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They know nothing about reusability. Not even NASA has operated a truly reusable vehicle, the "reusability" of Shuttle was a joke (it still cost >$1 billion per

They know nothing about reusability. Not even NASA has operated a truly reusable vehicle, the "reusability" of Shuttle was a joke (it still cost >$1 billion per flight) and they made every mistake possible when designing the vehicle. In contrast, Falcon 9 is an enormously simple launcher and reusability should be not only fairly straightforward but also advantageous. Moreover, because reusability of the F9 will actually save money (as opposed to the Shuttle where it required a massive ongoing operational cost) it will allow more money for ongoing development of improved vehicles (which SpaceX is already working on). Additionally, SpaceX isn't dumb, they've already tested running their engines through multiple cycles on test stands, they know the issues they'll run into and they have a reasonable idea how long they can expect to use them (spoilers: lots). And SpaceX has been operating reusable rockets over the course of several flights in the form of the the Grasshopper and F-9R-Dev vehicles which they've used for test flights.

tachyonbeam 13y ago
Honestly, their criticism sounds like the kind of thing any jealous nay sayer would say. They're trying to make it sound like an honest warning, but in reality, they're just afraid of having their crown stolen. They're basically telling SpaceX that their new approach has unforeseen risks. It's never been done before, hence it's risky, and it could well fail, it shouldn't even be tried. They're saying the NASA people had a working model for decades, and hence people should trust NASA's expertise more, not the new guy taking big risks trying new things. In reality, they can see that SpaceX knows what they're doing, and NASA has been falling behind for a long time, but that's really hard for NASA to accept. Still makes me sad to see this kind of attitude. Risk taking is necessary for innovation, and calculated risks often pay out big time, but the establishment is still always too afraid to take the said risks... And then when somebody else is there to take those risks, they try to discourage them.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  More or less. Here's the thing, SpaceX is almost certainly going to demonstrate partial launch vehicle reusability within the next year. And they're going to make it look easy. What's more, for the most part it will be easy. The damning bit is that what SpaceX ends up doing will be the sort of thing that could have been done back in the '80s or maybe even the '70s. But nobody had the right combination of pragmatism and vision to make it happen. But they could have, and there were bread crumbs all along the way. So why didn't they? A lot of it ultimately comes down to a few factors. Group think and bureaucracy. And fads. Yup, fads. One problem that orbital aerospace has been constantly afflicted with is the coolness factor problem. When pushing new projects it can be difficult to do so unless there is some sort of coolness factor, some way in which the new project is demonstrably more advanced than previous generation efforts. This is anathema to actual progress because most progress comes from copying, perfecting, and incremental innovation. The coolness factor is how we ended up with Shuttle (so cool), and X-33/VentureStar (much, much cooler). But look at the Falcon 9, it's just a 2 stage LOX/Kerosene booster, they've been building those since the '50s/'60s, it's the definition of uncool. But what it lacks in coolness it more than makes up for in usefulness. In terms of fads you can look to the Hydrogen rocket fad that still has a grip on a lot of engineers. LOX/LH2 undoubtedly has a very high Isp, and Isp is supremely important in the rocket equation. But it's not everything, and LH2 has a crapload of very serious downsides when it comes to using it in rocketry, many of which add significant cost to the system. The Hydrogen fad is why the Shuttle had SRBs (because the SSMEs couldn't generate enough thrust on their own to get off the pad) and