Quote from: rockets4life97 on 06/04/2020 12:37 amNASA feeling comfortable with re-use for Falcon and Dragon is a big step towards accepting re-use with Starship. This is a big step forward. The last shoe to drop looks to be the military.It seems a pretty strong argument that if reuse is good enough for people, it should be good enough for milsats.
NASA feeling comfortable with re-use for Falcon and Dragon is a big step towards accepting re-use with Starship. This is a big step forward. The last shoe to drop looks to be the military.
Quote from: rockets4life97 on 06/04/2020 12:37 amNASA feeling comfortable with re-use for Falcon and Dragon is a big step towards accepting re-use with Starship. This is a big step forward. The last shoe to drop looks to be the military.I disagree that's like saying that the SN4 explosion posed a risk to the current Space x demo flight, IMO.I do agree that NASA allowing Crew Dragon re-use IS a major milestone.
"They cut the price so much we could not believe what we were looking at."
By my count, the Block 5 variant of the Falcon 9 rocket has now launched 31 times. Of those, just 10 have been new boosters.
Here’s a good statistichttps://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1271745784569040901Quote By my count, the Block 5 variant of the Falcon 9 rocket has now launched 31 times. Of those, just 10 have been new boosters.
Some articles are mentioning a discount of a few million dollars for the contract changes to allow booster recovery on this flight. There was a contract modification last September that lowered the value by $9.5M.
Quote from: FutureSpaceTourist on 06/13/2020 10:47 amHere’s a good statistichttps://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1271745784569040901Quote By my count, the Block 5 variant of the Falcon 9 rocket has now launched 31 times. Of those, just 10 have been new boosters.I wonder if he's counting the FH flights as one. If 1046 core is the first block 5 then there were 14 cores flown to date. Maybe Eric should take a look at a nifty table on this forum
Quote from: gongora on 06/30/2020 04:58 pmSome articles are mentioning a discount of a few million dollars for the contract changes to allow booster recovery on this flight. There was a contract modification last September that lowered the value by $9.5M.The GPS III-3 launch provides another perspective on reuse. This was originally contracted as a disposable booster even though it clearly fell into the range for recovery. Air Force didn't allow recovery on the Dec. 2018 GPS flight, but the US Space Force is now willing to renegotiate $9.5M off what I believe is a ~$80M flight to allow SpaceX to recover the booster. SpaceX, on the other side, was willing to risk $9.5M in their pocket for the opportunity to recover and reuse this booster, and with a safe landing today, that bet just paid off for both parties.
Quote from: AJW on 06/30/2020 08:24 pmQuote from: gongora on 06/30/2020 04:58 pmSome articles are mentioning a discount of a few million dollars for the contract changes to allow booster recovery on this flight. There was a contract modification last September that lowered the value by $9.5M.The GPS III-3 launch provides another perspective on reuse. This was originally contracted as a disposable booster even though it clearly fell into the range for recovery. Air Force didn't allow recovery on the Dec. 2018 GPS flight, but the US Space Force is now willing to renegotiate $9.5M off what I believe is a ~$80M flight to allow SpaceX to recover the booster. SpaceX, on the other side, was willing to risk $9.5M in their pocket for the opportunity to recover and reuse this booster, and with a safe landing today, that bet just paid off for both parties.SpaceX paid $9.5m to gain approximately $200m ($20m savings per launch times 10 launches from this one rocket). Ballpark.
