He got the thing with the damage to the stage of Flight 24 wrong (like so many). Elon Musk had already clarified on twitter that the stage is NOT too damaged to fly again, but they simply chose to not do that.
Quote from: Elmar Moelzer on 06/03/2016 03:16 amHe got the thing with the damage to the stage of Flight 24 wrong (like so many). Elon Musk had already clarified on twitter that the stage is NOT too damaged to fly again, but they simply chose to not do that. This does not say too much. You could theoretically rebuild even very damaged stage. It would just cost more (possibly more than new stage).
All Elon has actually said is that the more beat-up returned stages are the obvious ones to use for requalification testing, and also that they could still refly.We might want to be cautious about inferring too much about how much refurb is required. For one thing, SpaceX might not know much themselves, pending the tests and inspections. For another, looks can be deceiving. It looked to some people like SES-9 had proven that the three-engine landing burn from GTO missions didn't work. The next time they tried it, it did.
They referred to the last landing as "experimental landing" in the webcast for a reason.
We might want to be cautious about inferring too much about how much refurb is required. For one thing, SpaceX might not know much themselves, pending the tests and inspections.
How about instead of these stages needing refurbishment it is merely a case that the stages are more valuable to just take apart and learn from. I'm sure there are a ton of rocket engineers that would just love to get there hands on a used stage to refine their calculations of reliability and such. They don't have a lot of demand for used stages right now.
Quote from: Elmar Moelzer on 06/04/2016 08:17 pmThey referred to the last landing as "experimental landing" in the webcast for a reason.There have been four successful landings of an orbital rocket in the history of rocketry -- three at the time of that launch. They probably have a bit more time to use that phraseology, especially as they are exploring the return profile parameter space.
Four successful landings of an orbital rocket BOOSTER. The 1st stage does not go into orbit.
The Shuttle was an orbital rocket. That's landed loads of times.
All this "comparison" and "who did it first" is a can of worms, because you always end up comparing peaches with apples.If you classify the Falcon9 1st stage as merely a suborbital booster, then even Blue Origin landed one before they did - yet its hardly comparable as certain diagrams have aptly visualized.
Big can of worms, but relevant discussion in the reuse thread...The Shuttle Orbiter landed many times, but was neither a orbital rocket (i.e. complete launch vehicle) nor an orbital class booster. It was a reentry vehicle with orbital engines. The SRBs were orbital class boosters but they were never landed (or barged), they splashed. Blue Origin hasn't flown a orbital class booster, nevermind landed one.To my knowledge, SpaceX is the first to land (or barge) a heavy lift orbital class booster. It's not interesting because of who was the first to do it, but because it is indeed a novel accomplishment.
Only SRB's and Blue Origin have reused their hardware. Landed stages that aren't reused are a novel but meaningless accomplishment.