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I don't understand the reasoning here; how could launching today with a guaranteed failure to recover possibly be more valuable than delaying another day or two

I don't understand the reasoning here; how could launching today with a guaranteed failure to recover possibly be more valuable than delaying another day or two with a shot at recovery? The only way it makes sense to me is if sea heights are predicted to remain unmanageably high for unacceptably long, or the chance of recovery was very low to begin with.

softbuilder 12y ago
The customer comes first.
dabeeeenster 12y ago
Probably because someone is paying them to launch a satellite into orbit? Not trying to be snarky - I have no idea! But that could be reason?
- mikeash 12y ago
  I'm sure it is. The customer paid for the launch, but doesn't directly care about landing or recovery. That's a secondary mission that SpaceX has essentially glued on to the end. This is great for SpaceX because it means they're getting paid to test their experimental techniques. But it also means that you can't use this as an excuse to delay. Imagine if you paid UPS to send a package across the country and they delayed your package by a week because they're testing a new cargo plane and conditions aren't currently favorable for testing, even though the normal cargo plane would do the job fine right now. You'd probably be pretty unhappy that UPS is putting their own internal testing ahead of doing what you paid them for.
- Tossrock 12y ago
  Someone who's already been delayed twice. Clearly they are willing to accept some margin of delay. The question I was posing is, how could delaying one more day be worth more (ie cost to SpaceX) than the value of the recovered rocket times the probability of recovery. And the correct answer is in the top response, which is that due to the moon's position, it would be a delay of over a week, not just another day.
  - dandelany 12y ago
    > Someone who's already been delayed twice. Yeah, due to weather and technical problems. Obviously there's no way of getting around those. It would be a much bigger deal to the customer to delay just because "SpaceX wants to". > how could delaying one more day be worth more (ie cost to SpaceX) than the value of the recovered rocket times the probability of recovery. And the correct answer is ... it would be a delay of over a week, not just another day No, even if they had a launch window tomorrow, they would not have delayed another day. The correct answer is that the price of delaying just to conduct an optional test is decreased confidence from potential launch customers that their payloads will not be delayed due to SpaceX's whims, customers who already question SpaceX's ability to launch on time. When someone pays you tens of millions of dollars, you don't get to delay their flight just because you want to test something experimental - it doesn't work that way. SpaceX will have many more opportunities to test their landing procedures, it's not worth pissing off a customer just to be more aggressive on the recovery timeline.
fit2rule 12y ago
The recovery is an experiment. The delivery of the satellite, a commercial venture.
cryptoz 12y ago
The other people responding are correct; the paying customer dictates when to launch, not SpaceX's hobby projects. You should treat reusability as a hobby for them, until they start getting paid contracts specifically to test reusability. Additionally, I should add: > another day or two At this point, due to the moon's orbit interfering with the trajectory of this launch, they have to wait another week or two, not a day, if they scrub this evening's launch. Waiting 1-2 more week for this launch might mean pushing other customer's launch dates back even further, thus incurring more delays and more cost overruns won't help SpaceX improve anything faster.

softbuilder 12y ago

The customer comes first.

dabeeeenster 12y ago

Probably because someone is paying them to launch a satellite into orbit? Not trying to be snarky - I have no idea! But that could be reason?

mikeash 12y ago
I'm sure it is. The customer paid for the launch, but doesn't directly care about landing or recovery. That's a secondary mission that SpaceX has essentially glued on to the end. This is great for SpaceX because it means they're getting paid to test their experimental techniques. But it also means that you can't use this as an excuse to delay. Imagine if you paid UPS to send a package across the country and they delayed your package by a week because they're testing a new cargo plane and conditions aren't currently favorable for testing, even though the normal cargo plane would do the job fine right now. You'd probably be pretty unhappy that UPS is putting their own internal testing ahead of doing what you paid them for.
Tossrock 12y ago
Someone who's already been delayed twice. Clearly they are willing to accept some margin of delay. The question I was posing is, how could delaying one more day be worth more (ie cost to SpaceX) than the value of the recovered rocket times the probability of recovery. And the correct answer is in the top response, which is that due to the moon's position, it would be a delay of over a week, not just another day.
- dandelany 12y ago
  > Someone who's already been delayed twice. Yeah, due to weather and technical problems. Obviously there's no way of getting around those. It would be a much bigger deal to the customer to delay just because "SpaceX wants to". > how could delaying one more day be worth more (ie cost to SpaceX) than the value of the recovered rocket times the probability of recovery. And the correct answer is ... it would be a delay of over a week, not just another day No, even if they had a launch window tomorrow, they would not have delayed another day. The correct answer is that the price of delaying just to conduct an optional test is decreased confidence from potential launch customers that their payloads will not be delayed due to SpaceX's whims, customers who already question SpaceX's ability to launch on time. When someone pays you tens of millions of dollars, you don't get to delay their flight just because you want to test something experimental - it doesn't work that way. SpaceX will have many more opportunities to test their landing procedures, it's not worth pissing off a customer just to be more aggressive on the recovery timeline.

fit2rule 12y ago

The recovery is an experiment. The delivery of the satellite, a commercial venture.

cryptoz 12y ago

The other people responding are correct; the paying customer dictates when to launch, not SpaceX's hobby projects. You should treat reusability as a hobby for them, until they start getting paid contracts specifically to test reusability. Additionally, I should add: > another day or two At this point, due to the moon's orbit interfering with the trajectory of this launch, they have to wait another week or two, not a day, if they scrub this evening's launch. Waiting 1-2 more week for this launch might mean pushing other customer's launch dates back even further, thus incurring more delays and more cost overruns won't help SpaceX improve anything faster.