Author Topic: Reuse milestones  (Read 70130 times)

Offline Barley

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Reuse milestones
« on: 09/17/2021 04:45 pm »
Sometime* in 2021 SpaceX reached a milestone of more reuse missions than new booster missions.

*Exactly when depends on how you count Falcon 1, Falcon Heavy, and rockets that did not reach orbit.

Offline cppetrie

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #1 on: 09/17/2021 08:17 pm »
Sometime* in 2021 SpaceX reached a milestone of more reuse missions than new booster missions.

*Exactly when depends on how you count Falcon 1, Falcon Heavy, and rockets that did not reach orbit.
Also this year were humans launching on both a once used (Crew-2) and twice used (Inspiration4) booster and in a once used capsule (Crew-2 and Inspiration4).

Offline rocketmaniac000

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #2 on: 11/05/2021 10:01 pm »
What Elon Musk and SpaceX have done to this point is nothing short of amazing! They told him it would be impossible to do this and sure enough he did it!


Offline su27k

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #3 on: 12/22/2021 04:29 am »
https://www.spacex.com/launches/index.html

Quote
On December 21, 2021, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched Dragon on the 24th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-24) mission for NASA from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, completing our 31st and final launch of the year. Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage about twelve minutes after liftoff and will autonomously dock to the space station on Wednesday, December 22.

CRS-24 also marked the 100th recovery of an orbital class rocket booster. SpaceX remains the only launch provider in the world capable of propulsive landing and re-flight of orbital class rockets. While most rockets are expended after launch — akin to throwing away an airplane after a cross-country flight — SpaceX is working toward a future in which reusable rockets are the norm. To date, SpaceX has:

* Launched 138 successful missions;
* Landed first stage rocket boosters 100 times; and
* Reflown boosters 78 times, with flight-proven first stages completing 75 percent of SpaceX’s missions since the first re-flight of a Falcon 9 in 2017.

2021 was particularly impressive, during which the SpaceX team:

* Launched 94 percent of all missions on flight-proven Falcon 9 boosters;
* Safely carried eight astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, in addition to transporting ~28,000 pounds of critical cargo and scientific research to and from the orbiting laboratory;
* Completed the world’s first all-civilian astronaut mission to orbit, which flew farther from planet Earth than any human spaceflight since the Hubble missions;
* Launched humanity’s first planetary defense test to redirect an asteroid, among other important scientific missions; and
* Deployed more than 800 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit which are helping to connect over 150,000 customers and counting around the world with high-speed, low-latency internet.

In the year ahead, SpaceX’s launch cadence will continue to increase, as will the number of flight-proven missions, human spaceflights, Falcon Heavy missions, and people connected with internet by Starlink. We’re also targeting the first orbital flight of Starship, and have resumed development of a lunar lander for NASA that will help return humanity to the Moon, on our way to Mars and beyond.

Offline su27k

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #4 on: 12/22/2021 04:31 am »
https://twitter.com/cboldenjr/status/1473291703301947392

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Kudos to the entire SpaceX Team for an exceptionally successful year by any measure!  - Charlie B.


https://twitter.com/waynehale/status/1473285005698904069

Quote
Congratulations to SpaceX on the landing of the 100th Falcon booster!  I admit being a skeptic when it was announced, now know I was wrong.  SpaceX has disrupted the launch industry and set the reuability standard everyone is emulating.  Remarkable achievement!


https://twitter.com/larsblackmore/status/1473256835859812355

Quote
The 100th Falcon landing, on the anniversary of landing #1 no less! Huge credit to the teams that took something that worked *most* of the time a few years ago and made it a normal and reliable part of launch.



Next up is 100% reusability, with Starship
« Last Edit: 12/22/2021 04:33 am by su27k »

Offline alugobi

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #5 on: 12/22/2021 08:50 pm »
Not so sure that "everyone" is emulating SX.

Offline cwr

Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #6 on: 12/22/2021 09:43 pm »

The stat I like is that:
1) Turksat 5B was launched by the 78th "previously flown F9 booster and FH cores"
2) CRS24 was launched by B1069 and while half a dozen boosters have left Hawthorn
    for MacGregor since 1069, I don't think 1078 has left Hawthorn yet.

So SpaceX has flown more "previously flown boosters"  than "unflown boosters" on launch
missions.

Carl

Online AmigaClone

Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #7 on: 12/27/2021 02:14 pm »

The stat I like is that:
1) Turksat 5B was launched by the 78th "previously flown F9 booster and FH cores"
2) CRS24 was launched by B1069 and while half a dozen boosters have left Hawthorn
    for MacGregor since 1069, I don't think 1078 has left Hawthorn yet.

So SpaceX has flown more "previously flown boosters"  than "unflown boosters" on launch
missions.

Carl

As of 21 December 2021, SpaceX has flown 133 orbital Falcon 9, 3 Falcon Heavy, and 5 Falcon 1 missions. Below is the number of each type of first stage flown on an orbital mission. The numbers in the 'New' column are those boosters that were launching for the first time, while the numbers in the 'flown' column are for those boosters that already had flown at least once.

Model  New    Flown  Total 
Falcon 1 5 0   5
Falcon 9 v1.0 5 0   5
Falcon 9 v1.1 15 0 15
Falcon 9 Full Thrust 24 12 36
Falcon 9 v1.2 Block 5       16 62 78
Falcon 9 Heavy 5 4   9
Totals 70 78 148

* Falcon 9 Full Thrust - Falcon 9 v1.2 up to block 4
Note that Falcon 9 V1.0 boosters were numbered B0001-B0007. There were six boosters built as pathfinders or test articles and never used in an orbital mission. The two boosters that flew short hops in that group, flew a total of 12 times.

