It seems like I remember a long time ago in a land far away that SpaceX mentioned refueling the ASDS cores on the Drone Ship and flying them back to the landing pad. The ASDS could stay on site and only crews would be rotated.
The new fairing will almost certainly be optimized for recovery
Quote from: Gotorah on 03/12/2017 12:34 amIt seems like I remember a long time ago in a land far away that SpaceX mentioned refueling the ASDS cores on the Drone Ship and flying them back to the landing pad. The ASDS could stay on site and only crews would be rotated.I kind of think they'll stop using barges for all but a handful of launches before they go to something like that. I think they'll transition to ITS or something of that heritage first.
Just consider that the much larger NG will only carry 80.F9, IMO will end up with 20-30 per launch, or an orbital slot's worth.Using FH doesn't change the equation much. You have 3 cores refurbish instead of 1, but save on manufacturing S2s.Plus, you can't RTLS the center core, so your "1 day" got expanded to 2 weeks.We're looking at 1000 LEO sats per year, and at least 2000 VLEO sats per year, possibly much more if their life span is below 5 years, which IMO is likely.
The limiting factor on how many sats to fly per launch, assuming below mass and volume limits) is how many can be flown on F9 RTLS -- IMO. ASDS will be reserved for GTO flights and FH center core recovery.
Quote from: IanThePineapple on 03/11/2017 11:54 pmThe new fairing will almost certainly be optimized for recoveryNo, for production
Having 20 boosters rotating through the launch program is an incredible level of optimization considering that each one eventually gets reused 50 times.
Quote from: M.E.T. on 03/12/2017 04:14 pmHaving 20 boosters rotating through the launch program is an incredible level of optimization considering that each one eventually gets reused 50 times.It's also an incredible money sink. Elon has said that reuse has to be full and rapid. George Sowers published an analysis on this site that basically says the same thing in excel form. ULA and Arianespace have said reuse is huge economical challenge. Contrary to popular opinion, all of them know what they are talking about.
So SX will likely have to contend with storing perhaps 30 boosters (including FH components) at the Cape.