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SpaceX caps 2022 with record-setting 61st Falcon 9 launch
- geocrasher 4y agoAnd to think that just a few years ago reusing a rocket even once was an incredible feat!
- Maraguy 4y agoWe're fast approaching the golden age of rockets.
- imglorp 4y agoNow we need the corrupt, entrenched, fossilized, competition to catch up. It's clearly not a tech problem but a business one.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoBefore I learned about SpaceX, I thought it was literally impossible to reuse rockets because they burned up in the atmosphere or something. After all, not a single space agency in the world was doing it. Surely the smart engineers working in those places had good reasons. Watching SpaceX land rocket boosters on target again and again is kind of magical, like something out of Kerbal Space Program. I wonder how long it's gonna take to get a fully reusable rocket. They're working on the Starship and it's supposed to be fully reusable.
- raverbashing 4y agoTo be fair to the older models, I think the main issue is: only "recently" (let's say, some 30yrs ago), we have had computers and sensors fast enough to manage an automated reentry of rocket stages (and ship drones as well) And SpaceX had to iterate a lot to get this working as well It is rocket science
- dotnet00 4y agoThe older model also didn't incentivize the things needed to support a reusable rocketry program. Companies were encouraged to have bloat and making satellites was still extremely expensive so there wasn't anywhere near enough demand to justify producing and reusing a handful of boosters. Ariane space was still arguing that reuse wasn't viable for them due to their low flight rate only until a handful of years ago. As far as I'm aware, ULA's CEO still insists that anything more than their proposed engine segment reuse is going to require too high of a flight rate to pay for itself (IIRC he said they'd need 10 flights per booster). This is also part of why SpaceX's model works. Even when disposable F9 is much cheaper than previous rockets in its class.
- bumby 4y ago>The older model also didn't incentivize the things needed to support a reusable rocketry program. I assume you mean the cost-plus contracting model? Or is there a different incentive mechanism you're referring to?
- dotnet00 4y agoCost-plus is part of it, but also just the launch vehicle acquisition process in general. Early on, SpaceX's biggest hurdle was getting payload contracts. IIRC they had to sue the government several times to overturn bad acquisition policies. Government acquisition processes weren't suited to supporting small new entrances into the launch market and there was somewhat of a belief that you weren't a credible launch provider unless you were as large as Boeing or Lockmart. In comparison nowadays it's relatively normal for lower cost programs or ones which can accept some loss to try flying on less proven rockets. New bold approaches to designing, building and flying rockets aren't immediately dismissed as just young naive engineers who haven't had the reality of spaceflight beat into them.
- bumby 4y agoWhat was determined to be bad acquisition policy? My understanding is that early contracts were awarded to ULA because SpaceX wasn't certified for military payloads. That, combined with your statement, implies the certification process levies bad requirements. Do we know what these bad requirements were?
- aisengard 4y agoThe only thing that burned up in the atmosphere for the Space Shuttle program was the fuel tank. All the other components, including the booster rockets, were recovered and refurbished for reuse. The innovation here isn't about reusability at all, it's about the economics of reuse. Maybe landing a rocket back on the pad rather than recovering them from the ocean makes it cheaper to reuse, has there been a study around that?
- gitfan86 4y agoRight, for the Space Shuttle the shortest interval on a back-to-back mission was 63 days.
- SEJeff 4y agoAnd I believe that the Falcon 9 with the fastest turnaround was B1062 with 21 days between flights. The previous record (also from a Falcon 9) was two separate boosters who launched and relaunched 27 days apart.
- ericd 4y agoYeah, SpaceX’s reuse is much, much simpler than the shuttle booster refurbishment. At the extreme, Starship is intended to have no refurbishment between flights - refuel and fly again, so that the cost of each flight will be mostly the fuel cost, on the order of single digit millions. Falcon 9 I believe is trickier since its kerosene fuel generates a lot of soot compared to the methane engines of Starship, and can be fouled. If you’ve ever used a camp stove with kerosene vs methane, one leaves your stove covered in black soot.
