SpaceX Successfully Launches Satellite With New Upgraded 'Block 5' Falcon 9 Rocket (theverge.com) 85
Thelasko shares a report from The Verge: This afternoon, SpaceX landed the most powerful version yet of its Falcon 9 rocket, after launching the vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The so-named Block 5 upgrade took off from the company's launchpad at Kennedy Space Center, sending a communications satellite into orbit for Bangladesh and then touched down on one of the company's drone ships in the Atlantic. It was the 25th successful rocket landing for SpaceX, and the 14th on one of the company's drone ships.
It also marks the first launch of the Block 5, the vehicle that will carry humans to space for NASA. The Block 5 is meant to be SpaceX's most reusable rocket yet, with many upgrades put in place that negate the need for extensive refurbishment between flights. In fact, the first Block 5 rockets will eventually be able to fly up to 10 times without the need for any maintenance after landings, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a pre-launch press conference. Ideally, once one of these rocket lands, SpaceX will turn it horizontal, attach a new upper stage and nose cone on top, turn it vertical on the launchpad, fill it with propellant, and then launch it again. Musk noted that the vehicles would need some kind of moderate maintenance after the 10-flight mark, but it's possible that each rocket could fly up to 100 times in total.
It also marks the first launch of the Block 5, the vehicle that will carry humans to space for NASA. The Block 5 is meant to be SpaceX's most reusable rocket yet, with many upgrades put in place that negate the need for extensive refurbishment between flights. In fact, the first Block 5 rockets will eventually be able to fly up to 10 times without the need for any maintenance after landings, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a pre-launch press conference. Ideally, once one of these rocket lands, SpaceX will turn it horizontal, attach a new upper stage and nose cone on top, turn it vertical on the launchpad, fill it with propellant, and then launch it again. Musk noted that the vehicles would need some kind of moderate maintenance after the 10-flight mark, but it's possible that each rocket could fly up to 100 times in total.
I watched the launch! (Score:5, Interesting)
Launch went off mostly flawlessly, except for the non-unexpected live camera feed issues. I remain amazed that they're able to do a live feed up to space and back as it is, so I can't complain too much. Expecting perfection there is asking a bit much, I think.
If this rocket performs as expected, it really is the game-changer that SpaceX is designed it to be. They're already out-competing everyone on launch costs. If they can really do a 24 hr turnaround on the same rocket? Holy. Shit.
Musk is always late on his predictions, but goddamn does he keep eventually getting there. I'm really blown away by this, and I can't wait to see what comes next.
Re: (Score:1)
ICBM forged by Putin.
I bet those won't be reusable.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They're already out-competing everyone on launch costs.
Yes, and they are talking about hitting $6m marginal launch cost with S2 recovery. That means they can either kick the floor out from under every other provider by an order of magnitude, or more likely, undercut other providers slightly will being enormously more profitable, to fold the extra profits into the BFR.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
SpaceX fans are all closet accountants. The rest of us don't care how much it costs to put yet another communication satellite in orbit.
The accountants who work for the people who want those satellites launched for less are not in the closet.
Re:I watched the launch! (Score:4, Insightful)
> The rest of us don't care how much it costs to put yet another communication satellite in orbit.
The rest of us must not have an imagination then. Space Tourism is /already/ a thing, and space colonies won't be far behind. Maybe you don't want to go; that's completely your prerogative. That said, I have no desire to live on this planet anymore. This guy is knocking zeroes off of the cost of getting to orbit, and that's a hugely exciting thing in moving towards that goal.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I watched the launch! (Score:1)
Re: I watched the launch! (Score:2)
Re:I watched the launch! (Score:5, Insightful)
For everyone else watching at home, if they can really reduce launch costs to a few million bucks a launch, it will enable a whole lot of things that currently can't be done.
For instance:
So even leaving out the more out-there humans-in-space stuff, there is a great deal to be excited by if SpaceX can really launch this cheap.
Re: (Score:2)
The rest of us don't care how much it costs to put yet another communication satellite in orbit.
If you mean that you don't care about competition in the telco market, I take it you work for Comcast or something. Boooo! :-p
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You don't have internet? You don't have TV, phone service, etc? Or you don't want those things to become better and cheaper? You don't even want better communication in disaster recovery situations? Pretty sure you're in the minority, the rest of us are pretty excited about cheaper communications satellites.
Re: (Score:2)
For the rest of us, we understand that it is all about economics of launch and exploration that gives us the ability to do things. .
Re:I watched the launch! (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe I'm alone in this, but what I look forward most to, concerning such low launch costs?
Mass produced probes.
