
SpaceX makes aerospace history with successful landing of a used rocket - smb06
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/30/15117096/spacex-launch-reusable-rocket-success-falcon-9-landing
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ge96
Thank you for making progress for humanity. Being useful haha.

edit: damn I could imagine something like a long assembly line, one building
is a massive x-ray machine, rocket slides into it like a sub-sandwich going
into a Quizno's oven, parts get pulled out, replaced with robotic arms,
refueled, payload attached, stands up, boom back into space! haha

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spiraldancing
Napkin-math ...

Long-term, Falcon9 exists to fund Spacex' R&D for Mars. Until now, Musk has
said <5% of Spacex budget goes to ITS dev. I expect that to change now.

1st stage costs $40m, targeting 10 flights = $4m/flight, amortised. Add
another 2-3 million for refurbishment, storage, etc., and reusing the 1st
stages should save Spacex ~$33m.

Shotwell, however, has stated that customers will receive up to 30% discount.
On a $62m flight, that's a savings of <$19m ...

giving Spacex an _extra_ $12-15m pure profit on every flight ... which I
hope/expect to get channeled into ITS dev.

Spacex is already the cheapest in the industry, and they now have a 3-5 year
head-start in reusability, they simply don't need to lower their prices more.

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yitchelle
Does the mean the amount of space vehicles (satellite, space stations,
transport space crafts etc) will explode in next few years? I wonder if there
any infrastructure to support this.

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skdotdan
It would be awesome if much more capital was assigned to the space industry.
Imagine a whole ecosystem of space companies both competing and cooperating.

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jernfrost
Exciting! I'd like to see the faces of all those people arrogantly writing off
SpaceX and Elon Musk. He isn't just a flamboyant marketing man, just doing
stuff NASA did 40 years ago or whatever sour comments I've seen directed
towards the achievements of SpaceX.

It is very inspiring to see a man with a dream reach this far, despite being
ridiculed for years. It wasn't supposed to be possible, but he did it anyway.
From now on one can always point to Elon Musk if somebody tries to put you
down and say something can't be done.

Of course most are not anywhere near the talent and focus of Elon Musk, but it
proves what people often seem to discount that startups can make a dent and
challenge the big established players.

I see the same when people discuss Tesla. People are very quick to write off
Tesla believing it is only a matter of time before Diamler Benz, Audi, Toyota,
etc knock them down with a superior electric alternative.

Personally I think we will see in both space launch and the car industry an
iPhone moment, where long time established players eventually get destroyed or
made irrelevant.

It has nothing to do with difference in talent, but when you work in an
established company you know very well how slow it can be for a company to
change their ways in fundamental ways. The change in priorities, strategy and
mindset will come too late for many of the players.

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kayoone
Almost feels like, the Elon Musk cult is like a religion for the generation Y.

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peter303
Blue Origin has reused their Shepard rocket 4(?) times. Their rockect has not
gone into deep space.

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jessriedel
These are not really comparable. The Shepard rocket is sub-orbital and
achieves something like 1/5 or less of the same speed as the Falcon 9.

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Retric
It's also not carrying a giant payload and 2nd stage.

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fwefwwfe
How do they know how many times they can re-use the rocket? Do they xray it
for cracks every 5 flights?

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peter303
Blue Origins rockets are rated 100 usages. Same as space shuttle.

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greglindahl
Blue Origin hasn't flown to orbit yet - they have a sub-orbital rocket, and
future plans for more.

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Diederich
I heard that Musk said that the next goal is to get Falcon 9 total turnaround
time to under 24 hours.

That's a direct dress rehearsal for the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITS_launch_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITS_launch_vehicle)
plan, where it takes off and returns directly to its pad, where it's refueled
and 2nd stage loaded on top, for immediate turnaround.

We're living in the fuckin' future.

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schoen
It's kind of weird to think that it would be so reliable that it wouldn't even
need serious inspection before flying again!

But I guess other vehicles like cars and trucks are in that category (they
don't typically receive an in-depth safety inspection before and after each
trip), so maybe rockets can get there too...

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monkmartinez
I had an in-flight emergency (kind of) today while doing a cross country
flight with a friend who is a PPL. We lost the alternator and lucky for us the
weather was really good, sans high winds. That means we had no instruments and
no comms.... except the back up handheld radio and our cell phones. No harm,
no foul and we landed safely...

I say that to say this; I would hope they are just really fast at inspections.
There is a real reason to get them right. Failures happen, even to super
analog tech.

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toomuchtodo
I think its important to note that while you shoot for reusability, if the
vehicle fails where it can complete is primary objective (but not return to
pad), that's not a show stopper; SpaceX has an entire warehouse full of
returned cores now. For ICT, same deal. Hope for the best, but if your core
has a critical failure and must burn a bit longer to achieve orbit, thereby
losing boostback and sacrificing itself, you start rolling out the next core
to the pad as soon as telemetry tells you (if you're on the clock with
colonists waiting in orbit for fuel before breaking orbit).

This is not without precedent; a Falcon 9 core previously had a failure of an
engine in flight, and the vehicle recalculated the burn time on the fly to
continue on with the primary mission.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/10/that-smooth-
spacex-l...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/10/that-smooth-spacex-
launch-turns-out-one-of-the-engines-exploded/)

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gnode
Ultimately, it may be better to abort in such cases, and land with payload
(assuming there's enough propellant left to do so), or even discard the
payload. As re-usability becomes more commonplace, the cost of the first stage
booster will dwarf the cost per launch, and we'll probably see space launches
for increasingly lower value cargo.

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toomuchtodo
The dynamic loads of a fully loaded Falcon 9 preclude an abort once it's off
the pad; you are committed.

I'm not an aerospace engineer, but if one wants to comment, I'd be happy to be
corrected. It already requires ideal conditions for stages to separate
successfully.

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gnode
I realise this comment is now over a week old, but could you clarify what you
meant? I don't know the specifics of the Falcon 9, but the only tolerance
problem I see is in the strength of the landing legs, supporting the weight of
the payload when landed (any excess propellants can be burnt off). Obviously
you could make them bigger at the cost of lift mass.

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toomuchtodo
The weight distribution of a fully fueled and payload-carrying Falcon 9
prohibits it from attempting any sort of boostback burn back to the landing
pad if an abort is needed. It would tear the vehicle apart.

It would be similar to a a fully loaded semi truck trying to turn on a dime.

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mr_overalls
The obvious question: how much cheaper should this make it, per pound, to put
something in orbit?

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srssays
Not much, because SpaceX is currently the cheapest launch provider in its
category (except perhaps the Russians). And their capacity is maxed out. If
anything they should put the price _up_.

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zzalpha
I don't think that's the question.

You're speaking of what they charge.

I'm curious (and fwiw I'm not the OP, so I have no idea if they were asking
this... :) what it _costs_.

Put another way, I wonder what this does to their margins?

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Tuna-Fish
Depends on how many times they can re-use a core.

The upper limit comes from the fact that they are currently only reusing the
first stage, and that the first stage core is ~75% of the cost of a launch.

So, if they can use a core n times, they get a % discount:

    
    
        2 38%
        3 50%
        4 56%
        5 60%
       10 68%
    

They are planning on additional future reuse, the next portion is probably
recovering the fairings.

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robotresearcher
I wonder if a thrice-used rocket will prove to be less reliable than a brand-
new rocket due to fatigue, or more reliable than a brand-new rocket because
it's proven itself to not be a lemon.

This development is great. So much fun to watch.

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azernik
There will probably be a bathtub curve, like with pretty much every complex
system known to man.

