Limits on F9 reuse and progress towards it

[Robotbeat]

Hence my estimation that we should add at least a year to the regularization of Starship.

it took a whole decade for Falcon 9 to mature to a high launch rate, and it’s still maturing and increasing in flightrate. So I don’t really disagree with just a year being added.

Being an order of magnitude more capable than Falcon 9 should help with transitioning, though.

Starship’s max launch rate may not be 50-100 per year like F9 but thousands or tens of thousands, and it may take decades to get there.

[JayWee]

Starship’s max launch rate may not be 50-100 per year like F9 but thousands or tens of thousands, and it may take decades to get there.

Which will require quite a lot of things to change besides Starship itself - licensing, ranges, air traffic control, ...
10k/year means 2 launches per daylight-hour.

[Robotbeat]

Starship’s max launch rate may not be 50-100 per year like F9 but thousands or tens of thousands, and it may take decades to get there.

Which will require quite a lot of things to change besides Starship itself - licensing, ranges, air traffic control, ...
10k/year means 2 launches per daylight-hour.

Even Falcon 9’s current launch rate wouldn’t have been feasible without changes to licensing and range upgrades. So that’s not a showstopper.

[Norm38]

Starship’s max launch rate may not be 50-100 per year like F9 but thousands or tens of thousands, and it may take decades to get there.

Which will require quite a lot of things to change besides Starship itself - licensing, ranges, air traffic control, ...
10k/year means 2 launches per daylight-hour.

None of that is blocked by technology.  There is a hill I can climb where I can overlook Chicago and O'Hare and see 30+ aircraft in the sky at one time.  All in close proximity, all moving in different directions.   All under control.  1.15 launches per hour is nothing for ground control to manage.  At that frequency launch corridors will be established.  Launches won't be rare events.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Current reuse status of block 5 boosters

twitter.com/_rykllan/status/1555389963361026049

#SpaceX's #Falcon9 & #FalconHeavy flightworthy boosters as of Aug 4, 2022

https://twitter.com/_rykllan/status/1555389972735315968

Statistics of #SpaceX's #Falcon9 & #FalconHeavy booster missions as of Aug 4, 2022

[AmigaClone]

Note on the 'missing numbers' in the diagrams above:

B1064, B1065, B1072 and B1075 have been spotted in a FH side booster configuration.

B1066, B1068, B1070 and B1074 have been spotted and identified as FH core boosters.

B1077 - has been spotted in McGregor and mentioned as the booster to take Crew-5 to orbit pending approval of repairs.

[john smith 19]

None of that is blocked by technology.  There is a hill I can climb where I can overlook Chicago and O'Hare and see 30+ aircraft in the sky at one time.  All in close proximity, all moving in different directions.   All under control.  1.15 launches per hour is nothing for ground control to manage.  At that frequency launch corridors will be established.  Launches won't be rare events.

True except for a few things.

Firstly HTOL vehicles have wings.  Apart for a very few seconds during takeoff an engine failure is always survivable.

Then there is the AvWeek article that spawned one of the new threads on this subject that says SX's current expectation is 15 launches. It's expanded that envelope at just over 2 launches a year.

It's taken 7 years to 15.

I don't doubt SX will continue to push this limit but it's the fact that it's take this to get to a target of 15 (I don't think any of them has actually got there yet).

Nor do I think that any airliner carrying paying passengers even considered an operating life in less than the 1000s of flights (I'm talking pre DC3 days).

The stress loads, intensities and durations of a VTOL rocket compared to a HTOL aircraft are radically different. Very short. Very harsh.

Obviously SX are collecting data and things are getting better. The question is to what extent a new vehicle (IE Starship) can overcome these issues while retaining the same flight profile   . That's not too much of a problem in the current market, but will cause lots of problems if you're trying to seriously put 1000 000  people on Mars.  One of my spreadsheet games looked at this and the numbers (in terms of vehicles, flights and lifetimes) with a projected 200 flight life expectancy for Starship, are huge.

[cAsE-sEnSlTivE]

Would it be possible to use the catching arms in Florida to catch Falcon boosters?

[rpapo]

Would it be possible to use the catching arms in Florida to catch Falcon boosters?

At the very least, they would have to reinforce the grid-fin mounts.  Or mount them more side to side as is done with the Superheavy Booster.  And they would have to develop new software.

The current Falcon landings appear to be accurate to within 2-3 meters, with land landings more accurate than sea landings.  That would probably be accurate enough.

Though frankly, I don't see them doing it.  Starship is their path forward for now.

[Robotbeat]

The useful reason to do that would be to put the arms through their paces and increase NASA’s comfort levels with allowing SuperHeavy to do the same. But it’s a non-starter as the arms AND the Falcon booster would need to be redesigned.

[DanClemmensen]

Would it be possible to use the catching arms in Florida to catch Falcon boosters?

No.
By the time you made all the needed changes it would no longer be a Falcon 9. It would be a new system which would take several years and a lot of R&D and would be more expensive than Starship, but with no advantages over Starship for any mission. Therefore, SpaceX has no reason to spend money on an F9 redesign. They will have higher ROI if they spend the money on Starship variants and enhancements and increasing Starship operational efficiency.

[TomH]

Same topic is addressed in this post in same forum. The post is re. an article in Aviation Week which directly relates to this thread:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=56527.0

[FutureSpaceTourist]

Cross-post for new fleet leader:

twitter.com/spacex/status/1568773631211360257

Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship – completing SpaceX’s first 14th flight of a first stage booster

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1568788727014752257

No obvious limit to rocket reflight so far

[Norm38]

Seems appropriate to put here.

5 days, 3 hours, 38 minutes for pad turnaround time. Progress!

[Norm38]

Late night crew watching thought:
What can be done to reduce hatch closing to launch time?  Two hours on the tarmac isn’t fun.

[whitelancer64]

Late night crew watching thought:
What can be done to reduce hatch closing to launch time?  Two hours on the tarmac isn’t fun.

The extra time is padding for delays, for example, like we have seen happen on the Crew-1 and Crew-5 launches when there was something interfering with the hatch making a good seal, and they had to re-open, clean, and seal the hatch again. Without extra time built into the schedule, something like that could scrub a launch.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1636088444890824704

Ochinero: F9 booster is capable of "way more" than 10 flights each; up to 15 now, but will see based on market conditions if we want to take effort to increase certification to 20 flights.