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SpaceX successfully lands its sixth Falcon 9 rocket after launch
- _audakel 10y agokey point - "spacex has yet to actually reuse any of its vehicles"
- ChuckMcM 10y agoTrue, interesting collection of Merlin engines they have. If nothing else their spare parts cache is huuuuge. :-) Can't wait to see what they launch with the refurbed boosters.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoSupposedly a reused booster will fly in the next 3 months; they're still haggling on price with the customer.
- phire 10y agoI wouldn't be surprised if they are haggling with the insurance company on the risks of reusing a booster.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoIt's possible. Only this summer did insurance rates on the Falcon 9 come down to those on the Ariane 5. SpaceX will have to provide extensive data (especially from the static fire in McGregor) to bolster reliability claims on a landed booster.
- InclinedPlane 10y agoThat's partly why they've been doing a bunch of full duration static fires on one of the landed cores. They've done 3 already that are known, they plan on doing around a dozen. That sort of thing should considerably reduce the uncertainty about flying a reused booster.
- dnautics 10y agothey have done an engine reignite test on one of them.
- skykooler 10y agoAnd then three full-duration burns on another.
- geuis 10y agoQuestion about the second stages: Are these left in orbit or are they deorbited?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 10y agoDepends on the launch. There is no remaining fuel in a second stage for any Delta v to lower its orbit into the atmosphere in most launches. A launch to GTO at 350 x 36,000 km will eventually decay. In some satellite launches there is a third stage (like a fregat, but not the same thing) which performs the final circularization of the orbit. In others the satellite itself does this. In a launch to an MEO orbit like 1500x1500 km the 2nd stage is going to stay up there pretty much forever as dead debris.
- ygra 10y agoSpaceX doesn't do GEO launches as far as I know, only GTO. I don't know whether from a lack of capability or whether they're not allowed/certified for that, though. I guess an expendable F9 should easily be able to get to GEO.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoSpaceX does GEO since December 2013. http://www.spacex.com/press/2013/12/03/spacex-successfully-completes-first-mission-geostationary-transfer-orbit http://www.spacex.com/press/2013/12/03/spacex-successfully-c...
- InclinedPlane 10y agoSpaceX doesn't do direct GEO insertion, only boosting to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) which is the norm for satellites headed to GEO. The satellite itself does the circularization, which isn't hugely costly fuel wise but requires a stage that can restart after coasting all the way to GEO altitude (several days), which SpaceX currently lacks (the 2nd stage runs on batteries).
- patman81 10y agoStill amazing to watch! Can't wait to see the Falcon Heavy liftoff, followed by two simultaneous first stage landings.
- Animats 10y ago2017 will be the big year for Space-X. First Falcon Heavy flight, and first crewed Dragon flight.
- creshal 10y agoEvery year since 2013 was the year of the first Falcon Heavy flight. Maybe this time.
- mikeash 10y agoThe time has been steadily getting nearer. It's only about six months out now. It's not reducing at a 1:1 speed, but it's coming down.
- Symmetry 10y agoThey keep re-designing the Falcon 9 and adding new features so it's not really surprising. Those poor engineers working on it, "What do you mean you're increasing the Falcon thrust again. Now we have to reinforce the connectors even more." The capacity of a Falcon 9 has gone from 10 tons to orbit up to 23.
- creshal 10y agoYes, and they're not done yet. I think the upper stage is going to get another thrust improvement with the next flight or so.
- richardw 10y agoWhat could SpaceX have learned about landing a rocket on a boat resting on waves? It seems like the craziest idea. I would have said "No chance. Land it on land, like the word says." but they've managed the risks down to where it's not surprising that they've landed yet another one. Some special magic has gone into that and I can't even imagine what issues they've had to solve.
