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Why haven't they started working on reusable rockets the second SpaceX showed us it could be done?

usrusr 3y ago
I think they did. But that does not mean they drop everything they already have much further in the pipeline as if launch capability between now and whenever they have caught up wasn't part of what they are paid for.
- signatoremo 3y ago
  They did not. Ariane 6 started mid 2010s timeframe, when Falcon 9 had became successfully reusable. They continued to spout nonsense such as reusability would keep rocket factory idle. Europe won’t have reusable rocket until 2030s at the earliest, almost 20 years after SpaceX https://europeanspaceflight.com/europe-will-introduce-a-reusable-launch-vehicle-in-the-2030s-says-arianespace-ceo/ https://europeanspaceflight.com/europe-will-introduce-a-reus...
  - hef19898 3y ago
    I really, really shoupd have kept that study offline somewhere... Back the day, before SpaceX came along a serious launch provider, ESA conducted a study on the financial viability of reuseable rockets. The conclusion was, that they are viabke, technically feasible but only financially interestung with a number of launches per year for which there was no demand. SpaceX for sure is launching a lot of their own Starlink satellites...
    - jve 3y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/syal5p/about_smart_reuse_from_tory_bruno/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/syal5p/about_... > Breakeven in 2 to 3 flights But then, 7 days ago he posted on https://www.reddit.com/r/ula/comments/17wos9u/tory_bruno_ceo_of_ula_vulcan_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ula/comments/17wos9u/tory_bruno_ceo... > As I have said before, propulsive fly-back generally requires an average reuse of 10x per booster, which has been achieved. So maybe it is difference between SMART (catch by helicopter) re-use and propulsive landing But he does acknowledge in comments that reuse can improve launch cadence.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Which mirrors what I remember from said ESA study (which for love of the universe cannot find online anymore, and I didn't download it back the day). The big question I took from that study was, which was also the point of it, was whether or not if there is enough demand to get over that threshold (whatever the ESA number was) to justify the development of a reusable booster. The answer back then was, back when Starlink wasn't a thing yet and the Russians were still in the market, was no, there isn't enough demand. Today, it seems, a lot of the launch volume comes from Starlink, which is basically SpaceX in-house demand for something we have no clue about its financial viability or profitability. Hence, I am quite sceptic about a lot of the space launch stuff. We have quite reliable numbers for SpaceX competitors (launch costs, development...) while SpaceX is somewhat of a black box. That alone makes comparing claims from SpaceX (which might well be true, but we cannot tell either way) to verifiable numbers from others dubious at best.
        jve 3y ago
        > SpaceX in-house demand for something we have no clue about its financial viability or profitability Starlink achieved cash-flow breakeven it seems: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-starlink-has-achieved-breakeven-cash-flow-2023-11-02/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-starlink-h... But the journalism... that statement is only in the title.
        hef19898 3y ago
        "Elon Musk (or any other person for that matter) says..." and "last quarters results show that" are not even in the same universe so. Edit: This is the first time I hear the term "Cash-Flow Break-even"... Is this metric from the same set as "Cash-flow before outside investment" and "Community adjusted EBITDA"?
        inemesitaffia 3y ago
        Cash flow positive is simple. In a given time period your income is more than your expenses. It doesn't cover what you've spent in the past
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jve 3y ago
    SpaceX first landed rocket on Dec, 2015. Then people were like: ok, you landed, let's see if it will fly or has any economical impact. Sure, now no-one questions whether landing a rocket is possible at all and whether it is worth it.
BLanen 3y ago
There's no proof yet reuse is actually cheaper. Even independent reports cite "a potential of 30% cost savings".
- theultdev 3y ago
  > There's no proof yet reuse is actually cheaper. What a ridiculous statement... This just in, blowing up your car is cheaper than refilling the tank, wow! There's proof right now btw, in SpaceX's Falcon prices vs others. Plus the common sense that remaking something is more expensive than not.
  - mahkeiro 3y ago
    That's not ridiculous the Space shuttle is the proof that reusable can be tricky… however for falcon 9 there is few doubt that it must be cheaper.
    - theultdev 3y ago
