Author Topic: Reuse milestones  (Read 70148 times)

Offline Norm38

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #40 on: 06/20/2022 02:10 am »
Three launches within 48 hours. All on reused boosters. No scrubs.
They are dialed in.

Offline Asteroza

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #41 on: 06/20/2022 11:59 pm »
Three launches within 48 hours. All on reused boosters. No scrubs.
They are dialed in.

They only demonstrated salvo capability, which while an important milestone, can easily be a manifest scheduling artifact.

The more critical metrics are pad cycle time, booster refurb cycle time, and current fleet status/size.

If they can do a tripleheader again in 4 weeks time, then that would be impressive. Doing it in 2 weeks would be amazing.

Offline Lar

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #42 on: 06/21/2022 01:58 pm »
Three launches within 48 hours. All on reused boosters. No scrubs.
They are dialed in.

They only demonstrated salvo capability, which while an important milestone, can easily be a manifest scheduling artifact.

The more critical metrics are pad cycle time, booster refurb cycle time, and current fleet status/size.

If they can do a tripleheader again in 4 weeks time, then that would be impressive. Doing it in 2 weeks would be amazing.

Pad cycle time and booster refurb time seem to be trending generally downward while fleet status/size seems to be growing much more slowly than the number of flights/year.

If they do a tripleheader in 2 weeks time, someone here will be saying "that's nice but what about 1 week time?"
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline alugobi

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #43 on: 06/21/2022 03:55 pm »
Quote
If they do a tripleheader in 2 weeks time, someone here will be saying "that's nice but what about 1 week time?"
I can think of just the one who will do that.

Offline Barley

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #44 on: 06/21/2022 04:48 pm »
Three launches within 48 hours. All on reused boosters. No scrubs.
They are dialed in.

They only demonstrated salvo capability, which while an important milestone, can easily be a manifest scheduling artifact.

The more critical metrics are pad cycle time, booster refurb cycle time, and current fleet status/size.

If they can do a tripleheader again in 4 weeks time, then that would be impressive. Doing it in 2 weeks would be amazing.
So far this year SpaceX is launching once per week.  Two tripleheaders 4 weeks apart would be a decrease in tempo.

I hope this and any other triple header is a scheduling artifact.  IMHO and experience aiming for records is a stunt and at least somewhat disruptive to normal operations (e.g. you can often decrease cycle times for a record attempt by deferring maintenance.)

I hope SpaceX concentrates on important metrics such as $/kg, kg/year and useful satellites launched.  The metrics you site may or may not help them.  I hope any records in them are in passing, rather than publicity stunts.

For example the refurb time has a clear tradeoff with the number of rockets.  If skilled labor is the limiting factor it might be better to refurbish 8/5 rather than 24/7 and accept a larger fleet with longer cycle times for each rocket.

Offline DanClemmensen

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #45 on: 06/21/2022 06:54 pm »

For example the refurb time has a clear tradeoff with the number of rockets.  If skilled labor is the limiting factor it might be better to refurbish 8/5 rather than 24/7 and accept a larger fleet with longer cycle times for each rocket.
For pad turnaround instead of booster turnaround, are all the personnel SpaceX employees and contractors, or are some of them NASA and USSF?  SpaceX may not be able to reduce pad turnaround much.

Offline wannamoonbase

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #46 on: 06/21/2022 07:45 pm »

For example the refurb time has a clear tradeoff with the number of rockets.  If skilled labor is the limiting factor it might be better to refurbish 8/5 rather than 24/7 and accept a larger fleet with longer cycle times for each rocket.
For pad turnaround instead of booster turnaround, are all the personnel SpaceX employees and contractors, or are some of them NASA and USSF?  SpaceX may not be able to reduce pad turnaround much.

For example the refurb time has a clear tradeoff with the number of rockets.  If skilled labor is the limiting factor it might be better to refurbish 8/5 rather than 24/7 and accept a larger fleet with longer cycle times for each rocket.
For pad turnaround instead of booster turnaround, are all the personnel SpaceX employees and contractors, or are some of them NASA and USSF?  SpaceX may not be able to reduce pad turnaround much.

