Pivot to BFR

[sanman]

In his latest IAC presentation, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX's full focus would be completely repurposed toward the planned BFR, with the resulting discontinuation of the successfully proven Falcon9R and the imminent FalconHeavy.
Presumably, SpaceX will devote enough further resources to Falcon9R to be able to fulfill its existing launch manifest commitments on schedule, but after that the BFR is supposed to be the one and only product offering to sustain SpaceX's business model (at least until they eventually come up with an even bigger BFR.)


What are the justifications for such a radical pivot? What is driving it?
What will it take to pull off such a radical pivot maneuver successfully?
Are there any past historical precedents that can be referenced for comparison?
Is this the best way forward, or are we likely to see some compromises in what pans out? If so, in what ways?

[Robotbeat]

Cost of the manufacturing line and all the technician and engineer talent involved in keeping it running. They free up like thousands of employees for BFR this way.

[sanman]

So they're just going to churn out enough F9Rs to meet the existing schedule of launch commitments, and then completely abandon that production line by converting it into the BFR production line?

And so the proven F9R is being abandoned for a BFR that hasn't even flown yet. Alas, poor F9R, we hardly knew ye.

What's the point of even going forward with launching the FalconHeavy, if it'll likely never fly again? Will it at least serve as a test-flight validation of new technologies that may be used on the BFR?

Once BFR becomes the new workhorse, then of course it's a whole new world, a whole new ballgame. At that point, the F9R and FH become footnotes in history. But it's a big If to get to that point.

[2552]

I think they'll make the F9 upper stage reusable and stockpile 20 or so block 5 F9s and FHs, shut down the factory, and keep reflying/refurbishing the stockpiled rockets until 2030 if they have to while charging current expendable prices, pocketing the savings of reusability to fund BFR development. A fully reusable F9 can't launch GTO missions, so FH will have to do all of them (probably being repriced at $62 million), and F9 will do Starlink constellation, Dragon and other LEO missions.

[NotOnImpact]

What are the justifications for such a radical pivot? What is driving it?

What is driving it is Elon's desire to get to Mars.  I imagine that he doesn't find the prospect of waiting around for the government to fund his plan very compelling -- and he knows the criticism he will take with any appearance of taking additional government money.  Total and complete re-usability requires a large rocket and this in turn drives down launch cost.  A launch cost even lower than the F9 has the potential to increase profits to pay for developing and perfecting the hardware that will be used to get to Mars.

What will it take to pull off such a radical pivot maneuver successfully?

Well, they did go from a single engine rocket to returning a stage in 9 years with many first-evers sprinkled in between.  So I think it takes a company with the vision and the drive of SpaceX.

Are there any past historical precedents that can be referenced for comparison?

Only the moon landing.  And that pales by comparison amazingly.

Is this the best way forward, or are we likely to see some compromises in what pans out? If so, in what ways?

What makes this a compelling plan is that it is not single purposed.  That is what made the Saturn V go into retirement - it was a built for a single purpose.  And being multi-purposed it has the potential that development costs would be shared across all implementations.  There could be 10 or 15 configurations of the ship (err.. second stage?) that all take advantage of a single first stage booster.   The ship itself is designed to land at many different speeds and many different atmosphere densities.

Usually, when a design tries to solve every problem, it ends up not being the best design for any individual case.  So in this sense, this is the compromise.  The compromise of designing a rocket that is not the best Mars transport, but has the potential to both fund and implement Mars transportation.

[darkenfast]

First they aren't going to shut down Falcon production right now, before BFR is designed.  Second, remember: Falcon is a RE-USABLE rocket.  Even if the Block 5 is only good for 10 flights apiece (and they believe it will do more), having a stock of them can allow a lot of missions.  When (and if) re-usability becomes routine, they would have to curtail a lot of production anyway and lay off a lot of valuable people.  It's like ending production of airliner Model As and starting production of airliner Model Bs, even though Model As will be flying for years.  You'll still make necessary parts to support the product, but your big assembly line will have moved on.

SpaceXs competitors won't be standing still.  Neither will SpaceX. 

[ANTIcarrot]

I think something of the Direct/Jupiter mindset might be at play here. Why have a big and little rocket when a medium sized rocket can do both and save money.

