SpaceX long-term stage processing goal = 48 hour turnaround

[Glom]

I think the barrier they will run into is the ability to get the times and dates cleared for the down range. It is not trivial it clean air traffic, boat traffic, etc.

Clearing air traffic isn't a problem: aircraft do it for each other all the time, continuously. In the scenario where launch vehicles are treated with aircraft-like turnaround times, they would undoubtedly be treated much like any other aircraft.

Um, no. They don't, at least not in the U.S. above 5,000 feet or within specified radii around certain designated metropolitan, military and spaceflight installations. Aircraft (and launching/entering spacecraft) in and around those areas in U.S. territory are subject to FAA flight rules and restrictions. There is a LOT of commercial aircraft travel in south Florida and all along the eastern seaboard of North America.

Isn't the point that if they can get to launching in such a casual and reliable way, that will lead to a paradigm shift in how airspace is viewed and it will be designed for permanently active launch corridors with reduced margins because we have so much confidence in the rockets now.

I know we're not there yet.

[rpapo]

As long as thinking starts from our tightly constrained existing model of rocket launches (rare, military like, expendible, government controlled, etc.), you are correct that this would be the barrier.  But as noted above, thinking out of the box or outside for some, forces engineers to cast all of that off and find what is physically limiting.  Most of the rest are rules people made up and people can change them.

Well, they could start by making certain areas immediately east and northeast of the cape as permanent flight restriction zones, much like how nobody's is/was allowed to fly over Area 51.  Restricting boat traffic would be more difficult than air traffic, I think, since you can't just re-route ships to the west of the cape...

[joek]

I think the barrier they will run into is the ability to get the times and dates cleared for the down range. It is not trivial it clean air traffic, boat traffic, etc.

Clearing air traffic isn't a problem: aircraft do it for each other all the time, continuously. In the scenario where launch vehicles are treated with aircraft-like turnaround times, they would undoubtedly be treated much like any other aircraft.

Um, no. They don't, at least not in the U.S. above 5,000 feet or within specified radii around certain designated metropolitan, military and spaceflight installations. Aircraft (and launching/entering spacecraft) in and around those areas in U.S. territory are subject to FAA flight rules and restrictions. There is a LOT of commercial aircraft travel in south Florida and all along the eastern seaboard of North America.

Isn't the point that if they can get to launching in such a casual and reliable way, that will lead to a paradigm shift in how airspace is viewed and it will be designed for permanently active launch corridors with reduced margins because we have so much confidence in the rockets now.

These issues have been recognized and worked for some time, and there is a considerable body of work on the subject; e.g., see (among others):
- Air Traffic Considerations for Future Spaceports, FAA, May 2014
- The FAA’s Current Approach to Integrating Commercial Space Operations into the National Airspace System, FAA, Sep 2013
- Space Transportation Concept of Operations Annex for NextGen, FAA, Aug 2012
- A Tool for Integrating Commercial Space Operations Into The National Airspace System, FAA/AIAA, Aug 2006
- Industry Trends and Key Issues Affecting Federal Oversight and International Competitiveness, GAO, May 2011

edit: add NextGen link.

[shooter6947]

Well, they could start by making certain areas immediately east and northeast of the cape as permanent flight restriction zones, much like how nobody's is/was allowed to fly over Area 51.  Restricting boat traffic would be more difficult than air traffic, I think, since you can't just re-route ships to the west of the cape...

That would be a pretty onerous flight restriction.  With no way to fly over or under, and no way to go around to the east, that would definitely put a damper on aviation traffic.

Would the situation be easier at Boca Chica?  Since that's the edge of the US anyway, and there's much less air traffic in that vicinity, a permanent flight restriction zone could fare better.

[joek]

Well, they could start by making certain areas immediately east and northeast of the cape as permanent flight restriction zones, much like how nobody's is/was allowed to fly over Area 51.  Restricting boat traffic would be more difficult than air traffic, I think, since you can't just re-route ships to the west of the cape...

That would be a pretty onerous flight restriction.  With no way to fly over or under, and no way to go around to the east, that would definitely put a damper on aviation traffic.

Would the situation be easier at Boca Chica?  Since that's the edge of the US anyway, and there's much less air traffic in that vicinity, a permanent flight restriction zone could fare better.

The objective is better integration and management of the entire US national airspace for all uses; see Space Transportation Concept of Operations Annex for NextGen.

I suggest a new thread in the Commercial Space Flight General section if you want to pursue the subject.

[Arb]

Restricting boat traffic would be more difficult than air traffic, I think, since you can't just re-route ships to the west of the cape...

