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.
Related Stories
Ars Technica reports SpaceX launches, and lands its "flight proven" rocket:
SpaceX did it. Its flown booster launched on Thursday evening from Florida, delivered its payload into orbit, and then returned safely to Earth by landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. During a brief interview on the SpaceX webcast, company founder Elon Musk was almost at a loss for words. "It's been 15 years to get to this point," he said. "It's taken us a long time. A lot of difficult steps along the way."
Ars will have a comprehensive, new story posted later tonight.
Cnet reports SpaceX launches recycled rocket in historic first:
A few minutes after sending the Dragon on its way April 8, [2016] the rocket successfully landed on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the first such Falcon 9 landing attempt that didn't end in a spectacular explosion. Clearly, this rocket had to be the one.
The rocket was recovered, reconditioned and reloaded for its second launch, which happened at 3:27 p.m. PT Thursday.
Roughly ten minutes later the Falcon 9 made its second visit to "Of Course I Still Love You" of the coast of Florida, landing right in the center of the landing pad bullseye.
"This is going to be ultimately a huge revolution in spaceflight," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said immediately after the landing. "It's the difference between if you had airplanes where you threw away an airplane after every flight versus you could reuse them multiple times."
Way to go SpaceX! I have watched rocket launches from way back in the Mercury, Gemini, and Saturn days, as well as many Shuttle launches. That we have finally reached a point where we can successfully vertically land then re-use rocket boosters kindles a feeling of amazement and awe in me that I struggle to put into words! This certainly adds credence to Elon Musk's plans to reduce the cost of commercial space launches and bodes well for his Mars ambitions, as well!
[Updated: 00:55 UTC] Launch and landing are available on YouTube: SES-10 Hosted Webcast and SES-10 Technical Webcast.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:04PM
www.spacex.com/webcast [spacex.com]
(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).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:13PM (6 children)
This event is huge for SpaceX and for space in general. It's the culmination of what they've been working on for 14 years! It's also exactly what the old dinosaurs of the industry, Boeing and company, were saying was impossible. And then later changed to economically infeasible once SpaceX showed it was very much possible. SpaceX's ultimate goal is Mars. Humans on Mars and ships moving in between regularly. This step, successful reuse, is absolutely critical. For anybody who missed their reveal of the ITS, or Interplanetary Transport System, it's really start to go from rocket to what I think we can finally start calling 'space ships.' The problem is that as the scope and scale of space projects increase exponentially so too does the cost. These things are simply not possible to operate when you're just throwing away the rockets after each launch. And for that matter, it'd be one way trips only which is more of a propelled catapult than a transport ship.
Anyhow, cutting to the chase. If 747s were thrown away after each flight you'd be paying a million bucks a ticket. Instead you pay $50. If this succeeds can you imagine where we'll be, as far as space technology goes, a decade from today? This is historic. Oh and if it for some reason goes awry everybody will be quick to blame the reuse aspect and it will hamstring the entire vision before it even gets going. Yeah maybe just a little bit of pressure here...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:39PM (2 children)
Something tells me it'll blow up. And there will be much wringing of hands and "see I told you so"s.
But I'd like to be cautiously optimistic. Everybody said that landing a rocket was insane. So they tried to land a rocket, and it crashed. So they tried to land another rocket, and it crashed. So they tried to land a 3rd rocket, and it crashed, fell over, and sank into a swamp. Well, ok, just two of those.
Everybody said that reusing a rocket was insane. So they tried to reuse a rocket, and it blew up....
But the FOURTH rocket! Aye, lad!
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @08:01AM (1 child)
Something tells me it'll blow up.
So what? So did the first several attempts at landing the rocket. Nobody gets *anything* perfect on the first attempt. Learning requires trying, and in rocketry, learning tends to involve things going BOOOOM.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @03:54AM
Looks like I was wrong. :)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:48PM (2 children)
The big question is how Musk will get the next 10x cost reduction?
10x - already accomplished?
100x = Mars
SLS = Senate Lunch System :p
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:26PM (1 child)
I think they have done a factor of 3x [npr.org] at best, not 10x, and that they don't need to get to 100x to make Mars attractive. $100/lb would be about a factor of 30x.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:36PM
But where will they make the next efficiency leap in cost per weight?
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:26PM
Obviously we aren't reducing the amount of space launches anytime soon, so reusing is the perfect step in the right direction. I'm guessing even when the rocket ends up with damaged parts they are recycling the components that have failed. I can't imagine they just thrown them in the ocean like all prior rocket launches have done.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29 2017, @05:56PM (11 children)
Trump will direct NASA to redesign its rockets, and have all its suppliers redesign all their rockets to use coal.
Effective April 1, 2017.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:07PM (4 children)
Works for aircraft
http://www.flysteam.co.uk/ [flysteam.co.uk]
Historically there were low performance steam aircraft.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:16PM (3 children)
If coal can work for rockets, that will be welcome news to the coal miners. Especially since big utilities are spreading fake news that coal is not the future of power generation.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:30PM (2 children)
You can get cheaty and turn coal into methanol in the Winkler process. I'm too lazy to look up if its the same Winkler who implemented the famous dissolved oxygen test using manganese. It was about the same era. Suppose it doesn't matter anyway.
Given all the cool stuff you can do with petrochemicals and impure coals it seems a waste to burn the stuff.
The natgas market is in a huge frac bubble where it hasn't quite trickled down from the geologists to the electrical plant operators yet that decline rates in the real world are a wee bit steeper than decline rates reported by marketing droids. We're headed for a hell of a squeeze in the natgas market in the next couple years, say, before 2025 at latest, probably before 2020. No, not next week.
BS stacked on BS all the way down and bad money thrown away after good money can make cheap natgas for a little while. But not forever....
