com/33145-spacex-to-refly-falcon-9-rocket-f... It is interesting that it was 2 months.. then after landing a few, it's now 6 months. Makes you wonder how much damage the rocket is sustaining during launch/recovery.
- walrus01 10y ago
  If I had to guess, their first priority is launching new rockets that generate revenue, with paying customers' payloads on them (as all of the recent Falcon 9 launches have been), rather than a self funded R&D flight. I don't think any paying customer would put anything other than a boilerplate/test article satellite on the very first ever re-use of a first stage.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    People would if the cost was sufficiently defrayed -- this is just a financial instrument problem. That might make the first reuse flight unprofitable for SpaceX, but not as unprofitable as one with no payload.
    - walrus01 10y ago
      The insurance companies which insure commercial telecom satellite launches are EXTREMELY risk averse - I would be surprised if you see a commercial launch in any of the first eight re-uses of first stages. Government/science payload/R&D, yes. LEO or geostationary transfer orbit commercial, no. edit: you might see a commercial flight with a never-flown-before prototype commercial satellite bus (example: like a geostationary bus the size of a boeing 702 with a novel never before tested type of ion propulsion stationkeeping system, or a new battery system, or something else weird).
      - aetherson 10y ago
        As I said, a financial instrument problem. If nobody is willing to create the appropriate insurance because of structural inefficiencies in the insurance industry, well, that's reality. But there's no prima facia reason why it should be uninsurable.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - cryptoz 10y ago
      One of the biggest risks to SpaceX's business is probably the perception that they cannot launch on time, that they have multi-year delays: they are not reliable in terms of launch date expectations. While SpaceX is getting better at this, they need to be able to show prospective customers that they will do everything possible to launch on time, or with the fewest delays. Otherwise, cheaper launches be damned, many customers might switch to a launch provider that will commit to a date. See this here for a series of graphs of how big their launch backlog has grown over the years: http://www.americaspace.com/?p=93456 http://www.americaspace.com/?p=93456 This means that launching customer payloads on fresh-built rockets is Priority #1, at least until confidence is fully restored, cadence is up, and backlog is down.
- ygra 10y ago
  One apparent problem is also to get a rocket certified for flying a second time. No one did that so far so there are no procedures for it. Part of the delay is figuring that out.
- rst 10y ago
  They want to do their first relaunch with a paying customer -- meaning the customer's insurance needs to be willing to insure a relaunch. So, now, they're talking to insurance companies to see what will convince them that the risks of a relaunch are comparable to those of a new rocket launch. This may involve doing a teardown on one of the returned stages, just to check for damage after the first launch and landing, even though they do not expect to do anything like that level of work on stages that they actually relaunch. An article that goes through all this in excruciating detail is here: http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/03/spacexs-latest-booster-back-home-as-company-mulls-pricing-proof-tests/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/03/spacexs-latest-booster-...

cryptoz 10y ago

For the record, it looks like Musk never said "we will do it in two months". He said SpaceX would aim for June and even mentioned likely delays in the same sentence. There's a huge difference, and the headline you linked to was written as clickbait.

ufmace 10y ago

More recently: "Aiming for first reflight in Sept/Oct." as of June 7th. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/740296489532948480 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/740296489532948480

jessriedel 10y ago

...more than 2 months ago...

mrep 10y ago

That's musk time though so you need to multiply by 2.

rgbrenner 10y ago

It's been 2.5 months. Last week, it was pushed back to the fall: http://www.space.com/33145-spacex-to-refly-falcon-9-rocket-fall-2016.html http://www.space.com/33145-spacex-to-refly-falcon-9-rocket-f... It is interesting that it was 2 months.. then after landing a few, it's now 6 months. Makes you wonder how much damage the rocket is sustaining during launch/recovery.

walrus01 10y ago
If I had to guess, their first priority is launching new rockets that generate revenue, with paying customers' payloads on them (as all of the recent Falcon 9 launches have been), rather than a self funded R&D flight. I don't think any paying customer would put anything other than a boilerplate/test article satellite on the very first ever re-use of a first stage.
- aetherson 10y ago
  People would if the cost was sufficiently defrayed -- this is just a financial instrument problem. That might make the first reuse flight unprofitable for SpaceX, but not as unprofitable as one with no payload.
  - walrus01 10y ago
    The insurance companies which insure commercial telecom satellite launches are EXTREMELY risk averse - I would be surprised if you see a commercial launch in any of the first eight re-uses of first stages. Government/science payload/R&D, yes. LEO or geostationary transfer orbit commercial, no. edit: you might see a commercial flight with a never-flown-before prototype commercial satellite bus (example: like a geostationary bus the size of a boeing 702 with a novel never before tested type of ion propulsion stationkeeping system, or a new battery system, or something else weird).
    - aetherson 10y ago
      As I said, a financial instrument problem. If nobody is willing to create the appropriate insurance because of structural inefficiencies in the insurance industry, well, that's reality. But there's no prima facia reason why it should be uninsurable.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - cryptoz 10y ago
    One of the biggest risks to SpaceX's business is probably the perception that they cannot launch on time, that they have multi-year delays: they are not reliable in terms of launch date expectations. While SpaceX is getting better at this, they need to be able to show prospective customers that they will do everything possible to launch on time, or with the fewest delays. Otherwise, cheaper launches be damned, many customers might switch to a launch provider that will commit to a date. See this here for a series of graphs of how big their launch backlog has grown over the years: http://www.americaspace.com/?p=93456 http://www.americaspace.com/?p=93456 This means that launching customer payloads on fresh-built rockets is Priority #1, at least until confidence is fully restored, cadence is up, and backlog is down.
ygra 10y ago
One apparent problem is also to get a rocket certified for flying a second time. No one did that so far so there are no procedures for it. Part of the delay is figuring that out.
rst 10y ago
They want to do their first relaunch with a paying customer -- meaning the customer's insurance needs to be willing to insure a relaunch. So, now, they're talking to insurance companies to see what will convince them that the risks of a relaunch are comparable to those of a new rocket launch. This may involve doing a teardown on one of the returned stages, just to check for damage after the first launch and landing, even though they do not expect to do anything like that level of work on stages that they actually relaunch. An article that goes through all this in excruciating detail is here: http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/03/spacexs-latest-booster-back-home-as-company-mulls-pricing-proof-tests/ http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/03/spacexs-latest-booster-...