Nasa is floating the idea of having a Crewed EM-1 with a no earlier than date of late 2018. So it is more of a race than you would think.
SpaceX Launches, Landings and News
- Thread starter Shadows
- Start date
- Megathread
Nasa is floating the idea of having a Crewed EM-1 with a no earlier than date of late 2018. So it is more of a race than you would think.
Going to the moon confirmed to be the result of compensation issues.
Richardson
CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
- Location
- Yes
"We are go for Age of Reflight." Damn nerds.
And he said with a quiet, but authoritative voice:
"LET THERE BE ROCKET!"
And there was rocket sitting upon the barge.
And he said with a quiet, but authoritative voice:
"LET THERE BE ROCKET!"
And there was rocket sitting upon the barge.
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Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
One booster, twice used.
I may hate a lot of things about living in Florida, but the ability to watch these things go off with my own eyes is not one of them.
I may hate a lot of things about living in Florida, but the ability to watch these things go off with my own eyes is not one of them.
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Erinyes
Ready?
- Location
- Chattanooga, TN, USA
Now that is the beautiful sight of progress.One booster, twice used.
I may hate a lot of things about living in Florida, but the ability to watch these things go off with my own eyes is not one of them.
Richardson
CAN YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
- Location
- Yes
One booster, twice used.
I may hate a lot of things about living in Florida, but the ability to watch these things go off with my own eyes is not one of them.
I feel all warm and fuzzy knowing the time is coming when I can run away to mars.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
It's really not. Space tourism is a maybe, though. Space!
Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
Well, we'll see. Now that it's succeeded, maybe we'll finally get to find out some of the numbers on just how much refurbishment cost. That's the magical detail we need to know.
Reuse works. Huge progress. Exiting times.
According to this estimate, reusing a 1st stage 15 times, would result in a 40% price reduction, if all savings were to be passed on to the customer: SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9: What are the real cost savings for customers? - SpaceNews.com
Of course, SpaceX won't do that. They will milk the cow as much as possible to finance their other plans.
According to this estimate, reusing a 1st stage 15 times, would result in a 40% price reduction, if all savings were to be passed on to the customer: SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9: What are the real cost savings for customers? - SpaceNews.com
Of course, SpaceX won't do that. They will milk the cow as much as possible to finance their other plans.
Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
This is true. Until other companies can start reflying their own boosters, SpaceX really needn't drop its pricetag, so it should really start pulling in the cash now.
blast flame
How far will we go if it means lighting the way?
- Location
- Perth, Australia
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If nothing else they need the high prices to get back all the resources they've spent on developing this, for a while.
RRoan
Technogaianist
- Location
- 'round a far, distant star
Gotta keep those engineers busy.
Also, they recovered the fairings! That's a relatively small part of the price, but every bit counts.
Shotwell has talked about an ~30% price reduction for mature first stage reuse. That would bring it down to 40 million USD or so.
Twisted Mentat
Coding Kiwi
- Location
- Wellington, NZ
Great milestone.
But remember the Shuttle was reusable too. It just required what amounted to a rebuild every time. From memory SpaceX haven't said just how much they had to replace/rebuild for this launch.
Now an orbital relaunch and recovery in 24 hours. That would be a massive acheivement. As that 24 hours wouldn't give you time to do a full or even partial rebuild.
But remember the Shuttle was reusable too. It just required what amounted to a rebuild every time. From memory SpaceX haven't said just how much they had to replace/rebuild for this launch.
Now an orbital relaunch and recovery in 24 hours. That would be a massive acheivement. As that 24 hours wouldn't give you time to do a full or even partial rebuild.
RRoan
Technogaianist
- Location
- 'round a far, distant star
As per the post-flight press conference, major components like the structure and engines were retained, but anything minor that didn't look perfect was replaced since, you know, it's their first reflight. And supposedly it's designed for ten flights without significant refurbishment, although I suspect that applies to the reuse-optimized "final" version which is planned to start flying around the end of the year.
Depends upon what you mean be "relatively small" since the Falcon 9's fairings are quoted at costing several millions of dollars. Even if it's "only" three million that is still 5% of the price.
This stage IIRC required four months of work to get it fully operational. Of course part of that is simply due to the fact this was their very first go so they needed to be extra thorough. Now that they've got some experience with it SpaceX has their refurbishment time down to "six to eight weeks". They've also started work on a refurbishment complex at Port Canaveral which is expected to drop that timeline down even further to just "two to four weeks" although it's unclear if that is for the current Block 3 Falcon 9s or the Block 5 Falcon 9s coming out later this year which are designed, among other things, to optimize reusability.
Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
The fairings cost $6M, about 10% of launch costs, so recovering them is pretty cool. They also probably don't need nearly the same care as the booster, so you could probably just clean off any ice that formed, replace the explosive bolts, and stick it on a new rocket. If you can get 30% cost reduction from the booster and 8% or so from the fairing, that's pretty darn good. Now we just need recoverable upper stages.
I imagine Block 5 will be what actually attempts near-immediate reflight, so I think the best the current generation is going to get on average is a couple weeks.
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- Location
- UK
What happened to the Falcon 9 Block 4?
Well it doesn't exist but then again neither does block 3. It goes v1.0 to v1.1 to Full thrust to Block 5. The naming scheme is horrible and SpaceX should feel bad.
Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
Full Thrust is just the nickname of 1.2 on account of it having way more lifting power than 1.1. Block 5 is then just the nickname for 1.3, though exactly what "Block 5" means or is named for is anyone's guess. According to Musk's statements, the big things in need of refurbishment after launch are the landing fins (apparently they actually ignite during reentry), the heatshield, and the paint. The first will be solved later this year when they switch from aluminum fins to titanium ones. Given that I've heard that launch facilities often use ablative paint to shield them from the heat of a launch, I suspect the paint job on the Falcon 9 may help it resist reentry, but a dedicated heatshield is what it is and there's not really much you can do about it in terms of dropping the costs. That said, perhaps there will be something done with one or both of those concerns since Block 5 is all about reusability. Alternatively, maybe they'll add another landing leg or grid fin to give it redundancy, which would at least account for the "5" part of Block 5.
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Volt Cruelerz
Software Engineer Hoosier in Florida
- Location
- Florida
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No one is entirely sure what Block 4 will be. Current theory is that Block 4 has to do with a change to the octaweb. Up until now the octaweb has been welded together but future octawebs are going to be bolted together instead. The reasoning for this seems to be that the octaweb needs to be taken apart and slightly modified for the Falcon Heavy and since SpaceX wants to use reused Falcon 9 first stages on the Falcon Heavy, first flight will have both side cores being reused Falcon 9 first stages, it makes sense to make it so they don't have to cutup the octawebs to convert them to Falcon Heavy.
As I understand it SpaceX has always used the Block X naming sequence in house. It's just they've been throwing out cool sounding names like Falcon 9, Falcon 9 1.1, and Falcon 9 Full Thrust to the public because of PR reasons.
That said there is this great chart of how terrible their naming sense is.
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RRoan
Technogaianist
- Location
- 'round a far, distant star
It hasn't flown yet.
No, blocks 1-4 do exist and block 3 is what's flying now. That's the scheme used internally. Everything else is apparently Elon being Elon.
My guess is that the original Falcon 9 is Block 1 (and I'm pretty sure the original payload user's guide even referred to it as such), V1.1 is Block 2, and Full Thrust is Block 3.