      I'm talking about cheapest overall. Done properly, reusable will always be cheaper, inheritly.
  - mandevil 3y ago
    There is a mathematical equation, a function of variables, on whether the reuse business case closes. The variables are, off the top of my head (I might have missed some) the base carrying cost of all the people necessary to run the space-ship factory, the incremental cost of refurbishing the rocket and the incremental cost of building a new one, plus the overhead both in payload and engineering effort to get that reusability. The result of the equation is how many flights per year is necessary for re-usability to pay off. So for the Space Shuttle reusability did not pay off, because it had a low flight rate and a very high cost of refurbishment (the Solid Rocket Boosters in particular probably never paid off- due to the landing into the ocean and the salt-water dunking they had to be fully taken apart after every flight, inspected, and put back together, and that meant that you actually had labor costs of twice the work of just assembling a new one- the materials cost savings was simply not worth that). This is one reason that SpaceX ended up abandoning their original plan of recovering engines from the ocean, though they were trying to do it much harder with liquid fuel engines rather than the simple solids that STS used. One interesting thing about SpaceX (a privately held company, which does not publish useful financials) is that they have also claimed they invested a lot into the factory for churning out engines with many fewer man-hours than their western competitors. That investment might not make sense if you are counting on reusing all your engines many times before they are replaced- unless you are looking at many many launches of Falcon Heavy, which I will be curious to see if they actually do (the market for super heavy rockets like that has never really existed at more than 5ish a year, and I'm personally uncertain if satellite internet can get there). Before SpaceX came along, the (Russian) Progress company was the cheapest in the world, with their R7 Semyorka (Soyuz 2 is the modern version) rocket family. That was because the Soviet Union had invested in a very heavily automated, highly productive launch factory (they launched a bucket-dropping spy satellite every two weeks, plus manned launches, Progress resupply flights, Molniya commsats, etc. so they had a very high flight rate) that needed very little in the way of manpower to make their engines and rockets- and that investment definitely paid off, the R-7 family has flown into space more than any other rocket in human history. But making it reusable and investing heavily in highly automated production tend to cut against each other as solutions to the cost problem until you get to extremely high flight rates. Whether you think that at current flight rates the numbers point to re-usability comes down to how much you trust Musk the businessman (personally not very much), and how much you trust Shotwell to manage Musk and bring the company to a good place in spite of Musk's random perturbations (personally I have great faith in Gwynne, but your mileage may vary).
mschuster91 3y ago
Because Europeans are waaaay more risk averse. Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years. We have completely lost visionary people ever since the fall of the USSR. Our politicians are mere managers (and often enough, they're extremely bad even in that role), our economy leaders largely only care about their own bottom line, and while our universities generally churn out decent graduates, they completely dropped the ball on innovation, research and actually retaining staff - made more difficult by the fact that we don't have absurd amounts of money sloshing around from donations, estates and other sources.
- spookie 3y ago
  Please take a look around ESA endeavours before making such cynical claims. For one, take a look at ESO. Comparing private companies to public funded ones is such a ill founded idea... I can't even begin to comprehend the optics of most in this thread, if I'm being honest.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years "Non-response". Renault had electric vehicles on the market in 2012 (Zoe), same year as the Tesla Model S. The BMW i3 came out in 2013. Different focus, slightly slower research for some groups to get a common platform (e.g. VW), but it's not like there was absolutely nothing and it took 10 years for European car manufacturers to realise EVs can work.
  - di4na 3y ago
    Tbf, i was working at one at the time. Finding the space in the chassis for the battery and adapting it and suspension to the weight of an EV meant they had to develop platforms for EV nearly from scratch. Without any idea of the market demand. At the current cost of developing new Platforms (a few billions), you could understand being risk adverse. Low sales would have killed the whole companies.
    - sofixa 3y ago
ekianjo 3y ago
because they are not even trying to be competitive.

