General Falcon and Dragon discussion (Thread 15)

[Svetoslav]

Words are that SpaceX Hakuto-R and OneWeb missions are further delayed.

Just what's wrong with SpaceX these days? Maybe Elon should focus more on his space activities and less on Twitter... It's becoming really frustrating to see these delays...


https://twitter.com/TGMetsFan98/status/1600145824666636291

[Stan-1967]

Gywnne Shotwell is in charge of operations, so she is probably more to blame than Elon, if in fact there is any problem.

[Svetoslav]

There may be no problem - after all, the company is now responsible for launching multiple payloads (with the absence of Russian rockets - actually, all western payloads) and they should be more careful in this situation.

I may be wrong, but... I do think SpaceX was more public in the past about the causes of delays...

[uhuznaa]

Words are that SpaceX Hakuto-R and OneWeb missions are further delayed.

Just what's wrong with SpaceX these days? Maybe Elon should focus more on his space activities and less on Twitter... It's becoming really frustrating to see these delays...


https://twitter.com/TGMetsFan98/status/1600145824666636291

I think they may just be more cautious lately. With all the bruhaha around Musk a launch failure could easily lead to a tsunami of bad PR, so they're just extra cautious with everything. Better safe than sorry.

[Alvian@IDN]

I wonder why they're decided to delay the upcoming Starlink launch by a day even though the Range published their ability to support the double header in Twitter

[ZachS09]

I wonder why they're decided to delay the upcoming Starlink launch by a day even though the Range published their ability to support the double header in Twitter

I replied to a similar question on Twitter saying that SpaceX probably considers external missions more important than their internal missions such as Starlink.

So, if there’s a Starlink launch and external mission scheduled in the same week, they’ll most likely go for the external mission first. In this case, they did O3b mPOWER F1 first.

[FLHerne]

I wonder why they're decided to delay the upcoming Starlink launch by a day even though the Range published their ability to support the double header in Twitter

The SWOT launch from Vandy slipped onto the 16th. SpaceX might not have the mission control staff to do three (!) launches in the same day.

[whitelancer64]

Also, weather delays are extremely normal this time of year.

[whitelancer64]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Crew Dragon Resilience reserved for non-ISS missions only?

I ask that because it flew Inspiration4 and is scheduled for Polaris Dawn.

Another reason for my question is that Endeavour is manifested for Crew-6 while Endurance eventually wraps up Crew-5 and Freedom is being refurbished. It makes me assume the latter three spacecraft will carry out the ISS crew rotations.

No. It flew Crew-1

[Jim]

The SWOT launch from Vandy slipped onto the 16th. SpaceX might not have the mission control staff to do three (!) launches in the same day.

Mission control staff has no real role in non Dragon launches.  It is just a monitoring function.

[Jim]

So my thinking was/is that they have something slightly out of spec, maybe transient that only triggers a fault on some flights, and they might have tracked it back to a supplier issue - That would account for the longer standdown we've just seen as they need to go back and investigate.

All speculation on my part!

A supplier problem? Just a wild guess but smells like they are not happy with something feeding into the system.

What's weird is that it's always like day before launch. If it was a supplier problem, they'd check all stages at once.

Actually, mere hours before launch.

They could be payload issues.

[Jim]

Just what's wrong with SpaceX these days? Maybe Elon should focus more on his space activities and less on Twitter

Why?  It is up to him to decide what is more important.

It's becoming really frustrating to see these delays...

Why?  It is only a few days.

[Jim]

Actually, mere hours before launch.

Usually a payload issue, since that is when the payload powers up for launch.

[abaddon]

Latest update in my EELV launch rate comparison chart with SpaceX's 200th flight.  Asterisks:

- EELV - yes this is a dated term
- SpaceX's 200th flight - I am counting the Heavy yesterday (not included in the chart) as 201st as I am counting the on-ground Amos anomaly as a failed launch, due to the destroyed payload. 
- Really fascinated to see how much faster the Vulcan can debut than the launchers depicted here.  They have a very ambitious first-year launch rate queued up...

[rpapo]

- Really fascinated to see how much faster the Vulcan can debut than the launchers depicted here.  They have a very ambitious first-year launch rate queued up...