Permanently restricted sea areas are not uncommon. Typically because "military and/or restricted and/or prohibited and/or dangerous and/or you-might-get-blown-up". See Don't go there by Beth Walsh for Chesapeake Bay examples.

[Senex]

I originally posted this over on the "Refurbishment" thread, but it would seem to be at least as relevant here.  And it may serve to get discussion off of airspace restrictions and back on the subject of processing boosters for re-flight.


While speculation is popular and is often justified by the absence of facts, there ARE some facts available. An earlier reference to the X-15 is highly relevant as it endured a very similar flight regime in terms of stresses (arguably greater). 

In an interesting article, space historian David Portree cites a study that looked at the refurbishment costs of the X-15 program that provides probably the most relevant real-world data we have:


"In November 1966, James Love and William Young, engineers at the NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, completed a brief report in which they noted that the reusable suborbital booster for a reusable orbital spacecraft would undergo pressures, heating rates, and accelerations very similar to those the X-15 experienced."

"The average X-15 refurbishment time was 30 days, a period which had, they noted, hardly changed in four years. Even with identifiable improvements, they doubted that an X-15 could be refurbished in fewer than 20 days.

"At the same time, Love and Young argued that the X-15 program had demonstrated the benefits of reusability. They estimated that refurbishing an X-15 in 1964 had cost about $270,000 per mission.

"Love and Young cited North American Aviation estimates when they placed the cost of a new X-15 at about $9 million. They then calculated that 27 missions using expendable X-15s would have cost a total of $243 million. This meant, they wrote, that the cost of the reusable X-15 program in 1964 had amounted to just 3% of the cost of building 27 X-15s and throwing each one away after a single flight.

My bold.

http://www.wired.com/2013/05/the-x-15-rocket-plane-reusable-space-shuttle-boosters-1966/

At least two implications can be deduced from this reference:

1. There has been much talk on the forums about the effects of "fatigue" with images of much of the booster requiring rework or even replacement.  Three X-15's flew 199 flights — and average of 66 each.  Just because a Falcon 9 flies high and fast does not mean it will be structurally degraded after a few cycles.

2. The X-15 required weeks of refurbishment.  It is safe to assume that most of that related to mechanical equipment.  That was with technology that had literally just been invented.  In a vehicle designed from the beginning with operating economies in mind, using a relatively mature technology, this might be dramatically lower.

[DaveH62]

I don't see a thread on policy implications of re-usability and I'm wondering if there has been much research and thought about the impact of radically reducing the time and cost to get to space.  It seems that 48 hour turn around would have a huge effect on costs and contracting methodology.

[alang]

I think the barrier they will run into is the ability to get the times and dates cleared for the down range. It is not trivial it clean air traffic, boat traffic, etc.

Clearing air traffic isn't a problem: aircraft do it for each other all the time, continuously. In the scenario where launch vehicles are treated with aircraft-like turnaround times, they would undoubtedly be treated much like any other aircraft.

Um, no. They don't, at least not in the U.S. above 5,000 feet or within specified radii around certain designated metropolitan, military and spaceflight installations. Aircraft (and launching/entering spacecraft) in and around those areas in U.S. territory are subject to FAA flight rules and restrictions. There is a LOT of commercial aircraft travel in south Florida and all along the eastern seaboard of North America.

Isn't the point that if they can get to launching in such a casual and reliable way, that will lead to a paradigm shift in how airspace is viewed and it will be designed for permanently active launch corridors with reduced margins because we have so much confidence in the rockets now.

These issues have been recognized and worked for some time, and there is a considerable body of work on the subject; e.g., see (among others):
- Air Traffic Considerations for Future Spaceports, FAA, May 2014
- The FAA’s Current Approach to Integrating Commercial Space Operations into the National Airspace System, FAA, Sep 2013
- Space Transportation Concept of Operations Annex for NextGen, FAA, Aug 2012
- A Tool for Integrating Commercial Space Operations Into The National Airspace System, FAA/AIAA, Aug 2006
- Industry Trends and Key Issues Affecting Federal Oversight and International Competitiveness, GAO, May 2011

edit: add NextGen link.

There are a lot of airline scheduling and flight operational systems that model flights according to a flight 'key' that assumes that only commercial aviation exists. At least in Europe, communication between local ATC, National Air Traffic control, Airports and Airlines has elements of ambiguity. Call signs are allocated by airlines within certain rules and occasional overruled in order to disambiguate them.
Much work has been done between the FAA, Eurocontrol, Airlines and airports to evaluate the idea of a Global Universal Flight Identifier and have real time trajectory planning and airspace modification, however given how little money has been made by airlines since 9/11 I suspect that legislation will be required to get airlines and general aviation to conform to the requirements necessary to deal with increased use of airspace by other players such as drones and rockets.