I think they did. But that does not mean they drop everything they already have much further in the pipeline as if launch capability between now and whenever they have caught up wasn't part of what they are paid for.

signatoremo 3y ago
They did not. Ariane 6 started mid 2010s timeframe, when Falcon 9 had became successfully reusable. They continued to spout nonsense such as reusability would keep rocket factory idle. Europe won’t have reusable rocket until 2030s at the earliest, almost 20 years after SpaceX https://europeanspaceflight.com/europe-will-introduce-a-reusable-launch-vehicle-in-the-2030s-says-arianespace-ceo/ https://europeanspaceflight.com/europe-will-introduce-a-reus...
- hef19898 3y ago
  I really, really shoupd have kept that study offline somewhere... Back the day, before SpaceX came along a serious launch provider, ESA conducted a study on the financial viability of reuseable rockets. The conclusion was, that they are viabke, technically feasible but only financially interestung with a number of launches per year for which there was no demand. SpaceX for sure is launching a lot of their own Starlink satellites...
  - jve 3y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/syal5p/about_smart_reuse_from_tory_bruno/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/syal5p/about_... > Breakeven in 2 to 3 flights But then, 7 days ago he posted on https://www.reddit.com/r/ula/comments/17wos9u/tory_bruno_ceo_of_ula_vulcan_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ula/comments/17wos9u/tory_bruno_ceo... > As I have said before, propulsive fly-back generally requires an average reuse of 10x per booster, which has been achieved. So maybe it is difference between SMART (catch by helicopter) re-use and propulsive landing But he does acknowledge in comments that reuse can improve launch cadence.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Which mirrors what I remember from said ESA study (which for love of the universe cannot find online anymore, and I didn't download it back the day). The big question I took from that study was, which was also the point of it, was whether or not if there is enough demand to get over that threshold (whatever the ESA number was) to justify the development of a reusable booster. The answer back then was, back when Starlink wasn't a thing yet and the Russians were still in the market, was no, there isn't enough demand. Today, it seems, a lot of the launch volume comes from Starlink, which is basically SpaceX in-house demand for something we have no clue about its financial viability or profitability. Hence, I am quite sceptic about a lot of the space launch stuff. We have quite reliable numbers for SpaceX competitors (launch costs, development...) while SpaceX is somewhat of a black box. That alone makes comparing claims from SpaceX (which might well be true, but we cannot tell either way) to verifiable numbers from others dubious at best.
      - jve 3y ago
        > SpaceX in-house demand for something we have no clue about its financial viability or profitability Starlink achieved cash-flow breakeven it seems: https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-starlink-has-achieved-breakeven-cash-flow-2023-11-02/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-starlink-h... But the journalism... that statement is only in the title.
        hef19898 3y ago
        "Elon Musk (or any other person for that matter) says..." and "last quarters results show that" are not even in the same universe so. Edit: This is the first time I hear the term "Cash-Flow Break-even"... Is this metric from the same set as "Cash-flow before outside investment" and "Community adjusted EBITDA"?
        inemesitaffia 3y ago
        Cash flow positive is simple. In a given time period your income is more than your expenses. It doesn't cover what you've spent in the past
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jve 3y ago
  SpaceX first landed rocket on Dec, 2015. Then people were like: ok, you landed, let's see if it will fly or has any economical impact. Sure, now no-one questions whether landing a rocket is possible at all and whether it is worth it.

