SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 - Jason 3 - SLC-4E Vandenberg - Jan 17, 2016 - DISCUSSION

[francesco nicoli]

In a few decades, expendable launch will seem as insane as crashing your airplane each time after you eject at your destination.

Or throwing away bottles just because you emptied them once. Or throwing used paper into landfills while destroying mega-hectares of virgin forest so you can plant pulp trees instead. Or producing mega-liters of clean, fresh potable water just so you can crap in it and flush. Or growing enough grain to meet the nutritional needs of every man, woman and child on the planet, then feeding it to cattle which throw away 90% of it as manure that then leaks into the water supply while a fair portion of the population simply starves. Or... (pick one).

My point is, never underestimate the success of some business models when there's large amounts of cash involved and all consequences don't have to be considered. Ideally, we'll have reuseable boosters one day, but sometimes looking at what else is going on makes me a pessimist.

agreed in principle, however in many examples the cost of reuse is above the cost of throwaway&getanewone. In this case, it's the opposite

[Kaputnik]

agreed in principle, however in many examples the cost of reuse is above the cost of throwaway&getanewone. In this case, it's the opposite

[ citation needed ]

[punder]

The surviving leg is probably the one most opposite from the side of the tank unzip. I can't decide if that means it's the leg that failed, or opposite from the leg that failed. And, I think we are looking at the top of the octaweb, and the engines may be relatively undamaged on the other side. If the pressure of the explosion escapes from weakest point (tank wall, or tank interface with octaweb) that implies (to me, not an engineer) that the engines should be okay. Some of them at least.

Wow, this guy nailed it early on. For some reason I can't hit his like button though.

 

[cscott]

To my eyes there appears to be much less soot in the engines compared with those of Orbcomm 2.

I remember seeing in the engine update thread a picture of a merlin 1D with a black thermal coating that was being tested. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32983.msg1417111#msg1417111

I also don't remember seeing a picture of the engines on the ORBCOMM-2 core before takeoff, could it be that the upgraded version of the engine uses a black thermal coating? And that the majority of the black we are seeing on the ORBCOMM-2 engines is actually this coating rather than soot?

IIRC consensus was that that black coating was specifically for IR imaging on the test stand (constant emissivity), not intended for flight engines.

[woods170]

In a few decades, expendable launch will seem as insane as crashing your airplane each time after you eject at your destination.

Or throwing away bottles just because you emptied them once. Or throwing used paper into landfills while destroying mega-hectares of virgin forest so you can plant pulp trees instead. Or producing mega-liters of clean, fresh potable water just so you can crap in it and flush. Or growing enough grain to meet the nutritional needs of every man, woman and child on the planet, then feeding it to cattle which throw away 90% of it as manure that then leaks into the water supply while a fair portion of the population simply starves. Or... (pick one).

My point is, never underestimate the success of some business models when there's large amounts of cash involved and all consequences don't have to be considered. Ideally, we'll have reuseable boosters one day, but sometimes looking at what else is going on makes me a pessimist.

I'll get to the spaceflight-related part of this post in a few minutes but I need to paint a background picture first:
Over here (as in my part of Europe) most plastic waste and paper waste (from both consumers and industry) is collected and recycled. Most of the biodegradable waste is also collected and turned into compost or other soil-improvement materials. Our water purification plants are so effective that most people in the Netherlands use tapwater, not bottled water. That really cuts down on the amount of plastic waste. Most cattle in Europe is fed corn-pulp, grass, hay and by-products of the food industry in stead of grain. And Europe has very strict laws with regards to the use of animal manure as soil fertilizer. A substantial part of the manure is nowadays turned into a dry product to replace the use of artificial fertilizer. Most metal waste is recollected and recycled. (Construction) debris is reused as a subsurface layer in road construction and as filling material in construction and brickworks. Asphalt/tarmac is recycled as well into new road surfaces. And the recycling of waste animal fatt and waste vegetable oils/fatts into bio-diesel and fuel-oils is one of the fastest growing industries in Europe. Most of the remaining waste does not go to a landfill but is burned at high temperatures with the generated heat used for district heating and generation of electricity. That in turn helps in cutting down the use of fuel oils and natural gas.
We are forced to do so. The rise of environmental laws from the late 1970's forward has made the old practice of simply throwing waste onto a landfill so expensive that it has become economically attractive to recycle/reuse most stuff.

Given that the cost of orbital launches has increased to nearly unaffordable heights in recent decades it is only natural that some entrepeneur(s) are eager to find out if reuse of rockets is economically attractive. The aircraft analogy is very fitting.

[CraigLieb]

In a few decades, expendable launch will seem as insane as crashing your airplane each time after you eject at your destination.

Or throwing away bottles just because you emptied them once. Or throwing used paper into landfills while destroying mega-hectares of virgin forest so you can plant pulp trees instead. Or producing mega-liters of clean, fresh potable water just so you can crap in it and flush. Or growing enough grain to meet the nutritional needs of every man, woman and child on the planet, then feeding it to cattle which throw away 90% of it as manure that then leaks into the water supply while a fair portion of the population simply starves. Or... (pick one).

