Gen. Raymond, head of Space Command, praises SpaceX's use of AFSS and says USAF would be comfortable flying on reused Falcon rocket. #33SS
Gen Jay Raymond, head of Air Force Space Command, says he's "open" to using previously flown rockets for launches of military assets. #33SS
Gen Raymond says he's ready to fly a military payload on a used booster. #SpaceSymposium #33ss
"I would be comfortable if we were to fly on a reused booster,” General John "Jay" Raymond told reporters at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “They’ve proven they can do it. ... It’s going to get us to lower cost.”
SpaceNews has a follow-up article on this contract award. You won't be suprised to know that SpaceX won on price, but this quote is interesting on AF's view of re-use:QuoteMeanwhile, [Claire] Leon said that the Air Force has no plans to fly payloads on Falcon 9 rockets with previously-flown first stages. The service has specifically requested SpaceX not to fly re-used hardware.“We would have to certify flight hardware that had been used which is more qualification, more analysis, so we’re not taking that on quite yet,” she said. “If it proves to be successful for commercial, we might consider that in the future.”http://spacenews.com/spacexs-low-cost-won-gps-3-launch-air-force-says/Claire Leon is the launch enterprise director for the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center
Meanwhile, [Claire] Leon said that the Air Force has no plans to fly payloads on Falcon 9 rockets with previously-flown first stages. The service has specifically requested SpaceX not to fly re-used hardware.“We would have to certify flight hardware that had been used which is more qualification, more analysis, so we’re not taking that on quite yet,” she said. “If it proves to be successful for commercial, we might consider that in the future.”
Cross posting from the GPS-IIIA-3 thread with quoted comments post that award announcement. I don't believe that Ms. Leon's comments (reported 2017-03-15) are substantially different from Gen. Raymond's (reported 2017-04-06) in the previous post. Her's highlight the work still to be done before the AF would actually buy a launch using a pre-flown core while the General's are more big picture about their general willingness to consider doing so.Quote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 03/16/2017 11:57 amSpaceNews has a follow-up article on this contract award. You won't be suprised to know that SpaceX won on price, but this quote is interesting on AF's view of re-use:QuoteMeanwhile, [Claire] Leon said that the Air Force has no plans to fly payloads on Falcon 9 rockets with previously-flown first stages. The service has specifically requested SpaceX not to fly re-used hardware.“We would have to certify flight hardware that had been used which is more qualification, more analysis, so we’re not taking that on quite yet,” she said. “If it proves to be successful for commercial, we might consider that in the future.”http://spacenews.com/spacexs-low-cost-won-gps-3-launch-air-force-says/Claire Leon is the launch enterprise director for the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center
Martin Halliwell(SES): You've got to decouple the engineering from the emotion. Engineering team at SpaceX is second to none.
Irene Klotz: Do you have other costumers that weren't as brave as SES that are now signed up? What is life-limiting factor?Musk: NASA has been supportive. Commercial, SES has been most supportive. Next thing is how to achieve rapid reuse without major hardware changeouts. Aspirations of zero hardware changes and 24hrs reflight.
Economically the best thing is all customers signing reuse launch contracts without restrictions.Boosters get flown 100 times, new boosters are made when needed.
The extra profit on a new booster launch contract money unlikely pays for the extra cost of building and testing it. The reflight flow for newly recovered boosters skips McGregor, so the savings isn't just manufacturing. I wouldn't be surprised if by the 3rd or 4th reflight refurb already costs about the same as McGregor resources alone.
NASA will likely require a ton of paperwork on reflown boosters, which might actually make it double logical to use new boosters on CRS/crew launches. Low thermal stress/lots of spare fuel on CRS launches.NASA CRS missions pay a lot more but there's the Dragon costs, the mountain of additional paperwork and several extra requirements. The big $$$ advantage of serving NASA is on the development contracts where NASA paid for Crew/Cargo Dragon and part of F9 R&D costs.
But SpaceX sets the prices - say if customer's decide that reused stages are safer than new stages. Then SpaceX would set a cost for a reused stage higher than a new one, and if people really, really didn't want a new one, and SpaceX wanted a new stage for every 10 launches, and a new stage cost $60m. They could always just add $6m to the cost of every reused stage, and then just scrap each stage after its done 10 launches. If necessary, and assuming a reused launch cost $30m, they could always add another $3m to each launch's cost, and do a dummy launch to certify the new rocket.
Our plan for CRS-11, it's going to be the Dragon [that will be reused]. Not the Falcon, not a reused booster. We've done a lot of work with SpaceX, over the last year and a half or two, looking at delta-verification requirements that we need to be comfortable to satisfy ourselves that Dragon can approach the ISS, get within the ellipsoid, and be done safely. So, a lot of technical work is happening. I'll tell you, everything is leaning good. That the next dragon mission that we'll launch will be reused. As far as the booster, we've just started those discussions. We've got some teams off generating how we'll even go about requesting information from SpaceX. Laying out our plan. I imagine we'll have some sort of preliminary review on that in the April/May time period. I think planning-wise, it may not happen this year. But shortly thereafter.
“I think a bunch of companies are waiting to see (what happens),” an insurance underwriter who works in the satellite and launch markets said before the SES 10 mission. “A lot of it does have to do with the insurance market. If this goes successfully, then a lot of customers are going to assume that the insurance community is OK with reused stages, which will be the case.”“The bottom line is reused rockets are here to stay,” the underwriter said.
Note: SES was charged 0.01% more for the reflight by their underwriter according to Martin Halliwell.
Quote from: AncientU on 04/11/2017 05:53 pmNote: SES was charged 0.01% more for the reflight by their underwriter according to Martin Halliwell.If your value is correct that is an increase of $50K in premiums on a premium that costs $40M on a $500M (sat +launch value) for a launch insurance. Not much of a risk factor change.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 04/11/2017 06:06 pmQuote from: AncientU on 04/11/2017 05:53 pmNote: SES was charged 0.01% more for the reflight by their underwriter according to Martin Halliwell.If your value is correct that is an increase of $50K in premiums on a premium that costs $40M on a $500M (sat +launch value) for a launch insurance. Not much of a risk factor change.The value is a direct quote from the CTO at SES, I don't think you'll find a better source. According to a recent SpaceNews article, insurance for a flight on Ariane 5 could be purchased for 4% of insured value, and rates for Falcon 9 were similar: http://spacenews.com/space-insurers-warn-that-current-low-rates-are-not-sustainable/Of course, if SES is also are insuring the cost of the launch, the cheaper flight rate on a used booster also factors in: at 4% premiums, the (approximately) $18.6M reflight discount should result in a premium $746k lower. A slightly higher rate will quickly eat this savings, but not at the 0.01% rate increase levels.
...The value is a direct quote from the CTO at SES, I don't think you'll find a better source. According to a recent SpaceNews article, insurance for a flight on Ariane 5 could be purchased for 4% of insured value, and rates for Falcon 9 were similar: http://spacenews.com/space-insurers-warn-that-current-low-rates-are-not-sustainable/...
“Ariane 5 insurance rates are around the 4 percent mark,” said Russell Sawyer, executive director of Willis Towers Watson’s Inspace brokerage. “If you had talked about launch and in-orbit rates being that low 15 years ago, everybody would have thought you were crazy.”SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket can be insured for only slightly higher rates than Ariane 5. Russia’s Proton vehicle, which has suffered multiple failures in the past five years, is insured at around triple the rate for Ariane 5, according to figures produced by underwriter SCOR Global.