- justapassenger 4y agoYou need economy of scale for reuse to makes sense. Space launch market still isn’t that big, and even for spacex half of their launches are from their internal project, starlink. Jury is still out if this is actually economical, as we don’t have insights into their financials and they keep on raising money (so we don’t know if some portion of that goes towards flacon subsidies).
- matheusmoreira 4y agoThere is no doubt that a reusable rocket will be more economical. You need cheap rockets first to get economies of scale. It's gonna be big in the future.
- sdifognoinio 4y ago[dead]
- reddog 4y agoExcept that the space shuttle solid rocket boosters were recovered and reused. From Wikipediea: "Out of 270 SRBs launched over the Shuttle program, all but four were recovered – those from STS-4 (due to a parachute malfunction) and STS-51-L (destroyed by range safety during the Challenger disaster).[6] Over 5,000 parts were refurbished for reuse after each flight. The final set of SRBs that launched STS-135 included parts that had flown on 59 previous missions, including STS-1.[7] Recovery also allowed post-flight examination of the boosters,[8] identification of anomalies, and incremental design improvements" Also the rockets on the shuttle itself were landed and reused.
- ktpecot 4y agoCalling the shuttle reusable is such a massive stretch. It’s like the shuttle of Theseus they basically had to rebuild it every time and it cost something like 1.5 billion dollars. Basically could’ve built a brand new rocket every time.
- dylan604 4y agoRecovery of the first stage of SpaceX rockets is not even close to being the same thing as reuse of the shuttle. Surviving re-entry is a completely different set of specs than floating through atmosphere at a much much slower rate of descent.
- _0w8t 4y agoThe first stage of SpaceX is the most expensive part with nine engines. The second stage is just single engine. Plus SpaceX reuse fairings and the Dragon is also reusable. So re-usable parts are like 95% and expendable parts are vastly cheaper than Shuttle refurbishing.
- ktpecot 4y agoI mean from a technological point of view sure, but that just shows how bad the design was(compared to what we know now). The falcon program shows that it’s obviously way more economical to just ditch the 2nd stage and reuse the booster. F9 launches cost sub 20 million and a shuttle launch costs on the order of a billion. Squabble over whatever details you want about performance or who had to do what R&D but F9 is clearly in a different league.
- perihelions 4y agoWikipedia has some very clean summaries of the statistics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches#Rocket_configurations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters#Falcon_9_FT_booster_timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...
- geocrasher 4y agoThis is a fantastic resource, thanks for posting it. Using it, I realized that in 2022, SpaceX had no landing failures. Their rockets nailed every landing they attempted, which is even more impressive when you realize they flew twice as many missions as in 2021.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thinkcontext 4y agoAccording to that list 2023 should be even more amazing. They have ~50 commercial or gov customer flights scheduled vs the ~30 they did this year. I wonder how much they can increase the flight rate, if they can't they'll face the dilemma of not having enough capacity to also launch the same or more Starlinks. What are the odds Starship begins launching Starlinks next year? If it doesn't they may want to open another pad, there's one available in Kourou.
- dotnet00 4y agoI think an orbital launch attempt for Starship is pretty likely in 2023. They seemed to have planned to try deploying Starlink with it from the start but have changed those plans and seemingly don't plan to do so for the next 2-3 Starship prototypes (they sealed off the "PEZ" style dispensers). Personally I don't think they'll be able to get more than 3-4 launches of it in, in part due to regulatory considerations. In which case maybe we'll see 1 or 2 Starlink launches on Starship depending on how well the first flight goes.
- ngoilapites 4y ago[flagged]
- Centigonal 4y agoElon is self-aggrandizing, pompous, and indifferent toward the well-being of his employees - but does that mean that it's a bad thing when his company sends rockets into space? Thousands of people who aren't Elon contributed their effort and talent to this feat - Does Elon's behavior around twitter negate their contributions?
