9 ms·
Just wanted to say that the phrase "flight-proven" is genius marketing.
by castratikron 10y ago
Just wanted to say that the phrase "flight-proven" is genius marketing.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoBetter than "Certified Pre-Owned Rocket" :-) I agree with the folks who have tweeted they should start adding launch "check marks" to the paint but that assumes that they will launch it w/recovery and then do it again.
- colechristensen 10y agoThey'll definitely want to do extensive destructive testing on the first twice-used rocket if they can land it (or maybe put it in a museum and do that on the second) There is a lot to learn about how the structure reacts to repeated launches (and undoubtedly engineering iterations to improve future models' reusability)
- Animats 10y agoThe title of this article should have been "Used Rocket".
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI think it would be funny if Gwen Shotwell put "Used Rocket Salesperson" on a business card.
- paulvs 10y ago"Flight-proven" as opposed to those inferior non-flight-proven rockets we're so used to. In a few years, perhaps flying your cargo on an un-flight-proven rocket will be the risky option. I applaud SES for being the early adopters, and SpaceX for always pushing the boundaries.
- rst 10y agoIt'll take more than a few years for anyone other than SpaceX, and perhaps Blue Origin, to start recovering entire boosters -- it's a lot harder than you might think to retrofit on an existing rocket, and those two companies are the only ones to have designed rockets from scratch for it (though Blue is ... ahem ... a little while yet from even starting to actually build their orbital launcher). Other launch providers are obviously watching, and the Indian space program, at least, is developing technology intended to feed into an eventual reusable design. But some of the others with announced plans still won't be trying to recover an intact stage, but only pieces, particularly the engines (detached in flight from the rest of the stage). That's the case both for Vulcan, the next-generation rocket from United Launch Alliance (the Pentagon's preferred provider), and for the Ariane-6 -- both of which won't initially launch with even that level of reuse, but only get it in follow-on work. (The reuse strategies for these are called SMART and Adeline, respectively, if you want to Google for them.)
- drdeadringer 10y agoDoesn't the US defense industry use this phrase as well, even if in PR over marketing?
- xiphias 10y agoIt sounded to me like ,,sex proven'' condoms
- shpx 10y agoI don't get the point, we know exactly what they're doing, so why do it? I wish press releases didn't make me parse what they're really saying. I know "marketing" works, but if I was a satellite company, I would expect my audience to be smarter than that.
- oconnor663 10y agoI think there are a lot of stories about companies that go "why do we need all this fake marketing crap anyway" and then proceed to lose a bunch of money :)
- varjag 10y agoThe same reason we get everything priced a cent short of dollar, despite everyone being aware of the trick.
- glaberficken 10y agooff topic: I wonder what the "real" cost of this is across the world? You know, things like minting cent coins and transporting them around, and other things I wouldn't even imagine!
- PDoyle 10y agoIn Canada? No cost at all.
- dansze 10y agoActually, that's an interesting question: How much more efficient transportation-wise is ending prices in .95 and transporting nickels?
- glaberficken 10y agoAfter a bit of googling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_debate_in_the_United_Sta... fascinating!
- the_duke 10y agoDon't know if this comes from SpaceX or SES. But Musk is definitely good at coming up with 'interesting' new terms. See RUD - Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (aka Crash).
- marvin 10y agoRUD has been a rocket engineering term for decades, same as e.g. lithobraking (slowing your spacecraft down by smashing it into the ground)
- the_duke 10y agoYou can always learn something new on HN. ^^ I only ever read in articles about SpaceX.
- alphaBetaGamma 10y agoI also like the concept of "engine-rich exhaust" (also known as "the engine is melting").
- tehbeard 10y agoPretty sure he nabbed that one from the KSP community. Also its not so much a crash as the rocket falling apart.
- JshWright 10y agoThe term is _much_ older than KSP (going back to at least the 70's)
- tempestn 10y agoI came here to say exactly the same thing. You know exactly what it means when you read it, but you still can't help but appreciate it.