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The reusability of the Falcon 9 is something still something without a lot of public information. I'd love to know how much they're spending to refurbish each o

The reusability of the Falcon 9 is something still something without a lot of public information. I'd love to know how much they're spending to refurbish each of these – is it 80% of build cost or 20%? Are they decommissioning other rockets earlier than 16 launches because they're finding faults, or are most just waiting for more launches? What are the decisions to re-fly based on, are there common failure modes that aren't causing mission or recovery failures but are causing SpaceX to rule out the booster for future missions. We do know that they're turning around boosters for re-use in less than 30 days which suggests they aren't doing extensive work, although I don't know how long building a new booster takes so maybe this is most of the time anyway. Maybe none of these details really matter with Starship on the way, in the long term that will probably address all of these much more obviously, but it's still a way off and for now the F9 is the core of their business.

inemesitaffia 3y ago
Reused Falcon 9 was ~28 million with everything as of 2020 (CNBC). Don't know how much new costs to make. Another advantage of reuse is cadence. They can refurbish faster than they build
whoknowswhat11 3y ago
Key is how it compares to competitors like SLS or Ariane 6. At least in terms of launch volume they are crushing competitors
schiffern 3y ago
> I'd love to know how much they're spending to refurbish each of these – is it 80% of build cost or 20%? "In August 2020, Elon Musk tweeted that refurbishment and reuse of a booster is done for less than 10% the price of a new booster while the payload reduction is below 40%. According to his tweet, SpaceX breaks even with a second flight per booster and saves money from the third flight on.[81] At that time, Falcon 9 Block 5 had made 35 flights with 11 boosters." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_development_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_...
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Oh awesome, this does shed some light on it all. Thanks!
- Already__Taken 3y ago
  35-(11x2) * 70mil being roughly a billion in profit? not bad for something everyone said can't be done.
deleted 3y ago
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pfdietz 3y ago
F9 is a combination of simplicity, reusability, and high cadence. Simplicity reduces the cost of the expended components and the cost of refurbishment. Reusability amortizes the cost of the components over more launches. And high cadence means both that fixed costs are amortized over more launches, and also that the expendable parts are produced at higher volume, reducing their cost. They must be really good at making a second stage now.
lumost 3y ago
The highest stress points of the rocket will be the engines. If I were to guess (which is all anyone can do), the booster can be re-used a practically indefinite number of times (>100 launches) - while the engines need to be replaced every K launches on average. They might be able to stretch engine lifetime if they are good enough at shutting the engine down on failure. If they can tolerate one flaky engine on a launch, then they can blend new engines with old engines to improve re-usability by running engines to failure. Question is how good they are at shutting down the engine as catastrophic failure could take out the whole vehicle. Space Shuttle main engines could be re-used 3x on hydrogen/oxygen fuel, and those maintenance schedules were set in the 80s.
asadotzler 3y ago
Refurb is a million or so, a small fraction of the total cost of new. The new second stages is about ten mil, the fairing, often reused but not always is a few mil for each half. The ops and recovery are probably a million. Listen to the Musk Aviation Week interview for his public statements on all of that. Best case, he says, is about fifteen million for a reused launch and people paying attention think it was typically about $28 million at that time. See Chris Colouris (sp) comments off the record for that number. I suspect in the last several years, the gap between those has closed and it's probably around $20 million for a typical LEO RTLS launch that SpaceX charges about $67 million for. (Note, the full build cost of a new F9 is also a matter of speculation, and I think it's between $40 and $50 million today.)

inemesitaffia 3y ago

Reused Falcon 9 was ~28 million with everything as of 2020 (CNBC). Don't know how much new costs to make. Another advantage of reuse is cadence. They can refurbish faster than they build

whoknowswhat11 3y ago

Key is how it compares to competitors like SLS or Ariane 6. At least in terms of launch volume they are crushing competitors

schiffern 3y ago

> I'd love to know how much they're spending to refurbish each of these – is it 80% of build cost or 20%? "In August 2020, Elon Musk tweeted that refurbishment and reuse of a booster is done for less than 10% the price of a new booster while the payload reduction is below 40%. According to his tweet, SpaceX breaks even with a second flight per booster and saves money from the third flight on.[81] At that time, Falcon 9 Block 5 had made 35 flights with 11 boosters." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_development_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_...

danpalmer 3y ago
Oh awesome, this does shed some light on it all. Thanks!
Already__Taken 3y ago
35-(11x2) * 70mil being roughly a billion in profit? not bad for something everyone said can't be done.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pfdietz 3y ago

F9 is a combination of simplicity, reusability, and high cadence. Simplicity reduces the cost of the expended components and the cost of refurbishment. Reusability amortizes the cost of the components over more launches. And high cadence means both that fixed costs are amortized over more launches, and also that the expendable parts are produced at higher volume, reducing their cost. They must be really good at making a second stage now.

lumost 3y ago

The highest stress points of the rocket will be the engines. If I were to guess (which is all anyone can do), the booster can be re-used a practically indefinite number of times (>100 launches) - while the engines need to be replaced every K launches on average. They might be able to stretch engine lifetime if they are good enough at shutting the engine down on failure. If they can tolerate one flaky engine on a launch, then they can blend new engines with old engines to improve re-usability by running engines to failure. Question is how good they are at shutting down the engine as catastrophic failure could take out the whole vehicle. Space Shuttle main engines could be re-used 3x on hydrogen/oxygen fuel, and those maintenance schedules were set in the 80s.

asadotzler 3y ago

Refurb is a million or so, a small fraction of the total cost of new. The new second stages is about ten mil, the fairing, often reused but not always is a few mil for each half. The ops and recovery are probably a million. Listen to the Musk Aviation Week interview for his public statements on all of that. Best case, he says, is about fifteen million for a reused launch and people paying attention think it was typically about $28 million at that time. See Chris Colouris (sp) comments off the record for that number. I suspect in the last several years, the gap between those has closed and it's probably around $20 million for a typical LEO RTLS launch that SpaceX charges about $67 million for. (Note, the full build cost of a new F9 is also a matter of speculation, and I think it's between $40 and $50 million today.)