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So, does anyone wanna guess how many reuses SpaceX will get out of a booster?
by _Microft 5y ago
So, does anyone wanna guess how many reuses SpaceX will get out of a booster?
- LeoPanthera 5y agoThey replace broken and worn parts, so at some point this becomes the Booster of Theseus problem. How many parts can you replace before it is not the same booster anymore.
- foobarbecue 5y agoI'm pretty sure it's when you replace the big metal tube part.
- nine_k 5y agoI suppose the central section with tanks cannot be replaced piecemeal, and cannot be excessively patched because it's a structural part. You can consider it an airframe. So it must be mostly the same boosters all the way, even if engines, valves, electronics, etc have been replaced multiple times.
- matthewfelgate 5y agoBooster of Theseus. Love it!
- perlgeek 5y agoI don't think anybody really knows; there simply isn't any data with > 10. Back in the days when boosters were recovered, I remember hearing somewhere that SpaceX was confident that they would be able to fly them 10x, and hoped for 100x
- grecy 5y agoElon said they'll keep reusing them and pushing their luck until they have a failure on a starlink launch... so we're almost certainly going to find out.
- mabbo 5y agoAnd when they do, they'll likely have telemetry of exactly what caused the problem. Then they'll adjust, and make the problem less likely in the future.
- grecy 5y agoPrecisely!
- babesh 5y agoOne such data point has already been obtained. One booster didn’t land because one of the engines had burned through its bell. It was less than 10.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoBoot, not bell. A boot is a flexible seal so its replacement would be considered routine maintenance.
- babesh 5y agoOops. You are right.