All doubts addressed ? No, but it's a big, impressive step in the right direction.
Famously, Nasa's space shuttle system was partially re-usable. Its white solid-fuel strap-on boosters, for example, would parachute into the Atlantic after each launch. The casings of these boosters were then refurbished and re-used numerous times.
And yet the complexities of servicing the shuttle system after every flight swamped any savings. SpaceX hopes its simpler Falcon 9 rocket can finally deliver a practical commercial solution. It believes its technology will eventually permit rapid turnaround, with boosters flying perhaps 10 times before being retired; maybe even up to 100 times with a certain level of refurbishment.
"With this being the first re-light we were incredibly paranoid about everything," Mr Musk said. "The core airframe remained the same, the engines remained the same - but any auxiliary components that we thought might be slightly questionable, we changed out. Now our aspiration will be zero hardware changes, re-flight in 24 hours - the only thing that changes is that we reload propellant."
Word on the street is that this launch saved about 30% of the normal cost. Which is nice, but hardly a game-changer. If and only if it gets the cost down to the level of something close to just refuelling and basic maintenance - say, $1 million per launch instead of ~$50 million per launch - will it have a serious impact. And that still won't be enough to open up space for the likes of you or I, but it might get us to the level where we can talk about a serious space industry in the same way we use that term on the ground. There's a long way to go before we get there.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39451401
Agreed. It's certainly a bottle of champaign grade success, but it's not fireworks and dancing in the street just yet. Well, maybe some fireworks
ReplyDeleteMy hopes are with en.m.wikipedia.org - Skylon (spacecraft) - Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteA reduction of flight costs from 50 to 1 million means a 98% reduction in costs... is that even reasonable?
ReplyDeleteAbsolute cost is not a good measure; we must take into account that the F9 takes 22.8 tons into LEO and the F9H, which is only 50% more expensive, puts 54 tons into LEO!
Matter Beam In principle yes, a 98% reduction is reasonable since the fuel cost is only something like $200,000. The lower limit on the maintenance cost is harder to estimate.
ReplyDeleteI agree that cost per unit mass is a much better measure, however, the absolute cost is currently so high that they're somewhat equivalent. If it's $5,000 per kilo or $7,000 per kilo, well, who's counting ? At least, it's such a crazy number that it means any kind of large space infrastructure is basically impossible. Order of magnitude improvements are needed, not "SALE NOW ON ! 30% OFF WITH FIRST PURCHASE !" offers.
30% of the normal cost may not be a game changer, but it is more than enough to give all of SpaceX's competitors brown trousers.
ReplyDeleteThey will have to develop their own reusables, or face bankruptcy.
Which means the state of the art of resusables will advance as the various companies compete to drive costs down.
Which will mean eventually we shall see $1 million per launch.
Winchell Chung Good point, it will certainly drive competition. I seem to recall reading somewhere that ESA's designers believe they can be competitive without re-usability. However, since SpaceX have embarked on the re-usability path, that will still encourage them to take it to extremes, and it's tough to imagine a non-reusable rocket ever being able to approach the theoretical cost limits of a reusable one.
ReplyDeleteI like to think of SpaceX's current rockets as technology demonstrators. Once they've bedded in the ideas behind re-usable, I'd be very surprised if there weren't enough "lessons learned" to warrant a complete redesign, which then would be much cheaper.
ReplyDeleteThat's still a way off. This is their first full refurb. So, they'll have the first set of lessons back from that. And that could feed back to how to better build engines, and so on for faster, cheaper maintenance.
But, as Rhys Taylor says in the post, the space shuttle was partly re-usable, yet much more expensive than sending things to orbit with disposables. So, it's hard to say if the end result will be better or worse than the current breed of expendable launchers. I'd love them to be. I think it's been a rocketry dream since rockets first lifted off. But that's exactly what makes me suspicious of my own optimism.