Well, if it fails, companies can always call UberSpace for a cheap deal :-)
What went up, Musk come down again: SpaceX to blast sat into orbit with used rocket
March is going to be a crunch month for SpaceX: it hopes to, for the first time ever, launch a commercial satellite into orbit using a previously used rocket. One of the Falcon 9 boosters Elon Musk's upstart has successfully blasted off and landed has been extensively refurbished for the mission. SpaceX's president Gwynne …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 9th March 2017 21:47 GMT Vulch
Next flight but one
SpaceX has a Falcon 9 due to launch on Sunday, it's due for its static fire tonight after two postponements. Recycle the pad and SES-10 is up next. There's a ULA launch due, currently targetting the 14th, and if that slips again (should have launched last week) then it may affect the SES-10 launch.
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Thursday 9th March 2017 23:06 GMT The Man Who Fell To Earth
Re: Don't call it "re-used"
Hmmm... "pre-owned" does not cut it either, as the previous launch customer only borrowed a ride.
"Ubered" would only make sense if SpaceX screwed both launch crew & the customer, skimmed the cash flow & did fake ghost launches whenever they thought NASA was looking.
"Second hand" sounds too low class, like someone's cast off.
"Pre-tested" might work, as it sounds like a feature.
"Pre-exersized" sounds kind of classy, so maybe they should call it that.
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Friday 10th March 2017 01:26 GMT Jon 37
Re: Don't call it "re-used"
"has never been done before"...
... except for the space shuttle boosters, and the shuttle itself. And Blue Origin, if you want to count suborbital hops.
The question is: Will it actually be cheaper? The shuttle itself cost a fortune to refurbish between launches, which was one of the things that made the shuttle uneconomical. We won't know whether SpaceX can refurbish cheaply until there have been a few launches with reused rockets and we can see what they're charging. The refurbishment cost will also probably go down over time, as they learn what systems don't need refurbishing every launch.
They said the first one that came back was going to get torn apart and examined and tested to destruction; one of the later ones has had a refurb, probably a fairly major one, and is about to fly again. Musk's stated goal is just to refuel them, time will tell if he can pull it off. I wish him all the best - it will be great if he can.
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Friday 10th March 2017 09:14 GMT Graham Dawson
Re: Don't call it "re-used"
The shuttle had unanticipated costs. The entire vehicle had to be refurbished, which included removing the engines and shipping them to a separate facility to be completely rebuilt.
A great deal of the cost was in replacing the heatshield tiling, which was an extremely time consuming process. It had been originally planned that the shield would be made from generic tiles over most of its surface, but they ended up having to construct custom-shaped files for nearly the entire shield, which massively inflated the costs there as well.
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Friday 10th March 2017 12:40 GMT Brangdon
Re: has never been done before
If you're counting Blue Origin's suborbital hops, then you should also count SpaceX's Grasshopper.
Refurbishment costs should go down as Block 5 comes into play. Block 5 is supposed to incorporate lessons learned from studying the boosters they landed successfully. They are currently on Block 3 or 4, and they've said they won't bother reusing them many times.
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Saturday 11th March 2017 15:31 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Don't call it "re-used"
No, suborbital doesn't count - not that any of the mentioned units are suborbital. They're sounding rockets.
Sounding rockets go straight up and straight down again, without being subjected to the kinds of stresses that going sideways at high speed result in (most notably: Atmospheric friction and being able to either return to base or to a downrange landing spot - neither of which are issues for sounding rockets)
"The shuttle itself cost a fortune to refurbish between launches, which was one of the things that made the shuttle uneconomical."
You're understating the costs by a long shot.
Shuttle cost so much to refurbish that it would have been wildly cheaper to build new launchers each time, but it was only intended to be used for missions bringing heavy shit back down and was only designed to be economic for those missions.
The SRBs would have been much cheaper to fabricate as right-sized expensables somewhere along the Gulf coast and barged to the cape, rather than being size-limited by railway tunnels from Utah, but that was a pork job and only one of many on the project.
After the early cancellation of the US space station, it was a platform flailing about in search of a mission (the mission being ISS) and the airframe life was used up in flagwaving exercises keeping a manned mission alive, to the point where it ended up being wrecked before its useful mission was accomplished.
As a result "we" no longer have any easy way of bringing big bits back down from LEO, which poses a serious problem when things like Hubble are large enough to come down substantially intact and uncontrollable. Skylab was bad enough. The ideal compromise solution would be applying a linear shaped charge to blow the tube open when it starts entering the atmosphere but I can't see that being acceptable either.
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Saturday 18th March 2017 01:04 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Don't call it "re-used"
The first stage of the Falcon 9 is sub-orbital. Past a certain point (~1km, maybe less) it doesn't matter how much higher a recoverable rocket goes. If it gets to terminal velocity on the way down, that's as fast as it's going to be going and that's what has to be slowed down and landed.
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Friday 24th March 2017 08:58 GMT Brangdon
Re: The first stage of the Falcon 9 is sub-orbital.
