
SpaceX Picks Rocket for First Relaunch - ValG
http://fortune.com/2016/07/17/spacex-rocket-for-first-relaunch/
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martythemaniak
Friendly reminder, they are launching a Dragon on an ISS resupply mission
tonight at 1245am EST. Secondary mission is trying to land the first stage on
Landing Zone 1, like the first landing in December.

You can watch it live on spacex.com or their YouTube or or ustream channel.

~~~
Cogito
And lots of extra info and discussion at
[https://spacexstats.com/live](https://spacexstats.com/live) and the SpaceX
subreddit

[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4t2umd/rspacex_spac...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4t2umd/rspacex_spacex_crs9_official_launch_discussion/)

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ohitsdom
It'd be HUGE if they can recover this rocket a second time. The data from a
rocket that has flown twice would be priceless.

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stepanhruda
It wasn't a reflown rocket.

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Spare_account
I think there is some confusion in this thread. The thread is about the plan
to re-fly a recovered first-stage sometime in September of this year.

The top comment is, however, about today's launch which was a new rocket as
you have commented. Your comment was positioned as a reply to a different top-
level comment which was on the thread's topic and it doesn't make sense in
that context.

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stepanhruda
I can't remember because many hours ago, but I wonder if they edited the
comment

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scarygliders
I imagine the refurbishment of a used Falcon 9 1st stage will involve a wee
bit more than just a bit of spit and polish.

It'll be examining the rocket engines for faults, replacement of degraded
parts, examining the whole structure for defects, and replacement of any other
parts if required - however, that will still be cheaper than completely
building a 1st stage from scratch.

Here's hoping the re-use will be a successful one!

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sandworm101
If they have to go through all those checks, then that is a failure for
several aspects of the program. The goal of reusability has been parts that
don't need to be checked. The engines have been run over and over on test
stands. They shouldn't have any faults after a single launch. If they do, then
the test program wasn't accurate. If hardware needs to be redesigned to meet
that goal, then it also needs to be re-tested and much of the program is back
to day one. I'm sure they will do checks, but I am equally sure they dread
finding something.

I;m reminded of the story of Shuttle's tires. They were designed to last four
or five flights, but famously were replaced every time. SpaceX wants to end
such things. Parts are to do what they are designed to do. A part designed to
last multiple flights without the need to be x-rayed every time, isn't going
to be x-rayed every time.

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voiper1
It's not a failure. It would be sheer negligence to not have a full check for
the _first time they've ever done this._

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sandworm101
If they have cracks in things that are designed to go through multiple flights
without cracks, and those cracks haven't appeared in testing, that's a
failure. Any such finds in checks today means the necessity of checks again
next time, and the hundreds of times after that. SpaceX needs to find nothing
so that they can then decide at some later date to stop doing the checks. Not
cracking open the fuel pumps after every flight is a necessary part of the
planned cost reductions. If inspections suggest that the design needs to be
checked every time, as with Shuttle, then new design is needed and the testing
program hasn't met its goals.

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yetihehe
> If they have cracks in things that are designed to go through multiple
> flights without cracks, and those cracks haven't appeared in testing, that's
> a failure.

No, it's real world engineering. You can't simulate everything when you're
doing something totally new. You need to make tests on real hardware to
confirm that your model is good.

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sgc
Exact. It is not really any different than going from in-house to beta testing
in software to get those real world bugs that always come up -- it is a known
step of the design process before even starting.

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gwern
I wonder who's going to sign up to put their cargo on the first refurb rocket?
I suppose SpaceX will be offering steep discounts in order to prove the
prototype.

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dredmorbius
Food and consumables for the ISS, or low-cost satellite launch are likely
targets.

A kilogram of water on Earth is worth a few pennies. In space, it's worth
$5,000 - $10,000. The value-add difference is the launch cost.

Take a bunch of cheap stuff you'd _like_ to have (but don't need essentially,
and can readily replace), and pack it on a refurbed booster. If successful,
you've gained a few thousand dollars per kg mass. If failed, you're only out
the source materials (and the booster, though since this is a _test_ , it's
the _outcome_ that's most significant).

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usrusr
Even if the payload is cheap, the second stage and delivery vehicle (dragon)
are not.

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jakub_h
For fuel delivery to LEO, the delivery vehicle could be quite cheap. Even the
Dragon might be an overkill. Perhaps a simple tank with a simple RCS assembly
would be enough.

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exabrial
What blows my mind is it only takes one engine to land the thing out of like
the 9(?) it has.

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greglindahl
One engine is too powerful, actually. That's why they call the final burn a
"suicide burn": the rocket can't throttle down far enough to hover, so you've
got one chance.

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eddy_chan
Forgive the laymans question but how much would it cost to ferry one extra
rocket whose mission is to help it land by giving a larger margin of error
when landing on the drone ship. I'm guessing carrying a few extra tonnes of
deadweight engine for 99% of the mission is a big deal.

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ygra
On the first stage every last little bit of weight counts since it only weighs
the rocket down. They already lower their payload to orbit by about 30–40 %
when they land the first stage. That stage has to fight most of Earth's
gravity and atmosphere so accelerating at all takes a lot of effort. So adding
weight to the part that is only needed for accelerating the rocket through the
atmosphere lowers the total payload considerably. It's bad on the second stage
too, but not that much (but even then, they shed the payload fairings or the
Dragon nose cone when they're no longer needed).

Adding another (different) engine also complicates things. Currently they only
have a single engine type for the whole rocket (plus thrusters), the one on
the second stage having a different nozzle. This greatly reduces complexity
and thus cost and risk.

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zardo
You've got the effect of additional mass on the stages backwards. Additional
mass on the first stage is bad, but additional mass on the second stage
reduces payload in greater proportion.

Mass on the second stage is on the rocket during both 1st and 2nd stage burns,
while you get to leave 1st stage mass behind for the 2nd stage burn.

