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SpaceX is attempting a huge feat in spacecraft engineering. It is seeking to land the first stage of its Falcon 9-R rocket on a floating platform at sea. Normally this would end up at the bottom of the ocean. If successful, SpaceX will shake the rocket launch market, by shaving millions of dollars off launch costs.
Today’s rockets are one shot wonders. They burn up fuel in a few minutes and splash down into terrestrial oceans, having put their payload on the right trajectory. This is wasteful and that is why scientists have dreamed of building reusable launch vehicles.
The holy grail of rocket launchers is a concept referred to as the single stage to orbit (SSTO) vehicle. The idea is to use a reusable launch vehicle (RLV) which has the capability to deliver a payload to orbit, re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and land, where it can then be refuelled. The process can then be repeated with a short turnaround.
https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-reusable-rockets-are-so-hard-to-make-36036
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday January 11 2015, @08:59PM
The author in the linked article does a decent job of explaining that its really hard along with a lot of "trust me" because anything other than "trust me" would require math
Perhaps this is true, but there was a lot of "trust me" in your post as well:
so the one percent or so of hardware costs is a rounding error.
One percent might be the cost of materials, raw steal, aluminium, etc.
But the fabrication and construction costs are significantly higher than that.
Design costs probably can't be avoided. But they are spread over the life of the design, and are going to be there anyway.
So ALL that matters is the total cost to build a new one, vs the total cost to refurbish a used one, plus any putative additional fuel costs to launch a reusable vehicle vs a one shot device.
Early space programs didn't have the ability to recover vehicles, so it pretty much wasn't an issue. The shuttle changed that. Space X changes that. Spaceship One changes that. Return and reuse is going to be the new norm.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Sunday January 11 2015, @09:45PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday January 11 2015, @09:54PM
Pretty sure both I and VLM addressed refurb costs.
Pretty sure that rocket reputability [nasa.gov] has already been proven. Without teleporters.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 12 2015, @05:04AM
sigh... Rocket Reuse-ability
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Sunday January 11 2015, @10:52PM
Ok, I assume you were kidding about the teleporting part.
But If I can play along, why would we teleport rockets down but not up? Of if we had teleporters why would we even have rockets?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Monday January 12 2015, @10:33AM
I think he was making the point that most rockets wouldn't be re-usable after a single launch, even without the stress of dropping back to earth. He doesn't actually have a teleporter
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday January 11 2015, @10:02PM
Something interesting to consider about the design costs, is $0 was spent on reuse design work on the Falcon 1 which puts it at a competitive advantage over a theoretical 1-R where money was spent on re-use.
In the NASA world, things change very slowly, but spacex has already stopped using the Falcon 1, Falcon 9 V1.0, and is almost done launching the Falcon 9 V1.1 and the 9-R will fly "soon ish". Having to keep "antique" reusable Falcon 1's, 9 1.0s and 9 1.1s around for 20 years until a mishap or whatever would be very problematic in the development cycle of the 9-R.
Its interesting that the model T was not the first car, not by any means. It was the first mass produced car in the USA, thats all. Might be that the tech level isn't quite ready for the model T of the space booster world. There were cross country car races 30 years before the first model T rolled off the line.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 13 2015, @12:03AM
Hell, for that matter there were electric cars competing in races almost 70 years before the model T was designed.
The model T's claim to fame was that it was cheap and reliable enough to be a good investment for members of the middle class. Something that the previous mass-produced Models A, B, C, F, K, N, R, and S had not achieved (and those are only the previous models produced by the Ford Motor Company, which was hardly without competitors)