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This was the fifth time this particular booster launched and landed successfully. Incredible.
by pensatoio 6y ago
This was the fifth time this particular booster launched and landed successfully. Incredible.
- new_realist 6y agoLike the Space Shuttle.
- KoftaBob 6y agoExcept the entire thing is reusable!
- stetrain 6y agoExcept the Falcon 9 second stage is not reusable. Shuttle had an advantage since the orbiter was both first and second stages. The orange fuel tank was lost on each mission, and the solid rocket boosters were recovered and refurbished after a swim in the ocean. So by some measures the Shuttle system was very reusable, but the complexities of the system resulted in high costs to tear down, inspect, and refurbish between flights.
- valuearb 6y agoSRBs weren’t reused; some of their parts were. Hitting the ocean at 200 MPH and floating in corrosive saltwater damaged them pretty significantly. It would have been cheaper to build new ones.
- stetrain 6y agoThe number I can find is 76 feet per second, or about 50mph. They had parachutes. My understanding is that refurbishment meant basically stripping them for parts and using them to build new boosters, but still a significant amount of percentage re-use of parts. It just highlights how important the amount of type of required refurbishment is to making re-usability actually practical. Falcon 9 is noteworthy because it's relatively inexpensive up-front compared to traditional boosters, relatively simple in design and part count (compared to STS) and relatively quick and inexpensive to re-use.
- brianwawok 6y agoLike 80%, there is still a few parts that get thrown out. Still a HUGE leap.
- Valgrim 6y agoI didn't know the space shuttle reused it's boosters. Apparently the two solid rocket boosters deployed parachutes after separation and were refurbished. Interesting! However the main booster could not be reused...
- djaychela 6y agoBy "main booster" do you mean the external tank?
- hylaride 6y agoBy "main booster" did you mean the big red thing? That was a fuel storage tank and yes, it was not re-used.
- DC-3 6y agoI believe it was actually one of the more strongly limiting factors on the frequency with which space shuttle launches could be conducted because the factory producing them could not turn them out particularly quickly.
- phkahler 6y agoBut it fed fuel to the 3 main engines on the orbiter, which were reused. The price of the tank should have been much lower than the engines.
- valuearb 6y ago
- thecolorblue 6y agoExcept much cheaper. Space Shuttle Budget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Budget Falcon 9 costs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Pricing Not directly comparable but still show a large improvement in efficiency.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoIIRC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF69nqY3TZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF69nqY3TZs says 2 million man hours of refurbishment for the shuttle.
- jesseb 6y agoExcept for the fact that a Falcon 9 is a small fraction of the cost.
- virtue3 6y agoOnly carries about 2/3 of the total shuttle payload to LEO when configured as reusable. Still puts it at 1/10th the cost of the shuttle tho.
- m4rtink 6y agoThats actually an insanely good achievement! :)
- valuearb 6y agoMore like 1/50th the cost. A Falcon 9 launch sells for a range of $50M to $90M depending upon extras/expend ability, but a reusable launch likely costs less than $30M. Total cost of Space Shuttle program (in 2000 cost mind you) was $200B for 134 launches, or $1.5B each. And an expendable Falcon launch actually can put nearly as much payload into LEO by weight as the Shuttle, and costs around $45M (priced $63M).
- SEJeff 6y agoNo. The shuttle boosters were expended every single launch. The Falcon 9 booster comes back and lands. Ironically, the Falcon 9 second stage is expended every single launch, but that will not be the case with Super Heavy / Starship that is in development.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoNo they were not. Only the external tank was expended. The SRBs were refurbished and the orbiter was reused/refurbished.
- ceejayoz 6y agoTrue. Something that's often overlooked here is how extensive the required refurbishment is. The "reusable" shuttle boosters and orbiter engines took substantial time (https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/584723main_Wings-ch3b-pgs74-93.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/584723main_Wings-ch... says 4-5 months), money, and labor to get ready for the next launch. SpaceX is still making noise about trying out a same-day reflight sometime soon; it's clearly a much less involved process.
- valuearb 6y agoNope, only some parts of SRBs were reused to make new SRBs. That 200 MPH collision and saltwater damaged them too much.
- chasd00 6y agoi suspect the cost to refurbish a shuttle + tank + boosters is more than the start-to-finish cost of a brand new Falcon9 let alone re-flying a recovered Falcon9.
- walrus01 6y agoThe per launch cost to refurbish the shuttle + new tank + refurb boosters was more than five separate fully-expended falcon 9-heavy launches.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 6y agoOver the life of the program, dividing total program R&D + flight operations cost by number of flights, each space shuttle launch cost between $900m to $1.5 billion. Not exactly an affordable reusable vehicle.