I believe the IPT was also based on the (optimistic) idea they could use the larger NASA workshops to make it. BFR is the largest design they can fit into their existing facilities.

[yokem55]

The challenge here is making sure fairing reusability works out and they leave enough capacity for building falcon upper stages to meet the flight rate for falcon that they need to fund the whole operation. Assuming an average profit of $20 million per falcon flight they would only need to fly 25 times a year to get $500 million a year to fund the $2.5 billion R&D for BFR over 5 years. Can they still build 25 upper stages a year when a big chunk of the staff and floor space is building BFR and BFS? This also requires a 100% uptake on reusable boosters and an end to expendable launches unless they expended some of the older block 3/4 cores still on hand. It also means they won't be flying Falcon 100 times per year to build out the constellation and the constellation will require the cargo BFS for full deployment.

Not impossible in my mind, but it's going to be a challenge for sure.

[envy887]

So they're just going to churn out enough F9Rs to meet the existing schedule of launch commitments, and then completely abandon that production line by converting it into the BFR production line?
...

There's going to be some overlap. There is no way they can build enough F9s in the next 6-9 months and then change over and start building BFR.

I think they will start building BFR in new manufacturing space in late 2018, and slowly overtake F9 manufacturing space until F9 manufacture stops in late 2020.

F9 won't officially retire until BFR has been flying for 4 or 5 years, which will be no sooner than 2025. It likely has hundreds of launches to go.

[Jcc]

Somehow I think there is a connection between the tremendous need for capital to build BFR and the fortuitous new venture capital fund exclusively to raise capital for SpaceX:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43472.msg1708410#top

Like Elon has been talking to investors and convinced them this is a good place to put their money?

[guckyfan]

I think they need investors for the satellite constellations. They need to convince them that BFR will help with cost efficiency in deployment, so part of that money can go into BFR development.

[Jcc]

I think they need investors for the satellite constellations. They need to convince them that BFR will help with cost efficiency in deployment, so part of that money can go into BFR development.

Yes, but in the general case, imagine saying we are going to build the worlds biggest rocket and make it fully reusable, so that the operational cost is lower than the smallest orbital rocket, and fly it so often that it beats everyone else in reliability and safety. Crazy? That's what they said about landing and reusing the F9 S1.

[Ludus]

I don’t know where SpaceX is in its F9 production ramp up, but they were targeting a rate somewhere between 30-40 cores per year by 2018. Block 5 which is the final optimized reusability version is supposed to be just coming out now.

So if SpaceX starts Block 5 now and produces them for a year they should have more than 30 Block 5’s that can be used gas and go for a dozen launches each and more with refurb. That’s more than 300 core/flights worth if they terminate F9 production by the end of 2018.

Plus they have a collection of recovered older version cores, some of which will be reflown a few times and which can be scrapped for parts otherwise.

The only other issue is S2’s which require either ongoing production, a large stockpile or reusability (unknown).

300 core/flights seems more than enough to cover the transition to all BFR if the S2 requirements can be met. 2018 SpaceX has about 30 flights with a couple FHs. They can keep up that pace for 5 years after exlusively using flight proven cores without using half their capacity.

There’s no special point they have to transition, so at whatever point they project having enough F9 hardware to cover the transition to BFR (with a few years of overlap) they plan to terminate F9 and switch most production to BFR.

[Mader Levap]

I do not see them closing F9/FH shop any time soon.

First, BFR will be later than SpaceX says it will be. Years later. Anyone thinking that THIS time SpaceX will do something on time simply deludes himself.

Second, there will be period when F9/FH and BFR will fly at same time. In fact, even beginning of windup period (when F9/FH are slowly phased out) may start way, way later than beginning of BFR flights.

So I see F9/FH serving them well for a decade at least.

[Ludus]

I do not see them closing F9/FH shop any time soon.

First, BFR will be later than SpaceX says it will be. Years later. Anyone thinking that THIS time SpaceX will do something on time simply deludes himself.

Second, there will be period when F9/FH and BFR will fly at same time. In fact, even beginning of windup period (when F9/FH are slowly phased out) may start way, way later than beginning of BFR flights.

So I see F9/FH serving them well for a decade at least.

