Retiring Falcon 9 first stages vs expending?

[Brovane]

Any consideration to retiring this booster (1058) because of it's status as the Demo-2 booster with the NASA worm logo on it's side?  Now that it has done 10-flights. 

[vaporcobra]

Any consideration to retiring this booster (1058) because of it's status as the Demo-2 booster with the NASA worm logo on it's side?  Now that it has done 10-flights.

Definitely not. B1058 is in its prime and will very likely become a fleet leader in just a few months (maybe alongside B1060 but still). B1049 and B1051, which are older and more finicky/slow to reuse, are better candidates for retirement but even then, it looks like SpaceX will prefer a more utilitarian version of "retirement" (i.e. expending one or both on special missions).

But this should probably be discussed elsewhere.

[alugobi]

because of it's status as the Demo-2 booster with the NASA worm logo

Why?  The propensity to make "historic" every novel thing and to save it somewhere doesn't do anything towards regularizing space science, access, and travel.  Which I think is a long term goal or desire of most of the fans here. 

I believe that the sooner we stop making celebrities out of astronauts, and the sooner we fly more and more and more until we can't remember who did what or which rocket went where anymore, that the closer we'll be to truly becoming a space-faring species. 

Quit bronzing all the baby shoes and get on with launching until it won't go anymore, then get another.

[DanClemmensen]

because of it's status as the Demo-2 booster with the NASA worm logo

Why?  The propensity to make "historic" every novel thing and to save it somewhere doesn't do anything towards regularizing space science, access, and travel.  Which I think is a long term goal or desire of most of the fans here. 

I believe that the sooner we stop making celebrities out of astronauts, and the sooner we fly more and more and more until we can't remember who did what or which rocket went where anymore, that the closer we'll be to truly becoming a space-faring species. 

Quit bronzing all the baby shoes and get on with launching until it won't go anymore, then get another.

Putting it in a museum can mislead future generations. Items that went into museums in the past include suits of armor that are fairly small, which led to the belief that knights were short. Turns out that real armor was worn out and discarded, while the stuff that was preserved was intended for training young squires (possibly apocryphal). "retiring" the old F9s to a museum could cause future space historians  to speculate on all the design flaws that led to poor turnaround times. Just throw them away.

[Conexion Espacial]

Any consideration to retiring this booster (1058) because of it's status as the Demo-2 booster with the NASA worm logo on it's side?  Now that it has done 10-flights.

Definitely not. B1058 is in its prime and will very likely become a fleet leader in just a few months (maybe alongside B1060 but still). B1049 and B1051, which are older and more finicky/slow to reuse, are better candidates for retirement but even then, it looks like SpaceX will prefer a more utilitarian version of "retirement" (i.e. expending one or both on special missions).

But this should probably be discussed elsewhere.

That's right, the B1049 and B1051 will most likely be scrapped this year on non-recovery missions, the newer boosters (such as the B1058 or B1060) will not only be used faster, but will be the ones that can reach the 20-flight goal. In addition, the boosters that have carried astronauts into space will probably have an easier time reaching 20 flights because they have had special treatment since manned missions require a higher level of overhaul.

[su27k]

Any consideration to retiring this booster (1058) because of it's status as the Demo-2 booster with the NASA worm logo on it's side?  Now that it has done 10-flights.

Besides the other issues listed in the replies, there's also the mundane question of where to put the booster if it's retired, it's big enough that displaying it is non-trivial. And the usual places like SpaceX HQ, KSC visitor center, Huston already have their booster displays.

[steveleach]

I guess at some point the industry is going to want to start thinking about responsible disposal.

SpaceX are starting to explore "reduce" (rideshares) and are leading the way on "reuse". The next step will probably be "recycle", with end-of-life boosters being stripped down to raw materials.

Dumping stages into the ocean will at some point come to be be viewed as environmental vandalism, I suspect.

[aero]

What is the real consideration for "end of life?" Reusing a booster until it fails in flight seems a no-go, no one wants to lose a payload like that. That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room to determine end of life. End of design life is easier but makes it hard to determine if booster can fly beyond end of design life. Perhaps exhaustive testing at McGregor of some retired boosters? I don't know quite how the math would fall out using that approach but it does seem that it would be a doable/convincing way to determine what the real reliability curve would look like for old boosters.

Maybe a complete teardown and inspection would be effective but that way still leaves one wondering if the component part specifications were the correct values. Maybe the correct values are easy to determine, but rocket science and easy don't seem to me to belong in the same sentence.

[Jim]

I guess at some point the industry is going to want to start thinking about responsible disposal.

SpaceX are starting to explore "reduce" (rideshares) and are leading the way on "reuse". The next step will probably be "recycle", with end-of-life boosters being stripped down to raw materials.

Dumping stages into the ocean will at some point come to be be viewed as environmental vandalism, I suspect.

