SpaceX Successfully Landed the 12th Falcon 9 Rocket of 2017 (theverge.com) 118
Shortly after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully landed on one of the company's drone ships in the ocean. "It marks the 12th time SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket this year, the 18th overall, and the second this week," reports The Verge. "It was also the third time that the company has successfully launched and landed a rocket that had already flown." From the report: The vehicle for this mission has flown before: once back in February, when it lofted cargo to the International Space Station and then landed at SpaceX's ground-based Landing Zone 1. Going up on this flight is a hybrid satellite that will be used by two companies, SES and EchoStar. Called EchoStar 105/SES-11, the satellite will sit in a high orbit 22,000 miles above Earth, providing high-definition broadcasts to the U.S. and other parts of North America. While this is the first time EchoStar is flying a payload on a used Falcon 9, this is familiar territory for SES. The company's SES-10 satellite went up on the first "re-flight" in March. And SES has made it very clear that it is eager to fly its satellites on previously flown boosters.
Pipedreams (Score:5, Interesting)
Musk may be pushing for some very interesting deadlines and pretty outlandish sounding concepts...
However his cars, even with all the weaknesses they have, are viable and his space company also successfully delivers.
I'd say that should at least be impressive.
Re:Pipedreams (Score:5, Funny)
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Cars and rockets are fine but the Hyperloop is definitely a pipe dream.
I see what you did there.
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Cars and rockets are fine but the Hyperloop is definitely a pipe dream.
I see what you did there.
It's nice to see some levity.
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Would that be mag-levity?
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Musk may be pushing for some very interesting deadlines and pretty outlandish sounding concepts...
However his cars, even with all the weaknesses they have, are viable and his space company also successfully delivers.
I'd say that should at least be impressive.
You could say the exact same thing about Howard Hughes. Wildly ambitious, had trouble with deadlines, decent reliance on government contracts and grants for significant parts of his business, similar mental eccentricities.
If both men didn't spend so much time cultivating his personal and company brands, the facts would probably turn the population against them.
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Re: Pipedreams (Score:3)
Re: Pipedreams (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet, he gets equal or less subsidies than his competitors.
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Downmaxx [Re:Pipedreams] (Score:2)
Quite a bit less in payments than what others ask for, and what "more limitations"? There's no spacecraft other than SpaceX's at the moment with a downmass capacity in the 100+ pound region.
Soyuz.
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Yeah, let us now compare capabilities a 7 year old rocket/ship to another with over 50 years of history.
Soyuz can carry three astronauts at most to ISS, and is a single purpose ship. Crew Dragon can carry 7, and also some cargo making the transportation to station cheaper overall.
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A pretty proven record of "nearly killing people" often enough but lucking into having them survive (18a, 23, 33, T-10-1, Mir EP-3, TMA-1, TMA-11). There have been lots of Soyuz close calls. And plenty of failures on unmanned Soyuz flights.
Luck doesn't last forever, and there's no sign that Russia's build quality is improving. If anything, it's worsening.
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Oh I agree with you that the Soyuz is not a perfect craft, but it does have a long history which does count for something. Build quality though, I've read this is a major problem throughout the Russian space program these days. I guess the sanctions are starting to bite a bit?
Progress requires the assumption and management of risk. Without technical and economic progress in the space-launch industry, there will be no qualitative or quantitative increases in space exploration, tourism, or industry beyond the current anemic "just barely up there" rate.
50 year old spaceship [Re:Downmaxx] (Score:2)
There's no spacecraft other than SpaceX's at the moment with a downmass capacity in the 100+ pound region.
Soyuz.
Yeah, let us now compare capabilities a 7 year old rocket/ship to another with over 50 years of history. Soyuz can carry three astronauts at most to ISS, and is a single purpose ship.
The post to I was responding was about downmass capacity. The statement was incorrect: Soyuz--as you pointed out-- routinely brings down three astronauts, which is a down mass of a lot more than 100 pounds.
The fact that Soyuz has "over 50 years of history" and Dragon doesn't was not brought up in the statement to which I was responding, so I didn't mention it.
Crew Dragon can carry 7, and also some cargo making the transportation to station cheaper overall.