B1028, intended to launch the Amos-6 mission, was destroyed prior to launch.

Edited for clarity.
« Last Edit: 12/29/2021 09:02 am by AmigaClone »

Offline CuddlyRocket

Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #8 on: 12/27/2021 05:55 pm »
... Below is the number of each type of first stage flown on an orbital mission.

Model  Unflown  Flown  Total 
Falcon 1 5 0   5
....

That makes it look like there were five Falcon 1 boosters none of which flew. As that was obviously not the case, I'm guessing that by 'unflown' you mean they had not previously flown before?

Online niwax

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #9 on: 12/27/2021 11:28 pm »
I'll add this one from almost precisely a year ago:

In my opinion, this is the week that significant reuse became fully accepted and the operational standard. We had a number of significant events over two launches:

- They flew a customer mission on a seventh flight after having never gone beyond a third flight before. This marks a sudden departure from gradual envelope expansion to a regular commercial fleet.
- NASA as one of their pickiest customers not only flew on a fourth flight after never going over two before, they flew after two demanding missions for other customers.
- Both launches were after (multiple) Starlink missions which so far have been seen as low-risk life-leader experiments. Now those boosters are part of the normal rotation.

And next week the NRO will fly on a fifth flight!

Since then, they have flown almost exclusively reused missions, with a recovery success rate that other launch providers would kill for as their mission success rate and a fleet that has barely increased since that last post.
Which booster has the most soot? SpaceX booster launch history! (discussion)

Online AmigaClone

Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #10 on: 12/28/2021 01:05 am »
... Below is the number of each type of first stage flown on an orbital mission.

Model  Unflown  Flown  Total 
Falcon 1 5 0   5
....

That makes it look like there were five Falcon 1 boosters none of which flew. As that was obviously not the case, I'm guessing that by 'unflown' you mean they had not previously flown before?

True. I will be changing the description of the second column to 'New' to try to clarify things a bit.
« Last Edit: 12/28/2021 01:38 am by AmigaClone »

Offline Norm38

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #11 on: 04/01/2022 05:40 pm »
Crew4 is launching on a -4 booster, twice the previous mark.  Axiom-1 not announced yet.

But that shows a lot of confidence and respect for flown boosters.  And will allow a lot schedule flexibility.

Offline DanClemmensen

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #12 on: 04/01/2022 05:49 pm »
Crew4 is launching on a -4 booster, twice the previous mark.  Axiom-1 not announced yet.

But that shows a lot of confidence and respect for flown boosters.  And will allow a lot schedule flexibility.
Inspiration 4 launched on B1062.3.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspiration4
« Last Edit: 04/01/2022 05:49 pm by DanClemmensen »

Offline abaddon

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #13 on: 04/08/2022 10:00 pm »
This probably belongs better in the "customer opinions on reuse" thread, but that's locked.  From the SWOT thread:
Related news: NASA has amended the launch contract for the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission.  It will now fly on a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster rather than a new one.

https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1512498083350736897
The money quote:
Quote
Even though I was always excited about utilizing flown @SpaceX
 boosters on principle and also the impact on mission cost, I have changed my opinion about them slightly: I now PREFER previously used boosters over totally new ones for most science applications.
This was something that was predicted by many on this site to happen at some point, but it's the first time I can recall seeing someone directly involved in a mission giving this opinion.
« Last Edit: 04/08/2022 10:01 pm by abaddon »

Offline alugobi

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #14 on: 04/08/2022 10:09 pm »
Remember all those posts about how it was really, really, I mean really expensive to turn them around, but that they covered it up and had to conspire to charge their customers more?

Or how some ULA peep actually knew how much it cost and why wouldn't anybody here listen to him?

And other dubious rubbish.  Those were fun.

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #15 on: 04/19/2022 06:12 am »
Visualisation of new versus reused boosters

https://twitter.com/renatakonkoly/status/1512495754749026305

Quote
A SpaceX launch with a brand new Falcon 9 booster is SUCH a rare sight these days!

Offline meekGee

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #16 on: 04/20/2022 10:51 am »
Remember all those posts about how it was really, really, I mean really expensive to turn them around, but that they covered it up and had to conspire to charge their customers more?

Or how some ULA peep actually knew how much it cost and why wouldn't anybody here listen to him?

And other dubious rubbish.  Those were fun.
The good old days.  "Proven" by "statistics", too.

At least those folks learned from that and are taking a more open minded approach when evaluating future vehicles... (/s)
ABCD - Always Be Counting Down

Offline wannamoonbase

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #17 on: 04/20/2022 02:38 pm »
Visualisation of new versus reused boosters

https://twitter.com/renatakonkoly/status/1512495754749026305

Quote
A SpaceX launch with a brand new Falcon 9 booster is SUCH a rare sight these days!

If the trend is your friend, then I love where this is going.  Extrapolate to 2030 and we should have multiple flights per day, LOL!

Can't wait.
Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline Nomadd

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #18 on: 04/21/2022 01:20 am »
 It's not exactly reuse, but the record for successful consecutive launches is the R-7 family at 133. (twice)
 Falcon 9 is at 129. Excuse for a party sometime next month.
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.

Offline su27k

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #19 on: 04/22/2022 03:16 am »
So B1060 first launch on June 30, 2020, 12th launch on April 21 2022, completed 11 launches in 660 days, with a 60 day average turnaround time.

Comparing to the Space Shuttle, the fastest orbiter to launch 12 times is Endeavour: May 7, 1992 - Jan 22, 1998, 2086 days, which gives an average turnaround time of 190 days.

Just another data point in case someone's wondering which one is more reusable.

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