Personally, I wouldn't be surprised *at all* if that was Elon's plan. After
all, he does want to go to Mars.
Cheers,
Rick Dickinson
On December 27, 2015 9:26:47 PM PST, David Weinshenker <daze39@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 12/27/2015 09:13 PM, David McMIllan wrote:
be,
On 12/27/2015 10:37 PM, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
I would not be surprised if the balance for Falcon 9 turns out to
forlower stage reuse is profitable, upper stage reuse is not.
Short term, almost certainly correct. Longer term... hm. I
suspect that, on a pure cost analysis, that is likely to hold true
quite some time, barring any sudden new developments in propulsion orthere
materials. But I wonder... what if the market shifts? Right now,
seems to be a meme that riding on a "used" rocket is riskier thanriding
a brand-new expendable, but that doesn't really make sense, from aand
broader perspective. What happens if the market starts to*prefer*
"broken in" rockets? Might externalities like lower insurance costs
regulatory hurdles close the business case for a reusable upperstage?
Too early to say, but it'll be very interesting to see how the market
shifts over the coming decade, as we get experience with actual
recovered/refurb'd/reused booster stages.
If we ever get to the point of on-orbit propellant depots, it might
make more sense to keep the "used" upper booster stages in orbit,
and design space-operations configurations (long-distance exploration
missions, NEO tugs, etc.) around them (compared to trying to re-enter
them intact).
-dave w