- dwaltrip 4y agoDon't feed the off-topic flamewar, downvote and carry-on ;)
- ngoilapites 4y ago[flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoAt a minimum, it's a personal attack, which is against the site rules. It's also off-topic, in a way that's likely to hijack the thread. But, yes, the negative emotional charge in that short a post is getting pretty close to flamewar.
- ngoilapites 4y agoOK I see your points, still, a personal opinion (he disgusted me) is not an attack. The real world is not off topic. And using violent words like "hijack" to describe an online conversation seems to me inadequate.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chasd00 4y agoI would love to read a minute by minute breakdown of what happens the 48hrs before a launch and 48 hrs after a launch. Like to the level of detail of the order of attaching straps to lift the booster off a drone ship and the individual commands to bring the flight computers online. edit: actually, i'm goign to ask that everyday astronaut guy to figure that out :)
- martyvis 4y agoThe Nasa Space Flight live streams go into a lot of nerdy detail on selected missions and tests. They seem to refer to spreadsheets that they have built up based on timing vents and lots of telescopic viewing.
- dwaltrip 4y agoEvery so often, I check the bar chart on the "Timeline of spaceflight" Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight#Orbital_launches_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight#Orbita... Space activity is really picking up. There were 177 successful orbital launches this year, and 135 last year. The best year after that was 1967 with 120 launches... We are in interesting times!
- SEJeff 4y agoYou reminded me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti... This is a golden age of (new)spaceflight and I'm thrilled to be living it.
- prox 4y agoAre there any true competitors for SpaceX? I don’t mean the consortium but more similar operating conpanies?
- metadat 4y agoJeff Bezos' Blue Origin is a competitor in theory but in reality as far as I know they have not won a single contract from SpaceX. Not sure if they're even in the ring.
- geocrasher 4y agoHow can the be in the ring if they can't even make it to orbit.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is a competitor in theory Not really, even in theory. It's only even remote current participation in the orbital market is the very overdue BE-4 engines it is developing for ULA (which I assume is “the consortium” that the upthread poster excluded in asking about competition.) Currently, its a suborbital launch company with aspirations of sometime becoming something more.
- waltbosz 4y agoI was at an outdoor party on the same night that a Starlink satellite deploy mission occurred over my area. I was able to see, with my naked eye, as the rocket fired off some sort of burn. It looked like an airplane with headlights pointing backwards. It wasn't until the next day that I confirmed what I had seen when I read about it on my local Reddit sub. It was really cool to have actually seen a the-future-is-now event like that.
- adolph 4y agoI had a similar experience a month or two ago at dusk. There was a broad line of twinkles moving across the sky. It took me a few moments to realize it wasn't a meteor breaking up but a new set of Starlinks doing their orbits together before moving into separate tracks.
- lbayes 4y agoThe linked domain (cbsnews.com) behaved reasonably at first, and then suddenly redirected to a wall of clickbait ads and broke back button navigation.
- 93po 4y agoI'd recommend ublock origin, or double checking you don't have a malicious addon installed/malware.
- MentallyRetired 4y agoCentral Floridian here. Considering blocking notifications from my "space launch alert" app. Feels like every day between spacex and the other companies. It's amazing.
- waltbosz 4y agoWhat's the use case for the app? Is it to remind the user to go outside and look up to see something interesting? Or does it serve as a warning system so that one is not spooked by mysterious loud noises?
- JumpinJack_Cash 4y ago[flagged]
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoSpace seems to be mostly about satellites, not about "real" space. The Moon, Mars, yes they represent interesting multi-billion dollar contract opportunities paid by a few big governments; but I don't see any other market opportunity besides that.
- janalsncm 4y agoMy dad has been a space fanatic for his whole life, but because of where he lives he never had a chance to see a rocket launch. Last summer I took him to see one of the SpaceX launches. I’m really glad I did. Personally, it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.