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> Before [anyone showed it could be done] the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective. There, I fixed it. The reusable orbit
by cryptonector 6y ago
> Before [anyone showed it could be done] the Falcon 9 was a relatively boring concept, from the economical perspective.
There, I fixed it. The reusable orbital launch vehicle revolution may well reduce launch costs by an order of magnitude when it's all said and done. That's not even relatively boring. It's not boring at all. It's nothing short of amazing. But it was boring when no one knew how to make it happen.
> But with a high-volume market things shift considerably. [...]
That's on the money. Government-owned/operated launchers are in trouble.
- imtringued 6y agoRocket reuse is not a panacea. There is a very real expendable cost advantage in choosing SpaceX but rocket reuse will not reduce rocket costs significantly. There might be another -50% costs to be had once they iron out all the kinks but what Elon musk promises will not happen because he always overhypes everything.
- cryptonector 6y agoSure, he overhypes, but already Falcon 9 is cheaper than all others and precisely because of reuse. I don't see how to deny this. Oh sure, SpaceX is a privately held corporation so we don't really know the real numbers and maybe he's just underpricing to convince the world he's right even though he's wrong, or something. But there's a reason ULA and others are getting into the reuse game, and it's that rocket engines are unbelievably expensive, so if you just reuse those you save a huge amount on costs. The evidence is overwhelming that reusing rocket engines is a huge savings. It must follow that reusing the whole launch vehicle would be a bigger savings.