If we're comparing to vehicles that haven't flown yet, we'd have to also add Boeing CST "Starliner" [boeing.com], NASA Orion [nasa.gov] and Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser [sncorp.com], among
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Very skinny astronauts [Re:Downmaxx] (Score:2)
Actually, Soyuz is the very spacecraft that I had in mind that is limited to ~100 pound payload downmass or so. There just isn't any significant mass reserve in it besides the ability to land with a crew of three, nor is there any significant volume for it.
Unless the crew consists of three people each weighing 33 kilograms (73 pounds) or less, the downmass is more than 100 kg.
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Musk does a lot of projects, and I don't like how he has funded some of them.
Regardless though, SpaceX has been nothing but a glowing success after years of failures and the hard work it took to overcome them. NASA and his other customers are getting the best possible value for their dollars compared to all of his competitors, and that's a very good thing for everyone.
If you want to talk about rampant fraud while on the government teat, go take a look at Lockheed Martin's ongoing disaster with the F-35 proj
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So in the world of aerospace where you get ten-year contracts and development of things takes forever, suddenly you're "concerned" about a one-year delay. You must have burst an aneurysm when you found out about the Ares V! :D
You are probably arguing with a Russiabot.
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SpaceX forces cargo liability back onto the customer, so its stealing from them with unavoidable risk and loss due to technical malfunctions. Previous NASA contract supply lift requirements weren't met for nearly a year after Musk agreed to the requirements, and lied about bulk as the cause when caught. Those are just a few of the problems glossed over by fan boys eager to, ehm, provide some service to Musk.
While your post, dripping with silly hatred, exposes your complete lack of understanding of how shit works. Consider that posting as na Anonymous Coward was at least ons smart thing you did today.
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SpaceX forces cargo liability back onto the customer, so its stealing from them with unavoidable risk and loss due to technical malfunctions.
So? Why should anyone but SpaceX and their customers give a damn about the contracts they have negotiated between themselves? Do you regularly worry about the contracts your neighbors sign for remodeling work, or that your county signs for re-paving a roadway?
Even if the customer has to buy their own launch insurance, they're still getting a WAY better deal with SpaceX than they would with a competitor who charges 10X as much per launch. They also get to shop around for that insurance rather than pay some Apple-like markup for that "service" from SpaceX itself.
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ivan you are one stupid son of a whore go back to interning sucking musks cock faggot
Seriously - is that the best you can do? It hardly makes sense, Muskmelon.
Re:Pipedreams (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, both only deliver thanks to millions in tax rebates, adding millions more in direct payments for milestones during development, and direct payments for cargo with more limitations than not due to the weak rocket power.
Speaking of rebates, let's remember the government had to deliver a fucking bailout for the competition not long ago.
And when viable rocket alternatives deliver a powerful solution but take twice as long at 3x the cost, what ends up being "weak" here is your argument.
Spare me (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, both only deliver thanks to millions in tax rebates, adding millions more in direct payments for milestones during development, and direct payments for cargo with more limitations than not due to the weak rocket power.
Nobody who has the money to buy a Model S or Model X is buying one because they need the tax rebates. It's a cool car that costs nearly six figures and people are buying it because they like the product and what it represents. If they get a tax rebate so much the better but that's not what makes it sell. Furthermore there is NOTHING wrong with some tax incentives to help develop a new clean technology. The internal combustion engine has had a good run but that run needs to come to a close. They are dirty, noisy, inefficient and limited to oil based fuels. If we need some tax incentives to get EVs up to scale then I have zero problem with that. It will benefit us all in the long run.
As for SpaceX, yes the government is a big customer and helped them get the company going but again, so what? NASA is hardly their only customer and are you seriously going to argue that SpaceX hasn't dramatically lowered the cost to orbit just like they said they would? "Weak rocket power"? WTF does that mean? You sound like one of Trumps twitter rants.
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Furthermore there is NOTHING wrong with some tax incentives to help develop a new clean technology.