thus is partially responsible for the Challenger disaster. It's also responsible for the Delta IV, which is an extremely expensive launcher. But back to breadcrumbs. They were there. In the early '90s the DC-X program demonstrated vertical takeoff/vertical landing was a feasible technology, and it did so using LOX/LH2 even. But the program was largely ignored because NASA was too dumb to see the promise of a reusable stage, since it wasn't cool enough relative to the idea of an SSTO RLV (in the same year as the last flight of the DC-X NASA got the X-33 program rolling). If NASA was just a little bit smarter and more practical it would have been easy to see the promise of the DC-X, easy to see the practicality of partial reusability, and easy to see the advantages of simpler launchers. But they didn't. Instead they pursued cool idea after cool idea, dumping around a billion dollars into X-33 alone. And when their overly ambitious cool ideas didn't pan out they ended up with nothing. And it was only through the comparative pragmatism of the defense department and the EELV program (which developed a couple boring 2-stage launchers) that the US had any reasonable launch capability whatsoever after the Shuttle program ended. Now it will be through the comparatively superior pragmatism (not to diminish the genius of SpaceX) that we'll end up with even greater launch capability and unprecedented reusability.
  - hga 13y ago
    "The Hydrogen fad is why the Shuttle had SRBs (because the SSMEs couldn't generate enough thrust on their own to get off the pad)..." Errr, not to my memory. Back when it was being thought about, Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit) was beyond the foreseeable state of the art, and the initial plans were to have to complete, reusable stages, a 1st stage big monster that would get the 2nd stage high and fast enough, and then would land "normally". But NASA just didn't get enough money to do it right (the '70s were a particularly bad time to be trying to do such a thing in the US, and in things like the SSMEs just plain screwed up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7711061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7711061). So at practically every turn, they sacrificed true reusability, operating costs, and ultimately safety (not a coherent design, but a series of compromises, and of course no provision for failure) to keep development costs within their budget.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Im pretty sure NASA tested their stuff too, you know. It seems to me that you're conflating the goal with the outcome. I think SpaceX is off to a great start and wish them every success, but it's a bit early to break out the champagne.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  Yes, and NASA found that their engines couldn't be rapidly reused during the early days of the Shuttle program. But the cost of the entirety of Shuttle refurbishment was so large that the engines were just a small part of that. The point is, NASA flew the Shuttle and knew that it was a stretch to call it reusable, but they had hopes. SpaceX has a lot more data on their side and they know that there's nothing fundamentally not reusable about their stages. They've cycled the engines through enough simulated launches to know how long they'll last, and it's more than enough flights (dozens) to translate to massively reduced launch costs if they pull it off. That's just one reason why NASA's experience with the Shuttle is utterly irrelevant to the Falcon 9. Frankly, there's just not enough to do to a Falcon 9 to make it costly enough to reuse to end up with the problems of the Shuttle. It would have to be completely non-reusable for that to be an issue, and that's extremely unlikely given the design and the data we have so far (for example, the reuse of the sub-orbital testing vehicles in Texas).
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    I'm not talking about the Shuttle but making a general point. You're talking as if SpaceX had invented the concepts of experimentation, testing and simulation, and as if such concepts were foreign to NASA, which I find an absurd position to take.

