9 ms·

And to think that just a few years ago reusing a rocket even once was an incredible feat!

by geocrasher 4y ago

Maraguy 4y ago
We're fast approaching the golden age of rockets.
- imglorp 4y ago
  Now we need the corrupt, entrenched, fossilized, competition to catch up. It's clearly not a tech problem but a business one.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
Before 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 ago
  To 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 ago
    The 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 ago
        Cost-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 ago
        What 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?
        dotnet00 4y ago
        As Musk had pointed out at the time, the requirements were essentially just large amounts of paperwork (since if NASA considers F9 reliable enough for cargo and even crew, it's kind of ridiculous to suggest it can't handle a GPS satellite), such that it was unreasonable for USAF to buy multiple years worth of launches without competitive bidding despite obviously having another option almost through certification. At the time they had made that award, SpaceX was already mostly through the certification paperwork with zero changes needed to the rocket. Besides that, although not a lawsuit, Lori Garver's book "Escaping Gravity" goes into a lot of depth regarding the behind the scenes political struggle regarding commercial cargo and commercial crew and how Congress and some parts of NASA leaned on the idea that they couldn't tolerate any failure as a means of trying to disqualify anyone but ULA,Boeing etc from those programs. I was wrong about them having to sue "several times" though.
- aisengard 4y ago
  The 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 ago
    Right, for the Space Shuttle the shortest interval on a back-to-back mission was 63 days.
    - SEJeff 4y ago
      And 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 ago
    Yeah, 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.
    - bumby 4y ago
      >Starship is intended to have no refurbishment between flights - refuel and fly again Surely this entails a host of quality checks between flights? What is that cost estimate at?
      - ericd 4y ago
- justapassenger 4y ago
  You 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 ago
    There 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 ago
Except 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 ago
  Calling 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 ago
    Recovery 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 ago
      The 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 ago
      I 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.

And to think that just a few years ago reusing a rocket even once was an incredible feat!

Maraguy 4y ago

We're fast approaching the golden age of rockets.

imglorp 4y ago
Now we need the corrupt, entrenched, fossilized, competition to catch up. It's clearly not a tech problem but a business one.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

Before 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 ago
To 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 ago
  The 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 ago
      Cost-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 ago
        What 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?
        dotnet00 4y ago
        As Musk had pointed out at the time, the requirements were essentially just large amounts of paperwork (since if NASA considers F9 reliable enough for cargo and even crew, it's kind of ridiculous to suggest it can't handle a GPS satellite), such that it was unreasonable for USAF to buy multiple years worth of launches without competitive bidding despite obviously having another option almost through certification. At the time they had made that award, SpaceX was already mostly through the certification paperwork with zero changes needed to the rocket. Besides that, although not a lawsuit, Lori Garver's book "Escaping Gravity" goes into a lot of depth regarding the behind the scenes political struggle regarding commercial cargo and commercial crew and how Congress and some parts of NASA leaned on the idea that they couldn't tolerate any failure as a means of trying to disqualify anyone but ULA,Boeing etc from those programs. I was wrong about them having to sue "several times" though.
aisengard 4y ago
The 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 ago
  Right, for the Space Shuttle the shortest interval on a back-to-back mission was 63 days.
  - SEJeff 4y ago
    And 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 ago
  Yeah, 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.
  - bumby 4y ago
    >Starship is intended to have no refurbishment between flights - refuel and fly again Surely this entails a host of quality checks between flights? What is that cost estimate at?
    - ericd 4y ago
justapassenger 4y ago
You 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 ago
  There 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 ago

Except 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 ago
Calling 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 ago
  Recovery 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 ago
    The 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 ago
    I 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.