Quote from: M.E.T. on 07/01/2020 11:13 amQuote from: AJW on 06/30/2020 08:24 pmQuote from: gongora on 06/30/2020 04:58 pmSome articles are mentioning a discount of a few million dollars for the contract changes to allow booster recovery on this flight. There was a contract modification last September that lowered the value by $9.5M.The GPS III-3 launch provides another perspective on reuse. This was originally contracted as a disposable booster even though it clearly fell into the range for recovery. Air Force didn't allow recovery on the Dec. 2018 GPS flight, but the US Space Force is now willing to renegotiate $9.5M off what I believe is a ~$80M flight to allow SpaceX to recover the booster. SpaceX, on the other side, was willing to risk $9.5M in their pocket for the opportunity to recover and reuse this booster, and with a safe landing today, that bet just paid off for both parties.SpaceX paid $9.5m to gain approximately $200m ($20m savings per launch times 10 launches from this one rocket). Ballpark.That's not fair reasoning. You're assuming that they're going to launch this first stage 10 more times but if they hadn't taken the $9.5 million hit on this one launch contract then they would have built 10 new stages for those 10 future launches. But, of course, they wouldn't have, they just would have built 1 more first stage and launched it those 10 times. So it's really only fair to count a benefit to SpaceX of not having to build 1 more first stage, not 10. So they really save more like $20 million. The net gain to SpaceX is then $11 million by this logic (plus they get one more launch out of the new stage, so slightly less than $11 million).However, even if they were losing money on this one contract, it's probably worth it to SpaceX to take the $9.5 million hit on this contract because it sets the precedent for the Air Force to let them land stages in the future. When bidding on competitive contracts in the future the Air Force is more likely to just accept having the stage land as part of the terms of the contract without penalizing SpaceX for it versus another bidder, meaning SpaceX won't have to lower prices in the future to be allowed to land the stage.
Quote from: Tulse on 06/04/2020 01:08 amQuote from: rockets4life97 on 06/04/2020 12:37 amNASA feeling comfortable with re-use for Falcon and Dragon is a big step towards accepting re-use with Starship. This is a big step forward. The last shoe to drop looks to be the military.It seems a pretty strong argument that if reuse is good enough for people, it should be good enough for milsats.Unfortunately the military doesn't value certain things in the same way many humans do.
Quote from: Hog on 06/04/2020 12:45 pmQuote from: Tulse on 06/04/2020 01:08 amQuote from: rockets4life97 on 06/04/2020 12:37 amNASA feeling comfortable with re-use for Falcon and Dragon is a big step towards accepting re-use with Starship. This is a big step forward. The last shoe to drop looks to be the military.It seems a pretty strong argument that if reuse is good enough for people, it should be good enough for milsats.Unfortunately the military doesn't value certain things in the same way many humans do.Suggested edit - "Unfortunately the military doesn't value certain things in the same way many [other] humans do."Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, etc., i.e., "the military" are humans, too.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 07/01/2020 11:40 amQuote from: M.E.T. on 07/01/2020 11:13 amQuote from: AJW on 06/30/2020 08:24 pmQuote from: gongora on 06/30/2020 04:58 pmSome articles are mentioning a discount of a few million dollars for the contract changes to allow booster recovery on this flight. There was a contract modification last September that lowered the value by $9.5M.The GPS III-3 launch provides another perspective on reuse. This was originally contracted as a disposable booster even though it clearly fell into the range for recovery. Air Force didn't allow recovery on the Dec. 2018 GPS flight, but the US Space Force is now willing to renegotiate $9.5M off what I believe is a ~$80M flight to allow SpaceX to recover the booster. SpaceX, on the other side, was willing to risk $9.5M in their pocket for the opportunity to recover and reuse this booster, and with a safe landing today, that bet just paid off for both parties.SpaceX paid $9.5m to gain approximately $200m ($20m savings per launch times 10 launches from this one rocket). Ballpark.That's not fair reasoning. You're assuming that they're going to launch this first stage 10 more times but if they hadn't taken the $9.5 million hit on this one launch contract then they would have built 10 new stages for those 10 future launches. But, of course, they wouldn't have, they just would have built 1 more first stage and launched it those 10 times. So it's really only fair to count a benefit to SpaceX of not having to build 1 more first stage, not 10. So they really save more like $20 million. The net gain to SpaceX is then $11 million by this logic (plus they get one more launch out of the new stage, so slightly less than $11 million).However, even if they were losing money on this one contract, it's probably worth it to SpaceX to take the $9.5 million hit on this contract because it sets the precedent for the Air Force to let them land stages in the future. When bidding on competitive contracts in the future the Air Force is more likely to just accept having the stage land as part of the terms of the contract without penalizing SpaceX for it versus another bidder, meaning SpaceX won't have to lower prices in the future to be allowed to land the stage.Disagree. This gives them 10 more launches (ok 9 to be precise) in ADDITION to all other boosters that have been built.
