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by InTheArena
2880 days ago
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The first stage represents about 75% of the cost of the vehicle, not 50%. This represents the actual cost of the metal on the launchpad, but not the services around the rocket, including launch control costs, etc. You can't take a rocket to India and you can't manufacturer that rocket in India (Skilset, US based corporation, ITAR) so you can't achieve your savings that way. Even Russia - which is using a very old tried and true rocket design - can't match prices at this point. In addition, the budget cuts in Russia have resulted in a massive reduction in reliability, which has blown up their insurance cost recently. In terms of second stage re-usability, they are looking at that for FalconX, and it's designed in at the start for BFR. Landing something from a second stage is as difficult comparatively vis-a-vis landing the first stage, as landing the first stage was compared to the suborbital hops that Blue Origin is doing. The latest SpaceX idea (judging by Elon's tweets) appear to be some sort of Ballute based approach. The first stage re-use should be good for 10 flights without a overhaul, with a complete tear-down on flight 10. |
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Out of curiosity -- can they _fly_ a rocket to India (maybe have a booster return to India instead of a drone ship ? Too far/out of the way ?
That may not help much since stage 2 would still have to be shipped around, which is probably not cost effective, and there might be other regulations that make it infeasible to launch anywhere but in the USA.