The ASDS seem to require an 8-9 day cycle time, 7 seems like a stretch.

Now if there was a RTLS on one side of a cycle we might be able to get a better idea on the best pad turn around time.
Wildly optimistic prediction, Superheavy recovery on IFT-4 or IFT-5

Offline Asteroza

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #47 on: 06/22/2022 01:49 am »
So far this year SpaceX is launching once per week.  Two tripleheaders 4 weeks apart would be a decrease in tempo.

Note this appears to assume tripleheaders occurring regularly, thus a 4 weeks/3 launches (or 8weeks/6 launches) is indeed less than one per week.

But regular tripleheaders is asking for burnout.

Putting that much strain on mission control is probably not healthy without increasing the personnel count. A secondary limiter is how many pad rat teams they have as well. Assuming only one team for each coast, the east coast team gets worked over at double the rate due to servicing two pads. Plus for any ISS missions, the pad rats need to give the white glove treatment.

Spacing it out to one a week implies a 2 week cycle time for west coast, and technically 4 week cycle per pad on the east coast.

That's working towards ideal scenarios as well, since you also have weather issues and range availability to deal with.

Offline Norm38

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #48 on: 06/22/2022 04:20 pm »
The point I was making wasn't so much that salvo launch was a good thing generally (though it will likely be needed for tanker launch).
But more that they scheduled three launches in 48 hours and kept the schedule.  No glitches, no scrubs (and non-weather scrubs are becoming very rare).
Agreed that no one wants constant salvos.  But if they are necessary (for tankers), they now know how to do it, and are not blocked by technology.  It's a logistics/personnel problem now.

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #49 on: 07/11/2022 06:15 am »
Summary of F9 / FH booster landings (although I think there were 30, not 29, in 2021?)

https://twitter.com/renatakonkoly/status/1546312305394290689
« Last Edit: 07/11/2022 06:15 am by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline AmigaClone

Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #50 on: 07/16/2022 03:26 pm »
Summary of F9 / FH booster landings (although I think there were 30, not 29, in 2021?)

In 2021 there were 30 successful landings and one failure.

OCISLY (Marmac 304) - 13 successful, 1 failed attempt.
JRTI (Marmac 303)      - 12 successful, 0 failed attempts.
ASOG (Marmac 302)    -  4 successful, 0 failed attempts.

Landing Zone 1            - 1 successful, 0 failed attempts.

In 2022 so far (16 July 2022) there have been 30 successful landings - no failures.

OCISLY (Marmac 304) -  3 successful, 0 failed attempts.
JRTI (Marmac 303)      -  9 successful, 0 failed attempts.
ASOG (Marmac 302)   - 12 successful, 0 failed attempts.

Landing Zone 1            - 3 successful, 0 failed attempts.
Landing Zone 4            - 3 successful, 0 failed attempts.

Offline Comga

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #51 on: 08/10/2022 05:57 pm »
Here's a milestone:

(snip) SFN launch article.
Falcon 9 rocket deploys SpaceX’s 3,000th Starlink internet satellite, August 10

The article refers to
Quote
The Falcon 9’s single-use upper stage...


It's like before mass produced Teslas, when it was rare that anyone referred to "internal combustion engine" or ICE automobiles or even "gas powered cars", because they basically all were.
Rocket reusability is being normalized.
What kind of wastrels would dump a perfectly good booster in the ocean after just one use?

Offline Robotbeat

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #52 on: 08/11/2022 01:07 am »
Here's a milestone:

(snip) SFN launch article.
Falcon 9 rocket deploys SpaceX’s 3,000th Starlink internet satellite, August 10

The article refers to
Quote
The Falcon 9’s single-use upper stage...