[mark_m]

SpaceX job adverts sometimes yield interesting nuggets information. Here's two from Vehicle Operations Engineer (Launch Engineering)

Identify areas for improvement in ... rapid and reliable processing, and work ... to implement changes to equipment, tooling, operations, and the launch vehicle to serve the company’s long term processing goals (48 hour turnaround from stage arrival to launch, and a 4 hour stage acceptance series in Texas)

Emphasis mine.

Discuss.

I may be off base here, but I didn't read this as necessarily having anything to do with reuse. I read it as turnaround from stage arrival in Texas, either after completing refurbishment or brand new from the factory, until it's ready for launch.

[chalz]

SpaceX job adverts sometimes yield interesting nuggets information. Here's two from Vehicle Operations Engineer (Launch Engineering)

Identify areas for improvement in ... rapid and reliable processing, and work ... to implement changes to equipment, tooling, operations, and the launch vehicle to serve the company’s long term processing goals (48 hour turnaround from stage arrival to launch, and a 4 hour stage acceptance series in Texas)

Emphasis mine.

Discuss.

I may be off base here, but I didn't read this as necessarily having anything to do with reuse. I read it as turnaround from stage arrival in Texas, either after completing refurbishment or brand new from the factory, until it's ready for launch.

Off base but not run out: it is not specific to reused stages. Stage arrival means arrival at the launch site(wherever that is), not Texas. 'Turnaround' then refers to getting all the components into a functioning rocket with payload. It's true the first stage could be arriving from a landing site 1km away but as a process issue I think they would want it's origin to be unimportant.

Acceptance testing means making sure a new stage works by a bunch of tests (which I am ignorant of) and at least one full duration burn (around 6 mins) of just the stage on the vertical test stand in Texas. Once it has passed it is ready to ship to the launch site.

How acceptance testing will interact with reused stages is not yet clear. We know the Orbcomm stage will not be used again so whether it goes back to Texas or not is not indicative. So far Musk said they have found 'no damage' and on that basis are prepared to static fire the stage. Potentially an easy process to streamline for future stage landings. This would line up with wanting to test a brand new stage in only 4 hours.

None of this speed is much use yet with weeks between launches but is part of the long term aspiration of cheaper, quicker commercial rocket launch. I'm sure they are both years away from being realised too.

[Jim]

I originally posted this over on the "Refurbishment" thread, but it would seem to be at least as relevant here.  And it may serve to get discussion off of airspace restrictions and back on the subject of processing boosters for re-flight.


While speculation is popular and is often justified by the absence of facts, there ARE some facts available. An earlier reference to the X-15 is highly relevant as it endured a very similar flight regime in terms of stresses (arguably greater). 

In an interesting article, space historian David Portree cites a study that looked at the refurbishment costs of the X-15 program that provides probably the most relevant real-world data we have:


"In November 1966, James Love and William Young, engineers at the NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, completed a brief report in which they noted that the reusable suborbital booster for a reusable orbital spacecraft would undergo pressures, heating rates, and accelerations very similar to those the X-15 experienced."

"The average X-15 refurbishment time was 30 days, a period which had, they noted, hardly changed in four years. Even with identifiable improvements, they doubted that an X-15 could be refurbished in fewer than 20 days.

"At the same time, Love and Young argued that the X-15 program had demonstrated the benefits of reusability. They estimated that refurbishing an X-15 in 1964 had cost about $270,000 per mission.

"Love and Young cited North American Aviation estimates when they placed the cost of a new X-15 at about $9 million. They then calculated that 27 missions using expendable X-15s would have cost a total of $243 million. This meant, they wrote, that the cost of the reusable X-15 program in 1964 had amounted to just 3% of the cost of building 27 X-15s and throwing each one away after a single flight.

My bold.

http://www.wired.com/2013/05/the-x-15-rocket-plane-reusable-space-shuttle-boosters-1966/

At least two implications can be deduced from this reference:

1. There has been much talk on the forums about the effects of "fatigue" with images of much of the booster requiring rework or even replacement.  Three X-15's flew 199 flights — and average of 66 each.  Just because a Falcon 9 flies high and fast does not mean it will be structurally degraded after a few cycles.

2. The X-15 required weeks of refurbishment.  It is safe to assume that most of that related to mechanical equipment.  That was with technology that had literally just been invented.  In a vehicle designed from the beginning with operating economies in mind, using a relatively mature technology, this might be dramatically lower.