Sure, I can agree with that. The problem is when the "bootstrap" money becomes the only thing holding up the industry. Electric cars seem to be doing well right now so taking away that subsidy is not likely to hurt, it may actually help since it forces them to run leaner and meaner to stay in business. The wind and solar power industries seem to rely just a little too much on these funds that were supposed to be for development. Whenever someone in government even suggests that maybe, perhaps, at some p
Age of Miracles... (Score:5, Insightful)
I lived through the later Apollo missions. Watched the Space Shuttle program prove that, if you have infinite money, you can make a brick fly. Watched that excessively complicated ship come apart - twice.
Watched ISS become operational, then watched us lose the ability to fly people to it.
And I watched SpaceX go from blowing up rockets, to making orbit less than ten years ago, to becoming a (semi) reliable truck to the ISS, to LANDING A FREAKING ROCKET ON A BARGE, to reflying reused rockets almost casually.
Age of Miracles.
Re:Age of Miracles... (Score:4, Interesting)
And I watched SpaceX go from blowing up rockets, to making orbit less than ten years ago, to becoming a (semi) reliable truck to the ISS, to LANDING A FREAKING ROCKET ON A BARGE, to reflying reused rockets almost casually.
That's how engineering is supposed to work. Incremental changes leading to improvements in reliability and capability, and hopefully reduction in cost.
Interesting as the Space Shuttle was, it was an engineering mistake, it was basically launching a crewed space station and then landing it each time. If it had been able to turn around and fly again in a matter of days or weeks that would be one thing, but it took months to refurbish any individual craft between flights. So expensive to design and build, expensive to launch, expensive to prepare for next launch. And for some reason we used it as a cargo vehicle when it would have been much more cost effective to launch cargo with an unmanned rocket with a faring designed for that cargo. The space station probably could have had much larger individual segments and could have been assembled faster if the components didn't have the shuttlebay as their design constraint.
SpaceX's approach, with both the reusable rocket and the inexpensive capsule intended for use in the limited time between the ground and the station, and then the station and the ground, makes a lot of sense. Hopefully they'll get man-rating soon.
Re:Age of Miracles... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Two satellites, plus a number of payloads that were either kept in the cargo bay during the mission (e.g. SpaceLab, various experiment pallets) or ejected and retrieved on later missions.
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In a war like that, both sides would just shoot down the other sides' satellites anyway, rendering LEO unusable for everyone.
Re:Age of Miracles... (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting as the Space Shuttle was, it was an engineering mistake, it was basically launching a crewed space station and then landing it each time.
The Space Shuttles were basically a fleet of space stations. One thing I wondered about is if NASA couldn't just launch one or more into space with the intention to not land them. They couldn't stay there forever, of course. At end of life the orbiter could be allowed to burn up in the atmosphere. If they really wanted to save it then repair it in orbit and land it with a return crew. Since it would never fly again then that opens options to land in an unconventional manner, not on a runway, to make the landing easier/cheaper/whatever. Such as a sea landing and just let it sink once the crew were recovered.
Then I realized that the public relations of allowing for the destruction of these iconic spacecraft would be more than NASA could bear. There were only three craft left that had gone to space. At the time they were retired the craft were considered suitable for flight only after considerable expense on craft that had already been flown well beyond their intended lifespan. Getting them to fly on even a one way trip would likely cost a lot of money for little benefit.
Perhaps what NASA should have done is make the retirement in orbit part of the planned uses of the craft from the start. They built six of them. As each new one was built they could have retired older ones in orbit as small space stations. Convert the payload space as a larger living space before retirement. Keep them useful as space stations before everything wore out and the technology became embarrassingly out of date.
SpaceX's approach, with both the reusable rocket and the inexpensive capsule intended for use in the limited time between the ground and the station, and then the station and the ground, makes a lot of sense. Hopefully they'll get man-rating soon.
In a way they've turned the Space Shuttle idea upside down. They reuse the booster stage and have one time use of the orbiter. SpaceX got to learn from NASA's mistakes. Too bad NASA couldn't learn from their own mistakes.
NASA needs to take on a different role in space. They should not be launching spacecraft, only provide government oversight and research. They need to act more like the FAA. The FAA provides oversight on private aircraft, they don't offer flights to people. NASA should let private industry launch payloads to space, not compete with them.
