Author Topic: SpaceX customers' views on reuse  (Read 350913 times)

Offline Hog

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #660 on: 06/04/2020 12:45 pm »
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.
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.
Paul

Offline rockets4life97

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #661 on: 06/04/2020 01:29 pm »
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.
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.

I think you misunderstand me. Starship requires re-use because of the architecture. For NASA to use Starship means being comfortable with re-use. Using re-use for Falcon and Dragon for crew is a first step towards being open for re-use in a new system. NASA and SpaceX will have a process for certifying re-use they learned/created through the experience with Falcon and Dragon. This process will benefit the certification of re-use for Starship in the future. I was not commenting on the relationship of Starship development.

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #662 on: 06/05/2020 12:30 am »
Let's keep this thread serious. Small trim.

If you don't like that, 4Chan is easy to find.
« Last Edit: 06/05/2020 12:31 am by Chris Bergin »
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Offline groundbound

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #663 on: 06/05/2020 10:27 pm »
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.

The last shoe to drop is when any customer specifiies that new boosters need not apply (potentially less reliable.)

I'm not being silly. That is a legitimate place that high re-use will eventually take us. I personally would prefer not to fly on an airplane without that airframe having had a test flight first.

Offline DreamyPickle

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #664 on: 06/06/2020 08:00 pm »
This approval for reuse on Crew Dragon missions came sooner than expected.

I wonder if there's any progress on getting Falcon Heavy approved for reuse? As far as I know it has three missions lined up (1xNASA + 2xDoD) that require brand-new rockets. The side-boosters are easy to recover but changing the nose cone for an interstage adapter is probably expensive so SpaceX could definitely shave a few millions if they could reuse them.

Online jpo234

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #665 on: 06/09/2020 10:59 am »
This should probably go here, but I can't delete a thread: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51179.0  [FST edit: I’ve retired that thread]

Planet teams with SpaceX to expand its Earth-observation constellation
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"They cut the price so much we could not believe what we were looking at."

« Last Edit: 06/13/2020 10:46 am by FutureSpaceTourist »
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Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #666 on: 06/13/2020 10:47 am »
Here’s a good statistic

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1271745784569040901

Quote
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.

Offline Stefan.Christoff.19

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #667 on: 06/19/2020 09:49 pm »
Here’s a good statistic

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1271745784569040901

Quote
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  ;D

Offline AJW

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #668 on: 06/30/2020 08:24 pm »
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.

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.
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Offline Rekt1971

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #669 on: 06/30/2020 08:44 pm »
Here’s a good statistic

https://twitter.com/sciguyspace/status/1271745784569040901

Quote
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  ;D

F9 and FH are different vehicles. F9 block 5 has launched 31 times (32 with today's launch) which is what he is talking about in the tweet above.

Offline M.E.T.

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #670 on: 07/01/2020 11:13 am »
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.

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.

Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #671 on: 07/01/2020 11:40 am »
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.

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.


Offline M.E.T.

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #672 on: 07/01/2020 12:06 pm »
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.

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.

Online laszlo

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #673 on: 07/01/2020 12:10 pm »
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.
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.

Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #674 on: 07/01/2020 12:36 pm »
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.
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.

Agreed that the military are humans too.

But disagree with your implication that Hog's post implied that they were not.  The lack of the word "other" in that context does not imply that the military is not human.

EDIT: Note that if Hog had left out the word "many" then I'd agree that it would imply the military is not human.
« Last Edit: 07/01/2020 12:37 pm by ChrisWilson68 »

Offline envy887

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #675 on: 07/01/2020 01:49 pm »
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.

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.

Offline M.E.T.

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #676 on: 07/01/2020 02:32 pm »
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.

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.

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.

That’s if you take a lifetime view of all F9 flights until the fleet is retired. Which is how one should be looking at it. If F9 Block 5 eventually does 500 flights before retirement, they could have done 490 flights with 49 boosters and 500 with 50 boosters.

If one is lost on its first flight, then sure they could still achieve 500 (501 actually) with just 51 boosters - so at the cost of just one extra booster. But that’s compared to the 510 they could have done with 51 boosters otherwise. So a loss of  9 flights for each booster lost on its first flight.

Offline mandrewa

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #677 on: 07/01/2020 03:54 pm »

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.


Ten flights per booster is the goal but that capability hasn't been demonstrated yet. 

There have been 53 successful Falcon 9 landings if we include the Falcon Heavy side core landings but exclude the center cores.  I would argue that the situation with the center cores is different enough that they should be treated as a separate category.  And at the same time there have been six landing failures if we don't include the landing failures prior to the first success.

But half of the landing failures were very early on, so they probably should also be counted as part of development.  Before mission 27 there were four successes and three failures.  So if we exclude those missions, ie. putting them into the development category, we have 53 attempted landings since then with 50 of them being successful.

So the current odds of landing success are 94%.  And as of yet the maximum number of times a booster has been recovered is five.

So, doing the math, 1 + 0.943 + 0.890 + 0.839 + 0.791 + 0.746 means that the average new booster has been demonstrated to be worth 5.2 flights.

Offline ChrisWilson68

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #678 on: 07/01/2020 04:09 pm »
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.

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.

Offline M.E.T.

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Re: SpaceX customers' views on reuse
« Reply #679 on: 07/01/2020 05:13 pm »
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.

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.

Look at the lifetime cost. Do you assume that SpaceX will aim to maximise the flights per booster - up to the aspirational 10 uses?

If so, then they will aim to reach the lifetime total F9 flights with as few boosters as possible. Meaning as close to 10 flights average as they can get. They aren’t going to just keep popping out more boosters than they need.

If they can only build 50 boosters ever to reach 500 flights, then they will do so - rather than building 100 boosters with 5 flights each.

Sweating their assets is the logical approach to take. It is after all their major competitive advantage.

Edit

With 5 boosters and a 60 day refurbishment time they can already maintain a fortnightly flight cadence pretty much indefinitely. Adding more boosters allows them to speed up the cadence and build a buffer to absorb occasional failed recoveries.

With 10 boosters they can launch weekly. And with 30 they can probably start shutting down their production line. Assuming 10 reuses are regularly achieved.
« Last Edit: 07/01/2020 05:28 pm by M.E.T. »

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