- ygra 10y agoThey mentioned on the live stream that the landing point doesn't really change the difficulty. It doesn't matter whether they land on water or on land, for the most part. What makes the landings difficult is how much propellant is left in the first stage. There's more of it left after a LEO launch, so they can do a longer landing burn and during that have more opportunity to correct, e.g. for winds. With the GTO launches there's only very little left, so the landing burn is shorter, which also stresses the vehicle more. This time they were happy to actually do a one-engine landing burn as opposed to three engines like they did with the drone ship landings so far (I think it has always been three engines at first and then one engine for the very last bit for drone ship landings until now). They've also noted numerous times that waves don't really matter much to the landing.
- brianwawok 10y agoSo can they add 5% more propellant to the rocket, or perhaps lower the weight of the rocket a bit so for the same propellant - more is left when it lands?
- ygra 10y agoPropellant tanks are full at liftoff, so no, there's no way of adding more. And there's also no room to save weight either, considering that every bit of saved mass is more payload capacity to orbit. Two features of the Falcon 9 Full-Thrust upgrade increased propellant limits, though: One was bigger tanks, but I think they said they're now at a height limit for various reasons (structural integrity of an empty rocket stage is usually abysmal, for example, and you want to land it upright and empty). The other was superchilling the propellants, which made them a bit denser, thereby fitting more.
- journeeman 10y agoI know it's too early but, I'm already kinda getting used to this.
- davej 10y ago> SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, estimates that reusing these landed Falcon 9 vehicles will lead to a 30 percent reduction in launch costs, according to Space News. Surely it will be more than a 30% reduction once they make the rocket refactoring process more efficient? I've heard Elon say that the savings would be an order of magnitude given how low the cost of fuel is relative to everything else on the rocket. I know Elon is famously optimistic and Gwynne is probably dampening expectations on purpose but 30% doesn't seem very impressive. Is Gwynne just playing down the cost savings or is she likely to be accurate, even in the medium term (3-5 years)?
- agildehaus 10y agoIt doesn't make much business sense to pass along ALL the efficiency savings directly to your customers. 30% reduction in launch costs will be hugely welcomed and SpaceX will be able to do lots with the additional revenue.
- mulcahey 10y agoPlus their launch backlog is already pretty full since they are undercutting all the incumbent providers... no sense in decreasing their margins if the current prices are very competitive.
- davej 10y agoPerhaps I misunderstood what Gwynne was saying. I thought that "launch costs" would be the cost of launching a rocket for SpaceX, rather than the price that they set for customers. Perhaps your correct though, the quote is a bit ambiguous.
- codesterling 10y ago"It's saving 90% in launch costs, but we're only passing 30% of the savings along to the customer" doesn't sound very good in a press release.
- cbeach 10y agoImagine the cost of the drone ship, the landing system and the logistics of recovery - I suspect that's the reason it's only a 30% reduction.
- justrossthings 10y agoLooking forward to this not even being news in the future. Thank you Elon
- hanoz 10y agoMy daughter and I saw a couple of strange flashes in the sky while out looking for Perseids last night. We're in the UK and the flashes were in Cassiopeia in the North Eastern sky at about 10pm BST, is possible they could have been from this rocket?
- DavidSJ 10y agoNo, the launch was at 6:26 am BST.
- david-given 10y agoCould it have been an Iridium flare? The timing sort of matches up. http://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx?lat=53.1204&lng=-2.2852&loc=Unspecified&alt=95&tz=GMT http://www.heavens-above.com/IridiumFlares.aspx?lat=53.1204&...
- hanoz 10y agoI did wonder about that but there were two or three flashes in quick succession. It was spookily close to matching up with that 22:29 flare prediction in Cassiopeia, but it was at least half and hour before that.
- simonh 10y agoThe flashes would have been Perseids. We saw a few as well, including one that flared brightly and left a short persistent trail that took about 10 seconds to disperse. If one comes directly down, or at an angle but towards you, it will just look like a flash in the sky.
- hanoz 10y agoThat does sound like the most likely explanation. Thanks.