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Erm, for what purpose exactly? Why have all these little space stations floating around?
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Could they have been linked with small network of connecting modules into a larger station?
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Only on slashdot would anyone suggest a Beowulf cluster of space shuttles . . .
hawk
Re: Age of Miracles... (Score:2)
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The Shuttle had a maximum mission duration of about 21 days. Using it as a semi-permanent space station would have required major changes. The first things that come to mind: new electric power systems, new flight computers (the ones used had potential issues on the end-of-year rollover), some way to protect the ceramic tiles from micrometeoroid impact, new systems for on-orbit transfer of propellant and other consumables.
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The orbiter is reused as well, it just took NASA some time agree to it.
They've already reflown one Dragon, and I believe the plan is to use all refurbished ones from this point on.
They're also working on recovering payload fairings, and an attempt to recover the second stage next year.
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Yes, now here's what I'd like to know: how is the reusable rocket model working economically?
The Space Shuttle showed that a space plane is physically feasible, and it had many, many successful missions, but it never succeeded in its real purpose: to make access to space cheap and routine.
At this point we have the same level of success confirmation for the Falcon system that we had after roughly the same number of successful Shuttle missions. And that's good. But it's not job done yet.
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I don't think that SpaceX has published the refurb costs, but SpaceX has stated that the cost of the rocket itself, not the cost of the fuel, is the expensive part of launching. Millions upon millions of dollars for the rocket, hundreds of thousands of dollars for the fuel.
If the refurb process costs more like what the fuel costs, then suddenly the price drops dramatically. Basically that's what we're waiting to see, if SpaceX can reliably launch used rockets again and again and again, and if some of that
Re:Age of Miracles... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how engineering is supposed to work. Incremental changes leading to improvements in reliability and capability, and hopefully reduction in cost.
It takes a disciplined approach and good systems engineering to make that happen. And I would say it is also quite a bit more than just engineering, it is about putting together the right resources, the right timing, the right amount of money, the right amount of competition or incentive to make something better and ultimately a product that people are willing to invest their money into.
And sometimes a really great idea is delayed for years and years or decades even while the enabling technology that could make it happen is developed.
I think that is where Elon Musk is really great at putting together all the great ideas, some of which have previously failed time and time again (electric cars, solar panels, reusable rockets, trains in tubes have been ideas decades in the making) and rethinking them to see how they might actually be made more viable using today's tools, resources and technology.
Other investors and CEOs would look at the failures of the past and see those failures as lessons learned to stay away from those dead end products and technologies... Elon Musk sees some of those failures from the past as opportunities to build on and get them right.
Re:Age of Miracles... (Score:5, Informative)
First, the Shuttle's design grew tremendously complicated. The tiles, which weren't supposed to pop off, did, and each one of them was unique and replacements had to be custom fabricated. Turnaround time grew from an estimated week to months.
Second, the Shuttle's biggest customer bailed out on it. You have to remember that the Shuttle was conceived in the 1960s and designed in the 1970s. At the time, spy satellites would eject a roll of film, which would be captured in mid-air [petapixel.com], developed, and analyzed. Once a spy satellite ran out of film, it was useless. The NRO envisioned the Shuttle as a way to refuel its spy satellites and reload them with new film. That's why the Hubble Space Telescope fit in the Shuttle's cargo bay - HST was about the sale size as a spy satellite, and the Shuttle was designed to hold a spy satellite.
But once the CCD was developed and the spy satellites could simply radio images back down to earth, film became obsolete. Without the ability to turn around shuttles in a week, and without a customer to pay for more frequent Shuttle flights, its operations slowed down to about 5 launches per year - 1/10th the frequency the bean counters assumed when OKing it. The costs which were supposed to be amortized never were, and turned it into one of the most expensive launch systems in history.
Re: Age of Miracles... (Score:1)
but if it doesnt have big explosions, people will lose interest fairly quickly. More interesting watching trump make a fool of himself and little rocket men make substantiated threats.
A miracle the US has made it this far past jan 2017.
Re: Age of Miracles... (Score:2)
Also less important now. because someone finally privately funded the r&d, its not the political football NASA became.