BLanen 3y ago

There's no proof yet reuse is actually cheaper. Even independent reports cite "a potential of 30% cost savings".

theultdev 3y ago
> There's no proof yet reuse is actually cheaper. What a ridiculous statement... This just in, blowing up your car is cheaper than refilling the tank, wow! There's proof right now btw, in SpaceX's Falcon prices vs others. Plus the common sense that remaking something is more expensive than not.
- mahkeiro 3y ago
  That's not ridiculous the Space shuttle is the proof that reusable can be tricky… however for falcon 9 there is few doubt that it must be cheaper.
  - theultdev 3y ago
    I'm talking about cheapest overall. Done properly, reusable will always be cheaper, inheritly.
- mandevil 3y ago
  There is a mathematical equation, a function of variables, on whether the reuse business case closes. The variables are, off the top of my head (I might have missed some) the base carrying cost of all the people necessary to run the space-ship factory, the incremental cost of refurbishing the rocket and the incremental cost of building a new one, plus the overhead both in payload and engineering effort to get that reusability. The result of the equation is how many flights per year is necessary for re-usability to pay off. So for the Space Shuttle reusability did not pay off, because it had a low flight rate and a very high cost of refurbishment (the Solid Rocket Boosters in particular probably never paid off- due to the landing into the ocean and the salt-water dunking they had to be fully taken apart after every flight, inspected, and put back together, and that meant that you actually had labor costs of twice the work of just assembling a new one- the materials cost savings was simply not worth that). This is one reason that SpaceX ended up abandoning their original plan of recovering engines from the ocean, though they were trying to do it much harder with liquid fuel engines rather than the simple solids that STS used. One interesting thing about SpaceX (a privately held company, which does not publish useful financials) is that they have also claimed they invested a lot into the factory for churning out engines with many fewer man-hours than their western competitors. That investment might not make sense if you are counting on reusing all your engines many times before they are replaced- unless you are looking at many many launches of Falcon Heavy, which I will be curious to see if they actually do (the market for super heavy rockets like that has never really existed at more than 5ish a year, and I'm personally uncertain if satellite internet can get there). Before SpaceX came along, the (Russian) Progress company was the cheapest in the world, with their R7 Semyorka (Soyuz 2 is the modern version) rocket family. That was because the Soviet Union had invested in a very heavily automated, highly productive launch factory (they launched a bucket-dropping spy satellite every two weeks, plus manned launches, Progress resupply flights, Molniya commsats, etc. so they had a very high flight rate) that needed very little in the way of manpower to make their engines and rockets- and that investment definitely paid off, the R-7 family has flown into space more than any other rocket in human history. But making it reusable and investing heavily in highly automated production tend to cut against each other as solutions to the cost problem until you get to extremely high flight rates. Whether you think that at current flight rates the numbers point to re-usability comes down to how much you trust Musk the businessman (personally not very much), and how much you trust Shotwell to manage Musk and bring the company to a good place in spite of Musk's random perturbations (personally I have great faith in Gwynne, but your mileage may vary).

mschuster91 3y ago

Because Europeans are waaaay more risk averse. Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years. We have completely lost visionary people ever since the fall of the USSR. Our politicians are mere managers (and often enough, they're extremely bad even in that role), our economy leaders largely only care about their own bottom line, and while our universities generally churn out decent graduates, they completely dropped the ball on innovation, research and actually retaining staff - made more difficult by the fact that we don't have absurd amounts of money sloshing around from donations, estates and other sources.

spookie 3y ago
Please take a look around ESA endeavours before making such cynical claims. For one, take a look at ESO. Comparing private companies to public funded ones is such a ill founded idea... I can't even begin to comprehend the optics of most in this thread, if I'm being honest.
sofixa 3y ago
> Just look at our car industries and their non-response to Tesla over all the years "Non-response". Renault had electric vehicles on the market in 2012 (Zoe), same year as the Tesla Model S. The BMW i3 came out in 2013. Different focus, slightly slower research for some groups to get a common platform (e.g. VW), but it's not like there was absolutely nothing and it took 10 years for European car manufacturers to realise EVs can work.
- di4na 3y ago
  Tbf, i was working at one at the time. Finding the space in the chassis for the battery and adapting it and suspension to the weight of an EV meant they had to develop platforms for EV nearly from scratch. Without any idea of the market demand. At the current cost of developing new Platforms (a few billions), you could understand being risk adverse. Low sales would have killed the whole companies.
  - sofixa 3y ago

ekianjo 3y ago

because they are not even trying to be competitive.