Actually even the first stage Falcon 9 is capable of getting to orbit on its own, albeit without a payload. It goes a lot faster than its terminal velocity. Blue Origin's New Shepherd is doing a much less difficult job generally. It is less close to performance limits and as a result can be made much heavier and so stronger. It's more comparable to SpaceX own Grasshopper rockets than Falcon 9. Grasshopper was reused multiple times, albeit only flying a few 100 metres up and down.
Blue Origin's next rocket, New Glenn, will be interesting. It will be orbital. They say it will be a scaled up New Shepherd and everything they learned on one will transfer to the other. I'm not so sure. I think they'll find they are hitting new problems for the first time, problems that Falcon 9 has needed to solve.
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Friday 10th March 2017 17:16 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Don't call it "re-used"
"All joking aside this really is a step change in rocket re-use which has never been done before."
Whoops, Blue Origin reused New Sheppard 5 times. Masten Space Systems has been reusing their landers over 100 times. Armadillo Aerospace. Reasonable Rocket, NASA DCX…….. Elon isn't doing anything new, he's just the Walmart of rockets.
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Friday 10th March 2017 13:22 GMT SkippyBing
Re: First ? Erm ...
'Err simple a Shuttle SRB is a steel tube, dropped into the ocean by parachute.
They hose it out replace the nozzle and refill the segments. Solid motors are simple and brutal, once started you don't stop them let alone restart and to land them.'
I believe that was the original idea, however as someone decided the SRBs should be made in Utah it became slightly more complicated. Rather than being a single piece tube it had to be constructed from multiple sections that were shipped from Utah to Florida and then stacked on top of each other, with O-rings to seal the joints. There was no obvious way at the time to ship the boosters in one piece. Consequently to reuse them they had to un-stack them, clean them up, replace the O-rings (while wondering exactly what was going on to damage them like that), refill them with propellant, ship them back to Florida.
I do kind of wonder what the saving was over just building new ones each time.
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Friday 10th March 2017 23:14 GMT far2much4me
Re: First ? Erm ...
Back in the 80's, I toured a machining facility that did a lot of work for NASA and JPL. One of their special contracts was re-machining the solid booster segments. After each launch and recover, the segments were broken down and cleaned. Then the top an bottom where the O-rings were fitted were re-machined to fit properly. Apparently the heat from the solid fuel caused enough warping to require this. If SpaceX can relaunch without having to replace/repair/refurbish half the components they are way ahead of where the shuttle was in reuse.
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Friday 10th March 2017 10:49 GMT AIBailey
Re: First ? Erm ...
"it hopes to, for the first time ever, launch a commercial satellite into orbit using a previously used rocket."
Didn't the Space Shuttle used pre-loved rocket boosters, making this statement incorrect ?
The SRB's in the shuttle were essentially huuuuge fireworks with no control over throttling (other than the shape of the solid fuel - it had a star-shaped cross section, and was designed so that the surface area changed during the burn to adjust the amount of thrust produced), however a rocket engine has thousands of separate parts, and can control the thrust. Whilst SpaceX's rocket engines are in principle similar to the shuttle main engines (if you squint a bit), the shuttle was a very different beast to a rocket, and so the original statement is true.
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Friday 10th March 2017 01:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
We keep seeing stories like "$100 million satellite blown up on pad !"
Okay, that would be what they spent to build that satellite.
But how much does it really cost to rebuild an exact copy of a satellite you have already built once ?
What is the real cost of the loss ?
It's almost as if journalists don't give a pooh.
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Friday 10th March 2017 14:38 GMT John Smith 19
"But how much does it really cost to rebuild an exact copy of a satellite "
That's actually a pretty good question.
In production engineering the term "learning curve" actually means what's the cost to double production. In combat aircraft (in WWII where this stuff started to be studied) it was about a 15% reduction per doubling. With more aircraft made in large single pieces in more automated ways it's less effective. However satellites remain highly labor intensive.
NASA had a classic case of this. IIRC the Voyagers were going to be a single probe but for various reasons they ended up building two. The second was significantly cheaper.
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Friday 10th March 2017 17:31 GMT MachDiamond
"But how much does it really cost to rebuild an exact copy of a satellite you have already built once ?
What is the real cost of the loss ?"
Most Satellites are hand built one-off pieces of machinery so making another isn't much cheaper than the first. They are also a very low quantity item so companies that build them charge all the market will bear.
The real cost of losing a satellite is massive. The operating company was planning on using or leasing capability that suddenly evaporates and they will have to wait years more to loft another bird if the company can survive the loss. A competitor may get their satellite up ahead of the replacement and take a major portion of the business that the first company planned on. The first company may have contracts with penalty clauses with customers. Just getting the cost of the destroyed satellite back might not be enough.
With 2 accidents in the last two years, insurance companies might have raised their rates to insure satellites on SpaceX rockets.
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Saturday 11th March 2017 08:28 GMT bazza
@MachDiamond,
Dunno why that attracted a down vote, all looked pretty reasonable to me. Must be some Musk groupies hanging around...