Re: Age of Miracles... (Score:2)
Reliability 95% so far [Re: Age of Miracles...] (Score:2)
SX has launched 43 times with 1 launch failure ( and a partial ).
Huh? What are you talking about? SpaceX failed in its first three launches. You can hardly call that "only one launch failure (and a partial)".
I admire that: the best way to push the boundaries is to fail, and then learn from the failures. But learning from the failures means: don't pretend that failures didn't happen.
Even it you meant "Falcon-9" and not "SX", you can only count "1 launch failure" if you ignore the one that exploded on the pad. That was only a year ago, so you'd think people would remem
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The one that exploded on the pad was NOT launching, but undergoing tests.
SX has 1 F9 that exploded during launch, and put 1 payload into too low of orbit. So, 1.5 as I said.
And AC said that SX had BELOW the 94%, when in reality, it is above 95%.
ULA charges 4x what SX does. A single launch from ULA costs more than what 3 payl
SX and F9 [Re:Reliability 95% so far] (Score:2)
Those 3 were F1s, not F9s.
The statement of yours to which I was responding stated that "SX" had only one failure and one partial failure. I assume "SX" was an acronym for "SpaceX." I can't see any way to interpret "SX" as being short for "F9".
If you are going to make up acronyms, be clear. It would not have taken more than few seconds to type "SpaceX" when you mean SpaceX, and "Falcon 9" if you mean Falcon 9.
"SX has 1 F9 that exploded during launch, and put 1 payload into too low of orbit. So, 1.5 as I said
Again: only true if you ignore the one that blew up on the pad, which would make it 2.5, not 1.5.
"ULA charges 4x what SX does. A single launch from ULA costs more than what 3 payloads AND launches that SX puts up.
Yes, that's precisely
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plenty of rockets have had failures on the pad and other test locations. Apollo 1 comes quickly to mind and yes, it is STARRED. Depending on how you do the stats, the first loss was with Challenger, or was Apollo. However, if Apollo is used, the by defintion, that means that any loss of life while working on the systems, means that Both NASA and USSR/Russia have MANY more deaths.
Paying more for a single launch than what you pay for the loa
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Again: only true if you ignore the one that blew up on the pad
You mean "the one that was blown up on the pad by improper handling"? That's like blaming cars for crashes caused by amateur drivers.
Nevertheless, it blew up [Re:SX and F9] (Score:2)
Again: only true if you ignore the one that blew up on the pad
You mean "the one that was blown up on the pad by improper handling"?
Blown up on the bad by a failed helium tank strut [popsci.com]. If there was improper handling somewhere, so far nobody has identified that as the problem.
But I'm not sure what your point is. All accidents have causes, which I suppose ultimately comes down to somebody doing something improper. It's still a failure.
That's like blaming cars for crashes caused by amateur drivers.
Or blaming SpaceX for explosions caused by amateur rocket engineers?
They learn from their failure. It's a very effective way to learn, and I approve of the fact that they do learn, and keep on going. Neve
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Wrong link corrected [Re:Nevertheless, it blew up] (Score:2)
Good catch, that link pointed to the earlier failure.
Here's a link to the failure on the pad http://spacenews.com/spacex-narrows-down-cause-of-falcon-9-pad-explosion [spacenews.com] which was attributed to a helium tank failure http://www.latimes.com/nation/ct-spacex-explosion-20170102-story.html [latimes.com], or http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a23652/spacex-falcon-explosion-cause-helium-loading/ [popularmechanics.com].
Sorry I inadverently linked to a different failure that was linked to a different helium tank failure.
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Once my payload gets bolted onto the top of the rocket, I don't care whether the rocket blows up in the assembly building, on the pad, or in it's way to space - if it blows up, it's a failure.
Now, for a manned mission, I really only care about failures that occur once the humans have climbed aboard.
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Re:Age of Miracles... (Score:5, Informative)
The US space program suffered from something that's part of the system it is sitting in. While there was competition with the Russians for the moon, money was no issue. But it was obvious the nanosecond Armstrong set the foot onto that rock, the game was over and the support for spending money on it was gone. We did it, we one-up'ed the Commies, now stop wasting money on it.