My point is, never underestimate the success of some business models when there's large amounts of cash involved and all consequences don't have to be considered. Ideally, we'll have reuseable boosters one day, but sometimes looking at what else is going on makes me a pessimist.

I'll get to the spaceflight-related part of this post in a few minutes but I need to paint a background picture first:
Over here (as in my part of Europe) most plastic waste and paper waste (from both consumers and industry) is collected and recycled. Most of the biodegradable waste is also collected and turned into compost or other soil-improvement materials. Our water purification plants are so effective that most people in the Netherlands use tapwater, not bottled water. That really cuts down on the amount of plastic waste. Most cattle in Europe is fed corn-pulp, grass, hay and by-products of the food industry in stead of grain. And Europe has very strict laws with regards to the use of animal manure as soil fertilizer. A substantial part of the manure is nowadays turned into a dry product to replace the use of artificial fertilizer. Most metal waste is recollected and recycled. (Construction) debris is reused as a subsurface layer in road construction and as filling material in construction and brickworks. Asphalt/tarmac is recycled as well into new road surfaces. And the recycling of waste animal fatt and waste vegetable oils/fatts into bio-diesel and fuel-oils is one of the fastest growing industries in Europe. Most of the remaining waste does not go to a landfill but is burned at high temperatures with the generated heat used for district heating and generation of electricity. That in turn helps in cutting down the use of fuel oils and natural gas.
We are forced to do so. The rise of environmental laws from the late 1970's forward has made the old practice of simply throwing waste onto a landfill so expensive that it has become economically attractive to recycle/reuse most stuff.

Given that the cost of orbital launches has increased to nearly unaffordable heights in recent decades it is only natural that some entrepeneur(s) are eager to find out if reuse of rockets is economically attractive. The aircraft analogy is very fitting.

Having visited Europe and walked through the small German town which my family members fled in the 1937, I was amazed at the thought that this part of the world (and many others of course) have been constantly lived in/on for thousands of years. The house, which my Mother and Grandmother were both born in, was torn down recently to make room for a garden. It was ONLY 400 years old, so didn't qualify to be kept for historic purposes!

 Back in America, the throw away culture, combined with a sense of expansion, growth and pioneer-thinking leads to a mentality that there is always a new place to go if the old place is trashed, used up, and depleted. We don't seem to value conservation or preservation. In other words, we are more like locusts.
While this may drive a desire to leave the planet, helping to foster the innovations required for Mars travel, it also may represent a cautionary tale about the attitude we take to that new home.

[wardy89]

To my eyes there appears to be much less soot in the engines compared with those of Orbcomm 2.

I remember seeing in the engine update thread a picture of a merlin 1D with a black thermal coating that was being tested. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32983.msg1417111#msg1417111

I also don't remember seeing a picture of the engines on the ORBCOMM-2 core before takeoff, could it be that the upgraded version of the engine uses a black thermal coating? And that the majority of the black we are seeing on the ORBCOMM-2 engines is actually this coating rather than soot?

IIRC consensus was that that black coating was specifically for IR imaging on the test stand (constant emissivity), not intended for flight engines.

I only wonder because when i look at images of the ORBCOMM-2 engines the black coating covering the engines appears so consistent. (maybe it is just my eyes) If it is just soot wouldn't it be more inconsistent? like you can be see in the areas round the engines which don't seem to be as consistently covered.

[CorvusCorax]

Or throwing away bottles just because you emptied them once. Or throwing used paper into landfills while destroying mega-hectares of virgin forest so you can plant pulp trees instead. Or producing mega-liters of clean, fresh potable water just so you can crap in it and flush. Or growing enough grain to meet the nutritional needs of every man, woman and child on the planet, then feeding it to cattle which throw away 90% of it as manure that then leaks into the water supply while a fair portion of the population simply starves. Or... (pick one).

My point is, never underestimate the success of some business models when there's large amounts of cash involved and all consequences don't have to be considered. Ideally, we'll have reuseable boosters one day, but sometimes looking at what else is going on makes me a pessimist.

That is describing what SpaceX is trying to achieve in a nutshell.

SpaceX isn't reusing rockets just for the sake of reusing them. We've been there and done that.

The Space shuttle was almost completely reuseable (except for the propellant tank). But it was commercially way more convenient and viable to build throwaway rockets the same way it is sometimes cheaper to make thin nonreuseable tetra-packs than producing bottles sturdy enough to live through enough reuses to justify the infrastructure to actually allow reuse (collecting, returning, refunds, cleaning and quality testing)

But if SpaceX succeeds, than reusing rockets will be much cheaper than building new ones every time.

Public opinion wont sway ULA or Arianespace to change their modus operandi. But SpaceX offering entire launch contracts for a price less than just their bare metal rocket hardware costs - that will get them change their business model. Big time.

There's still a price to reusing rockets. There's still a payload penalty (although that barely matters in the long run - you can simply build the rocket bigger) and engines suited for many reuses need to be built to a better standards than those rated for just a few seconds beyond a full burn.

SpaceX big advantage is that the current launch providers had been operating extremely inefficiently. That allowed to build rockets that can be potentially reused at a price still cheaper than the competition - and use that to finance the reuseability development program.