~~~
ygra
Good point; my bad.

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bargl
One thing a lot of people don't think about is that the price of the payload
isn't going down yet. The satellites that launch to GEO tend to be 300-500
million dollars. I've heard figures all around there.

There is a VERY low risk factor that companies which launch these will accept.
These satellites drive business for companies for years their life cycle is 20
years or so. They are a massive investment, and any risk on getting the
satellite to space is seen as something to avoid at all costs. Different
rocket companies are considered to be the gold standard because they introduce
VERY low risk to your payload. Even though these payloads are insured it's
still not worth loosing one because you loose out on a ton of revenue.

I'm speaking strictly of GEO satellites right now, but the whole economy
around satellites will have to be rethought if we can cheaply get devices out
there. I suspect that using "tried and true" hardware would become much less
important and the cost of the massive satellites would go down because we can
launch 5 a year every year instead of 1 or 2 a year. If one of them fails
that's fine, we can replace it with something new and margins of safety that
are applied in the industry can be reduced.

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jakub_h
Exactly. There's a vicious cycle of expensive payloads driving costs of
launches up (extra scrutiny, fewer launches, less experience, less cost-
reducing hardware innovation - the RL-10 alone is sixty years old and quite
expensive to build by hand from thousands of components, for example) in turn
again driving costs of payloads up (you want the best bang for the buck if the
price per kilogram is high, so you use overengineered spacecraft designs and
materials).

Fortunately, there seems to be no shortage of ways out of this - new large
markets like massive LEO constellations and fuel depots for more capable
exploration missions immediately come to one's mind.

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riyadparvez
Just landed safely.

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grinich
(Different rocket. They're going to re-launch it this fall.)

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smcnally
Yes. Still, another successful experimental landing, and another option for
experimental relaunches -

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ryanmarsh
How do you xray something as big as a rocket for stress fractures?

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Kliment
Either you send xrays across the surface, using the curvature, or you place a
detector on one side and an emitter on the other. Since you would know where
you expect the stress to have the greatest effect, you test the worst spots
first, rather than scanning the whole thing.

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greglindahl
This Fortune post is a bad-blog-rewrite of a nearly-fact-free Mashable blog
entry. Not a very good choice!

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geerlingguy
Yeah, for some reason, I don't think Fortune would be the company to break
news of this magnitude, especially in light of this [1].

[1]
[https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/75219082879835340...](https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/752190828798353408)

~~~
endgame
That page falls over with a JS error. Try:
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/752190828798353408](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/752190828798353408)

> Misunderstanding of what "beta" means to Tesla for Autopilot: any system w
> less than 1B miles of real world driving

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dummy_01
Are there pokemon in space?

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fixermark
Due to the COCOM limits on commercial GPS systems in smartphones, a phone's
GPS should fail to work when it is higher than 16,000 ft
[[http://support.spectracom.com/articles/FAQ/Why-are-there-
alt...](http://support.spectracom.com/articles/FAQ/Why-are-there-altitude-and-
velocity-limits-for-GPS-equipment)].

Since Pokémon GO's client requires functional GPS and locks out when it cannot
use one (to prevent cheating around turning off one's GPS when one is at a
location of interest to pretend you haven't left it), it will fail to operate
at ISS orbital altitude, even if it has reliable network link to the Pokémon
GO servers.

So the answer to your question is "Only if one of the crew packed a Game Boy
and a copy of one of the previous games." ;)

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grkvlt
Actually it's 60k feet or 18km, which you can check, since phone GPS will
still work on a commercial airliner during cruise.

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fixermark
100% correct; thank you for catching that. I held the fact in my mind's ear
and it clearly got corrupted.