Whether the competition likes it or not, SpaceX has set a very high bar to match in any new rocket system.  In price, reliability and availability.

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/theprimaldino/status/1614748086567321602

Has spacex just given up on recovering the center core at this point? Are there any future missions that even attempt that?

twitter.com/djsnm/status/1614758218852610048

It's a pretty small window of utility where it might make sense, the gain from expending the core is huge.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1615078289475002368

Center core moving too fast return. Falcon Heavy is a 3 (or 2.5) stage rocket, but full & rapid reusability on Earth demand a 2 stage rocket.

1st stage returns to launch site immediately via boostback & 2nd stage orbits until ground track passes back over launch site to return.

[DanClemmensen]

Has spacex just given up on recovering the center core at this point? Are there any future missions that even attempt that?

There is little economic incentive to recover the center core. FH missions are relatively rare, and SpaceX can charge as much as they need to to make a nice profit, because FH has no competition. It appears that they make the FH cores to order instead of having an inventory, probably because the contracts require availability on a specific launch date (that then slips). Any incremental effort needed to develop and maintain an FH core retrieval and refurbishment capability must be amortized over only a few FH missions before FH is superseded by Starship.

FH does have one type of competition. Users can figure out how to use F9 instead for some requirements by modifying either the payload or their operations. But F9 is likely to have a higher overall profit margin for SpaceX, so they have no incentive to try to keep these payloads on FH.

[Coastal Ron]

Has spacex just given up on recovering the center core at this point? Are there any future missions that even attempt that?

There is little economic incentive to recover the center core.

That is the wrong interpretation, since there actually is a financial incentive to recover cores that are recoverable, but as Elon Musk stated this core was going too fast to recover.

FH missions are relatively rare, and SpaceX can charge as much as they need to to make a nice profit, because FH has no competition.

This is not correct either when the U.S. Government is the customer, since the U.S. Government specifies the profit margin for their contracts. Of course if a Falcon Heavy launch (just the launch, not the custom services) costs more than a Falcon 9 launch, which it does, then SpaceX will get more profit out of a Falcon Heavy launch, but the profit margin is likely the same. Launch services are negotiated separately from the launch service itself, but would also be validated by the GSA for profit margin.

It appears that they make the FH cores to order instead of having an inventory, probably because the contracts require availability on a specific launch date (that then slips).

Before the contract is awarded SpaceX knows if the core will be expended or recovered, since they determine that information when they are working with the customer on what the payload needs are. So SpaceX has years of advance notice for when they need a Falcon Heavy center core that will be expended, and they can review their known and planned inventory of Falcon Heavy cores to see if they need to build a new one - which in most cases they will have to. And since they communicate with their customers on the status of the potential launch dates, they have plenty of visibility into when they need to build a Falcon Heavy core.

FH does have one type of competition. Users can figure out how to use F9 instead for some requirements by modifying either the payload or their operations. But F9 is likely to have a higher overall profit margin for SpaceX, so they have no incentive to try to keep these payloads on FH.

It is up to the customer to determine what their options are, not SpaceX. If the customer wants Falcon Heavy, SpaceX will sell them a Falcon Heavy launch.

For the most part I think it is very clear whether a Falcon 9 is an option for a payload mission, so it is more a matter that there just aren't that many large payloads that require the Falcon Heavy as opposed to any business considerations - because all the other commercial launch options outside of SpaceX cost a LOT more, so commercial customers are already getting a bargain just by using SpaceX.

[Jim]

1.  This is not correct either when the U.S. Government is the customer, since the U.S. Government specifies the profit margin for their contracts. Of course if a Falcon Heavy launch (just the launch, not the custom services) costs more than a Falcon 9 launch, which it does, then SpaceX will get more profit out of a Falcon Heavy launch, but the profit margin is likely the same.

2.   Launch services are negotiated separately from the launch service itself,

3.  but would also be validated by the GSA for profit margin.

1.  Not really.  SpaceX can charge what they want.

2.  Huh?

3.  GSA has no role in this

[Jim]

There is little economic incentive to recover the center core.

No, it is physics and not economics.