Quote from: woods170 on 06/30/2022 08:05 amQuote from: deadman1204 on 05/23/2022 04:07 pmPeople are laboring under this false idea that starship will replace falcon 9 in a couple years - which totally ignores spaceX saying on multiple occasions that this is not true.Falcon 9 will fly for as long as customers want it... Almost correct. It is in fact not up to the customers.SpaceX fully intends to switch over to Starship, as soon as committed obligations allow it. Outyear look: Falcon 9 will fly until roughly 2030, because NASA has committed SpaceX to flying Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon until 2030. But with Starship operational by then, even for crewed launches, the retirement of ISS drops the sole remaining prime customer for F9 by then. Only FH will soldier on a few more years, after ISS retirement, because of running DoD and NASA commitments. This is such a weird moment in time for Commercial LEO Destinations providers to bid on fixed-cost end-to-end service which will begin in 2030. Do they bid as if Starship crew launch/reentry by 2030 is a sure thing? Do they make a deal with SpaceX to ensure a smooth transition whether it occurs before or after station IOC? Do their design concepts even work, for example in terms of lifeboat/evac or attitude control, with a transition from small hypergolic spacecraft to a large cryogenic beast? Who knows what a 2030s space station should be like, but that question must be answered very shortly.In other words, I'm not as optimistic that new Crew Dragon commitments will not be made stretching into the 2030s. I think there's a good chance that CLD will be the last straggling customer(s) for F9. It'll be maybe two missions per year, so forget about rapid booster reuse milestones, and it's possible that some of these station proposals (if selected) will use Dragon for their entire lifetimes. SpaceX will probably want to stockpile as many F9 upper stages as they can and have enough to ride out however long the CLD era might last. Maybe, once Starship crew launch/reentry is NASA human-rated, SpaceX could develop a Dragon Lifeboat Edition certified for several years of docked mission endurance to reduce or eliminate additional F9/Dragon launches.
Quote from: deadman1204 on 05/23/2022 04:07 pmPeople are laboring under this false idea that starship will replace falcon 9 in a couple years - which totally ignores spaceX saying on multiple occasions that this is not true.Falcon 9 will fly for as long as customers want it... Almost correct. It is in fact not up to the customers.SpaceX fully intends to switch over to Starship, as soon as committed obligations allow it. Outyear look: Falcon 9 will fly until roughly 2030, because NASA has committed SpaceX to flying Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon until 2030. But with Starship operational by then, even for crewed launches, the retirement of ISS drops the sole remaining prime customer for F9 by then. Only FH will soldier on a few more years, after ISS retirement, because of running DoD and NASA commitments.
People are laboring under this false idea that starship will replace falcon 9 in a couple years - which totally ignores spaceX saying on multiple occasions that this is not true.Falcon 9 will fly for as long as customers want it...
Instead of blowing their wad on going to the moon with SLS, NASA should be working on a replacement for the ISS, which, at this point, is an albatross.
Given we are 50% of the way through 2022 this is what I think is notable:1) The launch cadence itself, less than 7 days, stunning2) The 100% recovery success rate 3) The accuracy of the ASDS landings, they seem to be getting more and more precise with each landing and are placing the points of each leg in nearly the identical position each time (I think this bodes well for Starship and Superheavy recovery)
Quote from: wannamoonbase on 06/30/2022 08:48 pmGiven we are 50% of the way through 2022 this is what I think is notable:1) The launch cadence itself, less than 7 days, stunning2) The 100% recovery success rate 3) The accuracy of the ASDS landings, they seem to be getting more and more precise with each landing and are placing the points of each leg in nearly the identical position each time (I think this bodes well for Starship and Superheavy recovery)Thanks for bringing us back on topic!
One of the keys to more rapidly reusing the Falcon 9 rocket was significantly increasing the water flowing into the pad during liftoff, reducing damage at Space Launch Complex-40 seen here. Also note the rapid "throwback" of the launch tower. Very important (and difficult to do).
This is really neat.I found myself wondering why they retract the T/E the way they do. (And why they never switched to the “newer” slight-retract-but-big-throwback way of doing it at VSFB SLC-4E.)Found a fairly informative answer on the subject here.
Therein lies a major reason by SLC-40 can turn a lot faster than Vandy.
https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1637646885761560576QuoteOne of the keys to more rapidly reusing the Falcon 9 rocket was significantly increasing the water flowing into the pad during liftoff, reducing damage at Space Launch Complex-40 seen here. Also note the rapid "throwback" of the launch tower. Very important (and difficult to do).
The thinking might be, that they're going to have to tear out the surface anyway in order to install the deluge manifolds, so let the first launch soften it up a little for the jack hammers.
RB, one thing about the complainers, is that many of them are stating, disguised, what they want to happen. They're not really griping; they're gloating.
Quote from: alugobi on 04/24/2023 03:56 pmRB, one thing about the complainers, is that many of them are stating, disguised, what they want to happen. They're not really griping; they're gloating.Hoping, rather. But it's been like that since the beginning.Every test was a disaster. Every failed F9 landing attempt, every starship hop.Right now the disaster du jour is "Literally all the concrete turned into murderous highway robbers that are now attacking citizens in broad daylight oh the humanity".Everything was avoidable if only they had listened to fill in the blank. Except of course if they had listened, they'd be somewhere in the Vulcan-SLS spectrum of stagnation.The caravan is already moving, just let it be.
Quote from: meekGee on 04/24/2023 09:31 pmQuote from: alugobi on 04/24/2023 03:56 pmRB, one thing about the complainers, is that many of them are stating, disguised, what they want to happen. They're not really griping; they're gloating.Hoping, rather. But it's been like that since the beginning.Every test was a disaster. Every failed F9 landing attempt, every starship hop.Right now the disaster du jour is "Literally all the concrete turned into murderous highway robbers that are now attacking citizens in broad daylight oh the humanity".Everything was avoidable if only they had listened to fill in the blank. Except of course if they had listened, they'd be somewhere in the Vulcan-SLS spectrum of stagnation.The caravan is already moving, just let it be.Why ? They were lucky booster didn't lose more engines to debris and cause it fall back on pad.
Very cool to see the improvement in time it takes to reuse a Falcon 9 booster.Decrease in time to reuse should be a good proxy for cost decline. *it's still a work in progress and not the full data set yet