Wrong analogy.  X-15 was an aircraft and designed like one.  Aircraft are reusable.  Design standards have yet to be developed for reusable boosters for fatigues mitigation.

[meekGee]

FWIW, in regards to the entire discussion of fatigue, 3 minutes of powered flight time is already plenty for high-cycle-count fatigue due to vibrations and aerodynamic loads.

So the stage is already designed with fatigue requirements.  (As is any high fidelity design...)

Additionally,SpaceX has been gathering data (to characterize the flight environment) over many flights now, so even before retrieving this stage, they already knew quite a bit about how the stage is being loaded.

Plus - designing and testing for fatigue is not something new.  It's been done in airplanes, ship-building, car manufacturing...  it's not magic.

I can't see why this has become such a giant issue.  Just like previous "hurdles" - it will loom large in the forum until suddenly it will be in the rear view mirror and there wouldn't even be a bump felt to witness it was there...

[Jim]

Yes, the 3 minutes of flight and the instrumentation from the many flights prevented the helium bottle from not breaking free.  Also, flight environments is not the same as vehicle loads.

The accident provided a benefit by pointing out how little data they have on the vehicle.

[Coastal Ron]

X-15 was an aircraft and designed like one.

Falcon 9 v1.1 FT is a reusable rocket and designed like one.

Design standards have yet to be developed for reusable boosters for fatigues mitigation.

Outside of SpaceX you mean.  Industry standards, sure.  But that doesn't mean SpaceX hasn't developed design standards for reusable boosters.

I'm not saying I know SpaceX has, just that reusable boosters have been a goal for SpaceX for years, so it's not like it would be something they haven't thought of, or prepared for.  Same for Blue Origin.

But ULA?  I doubt they would have spent much time or energy on developing design standards for reusable boosters, especially since they don't believe recovering and reusing the enter booster makes sense.  And other than Orbital ATK, SpaceX and ULA make up the entire orbital rocket industry that would be creating such standards.

So SpaceX creating the industry standards themselves would not be surprising...

[Jim]

Falcon 9 v1.1 FT is a reusable rocket and designed like one.

no, it is an expendable rocket that is being converted/upgraded to a reusable one. 

[Robotbeat]

Falcon 9 v1.1 FT is a reusable rocket and designed like one.

no, it is an expendable rocket that is being converted/upgraded to a reusable one.

In what sense? v1.1 for certain was designed to be reusable, with leg attachments even on flights where landing wasn't attempted, from the very first flight. The center engine position and octoweb all were carefully arranged for VTVL recovery and subsequent reuse. They failed to recover it until now, but v1.1 (and v1.1 full thrust) was not designed as an expendable rocket.

It's a reusable rocket cheap enough to be expended, but it was not designed as an expendable rocket.

[Dante80]

Yes, the 3 minutes of flight and the instrumentation from the many flights prevented the helium bottle from not breaking free.  Also, flight environments is not the same as vehicle loads.

The accident provided a benefit by pointing out how little data they have on the vehicle.

You keep saying that. The reality though is that SpaceX identified the problem with the telemetry they had after a fault tree analysis, fixed it, and came back to flight 6 months after the failure. RTF means that the failure investigation is concluded, FAA signed it off, and NASA, USAF and major SpaceX customers got briefed about it. This is a fact, isn't it?

Moreover, there have been hints that the rocket had more than 3000 channels of telemetry. In what way could the "very little data on the vehicle" be substantiated?

[Rocket Science]

The X-15 and Falcon have different parameters used in their design. The X-15 was overbuilt for multiple missions in order to collect data from the space environment and on the vehicle itself in various flight profiles: max height, max speed etc…
The Falcon is designed for re usability and for delivering a payload. It has to walk the fine line of being both robust structurally for reuse, yet light enough as to not affect its mass fraction which would defeat its reason to exist as a reusable vehicle.
Lessons learned from previous X-planes contributed to the database that the X-15 designers drew from. Falcon’s designers are at the pointy end of the spear and are writing the reusable booster books as they proceed through the design evolution. It is an experimental vehicle with an operational mission. Very unique in the world of X vehicles. Let’s remember that only after the Shuttle failures did NASA finally acknowledge that they were flying an experimental vehicle in an operational role with lives on the line…The experiment continues… No conclusion can be drawn at this point for re usability…

[AncientU]

Some have concluded that it never was a technical challenge, just an economic one.

Since tech isn't the issue, maybe a 48 hour turn-around is -- or maybe that is not a technical problem either...