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The exciting part is if they successfully land it again. Consider: eight first stage rockets have been landed already. One is a show piece (the first one) and
by mabbo 10y ago
The exciting part is if they successfully land it again.
Consider: eight first stage rockets have been landed already. One is a show piece (the first one) and at least one is too beat up to ever be reused. But that leaves a fleet of six-ish rockets. How many Falcon 9s would SpaceX need to run an active fleet that is constantly refurbished and reused, never replaced? They'd start to look less like Boeing and more like Delta.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoAgreed that each re-use lowers their overall operation cost for reaching orbit (and either increases profit or cuts customer cost to orbit depending on what ULA does). I also find that it is considered 'normal' that if your developing a new orbital booster you should insure that it is re-usable if you want to be competitive. That will put an interesting pressure on Russian launch vehicles if they wish to continue to get international business. But a critical issue which isn't resolve is 'cycle time.' For this to really be effective you can't spend as much time and money 'refurbishing' a booster as you did building it in the first place. (then re-use just saves materials and maybe time but not cost). Bezos demonstrated some pretty impressive cycle times with the New Shepard, and if they can get those type of cycle times on New Glen (a couple of weeks) they will be more competitive than Falcon 9. Fun times.
- sand500 10y agoI think time matters much less than cost because you could just pipeline a bunch of boosters being refurbished. You only have to have a booster ready at the rate it takes to get one of the three pads ready.
- greglindahl 10y agoIt is nice that Blue Origin is intended to be reusable, but Long March 5/6/7 and Ariane 6 and Vulcan and Angora and GSLV mkIII are all not reusable.
- Coincoin 10y agoNot all flight plans can lead to a recoverable rocket. GTO and polar orbits can't land back. This means there will be unrecoverable rockets from time to time. But your question still applies to recoverable flight plans. How many do they need to cover all those?
- mikeash 10y agoGTO and polar orbits can still land, they just use the barge ("Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship") instead of returning to the launch site. There are launches which don't have enough margin to land at all. The upcoming EchoStar 23 launch is one of these. This is a GTO launch of a really heavy satellite, so getting it up there requires using the fuel the rocket would need to land. However, this is rare, and it's likely that this will only happen a few more times at most
- alpos 10y agoI think the key point there is that SpaceX can offer many new options for launch that seriously expand the kinds of contracts they can accept. If your payload and destination allow for reuse then the cost of your launch is (cost of the whole rocket) / (number of reuses) + (landing & refurbishing costs) If you require the full fuel of a Falcon 9 it might make sense to accept higher risk and launch on a rocket that is at it's last launch. If you also don't want that risk, then maybe a mid-life Falcon Heavy can be cheap enough for you. If Falcon Heavy is still too expensive even with re-use then maybe a one shot Falcon 9 is right for you.
- ceejayoz 10y ago> However, this is rare, and it's likely that this will only happen a few more times at most Especially once Falcon Heavy comes online.
- mikeash 10y agoOnly six more months! As it has been for the last four years....
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- gozur88 10y agoThey're a ways from being Delta. One of the things that came out recently regarding crewed launches is Merlin turbines have been developing cracks under test. They're probably only good for a handful of flights. Musk claims that's all going to be fixed in the next version. We'll see.
- stevep98 10y agoRecovering the engines allows for inspection and modifying the design to compensate for any problems. Competitors just dump their flight-tested hardware in the ocean, when it is truly a goldmine of test data. SpaceX is able to do all this testing with a free ride on paying launches. There's no risk to the primary mission, and they get to develop their capability. There will be failures with reflown hardware for sure. I'm interested to know how well a failed engine can be isolated in flight so not to affect the others.
- greglindahl 10y agoF9 has single-engine-out capability, and it's actually been used. That requires that the failure be contained. BTW engines are often tested on the ground, so the main extra thing SpaceX learns from landing stages is data from the non-engine components.
- alirazaq 10y agoIdentifying those points of stress is the first step to building a better launch system.
- gozur88 10y agoOh, I agree. I just think it's going to be awhile.
- kitsunesoba 10y agoEven if a booster can only be reused 2-5 times, it's still a dramatic improvement over throwing it away after a single flight and will still have a measurable impact on launch prices. There's also savings to be had by putting all expendable flights on boosters that only have one or two launches left in them.
- rst 10y agoNot exactly like Delta; Falcon 9 second stages are still one-flight throwaways, and plans for reusing them have been shelved. (That might change if they build a second stage powered by the Raptor engine currently being prototyped for their Mars project -- or a scaled-down version of it -- but that remains a poorly-sourced rumor at this point. If they're working actively on any such thing, they've kept it fairly tightly under wraps.)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- greglindahl 10y agoSee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_prototype_upper-stage_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_prototype_upper-stage_e... While there's no money in this contract to develop the upper stage itself, only money for the engine, it's still a source.
- 824ueirwfjd 10y ago> eight first stage rockets have been landed already. Wow this is truly amazing! I didn't realize they've landed it 8 times already... I still remember watching the youtube live stream of the first successful landing and how exciting and moving it was to watch. We're truly entering a new phase of space exploration and I can't wait to see what comes of the next decade and beyond!
- mabbo 10y agoAfter the 4th or 5th one landed, and it suddenly became clear that this was the new normal, Musk had this wonderful tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/728459808270000128 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/72845980827000012...
- Ntrails 10y agoMy favourite part of this is how my perceptions have changed. - This cannot be possible - Awww, they got pretty close that's incredible - Great Scott, they've done it! - Heh, they're getting good at this - There's no way they'll fuck this up
- sametmax 10y agoPretty much my thinking too.
- qeternity 10y ago"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And then once the trick is revealed, it stops being magic and just becomes "boring" math/engineering/etc.
- ragebol 10y agoThen: - Yawn, another landing. It just lands, nothing exciting to see.
- LoSboccacc 10y agoluckily between here and there the'll be a lot of entertaining fireworks to be had. the only shameful aspect of it is how the press will portray failures as terrible events for SpaceX, while they're still pushing the envelope and boundaries of what we think it's possible with failures being normal for quite some time yet.
- avian 10y agoFrom which flight was the one that is too beat up to be reused? What happened?
- mrexroad 10y agoIt landed too hard iirc.
- ygra 10y agoJCSAT-14. It was the first successful landing after a GTO launch and it came down quite hard. GTO launches have the first stage come back quite a bit faster and with less fuel margin than LEO launches. See for example the SES-9 launch where landing failed due to too little fuel being left. While SpaceX opted to test this core to the breaking point, they also noted that it could have been reused despite the damage. But having a core that represents more or less the worst damage possible while still being able to refly it is valuable in itself and for comparing other landed cores against. They have since fired the engines for numerous full-duration burns at their test site and presumably nothing exploded yet. This doesn't tell much about aerodynamic stresses imposed, but at least the engines and tanks are seemingly good to go with minimal refurbishment for a few reflights at least.