Quote from: M.E.T. on 07/01/2020 12:06 pmQuote from: ChrisWilson68 on 07/01/2020 11:40 amQuote from: M.E.T. on 07/01/2020 11:13 amQuote from: AJW on 06/30/2020 08:24 pmQuote from: gongora on 06/30/2020 04:58 pmSome articles are mentioning a discount of a few million dollars for the contract changes to allow booster recovery on this flight. There was a contract modification last September that lowered the value by $9.5M.The GPS III-3 launch provides another perspective on reuse. This was originally contracted as a disposable booster even though it clearly fell into the range for recovery. Air Force didn't allow recovery on the Dec. 2018 GPS flight, but the US Space Force is now willing to renegotiate $9.5M off what I believe is a ~$80M flight to allow SpaceX to recover the booster. SpaceX, on the other side, was willing to risk $9.5M in their pocket for the opportunity to recover and reuse this booster, and with a safe landing today, that bet just paid off for both parties.SpaceX paid $9.5m to gain approximately $200m ($20m savings per launch times 10 launches from this one rocket). Ballpark.That's not fair reasoning. You're assuming that they're going to launch this first stage 10 more times but if they hadn't taken the $9.5 million hit on this one launch contract then they would have built 10 new stages for those 10 future launches. But, of course, they wouldn't have, they just would have built 1 more first stage and launched it those 10 times. So it's really only fair to count a benefit to SpaceX of not having to build 1 more first stage, not 10. So they really save more like $20 million. The net gain to SpaceX is then $11 million by this logic (plus they get one more launch out of the new stage, so slightly less than $11 million).However, even if they were losing money on this one contract, it's probably worth it to SpaceX to take the $9.5 million hit on this contract because it sets the precedent for the Air Force to let them land stages in the future. When bidding on competitive contracts in the future the Air Force is more likely to just accept having the stage land as part of the terms of the contract without penalizing SpaceX for it versus another bidder, meaning SpaceX won't have to lower prices in the future to be allowed to land the stage.Disagree. This gives them 10 more launches (ok 9 to be precise) in ADDITION to all other boosters that have been built.This is only a factor if they are booster-production-rate limited to the extent that they cannot build one more booster in the necessary time. I highly doubt that's the case, as it would probably take well over a year to get 10 flights on a single booster, which is plenty of time to crank out one extra booster.
The recovered booster is an asset capable of 9 more flights. That’s 9 more flights they could deliver even if they shut down their booster production line today. And every additional new booster they recover adds 9 more flights to their capacity.
The recovered booster is an asset capable of 9 more flights. That’s 9 more flights they could deliver even if they shut down their booster production line today. And every additional new booster they recover adds 9 more flights to their capacity.If they lost this one and built another new booster instead, that new booster replaces the 9 flights of the lost booster, but at the cost of the additional 9 flights that it would have added on top of the previous 9.
Quote from: M.E.T. on 07/01/2020 02:32 pmThe recovered booster is an asset capable of 9 more flights. That’s 9 more flights they could deliver even if they shut down their booster production line today. And every additional new booster they recover adds 9 more flights to their capacity.If they lost this one and built another new booster instead, that new booster replaces the 9 flights of the lost booster, but at the cost of the additional 9 flights that it would have added on top of the previous 9.For your logic to work SpaceX would have to be leaving enormous amounts of money on the table by failing to build enough boosters to meet demand.If you assume SpaceX continues to build boosters as long as there's demand for them, your logic entirely falls apart.