I think he said in the press conference that they weren't planning to reuse the core or boosters. (But then mentioned later they wanted some of the parts? IDK)
Correct, the engines were going to be retired anyway but they are keen to reuse the titanium grid fins on the boosters which cost a small fortune to make.
The core actually had older ablative grid fins made of aluminium so no great loss there[0].
Platinum is USD$32K per KG, so if the platinum grid fins are 100KG, then they would cost > $300K each just for materials. With 4 per booster that might be a million dollar price tag for the grid fins.
That would be $3200k for each, but they are made out of titanium, not platinum, and most of the cost is in the work, not material. I'd like to know the price too though.
ahh, I noticed that in the feed and was wondering why. I guess they expected it was the least likely to work? or needed the better grid fins less because of the cylindrical top
If I understood properly none of the boosters were block 5 so they weren't looking at re-flying them.
They are however interested in recovering the grid fins on the side boosters, which were redesigned to accommodate for the nose cones now sitting on top of them.
The latest hardware revision that's expected to be the mainstay for F9 flights going forward. Has better performance and addresses some reusability issues discovered in earlier blocks.
As far as I know, the center core was a block five one, but they didn't intend to refly it anyway, from what Elon said in the press conference. Maybe they intended to study it? If that's the case, there will probably be another "expandable" block five flight.
The plain is to lock down block 5's design so it can be man rated which in itself would make it more reliable. This will probably not happen until they fly them a few times though so that wouldn't mean the first block 5s would be more reliable.
To be perhaps slightly more accurate, it's like a major version 5.
Almost (if not) all missions include changes of some kind; the manufacturing blocks each have significant, incompatible differences in parts.
Upgrading the grid fins would be a minor version change, modifying the engine to increase its throttle depth a major one. I don't know, but it seems like there would need to be significant re-tooling for each new block, and many parts would be incompatible with previous blocks.
Even if they're not reusing any of it (this time), it's still very useful to examine and analyze how well it's held up.
Perhaps some piece of metal is showing more fatigue than they'd like to see, or a wire had damage to the insulation from a vibration. I'm sure that's the sort of thing they'll be looking at.
SpaceX has been keeping their launch prices pretty consistent, even when they couldn't know how many F9 stages they would actually recover. I think they've factored in testing losses into the price.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that advertised prices are still far above what they could achieve after flying for a while and paying down some of their R&D debt (and if/when the market becomes even a little bit competitive).
Almost inevitably. They don't need to hit rock-bottom prices because they're already there compared to the rest of the current market, and they can use the money to pay back their enormous R&D budget, or if Musk is just throwing that money off as a worthwhile loss then to pay for research on BFR and their other future projects.
After all if you can make a hefty profit while still undercutting the competition you're basically winning at capitalism.
The damage to the ASDS might be more of a problem. Depending on how badly it was damaged, it might not be available to catch other cores that could have landed otherwise
It look cool to have them land on their own, but wouldn't it be much cheaper to use parachutes and drop them in the ocean !? Either way they are going to take them apart down to each bolt and then reassemble again to make sure there are no faults. You don't simply fill it up and relaunch.
Yes, you do. Or at least, that's what they want to do. They've already reflown a bunch of their landed rockets, including the two boosters on Falcon Heavy. The ultimate goal is to be able to fill it up and relaunch, and the ultimate motivation for propulsive landing is simple - that's what is needed on Mars (parachutes won't do much there), so they want to master it.
EDIT: I meant that today, with Falcon Heavy Test Flight behind us, the two side boosters qualify as reflown - this was their second mission, not the third.
The left booster "originally launched on July 18, 2016 in support of the CRS-9 mission, and landed back at LZ-1". The right booster "originally launched on May 27, 2016 in support of the Thaicom 8 mission. Notably, it earned the nickname "Leaning Tower of Thaicom"; having developed a significant lean upon a hard first landing."
SpaceX goal with the Falcon 9 is to be able to land, simply check the core (the engine gets more complicated checkups), and to have it back on the launchpad within of a few days or weeks.
Arianespace (a major european launch company, known for the Ariane 5) has developed their own new engine concept for reusability, which is designed to be restarted unlimited times. Once Prometheus flies, they’ll not only have a reusable rocket comparable to the Falcon 9, but one that can fly, land, be refueled without checkup, and immediately fly again.
SpaceX also aims for that in the long run, but not in the Falcon 9 series itself.
Sounds like they are not that committed to the project and if it happens at all it will be a long way off. Will it be worth competing with both SpaceX and Blue Origin?
“We could replace Vulcain 2.1 by Prometheus,” Bonguet told SpaceNews. “Or Prometheus can be the first brick to build the next generation. We will see where we are in 2025 or 2030, and then decide on the right time whether to go one way or the other.”
There's no flight scheduled. They're developing a full-scale article to be ground-tested in 2020.
Prometheus or not, Ariane 6 is an expendable rocket in any form that currently or will soon exist. By the time they figure out the very basics of first-stage reusability on a launcher that is roughly equivalent to Falcon 9 FT, SpaceX will have BFR ... likely for quite a while.
At least their reusability plans are not a joke like ULA.
AFAIK, there's no major disassembly between flights. Certainly inspection and test firing, but nowhere near the meticulous detail and overhauls that the Space Shuttle went through after each flight. This is a completely different beast than what many observers' mental models are accustomed to.
A large part of the work SpaceX are trying to do is get it so that they can pretty much just give it a fairly simple inspection, fill it up and relaunch it. They already need far less work between launches than the space shuttle did.
