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http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/28/15071288/spacex-launch-recycled-falcon-9-rocket-landing-schedule
On Thursday, SpaceX is set to launch yet another satellite into orbit from the Florida coast — but this mission will be far from routine for the company. The Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX is using for the launch has already flown before. Around the same time last year, it sent cargo to the International Space Station for NASA, and then came back to Earth to land upright on a floating drone ship at sea. This is the first time that SpaceX will attempt to reuse one of its rockets.
[...] In truth, only part of the Falcon 9 is being reused on this upcoming mission. After each launch, SpaceX tries to save just the first stage of its vehicles. That's the 14-story-tall main body of the Falcon 9 that contains the primary engines and most of the fuel.
[...] Not only is this Falcon 9 rocket launching for a second time, but it's landing again, too. The first stage will attempt another drone ship landing in the Atlantic Ocean after takeoff, meaning this particular vehicle could see even more flight time in the future. It's still unclear just how many times a single first stage of a Falcon 9 can be used again. In the past, Musk has boasted that parts of the Falcon 9 could be reused up to 100 times, but he expects 10 to 20 reuses out of a single vehicle.
[...] It's not known just how much launching a used rocket saves the company, but SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell estimated that customers could see a price reduction of about 30 percent for launches that use landed rockets. (In October, however, she told Space News that SpaceX is only offering 10 percent discounts for the time being.) That means the Falcon 9, which starts at a little more than $60 million, could eventually go for $40 million if it's a reused vehicle.
[...] SpaceX performed a successful static fire test of the Falcon 9 engines on Monday, and right now, takeoff of SES-10 is scheduled for 6PM ET [2200 UTC] on Thursday from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. There's a two-and-a-half-hour launch window, so the Falcon 9 can conceivably take off anytime until 8:30PM ET [0030 UTC]. So far there's a 70 percent chance that weather conditions will be favorable, according [to] Patrick Air Force Base.
The Verge story says it will be updated 20 minutes before the scheduled launch to provide a live-stream of the launch.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:06PM (7 children)
The real story of why its happening today is products like this link
http://www.geomagic.com/en/products-landing-pages/inspection [geomagic.com]
Not a soylentvertisement although I worked at a industrial plant once that had a taster arm that would touch heavy mining industry components all over to verify specs. They called it a taster arm because it was like a freaky mechanical snake that sticks its weightless tongue out all over some giant mechanical gear or whatever and compared it to the CAD specs.
The reason why people didn't reuse stuff in the 60s or why the SSME reuse in the 80s was an unprofitable gimmick is even pure copper doesn't transmit heat fast enough for something like a Saturn 5 engine, so every time it cycles thru room temp to white hot, the hot side permanently stretches and deforms and stresses the metal and that builds up and in a couple cycles, where a couple could be as few as one, the metal cracks and that engine is down.
In the 60s it was cheaper labor and materials wise to build another especially if life is on the line rather than spend as long inspecting the machine, but if you're just tossing cargo up there and you have a magic measuring arm that can measure stuff for weeks 24x7 and can measure deformation, you can re-launch until something gets out of spec. Or just replace / rework the out of spec part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:34PM (4 children)
Is there any reason I should not view that as wild speculation?
I don't know exactly what SpaceX is doing but what I do know is that it certainly doesn't begin and end with a better QA tool. Boeing, with all the resources in the world, tried and failed to do what SpaceX is going to be doing and were literally calling it impossible before later changing that to 'economically infeasible.' I would definitely be interested in learning much more about their structural systems, but I'm having trouble seeing better diagnostics playing more than a tertiary role here.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:14PM (1 child)
Boeing was calling reuse impossible because it is more profitable to throw away the rocket and sell a new one to the customer.
SpaceX seems to think it is profitable enough to sell inexpensive launches, and eventually on re-used rockets, and make money enough to finance some of its other ambitions and ongoing development.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:42PM
You're conflating their statements. They were stating it was literally impossible. 'Economically infeasible' was a take-the-crow-out-of-mouth rephrasing. Even the name of the Dragon rocket is a reference to this. It's named after Puff the Magic Dragon as a bit of a jab at the many people who were stating the whole idea impossible. Initially the proclamations against the project were even organized as ad hominem framing him as naive and inexperienced and so therefore unfit to be able to state anything (even if clearly it was scientifically and logically justified).
And it being more profitable to throw away rockets doesn't even make any sense. For rockets fuel, relative to the cost of the entire rocket, is free. You're talking a couple of hundred thousand dollars for rockets that cost tens of millions of dollars. The vast majority of the cost in any rocket is the rocket itself. Get reuse down and your margin skyrockets. On the other hand if you're stating that Boeing was intentionally keeping their costs high to justify a larger cut in their no-contest cost+ government contracts, then yes - I'd tend to agree with you. But I think that nuance would be lost on most people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)
Just dug up this [aviationweek.com] quote from Shotwell a couple of years back. Even back then the engines were designed and rated for 40 contiguous cycles. Like the article says that doesn't necessarily mean the entire first stage is, but in any case I think it's safe to say that while better QA technology plays some role - it's definitely not their 'secret sauce.'
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:20PM
I think it's safe to say that while better QA technology plays some role - it's definitely not their 'secret sauce.'
Fair enough. I'd phrase it as necessary but not sufficient.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:25PM
If critical parts of the engine fail after one firing then it's probably a bad engine. You should be able to static fire the thing, check it out, then stack and launch it. My guess is alloys and composites have advanced a lot since the 60's. There's carbon fiber in use too because that is what partially caused the explosion last fall. Even if some parts are completely unusable after one firing then those parts can be made more replacable. Ablative rocket parts, lol
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @01:48AM
The SSME had major design issues that had nothing to do with reusability. Read some of Richard Feynman's articles on the subject, particularly the different design philosophies used in NASA (top-down SSME vs the bottom-up software) and the resulting quality. They can claim they designed for 55 reuses, or a million, but it doesn't mean they came close to achieving even one. That they eventually got them to be reliable for a single flight doesn't really mean that much comparatively (in other words, the SSME reuse hit about the same success as many of the other Shuttle design goals, like number of launches per year and price per pound).