Those natgas peaking plants are going to have nothing to burn soon enough.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:45PM (1 child)
What you say about natural gas is interesting. I didn't expect what you say to happen quite that soon.
As for coal, it probably has some place in the total energy picture. There are existing coal burning generation plants after all. But coal is not the long term future. Even with coal for peak demand, green energy should be the big focus. And solar already employs more people than coal.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 29 2017, @09:31PM
Coal doesn't do peak demand very well. Thats a baseload technology like nuclear. They do best cranked up to 100% and left alone until the next maint interval.
In some parts (most?) of the USA "gas" means natgas methane but my understanding in jolly old england before the north sea (and after, now that its in decline) gas used to mean coal gas where steam plus coal equals craptons of carbon monoxide. Thats the whole stick your head in an unlit kitchen oven kills you gag which makes no sense in the USA but if you have towngas or cokegas or coalgas the carbon monoxide is quite fatal.
Anyway. My gut level guess is coal gets stockpiled into gassifier facilities that run natgas peaking plants and legacy natgas furnaces and stuff.
You can do cool chemistry with carbon. I think we'll continue mining it for some time. Just not so much to burn and make steam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:26PM (4 children)
Surprisingly it's looking like Trump is on board with the space push. This [space.com] video could possibly be lipservice, but space enthusiasts are not exactly key demographic #1. That along with pushing to turn the SLS, AKA Space Shuttle 2.0, into an actual space system instead of a billion dollar do-nothing jobs program gained him a lot of good will from me. And thought he cut earth sciences all of that money went right back into NASA resulting in a substantial boost for their space facing divisions. The CO2 gamble is not smart, but that's another topic...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:36PM (2 children)
NASA has already been shifting towards greater cooperation with private industry:
NASA to Focus on Small Satellites [soylentnews.org]
NASA handing out money for cargo and passenger flights to the ISS is pretty straightforward. Cooperation on satellites for asteroid mining is a bit sketchier because that industry doesn't exist yet (maybe they can make some money on the side with imaging services). Bigelow has a plan to put inflatable habitats on space stations or even the Moon.
What has Trump changed about the SLS, other than altering mission priorities for its use (like affirming a trip to Mars or dropping an asteroid visitation mission)? Has Trump ordered engineering changes that will turn it into "an actual space system"? Because SLS testing is underway and it seems too late to do that.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:25PM (1 child)
What has Trump changed about the SLS...
First, some context. The SLS began development in 2010. The first launch, an unmanned lunar flyby, was scheduled for 2018. Let's put these numbers in context. JFK's famous space speech was in 1962 when our space technology was at a near zero level. 7 years later, 1969, the first man stepped foot on the moon. In 8 years the SLS couldn't manage, even with complete knowledge and generous contracts, what we we did in 7 years 45 years ago.
The reason it was a big deal when Trump "inquired" into NASA's ability to change the unmanned flyby into a manned flyby is because of implication. He's been working on trimming a lot of fat and the big beneficiaries of the SLS have already been target of his cuts prior. He's also publicly shamed the companies which is enough to shake their prices even without major action. That "inquiry" is not a coincidence. It's an offer they cannot refuse and the reason it was big news. If Boeing/Lockheed can't actually deliver the goods - expect to see the SLS program cut.
The above is already perfectly reasonable, but there's something that makes it all doubly clear that this is the situation. SpaceX will be sending two space adventurers in a manned flyby of the moon next year - having built up their entire project on a relative hand-to-mouth (or rocket at least) budget. That will make a complete mockery out of the SLS. I would also speculate that Trump and certainly NASA were likely aware, at least in broad terms, of SpaceX's plan there even though it had not yet been publicly announced. If implicitly threatening to cut the umbilical is what it's going to take to get ULA (the unholy anticompetitive merger of Boeing and Lockheed developing the SLS) to start actually putting out results, then I'm happy to see it happen.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:39PM
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about NASA's unmanned/manned flyby of the Moon with SLS/Orion.
There's reasons to be skeptical of SpaceX's manned flyby plan. They have yet to launch a manned mission, to the ISS for example, and they have not launched the Falcon Heavy (scheduled for Summer 2017). I think they can still do it and do all of these things way faster than the existing players, but if somebody dies in the attempt it will look really bad for the company. Heck, another exploding unmanned rocket will look really bad for the company.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 29 2017, @07:40PM
Maybe Trump is simply on board with making grand pronouncements about space, but not providing the resources to actually do anything about it. He's great at making promises. See his presidential campaign.
Space enthusiasts may not be an important demographic, but aerospace and defense contractors certainly are.
As for SLS and the SSME (space shuttle main engines) that is brilliant. Take an expensive re-usable engine from the shuttle, and put it on an expendable rocket. Good job! All while proclaiming that SpaceX's idea of reusable rockets is impossible. It is a jobs program as you say. But I don't expect it to ever be economical to fly. And congress critters will never give NASA the budget to fly SLS more than once every few years. Obviously, SLS does not get any goodwill from me. It's a colossal waste of (our) money.
As for the CO2 gamble, I think Trump could charge everyone for breathable air. You should have to pay to breathe. You don't think clean air just grows on trees do you?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday March 29 2017, @11:10PM
If Trump had access to a bunch of mad scientists captured from the Nazis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvtxjSrImHw [youtube.com]
(Too-lazy-didn't-click summary: coal dust powered world-war II era ramjet experiments)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:55PM
So which parts were used on the first flight and which parts were replaced.
Especially, the Helium tanks and engine components.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:44PM
No more floppy tits!!!
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Thursday March 30 2017, @11:02PM
The verge article hasn't been updated yet, but the launch is already complete. The satellite is being deployed to orbit and the booster has returned to I Know You Still Love Me.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/847578231808991232 [twitter.com]
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