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When I skipped through the video to the point where they explain that this was a mission without center reuse I was surprised to hear that they actually do seem
by usrusr 4y ago
When I skipped through the video to the point where they explain that this was a mission without center reuse I was surprised to hear that they actually do seem to offer a three booster reuse profile. Perhaps my surprise was from confusing "no second stage reuse" with "no center booster reuse"?
But if it's a wash (as you say) between non-reusable F9 and 3x reusable FH I'd probably go for a single EOL core anyways, for the lower total count of failure modes alone. Even more so if launches in that weight class are sufficiently rare to be served from "organic" churn of reusable F9 launches (they clearly are).
In any case, my mention of surprise in the top level comment was not meant as "how wasteful, losers, boooh!", but as an statement of amazement, "have we/they really come that far that a part of me is unimpressed by two of three?", and on a meta level surprise about how a non-reuseable F9 feels less disappointing to me: a non-reuse F9 is a valid compromise to eke out the last bit of payload, whereas the FH raises an expectation of being better in every way that's then disappointed by "a third of a step back" in terms of reuse compared to what we now consider a regular F9 launch. We consider the reusable F9 regular, crazy!
- dotnet00 4y agoYeah, I understood that, I just enjoy talking about the contrast between F9 and FH and how F9 improved so much that it mostly took over FH's market :P Eric Berger also put out a pretty good piece talking about all of this yesterday: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/the-worlds-most-powerful-rocket-finally-returns-after-a-3-year-absence/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/10/the-worlds-most-powe...