Anything that happened in the US space program after 1970 was basically inertia. The time it took for the space program to REALLY fall apart is testament only to just HOW much money was blown into it before the moonshot.
Shuttle-- a big booster [Re:Age of Miracles...] (Score:2)
Yup, after the moon landings, the American space program fell apart at the seams. They lost three times more people in the space program than Russia.
Uh, yes, but that's a bit misleading, since as of the end of the shuttle program, the American space program had launched five times more people into space than the Russian program. We tend to forget how large the shuttle was and how routine the launches were, but do recall that the total number of crewmembers of all 135 space shuttle missions was 833-- that's more than the total of all the people launched by all the other launch vehicles put together.
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That is why I am looking forward to seeing NextStep happen. With that, I would think that Axiom and Bigelow are the likely winners who will then be attached to the ISS. With Bigelow adding 1/3 more volume, and axiom will likely add about 1/8 to 1/6 more volume, it will be possible to add another 6 ppl on-board once they have ECLSS on 1 of those. That will enable both Boeing and SX to bring up a full load, assuming NASA or more likely CONgress, does not blo
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Working together [Re:Age of Miracles...] (Score:2)
I think you make the point quite well that government is not well equipped to offer innovation and efficiency. The best things happen when .gov just gets out of the way and let's people create.
Yes... and no.
Some history: The young innovative rocket company SpaceX had made claims that it had designed the most reliable booster ever built, one that would have a 99.9% reliability right from the very first flight... and then blew up their first three launches. When they finally got one to work, the fourth launch, they were out of money, and nobody but Kazakhstan was willing to fly on vehicles with a demonstrated reliability record of 25% (and even Kazakhstan wouldn't have, except that they had alrea
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Some history: The young innovative rocket company SpaceX had made claims that it had designed the most reliable booster ever built, one that would have a 99.9% reliability right from the very first flight... and then blew up their first three launches.
Were there actually any such claims made about the Falcon 1? The Falcon 9, on the other hand, was actually quite lucky when it comes to its first dozen flights or so - it hasn't been really common for new launchers to be so trouble-free in the past. Delta IV Heavy and Ariane 5 had issues in their first launch. Ariane 5 had even four issues in its first seventeen launches, where Falcon 9 has one on its fourth flight that was covered for by redundancy. And look where Ariane 5 is now, after it has matured.
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Some history: The young innovative rocket company SpaceX had made claims that it had designed the most reliable booster ever built, one that would have a 99.9% reliability right from the very first flight... and then blew up their first three launches.
Were there actually any such claims made about the Falcon 1? The Falcon 9, on the other hand, was actually quite lucky when it comes to its first dozen flights or so - it hasn't been really common for new launchers to be so trouble-free in the past. Delta IV Heavy and Ariane 5 had issues in their first launch. Ariane 5 had even four issues in its first seventeen launches, where Falcon 9 has one on its fourth flight that was covered for by redundancy. And look where Ariane 5 is now, after it has matured.
Yes.
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So, when you say the best things happen when .gov gets out of the way, perhaps you should say, the best things happen when .gov works in partnership with innovators.
The government should seek the best value for its money like any responsible buyer should. Before SpaceX there just wasn't much for competition. I am pleased that SpaceX was successful in getting a government contract. I am also pleased that the government now has leverage on the older companies to offer better value for their money. I mean *MY* money and *YOUR* money, because the government doesn't own that money, the taxpayers' do.
I hear complaints about "cost plus" contracts that the government offer
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The other failure was during a test and not during a launch.
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To be fair, the Shuttle had 2 losses with 135 launches.
Only because of extreme luck. [archive.org]
Are Space-X launches now getting cheaper? (Score:3)
Now that they are starting to re-use rockets and are successfully landing them, have they crossed some magic threshold where their launches are now much cheaper than their competitors using disposable rockets?
Or are they still having to charge a premium due to R&D investments into their system?
If they aren't starting to reap cheaper launch costs, when will they? I would think that while the reusable rockets is an interesting design goal, it would need to cut launch cost meaningfully to be really beneficial.