If NASA comes to grips with launch costs being this cheap (something that they never seem to do in their planning, always budgeting at ULA rates), it'll become obvious that the next logical step is not to produce probes in 1s or 2s, but by the hundreds. Mass production means low unit costs. And they can let their probe mass budgets rise (aka, build them cheap rather than spending a fortune trying to shave grams off on every last part). Forget RTGs with expensive 238Pu - use cheap 90Sr or 241Am, or just huge solar arrays. Switch from "failure is not an option" to "meh, as long as 90+% of them make it..." as a guiding principle.
Over the course of our lifetimes, we can transform our solar system from a huge expanse of "unknown" with tiny spots of "known", to a huge expanse of "known" where we're just filling in ever-smaller gaps.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Right now, so much of old space is focused on BEGGING money from CONgress to make a few $, while Musk is changing the world. OLD space needs to change quickly and invest in themselves, or simply sell out to somebody else.
Re: (Score:2)
That's only "obvious" to cargo cultists who don't actually know what they're talking about. What you (and a lot of your fellow cultists) don't grasp - there isn't anywhere where hundreds of identical probes are useful. Nor do you grasp that probes are desig
Re: (Score:2)
The goal is actually to vastly grow the market by lowering the price to a point that many more companies become interested in a launch. If they're right about the demand that would materialize at lower prices, they can give up a lot of profit on each flight by vastly underbidding their nearest competitor but still make more profit overall on volume.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I watched the launch! (Score:5, Insightful)
If this rocket performs as expected, it really is the game-changer that SpaceX is designed it to be. They're already out-competing everyone on launch costs. If they can really do a 24 hr turnaround on the same rocket? Holy. Shit.
That part is almost insignificant, the question is how many times it'll fly or if ten is another Elon estimate of what it might possibly do sometime in the remote future, I mean he's been throwing around numbers like 10, 100 even 1000 reuses in his Mars plans but so far nothing has been re-flown more than once. Now the most aggressive schedule would be to say we're putting the pedal to the metal and sending it out there as quickly and often as possible, but I doubt it'll happen quite that way because there's customer payloads at risk every time it goes up.
Then again, if Musk has Starlink ready to go maybe he'll say this is now an in-house risk and we're making this a quasi-experimental 3rd-10th launch that won't kill our reputation as a launch provider. It certainly wouldn't get any more "eat your own dog food" than that. The satellites should be in mass production anyway so as long as the rocket clears the launch site it's probably not that big a blow if it turns into a fireworks show on the 6th launch. He could just do another space is hard, we're pushing the boundaries, failure is permitted here and I think most would buy it. And if it doesn't blow up, well all the better.
Re: (Score:2)
An early network tech genius explained measurable results this way - " The technology revolution has nothing to do whether it happens 1x, 10x or 100x faster " The revolution is when technology enables you to do something today" - David Mathews.
You are absolutely right about the false premise of 24hr turnaround. Its not about how fast a turnaround but the revolution is being able to fly again, again, again, again, again, again...cheap, cheap, cheap, cheaper etc...
Re: I watched the launch! (Score:2)
You are absolutely right about the false premise of 24hr turnaround. Its not about how fast a turnaround but the revolution is being able to fly again, again, again, again, again, again...cheap, cheap, cheap, cheaper etc...
Except that they're related. If you can turn your rocket around in 24 hours it means inspection and repair requirements are minimal. Which means damage from re-entry is minimal. Which means you can re-use it more often, with less money spent on inspection and repair. Or, in your terms, "again, again, again, cheap, cheap, cheap".
Re:I watched the launch! (Score:4, Insightful)
I do expect it to be more than just the first flight that needs to be inspected in detail. I expect them to inspect every after every single launch for the first X launches, then once every 2 launches for the next X, then 1 in 5, then finally 1 in 10, or something along those lines. I don't think customers would be happy with SpaceX if they just jumped from a single success case to "no inspections at all for 10 launches".
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect the 'good for 10 launches without refurbishment' is a guesstimate, and they'll disassemble rockets after an increasing number of launches to determine exactly how many they should refurbish after.
Re:I watched the launch! (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly!
The cost per launch (not price per launch) is what makes Starlink possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They're talking about 12,000 satellites! (A few less than that, but they'll probably have to replace a few that fail.) And they're looking at a 5-7 year lifespan per satellite, which means once it's up and running, it will require putting up another 2,000 satellites per year. Even if they can do 20 satellites per launch, that's still a hundred launches per year. For reference, there were only 90 launches last year, and that's counting every launch by every country and company.
https://space.stackexchange.co... [stackexchange.com]
Estimates are that the Falcon 9 could lift 24 Starlink satellites per launch. The Falcon Heavy could get up to 67. The BFR could deploy over 300 per launch. Considering the need to deploy to different orbits, the Falcon 9 is probably the way to go.