tachyonbeam 13y ago

Honestly, their criticism sounds like the kind of thing any jealous nay sayer would say. They're trying to make it sound like an honest warning, but in reality, they're just afraid of having their crown stolen. They're basically telling SpaceX that their new approach has unforeseen risks. It's never been done before, hence it's risky, and it could well fail, it shouldn't even be tried. They're saying the NASA people had a working model for decades, and hence people should trust NASA's expertise more, not the new guy taking big risks trying new things. In reality, they can see that SpaceX knows what they're doing, and NASA has been falling behind for a long time, but that's really hard for NASA to accept. Still makes me sad to see this kind of attitude. Risk taking is necessary for innovation, and calculated risks often pay out big time, but the establishment is still always too afraid to take the said risks... And then when somebody else is there to take those risks, they try to discourage them.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
More or less. Here's the thing, SpaceX is almost certainly going to demonstrate partial launch vehicle reusability within the next year. And they're going to make it look easy. What's more, for the most part it will be easy. The damning bit is that what SpaceX ends up doing will be the sort of thing that could have been done back in the '80s or maybe even the '70s. But nobody had the right combination of pragmatism and vision to make it happen. But they could have, and there were bread crumbs all along the way. So why didn't they? A lot of it ultimately comes down to a few factors. Group think and bureaucracy. And fads. Yup, fads. One problem that orbital aerospace has been constantly afflicted with is the coolness factor problem. When pushing new projects it can be difficult to do so unless there is some sort of coolness factor, some way in which the new project is demonstrably more advanced than previous generation efforts. This is anathema to actual progress because most progress comes from copying, perfecting, and incremental innovation. The coolness factor is how we ended up with Shuttle (so cool), and X-33/VentureStar (much, much cooler). But look at the Falcon 9, it's just a 2 stage LOX/Kerosene booster, they've been building those since the '50s/'60s, it's the definition of uncool. But what it lacks in coolness it more than makes up for in usefulness. In terms of fads you can look to the Hydrogen rocket fad that still has a grip on a lot of engineers. LOX/LH2 undoubtedly has a very high Isp, and Isp is supremely important in the rocket equation. But it's not everything, and LH2 has a crapload of very serious downsides when it comes to using it in rocketry, many of which add significant cost to the system. The Hydrogen fad is why the Shuttle had SRBs (because the SSMEs couldn't generate enough thrust on their own to get off the pad) and thus is partially responsible for the Challenger disaster. It's also responsible for the Delta IV, which is an extremely expensive launcher. But back to breadcrumbs. They were there. In the early '90s the DC-X program demonstrated vertical takeoff/vertical landing was a feasible technology, and it did so using LOX/LH2 even. But the program was largely ignored because NASA was too dumb to see the promise of a reusable stage, since it wasn't cool enough relative to the idea of an SSTO RLV (in the same year as the last flight of the DC-X NASA got the X-33 program rolling). If NASA was just a little bit smarter and more practical it would have been easy to see the promise of the DC-X, easy to see the practicality of partial reusability, and easy to see the advantages of simpler launchers. But they didn't. Instead they pursued cool idea after cool idea, dumping around a billion dollars into X-33 alone. And when their overly ambitious cool ideas didn't pan out they ended up with nothing. And it was only through the comparative pragmatism of the defense department and the EELV program (which developed a couple boring 2-stage launchers) that the US had any reasonable launch capability whatsoever after the Shuttle program ended. Now it will be through the comparatively superior pragmatism (not to diminish the genius of SpaceX) that we'll end up with even greater launch capability and unprecedented reusability.
- hga 13y ago
  "The Hydrogen fad is why the Shuttle had SRBs (because the SSMEs couldn't generate enough thrust on their own to get off the pad)..." Errr, not to my memory. Back when it was being thought about, Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit) was beyond the foreseeable state of the art, and the initial plans were to have to complete, reusable stages, a 1st stage big monster that would get the 2nd stage high and fast enough, and then would land "normally". But NASA just didn't get enough money to do it right (the '70s were a particularly bad time to be trying to do such a thing in the US, and in things like the SSMEs just plain screwed up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7711061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7711061). So at practically every turn, they sacrificed true reusability, operating costs, and ultimately safety (not a coherent design, but a series of compromises, and of course no provision for failure) to keep development costs within their budget.

anigbrowl 13y ago

Im pretty sure NASA tested their stuff too, you know. It seems to me that you're conflating the goal with the outcome. I think SpaceX is off to a great start and wish them every success, but it's a bit early to break out the champagne.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
Yes, and NASA found that their engines couldn't be rapidly reused during the early days of the Shuttle program. But the cost of the entirety of Shuttle refurbishment was so large that the engines were just a small part of that. The point is, NASA flew the Shuttle and knew that it was a stretch to call it reusable, but they had hopes. SpaceX has a lot more data on their side and they know that there's nothing fundamentally not reusable about their stages. They've cycled the engines through enough simulated launches to know how long they'll last, and it's more than enough flights (dozens) to translate to massively reduced launch costs if they pull it off. That's just one reason why NASA's experience with the Shuttle is utterly irrelevant to the Falcon 9. Frankly, there's just not enough to do to a Falcon 9 to make it costly enough to reuse to end up with the problems of the Shuttle. It would have to be completely non-reusable for that to be an issue, and that's extremely unlikely given the design and the data we have so far (for example, the reuse of the sub-orbital testing vehicles in Texas).
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I'm not talking about the Shuttle but making a general point. You're talking as if SpaceX had invented the concepts of experimentation, testing and simulation, and as if such concepts were foreign to NASA, which I find an absurd position to take.