It's like before mass produced Teslas, when it was rare that anyone referred to "internal combustion engine" or ICE automobiles or even "gas powered cars", because they basically all were.
Rocket reusability is being normalized.
It's even more than that. SpaceX now does about 2/3rds the mass to orbit. It's like being transported 25 years into the most TSLA-investor wet dream future when most cars are electric. And Teslas.
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Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #53 on: 09/05/2022 04:54 am »
Love this chart. SpaceX just completed 40 missions this year and could reach 60

https://twitter.com/renatakonkoly/status/1566642793006731266

Quote
...and the 38th mission with a flight-proven booster 🚀

Edit to add:

https://twitter.com/RenataKonkoly/status/1566620003662794753
« Last Edit: 09/05/2022 05:25 am by FutureSpaceTourist »

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #54 on: 09/12/2022 06:14 am »
Current F9 booster fleet now B1058 has achieved 14 successful flights and landings

https://twitter.com/spacenosey/status/1569049084991881220

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #55 on: 09/25/2022 06:48 am »
https://twitter.com/alexphysics13/status/1573843125365342211

Quote
Today was the 69th booster recovery in a row since the last landing failure

nice

twitter.com/alexphysics13/status/1573843623753515008

Quote
To add to this. Falcon 9 landings are now so routine and reliable, they're getting up to points of reliability that some rockets have but launching.

https://twitter.com/alexphysics13/status/1573843679156092934

Quote
If SpaceX can keep this trend for another year, they may even have more successful landings in a row than more successful launches in a row by any other rocket 😅

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #56 on: 09/30/2022 05:42 pm »
twitter.com/jennyhphoto/status/1575899587239620609

Quote
SpaceX currently has a total of 14 active Falcon 9 boosters in Cape Canaveral & Vandenberg.

• B1049-10
• B1051-13
• B1052-7
• B1058-14
• B1060-13
• B1061-10
• B1062-9
• B1063-6
• B1067-6
• B1069-2
• B1071-4
• B1073-4
• B1076-0
• B1077-0

📷: Me for @SuperclusterHQ

https://twitter.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1575901564304244736

Quote
It's hard to wrap my mind around there being five reused SpaceX boosters with double digit launch-and-landings.

5 that have done the work of 60!

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #57 on: 10/01/2022 01:31 pm »
twitter.com/jennyhphoto/status/1575899587239620609

It's hard to wrap my mind around there being five reused SpaceX boosters with double digit launch-and-landings.

5 that have done the work of 60!

It is an impressive achievement. It'll be interesting to see if they do push on to 15 before year's end or give some of the lower launch stages more play. Certainly a couple of them could get there but then how much effort to check them over prior to any further launches?
« Last Edit: 10/01/2022 07:00 pm by john smith 19 »
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Offline DanClemmensen

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #58 on: 10/01/2022 03:55 pm »
twitter.com/jennyhphoto/status/1575899587239620609

It's hard to wrap my mind around there being five reused SpaceX boosters with double digit launch-and-landings.

5 that have done the work of 60!
It is an impressive achievement. It'll be interesting to see if they do push on to 15 before year's end or give some of the lower launch stages more play. Certainly a couple of them could get there but then how much effort to check them over prior to any further launches?
I thought the idea was to intensively inspect one or perhaps two boosters at "age" 15, maybe even tear them down, to learn what really needs to be inspected.  The knowledge gained will tell them how much inspection is needed for the rest, and almost certainly be a small increment over what they are doing already, so this extra work (two teardowns) won't affect the overall launch cadence.

Remember that 1049 is being held in reserve to be expended on the next expendable launch, so it's not in the normal rotation.

Offline AC in NC

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Re: Reuse milestones
« Reply #59 on: 10/01/2022 08:31 pm »
I thought the idea was to intensively inspect one or perhaps two boosters at "age" 15, maybe even tear them down, to learn what really needs to be inspected.  The knowledge gained will tell them how much inspection is needed for the rest, and almost certainly be a small increment over what they are doing already, so this extra work (two teardowns) won't affect the overall launch cadence.

Remember that 1049 is being held in reserve to be expended on the next expendable launch, so it's not in the normal rotation.
That was the gist of one tweet IIRC.  However there was a subsequent tweet that implied (at least to me) that they felt comfortable pushing through 15 with perhaps regular refurbishment inspections informing when to do an intensive inspection/tear-down

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