Replacement cost can, depending on circumstances, vary a little. If it's the first of a series of identical satellites then it's not necessarily a linear increase in cost to build one more. It can cost more if it means bumping another customer from the production line! Or if the line's order book is looking thin a deal can no doubt be arranged. They are saving on the payload design costs, which is a pretty large part of the cost sometime. The time delay can be pretty bad; some of the major rad hard electronic components are quite often hand made, not the kind of thing kept in stock just in case.
Similarly if the satellite is replacing an older one already in service then the loss of business can be small; the flight ops guys looking after the old one in orbit just start looking at the fuel gauges nervously. There's strategies they can employ; for a geo they can let the elevation position start drifting, saves a bit of position keeping fuel. It's only when they haven't the fuel to maintain azimuth do they start getting moaned at by the ITU and other operators and have to use what's remains to boost it to a parking orbit and switch it off. I think Eutelsat came close to having to do this with one of their birds after they failed twice to replace it.
But if it's a brand new service then yes, the loss of business can be crippling expensive. That's what so upset SpaceX's launch customer last autumn.
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Saturday 18th March 2017 01:12 GMT MachDiamond
@bazza, Yep. If the payload was one (or a fleet segment) of a constellation of identical satellites, building another copy isn't as big of a deal. They can snag one reserved for a future launch to fill in a hole. If an operator is putting up a replacement and the old copy has been on station for a decade, the new one is likely to be different. The old one in orbit might not have 2 more years left in it if that's the delay to get a replacement remade and launched.
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Saturday 11th March 2017 15:49 GMT Alan Brown
"I would have thought they'd try a test launch without a payload just to prove the engineering"
NOBODY does a test launch to orbit without a payload. You might give a free relaunch if it fails but the costs are too high to wear otherwise,
Besides. You need the mass up top to prove the system.
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Saturday 11th March 2017 00:16 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: But as always the real question is not how clever is it.
"Some say without a major cut in price per Kg Mars won't happen either."
As I think has been mentioned further up, Musks end-game is to launch, land, refuel, launch. If that works out, something in the direction of a 90% saving or at least something north of 50% anyway, should be achievable.
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Friday 10th March 2017 15:39 GMT Tempest8008
Collection of low cost cube-sats instead
Doesn't it make more sense for SpaceX to try a launch with a previously used rocket and have a cheaper, more disposable payload?
A bunch of school cubesats, for example.
They eat the cost of the launch, but now you have PROOF that your PL (previously launched) rockets work, and you can start hauling in multiple requests at the lower price.
You end up with quantity making up the money, and if something DOES go wrong your customer isn't out millions for a destroyed satellite.
And in the meantime they get to look like the good guys, providing a free launch for academia.
(I'm assuming the reason they didn't do this is due to an accountant somewhere)
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Friday 10th March 2017 16:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Collection of low cost cube-sats instead
I would agree, and like the idea of cubesats etc that are cheap enough to bring the technology within reach of far more research - except for the space debris issue ... Maybe each launch could also take a large Hoover, bring some junk back when it lands ;)
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Monday 13th March 2017 11:44 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Collection of low cost cube-sats instead
"Maybe each launch could also take a large Hoover, bring some junk back when it lands"
[Not high enough, not fast enough] to be worth a damn - the first stage is in a ballistic trajectory (and not even an intercontinental one). Anything that's at the levels it reaches will be out of orbit in a matter of days anyway.
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Saturday 18th March 2017 01:17 GMT MachDiamond
Re: Collection of low cost cube-sats instead
Cubesats go up as a secondary payload where the primary payload is paying nearly all of the launch bill. 100 cubesats launched on a $50m rocket makes the launch cost $500,000ea. That's a tidy sum of money for a high school or college group to find funding for and 100 cubesats is a lot to flush out on one launch.
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Friday 10th March 2017 16:52 GMT Msitekkie
Minimal Refurbishment - According to Elon
I'm interested as to where that quote of "extensive refurbishment" came from. I believe Elon Musk said that minimal refurbishment was required, so has that changed? From what he has said in the past I believe Elon would regard that as a failure if true.
Here's one relevant quote I found today:
SpaceX engineers transported the flown rocket stage from its landing zone at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station a few miles north to the Falcon 9’s Complex 40 launch pad for a brief engine firing in January, less than a month after its Dec. 21 flight for Orbcomm.
“Getting that stage back and taking a look at it, it was extraordinary how great it looked,” Shotwell said. “In fact, we didn’t refurbish it at all. We took a look at it and we inspected it (before moving it to the launch pad).”
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Thursday 16th March 2017 09:40 GMT A K Stiles
Re: Launch delayed...
And now successful. Still amazed by the fact we can do stuff like this, and get the pictures of it effectively in real-time. Beers or whatever their preferences are all round. I'll even let them off for the presenter's "super-awesome" description of launching a first stage the old fashioned way, sans-recovery.
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