Re:Are Space-X launches now getting cheaper? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is R&D to recoup, but there has already been a cost reduction for launch customers, on top of what was already the cheapest launch system in its payload class. Since it was already highly price competitive, SpaceX's incentive to lower costs to customers even further is small - there is no competitive need. The details are private, but estimated that the cost to SpaceX is about 35% less than a fully expendable rocket, and they pass about 10-15% cost reduction on to customers.The difference they pocket to recoup R&D costs and continue with more R&D for further cost reductions. The internal cost will fall more once stages are reused more times.
So it is already worth while, but this is not the whole picture. For one thing, the early re-launches are involving more inspection time and expense than they plan on once it gets into full swing. Second, they have made a newer rev of the F9 to minimize turnaround refurb over the past revisions. Lastly, some of their self funded R&D is going into a fully reusable launch system to drive costs even lower.
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I'd also imagine it is a bit of a work in process, as the more times they reuse a single rocket, that extra inspection time is probably used to see which components fail first, how they might be redesigned to either last longer, be replaced easier and/or cheaper, etc... After every launch and inspection they likely refine what might be put into the next generation, then rise and repeat until a threshold of diminishing returns is hit barring technical innovation in regards to some bob or bit or material.
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(stage 2 might undergo more re-design once they start re-using it ; first landing attempt will be with FH test )
Do you have a source on that? I've seen speculation along those lines, but never anything official (or even suggestive of that from an official source.)
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First stage (not entire rocket) is being reused. My understanding is that to make it able to land and be reused, it essentially has to be both strengthened and carry but a half of payload it can so it can have fuel remaining and carry necessary additions to the rocket to perform a landing.
That means that if we are being very generous, you need at least three launches from the same rocket, as long as you don't count any other costs related to launch to turn a profit on reusing the first stage. I.e. two launc
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For reusable mode, subtract about 1/3. In addition, it is the EXACT SAME ROCKET. There is nothing different between expendable or reusable, other than expendable will simply not include the legs and a few other items. Musk has said that F9 will do 8.3 to GEO, and 5.5 tonnes in reusable mode, which is 2/3 of the expendable mode. [wikipedia.org]And according to Musk, even in reusable mode, the rocket is paid for on the first launch.
As to insurance, this really is NOT unknown. It is the same as
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multiple things wrong there. For reusable mode, subtract about 1/3.
50% vs 67%, it's not that far off.
In addition, it is the EXACT SAME ROCKET. There is nothing different between expendable or reusable, other than expendable will simply not include the legs and a few other items.
So exactly the same, except when it's not?
Likewise, F9 is designed for re-use so should have no issues going to the rated limited, which is supposedly 30 launches.
Come on, this is Musk's PR department talking. They've landed 18 rockets, three have been reused once and fifteen not at all so more like a factor of 1 + 3/18 = 1.16 rather than 30. Granted, some of them might fly again in the future but that number is extremely theoretical.
Look, the AC is right if froze SpaceX in time and said the reuse you have today is all the reuse you'll ever get it wouldn't be much point. SpaceX could build an
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The expendable F9 costs $61M and launches 22.8 tonnes to LEO, with this expected to go to 25-26 tonnes with block 5.
With Stage 1 reusable mode, they can do ~20 tonnes, at a cost of ~ $45M. FH, which is to be tested in December, launches 64 tonnes, at a cost of $100M. Ariane 5 launches 21 tonnes at a costs of $220 M.
Atlas 5 launches 18.8 tonnes at a cost of $200-300M.
Russia launches 23 tonnes at a cost of $80M.
And considering that the Russian launch
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They are.
SpaceX is already significantly cheaper than the competition and they continue to push the price downwards. They haven't passed on the 'full' savings of reusing rockets because they themselves haven't realized it. Yet. They're still being somewhat cautious before they re-certify a rocket so they're still a ways off from launch-land-refuel-launch (and TBH if you have a half dozen rockets 'in stock' there's little need for that).
The near term includes use of the Falcon Heavy instead of using the F
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Customers get a discount launching on a re-used rocket vs a new one. That's one way that the process is paying off for both SpaceX and the launch customers.