That would still fit with terminating production by the end of 2018. At a dozen flights per core they could still fly them heavily for the next 5 years and likely have a tail of flights still happening in 10 years. Genuine rapid reusability if Block 5 really achieves it, creates situations the industry isn’t used to.

Once they terminated production of F9, it might still be the only system they fly for several years even while most of their production resources are devoted to building BFR. Certainly there would also be a period of years they fly both systems, all even if they do a hard shut down of F9 production within a year. Of course there’s no big difference if they let that slip to 2 years and don’t completely shut it down until late 2019.

This actually solves what would otherwise be a problem. How many fully reusable F9 cores do they need laying around? They’ve been ramping up their capacity to build them at the same time they polish rapid reusability. If they don’t stop producing them and pivot their resources to building something else, what do they do?

[pippin]

Historical precedent?
Of course the Space Shuttle has to come to mind here which was built on the same idea: a reusable LEO launch vehicle big enough to replace them all and cheap enough to make it viable.

Of course we know how that turned out and the key for SpaceX to succeed will be that reuse actually delivers on the cost savings they hope for, unlike with the Shuttle which did not.
One thing SpaceX has done better is that they have an incremental approach to reuse. They’ve tried this before and optimized it and also started with a non-manned version so they don’t have to build something extraordinarily reliable that has to work the first time to build the technology.
So I’d give them more confidence than STS had but of course it’s still a huge risk. BFR is so large that even a small error is the cost assumptions can make it completely not viable for the markets they are currently targeting with F9 and FH, especially since by the time they are flying BFR they will likely have competition in the „re-usable“ market.

[envy887]

Historical precedent?
Of course the Space Shuttle has to come to mind here which was built on the same idea: a reusable LEO launch vehicle big enough to replace them all and cheap enough to make it viable.

Of course we know how that turned out and the key for SpaceX to succeed will be that reuse actually delivers on the cost savings they hope for, unlike with the Shuttle which did not.
One thing SpaceX has done better is that they have an incremental approach to reuse. They’ve tried this before and optimized it and also started with a non-manned version so they don’t have to build something extraordinarily reliable that has to work the first time to build the technology.
So I’d give them more confidence than STS had but of course it’s still a huge risk. BFR is so large that even a small error is the cost assumptions can make it completely not viable for the markets they are currently targeting with F9 and FH, especially since by the time they are flying BFR they will likely have competition in the „re-usable“ market.

There is no precedent nor competition for a fully reusable LV. That's both a potential significant risk, and a likely significant advantage.

[CuddlyRocket]

So they're just going to churn out enough F9Rs to meet the existing schedule of launch commitments, and then completely abandon that production line by converting it into the BFR production line?

Elon spoke of already ordering new equipment to manufacture the BFR. Suggests they're going to build a new production line rather than converting the existing one, which they'll probably mothball. This will give them the option of re-starting it, should that prove necessary.

[sanman]

Elon spoke of already ordering new equipment to manufacture the BFR. Suggests they're going to build a new production line rather than converting the existing one, which they'll probably mothball. This will give them the option of re-starting it, should that prove necessary.

So then is the decision to scale down BFR (12m to 9m, etc) based more on reducing production costs, when it's going to be an all-new production line anyway?

Will SpaceX be forced to expand in a significant way at least temporarily, in order to cope with the demands of this transition or spike in workload? It seems like the aspirational 2022 date indicates a period of intense activity ahead.

[Coastal Ron]

So they're just going to churn out enough F9Rs to meet the existing schedule of launch commitments, and then completely abandon that production line by converting it into the BFR production line?

The Falcon 9 and BFR/ITS production lines will be completely different. The Falcon 9 is built from aluminum and 3.7m in diameter, whereas the BFR and ITS are built out of composites and are 9m in diameter. Even a different size paint shop.

As a complete guess, I wouldn't be surprised if they move the Falcon 9 production tooling to MacGregor - just in case they need to build new ones.

What's the point of even going forward with launching the FalconHeavy, if it'll likely never fly again? Will it at least serve as a test-flight validation of new technologies that may be used on the BFR?

Flying the Falcon Heavy for 4-5 years could be worthwhile. Musk thinks it's worthwhile, so we'll have to see if it turns out that way...