Once they get serious about Starlink, they'll probably start adding a few to every launch that has excess capacity. (And by "serious" I mean having gotten the satellites in real production.)
Re: (Score:2)
BFR is designed for orbital maneuvers with long-term propellant storage, so it should be able to deploy to multiple orbits, so long as the delta-V requirements aren't too great.
That said, one needs to apply standard Musk Time correction factors to BFR's timeline. I expect F9 and FH to be what most or all of Starlink is launched with.
Re: (Score:2)
hey're talking about 12,000 satellites!
This is Musk. The first ten thousand satellites will take twenty years and all be *tests* - but after that, things'll proceed swimmingly; I expect each "Big Fucking Starlink Satellite" to provide facilities for at least fifty thousand space colonists.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The main reason no booster has flown 3 times yet is that they've been obsoleted by new versions before they've had a chance. They have to improve launch cadence. If they can do 100+ missions a year then it starts to make sense to re-fly a booster 10 times. Probably have to have a thousand launches a year for 24 hour turnaround to make sense, so that won't be happening for a long time.
The expectation with Block 5 is 10 launches with minimal inspection/refurbishment (because risk is considered low for the fir
Re: (Score:2)
He really is about to do for space what USSR/America space race did.
Now, it is time for ppl to start screaming at our CONgress critters to quit wasting our money.
Re: (Score:2)
People can "claim" a lot of things but where is the proof to backup their claims?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can find at least 3 articles claiming that the Indian spaceflight to Planet Mars cost only $7.5 Milliions
That is such an obvious nonsense. Even the PSLV costs at least $25M. How could you send a probe for $7.5M when your rocket costs over $25M?
Re: I watched the launch! (Score:2)
I can find at least 3 articles claiming that the Indian spaceflight to Planet Mars cost only $7.5 Milliions
You need new glasses, pops; the very first article says $74 million.
Re: (Score:2)
Turn it horizontal??? (Score:3)
What's this "turn it horizontal" nonsense about? There's no time for that!
A properly reusable rocket should just require a new upper stage to be lowered into place on top of the just-landed/still-vertical first stage, a quick 5-minute refuel, and then back to work!
If SpaceX can't get shorter turnaround times than Southwest, then what's the point? ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Only China and Russia put mens into space
*put mans into space
FTFY.
*put womens into space.
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
Put people into space!
Never specify gender, unless it is appropriate!
Re: (Score:2)
Put peoples into space!
Re: (Score:2)
Put primates into space!
Perhaps we are guilty of being humanist???
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Turn it horizontal??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Turn it horizontal??? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
5-minute refill?
Dude, filling up one of these suckers is not like a trip to the gas station.
2nd goal. 1 more for a hat trick. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bankwupt! SpaceX is going bankwupt, I tell you! ;)
(does that work? ;) )
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You know who else owned bankrupt businesses yet people take him seriously? The POTUS.
[T]he press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.
-- Salena Zito, in The Atlantic, Sept 23, 2016.
Six more then manned! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Museum pieces (Score:4, Informative)
SpaceX have adopted a policy that any pre-block 5 booster will fly at most twice, and so have not been landing pre-loved boosters (called "flight proven" in SpaceX's spin.) All these boosters which would make wonderful museum pieces are being discarded into the ocean.
However, there are a few flown boosters which have not been lost. The first booster to successfully land is on display outside SpaceX's headquarters. The two side boosters from the Falcon Heavy launch were previously flown and have been recovered. I think the first booster to fly a second time was recovered, as this was before the don't-recover-used-boosters policy came into effect.
Am I correct on all these? Are there any other recovered twice-flown boosters? Does anyone know what SpaceX intends to do with them? Can I hope to see any of them in a museum one day?
Re: (Score:2)
There are very few museums with the space or the monetary resources to buy, transport and house a 230 foot booster. So no need to save up dozens.
Littering (Score:2)
If SpaceX has the capacity to recover the booster but is just letting it burn up for economic reasons its just littering and they need to be hit with a littering fine. Sure it was considered OK to do so when noone thought boosters could be recovered just as public defecation was OK when their was no indoor plumbing. But now we have toilets.
To make it fair and to give a kick in the backsides of the competitors all launches which dont recover their boosters should be hit with a littering fine.
Re: (Score:1)
They have used almost all of the discarded boosters for either launches where a landing was never viable (e.g. GTO), or for experiments like testing a three engine landing burn.