No different than letting upper stages or spacecraft burn up

[CorvusCorax]

What is the real consideration for "end of life?" Reusing a booster until it fails in flight seems a no-go, no one wants to lose a payload like that. That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room to determine end of life. End of design life is easier but makes it hard to determine if booster can fly beyond end of design life. Perhaps exhaustive testing at McGregor of some retired boosters? I don't know quite how the math would fall out using that approach but it does seem that it would be a doable/convincing way to determine what the real reliability curve would look like for old boosters.

Maybe a complete teardown and inspection would be effective but that way still leaves one wondering if the component part specifications were the correct values. Maybe the correct values are easy to determine, but rocket science and easy don't seem to me to belong in the same sentence.

Falcon9 has a lot of redundancy built in. A lot of things ( for a rocket!) can go wrong - including engine failures - and it will still deploy its 2nd stage with the desired altitude,and velocity, but would likely fail to land where and how it was intended.

As such, flying boosters until they fail to land is not directly equivalent to putting payloads at risk, even though the risk is probably increasing when key parts of a booster start exceeding its design life.

If it starts becoming too risky to fly customer payloads, theres always starlink.

The bigger question we should ask at sone point "what to do with all the used boosters" when Starship becomes operational and takes over themajority of launches.

Falcon9 will still be used for manned and high profile missions for a couple of more years, but launching ( and refurbishing ) aging F9 boosters will simply no longer be financially viable, if the payloads could go on a Starship.

We might see perfectly good boosters with less than 20 launches on them put in a museum or even recycled!!!

[Lee Jay]

I guess at some point the industry is going to want to start thinking about responsible disposal.

SpaceX are starting to explore "reduce" (rideshares) and are leading the way on "reuse". The next step will probably be "recycle", with end-of-life boosters being stripped down to raw materials.

Dumping stages into the ocean will at some point come to be be viewed as environmental vandalism, I suspect.

No different than letting upper stages or spacecraft burn up

I don't agree, Jim.

A suborbital entry will result in the vast majority of the materials hitting the ocean intact.

An orbital entry will cause a lot of the material to be vaporized.

Not the same thing.

[freddo411]

What is the real consideration for "end of life?" Reusing a booster until it fails in flight seems a no-go, no one wants to lose a payload like that. That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room to determine end of life. End of design life is easier but makes it hard to determine if booster can fly beyond end of design life. Perhaps exhaustive testing at McGregor of some retired boosters? I don't know quite how the math would fall out using that approach but it does seem that it would be a doable/convincing way to determine what the real reliability curve would look like for old boosters.

Maybe a complete teardown and inspection would be effective but that way still leaves one wondering if the component part specifications were the correct values. Maybe the correct values are easy to determine, but rocket science and easy don't seem to me to belong in the same sentence.

You can age out a booster based on financial considerations.   

One approach would be to depreciate a booster at a fixed number of launches where it is known that the risk of failure is negligible.   For example, cost to build booster $30 million, use 30 times, so the cost per flight for depreciation is 1 million, and this is deemed acceptable as the 31st flight would only lower the per flight cost a negligible amount.

Another approach would be to use a booster until refurb costs for $X new flights become greater than the cost to produce a new booster for $X flights

Either one of these leaves a mostly good booster at end of life.  Recycle, museum piece, or expend at that point.

[rsnellenberger]

I guess at some point the industry is going to want to start thinking about responsible disposal.

SpaceX are starting to explore "reduce" (rideshares) and are leading the way on "reuse". The next step will probably be "recycle", with end-of-life boosters being stripped down to raw materials.

Dumping stages into the ocean will at some point come to be be viewed as environmental vandalism, I suspect.

No different than letting upper stages or spacecraft burn up

Especially when the total mass of any significant shipwreck (e.g., Andrea Doria, Bismarck, Titanic) probably exceeds the total mass of expended stages dropped in the ocean by at least a couple of orders of magnitude, particularly when the ephemeral nature of aluminum in saltwater is taken into account.

[Lee Jay]

I guess at some point the industry is going to want to start thinking about responsible disposal.

SpaceX are starting to explore "reduce" (rideshares) and are leading the way on "reuse". The next step will probably be "recycle", with end-of-life boosters being stripped down to raw materials.

Dumping stages into the ocean will at some point come to be be viewed as environmental vandalism, I suspect.

No different than letting upper stages or spacecraft burn up

Especially when the total mass of any significant shipwreck (e.g., Andrea Doria, Bismarck, Titanic) probably exceeds the total mass of expended stages dropped in the ocean by at least a couple of orders of magnitude,...

That's certainly not true.

[toren]

Maybe overstated, but in the right direction, for example:

Probably the largest wreck from WW II, IJN Yamato, was about 65000 t displacement.

Wiki lists a dry F9 FT as 529 t.  So you'd have to dunk nearly 120 F9 class boosters to equal just one large ship wreck.

