SpaceX long-term stage processing goal = 48 hour turnaround

[Coastal Ron]

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.

Falcon 9 v1.1 also drew from lessons learned from 3 years of v1.0 flights, 2 years of v1.1 non-FT flights, as well as 5 years of manufacturing knowledge about what they were capable of.  As the saying goes, an overnight success years in the making...

No conclusion can be drawn at this point for re usability…

Yep.  Recoverability though, is a different matter...

[Rocket Science]

I agree Ron with most of what you wrote but to just maintain perspective, all those prior flight mentioned also led to a LOV just 7 months ago and even more information for the books they are writing. This last flight with upgrades I view as a reset for them in terms of procedures and processes.
I am appreciative that an organization like SpaceX is willing "to at least try" to quote Elon. I also remember him saying a couple of years back if he doesn't achieve re-usability he might just walk away from it all... (I really didn't believe it when he said it at the time, but I guess we'll see)

[meekGee]

I agree Ron with most of what you wrote but to just maintain perspective, all those prior flight mentioned also led to a LOV just 7 months ago and even more information for the books they are writing. This last flight with upgrades I view as a reset for them in terms of procedures and processes.
I am appreciative that an organization like SpaceX is willing "to at least try" to quote Elon. I also remember him saying a couple of years back if he doesn't achieve re-usability he might just walk away from it all... (I really didn't believe it when he said it at the time, but I guess we'll see)

All true about the failures, except all the issues they've had had nothing to do with reusability.  They designed this rocket (3rd iteration now) for RTLS and reusability.  They even designed the 2nd iteration to be such.  This doesn't guarantee that there's no holes in the design, but making modifications to plug these holes (based on study of the returned core) is a much easier task than standing there scratching your head and going "how in hell are we going to make thing this reusable?"

[Jim]

Yep.  Recoverability though, is a different matter...

Without reuse, it is a wasted effort.

[QuantumG]

Yep.  Recoverability though, is a different matter...

Without reuse, it is a wasted effort.

Why? Just being about to inspect engines that have flown is worth a lot.

[Dante80]

I think that Jim is trying to say the following.

1. There is a lot of effort, cost and penalties involved in the current SpaceX architecture for re-use.
2. If there is no economic re-usability, that effort becomes dissimilar to the benefits that recoverability might bring to the table for future iterations of the architecture.
3. Thus, until economic re-usability is proven, the whole architecture around it can be viewed as a money drain vs the alternative (optimizing for a cheap, mass produced, expendable LV with max performance).

[Jim]

Why? Just being about to inspect engines that have flown is worth a lot.

That can be done on a test stand. 

[QuantumG]

Why? Just being about to inspect engines that have flown is worth a lot.

That can be done on a test stand.

You have to recover the engines first.  Also, inspection of just about everything else on the stage after flight is an opportunity that they haven't had before.

[Vultur]

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

Economic combined with politics ... NASA didn't have the political will/funding either to develop the Shuttle properly, or to develop a new better RLV or partial RLV after the Shuttle's inefficiency/expense became clear. Buran was always going to have an expendable booster IIRC, but anyway it got killed by the fall of the Soviet Union, and Russia hasn't tried reusability since.

And no private company that's tried (until just now) has had the funding to get very far.

I'm not sure when the software to do the sort of unmanned VTVL SpaceX & Blue Origin have done became available, but something like a 'flyback first stage' with a pure rocket second stage probably could have been done 40+ years ago.

[nacnud]

Buran was supposed to develop into a fully reusable design, orbiter, boosters and ET. At least that was claimed at the time.

[Jim]

Why? Just being about to inspect engines that have flown is worth a lot.

That can be done on a test stand.

You have to recover the engines first.  Also, inspection of just about everything else on the stage after flight is an opportunity that they haven't had before.

don't even need to fly the engines.  Just run them on the test stand.    That will provide the data needed.

[Donosauro]

I ... remember [Elon] saying a couple of years back if he doesn't achieve re-usability he might just walk away from it all... (I really didn't believe it when he said it at the time, but I guess we'll see)

Yes, but he didn't say, did he, that he would give up if SpaceX's current approach failed to achieve viable reusability? After all, this is at least the second approach they've taken: parachute recovery was tried, unsuccessfully, with Falcon 1. Perhaps SpaceX has one or more approaches, or variations on the current one, in case this one fails.

[joek]

...parachute recovery was tried, unsuccessfully, with Falcon 1...

And Falcon 9.

[Robotbeat]

How are there STILL people who think that it might be impossible for a Falcon 9 booster to be reused (i.e. even after tweaks to the design)?

The "Anti-rocket-reusability Law of the Universe" hypothesis. I just don't get this.

[meekGee]

It's been pointed often that in order to understand what happens to a rocket in flight, you need to fly it.

Not just the engines.  Take for example, oh, I don't know, the struts that hold the He bottles to the tank.

Wouldn't it be nice to inspect their ball ends after flight to look for almost-failures?   Might be useful in avoiding a future failure!

(Of course, Dr. Evil, that too, has already happened)

Point is, a returned stage automatically allows them to increase the reliability of the design.

How does any of the expendable rocket vendors know if there are near-failures in their rockets?

[QuantumG]

don't even need to fly the engines.  Just run them on the test stand.    That will provide the data needed.

Flight stresses can't be tested on the ground.

[llanitedave]

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.

Why? Just being about to inspect engines that have flown is worth a lot.

That can be done on a test stand.

These two posts look very contradictory to me.

[QuantumG]

These two posts look very contradictory to me.

It's almost like he got me to say what he wanted to say and then stopped talking. It's a great strategy.

[gregpet]

Could SpaceX remove redundancy as well as redesign over-engineered parts as more stages are returned and studied?

Could you eventually take significant weight off of the Falcon given reusability?

[mikelepage]

Seems like time to recommend everyone watches this talk again (Jeff Greason 2014 ISPCS Keynote):


As far as SpaceX goes, I think it makes sense that there will have to be a separate pricing structure for reused boosters because the risk is qualitatively different and thus far unknown.  I'm assuming every returned booster will have at least one qualification test (static fire without payload), and then a pre-flight static fire on the pad before it returns to flight service.

Then if they were being systematic about it, I'd imagine the 2nd returned booster would be reused once, and then taken apart and inspected, the 3rd returned booster reused twice, and then taken apart and inspected, and so on, until they have empirical data for how each component degrades over time with n flights.  Upgrade components accordingly for F9 v1.3.  Once they have a handle on that, they could start reusing them to destruction (with non-critical payloads) so they can gauge the max number of flights for which any booster can reasonably be used.

Only after they've done all that do I think they can switch to a commoditised service model where the fee you pay is for getting a payload to orbit, without distinguishing between new and used stages.  In the meanwhile, the only downside risk is that (with non-critical payloads), they'll discover some new phenomena that causes reused stages to blow up much more frequently than they were expecting.

Jeff Greason's so-called "valley of death" is being crossed