It's quite likely that the cheaper prices achievable with reuse could in theory be met quite a while down the road by a competitor that built expendable rockets but really as cheap as theoretically possible. Basically the Chinese approach to consumer electronics: Make stuff that just barely works but for absolutely dead cheap - using both subsidies, cheap labour, mass production and newest production methods.

How cheap could an expendable rocket be made if you wanted to produce a hundred cores a week using all available cost savings modern manufacturing offers?

To be viable in the really long run, then SpaceX doesn't only have to get reuse working and costs of refurbishment cheaper than a new rocket of their own making. That's only the  first step and viable only while SpaceX rockets are cheaper than rocket by <insert competitor here> anyway. In the long run they would have to make refurbishment costs - including the partial cost of first producing that reuseable rocket divided by the number of achievable flights - cheaper than the bare metal cost of the cheapest thinkable mass produced rocket ever. Only if they manage that will expendable rockets ever completely loose their business case (And they might still survive in niche markets - ICBMs for example)

Most likely both approaches will live alongside for quite some time. Throwaway rockets would be simpler (No need to have easy maintenance, ablative instead of regenerative cooling, less capable avionics, no re-entry ability or grid fins, no RCS on 1st stage) and could use propulsion variants not really suitable for reusable rockets (solid 1st stage - where thrust matters and isp doesn't)
 
The same as nowadays you can find both reusable bottles and throwaway bottles in the supermarket.

[Lar]

General reuse of materials, why we fill water bottles once (or why we drink from the tap) etc.... off topic. Please try to bring it around so we dont have a RUD of the thread. Or at least of some posts in the thread.

(the post just above mine? It's kinda sorta on topic but it's probably more well suited for a thread about reuse economics. Which, guess what? We have several!!!) 

Thanks!

[Llian Rhydderch]

Also, did SpaceX just achieve SMART(-ish) reuse?   

Modular, definitely Modular!

With a rather energetic and low-altitude separation event. 

[saliva_sweet]

Also, did SpaceX just achieve SMART(-ish) reuse?   

Modular, definitely Modular!

Certainly points to a way to easily get rid of the tanks.

[AncientU]

Also, did SpaceX just achieve SMART(-ish) reuse?   

Modular, definitely Modular!

Certainly points to a way to easily get rid of the tanks.

And begin rapid disassembly of the rest.

[david1971]

I'm not sure why, but something about that photo of the "recovered" engines coming home made me really sad to think about throwing four SSMEs into the drink for each SLS launch, especially since it's looking like everyone will be trying to get their engines back at that point.

[Pete]

Ok, so we got back the engines and rearmost support structures...

So does the score stand at 1.5 returned first stages?
2 returned, but one is "slightly scuffed, a restorer's dream"?

Never mind the good science in there, can you imagine what those engines will sell for as "Collector pieces"?

[Pete]

.... really sad to think about throwing four SSMEs into the drink for each SLS launch, ....

Oh relax, its not as if each SSME cost very much, is it? Whats a mere $60M between friends. (each)

[bob_the_sky_watcher]

I'm not sure why, but something about that photo of the "recovered" engines coming home made me really sad to think about throwing four SSMEs into the drink for each SLS launch, especially since it's looking like everyone will be trying to get their engines back at that point.

I agree, i did not think so before, but each time is see a launch now, whether it be Ariane, ULA or anyone else, i keep thinking "What a waste..." when the first stage is dropped.

[pippin]

In a few decades, expendable launch will seem as insane as crashing your airplane each time after you eject at your destination.

Or throwing away bottles just because you emptied them once. Or throwing used paper into landfills while destroying mega-hectares of virgin forest so you can plant pulp trees instead. Or producing mega-liters of clean, fresh potable water just so you can crap in it and flush. Or growing enough grain to meet the nutritional needs of every man, woman and child on the planet, then feeding it to cattle which throw away 90% of it as manure that then leaks into the water supply while a fair portion of the population simply starves. Or... (pick one).

My point is, never underestimate the success of some business models when there's large amounts of cash involved and all consequences don't have to be considered. Ideally, we'll have reuseable boosters one day, but sometimes looking at what else is going on makes me a pessimist.

agreed in principle, however in many examples the cost of reuse is above the cost of throwaway&getanewone. In this case, it's the opposite

That's what we all hope. We don't know that, yet.

[Lar]

Ok, so we got back the engines and rearmost support structures...

So does the score stand at 1.5 returned first stages?
2 returned, but one is "slightly scuffed, a restorer's dream"?

Never mind the good science in there, can you imagine what those engines will sell for as "Collector pieces"?

For the purposes of the poll, this one is a fail. For the purposes of advancing the Great Project , this one is highly useful.

[mvpel]

The fact that the tanks flew forward and the octaweb+legs barely flew backward tells quite a bit about where the center of mass is...

Technically, the tanks flew in a lot of different directions.

[CraigLieb]

If SpaceX wants to get students excited about science and math take one of those engines on a high school tour. Also donate a couple to aerospace colleges if ITAR issues can be resolved. Send young engineers out with them. Great recruiting tools.