[envy887]

Maybe overstated, but in the right direction, for example:

Probably the largest wreck from WW II, IJN Yamato, was about 65000 t displacement.

Wiki lists a dry F9 FT as 529 t.  So you'd have to dunk nearly 120 F9 class boosters to equal just one large ship wreck.

F9 is more like 30 t dry.

[steveleach]

The fact that something else is worse often doesn't help much if/when public opinion turns on you.

We already know that large swathes of the general public believe all these billionaires and megacorporations should stop playing with rockets and fix problems at home.

If someone wants to sell newspapers with a scare story about all those boosters being dumped in the ocean for the last 50 years, SpaceX would be able to respond with "we don't really do that any more". No-one else would.

[DanClemmensen]

Maybe overstated, but in the right direction, for example:

Probably the largest wreck from WW II, IJN Yamato, was about 65000 t displacement.

Wiki lists a dry F9 FT as 529 t.  So you'd have to dunk nearly 120 F9 class boosters to equal just one large ship wreck.

F9 is more like 30 t dry.

The 529 t appears to be teh wet mass of the two stages.  The dry mass of the first stage is 25.6 t. See:
    https://www.spaceflightinsider.com/hangar/falcon-9/
Therefore it takes more than 2500 F9 boosters to equal Yamato.

[markbike528cbx]

Maybe overstated, but in the right direction, for example:

Probably the largest wreck from WW II, IJN Yamato, was about 65000 t displacement.

Wiki lists a dry F9 FT as 529 t.  So you'd have to dunk nearly 120 F9 class boosters to equal just one large ship wreck.

F9 is more like 30 t dry.

The 529 t appears to be teh wet mass of the two stages.  The dry mass of the first stage is 25.6 t. See:
    https://www.spaceflightinsider.com/hangar/falcon-9/
Therefore it takes more than 2500 F9 boosters to equal Yamato.

[snark] Perhaps there should have been a NEPA process before the Yamato was sunk
[/snark, was reading the Boca Chica permits thread.]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironbottom_Sound  shows about 50 ships sunk there.
Just adding the tonnage of heavy cruiser and larger ships...
Hiei and Kirishima , 2x 27,000 tonnes
Astoria, Quincy, Vincennes 3x12,463 tonnes
Canberra 10,000 tonnes
Atlanta 8,000 tonnes

for 108,000 tonnes, just in one portion of a out of the way place in the world.

Scapa flow _still_ has  three battleships, three light cruisers and a fast mine-layer remaining from the 1919 scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet.
http://www.scapaflowwrecks.com/wrecks/

So the tonnage from spacecraft is minimal compared to other seafloor wrecks.  Also spacecraft are nearly always depleted of propellants before loss.

[rsnellenberger]

I guess at some point the industry is going to want to start thinking about responsible disposal.

SpaceX are starting to explore "reduce" (rideshares) and are leading the way on "reuse". The next step will probably be "recycle", with end-of-life boosters being stripped down to raw materials.

Dumping stages into the ocean will at some point come to be be viewed as environmental vandalism, I suspect.

No different than letting upper stages or spacecraft burn up

Especially when the total mass of any significant shipwreck (e.g., Andrea Doria, Bismarck, Titanic) probably exceeds the total mass of expended stages dropped in the ocean by at least a couple of orders of magnitude,...

That's certainly not true.

You trimmed the *allowing for corrosion*, but I suppose you are technically correct here.

This turned into an Arsenio Hall "things that make you go 'Hmmm'" event for me...

Dry masses were taken from Wikipedia (primary) or [whatever DuckDuckGo returns] (secondary).
Format is number of launches, then total dry mass tonnage for non-orbital stages. 
Assumes all stages hit the water, even if they didn't (looking at you, Atlas)
SWAGs used: Atlas F -> D adds 1000 lb; Titan side dry mass @ 10000 lb, 12000 (34D), 14000 (IV)

Saturn (3350 t):   
    I (10 Launches): 497 tons
    IB (9 L):   416 t
    V (13 L): 2437 t    (included Skylab S-II out of laziness)

Titan (3355 t):
   I, II, IIIA, IIIB (248 L):  1776 t
   IIIC, IIID, IIIE (65 L): 813 t   
   34D (15 L): 202 t
   IV (39 L):  565 t

Atlas (6302 t):
  SM-65D, E, F (253 L):  1518 t
  Atlas D (SLV-3), Agena, Centaur, E/F:  (376 L):  2444 t
  Atlas III (6 L):  90 t
  Atlas V (90 L): 2250 t

Thor, all blocks (145 L):  507 t

When you get past Thor, the Delta family seemed like a maze of twisty little passages all alike, so I surrendered.

Total dry mass sent to the vast briny by these launchers:   13,514 tons
IJN Yamato displacement (at full load):  72000 tons